"Any empirical evaluation of the relationship between Trump and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase is doing more work than the other. In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plurality support among every economic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would be something more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how various groups in this income bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of whites in this "working class" supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than $100,000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic candidate. So when Packer laments [in the New Yorker] the fact that "Democrats can no longer really claim to be the party of working people—not white ones, anyway," he commits a kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of white people—working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Essayists from the United StatesEditors from the United StatesMemoirists from the United StatesBloggers from the United StatesJournalists from Baltimore
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ta-Nehisi_Coates
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ta-Nehisi Coates
58 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ta-Nehisi Coates →
Related Quotes
"[M]y goal is to get kids to own their education. I don't think I can hector them into doing this. I don't think I can…"
"Weakness, misery, does not always elicit sympathy. Perhaps that is because the weakness reminds of what we we fear fo…"
"No other athlete in a major sport gives so much of his body and gets so little in return than the average player on a…"
"Mr. [Clyde] Ross at that time, like most African Americans around the country, was unable to secure a loan, due to po…"
"When people wanted to criticize the Affordable Care Act they would often say “This is reparations. This is reparation…"
"You actually can’t understand American history without understanding slavery."
"Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Dee…"
"When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When…"
"[James Baldwin is] probably the biggest influence on me from a literary perspective."
"I'm looking to avoid a subtly demeaning subtext which holds that reading, say, is something you should do--like floss…"