If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, LBJ: ‘Convince the Lowest White Man He’s Better Than the Best Colored Man’
Tall Poppy Syndrome, the politics of resentment, fundamental attribution error, and sameness-based notions of fairness are a systemic slog for neurodivergent and disabled people. We’re often called frauds and fakes and attention seekers when advocating for our needs. Accommodations are framed as unfair privileges. The resentful hostility to the ADA is pervasive and enormous. We often have bad encounters with self-anointed “disability police” steeped in resentment.
The systems are bad and they are designed by people who are bad to help people who don’t deserve it while ignoring the people who do deserve it.
Populism and the Politics of Resentment as distilled by Hank Green, Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment – YouTube
Resentment of minorities is baked into white supremacy. It’s a fundamental tool.
Republicans typically mislead working-class whites into supporting a neoliberal agenda that undermines their economic security by using overt and covert racism to draw attention away from the enrichment of the capitalist class. Republicans accomplish this by using racial stereotypes and appeals to white racial resentment to blame brown and black people—instead of white elites—for their plight. Commenting on the predicament of the white working class, Kirk Noden observed in the Nation: “Corporate Democrats have never advanced their interests—and at least Republicans offer a basic, if misleading, story about why they are getting screwed.”
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
The motivation in 2016 was equally nefarious and destructive. Trump tapped into an increasingly powerful conservative base that had been nurtured for decades on the Southern Strategy’s politics of anti-black resentment. Similar to George Wallace’s run for the presidency in 1968, Trump’s supporters bristled at the thought that public policies would provide any help to African Americans and were certain that blacks were getting much more than they deserved from the government while the “average American” was getting much less. The message was clear: They weren’t deserving and weren’t really even Americans.
Anderson Ph.D., Carol. White Rage (p. 169). Bloomsbury Publishing.
These divergent reactions offer a grim shorthand for Trumpist politics, which seeks not to solve problems but provide scapegoats for those problems, and then hope that people are too distracted by hatred to notice.
Trumpists Don’t Seem to Mind Claims of Sexual Assault – The Atlantic
This isn’t politics. It’s the industrialisation of resentment.
What the Liverpool incident tells us about the new culture war
This is part of a larger practice, a larger pattern, in which government has been hijacked by the very rich through manipulations of status anxiety.
Ian Haney López, “Dog Whistle Politics: Coded Racism and Inequality for All” – YouTube
Table of Contents
Resentment: The Grand Bargain of White Supremacy
What is the Southern Strategy? It is this. It says to the South: Let the poor stay poor, let your economy trail the nation, forget about decent homes and medical care for all your people, choose officials who will oppose every effort to benefit the many at the expense of the few-and in return, we will try to overlook the rights of the black man, appoint a few southerners to high office, and lift your spirits by attacking the ‘eastern establishment’ whose bank accounts we are filling with your labor and your industry.
George McGovern, quoted in: Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 27.
At the base of that fear was what Smith calls the “grand bargain” of white supremacy, buttressed by paternalism and evangelicalism, whereby the southern white masses relinquished political power to the few in exchange for maintaining their social status as better than the black man.
Maxwell, Angie,Shields, Todd. The Long Southern Strategy. Oxford University Press.
Republicans had to mirror southern white culture by emphasizing an “us vs. them” outlook, preaching absolutes, accusing the media of bias, prioritizing identity over the economy, depicting one’s way of life as under attack, encouraging defensiveness toward social changes, and championing a politics of vengeance. Over time, that made the party southern, not in terms of place, but in its vision, in its demands, in its rhetoric, and in its spirit. In doing so, it nationalized southern white identity, and that has changed American politics.
Conservative dog whistling made minorities, not concentrated wealth, the pressing enemy of the white middle class. It didn’t seem to matter that the actual monetary transfers to nonwhites were trivial. If all of the anti-poverty and social welfare dollars paid to blacks during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had instead been given to low- and middle-income whites, it would have added less than three-eighths of 1 percent to their actual disposable income.59 What mattered was the sense that blacks were getting more than they deserved, at the expense of white taxpayers. The middle class no longer saw itself in opposition to concentrated wealth, but now instead it saw itself beset by grasping minorities. And note a further, related shift evident in Phillips’ phrasing: what had been liberal “programs” when they helped whites became “welfare” when extended across the colorline. Racial attacks on liberalism shifted the enemy of the middle class from big money to lazy minorities, and transmuted economic programs that helped to build the nation into welfare for undeserving groups.
Lopez, Ian Haney. Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (pp. 30-31). Oxford University Press.
