Making Sense of 11/6/2018
*Note - at the bottom of this post are links to the sources for the information I'm drawing on.
Last nights election is producing results that are demonstrating that two specific ideas are overlapping and starting to explain more about elections overall, and political attitudes that drive them. They are the ideas that the population of the United States is sorting itself geographically along political lines, meaning people are actually trying to move to be where people are more likely to share their political attitudes (beginning in the late 90's) and that since the election of Barrack Obama, the primary predictor of the political affiliation of white people is racial attitudes.
Let's start with the racial attitudes of white people, and how that becomes the primary predictor of party affiliation.
We need to clarify a few things to have this conversation more succinctly. There are labels political scientists use to define racial attitudes. They are "racially conservative" and "racially liberal."
Racially conservative is to believe some of the more negative stereotypes about non-white people. They're more likely to believe Black folks don't get ahead because they don't work hard enough, and that structural racism isn't the issue. They're more likely to believe Black folks have a higher rate of drug use than whites (data does not support that). That kind of thing.
Racially liberal, are on the opposite end. They will be more likely to believe structural racism is the primary driver for the way that racial economic inequality exists. They aren't more likely to believe Black people are less intelligent, etc.
Let's also be clear that this is not to say racially liberal white people are incapable of committing racist acts or participating in white supremacy, but they aren't driven by racism. If you're a white person, that may sound confusing. The key ingredient here is that the overwhelming majority of white people are ignorant about how white supremacy works, and how steeped in racism our society is. If you take the metaphor of all of us being fish swimming through life, it's the water. We don't have to see it or know what it is for it to shape our behavior and habits. Racism doesn't have to be a driver of your actions for the results to be racist. Be willing to learn, be willing to make it right. The racially liberal folks are capable of developing the self motivation to learn and understand this. Racially conservative folks are by definition incapable of learning this. This is an extremely important distinction, and will make sense as we move forward. Back to the rest of the topic at hand...
Prior to the election of Barrack Obama, white people didn't sort themselves out politically along lines of racial attitudes. Republicans and political conservatives have always shown a comparatively high percentage of racially conservative ideas and party affiliation. Until Barrack Obama, Democrats had a lower instance of racially conservative people who saw themselves as affiliated with the party, but those who did have racially conservative attitudes weren't by any means a small part of the party. Whether a persons racial attitudes were racially conservative or racially liberal, weren't a great predictor of their party affiliation, overall.
That starts to change when Barrack Obama is elected, and it becomes the essential predictor of party affiliation in the 2016 election. The great mystery of who the voter is that can go from voting for Obama to voting for Trump is solved here (it's at least been a mystery among white people, who are a lot of the political leadership and the press, but probably not a mystery to Black people and other people of color).
Barrack Obama won the primary for the Democratic nomination. At that point, historical party affiliation still determined party affiliation. Racial attitudes were the primary predictor during the 2008 primary. Those white Democrats who still have conservative racial attitudes, are primarily driven by this, and vote for Obama, because he's a Democrat. They may be somewhat uncomfortable with him being a black guy, but he's still a Democrat, and that becomes the driving factor, at that point.
Even in the second election, to his credit, Romney didn't specifically run a campaign based on white grievance and white identity politics. (Yes, it is questionable whether or not we should give people credit for not being out and out racists, but this is the world we have today). Romney runs as a "classical conservative," which means the racially conservative Democratic electorate is still seeing Obama more as Democrat than "Black guy," even after four years of pretty horrifically racist attacks on social media and Fox News, etc. The racially conservative Democrat sees this as "politics as usual" or worse, over time it starts to erode their sense of affiliation with the Democratic Party.
During that eight years when Barrack Obama is president though, something different is happening with the Democratic electorate that was already leaning racially liberal. Barrack Obama is a Democratic president, but he's also the first black president. Racially liberal Democrats are proud as hell of this fact. They're also not perceiving eight years of racially motivated criticisms and faux controversies leveled against Obama as "politics as usual." Obama, to white racially liberal Democrats is wholly and completely, "one of us." They are seeing this as an attack on their political and cultural identity, and they begin to become more sensitive to acts of racism and racist speech in a way they weren't before.
Now, these racial attitudes follow into a whole bunch of other things that they didn't always. Racial attitudes predict whether they think the economy is good, how they feel about health care, and the economy. more than whether they were Democrat or Republican. That was a new development. They were previously also primarily tied to party affiliation.
Then comes the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign is speaking to white grievance explicitly. It's not a "classical conservative" campaign. Trump creates a political career out of saying the quiet part loud, and appealing directly to white racial anxiety.
For the racial conservatives in the Democratic Party, it activates those attitudes, and these are the people who vote for Trump, even after voting for Obama twice.
For the racial liberals in the Democratic Party, Trump is all the worst things they've believed or seen in the 8 years Obama was president.
Apparently, the Republican Party has been nearly at their ceiling for racially conservative attitudes for years. What Trump picks up is the racially conservative Democrats. Republicans and conservatives haven't gotten more racist. They've just started saying it out loud. Politically liberal/progressive Democrats have actually gotten more racially liberal.
Above and beyond every other indicator people have tried to use, be it economic status, education level, whatever, the best predictor of who voted for Trump or who voted for Hillary in 2016 was racial attitudes.
