A role for the Black Lives Matter movement when police kill white people?

To draw attention to bad things happening to white people is decidedly out of fashion these days.  To do so risks communicating an "All Lives Matter" message, and that is ill advised in most progressive circles in this period when Black Lives Matter has been revived--appropriately, in my opinion--in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis Police in late May.    

So I was surprised to see Jack Healy's front-page story yesterday for the New York Times dateline Sedalia, Missouri, population 21,287.  The headline in the print edition that landed in my driveway is "In Rural Towns, Similar Chants to Find Justice."  The online headline is a little different, "A Family Cries 'Justice for Hannah.'  Will a Rural Town Listen?"  And here's the subhead, which highlights the rural context: 

People in rural areas are killed in police shootings at about the same rate as in cities, but victims’ families and activists say they have struggled to get justice or even make themselves heard.

Neither headline nor the subhead mentions race, however, which I'd argue is a fairly critical piece of the story--even more central to my mind than the rural angle.  This paragraph, about the young Sedalia woman who was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy appears deep in Healy's story:  

Ms. Fizer and the deputy who shot her were both white, a common dynamic in shootings that occur in overwhelmingly white, rural parts of the country. Black and Hispanic people are killed at higher rates than white people in rural areas, but the demographics of rural America mean that about 60 to 70 percent of people killed by law enforcement there are white, according to an analysis by Harvard researchers.

To me, its placement feels a bit like burying the lede.  

The lede the editors went with, which doesn't mention race, follows: 

Seven weeks had passed, and still there were no answers. So once again, a small cluster of friends and family gathered in the leafy courthouse square and marched for Hannah Fizer, an unarmed woman shot and killed by a rural Missouri sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.

“Say her name! Hannah!”

“Prosecute the police!”

Their chants echoed protests over police killings in Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta and beyond. But this was no George Floyd moment for rural America.

Though people in rural areas are killed in police shootings at about the same rate as in cities, victims’ families and activists say they have struggled to get justice or even make themselves heard. They say extracting changes can be especially tough in small, conservative towns where residents and officials have abiding support for law enforcement and are leery of new calls to defund the police.

Hannah Fizer's mother, Amy, commented (in a statement that echoes one of my own mother's favorite expressions):   

It’s like pulling teeth.

Amy Fizer also explains that she and Hannah's father have not been been interviewed or kept abreast of the investigation into Hannah's death--and that the Pettis County Sheriff, Kevin Bond, has not revealed to them the name of the deputy who killed their daughter after stopping her on the way to her night shift at an area convenience store.  The deputy claimed that he "met with verbal resistance" from Hannah Fizer and that he suspected she had a gun.  Subsequent investigation revealed no gun.  

This is the sort of story I've not been expecting to see in national media for the reason I led with in this post:  this story draws our attention to the phenomenon of law enforcement--including white law enforcement, even in (or is the point especially in?) rural areas--killing white people. 

And so the story raises the question:  Where are white victims of police violence in the Black Lives Matter movement?  Should we acknowledge them in the context of that movement?  Or would acknowledging those deaths be tantamount to saying the forbidden "All Lives Matter"?  What are the political, social and cultural implications of not acknowledging them?  An earlier event that took up this conundrum, this one from 2015 in South Carolina, is here.  

We saw a partial response to these questions, I guess, a few weeks ago when Donald Trump answered a journalist's question about Black Americans being killed by police by saying that "more white people" are killed by cops than black people.  Here are some Tweets by  journalists that I captured just after his  comment:  

And here are two of my Tweets about the matter then:

The New York Times responded to Trump's comment with this story by Jeremy Peters:  

Mr. Trump added to his long record of racially inflammatory comments during an interview with CBS News, in which he brushed off a question about Black people killed by police officers, saying that white people are killed in greater numbers.

Mr. Trump reacted angrily when asked about the issue, which has led to nationwide protests calling for major law enforcement changes.

“Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” the interviewer, Catherine Herridge of CBS News, asked the president.

“What a terrible question to ask,” Mr. Trump responded. “So are white people. More white people, by the way.”

Statistics show that while more white Americans are killed by the police over all, people of color are killed at higher rates. A federal study that examined lethal force used by the police from 2009 to 2012 found that a majority of victims were white, but the victims were disproportionately Black. Black people had a fatality rate at the hands of police officers that was 2.8 times as high as that of white people.

