I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump

[MrScorpio]

Apr 1, 2016 By Jonna Ivin

I’m just a poor white trash motherfucker. No one cares about me.


I met the man who said those words while working as a bartender in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas. It was a one-street town in Benton County. It had a beauty parlor, a gas station, and a bar where locals came on Friday nights to shoot the shit over cheap drinks and country music. I arrived in Arkansas by way of another little town in Louisiana, where all but a few local businesses had boarded up when Walmart moved in. In Arkansas, I was struggling to survive. I served drinks in the middle of the afternoon to people described as America’s “white underclass” — in other words, people just like me.

Across the highway from the bar was the trailer park where I lived. I bought my trailer for $1000, and it looked just like you would imagine a trailer that cost $1000 would look. There was a big hole in the ceiling, and parts of the floor were starting to crumble under my feet. It leaned to one side, and the faint odor of death hung around the bathroom. No doubt a squirrel or a rat had died in the walls. I told myself that once the flesh was gone, dissolved into the nothingness, the smell would go away, but it never did. Maybe that’s what vermin ghosts smell like.

I loved that trailer. Sitting in a ratty brown La-Z-Boy, I would look around my tin can and image all the ways I could paint the walls in shades of possibility. I loved it for the simple reason that it was the first and only home I have ever owned.

My trailer was parked in the middle of Walmart country, which is also home to J.B. Hunt Transportation, Glad Manufacturing, and Tyson Chicken. There is a whole lot of money in that pocket of Arkansas, but the grand wealth casts an oppressive shadow over a region entrenched in poverty. Executive mansions line the lakefronts and golf courses. On the other side of Country Club Road, trailer parks are tucked back in the woods. The haves and have-nots rarely share the same view, with one exception: politics. Benton County has been among the most historically conservative counties in Arkansas. The last Democratic president Benton County voted for was Harry S. Truman, in 1948.

There is an unavoidable question about places like Benton County, a question many liberals have tried to answer for years now: Why do poor whites vote along the same party lines as their wealthy neighbors across the road? Isn’t that against their best interests?

http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites-chant-trump-trump-trump/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Reminds me of Joe Bageant's writing, may he rest in peace. n/t

[LiberalArkie]

2. This is what started it

Many slave owners in both the North and South were also political leaders. Soon, they began to pass laws that stipulated different treatment of white indentured servants, newly freed white men, and African slaves. No white indentured servant could be beaten while naked, but an African slave could. Any free white man could whip a Black slave, and most important, poor whites could “police” Black slaves. These new laws gave poor whites another elevation in status over their Black peers. It was a slow but effective process, and with the passing of a few generations, any bond that indentured servants shared with African slaves was permanently severed.

[desmiller]

3. As a black man, I thank you for the lesson.

[LiberalArkie]

5. Before the politicians made the white indentured servants more of a person than a black man

they were more or less equal even in their own lives. "The Man" had to do something. Even Bernie went into that in one of his early speeches.

“They told white workers who were earning pennies an hour, ‘Hey, you think you’re in trouble, but you’re better off than the blacks,'” he said. “And they told straight people, ‘You’re better off than those gay people.’ And they pitted men against women. It’s always playing one group against another. That’s how the rich got richer while everybody else was fighting each other. Our job is to build a nation in which we all stand together.”

[brush]

16. How could Obama be descended from him? Obama's father was Kenyan who came . . .

to this country in the 20th century.

[1939]

19. Except

Slavery was not equally distributed through the south. Many of the areas such as described by the author of the piece had relatively few slaves. Some of the hardest "poor white" attitudes persist in the fringe areas of the south. A really good read on this culture is James Webb's book "Born Fighting".

[QC]

8. Great article. Everyone should read this. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. And every voter needs to see the chart in the article

[QC]

10. Definitely. n/t

[panader0]

14. Wow....

[senseandsensibility]

15. Unbelievable.

I am bookmarking.

[Skittles]

18. do Trump voters realize Trump *IS* the red part?

[lunatica]

11. Yup. they create weg issues and use them to the hilt

For those of us who have been around for awhile this is the first election where the "Gay Agenda" wedge issue hasn't come up with the Presidential Candidates. But they're still using the "Mexicans are coming to take your jobs" wedge issue. Good old Donald Trump's first words when he declared were that the Mexicans were coming to rape women. I'm sure he meant white women, because Lord knows everyone knows they're the only ones that count.

[lunatica]

13. That's exactly why they don't use gays anymore

They now have equal standing with everyone. And they can't say gay marriage has ruined their marriages now either.

[intrepidity]

17. Excellent long-form article.

Thank you for posting it!