W W C

This last election has exposed another deprived or challenged population within the American socio-economic fabric.  That is the white working class (WWC).  It is this class that much attention has been given to of late; it is being given credit or blame for the success Donald Trump experienced last Tuesday.

Certain attributes are being attached to those who make up this class.  A civics teacher who wants to explain or have his/her student inquire into this past election should present and define who these people are and what role they played in putting Trump over the 270 Electoral votes needed for victory.

          It seems that there were enough of these people in key, usually Democratic states to give Trump and his party the edge.  Again, the margin was large enough in too many states to throw the election in the direction of the Republicans not only for the presidency, but for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Nationally, more people voted Democratic for each of these bodies than voted Republican, yet the Grand Old Party won all three.  As the students of one of the high schools where this writer taught would say to the female teachers, “That ain’t right, Miss.”

          So, what are these attributes that characterize the WWC?  It seems to be a group of people who have been hit with one or more of the following developments:

·        they are generally people without a college level education;

·        they can be former small business owners that, due to the Great Recession, have lost their businesses and the capital that set up those businesses;

·        they have lost their jobs due to work being exported to a lower-wage foreign country or to sections of the nation that have “right to work” laws (often being southern states such as South Carolina) or to automation.

          Many of them are products of families that can vividly remember better days.  Those days saw people similar to them, perhaps their parents or grandparents, being union workers who worked in busy factories or foundries.  Oh yes, those grandparents, by the way, represented the generation that won World War II – the “Greatest Generation.”

They also remember a social setting populated by people mostly like themselves – white and of Anglo-Saxon or Germanic stock or perhaps Scandinavian.  Now what they see is increasing numbers of people whom they perceive as not being similar to them.

          These others – intruders – can be blacks or Latinos, Asians, and/or Muslims from the Middle East.  The smells are different or the accents are un-understandable.  Among “these real Americans” are older ones who have seen their children move to where the work is only to be probably struggling far from home.

They also see themselves aging too quickly, perhaps with health problems, and with financial challenges that deprive them of planning a better future.  And then along comes the Donald with his travelling show promising greatness again.

          Yes, the Clinton refrain that America is still great and getting better might be true, but it is not true for these people.  And this is not the first time this dynamic reared up and showed itself.  Ronald Reagan, with another quip of a saying – morning in America – promised a better future, only to see an acceleration of the disparity in income and wealth.

Many mark Reagan’s terms as the time when that disparity became serious.  That’s when the one percenters began to seriously gobble up just about all new income and own too much of the nation’s capital.  The plunge for the WWC in economic and social standing did not start eight years ago – although the Great Recession augmented the problems – but can be traced to the early 1970s.

          And one more thing can be said about them:  they are not the only ones hurting.  There are also the usual suspects:  inner city blacks and other minorities.  So, a civics teacher or curriculum that is guided by federation theory would find such conditions ripe for study.  That theory finds such conditions as immoral.  Why?  Because they are reflective of an inequality caused not by acts of those affected, but by structural factors beyond the victims’ control.

          From the above description, one can detect a host of more specific issues.  There is the plight of unions and the whole justification for their existence.  There is racism: the conditions that create it and encourage it to grow.  There is globalization:  its pluses and minuses.  There is the democratic quality of our electoral process including the justification for the Electoral College.  There is automation and the threat it poses to jobs. 

More generally, there is the nature of Americanism:  what is it, what is its justification, what is its promise?  And there is nationalism:  what is it, what are its dangers, and how nationalistic is the incoming president?

          This writer recently attended his fiftieth high school reunion.  One question he asked at the get-together was:  given that this election cycle had an avowed socialist and not so subtle nationalist running for president and receiving a lot of votes (this was before the two major candidates were determined), are the elites of the nation taking note and willing to change course?  At the time, he believed that neither Trump nor Sanders had a chance.  He was fifty percent correct.

          And that brings up another issue:  how powerful are the elites?  How much can one see the elites as a singular force?  How much is the system rigged against the interests of the clear majority of the nation?  Are the critical theorists right?  Do we need a revolution or, in more acceptable language, a transformation?

This writer still holds the belief that we need serious tweaking including some transformations, but that overall, the system works.  After all, most voters did not vote for a revolution; they voted for the establishment candidate.