Of course, what Trump said is technically true.  So were the clarifications by the media.  I call this the "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics" problem.  Multiple accurate assertions can be made based on available empirical data.  The media choose to highlight one or the other.  In doing so, they drive wedges between folks who have a lot in common:  both people of color and low-income, low-status whites (who are arguably also people of color) are vulnerable to police misconduct.  Indeed, people of color and low-income whites are vulnerable to lots of bad stuff.  

I'd like to see these vulnerable folks banding together across racial lines and not to be put into a contest--or conflict--with each other.  Wouldn't we be better off, at least occasionally, to do what Healy and the New York Times have perhaps done/kinda' sorta/implicitly laid the groundwork for?   Cross-racial coalition building, that is.  It brings me back to a question I've been mulling for a long time, in this context and others:  Wouldn't all parties who have a beef about policing--parties of all colors/races/ethnicities--be better off joining forces rather than strictly competing to say who has it worse?  wouldn't we be better off not engaging in what Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie calls "the oppression Olympics"?  

It seems these days that lots of folks, including many non-whites, are skeptical that anything law enforcement do that is "wrong," "inappropriate," even in violation of the constitution, is attributable to anything other than racism or grounded in racial difference.  But don't the data from this Healy story belie that assumption?  Even the data Trump implicitly invoked in his ham-handed comments a few weeks ago?

On a somewhat different note, this story out of central Missouri reminds me of the movie "Winter's Bone," set in southwest Missouri, and the scene where the county sheriff pulls over Teardrop.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, then see the movie. Some prior posts about that movie are here and here.  

I'm also thinking about the movie "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri," set in a fictitious Missouri town.  That movie features plenty of racism by local police, but also law enforcement failures in relation to the investigation of a local teenager's death, that of a young woman who was raped before she was murdered.

The Healy report wisely addresses two other issues that loom large in rural contexts:  the higher rate of gun ownership and the lower rate of availability of mental health services.  Regarding the former, the story cites David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, who says

the prevalence of guns may explain why cities and rural areas have nearly equal rates of law enforcement killings even though murders and violent crime rates tend to be higher in cities.

More than half of the people fatally shot by rural officers were reported to have a gun, according to a seven-year tally by Mapping Police Violence. Ms. Fizer was among the roughly 10 percent who were unarmed.

And then there is the issue of body cameras, technology and resources.  I published this in 2014, and it was controversial in the U.S. but has been cited widely in Australia and New Zealand.  One of my points about rural socio-spatiality is that if you are going to police vast rural areas effectively, you're going to need technology and resources.  In this case, the Sheriff claims not to have had enough of both to do something else:  hold law enforcement accountable by downloading, sorting and storing body cam footage.  

It is tragically ironic that this story out of Sedalia was published on the same day that another victim of crime in a Missouri small town committed suicide.  Daisy Coleman killed herself yesterday, as Amanda Arnold reports in The Cut:  

Daisy Coleman, the survivor at the center of the 2012 Maryville, Missouri, rape case and whose story was later featured in the Netflix documentary Audrie & Daisy, died by suicide on Tuesday evening. She was 23 years old.

* * * 

Coleman became the subject of national attention in 2012, when she, then 14 years old, attended a party where she blacked out from drinking and was allegedly raped by 17-year-old Matthew Barnett, a senior football player who had familial ties to a former Republican state representative. Before dawn the next morning, Melinda [Daisy's mother] found Daisy, who was wearing just a T-shirt and sweatpants in below-freezing weather, passed out on their doorstep. A hospital exam later confirmed Coleman had been raped, which led to Barnett’s arrest. He ultimately faced few repercussions, however: He received two years’ probation but was never convicted. Meanwhile, Coleman endured relentless victim blaming, and her entire family was harassed. People were “calling me a bitch, a whore, and a slut every single day,” she wrote in Seventeen. One Fox News guest suggested Coleman had “expected” to get raped. Melinda claimed she was fired from her job at a local veterinary clinic over the scandal.

The ruthless bullying took a grave toll on Coleman, and in 2014, she was hospitalized following a suicide attempt; it was not her first. After recovering, she went on to advocate for survivors of sexual assault.

