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Racialization of Politics in the UK
A major theme at TOO is the racialization of American politics—the tendency for politics to reflect racial/ethnic identities rather than economic interest, as was the rule in pre-multicultural America where the Democrats were the party of working class Whites. The racialization of politics means that the Democrats’ “ascendant majority” of non-Whites is likely to dominate in the future, as they do in California where they had supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature (until two representatives of the ascendant [Ronald Calderon and Roderick Wright] got involved in scandals) and are urgingGovernor Jerry Brown to spend yet more money on social programs.
It’s interesting that one aspect of the new American identity politics is that Republicans are likely to continue to do relatively well in the Senate because each state gets two senators. That means that rural states with larger percentages of Whites, and especially older and working class Whites, are likely to vote Republican as racial identities increasingly dominate the political landscape (Ron Brownstein, “Parties trading places for 2014“). Clearly the White working class and older Whites are conspicuously absent from the coalition of the ascendant; Obama’s popularity is about 30% among these groups. Although these groups show the clearest pattern, Whites in general haven’t jumped on board the multicultural bandwagon as it heads into our glorious and vibrant future: majorities of all age groups and both sexes of Whites voted Republican in 2012; this trend will be more extreme in the future.
There are similar trends in the UK . . .
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