The “Great Awokening”: Racial narratives in reporting on the working class in White leftist and Black newspapers during the 2016 United States presidential election

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent events in the United States galvanized by race have purportedly had a significant effect on the wider society’s appreciation of systemic racism, some calling this the “Great Awokening.” Some social commentators assert that it is now the norm for “leftists” to reveal “not a strain of racism,” while others argue that they are now farther left than average Black voters. We critique this assertion of a new metamorphosis among White people by exploring how White leftist print media contrasts with Black newspaper reporting on the shape of working class people during the 2016 United States presidential race. Using textual analysis, we examined articles culled from Ethnic NewsWatch (424 articles) and the Alternative Press Index (303) and found two fundamentally divergent patterns about race’s role. We found that the left-wing White press used a color-blind rhetoric to narrate stories about a racially homogenized working class, a distinctly downtrodden sector of America oppressed by elites. In utilizing a color-blind frame, the reporting failed to confront how systemic racism was a fundamental context to understanding the election. In contrast, Black newspapers described a working class world that was multiracial and actively resistant to structures of oppression.