Tova Perlmutter writes of a recent online exchange:
Person A posted:
In light of the Iowa caucuses today, something really bothered me on the news last night. A woman was interviewed, and she said that she supported Trump because, and I quote, ‘he says what we’re ALL thinking.’ Do people really think that his views — particularly those on Muslims, Mexicans, and women — are shared by everyone, and the rest of us are just too afraid to admit it? It’s one thing to agree with him yourself, but to think that deep down, we all do? It’s probably the scariest thing I heard someone say all of this pre-primary season.
This prompted a whole lot of responses, of course, speculating as to the psychology of Trump supporters. The thread that I [Perlmutter] would like to see discussed by your group was the following (slightly edited to make it more concise):
Person A wrote:
Poorly educated white people, especially middle aged men, had the beejeezus kicked out of them in the Great Recession. By and large, the system (political, economic, media) has ignored the plight of these people (or worse, made fun of them). It’s a shame all that anger is concentrated in the wrong places, but the existence of that anger in the first place is partly all of our faults (mine included).
I (Perlmutter) replied:
I disagree that politicians, economic policy-makers and the media have ignored the plight of these people. In fact, I would say that by and large the (hugely important and valuable) efforts at mitigating the Great Recession were politically possible specifically by citing the needs of these white people. (Aka ‘middle class Americans.’)
Over and over I saw and heard stories about the ‘man-cession,’ about how this downturn was different because it was affecting not only [the presumed permanent and undeserving minority underclass] but also those who had ‘paid their dues, invested in the system,’ etc., etc.
I do not think that the backlash we see among racist revanchists is attributable to their being neglected or ignored. It’s certainly true that white non-wealthy Americans have a more precarious perch than they once did, and that’s a result of voters buying into austerity and trickle-down punitive policies, and enabling the deregulation that liberated banking/investment mayhem. So people may be realistic in assessing their own personal life-chances. But their anxiety and hatred are not a result of being ignored or disfavored by the chattering classes. They simply haven’t been.
Person A replied:
My sense of the attention this has received is different from yours, but I should add, much of the racist counter-reaction is that poor Whites are now experiencing the sort of outcomes, in health and marital stability, for example, that we’ve long associated with Blacks and Native Americans.
IOW, the anger and the loss of power/privilege are connected, but in complicated ways.
I (Perlmutter) replied:
It would be interesting to think about how we might find out empirically how much news coverage and politicians’ discussion there was of white working people’s difficulties over the past several years. Clearly my subjective impression is difficult from yours, but isn’t this something that could at least in theory be determined?
Person A replied:
It’s interesting how, in a post-MSM world, we can experience the news environment in such different ways.
Anyway, here’s the social science question that arose from that thread:
Do you know of any empirical data collection that tracks the topics of news coverage, either in general or specifically regarding this question? It might be considered as part of the same general issue as the famous “clinging to their guns” comment from 2008. But I’m particularly interested in the contention that the losses experienced by white middle-class men have received less attention and respect than the difficulties faced by POC and women. Again, I’d like to know if there is any way to quantify the “attention” over the last several years.
My reply:
Lots to chew on here. First, I’m inclined to agree with Perlmutter on the whole “man-cession” thing. I think part of it is that it remains counterintuitive to think of men, or white men, as the victims. So any claim that white men are hurting continues to have a sort of news appeal. And then of course there’s the norm: white men are supposed to be doing ok, so if they (we) aren’t, that’s news.
Regarding the research question: Yes, there are people who study the content of news stories, and they’ve been doing this for many years, so it should be possible to get some trends on this.
Also interesting is the “he says what we’re ALL thinking” quote. I do think this is an issue, that people sometimes seem to think that other people agree with them, deep down. I’m pretty sure this particular cognitive/social illusion has been studied in many ways in psychology and political science.
In some ways, though, the false belief that, deep down, just about everybody agrees with you, is a good thing? Why do I say this? Because it motivates us to talk things over. If I think you really share my values, and you think I really share my values, then we’re both motivated to hash things out, each of us secure in the illusion that we’re likely to prevail. If we do have this discussion, one or both of us might end up disappointed on that account, but we might well make progress in other ways, in a Getting to Yes sort of way. Conversely, when people feel that attitudes are frozen, then there’s no motivation to try to persuade, hence no opportunity for persuasion or creative solutions.