The Reagan tax cuts over the 1980s transferred a trillion dollars of wealth to the top one percent. And every decade since those tax cuts have not been repealed, they’ve remained in place, and a further trillion dollars of wealth plus has been transferred to the top one percent, sold through a story that says:
fear minorities, resent minorities, distrust
government, defund government, get government out of the marketplace, get government out of social spending, cut
taxes.And this is dog whistling. This is dog-whistle politics.
When you see that curve start to go up, and the top one percent beginning to control more and more wealth in the country, in 1980. That’s done through a racial narrative, through a racial narrative that says: you’re under threat from minorities so you ought to despise government, vote against it.
Ian Haney López, “Dog Whistle Politics: Coded Racism and Inequality for All” – YouTube
A good many, perhaps a majority of the party’s leadership, envision substantial political gold to be mined in the racial crisis by becoming in fact, though not in name, the White Man’s Party.
Robert Novak, reporting on a 1963 meeting of the Republican National Committee
White Resentment Thrives on Victimhood
White resentment has long thrived on the fantasy of being under siege and having to fight back, as the mass lynchings and destruction of thriving, politically active black communities in Colfax, La. (1873), Wilmington, N.C. (1898), Ocoee, Fla. (1920), and Tulsa, Okla. (1921), attest. White resentment needs the boogeyman of job-taking, maiden-ravaging, tax-evading, criminally inclined others to justify the policies that thwart the upward mobility and success of people of color.
Opinion | The Policies of White Resentment – The New York Times
That white resentment simply found a new target for its ire is no coincidence; white identity is often defined by its sense of being ever under attack, with the system stacked against it. That’s why Mr. Trump’s policies are not aimed at ameliorating white resentment, but deepening it. His agenda is not, fundamentally, about creating jobs or protecting programs that benefit everyone, including whites; it’s about creating purported enemies and then attacking them.
In the end, white resentment is so myopic and selfish that it cannot see that when the larger nation is thriving, whites are, too. Instead, it favors policies and politicians that may make America white again, but also hobbled and weakened, a nation that has squandered its greatest assets — its people and its democracy.
Opinion | The Policies of White Resentment – The New York Times
Over the course of the Long Southern Strategy, the coded racial mantras shifted from whites being better suited at governing, to whites having the right to protect whites-only private spaces, to whites being victims of reverse discrimination. But equality feels like an attack when privilege is all one knows. Together, the coded language provided deniability and the urgent threat of potential peril consolidated resistance. Politically malleable, whiteness has proven to be the GOP’s blank check that always clears.
Maxwell, Angie,Shields, Todd. The Long Southern Strategy. Oxford University Press.
In his analysis of the race, Burnham summarizes what he saw as the conditions that would give rise to a southern realignment, including the organization of interest groups based on “perceived deprivation or the threat of deprivation”; the spreading of negative attitudes toward outgroups; and a zero-sum outlook that caused “politics to be regarded by many as virtually total in character.”
Maxwell, Angie,Shields, Todd. The Long Southern Strategy. Oxford University Press.
White Supremacy: A Pyramid Scheme Built on Resentment
Race was not only created to justify a racially exploitative economic system, it was invented to lock people of color into the bottom of it. Racism in America exists to exclude people of color from opportunity and progress so that there is more profit for others deemed superior. This profit itself is the greater promise for nonracialized people-you will get more because they exist to get less. That promise is durable, and unless attacked directly, it will outlive any attempts to address class as a whole.
This promise-you will get more because they exist to get less-is woven throughout our entire society. Our politics, our education system, our infrastructure-anywhere there is a finite amount of power, influence, visibility, wealth, or opportunity. Anywhere in which someone might miss out. Anywhere there might not be enough. There the lure of that promise sustains racism.
White Supremacy is this nation’s oldest pyramid scheme. Even those who have lost everything to the scheme are still hanging in there, waiting for their turn to cash out.
Even the election of our first black president did not lessen the lure of this promise to draw people to their support of racism. If anything, the election strengthened it. His election was a clear, undeniable sign that some black people could get more, and then what about everyone else’s share? Those who had always blatantly or subconsciously depended on that promise, that they would get more because others would get less, were threatened in ways that they could not put words to. But suddenly, this didn’t feel like “their country” anymore. Suddenly, they didn’t feel like “their needs” were being met.
What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor-even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.
Even in our class and labor movements, the promise that you will get more because others exist to get less, calls to people. It tells you to focus on the majority first. It tells you that the grievances of people of color, or disabled people, or transgender people, or women are divisive. The promise that keeps racism alive tells you that you will benefit most and others will eventually benefit… a little. It has you believing in trickle-down social justice.
