Donald Trump and the Twilight of White America

On June 25, 2015, a week after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States, the Census Bureau released a landmark report on the demographics of American children under the age of five. For the first time in U.S. history, it reported that a minority of this group is “white”—neither black, nor Asian, nor Hispanic. …

It is unlikely that a printed copy of this Census report hangs in a gold-plated frame on Trump’s wall. But the specter of America’s all-minority future has stalked his campaign. Trump’s core constituency is clear: Republican whites, particularly men, and especially those who didn’t go to college, who feel their American whiteness like a second skin. Many of these first beneficiaries of the franchise now feel disenfranchised. The original middle class feels cut out of the American Dream. The majority is collapsing in on itself. CONT.

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.