“The First White President” (2017) is an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coastes wherein he argues that Donald Trump rose to power on the back of White racism and not, as many suppose, by taking seriously the concerns of the White working class.
Coates:
“We are now being told that support for Trump’s ‘Muslim ban,’ his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham’s America and Jeff Foxworthy’s.”
Exit polls showed that Trump won Whites across the board, regardless of income, education or age, and did way better among Whites than anyone else. In fact, one study found:
“The racial and ethnic isolation of whites at the zip code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support.”
Nor was that just some kind of accident:
“Trump moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable to the overt and freely claimed.”
Cognitive dissonance:
“The implications […] that the salt-of-the-earth Americans whom we lionize in our culture and politics are not so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos […] were just too dark.”
And so “the country’s thinking class” make it about class, not race, in particular they make it about the White working class. They did the same thing in 1990 when David Duke almost became senator of Louisiana, even though Duke had been the grand wizard of the Klan.
Seeing Trump through a White gaze: Coates shows how White opinion-makers are blinded by their own Whiteness, even those who are anti-Trump. For example, he says of Mark Lilla:
“That Trump ran and won on identity politics is beyond Lilla’s powers of conception. What appeals to the white working class is ennobled. What appeals to black workers, and all others outside the tribe, is dastardly identitarianism. All politics are identity politics – except the politics of white people, the politics of the bloody heirloom.”
By “bloody heirloom” Coates means:
“the passive power of whiteness – that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them.”
That heirloom was made possible by “land theft and human plunder.” Trump, more than any other president, “has made the awful inheritance explicit.”
What makes Trump the first White president:
“Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent – an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new – the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific – America’s first white president.”
Read the whole essay at the Atlantic.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
515
So, white Americans are racist, who knew? Coates needs to explain why HRC lost voters BHO won. Whites were more racist fifty years ago, yet George Wallace couldn’t win in 1968. What good does it do to point out the obvious? Coates points out that high income whites hide behind “the white working class”, why? What’s the point of this masquerade? What has changed in the standing of the USA in the world in 2016 compared to 1968?
LikeLike
What has changed in the standing of the USA in the world in 2016 compared to 1968?
In 1968 we had a younger generation of hippies who were into peace, love and anti war.
In 2018 we have a generation who couldn’t care less about poc. Acording to Kid Rock whites don’t like to be told who to like and what to say. He is running for senate in Michigan and I bet he will get elelcted.
(https://youtu.be/OY3zFblpM5s)
12% of Bernie voters switched to Trump. Explain that to the DNC.
LikeLike
Kid rock? Maybe lsd can be legal starting in ann arbor lol.
LikeLike
Listened to this on The Atlantic Magazine podcast. It’s an excellent summation of the cretin 45 aka Mango Mussolini.
LikeLike
“In 1968 we had a younger generation of hippies who were into peace, love and anti war.”
People like HRC, WJC, her husband, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc.? I don’t buy it. The present generation isn’t all that different and were raised with the values of the generation you allude to. Hippies wanted to “find themselves” by going to India, as Jobs did, “turn on” by using lsd and other mind altering drugs. I doubt that poc played much of a role in their lives. They opposed the Vietnam war for the sane reason that they had better things to do with their lives than being canon fodder for Uncle Sam. The Vietnamese resistance to US predation had a great deal to do with it. Who remembers that the US invaded the Dominican Republic during that same period? Nobody, because the DR had no Hồ Chí Minh.
“Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961.[76] In February 1963, a democratically elected government under leftist Juan Bosch took office but it was overthrown in September. In April 1965, after 19 months of military rule, a pro-Bosch revolt broke out.[83]
Days later U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, concerned that Communists might take over the revolt and create a “second Cuba,” sent the Marines, followed immediately by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and other elements of the XVIIIth Airborne Corps, in Operation Powerpack. “We don’t propose to sit here in a rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communist set up any government in the western hemisphere,” Johnson said.[84] The forces were soon joined by comparatively small contingents from the Organization of American States.[85]
All these remained in the country for over a year and left after supervising elections in 1966 won by Joaquín Balaguer. He had been Trujillo’s last puppet-president.[35][85]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic#Post-Trujillo_.281961.E2.80.932000.29
LikeLiked by 1 person
For those too young to remember, once upon a time America had the potential to be great. In 1957 I went to work in an auto assembly plant in Michigan. There was a meritocracy culture. You had to work to earn everything. There was fierce competition and peer group pressure for better jobs, better pay, promotion. If you worked well with others, able to solve problems, demonstrated leadership ability upper management would identify you for raises and promotions. Even if you needed more education, there was a tuition refund program the company supported. People came to work on time, worked hard to solve problems, cut costs, suggest improvements, etc. It was not usual to see a person work their way up from the assembly line floor to Plant Manager. The Horatio Alger story was alive and well. The auto industry was making billions and employing millions of America.
