There have also been plenty of POC who are not working class who voted for Trump, including well to do black people. Are you going to charge them with being race traitors?
Honestly, had it not been for George Floyd’s murder, the BLM protests, and Trump’s racist and egregious use of his name the way he did, many more black people and POC would have voted Republican.
Black people do not vote as a continuous block, neither do Hispanics, Asians, Indigenous Americans, or — dare I say it—white people. It’s an incredibly reductive assumption to assume otherwise. People live under a wide spectrum of concerns of shifting importance over time. No one should ever be a single issue voter. It’s irresponsible.
It’s a mistake to put too much emphasis on early polls as they can’t possibly be an adequate sampling. The numbers are shifting as mail in ballots come in and averages are taken from more polls. It does matter where, when, and how you poll.
We also shouldn’t ignore how age skews the white vote. Older people favor Trump (probably because they think he’ll protect their retirement income with that near singular focus on the stock market) and white people have been having fewer children for years. That means the boomer generation holds an enormously disproportionate sway amongst white voters are there are far fewer young white voters. The most common age of whites is 58. For minorities, it’s 27. That matters too. Don’t forget, when asked, Biden’s response was that the stock market is not the economy. He’s right, of course, it’s a false indicator of economic soundness but it is the financial landscape of older Americans whose retirement income is based on stock market investments. It is the economy to retirees.
An overwhelming majority, across all races, polled that the economy was the single most important issue in their voting choice over EVERYTHING else, including racial inequality. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about racial inequality, it means right now, the economy is most what they’re worried about. If retirement income is tied up in the stock market for older Americans and more white people are at or nearing retirement age, that far better explains the white vote over charges of racism. Factor in ethnic whites, I would say fear of socialism (also an economic concern) was the overriding factor in their vote over racial inequality, which they also experience alongside xenophobia.
I’m not denying there is a problem with racism in America and different forms of bigotry altogether. We see it alive and well every day, especially in certain notorious arenas. They are loud and proud, aggressive and vile. They do not represent all white people. They are not the majority, they are the minority. I’m not saying it’s unimportant racism and bigotry be dealt with and put right — we all want to live the American dream.
I’m saying don’t get so caught up in echo chambers that you can’t see the forest for the trees.
In the end none of our nation’s problems, NONE, will be solved if we only allow ourselves to look at them through overly emotional, biased, or reductive lenses. Most of our problems are quite complex, we do live in an advanced civilization and world after all, and they tend to bleed into and feed off of one another. Too often, we ignore that far too much at our own peril.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/30/most-common-age-among-us-racial-ethnic-groups/