Maryville, population 11,972, is in far northwest Missouri, on the Iowa state line. Interestingly, both of these cases attracted the "intervention"--official or not--of professionals from Kansas City, the regional center. In the case of Audrie and Daisy, a Jackson County prosecutor was brought in to investigate local law enforcement and prosecutorial handling of the case. In the Sedalia matter, a Kansas City police officer who lives in Sedalia is challenging Pettis County Sheriff Bond in the upcoming election. 

And that takes me back to some Facebook comments by Sheriff Bond about the Sedalia protests.

Do you want this to continue and cause irrevocable harm to our community?  Are you willing to allow Pettis County to become the test project for some social justice experiment for rural America?

The use of "social justice" is interesting there, since the right uses it as a pejorative term for the left:  The sheriff also suggested that outside agitators are sowing "social chaos."  Even Hannah Fizer's father invokes similar concerns, as Healy summarizes:

But [Mr. Fizer] counted himself as a conservative Republican and worried that the protests in Sedalia could be co-opted by left-wing outsiders — a pervasive, but largely unfounded fear in small towns after Mr. Floyd’s killing.

Reminds me of similar concerns articulated by my mom about her community in nearby northwest Arkansas.  I wrote this about the "outside agitator" trope, and here's another piece about so-called "antifa busses," which are a hoax.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism. 

Sports, social class, and race (Part 1 of 3)

This is part one of a three-part series about sports and the white working class, with an emphasis on professional wrestling. This part focuses on providing a framework to understanding the intersection of sports with social class and race.

In the movie Billy Elliot, a young, working class boy from County Durham in North East England finds that his talent is in the girls-only ballet class, much to the consternation of his hyper-masculine, coal-miner father. Billy's father much prefers boxing, which is more popular in their community and a traditionally masculine sport.

When Billy arrives in London to audition for the Royal Ballet, he is unsure how to communicate with his peers from elite backgrounds, and he ends up punching another dancer in frustration after his audition. The judges are horrified by Billy's act of violence and seem troubled that he could bring the violent mores of working-class County Durham to vaunted halls of the Royal Ballet.  

The thematic contrast between boxing and ballet that underpins Billy Elliot goes beyond a simple contrast between combat and artistry, but also makes clear that sports can reflect the preferences and mores of the social classes in Britain. But why is it that sports are classed? 

Bordieu’s Theory on Cultural Capital and Sports

French sociologist Pierre Bordieu helps explain the classing of certain sports through his theory of cultural capital. His theory posits that the consumption of goods helps reinforce social class because individual consumption tends to reflect the values and virtues of the consumer’s social class.

In the sports context, Bordieu theorizes that the aims of upper class sports tend to exemplify upper class virtues likes artistic quality, health maintenance, and individualism; while lower-class sports exemplify lower-class virtues such as competitiveness, violence, strength, and collective discipline. He uses the example of body building versus gymnastics to show this distinction. While body building produces a large, physical form that outwardly reflects the working-class virtue of a strong body, gymnastics is essentially body hygiene and maintenance, which reflects the upper class virtue of a healthy body.

Bordieu also gives significant weight to the perceived social profits of certain sports. The upper classes derive social profit from certain sports because those sports acquire distributional significance. This means that certain sports acquire significance among the social classes because of how their participation is distributed among the classes. For example, golf is available almost exclusively to the upper classes because it requires a large amount of leisure time and significant economic expenditure. With such a limited subset of individuals who can afford to participate, these sports become a technique of sociability, where the upper classes derive social value from mingling among themselves in a privileged space and differentiating themselves from the lower classes.

On the other hand, the lower classes derive significantly different social profits from their sports. For example, most team sports run counter to the strong individualism reflected in upper class sports like tennis and golf, because athletes derive social profit from collective discipline, sacrifice, and working towards a common objective. Combat sports like boxing or wrestling are truly working class because the violence inherent in their execution are anathema to the virtue of respectability in the upper class. Importantly, with the increased commercialization of sports, the social profits for the working class may turn into an economic profit for a talented few, as playing sports professionally can also be a way out of poverty.

