If Bernie Sanders accomplished anything sacrificing his self-respect to become the Democratic Party’s prison girlfriend, it was to elevate racism, the fate of the Rust Belt, and economic inequality to front-page stories. The problem is that as long as racism, the fate of the Rust Belt, and economic inequality are separate topics talked about by different people in different ways, nothing will ever change.
One of the reasons economic inequality has ramped up has been the clever division of the people impacted. Poor people of color are victims of racism while poor white people are too lazy to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Encourage the POC to feel jealous of the chances the dumb whites throw away like empty PBR cans. Get the white folks to believe the POC live off handouts. Blacks vote for Dem candidates who say they’ll help but don’t; poor whites elect Trump who promises not to and doesn’t.
Poor whites make good copy. There’s a new book, Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America.” There’s also a new movie out of an old book, Hillbilly Elegy. National Review has its own white trash story up and the MSM has made parachuting elite columnists into the Heartland to write thought pieces into a sub-genre that could sit aside Business and Sports on the masthead. Whatever all those writers think their point is, their point ends up being that poor whites are very different from poor blacks.
The fascination with writing about white trash arises because poor white people are a stand-in for poor blacks. Kinda by proxy, the way the movie M*A*S*H* set in Korea was actually a criticism of America’s war in Vietnam. White liberals can say anything they want about Appalachians, stuff they can’t get away with saying about blacks. That avoids anyone seeing that the story is all the same story, just whitewashed with claims of racism.