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The fear of white decline
Hillary Clinton's outreach to working-class voters signals the group's decl=
ining economic security.
Gregory Rodriguez

May 19, 2008


Hillary Rodham Clinton is right. She has the broader and whiter
political coalition, so she should, by all rights, be the Democratic
presidential nominee.

After all, in other realms of the political process, we routinely
refer to "black districts" or "Latino districts" and speak of the
necessity of those jurisdictions to be represented by black or Latino
elected officials. Well, then, because the American population is 66%
white, maybe the United States is a de facto white district that
should be represented accordingly.

Don't scoff at the idea. Ethnic and racial self-determination have
been underlying factors in the formation of modern nations. Israel is
one example, along with anti-colonial revolutions and states in the
Third World. The principle of ethnic self-determination made its way
into the United Nations Charter, and it lurks in contemporary
domestic discussions about the political and cultural rights of every
kind of minority.

The Clinton campaign's assertion of her electability based on
"hardworking white American" voters reveals deep divisions in the
Democratic coalition. But it isn't a sign of the resurgence of white
supremacy in America. Rather, it is a formal re-articulation of
whiteness as a social category and a racial interest group.

For decades now, scholars have been writing about the invisibility of
whiteness. To be white in America meant that you were a member of the
default category that just isn't discussed. In 2000, journalists
didn't incessantly mention that George W. Bush was seeking to become
the 43rd white male president of the United States. No one even
thinks in those terms. It's implied. It's one of the perks of
dominance. We generally mention race when we speak of nonwhites.

Since the civil rights movement, though, it's also been taboo to
speak of the collective interests of white people in polite company.
To mention whites as an interest group -- in the way we do minority
groups -- hearkens back to segregation and worse.

Sure, we've discussed the importance of subgroups of whites -- soccer
moms and NASCAR dads. But analysts didn't treat their whiteness as
the primary thing that determined their political behavior, in the
way that, say, Latino voters are almost always presumed to vote based
on ethnic considerations.

But the Obama-Clinton rivalry seems to have changed all that, and
we're now openly discussing white working-class voters in ways that
make clear that their racial interests play a role in their political
preferences. Last week, exit polls in West Virginia showed that
Barack Obama might be facing some fierce racial resistance if he
becomes the Democratic nominee. More than half of West Virginia
Democratic voters -- 95% of whom are white -- said they would be
dissatisfied if Obama won the nomination.

Is this white supremacy? No, in fact it might be its opposite, an
acknowledgment that white privilege has its limits. With immigration
and globalization reformulating who we are as a nation, it isn't the
white elites that are threatened by the changes; rather, it's the
nearly 70% of whites who are not college educated who figure among
the most insecure of Americans. Many feel that their jobs are being
outsourced or taken by immigrants -- legal or otherwise -- and that
their culture is being subsumed. When Clinton promises to make their
voices heard, she's appealing not to Anglo-Saxon racial triumphalism
but to the fear of white decline.

Granted, not everyone who fits under the rubrics of "white, working
class, not college educated" is going to vote against Obama. But by
rallying to Clinton's faltering candidacy, some sectors of white
society might be trying to solidify the old racial boundaries of
American nationhood. It's not so much that they are hoping to reclaim
their place, but that they are seeking to carve out a niche and
demanding that, at the very least, the presidency remains "theirs."

Like black or Latino activists who insist that a particular
congressional district should be represented by one of their own, the
disgruntled white working-class, non-college-educated voters might be
demanding that their majority status still translate into something
at least symbolically meaningful to them.

But that doesn't make it right. No matter who wins the presidency,
there is one thing we ought to learn from this campaign. In our
rapidly diversifying nation, where we are all becoming minorities,
the idea that any given group has an inalienable claim on a
particular political seat, appointment or office based on
demographics has officially outlived its usefulness.

Romantic notions of ethnic self-determination and multiculturalism
may have once served to dismantle empires and garner attention for
forgotten minorities. But today they are more likely to nurture the
kind of white nationalism on which Clinton has placed her last
political hopes.

grodriguez at latimescolumnists.com


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