In America, the enjoyment of sports is a classed affair. Social class is reflected in consumption preferences of fans, as inferred by advertising preferences, also reflects the classing of sports in America as well. While much attention is paid to which $7,000 to $650,000 wristwatch a golfer wears when they win stops on the PGA tour, the focus in NASCAR is on which cheap, working class beer will adorn the winning car, Miller High Life or Busch. Though class and elitism is less baked in than in Britain perhaps, consumption of American sports often has distributional significance, and remains a strong indicator of social class.

American Sports and Race

Another dimension outside of class that affects the consumption of American sports is race. In the past, consumption of certain sports was almost entirely restricted by race. For example, Major League Baseball was a literal white-man’s-game until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1945. The same was true of other major sports leagues as well. For example, the National Basketball Association (NBA) - where today 74 percent of players are Black - did not integrate until 1950.

No explicit color barrier exists in American sports today, but there remain some very large racial disparities in sports fandom. For example, a full 92 percent of National Hockey League (NHL) fans are white, which is second only to NASCAR which boasts 94 percent white fans. Compare these figures to the demographics of fans of the National Basketball Association, where only 40 percent of fans are white and 45 percent are Black.

The fandom of these sports leagues also reflects participation in the highest-levels of the sport. For example, 80 percent of players in the NHL are white, and only 32 out of 800 active players are Black. This year will also be the first time that a Black driver will compete in NASCAR’s full Cup Series Schedule in 45 years. Meanwhile in the NBA, 80 percent of players are non-white.

However, while the NHL and NASCAR are obviously predominantly white sports they don’t always connote wealth. While the NHL has the highest share of fans who make more than $100,000 a year at 33 percent, the solidly middle class NASCAR has only half that at 14 percent. It seems that despite the reputation of hockey as a violent sport suitable for working-class toughs, perhaps a fairer characterization is that of the major American sports leagues, only NASCAR is a truly white working-class sport.

These statistics on race and American sports beg the question: if we are willing to accept that sports are a reflection of social class as Bordieu suggests, are sports also a reflection of race? Is being a fan of the NHL or NASCAR an expression of whiteness, as much as golf is an expression of being upper class?

Based on the extremely homogenized racial distribution of fans of American sports, I would say yes. When being a fan or participating in certain sports remains such a uniformly white experience, it’s hard to ignore the possibility that these sports have acquired what Bordieu would call distributional significance, but in the racial context as well. Participation in these sports helps reinforce distinctions between class and race by showing that someone is white, working class, or possibly both.

A path forward in the war on drugs

The documentary Meth Storm follows an impoverished family of meth addicts in rural Arkansas who are struggling to manage their addiction and stay out of prison. The son, Teddy, has found religion during his sixth stint in prison in the past ten years, and he promises the mother of his children that he will get sober and get his life back on track. Teddy’s mother said this commitment to sobriety was unlikely to last. She says her son has merely found “jailhouse religion” and will be back on meth shortly after he gets out. Disappointingly, Teddy’s mother is right. A few months later Teddy is arrested again for possession and finds himself in prison for a seventh time.

On the other side of the drug war, DEA agent Johnny Sowell acknowledges that every time they arrest a drug dealer, a replacement springs up shortly thereafter. Still, he hopes that this latest round of arrests of low-level drug dealers, dubbed Operation Ice Storm, will lead to the source of the super-potent meth coming in from Mexico. Johnny busts as many low-level dealers as he can, for selling as little as a gram of meth. He pumps them for information until he finally catches a direct connection to the cartel in a dangerous high speed chase. The connection refuses to snitch. If he does, the connection’s entire family in Mexico will be killed. Another dead end in the drug war.

Teddy and Johnny have something in common besides their decaying town. They both keep doing the same things they have always done, in futile hope of a better result. Teddy keeps trying to turn his life around, but always goes back to drugs. Johnny keeps arresting people like Teddy to stop the flow of drugs, but he never gets any closer to the source. Like characters in a modern Greek tragedy, it is impossible for anybody in this community to avoid the cruelty of their own fate. The war on drugs rages on, regardless of the participants efforts to resist.

So what is to be done for communities ravaged by drugs like the one in Meth Storm and their urban counterparts? What is needed is compassion in the law for addicts and drug users, one that recognizes their humanity and decouples it from race or income level.

But what does this compassion look like in policy terms? To start, we must create avenues for drug users to course correct before they are trapped in the cycle of addiction and incarceration. For example, drug courts which emphasize treatment instead of just punishment have shown promising drops in rates of recidivism among drug users. Well maintained and funded pretrial diversion programs are also effective in preventing users from being rearrested.

