Political Tribes

by Amy Chua

  white, working-class . . . moonshiners: Larry J. Griffin and Peggy G. Hargis, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Social Class 20 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 265, 410.

  40 percent of NASCAR fans: Hugenberg and Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’,” 637.

  remains overwhelmingly Republican: Joshua I. Newman, “A Detour Through ‘Nascar Nation,’” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 42, no. 3 (2007): 298–99.

  racing-speak is filled: Rebecca R. Scott, “Environmental Affects: NASCAR, Place and White American Cultural Citizenship,” Social Identities for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 19 (2013): 13–14.

  NASCAR is all about: Hugenberg and Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’,” 640; Steve Odland, “NASCAR’s Back!,” Forbes, February 27, 2012; Lynsay Clutter, “Nascar Fans Are Brand Loyal,” WTHR, http://www.wthr.com/story/3689698/nascar-fans-are-brand-loyal.

  NASCAR fans are more: Clutter, “Nascar Fans Are Brand Loyal.”

  “I have an Interstate battery”: Ibid.

  three times more likely: Ibid.

  “I have a Nextel phone”: Ibid.

  the “NASCAR congregation”: Newman, “A Detour Through ‘Nascar Nation,’” 299, 300.

  “pilgrimages” that fans: Hugenberg and Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’,” 643.

  “that of belonging”: Newman, “A Detour Through ‘Nascar Nation,’” 300.

  quarter of a million . . . “pure joy”: “NASCAR Power Real, ’Til It’s Over,” Florida Times-Union, February 17, 2002; see also Hugenberg and Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’,” 636.

  owner and CEO, Brian France: Griffin and Hargis, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, 265–66; Shubhankar Chhokra, “NASCAR Asks Fans Not to Display Confederate Flag, NASCAR Fans Rebel,” National Review, July 7, 2015.

  “Spotting a Confederate flag”: Ibid.

  Brian France endorsed him: Jeff Gluck, “NASCAR CEO, Some Drivers Endorse Trump for President,” USA Today, February 29, 2016.

  “world of wrestling”: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 15. This section on WWE draws heavily on the work of Alex Wang.

  working-class Americans: Wrestling fans tend to be lower or middle class. See R. J. Smith, “Among the Mooks,” New York Times Magazine, August 6, 2000, 40–41; Frank B. Ashley, John Dollar, and Brian Wigley, “Professional Wrestling Fans: Your Next-Door Neighbors?,” Sports Marketing Quarterly 9, no. 3 (2000): 143.

  real and fictive: Sharon Mazer, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998), 167.

  narratives about modern romance: Betty Jo Barrett and Dana S. Levin, “What’s Love Got to Do with It? A Qualitative Grounded Theory Content Analysis of Romance Narratives in the PG Era of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Programming,” Sexuality and Culture (2014): 564.

  form of melodrama: Henry Jenkins III, “‘Never Trust a Snake’: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama,” in Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling, ed. Nicholas Sammond (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 36.

  drama of good versus evil: Mazer, Professional Wrestling, 2, 3.

  He once entered the ring: Vann R. Newkirk II, “Donald Trump, Wrestling Heel,” Atlantic, March 15, 2016.

  “both mesmerizing and gross”: Christina Wilkle, “That Time Donald Trump Clotheslined Vince McMahon on ‘Wrestlemania,’” Huffington Post, February 23, 2016.

  a “WWE Superstar”: “Donald Trump,” WWE, accessed January 9, 2017, http://www.wwe.com/superstars/donald-trump; “Donald Trump Enters the Hall: 2013 WWE Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony,” WWE, accessed January 9, 2017, http://www.wwe.com/videos/donald-trump-enters-the-hall-2013-wwe-hall-of-fame-induction-ceremony.

