Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics

Abstract

Scholars tend to agree that American politics has become polarized along partisan and ideological lines, yet the causes of polarization are in much dispute. The author argues that polarization and the culture wars are a consequence, in part, of the changing nature of white identity after the civil rights movement. The transformation of whiteness from a form of social standing to a norm produced ressentiment among whites, which Republican strategists mobilized by depicting Democrats as the party of intellectual snobs and undeserving rabble and the GOP as the party of the virtuous middle. Normalizing this middle and the snobs as white polarized whites along partisan and ideological lines, creating an incentive to win votes by appealing to hot-button cultural issues such as welfare, abortion, and gay marriage.