Poor White Racist

We must always challenge our own beliefs and convictions. This is easier said than done, but I do try to live by that rule. That's why today I write this short post to correct a long held misconception of mine...

It may be one of the most widely held stereotypes about white people in the "civilized west"; that very poor, or poorly educated, white people are more racist. I started doubting this when a couple of years ago I read somewhere that among Democrats the percentages didn't add up to back up this assertion; very poor Democrat voters showed not much more racist tendencies than rich voters. I can't find that article now, but I've always remembered it exactly because its premise was so far removed from what I've always believed.

Not long after the whole 2015 / 2016 Trump campaign saga began, and my preconceptions about the poor "working class" white voters were confirmed once again. To be clear: Trump did mobilize the distinct group of white racists, emboldened them, "Made America Racist" again by normalizing open racism through incessant racist dog-whistling and more. That hasn't changed. What also hasn't changed though, is that this doesn't prove that poor white Americans are more racist than their rich counterparts. And with Trump, the GOP became for working class white Americans a promise that their lot in life would be improved; he was the quintessential poor man's populist, something the Democrats have failed to produce for some decades now, except Bernie Sanders of course. Only in retrospect can these voters conclude that Trump's promises were false.

During Trump's time in the Oval Office a few other articles appeared that brought me back to doubt the stereotype of the poor white racist. In 2019 "Dissent" magazine published an article titled Poverty Doesn’t Make You Racist, and in it recommendations were made for the Democrats on how to win back the White House from the "Trumpified" GOP. It concluded by saying that Democrats should not aim for Trump voters, but for poor white voters in general. Here's an interesting quote from near the end of the article:

There is a significant group of white voters, especially among the young, who take discrimination seriously and are part of a strong, multiracial base of the Democratic Party. And the white voters who are a part of that coalition generally have lower incomes than other white voters.
_{source: DISSENT}

White voters who take discrimination seriously generally have lower incomes. This assertion is based on a study showing that "white voters who support anti-racist policies generally have less income than their more racist peers." The Democrats didn't follow this advice, of course, as they went full throttle on the "we're NOT TRUMP" and "going back to normal" course. In October 2021 a Medium article was released by Brett Pelham titled The Myth of the Poor White Racist. Brett looked up data on interracial marriages by education level, quoting a 2017 Pew survey and public opinion data collected in the widely respected U.S. General Social Survey (GSS). He shows the results of more than 12,000 non-Hispanic White Americans who were surveyed in the GSS between 1980 and 2006, reporting how close they felt to American Blacks:

...a surprisingly high percentage of very poorly educated Whites (12.3%) [...] reported feeling “very close” (the extreme of 9 on the 9-point scale) to Black Americans. In comparison, only 6.4% of Whites with a graduate degree reported feeling this high level of interracial closeness. That’s a ratio of nearly 2:1.
_{source: An Injustice!}

To be fair, the author mentions caveats to these numbers that are relevant, so please read the entire article for yourself, but coupled with the data he shares on interracial marriages, we're getting closer and closer to the conclusion that the myth about the poor white racist may indeed be a myth; very poorly educated white women are almost three times as likely to marry a black husband than very highly educated white women. Of course we need to keep in mind, as the author does as well, that something as simple as proximity can explain this for a great part; poor white people tend to live in the same neighborhoods as poor black people, and poor neighborhoods correlate highly with poor education. Still, this article draws the same conclusion as the previous one:

If the United States is to live up to its moniker as the “land of the free,” it will take a diverse coalition of progressive Americans to defeat regressive policies such as a biased electoral college system, blatant gerrymandering, and state legislatures that are rapidly making it harder than ever for already disenfranchised Americans to vote. Ironically, then, registering many more very poor White voters could become a new tool in the 21st century arsenal against systemic racism. If we wish to make this tool as powerful as possible, we should find ways to promote empathy and understanding among poor and poorly educated Whites who are uncertain of exactly what they think about things like systemic racism.
_{source: An Injustice!}

There are many more articles and studies on this subject out there, so please feel free to look around. As for myself, this has been enough to at least stop and think twice whenever I encounter the argument that poor people are more likely to exhibit racist tendencies just because they're poor or poorly educated. It seems such a natural conclusion to be drawn, but I know that this doesn't make it true automatically. For example: drug abuse is more rampant among the poor as well, isn't it? It seems that way, yes. But is it true? I know from personal experience as well as from several articles I've read that rich people use a lot of drugs as well. The only difference is that the rich don't need crime to get their drugs. In other words: if you've got enough money to support that expensive "hobby," you're not a menace to society. Rich and better educated people may well simply be better at hiding their racism, and it's a fact that many Trump supporters are well off middle class and upper class. All I'm saying is don't simply assume these widely held stereotypes to be true; I know I won't anymore.

Oh, the below linked video is about critical race theory and the whole GOP culture war around it. This post isn't to take away from these truths whatsoever; they aren't mutually exclusive.

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