  Linda McMahon, whom he chose: See Kate Vinton, “Meet Linda McMahon, Wife of WWE Billionaire and Trump’s Pick for Small Business Administrator,” Forbes, December 7, 2016.

  in July 2017 Trump proudly: Michael M. Grynbaum, “Trump Tweets a Video of Him Wrestling ‘CNN’ to the Ground,” New York Times, July 2, 2017.

  black and Latino working class following: Chris Harrington, “WWE Viewer Demographics,” Indeed Wrestling, July 29, 2014, http://indeedwrestling.blogspot.com/2014/07/wwe-viewer-demographics.html.

  the prototypical: Claire Shaeperkoetter, Jordan Bass, and Kyle S. Bunds, “Wrestling to Understand Fan Motivations: Examining the MSSC Within the WWE,” Journal of Entertainment and Media Studies 2, no. 1 (2016): 123; Ashley, Dollar, and Wigley, “Professional Wrestling Fans,” 143.

  some experts, disaffected: Douglas Battema and Philip Sewell, “Trading in Masculinity: Muscles, Money, and Market Discourse in the WWF,” in Sammond, Steel Chair to the Head, 282; Michael Atkinson, “Fifty Million Viewers Can’t Be Wrong: Professional Wrestling, Sports-Entertainment, and Mimesis,” Sociology of Sport Journal 19 (2002): 62; Vaughn May, “Cultural Politics and Professional Wrestling,” Popular Culture Association in the South 21, no. 3 (1999): 81; Smith, “Among the Mooks,” 40–41.

  former industrial heartland and the South: Google search data from 2004 to 2016 shows that most searches for “WWE” come from users in the Rust Belt, Midwest, and South. The WWE is most often searched in West Virginia, followed by Rust Belt cities in upstate New York (Utica and Buffalo in particular). Of the top ten states in which users search “WWE,” five are in the South (Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, arguably Virginia), two are in the Midwest (Kentucky, West Virginia), and three are on the East Coast (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York)—though searches in Pennsylvania and New York are noticeably clustered around fading industrial hubs. Despite its vast population, California is not listed in the top twenty-five state searches for the WWE. Independent analysis, Google Trends Search Data, 2004 to present, accessed January 10, 2017, https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=WWE.

  “[a] political novice”: Gail Collins, “Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire?,” New York Times, May 26, 2010.

  “Linda has a”: Vinton, “Meet Linda McMahon, Wife of WWE Billionaire and Trump’s Pick for Small Business Administrator.”

  “don’t take him literally”: Nolan D. McCaskill, “Trump Adviser: Don’t Take Trump Literally, ‘Take Him Symbolically,’” Politico, December 20, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-symbolically-anthony-scaramucci-232848.

  “As this election fades”: Jenée Desmond-Harris, “Trump’s Win Is a Reminder of the Incredible, Unbeatable Power of Racism,” Vox, November 9, 2016.

  “[N]obody did this”: Kevin Williamson, “Chaos in the City, Chaos in the State: The White Working Class’s Dysfunction,” National Review, March 28, 2016.

  “who won’t sacrifice” . . . “[N]o educated person”: Robert Donachie, “Tech Founder: Middle America Is Too ‘Violent, Stupid, and Racist’ for New Jobs,” Daily Caller, January 8, 2017.

  “treason”: Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (New York: Crown, 2003).

  “Liberals hate”: Ann Coulter, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (New York: Crown, 2002), 7.

  so little interaction: Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017), 2–4; Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016), 5, 135–43; Charles Murray, Coming Apart, 69–94; Putnam, Our Kids, 39–41; Janie Boschma, “Why Obama Is Worried About ‘Class Segregation,’” Atlantic, May 12, 2015.

  “I may be white”: Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, 3.

  Chapter Eight: Democracy and Political Tribalism in America

  “There is nothing which I dread”: John Adams, letter to Jonathan Jackson, October 2, 1780, in The Work
s of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1854), 511.

  “America is woven”: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1980), 577.

  unlike the United Kingdom and the European Union: Ian Bremmer, “These 5 Facts Explain Why Brexit Could Lead to a U.K. Breakup,” Time, July 1, 2016; Tony Barber, “Europe Starts to Think the Unthinkable: Breaking Up,” Financial Times, March 2, 2017.

