Name: After Trump, the crisis: White America at the historical crossroads
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After Trump, the crisis: White America at the historical crossroads

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A group of pro-Trump protesters raise a giant America Flag on the West grounds of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.--How are you feeling?Hopeful, in a way. The George Floyd rebellions, which were some of the largest sustained protests in the history of the United States, really changed things in some fundamental ways. On that note, I believe that we could have thought differently about the Trump administration. We could have had a strategy that envisioned bringing Trump down through popular protests. In most European countries, a figure such as Donald Trump would have been protested out of office&nbsp;as much as he was voted out of office, and earlier probably.Language does political work. It shapes reality and the limits of our collective imaginations, and how we think about political society and our role in it. For example, in the Age of Trump, and especially in the moment of the George Floyd uprising, there were&nbsp;more public discussions of "structural" or "institutional racism."&nbsp;Joe Biden is also using this language. I worry that most people, both in the news media and on the day-to-day, do not have a real understanding of what those words mean in practice.Structural racism is a very important concept, but it is now becoming an empty signifier. I believe that it is very hard to know what politicians mean when they say "structural racism."&nbsp;And to hear police departments and law enforcement talking about structural racism particularly begs for a serious discussion of the concept as related to redress of grievances. The structures in this country are such that white working people have learned that their racist claims and desires will be listened to. Black people have learned that those white working people have to be placated in their racism or Democrats cannot be elected. If there can be a change where poor whites can be brought together in an alliance with antiracism, that would be an interesting moment."Working class" is a term&nbsp;that has come to dominate American political discourse during the Trump regime and now beyond. But it is emptied of all content and meaning. "Working class" is too often used in a superficial race- and gender-neutral way by the mainstream news media and other political elites. In many ways, "working class" is just another way of saying "white men."&nbsp;That assumption is so deep it goes unremarked upon by most.&nbsp;To talk about the "white working class" is really to fight on the terrain that the likes of a Trump or a Steve&nbsp;Bannon or Breitbart could occupy.If one goes down the road of talking about the "white working class," inevitably the emphasis ends up on "white."&nbsp;With the Bannons and Trumps that "white" is emphasized, as in the full-blown white nationalism&nbsp;that they gravitate towards.Even with the Democrats there is an emphasis on the "white" in "white working class," because they do not have anything as a party to offer in terms of class or the specifics of trade policy that would actually appeal to the people in Macomb County, Michigan. The Democrats are not for trade union rights in any fundamental way. The Democrats are not for reorganizing the working class. The Democrats are very much in favor of disastrous trade deals such as NAFTA.When political leaders and pundits say "middle class" they mean the white middle class —&nbsp;what is imagined to be the middle of the class structure. But for African Americans, the 50th percentile has about one-ninth of the wealth of the middle of the white class structure.The term "middle class" obscures racial differences and related inequalities. I believe&nbsp;this has been true since at least the 1980s. Some of us on the left are implicated in this too, because there is a kind of left politics that argues, "Oh, we should advance these middle-class economic demands, which in turn would mean we do not have to talk about race so much. Our economic agenda helps everyone, so we can&nbsp;avoid these challenging conversations about race".These types of approaches to class and race in America mean that there is very little space in the public discourse to seriously consider what would bring poor people together across the color line, while also being attentive to the specific grievances that African Americans and immigrants have in the United States.Race and class should not be discussed as being separate and apart from one another in America,&nbsp;or the West more generally. Where do you think the impulse to talk in simple terms, to decouple the two concepts, comes from?For some of us who are materialists and apply Marxist analyses, part of our worst impulses are when we argue that class concerns should submerge concerns about racial justice.For all his experience with the Black Freedom Struggle, there have been too many&nbsp;moments when Bernie Sanders was also guilty of that type of class reductionism.The fact that the Sanders&nbsp;2016 campaign&nbsp;introduced the word "socialism"&nbsp;into the national vocabulary was a big achievement. Given that, many people were willing to allow certain problems to go uncommented upon. In 2020, it seemed to me that Bernie Sanders had been given better advice about how to talk about race.I believe that Sanders was most comfortable in both 2016 and 2020 speaking about things that are important for Black and brown people in the United States such as Medicare for All. Sanders was also advocating economic policies that did not have a specifically important racial dimension to them, such as&nbsp;college tuition for all.&nbsp;Systems of white supremacy and white racism also hurt white people. How can we do a better job of explaining that to white folks?The willingness to accept dehumanization never ends at the color line. As an example, America's prison system is essentially an extension of Jim Crow that disproportionately targets young Black men. But that same system, from the 1980s forward also vastly increased the number of white people who are incarcerated. Using America's Jim Crow prison system as an example, we can highlight the racism at work there against black men — but then, at the same time, call attention to how white people, in particular poor white people, are also being hurt by mass incarceration. Another example is how the number of white women incarcerated has gone through the roof in the same period.How do you think whiteness is doing at present in America?A majority of whites in the United States still support Trump. We often get confused by these extraordinarily close elections. In fact, these elections are so close because African Americans vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate. The same is true for Latinos and Hispanics. This gives the appearance that there is all this resistance against Trump and what he represents, but in reality white Americans are generally supportive of him. We do not gain much in this country by denying that fact. &nbsp;These political and cultural problems have been going on for a long time in white America. Those problems continued and maybe even accelerated under Donald Trump.Moreover, there are huge numbers of eligible voters who do not participate. Poor people are much less likely to vote. There is something wrong with America's culture and politics that is larger than Donald Trump.An example of the many problems in white America —&nbsp;not exclusively found among the so-called white working class —&nbsp;is shown through the response to COVID and refusing to wear a mask. This a literal embrace of death by large numbers of white people in America. The mindless embrace of death by refusing to wear a mask also represents a type of widespread malaise.There is much evidence of this from the studies about the opioid crisis and the so-called deaths of despair&nbsp;among certain segments of the white public. In total, that data and other examples point&nbsp;to a type of psychological emergency among some&nbsp;whites.Is whiteness in some form&nbsp;of crisis as shown by the Age of Trump, which was at its core a white supremacist and neofascist backlash against multiracial democracy?I do not subscribe to the argument that in the next few decades white people will somehow not be the largest group and that therefore means the end of whiteness as we know it in America.At present there is a re-examination of the assumptions that undergird whiteness in America. That could result in a type of social democracy, or whiteness could be refurbished by admitting into its ranks groups who are now considered "people of color."&nbsp;There are real possibilities of a reactionary move as well.&nbsp;What is a crisis? Something that we do not know where it leads. Lots of white Americans are experiencing such a crisis.Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at&nbsp;. He also hosts a weekly podcast,&nbsp;. Chauncey can be followed on&nbsp;&nbsp;and&nbsp;.MORE FROM

A group of pro-Trump protesters raise a giant America Flag on the West grounds of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.--How are you feeling?Hopeful, in a way. The George Floyd rebellions, which were some of the largest sustained protests in the history of the United States, really changed things in some fundamental ways. On that note, I believe that we could have thought differently about the Trump administration. We could have had a strategy that envisioned bringing Trump down through popular protests. In most European countries, a figure such as Donald Trump would...

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Chauncey DeVega

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After Trump, the crisis: White America at the historical crossroads

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