Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence-and the incomprehensible malice-of poor white America. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump: A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right. A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe.Įqually jarring has been the shift in tone. It was why so many regular Americans were drawn to a man like Donald Trump. The question was suddenly no longer why Democrats struggled to appeal to regular Americans. And then, of course, came the 2016 presidential campaign. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis came out last year. Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 was published in 2012, and Robert D.

Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Listen to the audio version of this article: Download the Audm app for your iPhone to listen to more titles.

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