  In 1965, whites: “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S., Driving Population Growth and Change Through 2065,” Pew Research Center: Hispanic Trends, September 28, 2015, 9, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065.

  nearly 59 million: Ibid., 8, 11, table 1; D’vera Cohn and Andrea Caumont, “10 Demographic Trends That Are Shaping the U.S. and the World,” Pew Research Center, March 31, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/31/10-demographic-trends-that-are-shaping-the-u-s-and-the-world.

  Unlike previous waves: “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S.,” 8.

  Between 1965 and 2015: Ibid., 27.

  Already, non-Hispanic whites: Drew Desilver, “Share of Counties Where Whites Are a Minority Has Doubled Since 1980,” Pew Research Center, July 1, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/01/share-of-counties-where-whites-are-a-minority-has-doubled-since-1980.

  By 2020, more than: U.S. Census Bureau, “Projecting Majority-Minority: Non-Hispanic Whites May No Longer Comprise Over 50 Percent of the U.S. Population by 2044” (chart based on 2014 national projections), http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2015/cb15-tps16_graphic.pdf.

  According to Pew Foundation: “Modern Immigration Wave Brings 59 Million to U.S.,” 10.

  The U.S. Census predicts: Sandra L. Colby and Jennifer M. Ortman, Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060, U.S. Census Bureau, March 2015, 9.

  the Census typically categorizes: Richard Alba, “The Likely Persistence of a White Majority,” American Prospect, January 11, 2016.

  might self-identify as white: Hua Hsu, “The End of White America?,” Atlantic, January/February 2009.

  largest group of new immigrants: “The Rise of Asian Americans,” Pew Research Center, April 4, 2013, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/06/19/the-rise-of-asian-americans.

  “beiging” is more apt: Hsu, “The End of White America?” (citing Michael Lind).

  “In a little more than fifty years”: President William J. Clinton, Commencement Address at Portland State University, Oregon, June 13, 1998, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=56140.

  “nothing positive about”: Hsu, “The End of White America?” (quoting Noel Ignatiev).

  “the sickness of race”: Ibid., (quoting William “Upski” Wimsatt’s 1994 book Bomb the Suburbs).

  After the Civil War: Taken almost verbatim from Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 199 (citing C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow [New York: Oxford University Press, 1966], 23, and James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders [New York: W. W. Norton, 1998], 234).

  “we will have black”: Oakes, The Ruling Race, 234 (quoting a Georgia commissioner speaking before the Virginia secession convention).

  Southern whites responded: Taken almost verbatim from Chua, World on Fire, 199–200.

  Many believe that: See, e.g., Carol Anderson, “Donald Trump Is the Result of White Rage, Not Economic Anxiety,” Time, November 16, 2016; see also Charles Blow, “Trump: Making America White Again,” New York Times, November 21, 2016.

  two thirds . . . “that discrimination”: Robert P. Jones et al., How Immigration and Concerns about Cultural Changes Are Shaping the 2016 Election, PRRI/Brookings, June 23, 2016, https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-poll-immigration-economy-trade-terrorism-presidential-race.

  “there is more racism”: “Racism as a Zero-Sum Game,” NPR, July 13, 2011 (interview by Michel Martin of Michael Norton and Tim Wise), http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137818177/racism-as-a-zero-sum-game.

  “by nearly any metric”: Evan Osnos, “The Fearful and the Frustrated,” New Yorker, August 31, 2015 (quoting Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 3 [2011]: 215–18).

  “decline of whiteness”: Robb Willer et al., “Threats to Racial Status Promote Tea Party Support Among White Americans,” Stanford Graduate School of Business, Working Paper No. 3422, May 4, 2016, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/threats-racial-status-promote-tea-party-support-among-white.

  “most unsettled”: Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg, “Places Most Unsettled by Rapid Demographic Change Are Drawn to Donald Trump,” Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2016.

