Conservatives and moderates are often dismissive of “identity politics,” by which they mean liberal efforts to motivate voter turnout by raising issues of particular concern to women, people of color, and other marginalized groups in American politics. But it is important to remember that the original identity politics play was for whites. Long before women or people of color won the right to vote, it was the South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, a white supremacist, who wanted whites to rally around their racial identity. …
Calhoun was far from the last American conservative to stoke white identity in order to get white working-class people to vote their race rather than their class. But no successful modern candidate has done so as blatantly as Donald Trump did in 2016. The timing thus could not be better for Duke University political scientist Ashley Jardina’s eye-opening book, White Identity Politics, which uses extensive survey research to explore the meaning of white identity today. CONT.
Richard D. Kahlenberg (Century Foundation), Washington Monthly