538 - Democrats Have Their Own Challenges In Talking About Racial Issues In The Trump Era
After last year's election, there were many progressives who argued that Trump's victory was due to his focus on the concerns of the working class and that it was Democrats who were overly focused on "identity politics." In other words, white male resentment of the progress made by women, immigrants, and minorities was really based on their "legitimate" economic insecurities. Thus, for Democrats to win, they had to de-emphasize social justice and equal rights, and primarily focus on a populist economic agenda.
538 has a great article that states what should be obvious, that Trump won in large part by stoking racial and gender based resentments, rather than based on his economic agenda. This is why areas that were largely white that were not affected by immigration or trade still voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Perhaps Democrats and Progressives need to stop running away from the subject of race and gender, but instead confront the issue head-on and inform people about how Trump is using racism, sexism and xenophobia to oppress working class white males by giving them a scapegoat and allowing them to feel superior even as Trump and Republicans take away their healthcare and benefits to fund tax cuts to the rich. Put another way, perhaps social justice is just the other side of the economic populism coin, and if we do not address Trump's hate honestly and with courage, Trump will simply blame the economic injustice we are trying to address on society's most vulnerable members.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-have-their-own-challenges-in-talking-about-racial-issues-in-the-trump-era/
The proposals themselves — and the FDR-style rhetoric surrounding them — show the Democrats trying to capture the populist appeal that seemed to drive both Trump and Bernie Sanders’s presidential runs last year. The “Better Deal” ideas are almost exclusively about economic issues and largely do not address subjects like immigration, abortion or racial discrimination.
Economic populism could work for Democrats. Trump, as FiveThirtyEight detailed after the election, was particularly strong in areas where residents had lower credit scores, men had stopped working, and where jobs are vulnerable to automation and outsourcing. Areas, in other words, where people have reason to worry about their economic future.
But here’s the big potential problem for Democrats: What if Trump’s victory — carrying more than 200 counties where former President Barack Obama had won in 2008 and 2012 — was not primarily driven by his populist economic appeals, but by his rhetoric and policies around race and identity issues instead? Trump’s denunciations of Black Lives Matter, his embrace of building a wall to keep Mexicans from coming to the U.S., and his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country were just as much a part of his campaign as his promises to bring back coal jobs.
In short, what if the Democrats’ problems with white working-class voters are more about them being white than working-class?
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Martin Luther King spoke with his jailers about how they shared the same economic worries, and that social justice was the key to economic justice as he explained in Drum Major sermon. Lyndon Johnson understood how racism was often used to oppress poor whites. During the civil war, poor whites were recruited to fight for the South and slavery even though the presence of slavery undercut their own earnings.
Democrats should not run from issues of race. Rather, they need to confront the issue head on and show working class whites that they should be in solidarity with the party that is fighting for the working class, not the party that offers them the false promise of racial superiority.
