Working class whites - when did we lose them?

[Human101948]

78. Goes back further than that...

As LBJ said, "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."

When that mindset was challenged by the Civil Rights Act, the Republicans nurtured the resentment that many whites felt. In fact, while their patrons were shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, the Republicans were promoting the idea that those jobs were not available to white men because they had been taken by African Americans through affirmative action programs, an imaginary reversal of the discrimination and racism that African Americans had suffered ever since the end of the Civil War.

Then the Republicans bundled in xenophobia with the anger toward immigrants from South and Central America, claiming that all those good jobs that had disappeared had actually been gobbled up by desperate undocumented workers.

On and on it goes, with the Republicans exploiting the fears and anger of one group of Americans against the "others."