A new identity politics rising on the right: white consciousness

ESTERO, FL - OCTOBER 31: Two women hold an American flag as people stand in line for President Donald Trump's campaign rally at the Hertz Arena on October 31, 2018 in Estero, Florida. President Trump continues travelling across America to help get the vote out for Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections. Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP == FOR NEWSPAPERS, INTERNET, TELCOS & TELEVISION USE ONLY ==

In the popular imagination, identity politics is the stuff of queer-studies seminars and Hillary Clinton rallies. The excesses of intolerant university students raging against misogyny, racism and homophobia have been rigorously catalogued.

Rather less attention has been paid to the appetite for a different kind of identity politics — one centred around whiteness and championed by Donald Trump. This kind of right-leaning identity politics is more potent than the left-leaning version. There is no cause which unifies the Democratic Party as much as the lost respectability and forgotten prestige of whiteness that typifies the Trumpian Republican Party.

For evidence of this, look no further than the President’s closing arguments a week before the mid-term elections on November 6. Worried about the damage that a Democratic wave in the mid-terms could wreak, Trump has fed his base an artery-clogging diet of red meat. Recently leaked news that his administration is planning to rip up Obama-era rules on the treatment of transgender people was a poke in the eye for political correctness. The President has also seized on the useful image of a caravan of Central American migrants heading to the border.

Trump and his allies have claimed that the caravan is an “invasion” harbouring, among other things, criminals, “Middle Easterners” (apparently meaning terrorists) and “diseases” such as leprosy. To deal with a slow-moving procession trudging through Mexico and weeks away from reaching the border, Trump has dispatched 5200 troops — double the number fighting Islamic State in Syria. On Tuesday, Trump floated the idea of abolishing birthright citizenship by executive order. The fact that the text of the 14th amendment bars such action is no matter, since the point is to sway those white voters who are apprehensive about their future status in a country where they may find themselves in the minority within their lifetimes.

Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally in Estero, Florida. Picture: AP.

Political scientists have spent three years puzzling over the psychological impulses that propelled Trump to power. Hostility towards blacks, Muslims and immigrants was a significant predictor of support for Trump, even in the Republican primaries. But academics have often overlooked the importance of whiteness itself. When this is measured — by asking questions about reverse discrimination and how important being white is to one’s identity — white consciousness is in some cases an even better predictor of support for Trump than lukewarm feelings about blacks or Hispanics. Though there is some overlap, concern over white identity is distinct from racial animus, notes Ashley Jardina of Duke University. Jardina’s data show that whites can be concerned about their status without harbouring much hostility against non-whites.

Though people with high scores on white identity are hostile to immigration, they are also strong supporters of Social Security (federal pensions) and Medicare for the elderly. Unlike means-tested programs, such as cash welfare or food stamps, these schemes are seen as benefiting white Americans after a life of hard work. Trump broke with Republican orthodoxy when he promised no cuts in the programs, while also driving a hard line against immigration of all kinds.

Diana Mutz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, analysed survey data from 2012 and 2016 and found losses in financial status did not predict support for Trump, but a feeling of threatened status (whether white, Christian or male) was a strong predictor. According to Public Religion Research Institute polling, 76 per cent of Republicans agree “the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence”, and 61 per cent think “the impact of the US becoming non-white by 2045 will be mostly negative”. Four in five Republicans support barring Muslim immigrants and building a wall on the Mexican border.

The Trump playbook has an effect further down the ballot. Antonio Delgado, a black Rhodes Scholar running for congress in upstate New York, has faced ads labelling him a “big-city rapper”. Chris Collins, a Republican incumbent indicted for insider trading, released a campaign ad simply showing his (white) Democratic opponent speaking Korean. Duncan Hunter, another Republican incumbent under indictment, has said that his (Christian) opponent of Arab descent was working to “infiltrate” congress through a “well-orchestrated plan” supported by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Republican Party has either tolerated or funded such campaign rhetoric. The only candidate repudiated by some party members is Iowa congressman Steve King, after he endorsed a white-supremacist candidate for Toronto’s mayorship and gave an interview with a far-right Austrian website. King has a history of questionable comments, including saying: “We can’t restore our civilisation with somebody else’s babies”.

Laura Ingraham of Fox News, the news outlet favoured by Trump, declared: “It does seem like the America we know and love doesn’t exist any more”, because of “massive demographic changes”.

In the past, political scientists thought racial appeals needed to be coded in order to work. Today they are not, and that does not seem to matter. Trump, who began his political career by suggesting that Barack Obama was a Kenyan Muslim who received an elite education only because of affirmative action, is President. Collins, Hunter and King are favoured to win.