“White Identity Politics as Racial and Class Politics in the Trump Era”

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Political Attitudes II (Table 19)

Abstract

The Obama and Trump era has inspired much research on white identity politics, including studies on ordinary white consciousness, seeking to understand the widespread prevalence of white consciousness, its social profile, political shape, and fluctuations. In her seminal work, Jardina (2019, 2021) argued that white consciousness is more prevalent and politically salient than generally recognized and most high white consciousness whites (HWCWs) are motivated by white ingroup favoritism more than animus towards racial outgroups. This study tests an alternative racial and class theory positing that most HWCWs fit three divergent types: 1) ‘White (Christian) ethnonationalists’ who combine high white consciousness with strong and explicit racial animus, opposition to redistribution, and support for ‘neoliberal governance’; 2) Marginalized whites who perceive redistributive politics as organized by race and combine high white consciousness with support for economic redistribution; 3) A ‘cross-pressured’ type combining high white consciousness with racial animus, including explicit prejudice, and support for redistribution. The typology is informed by studies of right-wing populism, working class people cross-pressured by liberal class and conservative racial politics, and qualitative analyses of the worldviews of rural and white working-class Americans in our era of high economic inequality, political polarization, and high racialization of politics. I conduct latent profile analyses of non-Hispanic whites using 2016 and 2024 ANES Time Series to identify statistical classes with similar racial and redistributive (class) political positions (attitudes, feeling, beliefs, policies). Findings focus classes high on white consciousness but reference other types; socially and politically profile the high white consciousness classes contextualize them in current U.S. politics. Preliminary analyses of 2016 support the tripart typology. Classes scoring high on white consciousness fit one of the three hypothesized types. Most classes scoring high on explicit prejudice or stereotypes were also high on white consciousness classes.

Author

• Carl W. Stempel, California State University-East Bay