Like many of President Trump’s policies, the White House’s recent embrace of a plan to cut legal immigration in half rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the economic relationship between “the brown and the gray.” That’s the phrase I’ve applied to America’s increasingly diverse younger generations and its predominantly white […] Read more »
Government, Healthcare Most Important Problems in U.S.
Americans cited the U.S. government itself as the most important problem facing the U.S. this month (20%). This is down five percentage points from June, but still elevated amid the tension between the Trump White House and Congress. CONT. Art Swift, Gallup Read more »
The Political Payoff of Making Whites Feel Like a Minority
Nationality, race and ethnicity are a large part of identity for most people. Factors like this matter more for some people than others — and for some groups more than others — but a sense of group awareness or membership exists in varying degrees across all segments of American society. […] Read more »
The Policies of White Resentment
White resentment put Donald Trump in the White House. And there is every indication that it will keep him there, especially as he continues to transform that seething, irrational fear about an increasingly diverse America into policies that feed his supporters’ worst racial anxieties. … The guiding principle in Mr. […] Read more »
Affirmative Action Is an Example of How Polls Can Mislead
Trump administration officials are preparing to challenge admissions policies they deem to be discriminatory against white students. Unsurprisingly, analysts and commentators have dredged up old poll numbers to try to figure out how it will play politically. The polls don’t tell a clear story. Some polls show that affirmative action […] Read more »
Resentful white people propelled Trump to the White House — and he is rewarding their loyalty
… In March 2016, the political scientist Michael Tesler and I showed the importance of “white identity” during the Republican primary. Trump did particularly well among whites who strongly identified as white, who thought whites suffered from discrimination, who thought whites were losing out on jobs to minorities, and who […] Read more »