Graham and Pinto measured poll respondents’ sense of purpose, sense of community and their financial and social well-being and found that “blacks and Hispanics typically score higher than whites,” noting that “these findings highlight the remarkable levels of resilience among blacks living in precarious circumstances compared to their white counterparts.”
Graham and Pinto write:
The deepest desperation is among cohorts in the white working class who previously had privileged access to jobs (and places) that guaranteed stable, middle-class lives. Rather ironically, African Americans and Hispanics — the cohorts that historically faced high levels of discrimination — retain higher levels of well-being, especially hope for the future.
The data suggest that a large segment of the white, non-college population lives day-by-day in a cauldron of dissatisfaction, a phenomenon that stands apart from the American tradition.
This discontent drew many disaffected Americans to Donald Trump, and Trump’s defeat in 2020 has produced millions of still more disaffected voters who support his claim that the election was stolen.
Michael Bang Petersen puts it this way:
We know that humans essentially have two routes to acquire status: prestige and dominance. Prestige is earned respect from having skills that are useful to others. Dominance is status gained from intimidation and fear. Individuals who are high in the pursuit of dominance play a central role in political destabilization. They are more likely to commit political violence, to engage in hateful online interactions and to be motivated to share misinformation.
If you read the rest of the article, the various researchers Edsall quotes talk about how 'trade shock' after NAFTA in 1993 and China entering the WTO in 2000 cut whatever vestigial ties working-class whites had to the Democratic Party. There's a lot of talk about status loss in the article, but I think the deeper issue is culture loss. I think the argument I make in the second half of Genealogy Part 1 about capitalism's destruction of customary culture goes to the heart of it.
This destruction has been a long-term, erosive process, but it was accelerated by these free trade policies that destroyed the economic infrastructure of so many rust-belt communities. Neoliberal Democrats like the Clintons supported free trade because they bought the Kool Aid that it benefits everyone in the long run economically. But they never took into consideration the destructive impact these policies have on local communities and their traditional cultures. Most Liberals couldn't care less about local communities and their local cultures because (1) they've never lived in one, or (2) if they have, they left them because they wanted to be free of the constraints that living in any kind of real community requires.
So Liberals understand that the trade policies they supported might be disruptive, but that living in a dynamic, innovative, future-oriented society requires that people adapt, that they should expect to have three careers, that they should come to love and embrace change, etc. But it's all self-justifying, capitalist b.s., And so it's understandable that those whose lives capitalism has disrupted resent having to uproot themselves, move from their homeland to where the work is, and be trained to assimilate into an economy that destroyed everything that they loved. And they particularly resent the smug Liberals who tell them that what they loved was stupid and that they should live like them: See how happy we are in the suburbs working in our cubbies!
Their situation is a lot like that of Native Americans who experienced a similar destruction of their customary culture when they were moved from their sacred homeland to places where traditional practices were not possible or not allowed and where they were pressured to assimilate into a culture that they despised. Black and Hispanic Americans are more resilient because they live in communities that have adapted to economic instability and have less reason to fear status loss because historically they have had more to gain in that regard and than to lose.
So what's the solution? Well, maybe it would be good to start by not destroying local communities and cultures. Rather than assume that the economy and its mystical Invisible Hand always knows best, make the economy serve human needs. And most humans need stable community life and vibrant, local traditional cultures to live happy, productive lives. Stop letting utilitarian, economic logic be the only consideration as if good-paying jobs were the only thing that mattered no matter how disruptive the economy is in every other aspect of human life. Yes, it might be and probably is, too late to preserve what's vital, but recovery can't begin until you stop making a remedy impossible.
Let's exercise some wisdom. But we can't do that, right, because our capacity for making wise collective decisions about what humans need to flourish was lost long ago. Instead, we've surrendered all our agency to the Invisible Hand. Our minds are so held captive by that propaganda, that no other possibility can be even entertained.
The ironic thing is that far more people who identify as Democrats get this than do doctrinaire Libertarian Republicans. The Clinton Neoliberal wing of the party destroyed the Democratic brand with working class whites, but the Republicans couldn't care less about them. If we lived in a sane world, working class whites and people of color would take over the Democratic Party and force it to make the economy work in their interests, but the Democrats can no longer be a home for American working-class whites--the Dems are anti-gun, pro-abortion, et al.--and they're the party of the people of color who they fear seek to displace them.
And there you have it. There's good reason to believe that this will play out in the stupidest, most violent way possible because the best among us lack conviction, and they lack conviction because they lack wisdom, and they lack wisdom because they live within a metaphysical imaginary that discourages them from thinking such a thing exists. Expediency is all.