I just saw an interesting tweetstorm that implicitly responds to, and partially echoes, your last point. I think it lends an interesting perspective on the question of why identity can be divisive, and expands on why this illusion can be helpful. https://twitter.com/ContentOfMedia/status/695704674033270785 (also reposted below.)
Identity: Unifying vs Divisive.
A @ContentOfMedia tweetstorm.
People have properties. Some of these properties are used to form groups. Properties with significant “weight” are called “identities”.
Some properties are easy to gain, and hence the identity groups are easy to join. Anyone can be a Doctor Who fan, a Gamer, or a Christian.
Some are harder to join. It takes significant work to become a Doctor, a Famous Actor, or a Senator.
Some are automatically assigned at birth, “for free”, but difficult to change later. A Woman, an African-American, a Dwarf. (Little People)
When we start talking about identities, we can see that some are unifying, bringing otherwise-different people together…
…and some are divisive, driving otherwise similar people apart.
(This is not a fixed property, but varies according to the situation.)
I think, however, that there’s a trend; That easier identities to adopt are more unifying, and harder ones more divisive.
That is, it’s easier to call for unity in a group of Doctor Who fans by saying, “We’re all here because we love The Doctor.”
Not that you can just ignore identities more likely to be divisive! Sometimes they highlight an important difference.
It seems to me, though, that you should think, before bringing up an identitarian issue, if it will be unifying or divisive.
I think there are a lot of groups that get formed that are “Xs of Y”, where X and why are groups, and these are usually divisive.
“Christian Doctor Who Fans” is probably divisive at a Fan Convention. (Maybe also at a church.)
The more identities you link up, the more likely you are to split a group.
How many people can join a group of “Black Christian Doctor Who fans who are also doctors?” Some, but it’s a giant risk.
There may be cases where members of multiple identities have specific interests that differ from their constituent identities.
(This is what the cool kids call “intersectionality.”)
If you find that sort of thing going on, it can be very interesting to explore. But it comes with a cost.
So think carefully before you construct ever narrower identities. Perhaps a focus on the larger more unifying identity is better.
Stay cool, my fellow human beings.
(See what I did there?)
This puts a lot of weight on just who ‘we’ is. If you said Republican primary voters, especially more downscale ones, I would say yes, and that is why Trump does so well with them. Not that they would go as far themselves, but they also realize that is Trumps blustery style. They do believe themselves to have been sold a bill of goods by politicians, every bit as much on their own side as others.
False-consensus effect!
“Also interesting is the “he says what we’re ALL thinking” quote. I do think this is an issue, that people sometimes seem to think that other people agree with them, deep down. I’m pretty sure this particular cognitive/social illusion has been studied in many ways in psychology and political science.”
Bottom line upfront: I believe Perlmutter’s lead line is wrong that “efforts at mitigating the Great Recession were politically possible specifically by citing the needs of these white people” but I concur that “poor Whites are now experiencing the sort of outcomes, in health and marital stability, for example, that we’ve long associated with Blacks and Native Americans.”
Elaborating a little: To the extent that there were efforts to mitigate the effects of the 2008 crash, they primarily benefited the upper end of the income distribution not the lower end. (Think bank bailouts and where Stimulus dollars went vs unfulfilled promises of mortgage relief for people on the bottom end of the income distribution.) The Great Recession is the culmination of policies which have the effect of screwing middle-class people who get the vast majority of their income via wages. I’m referring to policies and legislation which provide advantage capital over labor. While middle-class white people have gotten the shaft since the start of the Great Recession, middle-class African-Americans and Hispanic gotten it much worse. Some charts showing historical wages and productivity, wages as a fraction of gross domestic income, and how income gains have been distributed here – http://www.robustanalysis.net/todays-charts/
Related reading: Noah Smith, “Free Trade with China Wasn’t Such a Great Idea for the U.S.” – http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-26/free-trade-with-china-wasn-t-such-a-great-idea
More on working people getting shafted:
http://www.robustanalysis.net/nafta-was-a-bad-deal-for-u-s-workers-thats-one-of-the-reasons-i-expect-bad-things-from-the-tpp/
http://www.robustanalysis.net/josh-bivens-more-notes-on-the-gains-from-trade-and-who-gets-them/
> While middle-class white people have gotten the shaft since the start of the Great Recession, middle-class African-Americans and Hispanics have gotten it much worse.