Then came the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement and the assassination of Kennedy, King and Malcolm X. The government came up with Equal Employment Opportunity laws to prevent discrimination based on race and sex. Suddenly, white corporate America conducted a paradigm shift from a meritocracy to an aristocracy. They created educational “glass ceilings” to prevent black advancement. In order to qualify as a line foreman, you must have a college degree.
Under the guise of these new policies, management hired their children, recently graduated from college and anointed them as the new foremen. Then you, a worker in the plant for 20 years are told to train this new kid to be your boss. Plus, these new kids came into the plant with a sense of entitlement. Why? Because they had not earned the right to supervise veteran assembly line workers. Of course the workers resented these kids and dumbed down to point that whatever these kids told them to do, they did, even though they knew it was the wrong thing to do.
Of course, this racist policy demoralized the workforce. Costs went up. Quality went down. Strikes were long and tense. High quality Japanese products took over the American market share and we never have recovered. All three of the major auto makers have been on the brink of bankruptcy at one time or another.
The majority of our industries have been unbolted and shipped offshore because of these ill-advised management practices and policies. Meanwhile, the white middle-class is disappearing and those who fallen into the near poverty level are so upset they have elected a sociopath as president, hoping this paradigm shift can be reversed. It will not.
Why? Because white supremacy created white privilege out of the fear of competition by black people, which exposes the white supremacy myth. If white people are superior, why create the artificial educational, political, social and economic barriers to black advancement?
Let’s have a little truth up in here and recognize the real problem – fear of competition.
LikeLike
@ wbarnard
“The Horatio Alger story was alive and well. The auto industry was making billions and employing millions of America.
Then came the 1960’s, the Civil Rights Movement and the assassination of Kennedy, King and Malcolm X. The government came up with Equal Employment Opportunity laws to prevent discrimination based on race and sex. Suddenly, white corporate America conducted a paradigm shift from a meritocracy to an aristocracy. “
Soooo, Black people fighting for equal opportunity destroyed the Labor Nirvana you enjoyed in 1950s and 1960s Industrial America?
The major flaw in your meandering argument is that if there really was a “meritocracy” in Industrial, Mid 20th Century America, Black people would not have had to fight for equal rights. The truth of that time is quite different.
The “meritocracy” you ballyhoo about was primarily for White men. Left out of your labor utopia were Black people, White women, Latinx, Native Americans and Asian Americans.
Black people did find better paying jobs in America’s Industrial Heartland during that period. Many Black people were able to purchase houses and material goods. Some were able to send their children to college.
Yet, there was rigid housing and school segregation in those industrial cities (Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee). There was rampant police brutality. Black people in those cities were subject to White mob attacks until the 1960s. The surrounding towns and counties enforced sundown policies against Black people.
That period was hardly an “equality utopia”. The “aristocracy” you bemoan was always there, whether you noticed it or not.
LikeLiked by 1 person
well i don’t know except what my mom said that my dad ‘stayed out of vietnam’ by having a full time job, night time grad school, and having kids, so there’s probably some whole self-fullfilling tangent to be taken from above also.
it reminds me though you could go in as a i think they called it ‘mustang’ officer – lieutenant out of college but apparently they shot at the silver thing on the helmet more
LikeLike
You are largely correct. The racism is indeed historic and systemic. My focus was much broader than the matter of racism. I was trying to explain how the racism of America has led to it’s continuing decline in the eyes of the world – socially, politically and economically.
Racism has created a trap that the white man cannot escape. Ever wonder what it was like to see the slow implosion of the Roman Empire? Well, we are now eye witnesses of that same implosion.
After the Civil Rights Movement, etc, the barriers to black advancement became a deeper part of the culture than ever and the result today is a “privileged” white America unable to compete on a global scale. White privilege has fostered two generations of a soft privileged group of people who never had to compete at a global level for success.
An illustration: The emerging butterfly must struggle mightily to get out of it’s cocoon. Slice the cocoon along the side and make it easier for the butterfly to emerge and what is the result? A butterfly that cannot fly. Why not? Because it develops the strength to fly through the struggle to emerge from the cocoon.
By the same token, white America has similarly created an easy path to “success” via white privilege. There has been no real struggle for their success because 25% of the population were not allowed to compete.
