Racial Identity, and Its Hostilities, Return to American Politics
President Obama and Bernie Sanders have speculated that frustration over lost jobs and stagnant wages can explain much of the blue-collar support for Mr. Trump and conservative populists more generally.
The explanation, however, is not quite satisfactory. As Matthew Yglesias at Vox suggests, many white Americans are most likely drawn to Mr. Trump’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant message because they agree with it.
Such voters are nostalgic for the country they lived in 50 years ago, when non-Hispanic whites made up more than 83 percent of the population. Today, their share has shrunk to 62 percent as demographic change has transformed the United States into a nation where others have a shot at political power.
.. But the reaction of whites who are struggling economically raises the specter of an outright political war along racial and ethnic lines over the distribution of resources and opportunities.
.. Racial animosity has long helped foster a unique mistrust of government among white Americans. Nonwhite voters mostly like what the government does. But many white Americans, researchers have found, would rather not have a robust government if it largely seems to serve people who do not look like them.
.. European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the United States mainly because of American racial heterogeneity. “Racial animosity in the U.S. makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters,” they wrote.
.. white taxpayers have opposed welfare because they see themselves “as being forced, through taxes, to pay for stuff for blacks that many of them could not afford for their own families.”
.. Daniel Hungerman from the University of Notre Dame found that all-white congregations became less charitable as the share of black residents in the community rose.