We also need to reform how we treat drug users who find themselves incarcerated. A study from 2002 indicated that over half of all prisoners in the US met the criteria for a diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence, but only 15 to 20 percent of those who would benefit from treatment received it. Part of the reason is that the current criminal justice system focuses on punishment, rather than treating addiction as a disease. When prisons spend their resources in accordance with this assumption, the inevitable result is that many of the incarcerated do not get the help they need. Every addict who goes to prison should receive treatment for their addiction, otherwise it is only a matter of time before many will return.

Another reform that has been gaining traction is ending mandatory minimums that were a result of the tough-on-crime stances of the 1980s and 1990s. Although the end of the racially tinged 100:1 ratio in sentencing for crack cocaine versus cocaine was a welcome reform, this was a band-aid policy for a specific drug and not a permanent solution. The law still maintains a grossly unfair 18:1 sentencing ratio between crack cocaine and cocaine, and the vast majority of mandatory minimums have not been addressed. For example, the mandatory federal minimum sentence for distribution of five grams of methamphetamine is five years, even though that amount could be as little as a week’s supply to a heavy user.

In addition to ending mandatory minimums, we must go further to ensure that there is something worth returning home to after former dealers and users have served their sentences. We need to invest in job training for prisoners and provide opportunities for these returning individuals to work in their communities and become contributing members of society.

Another consideration is that sentences for using or selling even a small amount of drugs can last much longer than the period of incarceration or parole, because hiring managers discriminate against those with drug convictions. We must destigmatize non-violent drug convictions in hiring and allow rehabilitated drug offenders to have their slate wiped clean. Without these reforms, the reality is that in an area with no jobs like Faulkner County, Arkansas in Meth Storm, the only way the formerly incarcerated can make money is in the drug trade, which will further ingratiate themselves into the cycle of addition and incarceration.

So how do we obtain the political capital to get these policy outcomes in place? We need to humanize drug users and, yes, even low-level drug dealers. The first step is to encourage the positive trends of humanizing opioid users. For people of color whose communities have been criminalized for decades as a result of the war on drugs, it may be difficult for many to square the injustice of only granting compassion to wealthier and whiter opioid users. However, the reality is that many Americans continue to otherize drug users, by saying drug use is something that only poor whites, Latinos, or Black folks do.

In order to help build a broader coalition of support, we need the public to believe that addiction can affect their own family and friends, so any humanizing narratives about drug use and addiction are helpful. For example, when rockstar and drug addict Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose, there was an outpouring of support and much credit given to his family for making his cause of death public. However, when a poor addict like Teddy dies in rural Arkansas, its doubtful that there will be similarly affectionate support. It will just be another sad statistic in the war on drugs. With greater recognition that drug use is not attributable to someone’s characteristics of being poor or a racial minority, we can enact policies that will change the fates of people like Johnny and Teddy in Meth Storm.

If the white working class won’t support Ocasio-Cortez because of a $3,000 suit, why did they elect Trump?

After winning an upset victory against Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could make history as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. So, of course it is only fitting that there is major controversy over her clothes. Yes, you read that correctly: her clothes.

For some background, Ocasio-Cortez is a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist with aspirations

to create an America that works for all of us—not just the wealthiest few,

according to her campaign page. Ocasio-Cortez runs on a platform that prioritizes the needs of working families and seeks to implement pro-working-class-policies such as Medicare-for-all, free public universities, and a guaranteed job program. The young politician frequently describes her own background as working-class—pointing to her Bronx upbringing, her mother’s occupation as a housekeeper, and her immigrant family’s economic troubles.

Ocasio-Cortez could be the working-class leader the Democratic Party needs to finally appeal to white-working-class ("WWC") voters, but an outfit choice has apparently aligned her with privileged elites instead. In a photo-op with Interview Mag last month accompanying a conversation with an editor, Ocasio-Cortez is shown wearing a sharp emerald blazer (Gabriela Hearst $1,990), matching trousers (Gabriela Hearst $890), and black pointed-toe heels (Monolo Blahnik $625). Photos of Ocasio-Cortez in the roughly $3,500 suit standing next to New York construction workers quickly prompted an uproar in the conservative web-space, many naming her a hypocrite.