LikeLike
Eh the other problem is everyone wanted to be a ‘business major’ for a while and guess what ppl aint buying much lately. Nobody want to make widgets just run the company that sells them (wherever they come from).
LikeLike
Once again Coates is right.
LikeLike
I’d say that the slave-owning presidents were pretty “white” too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In what world did the country’s ‘thinking class’ try to focus on class? The entire Trump presidency was characterized by intellectuals and the media hammering the race angle nonstop. The very framing of a ‘white working class’ was a cynical media contrivance designed to poison the well of class discussion so that such discussion would never get started in the first place. The people actually talking about class almost never talked about any ‘white working class’; the point of class is that it transcends racial boundaries. As an example, the Amazon workers currently trying to unionize in Alabama are not black, white, brown, or any other color first and foremost; they’re workers before anything else. Amazon doesn’t give a shit what they look like, it gives a shit that they’re trying to organize as a class (in fact if it were smart Amazon would put more effort in trying to disrupt the union drive by emphasizing a racial divide among the workers. They were smart though to send in a bunch of black attorneys from Morgan Lewis to lead the anti-union attack). From Amazon’s perspective if it doesn’t stop it in Alabama, it’ll start happening everywhere. If you actually wanted an analysis focused on class, you mostly had to seek out people like Adolph Reed writing in obscure outlets like Nonsite.org.
In fact, speaking of Reed, I’ll quote him a bit here, from this piece https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10624-017-9476-3:
“Since the election, that alliance against class politics has become even more aggressive in red-baiting Sanders and the left via a new sort of race-baiting—attacking socialism, and advocates of socialism or social-democratic politics, as racist or white supremacist. It has closed ranks around condemnation of working-class whites who voted for Trump as loathsome and irredeemable racists with whom political solidarity is indefensible and in the process reducing “working class” to a white racial category and synonym for backwardness and bigotry. Antiracists and neoliberal Democrats unite in high moral dudgeon to denounce suggestions that more than racism operated to generate the Trump vote and that some working people, particularly those whom Les Leopold describes as Obama/Sanders/Trump voters—and not necessarily only white ones—felt betrayed by both parties (Leopold 2017; Lopez 2016; Parenti 2016; Edwards-Levy 2017; Shepard 2017; Skelley 2017; Cohn 2017). The practical upshot of that moral stance is that there can be no political alternative outside neoliberalism. That is why it is important, as we look toward the daunting prospect of building a movement capable of changing the terms of debate in American politics to center the interests and concerns of working people—of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and whatever immigration status—who are the vast majority of the country, that we recognize that race-reductionist politics is the left wing of neoliberalism and nothing more. It is openly antagonistic to the idea of a solidaristic left. It is more important than ever to acknowledge that reality and act accordingly.”
Coates is genuinely useless. He gets paid because he writes like some bastardized knockoff of Baldwin, but with absolutely none of the substance. Baldwin, not unlike King, gradually shifted towards a kind of universalism based on economic interests and common humanity, while Coates is still splashing around in the kiddy pool where he’s berating white women in elevators because they shoved his kid out of the way and he can’t comprehend these events through anything other than a racial lens. ‘She couldn’t have shoved my kid because she’s an impatient asshole, she must have done it because she’s a racist White Woman™!’
There’s a pretty amazing on-stage interview/talk thing Coates once did with Barbara Fields, where he very clearly doesn’t comprehend much of what she’s saying. And I’ve seen nothing to suggest that he’s gotten any wiser or figured anything out more in the decade since (not that I can really blame him; he’s carved out a very comfortable and profitable niche for himself. Grifters gotta grift; there are always bills that need to be paid).
LikeLike
@ Ben
If only. Just ask Jemele Hill a week later:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/jamele-hill/)
White Liberals have a long history of class-reductionism, from FDR to Obama and Bernie Sanders:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/black-people-the-white-liberal-users-guide/)
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/bernie-sanders-on-reparations/)
The right likes to picture White Liberals as being sunk in identity politics. They do that to fearmonger to their racist base. And yet they also like to say that Democrats have done nothing for Black people. So which is it? Are Democrats bending over backwards for Black people or not?
Until 2019, the White Liberal press was skittish about applying the word “racist” in their own voice to anyone, even to Trump:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/07/24/the-word-racism-in-2019/)
Before then they did it by proxy through non-Whites, like Ted Lieu, AOC or Omarosa:
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/the-term-racially-tinged/)
I agree that Coates is no Baldwin.
LikeLike
“class-reductionism”
It’s called reality.
You keep digging with your idpol shovel, see where it gets you.
LikeLike