Race, Remembrance and Precarity: Nostalgia and Vote Choice in 2016

• In Event: Difference, Solidarity, and Redistribution in Twenty-First Century America

Abstract

This paper shows how nostalgia for a lost past drives support for Trump. Longing for a lost “golden age” has infused other historical periods when Americans confronted the anxieties associated with change and uncertainty (Cowie 2016, p.227). Gillespie demonstrates that Trump took full advantage of this powerful social and political tool in his call to “make America great again.” But nostalgia, she shows, reflects a tunnel-vision of the past, incorporating only the perspective of those who feel their social dominance challenged. At the heart of that challenge lie perceived shifts in the racial hierarchy. Nostalgia is closely linked to racial resentment and to backlash against the election of America’s first black president. Of course, racist appeals, coded or not, are nothing new in American politics. The era that many remember with nostalgia featured bitter struggles over basic civil rights in the South and the openly racist candidacy of George Wallace who won votes across the country with his vow to preserve segregation “forever.” Gillespie’s analysis shows the power of a savvy marketer to prime racist attitudes by combining open attacks on immigrants with gauzy references to a misremembered past.

Author

• Andra Gillespie, Emory University