But, what transformed a potential existential crisis into a genuine existential crisis was the election of an African-American to the highest office in America. Already suffering from the effects of dominant group status threat, the white working class was now confronted with "a Harvard-trained lawyer, a U.S. senator from the land of Lincoln, whose expertise was the Constitution itself, whose charisma and oratory matched or exceeded that of most any man who had ever risen to the Oval Office, whose unusual upbringing inclined him toward conciliation of the racial divide, who famously saw the country as not blue state or red states but as the United States, whose wife, if it could be imagined, was also a Harvard-trained lawyer with as much star power as her husband, who, together with their two young daughters, made for a telegenic American dream family, and who, beyond all this, ran a scrupulous, near-flawless campaign, a movement really" (p. 311).
Only 43 percent of white Americans voted for Barack Obama in 2008, only 39 percent in 2012. As Ms. Wilkerson observes, "For much of his presidency" [Obama] was trying to win over people who did not want him in the Oval Office and some who resented his very existence" (p. 314). She agrees with the observation of political scientist Ashley Jardina who asserted. "The symbolism of Obama's election was a profound loss to whites' status" (p. 315).
Thus, when an anti-Obama "birther" and white supremacist not only won the Republican Party's nomination for president, but also the 2016 presidential election, it marked a stunning reassertion of the caste hierarchy in America. "White men voted for Trump at 62 percent, White women at 53 percent. Latino men at 32 percent. Latina women at 25 percent. African-American men at 13 percent, and black women at 4 percent" (p. 330).
To many in America's white working class, the slogan "Make America Great Again," actually meant "Make America White Again," and promised to heal their "psychic break" by restoring them to their rightful place within the white hierarchy -- once again above those who are inherently inferior.
That explains why, even afer some 20,000 lies, impeachment, the inhumane separation of children at the border, and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic (killing more than 225,000 American) and its consequent economic depression, white men still support Trump over Joe Biden by a margin of 57 to 36 percent. As Charles Blow writes in the New York Times, "Trump's base of mostly white men, mostly without a college degree, see him as the ambassador of their anger, one who ministers to their fear, consoles their losses and champions their victimhood. Trump is the angry white man leading the battle charge for angry white men" (New York Times, October 25, 2020).
Are these white men to be pitied or reviled?
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