  “52 percent of”: Claire Foran, “The Optimism and Anxiety of Trump Voters,” Atlantic, January 20, 2017 (summarizing Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox, Betsy Cooper, and Rachel Lienesch, “Nearly One in Five Female Clinton Voters Say Husband or Partner Didn’t Vote,” PRRI, December 1, 2016).

  discrimination against whites: “Low Approval of Trump’s Transition but Outlook for his Presidency Improves,” Pew Research Center, December 8, 2016, 27, http://www.people-press.org/2016/12/08/low-approval-of-trumps-transition-but-outlook-for-his-presidency-improves.

  that “average Americans”: Michael Tesler, “Trump Voters Think African Americans Are Much Less Deserving Than ‘Average Americans,’” Huffington Post, December 19, 2016.

  “perceptions that whites”: Michael Tesler, “Views About Race Mattered More in Electing Trump Than in Electing Obama,” Washington Post, November 22, 2016.

  unemployment and addiction: See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Today’s Heroin Epidemic,” last updated July 7, 2015, https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/heroin; Aria Bendix, “The Collapse of the White Working Class,” Atlantic, March 24, 2017; Victor Tan Chen, “All Hollowed Out: The Lonely Poverty of America’s White Working Class,” Atlantic, January 16, 2016; Rod Dreher, “Trump: Tribune of Poor White People,” American Conservative, July 22, 2016 (interview with J. D. Vance); J. D. Vance, “Why Race Relations Got Worse,” Atlantic, August 29, 2016.

  Life expectancy is: Monica Potts, “What’s Killing Poor White Women,” American Prospect, September 3, 2013 (citing S. Jay Olshanky et al., “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, and Many May Not Catch Up,” Health Affairs 31, no. 8 [August 2012]); Betsy McKay, “Life Expectancy for White Americans Declines,” Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2016; see also Jessica Boddy, “The Forces Driving Middle-Aged White People’s ‘Deaths of Despair,’” NPR, March 23, 2017, http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples-deaths-of-despair.

  Educational prospects for: See generally Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017), 43–52; J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), 197–207.

  most elite colleges: Jodi Wilgoren, “Elite Colleges Step Up Courting of Minorities,” New York Times, October 25, 1999.

  one poor white: Informal survey at Yale Law School conducted by Blake Neal, April 25, 2017 (on file with author).

  America’s elite universities: Ross Douthat, “The Roots of White Anxiety,” New York Times, July 18, 2010 (citing Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009]).

  White employees increasingly feel: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mournin
g on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016), 136–39.

  city of New Haven: Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 563 (2009).

  While whites generally are: Haeyoun Park, Josh Keller, and Josh Williams, “The Faces of American Power, Nearly as White as the Oscar Nominees,” New York Times, February 24, 2016.

  Between 1999 and 2008: Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 20.

  “Although women and racial”: Nicholas Carnes, “Does the Numerical Underrepresentation of the Working Class in Congress Matter?,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2012), 6.

  among the lowest upward mobility: Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (New York: Penguin, 2014), 174–80; see also Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (New York: Viking, 2016), 319–21.

  Just 24 percent: Andrew Kohut, “What Will Become of America’s Kids?,” Pew Research Center, May 12, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/12/what-will-become-of-americas-kids.

  “cop killer entertainment”: Carma Hassan, Gregory Krieg, and Melonyce McAfee, “Police Union Calls for Law Enforcement Labor to Boycott Beyonce’s World Tour,” CNN, February 20, 2016.

  “whitesplaining” jazz: Emily Yahr, “Your Guide to the ‘La La Land’ Backlash,” Washington Post, January 25, 2017.

  clueless white male: Hsu, “The End of White America?”

  in part a “whitelash”: “‘This Was a Whitelash’: Van Jones’ Take on the Election Results,” CNN, November 9, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/van-jones-results-disappointment-cnntv.

  “choked to death”: Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Letter to My Son,” Atlantic, July 4, 2015; see also Chris Hayes, A Colony in a Nation (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 37, 115–16.

  “imprisons a larger”: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness rev. ed. (New York: The New Press, 2012), 6.