As this is being written, we are in the middle of Trump’s second impeachment trial, about a month after the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Political polarization seems to be continuing to grow. The Republicans appear wedded to a future based on the racially charged policies of Donald Trump while the Democrats despise him and everything he stands for. Occasionally, one hears the words “civil war” shouted out. Is there a glimmer of hope out there? Perhaps. Ian Haney López, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, has been studying voters, their motivations, and their voting patterns. His results and conclusions deserve some consideration. They presented in his book Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America.
López’s focus is on race, racial justice, and economic inequality. In his view, racial issues are the basis for the political polarization that has grown over recent decades. He justifies this conclusion by providing an explanation for the evolution of the Republican Party following its adoption of the “southern strategy” using race as a means of capturing southern white voters. Here is his description of Republican strategy and its consequences
“Fear and resent people of color. Fear people of color because their basic nature is violent. Resent them because they are lazy and undeserving and rip off government rather than do honest work.”
“Distrust government. Distrust government because it doesn’t care about white people. Instead, it coddles undeserving minorities with welfare spending and it refuses to control violent minorities by leaving laws unenforced and borders open, while it taxes whites to pay for handouts and ineffective government programs.”
“Trust the marketplace. The market rewards hard work and whites work hard, so no government help is needed. People of color are poor because they make bad choices. Support the very wealthy and large corporations as the job creators.”
“Former Republican congressional leader John Boehner declared in 2018 that ‘there is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump Party.’ He’s wrong. That is the Republican Party—as it has been transmogrified by the strategy it adopted fifty years ago. They built their white man’s party but cannot control it. The Silent Majority, Reagan Democrats, the Tea Party, Trump voters—these are all the names for the Right’s base voters who decade by decade through a dangerous call and response with their leaders and the right-wing media, have become ever more racially reactionary.”
This strategy has thus far proved very useful for Republicans, but it has converted the party from one of cultural liberals and fiscal conservatives to one focused on using racial enmity to provide policies that produce ever greater economic inequality to the detriment of its voters. This party of whiteness has condemned itself to a future as a minority party. The only way to control power as a minority is to attack the fundamentals of a democratic society: the rule of law and majority rule. Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden. The Republican Party blatantly aided him in that illegal act. Its major legislative activities seem to be focused on making it as difficult as possible for minority voters to cast a ballot. Democracy is at risk when this Republican Party is in power.
Is a combination of a few extremely wealthy individuals and those who respond to racial dog-whistle politics a stable entity? López believes the Republican Party is vulnerable to simple variations in approach by its Democratic opponent. He advocates what he refers to as a race-class narrative approach.
If Republicans have become the party of racially threatened white voters, then Democrats have become the party of economically and socially threatened minorities—Blacks in particular. This focus on attracting black voters goes back to the New Deal era when Democrats, in an uneasy alliance with southern Democrats or Dixiecrats, recognized that they and their labor union allies would need Black votes in order to produce the policies they required. It was inevitable that Republicans would reach out to southern voters and provide them a new home. It was inevitable also that this divergence in racial priorities would produce intense polarization. López’s path forward involves convincing Democrats to focus on providing policies aimed at producing lessened economic inequality using a racial solidarity approach. The idea is to convince voters that race is used now and has always been used to limit the economic aspirations of white voters in order to further enrich the wealthy.
To understand the motivations of white voters who seem to vote against their best interests, López introduces the concept of “the wages of whiteness.” The phrase was provided by labor historian David Roediger, but it derives from a much earlier analysis by W.E.B. DuBois.
“’It must be remembered,’ wrote DuBois, ‘that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage.’ Focusing in particular on poor southern whites, DuBois emphasized that they were nearly destitute, yet the planter class contrived to pay them in racial pride, making superiority over Blacks compensation for economic straits. ‘They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks and the best schools,’ DuBois wrote. ‘Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect on their personal treatment and the deference showed them’.”
This wage of whiteness was sufficient to convince poor whites to die for the cause of slavery in the Civil War. In a later era, it would cause them to shun the higher wages of union representation lest that imply white and black workers might in any way be equal.
Ultimately the Republican approach must encounter an era of diminishing returns and the wages of whiteness must fall. One cannot transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the very wealthy indefinitely.
“But the economic crises confronting the vast majority of whites is very much connected to whiteness. Dog whistle politics has made the majority of white voters unwitting co-conspirators in their own economic calamity. It is largely whites voting their economic anxieties who empower the politicians engineering surging inequality. Worsening economic security is the true material wage of whiteness paid over the last half century.”
“This is the story of surging wealth inequality, declining jobs and pensions, hollowed out cities, broken rural towns, and the Great Recession. This is the narrative of deaths of despair from suicide and opioid abuse spreading across the country.”
Pundits tell us that there is no longer a middle when it comes to voters. Voters tendencies are frozen and few cross over from one side to the other. López’s research convinced him that class consciousness is still alive in the hearts of voters. When groups of voters are queried about whether government could have a positive role in creating better conditions for citizens, he finds that about 20% are firmly progressive in their views, about 20% are firmly in the opposite camp, and about 60% had some combination of progressive and reactionary views. He refers to these people as “persuadables.”
This is not to imply that this large number of people have centrist views on politics. It is more a result of the fact that they spend little time following political disputes. That is why the term “persuadables” is so appropriate. It also explains why majorities view individual progressive objectives as desirable and then vote for politicians who are against them, and why Obama voters could so easily switch to Trump voters. It depends on who is telling the story that best resonates with them.
López’s research indicates that Republican dog-whistle messages have found resonance with many voters, but that does not mean they are diehard racists. Having racial bias is depressingly common, but that does not mean everyone will act on that bias when other considerations are at play. López finds that approaching Whites directly with a message of economic or social justice for people of color tends to make them defensive, feeling that they are being accused of racism. Whites are interested in approaches that provide them something as well. Historically, and according to López’s research, the best approach is to suggest a policy that specifically applies to all people. In other words, a race-class narrative works: we are all in this together and we all will benefit. Note that this is not a race-free approach, it is more accurately a racial-solidarity message.
Democratic candidates have often approached voters with either an aggressive push for racial justice or a nonracial economic approach. Neither has been effective in competition with the racial messaging of the Republicans. López uses focus groups, surveys, and polls to suggest his race-class approach is the most effective at countering the racial messaging of the Republicans.
“Our research has shown that a huge chunk of the electorate straddles the progressive-reactionary line, and many are likely to merge left if economic and racial issues are appropriately and comprehensively intertwined.”
Let us hope he is correct.
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