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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35581 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Just as follow on, and in the spirit that everything related to Trump is culture war:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/19/politics/trump-voters-of-color-analysis/

Pull quotes:

The fact that Trump is doing considerably better among Republican voters of color than White Republicans flies in the face of the fact that many Americans view Trump as racist. I noted in 2019 that more Americans described Trump as racist than the percentage of Americans who said that about segregationist and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.

This fact should be the smoking gun that we're not talking about the same thing that we used to with the term "racism". The american public pretends to believe that Trump was more racist than Wallace.

Indeed, the Republican Party as a whole has been improving among voters of color. The party’s 38-point loss among that bloc for the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms was a 5-point improvement from 2020. Its margin among White voters stayed the same in exit poll data.

This is political realignment from the inside. It's slow, it could reverse or it could continue. I believe very strongly that the political coalitions are going to change composition quite a bit in the coming decade. I don't know what the issues will be, but the separation between the working class (see our discussion in last week's thread) and the middle class is becoming big enough to win elections on. The question is which party will get which side, and in what quantities.

As a point for discussion, if (and it's a big "if) the Republicans fully take up the flag of the working class, would that make them the left-leaning party?

This fact should be the smoking gun that we're not talking about the same thing that we used to with the term "racism".

Does anybody dispute that what we mean by "racism" in 2023 is different than what people meant by "racism" in 1968? That's a whole one year post-Loving v. Virginia. I'm confident if you asked a bunch of Americans if anti-miscegenation was "racist" in 1968 they would say "no." I suspect a large majority asked the same question today would say "yes."

The american public pretends to believe that Trump was more racist than Wallace.

Why "pretends to believe?" If our understanding of racism has changed why isn't it the case that more Americans today authentically believe Trump is racist than believed Wallace was racist in 1968? Note that your quote isn't comparing Americans today calling Trump or Wallace racist. It's comparing Americans today calling Trump racist with Americans in 1968 calling Wallace racist.

As a point for discussion, if (and it's a big "if) the Republicans fully take up the flag of the working class, would that make them the left-leaning party?

I guess it depends on what policies they advocate that involve taking up this flag. Most pro-working class policies seem pretty left-coded in the United States to me though.

Define ‘pro-working class policies’. Working class people broadly support the police, immigration restrictionism, tax cuts for themselves, and picking jobs over environment.

1.) This is true, but they also support common sense reforms the GOP opposes. Like, a lot of working class white people, especially in rural areas where there are basically no minorities have had run-ins with terrible cops.

2.) I've seen no actual evidence of immigration support based on income.

3.) Sure, everybody is selfish. OTOH, I'm sure if I looked into local ordinancs and bonds and other things, I'd actually bet lower-income working class voters consistently support increasing taxes on themselves far more than rich people do.

4.) Again, depends on the specific policy. Yes, coal miners in West Virginia are going to continue to support coal mining, but is a construction worker in Sheboygan? Probably not so much. Of course, everybody is selfish, but I guarantee you the vast majority of working class people do not want to go back to the pollution level of even the 90's, even if it meant working class jobs.

local ordinancs and bonds

Voting to tax yourself and have those taxes administered and spent in your local community, is very different than sending taxes off to the blackholes of statehouses or DC.

If there's in recent news to show that #4 is true, we only have to point to the train derailment in East Palestine. It's definitely a white working class area, and there's no love lost for Norfolk Southern having to foot a large cleanup bill, and people are still concerned about the water despite tests repeatedly coming back without showing any increase in pollutant levels. Contrast this with the days when companies would have dumped chemicals of a similar hazard level in an open pit and not told anybody about it, the residents not knowing anything until people started suffering adverse health effects decades later. Republicans can be a little more proactive about this than in the past since environmentalists are now almost exclusively concerned with climate change, but my guess is there would be broad conservative opposition to new environmental regulations if they weren't connected with a specific incident. I have a friend who worked for an environmental contractor and he said that the EPA turned into a joke under Trump, with operators totally unconcerned about being dinged with Federal violations. State environmental agencies had more teeth in those days, and in Pennsylvania, that's saying something, since DEP is viewed as notoriously dysfunctional among people in the know.

Fair enough. I suppose I was thinking along the lines of "policies that improve the material conditions of working class people." Stuff like universal health care, increased business safety regulation, unionization, things along those lines. I think SSCReader's comment upthread has a good enumeration.

I suspect a large majority asked the same question today would say "yes."

Depends on who you ask. I suspect BIPOC would give very different answers to white people.

According to Gallup non-white Americans have been more supportive of interracial marriage than white Americans any time they've ever been asked.

Break down the demographics a bit further......

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/202003/how-racial-minorities-view-interracial-couples

In fact, the participants’ responses depended not only on their race but also on their gender. In the case of Black-White marriages, Black men showed roughly equal warmth for both Black male-White female and White male-Black female couples. Black women indicated a similar level of warmth for White male-Black female couples, but they were quite cool toward couples where the husband was Black, and the wife was White.

When the researchers looked at the data from the Asian participants, they found the opposite pattern of results in terms of gender. Specifically, Asian women were equally warm to couples where the husband was White, and the wife was Asian and to couples where the races were reversed. In contrast, Asian men indicated high warmth toward Asian male-White female marriages, but they were quite cool to couples where the husbands were White, and the wives were Asian.

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