Raw Data: Racial Resentment Among Blue-Collar Whites Hasn’t Changed in 30 Years

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I asked earlier for data about the racial attitudes of the white working class. There’s no foolproof way of determining this, but Phil Klinkner passes along the “racial resentment” scores of white working-class men from the American National Election Studies. This is on a scale of 0-16:

There are a few obvious things to take away from this:

  • Racial resentment scores haven’t changed at all over the past 30 years.
  • White men with only a high school education score exactly the same as white men overall.
  • But white men with low incomes score a little higher.

If I were to draw any conclusions from this, I’d choose these two:

  • Donald Trump is probably not drawing on anything new in the racial resentment department. He’s being louder and more obvious about it, but the pool of white racial resentment he’s working with just hasn’t changed much.1
  • It’s low-income whites who score higher than whites overall, not those with low education. This suggests that economic status plays a (small) role in exacerbating racial resentment and that economic anxiety probably does play a (small) part in Donald Trump’s appeal to blue-collar whites.

This is just one bit of data, and I wouldn’t take too much from it. If I come across anything else that tells a different or more detailed story, I’ll pass it along.

1Sure, maybe it’s changed in just the past four years. I wouldn’t put a lot of money on that, though.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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