Pew Research Center, “Wealth inequality has widened along racial, ethnic lines since end of Great Recession” – http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/
There has been a general growth during the Obama years of insulting of whites as a race by the media. The ongoing brouhaha about OscarsTooWhite is illustrative of the kind of hate that is increasingly fashionable. You are allowed to insult white people with impunity, as long as you are quick to carve out exceptions for white women, white gays, white transgenders, etc.. Thus it’s best to specify that you hate, say, Cisgender Straight White Males.
There are of course other groups you are not allowed to insult. Spike Lee’s career is illustrative. Spike has been racially denouncing the people who dominate the business side of the entertainment industry for 25 years. This year he has gotten little but praise from the press for his hate because he has carefully denounced only white people for running the entertainment business. Back in 1990, however, his previously fabulous career took a major hit when Spike specified that he resented not just generic white control in Hollywood, but white Jewish power. From a long NYT article that served as a bill of indictment of Spike:
“In the same interview, Mr. Lee said: ”I am not anti-Semitic. Do you think Lew Wasserman, Sidney Sheinberg or Tom Pollock would allow it in my picture?” He was naming the heads of the parent company, MCA, and Universal Studios, which made the film. And when asked on ABC’s ”Prime Time” whether his films can express any message at all as long as they make money – a wide-open question that did not refer to ”Mo’ Better Blues” – Mr. Lee answered, ”I couldn’t make an anti-Semitic film.” Asked why not, he said that Jews run Hollywood, and ”that’s a fact.””
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/16/movies/critic-s-notebook-spike-lee-s-jews-passage-benign-cliche-into-bigotry.html?pagewanted=all
You can’t insult Jews with impunity in America. Spike had to immediately publicly apologize with a piece in the NYT with the humiliating title “I Am Not an Anti-Semite.” Has his career even fully recovered yet? I had very high hopes for his career back in the 1980s, so I’m not sure if it has.
There’s a very slowly growing awareness among generic whites that if they aren’t going to be a majority in the future, that they need to start demanding the kind of minority protections that Jews and blacks insist upon. Otherwise they are doomed to the status of Legacy Majority, powerless at the ballot box but free to be kicked around for reasons of hereditary guilt.
Well, if the media insults Whites, is it insulting Blacks any less? Don’t we read a lot of stories about black crime, single motherhood, drug use, prison populations, gang glorification etc.
If you are using the evidence to conclude Whites get insulted with impunity, well so are blacks.
Maybe what you are saying is that in the pasts Whites got a pass but no longer?
WBUR 90.9 FM Boston, “In New Hampshire, Voter Frustration Spans The Political Spectrum” – http://www.wbur.org/2016/02/04/voter-frustration-new-hampshire
This is taking the phrase “what we’re ALL thinking,” in that context, way too literally. Unless it was in a paper on set theory.
Just to be clear (not sure how much it matters, but might make the disagreement easier to understand):
The paragraphs that begin “My sense of the attention…” and end with “connected, but in complicated ways” were written by Person A, my interlocutor. And, just for full accuracy, the original post about the Trump supporter was written by an entirely different person, a mutual friend of Person A and me. Neither Person A nor I were directly addressing the question of imagined consensus; he was trying to explain the anger of white people and I was questioning his explanation.
David Manheim, I’m not sure what courses of action or persuasion would be the benefit of adopting the framework you’ve provided above. I mean, I’m also not sure it’s all that accurate a description of how identity works, but if we were to try to use it, how would that change our behavior or conclusions?
Chris G: I agree that the inadequate mitigation efforts “primarily benefited the upper end of the income distribution not the lower end,” and I think your examples are quite good. What I was trying to say was that selling those efforts as benefiting the upper decile or even quintile would have been politically tone-deaf at the time, and that the stimulus was presented as something that would help the “ordinary” — read “white” — folks who were seen as deserving help (as opposed to the usual “welfare queens” to whom they were implicitly compared). Steve Sailer’s perspective that the whole society has twisted itself in knots to care for black people is an example of the context in which these policies were sold. But you are absolutely right that the benefit of the anti-Recession policies has not primarily helped poor or middle-class people, of any race, to recover from the losses they experienced as a result of the economy’s collapse.
