February 18th, 2008
When I was studying geography at the University of
Birmingham in the early 1950s I had to spend a lot of time studying racism. One of the most important things I learnt was that the fiercest colour prejudice came from the white working class, and most particularly the least well off workers. The term for them in the academic text books of those days was ‘poor whites’.
In the 1960s I saw this academic theory happening in real life, as the first wave of West Indian immigration hit my home town of Wolverhampton which led to Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech. Which was applauded in the small terraced houses of All Saints Road, where my grandparents lived. They did not like the cooking smells which drifted in to their houses. They did not like black boys taking their daughters out. And, of course, underlying it all, was the very real threat to their livelihood whenever the economy turned down. The blacks filled the jobs that the men wanted. And the wives of the blacks drove down the rates for child minding and house cleaning, which delighted the white middle classes.
That same theory can be seen in action in the battle for the US Presidency. The one demographic group which has not yet been captivated by the surge towards Obama is the white working class. Not surprising at all since the American economy is heading for a serious recession, which will impact most severely on those of the poor who cannot keep up with their mortgages. The last remaining hope of Clinton recovering the initiative is the working classes in some of the remaining big states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
This is the ultimate irony. Both of the Clintons, even though they hail from Arkansas which was a hot bed of racism when I was a young man, are the opposite of racist. But to win, they will depend on the fears which fuel colour prejudice.
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