Yes, it is about class-and about gender and sexuality and ability. And it’s also, almost always, about race.
Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race (pp. 12-13). Da Capo Press. Kindle Edition.
Poor southern whites have long been conditioned to forfeit a personal battle in the service of winning an imagined war from which they do not benefit.
Maxwell, Angie, Shields, Todd. The Long Southern Strategy. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
We’re really looking at a 50-year history of conservatives using race as a way to build electoral support for politicians who promise to dismantle the New Deal.
Ian Haney López, “Dog Whistle Politics: Coded Racism and Inequality for All” – YouTube
Fear and Rage and Resentment
Fear and rage and resentment, the bread and butter of the Long Southern Strategy, often drive more people to the polls than optimism or likability or hope, no matter where they live.
Poor southern whites have long been conditioned to forfeit a personal battle in the service of winning an imagined war from which they do not benefit.
Maxwell, Angie, Shields, Todd. The Long Southern Strategy. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
The guiding principle in Mr. Trump’s government is to turn the politics of white resentment into the policies of white rage — that calculated mechanism of executive orders, laws and agency directives that undermines and punishes minority achievement and aspiration.
The Lowest White Man
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, LBJ: ‘Convince the Lowest White Man He’s Better Than the Best Colored Man’
In a way, Donald Trump represents white people’s right to be wrong and still be right. He is the embodiment of the unassailability of white power and white privilege.
To abandon him is to give up on the pact that America has made with its white citizens from the beginning: The government will help to underwrite white safety and success, even at the expense of other people in this country, whether they be Native Americans, African-Americans or new immigrants.
But this idea of elevating the lowest white man over those more qualified or deserving didn’t begin with Johnson’s articulation and won’t end with Trump’s manifestation. This is woven into the fabric of the flag.
For white supremacy to be made perfect, the lowest white man must be exalted above those who are black.
If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups
Nine preregistered studies (n = 4197) demonstrate that advantaged group members misperceive equality as necessarily harming their access to resources and inequality as necessarily benefitting them. Only when equality is increased within their ingroup, instead of between groups, do advantaged group members accurately perceive it as unharmful.
The misperception that equality is harmful is stubbornly persistent, resisting both reason and incentivization. Specifically, this misperception prevails when resource scarcity concerns are addressed by framing resources as unlimited (study 4) or when participants are directly informed that equality-enhancing policies would not limit the advantaged groups’ access to resources (study 5). The irrationality of this misperception is underscored by the fact that it persists when participants are encouraged to think more deliberatively about policies by jointly presenting truly unharmful and harmful equality-enhancing policies side by side (study 8). Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that participants continue to misperceive equality as harmful even when it financially benefits them (study 7). These grim results suggest that perceiving equality as harmful to advantaged groups is a powerful heuristic.
This misperception that equality is necessarily zero-sum may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone.
If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups | Science Advances
Further Reading
- Neoliberalism
- Conservatism
- Resentment
- Southern Strategy
- Lost Cause
- Segregationist Discourse
- Meritocracy Myth
- Moral Panic
- Lowering the Bar
- Minority Stress
- Racial Weathering
- Policing
- Toxic Masculinity
- Bodily Autonomy
- Biological Essentialism
- Stigma
- Shame
- Ableism
- Eugenics
- Administrative Burden
- R-Word
- Empire of Normality
- Autism Grievance Parent
- Power
- Privilege
- Precarity
- Oligarchy
- Sadopopulism
- Systems Generated Trauma
- Rot Economy
- Fantasy Economy
- Metric Fixation
- Objectivity
- Tech Ethics
- Ableism
- Neuronormativity
- Empire of Normality
- Pathology Paradigm
- Behaviorism
- Eugenics
- Deficit Ideology
- Sameness-Based Fairness
- ”Better get used to it.”
- Inspiration Exploitation
- School-Induced Anxiety
- Toxic Positivity
- Resilience
- Burnout
- The Road to Neuronormative Domination.
- Education Technology and the New Behaviorism
- We’ve Turned Classrooms Into a Hell for Neurodivergence
- 14 Obstacles to Neurodiversity Affirming Practice
- Double Empathy Problem
- Double Empathy Extreme Problem
- Triple Empathy Problem
- Disability Double-bind
- Performative Neurodiversity (Neurodiversity Lite)
- Pathology Lite
- Empire of Normality
- Harm Reduction Theater