These commenters appear from their profiles to be of the WWC demographic:

Is Ocasio-Cortez more of a limousine liberal than a socialist? . . . She’s wearing a more than a month’s salary for most Americans…and she’s going to lecture us about income inequality and why we should trust her and her ilk with our money. No—hell no. - Matt Vespa, Town hall

[S]ocialists looooove money. . . . Same goes for the hot new socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's everywhere now as she runs for a New York seat in the U.S. House. And with that comes money — and bling. - Joseph Curl, Daily Wire

No, she's a real socialist. This is what socialism is. You tell the people that they deserve more, and those stinky 'rich' people aren't paying their fair share. Then you join the ranks of the elite, bu[y] expensive clothes, lake houses, Audis, etc., and you're set. This is socialism. This is literally what it is. America First, Reddit

Popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk questioned Ocasio-Cortez's allegiance to the working-class on Twitter:

a) The alt-right doesn’t seem to understand the concept of magazine shoots

b) You don’t get to keep the clothes, duh

c) I don’t “pretend” to fight for a Living Wage & Medicare for All. I do it.

d) Get used to me slaying lewks because I am an excellent thrift shopper pic.twitter.com/Nd2m6WoCxF

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) September 15, 2018

Kirk's tweet received 16,105 retweets and 37,677 likes, and although he does not purport to speak for the WWC, many may find Kirk's argument compelling. Ocasio-Cortez's outfit choice was also critiqued on prime time television. In a segment on Fox News show Fox and Friends, hosts Katie Pavlich and Pete Hegseth mocked Ocasio-Cortez for her 'expensive tastes.'

Pavlich started by saying: The rising star of the Democratic Party has expensive tastes for a socialist. For a photo shoot for Interview Magazine. Her pant suit — appropriate — retailing more than $2,800 alone. And the shoes $600 bucks.

As the studio gasped in shock and awe, Hegseth chimed in: It's tough being a socialist. It really is.

Pavlich then added: I mean I want a pair of $600 shoes. I think she should redistribute…hypocrisy at its best.

As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out in her response to Kirk, however, the clothes weren’t even hers—as with all magazine shoots, the outfit was borrowed from the designer for publicity purposes. But viewers of Fox News—who are primarily white and many working-class, CNN reports—will probably stop the inquiry at was was aired on Fox and Friends and align her with privileged elites.

Ocsasio-Cortez—who almost lost her family home to foreclosure after her father’s death, went to college on student loans, and currently lives in the Bronx on a working class salary—should certainly be considered working-class. Like members of the WWC, Ocsasio-Cortez

grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.

She has more in common with the WWC than any wealthy Republican politician, but it seems that the commentators above will look for any minuscule reason to disregard Ocsasio-Cortez as a privileged liberal. By bringing attention to Ocasio-Cortez's expensive clothes (which, again, were borrowed), conservative media paints the self proclaimed working-class champion as someone who, instead, cannot possibly relate to the WWC.

Instead (and oddly enough), it seems that the WWC identifies more soundly with Republican figures like Donald Trump. Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, claims that when the liberal media makes fun of Trump's hair, his orange glow, the way he talks, his long tie, and his taste for McDonalds, the WWC somehow sees this as insulting them.

What I don’t think they realize is that out here in Arkansas and the heartland and the places that made a difference in that election, like Michigan and Wisconsin, when we hear that kind of ridicule, we hear them making fun of the way we look, and the way we talk, and the way we think.

Apparently the WWC are quick to overlook Trump's taste for $17,000 Brioni suits and the fact that he has never been and never will be working-class (See Trump's $413 million inheritance from his father here). Although Trump may pretend to understand the struggles of the working-class, his policies have certainly done nothing to alleviate them.

Unfortunately, the divide between the Democratic party and the white-working-class is larger than ever. It is this animosity that pushes the WWC toward uber-wealthy real estate moguls and away from candidates, like Ocsasio-Cortez, who understand their plight.

For a discussion on the role of gender in the animosity between the WWC and Democratic party, see a related blog post here.

