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Gest, Chapter 2 Arquivo The New Minority The New Minority White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality JUSTIN GEST 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Gest, Justin, author. Title: The new minority : white working class politics in an age of immigration and inequality / Justin Gest. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016010130 (print) | LCCN 2016022736 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190632540 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190632557 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780190632564 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190632571 (Epub) Subjects: LCSH: Working class—Political activity—Great Britain. | Working class—Political activity— United States. | Whites—Great Britain—Politics and government. | Whites—United States—Politics and government. | Whites—Great Britain—Social conditions. | Whites—United States—Social conditions. | Right wing extremists—Great Britain. | Right wing extremists—United States. Classification: LCC HD8395 .G47 2016 (print) | LCC HD8395 (ebook) | DDC 324.086/230941—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010130 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America 2 The New Minority A COUNTER- NARRATIVE AND ITS POLITICS We are people who are used to being represented as problematic. We are the long- term, benefit- claiming, working class poor, living through another period of cultural contempt. We are losers, no hopers, low life scroungers. Our culture is yob culture. The importance of welfare provisions to our lives has been deni- grated and turned against us; we are welfare dependent and our problems won’t be solved by giving us higher benefits. We are perverse in our failure to succeed, dragging our feet over social change, wanting the old jobs back, still having babies instead of careers, stuck in outdated class and gender moulds. We are the challenge that stands out above all others, the greatest social crisis of our times. —Peter Mandelson, Labour Minister1 This book’s polemical title suggests that white working class people may be un- derstood as a minority. I do not introduce this counter- narrative in the interest of reappropriating victim status or competing with the claims of ethnocultural minorities, whom I have previously studied at length. Rather, it is to demon- strate that marginalization and minoritization may be experienced in different ways, and simultaneously, by different people. It is to explore how disparate ex- periences of marginalization are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is to con- sider what connects the marginalization of ethnocultural minority and majority communities. And it is to examine the extent to which the white working class can control their fate, and to what extent it is determined by the severity of their circumstances. The conceptualization of any group of white people in the United Kingdom or the United States as a “minority” is questionable, to be modest. Less mod- estly, such a conceptualization stands in the face of 50 years of progress achieved by civil rights struggles, community cohesion agendas, and affirmative action policies. At their inception, such efforts acknowledged— and indeed were mo- bilized against— the privileged status of white people. 20 A Counter-narrative 21 White people benefit from a political and social system of their own creation. They are advantaged by a history of structural discrimination in their favor, a trajectory unfettered by the legacies of slavery or the exploitation of colonial- ism. They boast an acquaintance with what are widely perceived to be norms of national culture and language, which enable their effortless integration into circles of belonging and recognition. White males in particular assume the “priv- ileged role of universal subject” (Kennedy 1996: 88). They enjoy the intangible sense of affinity with predominantly white leaders in business and politics. They are unhindered by the pressures of adaptation. Some describe the situation in harsher terms, going so far as to argue that whites exploit “unearned advantages” as a means to “improve or maintain their social position” (Olson 2002: 388). Earned or unearned, it is assumed that these advantages make white individuals, in short, the incumbents. And yet, among white working class people, there is an emerging sense of displacement and disempowerment. From my ethnographic research in East London and Youngstown, I find that claims of minority status range from the subtle to the blatant, but nearly all pertain to three phenomena: Outnumbering : White working class people recognize the steady deteriora- tion of their numbers. Increasing proportions of all population groups are attain- ing higher levels of education, and white people comprise a decreasing share of national populations in the United States and the United Kingdom (Kaufmann 2004c; Dench et al. 2009). By 2040, the US census estimates that white people will number less than 50% of the American population. However, this is more conventionally a local matter, when demographic change alters the share of white working class people in neighborhoods and cities. Such change is attrib- utable to fertility rates, foreigners’ immigration, and native emigration to other parts of a region or country. In my interview with activist Nancy Pemberton in Thamesview, East London, she would stop me if I referred to immigrant groups as “minorities.” “It’s a fact that we are a minority,” she asserts. “There’s not a school in the borough that’s not 80% ethnic. Nobody English moves into this borough. They only move out. It’s gotten to the stage where, even queuing for the loo, it’s a novelty when you meet an English person to speak to. […] I won’t allow myself to feel on the out- side of my society. But a lot of other people are scared. They feel intimidated.” Nancy’s statements reflect a generally monolithic view of nonwhite, non- English people that is shared by many in her neighborhood. Externality : White working class people are sensitive to their exclusion from consultation and representation— not only in bodies of representative govern- ment, but also more generally in popular entertainment, public institutions, and employment. They are wary that the same principles of equal access and 22 The New Minority representation that compensate for other groups’ disadvantages do not apply to them. Congresspeople who have previously belonged to the working class comprise only 2% of Congress (Carnes 2012). TheWashington Post reports that between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House of Representatives grew from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted dol- lars, while the wealth of an American family slightly declined from $20,600 to $20,500 (Whoriskey 2011). As a result, government and business feel distant, clubby, and unwelcoming. In Youngstown, 29- year- old chef Paul Podolsky says disempowerment ex- tends to the workplace. “Whites are the minority now,” he says. “Sometimes, it gives [black people] greater power because it’s the higher group. So they can get their way. My uncle works at a plant where everybody is scared to tell the black people what to do because they’re worried about retaliation. The managers are outnumbered and they don’t have a backbone. […] White people are held to a different standard. In history books, whites were always above the blacks. But we desegregated to change the world. It’s been 100 years and they still want more.” Paradoxically, Paul implies that black people are privileged, while simul- taneously acknowledging that white people continue to occupy most positions of authority. Subjection to prejudice : Many white working class people believe they are fre- quently subject to conscious or unconscious prejudgment by members of ethnic minorities, as well as by middle- and upper- class white people. They believe that such prejudice affects their ability to get hired for jobs, receive equal treatment by officials and businesses, and access government benefits like housing or -wel fare. Sometimes, this is also a matter of the special treatment white working class people believe members of nonwhite minorities receive— such as scholarships, employment, exemptions or leniencies, and government contracting. “I fought for this country,” lamented pensioner Harriet Johnson from Dagenham, East London, “and it ain’t even our country anymore. You’re not the priority. We’ve got everything here. Gays, lesbians— what do you call them?— bisexuals, prostitutes, pedophiles. This place is like [the soap operas] ‘Coronation Street’ meets ‘East Enders’ and ‘Holly Oaks’ all at once.” In Youngstown, elec- trician Iggy Nagy says, “White people have become the minority itself. […] People have freaked out on me for things I’ve said, because I can’t say anything [about black people] because of slavery and their historical oppression. People aren’t looking for equality; they’re looking for retaliation.” While Harriet refers to her relegation in priority beneath people she finds deviant, Iggy does not mind relegation so long as it promotes actual equality.
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