That's one piece of the explanation.
The second piece is what's been referred to as The Big Sort. This is a phenomenon that started in the late 90's and early 2000's, and it's people sorting politically, along geographic lines. That's a fancy way to say, people are trying to move to places where the existing population already shares their political affiliation or views.
It's part of the explanation for the re-urbanization phenomenon, along with economics. That people are leaving rural areas, and even the suburbs has as much to do with The Big Sort as it does with the economic opportunities. The combination of being racially liberal, but also being raised white in a white supremacist society also helps explain a lot of what we're seeing as gentrification.
Let's take what it means to have these two things working together.
Starting 20 or so years ago, people started sorting themselves out into geographical enclaves that reflect their political affiliations and leanings. In 2008, the US elects it's first Black president. As a result, party affiliation and political leanings start to become predicted by racial attitudes. People with racially liberal attitudes become more racially liberal in the process.
This would explain why a state like VA, which has been a series of nail biting statewide races, but is still majority white, not only chooses not to elect a Neo-Confederate (a white supremacist who prefers Confederate uniforms to Nazi regalia or a Klan hood) racist like Corey Stewart, but does so in a way that is so decisive, the race was called in favor of Tim Kaine within a few minutes of polls closing. Charlottesville is in Virginia, and to racially liberal people in Virginia, the reality of racism knocked on their door last year. Virginia has been experiencing an influx of former north easterners for a decade or so. It's been "purple" for some years. VA did go for Clinton in 2016 as well, in keeping with the rest of this data.
It also explains how Steve King, someone who has all but come out and just said he's a white supremacist is able to keep his seat. He represents a solidly red district, and they have never been bothered by conservative racial attitudes. It also explains how Ron De Santis beats Andrew Gillum. As a candidate, Gillum just campaigns better than De Santis, this is a really hard thing to say isn't true. Looking at the two men, in debates, in their ads, all of it. Gillum is just a better politician, all the way around. De Santis though, puts his efforts into the same kind of racial grievance campaign as Trump, even trying his best to have the electorate associate him with Trump. Iowa and Florida went to Trump in 2016.
SO.. yes... The blue states are getting bluer, and the red states are getting redder. But, both of those things are happening right now because people have been sorting themselves out so that it was an inevitable result and the racial attitudes of people are now more likely than any other factor to be predicting party affiliation.
That white people are splitting along the lines of racial attitudes, and geography is a meaningful indicator of the future of country.
This also explains why we're seeing a historic number of women of color going into the House of Representatives. Those who were previously already racially liberal, became more racially liberal over the course of the Obama presidency and the last few years.
This doesn't mean that white people who have racially liberal attitudes are suddenly going to be free of all bigoted and prejudiced ideas. A few hundred years of creating and maintaining the white supremacist culture they've grown up and been raised in makes that impossible. It does mean, that there have never been white people in the Democratic Party more desiring of racial equity than those who are still there.
It also means that in this period in time, where racism is concerned, they are functionally different than the white people of the Republican Party and conservative movement. Those are white people who are currently responding to a racially conservative attitude that is driving their sense of political identity. That is not a population that is going to be "reached" in relation to racism and white supremacy, especially in this current political moment when the entirety of the Republican Party and conservative movement are explicitly trying to activate those racist attitudes, every single day.
Some of this is genuinely good news. There is a better chance today, than there has been in any of our lifetimes to create a political coalition that is cross racial, in a way that is fundamentally equitable. If it can't be created now, all of the groundwork to create it can be laid. It may actually take ten years of education to get todays racially liberal white people to a level of understanding that makes them able to participate in that coalition in a genuinely positive and effective way, but that chance is close now than it ever has been.
It is in the interest of, and the responsibility of white people who do want a genuinely equitable and fair society to do the work toward that education as much as we can on our own and together. It is not the responsibility of people of color to teach us. There are ways we can hear the voices of people of color now that weren't available before. There is a wealth of journalists, activists, academics, artists, scholars etc for us to seek out. If we promote those voices, and be patrons of their work, there will be more still.
It also starts to make some things much clearer. Those white people who are responding to the racist campaigns of the Republicans and conservatives, they are not going to be won or changed. It is their cultural identity. Short of some incident that is genuinely world changing for them individually, they won't be reached on the basis of race or racial equality. There may be some other way to start to change their thinking, but it will have to be adjacent to race. The thing most often co-occurring with racially conservative attitudes is evangelical Christian identification, as well.
*Below are links to the sources of info I'm referencing. Taking the information from both of them, and layering them on top of each other, understanding that the geographic sorting started first, and now is primarily driven (among white people at least) by racial attitudes gives what I think is a clear picture of what we saw last night.
Why Is This Happening w/Chris Hayes - White Identity Politics with Michal Tesler - This podcast made me seek out the following book. It's an hour long interview, goes deep on the data related to racial attitudes since 2008, and made me really want to know more.
Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America - I'm sure you can find this book plenty of places, I got an ebook from my local library and have been working through it. It's really full of great info.
The Big Sort - I read this a while back (after hearing an interview with it's author), and it has been useful in looking at the political landscape, but it was written in 2008.