Having irrevocably isolated themselves from the white working class, modern leftists have turned to dogmatic race-based politics to close the gap.
A recent Yale University study contains a stark warning to Critical Race Theory adherents who use a race-based worldview to push for a myriad of policy issues.
According to the researchers, framing liberal pet policy issues like affordable housing and raising the minimum wage through a race-based lens reduces overall support for these issues and is inferior to using a class-based lens.
Critical Race Theory, the practice of framing political issues through the lens of race – including seemingly detached issues like infrastructure spending – has become a cornerstone of the modern Democratic Party.
The practice of framing political issues through the lens of race – including seemingly detached issues like infrastructure spending – has become a cornerstone of the modern Democratic Party.
President Biden hung his 2020 presidential campaign on race-based identity politics and continues to fix his agenda on “addressing racial inequities”. To get past the primaries as a Democrat post-2008, race-based identity politics is a must.
To get past the primaries as a Democrat post-2008, race-based identity politics is a must.
Over the past several decades, Democrats have abandoned a populist, working-class agenda and become the party of elitism, globalism, and distain for the average American. Having irrevocably isolated themselves from the white working class, modern leftists have turned to dogmatic race-based politics to close the gap.
Having irrevocably isolated themselves from the white working class, modern leftists have turned to dogmatic race-based politics to close the gap.
This strategy is not without its faults. While the media relentlessly slammed Trump as a bigot or worse, Trump’s racially agnostic focus on “America First” principles earned him substantially higher Black and Hispanic support in 2020 than 2016, particularly among men. Trump won 12% of Black Americans in 2020, up from 8% in 2016. His share of the Black male vote rose from 13% in 2016 to 18% in 2020.
In the Democratic primaries, Hispanics were particularly slow to warm to Biden, with a majority preferring the more working-class-aligned Bernie Sanders. Sanders ended up with 53% of Latino voters in Nevada, compared to Biden’s 17%. He won 49% of Latinos in California to Biden’s 19%, and he won 39% of Latinos in Texas to Biden’s 26%.
In the Democratic primaries, Hispanics were particularly slow to warm to Biden, with a majority preferring the more working-class-aligned Bernie Sanders.
In the general election, Trump earned 32% of Hispanics nationwide, up from 28% in 2016, and his numbers with Hispanic men rose from 32% to 36%.
In 2016, Trump eclipsed conventional Republicans like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush with a distinctly class-based political agenda that promised to put Americans first and fight globalist elites. Trump drew immense blue-collar support with this message and flipped multiple rust belt states from blue to red by drawing out working class and rural supporters who felt abandoned by the modern Democratic Party.
Trump drew immense blue-collar support with this message and flipped multiple rust belt states from blue to red by drawing out working class and rural supporters who felt abandoned by the modern Democratic Party.
While Democrats managed to install Biden into the White House in 2020, the Biden agenda has been driving away significant numbers of swing voters, specifically white-college educated women and Hispanics. As Michael Barone pointed out in an early May Rasmussen op-ed, Biden’s push to add Critical Race Theory in schools has been rejected by voters, and most voters believe the border is in crisis and Biden is to blame.
The left’s obsession with race-based politics prompted Yale researchers this year to study whether a race-based lens is an effective tactic to build support for a variety of policy issues.
To do so, researchers gathered actual political messaging from a variety of statements made by prominent left-wing politicians and integrated these messages into a series of survey questions on issues like infrastructure spending, student loan debt, climate change, minimum wage, and affordable housing.
An example of the text the researchers used is a press release from the Biden White House, in which President Biden framed a seemingly race-irrelevant issue – making investments in roads and bridges – as a race-based issue. The text the researchers used from the whitehouse.gov reads as follows:
“President Biden is calling on Congress to make a historic and overdue investment in our roads, bridges, rail, ports, airports, and transit systems…these investments will advance racial equity by providing better jobs and better transportation options to underserved communities.”
Other starkly race-based language was borrowed from heavy hitters like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Barbara Lee.
Once they had collected sufficient left-wing race-based talking points, the researchers created a series of statements on issues like investing in infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, canceling student loan debt, and addressing pollution.
One series of statements was framed through a race-based lens, connecting infrastructure spending for example to “advancing racial equity”, and declaring canceling student loan debt is, “a matter of racial justice.”
One series of statements was framed through a race-based lens, connecting infrastructure spending for example to “advancing racial equity”.
Another series of statements focused on the same issues but framed them through a class-based lens. On the issue of affordable housing for example, a statement referenced the fact that “working-class, middle-class, and working poor Americans spend over half their pay on shelter.”
On the issue of affordable housing for example, a statement referenced the fact that “working-class, middle-class, and working poor Americans spend over half their pay on shelter.”
Researchers then asked respondents to indicate their level of support for the issues, including investing in infrastructure, raising the minimum wage, canceling student loan debt, and addressing pollution.
The researchers wrote that while it is common for modern Democrats to frame policy issues through a race-based lens to drum up support, there is no evidence to show this is effective. They summarized:
“Despite observed increases in support for racial justice and Democratic elites’ use of race…frames in their public messaging, we find no evidence that Americans are persuaded by these policy frames.”
Using a class-based lens to explain policy issues, on the other hand, proved more effective, but particularly among Whites and Republicans. The researchers summarized:
“On this binary measure, we find that the class frame increased policy support by a statistically significant 2.1 percentage points.”
The researchers also found that Black respondents were no more responsive to the race frame than they are to the class frame. This indicates that while identity politics players are using a race-based frame to attract support from minorities, using a class-based frame would do the job just as well, and turn off far fewer people. The researchers added that:
“On the other hand, non-Hispanic whites appear to be responsive to the class frame (0.09 scale points, SE = 0.04; p < 0.05) while the race frame…decreases policy support.”
The researchers also built a “collective guilt index” to measure “White guilt” and its impact on support for either the race-based or class-based frames. Unsurprisingly, Whites with middle to high levels of “collective White guilt” were more moved by the race-based frame than their less guilt-ridden counterparts.”
“Unsurprisingly, Whites with middle to high levels of ‘collective white guilt’ were more moved by the race-based frame than their less guilt-ridden counterparts.”
There was also a fairly substantial partisan divide between those swayed by race-based or a class-based frames.
“We find that the class plus race frame decreases Republican support for a policy by 3.0 percentage points (SE = 1.3; p < 0.05) and the race frame decreases Republican support by 1.9 percentage points (SE = 1.4; p = 0.18).
Finally, among Independents, we find positive effects from the class frame and negative effects from both the race and class plus race frames.”
While the aim of the researchers was to provide an “empirical test” to analyze support for “race-neutral progressive policies”, the research is relevant to political activists on both sides of the aisle, and sheds light on the recent class-based successes of the populist right. It also contains a warning for dogmatic Critical Race Theorists on the left: be careful playing identity politics, it can easily backfire.
