Why Identity Politics Benefits the Right More Than the Left
3rd September 2018
A Voice of the Crust wags a finger.
I love the way the link is constructed: ‘identity-politics-right-left-Trump-racism’. It’s as if they can’t construct a link to a Guardian article without including ‘Trump’ and ‘racism’ ‘in it. (I suppose they have editors to make sure people follow the rules….)
This does not mean racism is irrelevant; it matters, but social science suggests it does in more complicated ways than much commentary suggests.
Of course, if ‘racism’ is the persistent filter through which a large part of the political establishment views things, then it damned straight is relevant, although more as a mental disorder than as an actual thing.
Perhaps because straightforward bigotry has declined precipitously while more subtle, complex resentments remain, understanding how intolerance shapes politics requires examining not just beliefs, but also the relationship between beliefs and the environments people find themselves in. This distinction has important implications for how we interpret and address contemporary social and political problems.
Translation: Since obvious racism is becoming more and more difficult to uncover without looking like idiots, we’re going to keep digging and bloviating until we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s really there nevertheless; with any luck, we’ll take a lot of stupid people with us.
Rather than being directly translated into behavior, psychologists tell us beliefs can remain latent until “triggered”. In a fascinating study, Karen Stenner shows in The Authoritarian Dynamic that while some individuals have “predispositions” towards intolerance, these predispositions require an external stimulus to be transformed into actions. Or, as another scholar puts it: “It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group … But when they perceive no such threat, their behavior is not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.”
So just because you haven’t done anything racist yet, nevertheless you’re really racist deep down inside and could break out in racism without warning at any time. Sort of a ‘climate change’ theory of racism.
What pushes that button, Stenner and others find, is group-based threats.
Such as, say, being hectored for racism by people who have nothing better to do with their time. Of course, it’s still your fault rather than the fault of the people pestering you, who only have your welfare in mind.
Building on such research, Diana Mutz recently argued that Trump’s stress on themes like growing immigration, the power of minorities and the rise of China highlighted status threats and fears particularly among whites without a college education, prompting a “defensive reaction” that was the most important factor in his election.
Of course, these aren’t actually real threats, no no no! They’re just manufactured threats that Trump uses to scare the people in Flyover Country to stampede.
This “defensive reaction” also explains why Trump’s post-election racist, xenophobic and sexist statements…
Of which there are none, except in the minds of his critics.
… and reversal of traditional Republican positions on trade and other issues…
Gee, they never complained when John McCain did it.
… have helped him – they keep threats to whites front and center, provoking anger, fear and a strong desire to protect their own group.
Yeah, Trump created Black Lives Matter out of whole cloth just to scare white voters.