Attitudes toward college

Traditionally American families viewed higher education as the pathway to success and prosperity. In order to achieve a high standard of living and move up the social ladder, individuals were encouraged to acquire specialized knowledge and skills. And the only means of acquiring these assets was to attend an institution of higher learning. Thus, families encouraged their children to attend college and work hard to graduate. After students finished their undergraduate education, many families also encouraged their children to attend graduate and professional school, so that they could further hone their specialized skill sets.

However, in recent years some Americans have begun to question the value proposition of a college education. And some groups within American society such as the white working class have adopted a relatively negative attitude about higher education. Rather than view colleges as the gateway to the American dream, many white working class Americans now believe it is immaterial to achieving social mobility. The reported cases of college graduates working minimum wage jobs after graduation only reinforces their belief that college is not worth it.

Today, only 12% of low paying jobs are held by teenagers, while adults make up 60% of them. Also, only 20% of such workers had attended some college in 1979 while today, it's 33%. In essence, people working at a McDonald's (MCD), Burger King (BKW) or Wendy's (WEN) are older and more educated but earning some of the lowest wages in the economy.

Furthermore the rising cost of higher education has led many working class Americans to feel that college may actually hinder one’s ability to achieve social mobility in their life time. The money borrowed to attend a university not only continuously accumulates interest from the time its issued to the borrower, but it is also considered nondischargeable debt. Thus, student loans must be paid back regardless of the employment opportunities available to graduates. Even if a person declares bankruptcy in their lifetime, their student loan debt will not be forgiven.  

It’s 2018 and Americans are more burdened by student loan debt than ever. You’ve probably heard the statistics: Americans owe over $1.48 trillion in student loan debt spread out among about 44 million borrowers, that’s about $620 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt. In fact, the average Class of 2016 graduate has about $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from the previous year.

According to Joan C. William, the white working class resents the professional class and by extension higher education institutions, because they perceive them as arrogant and lacking social honor. Williams further states that white working-class families often fear their children will reject their beliefs and ideals after receiving a college education. Thus, white working-class families do not push their children into higher education unlike middle-class and upper-class families.

However, it seems to me that working-class communities still need college educated professionals in order for their communities to function properly. For example, these communities still need health care professionals to care for the population, they still need legal professionals to help resolve disputes, and they still need managerial professionals to guide large scale manufacturing and assembly operations. Also, for these communities to obtain much needed investment capital and to gain more jobs, professionals must have a place within the community. After all the opening of a new hospital or law firm creates hundreds of new positions to be filled by members of the community.  

Since it is common knowledge that college educated individuals are vital to the normal operation of a community, why do working-class families still discourage their children from attending university? Would the attitude of the white working-class towards college change, if it were more affordable and thus more accessible to all individuals?

The myth of white privilege on college campuses

One hundred four Historical Black Colleges and Universities (“HBCU”) remain in the United States. Non-black students make up a mere 17% of the enrolment at these institutions. According to Women’s Studies scholar Peggy McIntosh however, only whites have the privilege of finding “academic courses and institutions which give attention [solely] to people of [one] race.” According to McIntosh, this is yet another one of the insidious benefits granted to whites, all emanating from the great bogeyman, white privilege.

I admittedly have only attended two institutions of higher learning. Nevertheless, in my experience, McIntosh’s “invisible knapsack of white privilege” could not be further from the truth. My alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, is less than 50 percent white and has built diversity studies into the core of their curriculum.

Graduates of Penn must complete seven sector and six foundational policy requirements to graduate. One can complete the sector requirements with traditional history, literature, math and science courses. The foundational requirements, on the other hand, require students to take a course in cross-cultural analysis and another in the cultural diversity of the United States. Courses such as “Homelessness & Urban Inequality,” “Psychoeducational Interactions with Black Males,” and “Intro to Queer Studies” fulfill these requirements.

Penn isn’t special. Similar requirements exist at universities across the country. After all, Penn is only ranked as the 21st most diverse institution amongst the top 100 American universities.

HBCUs make up 30 percent of the ten least diverse American universities. Predominantly white public schools in the racially homogenous states of South Dakota, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Maine make up another 40 percent. The least diverse, Yeshiva University, is a Jewish school. So where are all these academic courses and institutions providing sole attention to whites?

