The pot calling the kettle black.
Via Chicago Tribune:
Unlike the bigoted protesters in the 1960s, the demonstrators in Charlottesville, Va., did not wear hoods. On Saturday, we saw their faces clearly. And they were angry white men.
If we are to get to the root of the recent escalation of confrontational bigotry in America, we must acknowledge who is fueling it. That is the growing demographic of insecure white males who blame their social and economic failures on everyone but themselves.
Demonstrations like the one this weekend represent the false notion that white men are losing the unfair advantage they have enjoyed in America since its founding.
The fear that African-Americans would somehow gain economic parity with white men has long been one of the driving forces behind bigotry in our country. Today, that bigotry has been expanded into a cultural war against immigrants — a fight that is largely defined by education or more specifically, the lack of it.
Americans who thought that racism and bigotry would simply die out with the aging population must be sorely disappointed. Young men are largely driving the modern hate groups, and their numbers have escalated in the last two years.[…]
Trump won the largest margin of white voters without a college degree in nearly four decades. Two-thirds, or 67 percent, of non-college whites supported him, compared with 28 percent who supported Hillary Clinton, according to the Pew Research Center.
Let’s break those numbers down by the sexes. According to exit polls, 71 percent of white men without a college degree voted for Trump. And 61 percent of white women without a college degree supported him.
These voters represent the core of red state America. In rural swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, they are the ones responsible for pushing Trump across the finish line.
By no means should we assume that every uneducated or undereducated white Trump supporter would join a hate group or even become a sympathizer. Most of them likely were appalled by the violent images that came out of Charlottesville. Neither should we think that well-educated whites can’t buy into the white supremacist argument that America has somehow been stolen and needs to be brought back to where it belongs. Indeed, there has been a recent movement to recruit on college campuses.
But the people who are most likely to be swayed by the bigoted rhetoric of white nationalist, neo-Nazi and armed “Patriot” groups certainly can be found among Trump’s low-income, less educated supporters. They are among those who tend to feel most vulnerable to the changing demographics.