Every election generates theories to explain the success or failure of the candidates. This year, one of the most prevalent theories is that whites without college degrees are driving Donald Trump’s success. The theory is so popular that multiple articles and even books have been written about it. But laying the blame for Trump solely at the feet of this group is unfair and troubling for several reasons.
Reason #5 – A Sizable Number of Whites Without Degrees Actually Support Clinton.
Last week, CNN conducted a poll that analyzed support for the candidates by race and educational level. Here is a graphic:
According to the poll, Trump has the support of sixty-eight percent of whites without degrees. However, the poll also shows that Clinton receives support from nearly a quarter of that group. (For comparison, Clinton’s level of support from whites without degrees is higher than Trump’s support from African Americans, Asian Americans, or Latinos.) While it is certainly fair to say that a majority of whites without degrees support Trump, it is equally fair to say that a significant number do not.
Reason #4 – Blaming Whites Without Degrees Ignores Recent Electoral History
In 2012, according to a number of sources, sixty-one percent of whites without degrees voted for Mitt Romney. However, the same sources indicate that roughly fifty-six percent of college-educated whites also supported Romney. Moreover, in this year’s GOP primary, roughly thirty-five percent of college educated whites voted for Trump. Trump even won that demographic in several states.
Taking everything into account, college educated whites do not support Trump in the same numbers as whites without degrees. Nevertheless, many of them do support Trump in numbers that are far from negligible.
Reason #3 – Blaming Whites Without Degrees Promotes Ugly Stereotypes
During the Civil Rights Movement, white resistance to Black progress manifested in many ways. The most obvious way was through the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and associated groups. Members of the KKK were responsible for atrocities including the assassination of Medgar Evers, the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the killing of four little girls at a Birmingham church, and attacks on Freedom Riders.
While the Klan terrorized African Americans, they were not the only group opposed to racial equality. White Citizens’ Councils were also opposed to integration. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Councils were designed to appeal to “better mannered, more discreet racists.” The Southern Poverty Law Center states:
Unlike the KKK, the [Citizens’ Councils] had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the “uptown Klan.” While there were plenty of bare-knuckle racists attracted to the councils’ anti-integration slogan, “Never!,” the members also included bankers, merchants, judges, newspaper editors and politicians — folks given more to wearing suits and ties than hoods and robes. . . . Although they weren’t immune to violence . . . the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of “forced integration.”
Our society took an important lesson from this era. According to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, here’s what we learned: “For many white people, the image of a racist is a hood-wearing Klan member or a name-calling Archie Bunker figure.” Under Dr. Tatum’s premise, then, “True Racists” are like the Klan. “True Racists” are violent, uneducated, and uncouth. So, it is easy to label blue collar whites as racist. On the contrary, whites with designer clothes and expensive degrees are “conservative,” but as long as long as they do not use the n-word or engage in violence, they are not “True Racists.”
Blaming whites without degrees for Trump ignores the fact that by doing so, we allow college educated whites to dodge responsibility for their actions. As explained above, a solid amount of Trump’s support – both in the primaries and now – comes from college educated whites. But this fact has received scant attention in the media in comparison to the swarm of articles about Trump’s support from those without degrees. By failing to call out the college educated whites that support Trump, we continue the harmful pattern of excusing racist behavior so long as it comes from those with the proper credentials.
More troubling still, by refusing to discuss the role of college educated whites in this election, we continue the pattern of only punishing “Archie Bunker” type racism. Though using racial slurs and committing hate crimes are certainly racist, there are a constellation of other behaviors that are also racist. When we focus on only two of the behaviors, we make it harder to eliminate the other offending behaviors.
Finally, by ignoring the considerable number of college educated whites that support Trump, we continue the fiction that somehow having a degree makes a person unable to be racist. Lawyers can be racist. Doctors can be racist. College professors can be racist. There are many things that can make a person challenge their racist tendencies, but at this time, merely graduating from college is not one of those things.
Reason #2 – Blaming Whites Without Degrees Gives College Educated Whites Credit They Don’t Wholly Deserve
The most likely reason that the “education gap” discussion has dominated this election cycle is that college educated whites are not solidly backing the GOP nominee for the first time since 1956. Here’s a look at the historical pattern since 1972:
Source: Washingtonpost.com
Unquestionably, any person voting against Trump is making a wise choice. However, there is great danger in assuming that rejecting Trump is the same as rejecting his racist ideology. Since the Nixon era, Republican candidates have used coded racial messages in their efforts to appeal to white voters. And as the chart shows, since the Nixon era, the ploy has worked amazingly well with college educated whites.
If college educated whites have consistently voted for GOP candidates despite the racial “dog whistles” of Willie Horton ads and remarks about the “47 percent,” the most likely conclusion is that the problem in 2016 is not with the message, but rather with its delivery. White college educated voters are not trying to avoid Trump’s racist policies. They are trying to avoid Trump’s racist presentation. By rejecting Trump, they are rejecting overt racism. This is a good first step. However, it’s not enough. Put another way, if a 2020 GOP candidate presented policies identical to Trump’s but without the bombast and the violent crowds, history tells us that a solid number of college educated whites will support that candidate. So, a vote against Trump in 2016 is a step, but it is not enough to make a person anti-racist.
Reason #1 – Blaming Whites Without Degrees Shifts Focus Away from Those Who Created the Conditions Where Trump Could Succeed.
As I have written in this space before, the GOP has a long history of making coded racial appeals to white voters. The focus on the “education gap” distracts from what should be the primary discussion – the Republican Party’s liberal use of racial messages since 1968.
Most of the articles discussing Trump’s support from whites without degrees include a discussion of blue collar whites’ racial anxieties. Assuming that the reports of racial resentments are accurate, these resentments were either created or stoked by the elite class of the Republican Party. It was party elites who decided to use phrases like “law and order” or “state’s rights” to attract white voters. It was party elites who were elected to office after using racist imagery.
Focusing on whites without degrees is a useful way to divert attention from the devious games the Republican Party has played with race for decades. GOP elites have created this mess. And now they are content to let less educated whites take the blame for their handiwork. As long as we remain distracted, we will never get to the point where the GOP leadership is held accountable for the harm they have brought into our civic discourse.
The Upshot
Because our culture has decided that it is acceptable to label less educated whites as racist, it has been easy to make “poor, uneducated whites” the racial villains of the 2016 cycle. The stories about Trump’s strength with non-college voters are not troubling. Instead, the problem lies with the implicit suggestion that only the “bad” whites or “low class” whites supported Trump on his way to victory. With one fell swoop, the storyline demeans one group while elevating another. It is entirely fair to ask all voters to take ownership of their decisions. However, it is patently unfair to smear one sub-set of voters when other voters are behaving in exactly the same fashion.