If you look back at our recent history from the New Deal to the 1980 presidential election, and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, most working-class whites voted Democratic.
If you look back at our recent history from the New Deal to the 1980 presidential election, and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, most working-class whites voted Democratic.
I think the tipping point was a bit earlier (1968), but that's just a quibble. Your observation is correct. The difference is that after 1954 (Brown v Board) and especially after 1964 (Civil Rights Act) and 1965 (Voting Rights Act), working-class white voters realized that Democrats were trying to do their best for the entire population, not just the white population. The New Deal passed because of concessions to Dixiecrats that limited benefits for black citizens. Same goes for the GI Bill, which had no racial disparity in its language (unlike Social Security, which limited benefits for black people by excluding occupations they were likely to be employed in), but the Dixiecrats demanded that people from their ranks be allowed to administer GI Bill benefits, and they administered the project in a way that severely limited the dispersal of GI benefits to black GIs. American politics is mostly about race. Has been since 1789. Still is.
If you look back at our recent history from the New Deal to the 1980 presidential election, and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, most working-class whites voted Democratic.
I think the tipping point was a bit earlier (1968), but that's just a quibble. Your observation is correct. The difference is that after 1954 (Brown v Board) and especially after 1964 (Civil Rights Act) and 1965 (Voting Rights Act), working-class white voters realized that Democrats were trying to do their best for the entire population, not just the white population. The New Deal passed because of concessions to Dixiecrats that limited benefits for black citizens. Same goes for the GI Bill, which had no racial disparity in its language (unlike Social Security, which limited benefits for black people by excluding occupations they were likely to be employed in), but the Dixiecrats demanded that people from their ranks be allowed to administer GI Bill benefits, and they administered the project in a way that severely limited the dispersal of GI benefits to black GIs. American politics is mostly about race. Has been since 1789. Still is.