The white working-class minority: a counter-narrative

Abstract

This article contributes a counter-narrative about white working-class people in the USA and the UK. It argues that the systematic and social disempowerment of white working-class people is creating a new minority group. I begin by clarifying the occasionally nebulous definition of “working-class white” communities. I then describe the concept of “post-traumatic cities” – exurbs and urban communities that lost signature industries in the mid- to late-twentieth Century and now provide the setting of working-class white people's marginalization. Next, I outline the more conventional moral, economic, and demographic narratives that depict the condition of working-class white people. Putting into conversation diverse literatures addressing socioeconomic inequality, minority politics, and political behavior, I then exhibit how (1) systemic, (2) psychological and rhetorical, and (3) political forces compound to institutionalize the marginalized social position of white working-class people in the USA and the UK. In the end, I argue that these forces yield a disempowered social and political status that demands the attention of minority politics scholars and alters the way we conceptualize minorities.