I will concede that courses in English literature and many history courses are focused on the exploits of whites. I know, it’s shocking that a course focused on English literature would be dominated by white authors from a time when England was almost 100% white and the only English speaking country on the planet. European history is naturally dominated by whites because Europe is predominantly Caucasian. Similarly, courses in Chinese literature or African literature naturally focus on black and Asian authors.

Schools such as Stanford have bowed to pressure from black activists like Jesse Jackson and cancelled its Western Civilization courses. Apparently Stanford’s administration subscribes to the statement “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go.”

If we shouldn’t study Western Civilization because of slavery and the mistreatment of minorities, is there any history that should be studied? We will not have many historical subjects left to study if we exclude societies that enslaved and victimized others, because slavery and mistreatment of minorities was practiced almost universally during much of world history.

Specialized courses still exist in the subjects once broadly covered in Western Civilization classes. However, thumbing through Stanford’s History Department course catalog, more courses focus on progressive subjects like “Transhistory: Gender Diversity from Medieval to Modern,” “Sugar and Slavery, Race and Revolution: The Caribbean 1450-1888,” and “Gay Autobiography” than traditional ones such as “Renaissance to Revolution: Early Modern Europe.”

The one group notably omitted from the history offerings at Stanford is the white, male, American worker. A course on the works of Howard Zinn focuses on holocaust denial and the Obama “birther” conspiracy, but inexplicably excludes any mention of workers. You can even take a course on the history of East Asian cinema, or another focusing on female divinities in China.

It’s not that East Asian Cinema, transgender history and Caribbean slavery aren’t important subjects in history, it’s that they are included, at the exclusion of a course on the white, American worker. Placing an emphasis on cross-cultural understanding has not helped students appreciate views they disagree with. A 2017 poll by the Brookings Institute found that 51% of American college students believe that it is acceptable for student groups to disrupt disagreeable speech by shouting the speaker down. According to the same poll, 53% of college students support prohibiting certain speech and viewpoints that are offensive to certain groups of students, rather than fostering an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints.

Most troubling of all, 19% of American college students believe that it is acceptable for student groups to use violence to prevent speakers who they oppose from speaking. Let that soak in for a minute. Nearly 1 in 5 American college students believe that it is acceptable to use physical violence against a speaker because a student group finds the speaker offensive. Are we in the United States, the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany?

Modern universities offer more than just diverse student bodies and course offerings, they offer university sponsored organizations and “safe spaces” dedicated to minority groups. These groups provide counseling and community for individuals who might feel out of place on a university campus. They often cater to racial groups such as African-Americans and other minorities, like the LGBT community.

These groups perform an important service on college campuses. However, they can alienate those who are not apart of the designated group. Moreover, equivalent groups often do not exist for other groups that might also feel out of place on a college campus, like first generation rural students.

Who is going to feel most out of place at Colombia: The African-American guy from Harlem, the gay guy from the Upper East Side, or the farm boy from Montana? Yet only the farm boy will be without a safe space for counseling and community.

Not only do whites not possess any unique access to institutions or courses focused on their race, they are actually marginalized by certain organizations. Further, they even face a disadvantage during the application process in the form of affirmative action. According to college counselor Ann Lee, black applicants receive an average “bonus” of 230 points over white applicants on their SAT score in college admission programs that employ affirmative action, while Hispanics receive a “bonus” of 185 points.

I am not trying to say “woe is me, I’m a white guy.” I will admit that I received advantages in life that the average American will not. However, I believe that has less to do with the color of my skin than with socioeconomic status. I had a two-parent home and a support system that emphasized education. I went to a private elementary school, had private tutors every week in high school, and even got sent to nerd camp for a couple summers on the east coast.

Diversity is important, and I do think there is some validity to the argument that white Americans accrue certain benefits based on the color of their skin. The fact that discrimination still lingers in some walks of life is deplorable and must be eradicated. However, there is no sense in creating white privilege where it does not already exist. A white student will have no easier time finding a school or course that focuses solely on his race than a black one.

I believe this is a symptom of racial scholars and racial activists provoking racial unrest by misidentifying racial discrimination. This triggers feelings of alienation and discomfort amongst members of groups that might have otherwise coexisted more harmoniously. In my opinion, focusing on “white privilege” is counterproductive, and it actually increases the privilege of whites. I will expand on this issue in my next blog post.

To access an interesting post on obesity and race in the context of a HBCU click here.