I appreciate how well you expressed it: “The Great Recession is the culmination of policies which have the effect of screwing middle-class people who get the vast majority of their income via wages. I’m referring to policies and legislation which provide advantage capital over labor. While middle-class white people have gotten the shaft since the start of the Great Recession, middle-class African-Americans and Hispanic gotten it much worse.”
I do want to distinguish my view from yours on one point, though: As noted in my first paragraph above, the statement that “poor Whites are now experiencing the sort of outcomes, in health and marital stability, for example, that we’ve long associated with Blacks and Native Americans” was mistakenly attributed to me when Andrew copied sections of my (too-long) email. I don’t know the data on health and marital stability for poor whites, either in past years or “now” (not sure what period was intended by that reference), and I don’t feel sure what “we’ve” associated with other racial groups. I’m not saying that statement is wrong, necessarily, just that I don’t have the information to make such a claim.
Rahul, good point.
Can anyone point me to the kind of data Andrew says is being studied about the media coverage of different groups and issues?
Thanks, all and especially Andrew, for taking up my questions.
Ah, Andrew has now fixed the attribution in the main post.
> What I was trying to say was that selling those efforts as benefiting the upper decile or even quintile would have been politically tone-deaf at the time, and that the stimulus was presented as something that would help the “ordinary” — read “white” — folks who were seen as deserving help (as opposed to the usual “welfare queens” to whom they were implicitly compared).
Got it. I concur.
I’m also curious if there is any historical information relevant to this.
Specifically, there have been periods in history where the “absolute” status of white middle class men dropped — but during most of these periods the status of white middle class men was still higher than that of other groups (black people, white women, native Americans, and in some areas Hispanics). But now with some increase in the status of the “underclass” groups, the gap is no longer there or as great as in previous times.
(What brought this to mind was thinking of my father’s experience of losing his job in the early nineteen-sixties — a combination of the engineer-reaches-a-certain-age phenomenon and the economic woes of Detroit. But since it was partly a location phenomenon, it wasn’t as bad as a nation-wide phenomenon, and was also less severe for him than for a man who didn’t have the subcultural background that made it plausible to get another academic degree in his fifties.)
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/presentations/redbluetalkau.pdf
1) I have not read the book.
2) Anticipating any significant revisions in 2017?
3) Looking at your chart #32, Economic and Social Attitudes of Rich and Poor, if more poor people turned out to vote I’d expect more economically liberal and socially conservative elected officials – and probably public policy – than we have now. Voter turnout stats – http://www.demos.org/data-byte/voter-turnout-income-2008-us-presidential-election
Chris:
You should read the book. It’s jam-packed with research, there’s a lot more there than I could cram into a 1-hour talk.
Regarding turnout, check out this post from a few years ago.
Timur Kuran’s research on preference falsification provides the best explanation. The same dynamic Kuran identified ahead of the Arab spring is in play. People feel that they are being silenced, and when they see others who “say what we were afraid to say”, it emboldens them to also speak up and stop falsifying their preferences. These tipping points are fueled by mass interconnectedness due to smart phones and social media. Arab spring was an early validation of Kuran’s model, but it also explains the rise of GamerGate, SJWs, BLM, and the Trump brigades. In all of these cases you have populations who felt unfairly silenced, and who can be mass mobilized by social proof when someone ventures out to “say what we were secretly thinking”
In some ways, though, the false belief that, deep down, just about everybody agrees with you, is a good thing? Why do I say this? Because it motivates us to talk things over. If I think you really share my values, and you think I really share my values, then we’re both motivated to hash things out, each of us secure in the illusion that we’re likely to prevail.
Every coin has two sides, doesn’t it? If I believe that we both deep down share the same values then after presenting my arguments clearly I can expect to win you over to my point of view. If this does not happen, I might be inclined to think that you are not sincere, that you have something against me personally, that you want to go ahead of me by pretending to have more popular or conformist views, in other words, that you are arguing in bad faith. Thinking that the other side acts in bad faith is probably the most destructive force for any rational discussion. It is much better to think that we are very different all the way down and think of something on which we can agree, even if superficially.
It seems pretty clear to me that “all” refers not to all of humanity or all US voters but to all Trump supporters.