Those People

Those people are stupid. They’re lazy and ignorant. A lot of them are addicts. They spend a lot of time making excuses for themselves, but they are mainly responsible for their own situation. If they want to have better lives, they need to try harder.

Who are those people? 

Not blacks or Mexicans. For me, those people are what we might call Trump Whites: white men with education that stopped in high school, down on their luck because the jobs their fathers did are gone, discouraged, tribal…and mad as hell about it. Burn baby burn!

My attitude toward them, I’m ashamed to admit, has been no better than their opinions of minorities. You know: leeches on society, we’d be better off without them. 

I grew up knowing better than to make eye-contact with certain men in rural bars in the south. Rednecks, we called them. After a few beers, it seemed like a fair percentage were mean as snakes. “What are you looking at, son?” My cue to slide out of there.

It was hard to develop sympathy for someone like that. Fear, sure, but not sympathy. They were to be avoided, not aided.

But times have changed. And maybe even I’ve changed.

Much has been written about the white men who are flocking to Trump. He’s their beacon of hope. Or that’s what they think. And the likely reason they think that is that they haven’t seen any other beacons lately. For the last few decades, progressives have been focused more on poor minorities. Minorities need help, no doubt, but it may be time to take a fresh look at the needs of poor whites.

In some ways poor and formerly middle class whites are as trapped in their circumstances as blacks in Detroit or on the south side of Chicago. There’s not much opportunity for them in their communities. Steel is gone. Coal is going. Plants are rusting. 

And yet, their homes are there. Their families and friends are there. Even if they wanted to pick up and move, where would they go? Where are there jobs for them, with their poor education and outmoded skills? They feel hemmed in and abandoned. They’re pissed off and looking for someone to blame. And for someone to lead them out of the wilderness. If a real prophet isn’t on the scene, a false prophet, like Trump, will do.

I think those of us on the left had better figure out a way to be that prophet. We can’t do it by patronizing them. We can’t do it by looking down our noses at them. We can’t do it by being angry at them. Or afraid of them. We have to figure out how to help them.

Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s in our collective self-interest. We’re not going to be able to get anything done politically in this country until we find ways to improve the prospects of these folks, and their faith in the rest of us.