Returning home to Connecticut is a confusing experience for me. While it’s great to leave the Dartmouth bubble for a while, it doesn’t take long for me to miss the separation Dartmouth offers from my childhood friends and family. After working in Washington, D.C. this summer, I returned home to finish the rest of the summer in peace. However, my time at home has compelled me to describe a phenomenon that I suspect many Dartmouth students do not interact with on campus — one that is singularly powerful in our politics today. The narrative of “White American Victimhood” — or the narrative that white people have been systematically disadvantaged in modern American society — permeates communities across the country. The concept has fueled what I deem to be the most influential and dangerous political movement of our time. However, before addressing its consequences, I have to define it. The only way to quell this movement though, is through understanding and showing empathy to those who have been swept up in it.
Let’s back up. Americans, specifically white Americans, have been sold a bill of goods in our modern politics. Both Democrats and Republicans have decried contemporary economic conditions in the United States and promise that their policies will restore a nostalgic golden age of the American middle class. Many politicians use their personal experiences of growing up with the economic conditions of postwar America to evoke a certain nostalgia. They call back to a time when any high school graduate could purchase a house and put their children through college with a 9-to-5. Elizabeth Warren, a politician especially well known for this rhetoric, espouses on her website that she grew up “on the ragged edge of the middle class” and frequently tells the story of how her mother began working as a cashier at Sears to make ends meet after her father was injured and could no longer work.
Although this narrative is not overtly racial, it has an undeniable racial undertow. These personal histories took place in a time during or just after the Civil Rights Movement, when racial discrimination across the country remained ferocious. Many of the narratives of economic success described by these politicians were exclusively available to white Americans. By using these narratives, politicians across the political spectrum, whether purposefully or not, are employing a dog whistle — they promise to restore the glory of white America and bring back a time for which so many have a misplaced nostalgia.
For the many white Americans, these promises remain unfulfilled. A sizable portion of the country still reports struggling to pay their bills, and the economic outlook for young people with just a high school education is radically different than it was in 1975, let alone earlier. Although it can be difficult to understand this viewpoint, especially when Americans of other races are dealing with persistent economic inequality, I encourage everyone to try. It may seem irrational, but many white Americans feel especially slighted by their current status. They think that anti-white discrimination has become just as bad a problem as discrimination against non-white groups. These feelings manifest in overwhelming sadness, reflected by skyrocketing rates of addiction and suicide in primarily white working-class communities. The other frequently overlooked byproduct? Unbridled and deep-seated rage.
In 2016, Donald Trump led a revolution that had been developing for years. He painted a compelling portrait of white victimhood by weaponizing the previously-outlined economic characteristics millions of Americans were facing. He created a convenient scapegoat for our economic struggles by blaming immigrants for stealing jobs — even though several previous Republican presidents, notably Ronald Reagan, were pro-immigration. The rest is history. His success was jarring to many elites in our political system, mainly because of their separation from the harsh economic realities and ugly political sentiments that defined how millions of whites thought about the election. Trump, however, was able to win the White House by painting a dire portrait of America, calling immigrants “animals” who are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. Trump effectively directed white rage in a very specific and potent manner. He indoctrinated millions of people with a narrative that some are willing to fight for and others are willing to die for. I have seen this indoctrination poison how friends and relatives see the world — discussing politics with these people can be both deeply frustrating and heartbreaking. It’s hard for me to have empathy for these people at times, but remembering where they are coming from is critical to understanding how they see the world.
For many, the modern right’s narrative of being slighted is not a belief but a lifestyle. It gives people who have little or no hope something to fight for. Trump and other modern leaders in the movement have endeared themselves to white America by co-opting traditional paradigms of masculinity as well as familiar symbols to white Americans in their campaigns — think Hulk Hogan at the Republican National Convention. They have not only crafted a story that millions of their followers can subscribe to, filled with scapegoats and explanations for many white Americans’ shortcomings. More than that, they have integrated traditional aesthetics of “white America” into their public-facing lives and storytelling, making it impossible to ignore for many.
As we enter another election cycle in which the dynamics of white victimhood are influential, I encourage politicians, their campaigns and everyday Americans to exhibit a measure of empathy for those who subscribe to this narrative. They are hurting, just like millions of Americans across the country.
Suppose we are to direct our rage at anybody. In that case, it should be at the people who saw a convenient opening to enrich themselves even further by exploiting the challenging economic period that persists for millions across the country. The only way to prevent their power grab is to continue to expose their dishonesty — and to vote in droves.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
