The truth about white working-class men: Jill Filipovic

It's hard out there for a white guy. The anger of the white male ushered Donald Trump into the White House — white men chose him over Hillary Clinton 62% to 31% — and even much of the Democratic Party is now focused on the plight of working-class whites (never mind that women of color are more likely to work low-wage jobs). Pundits, too, argue that things for white men are worse than ever, and so they deserve special focus.

It is true that income inequality in the United States is stark and brutal. It is true that a white man without a college education can no longer assume he'll be able to get a job that enables him to be a sole breadwinner for his family, marry a woman who will take care of the home front, buy a home with a two-car garage, produce upwardly mobile children, and retire comfortably.

It is also true that women and people who aren't white have never been able to work under these assumptions. Now that some white men are living in the reality where much of the country has always existed, they're mad — and rightfully so. In a nation of vast wealth and opportunity, it's frustrating and enraging to see your prospects restricted, and to work hard but still not make ends meet. The goal of crusaders for women's rights and racial equality has never been to race to the bottom and make more people equally worse off. It has been to improve everyone's lot, and bring those at the bottom rungs up higher.

Many of these angry white men, though, seem upset only on their own behalf, and concerned only with restoring themselves to positions of dominance — even if that hurts the rest of us. Much of the country has always lived without the unearned benefits white men without college degrees see slipping away: a supportive full-time spouse at home, government-subsidized affordable housing, government-subsidized high-quality health care, government-subsidized retirement. Social Security long excluded occupations dominated by women and African Americans; federal mortgage programs that enabled white men to buy houses largely excluded blacks and women.

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Yet instead of supporting broad social welfare policies that would make us more equal — and make life for almost everyone better — many Trump-voting white men seem interested only in improving things for themselves, happy to deport their immigrant neighbors, to restrict the ability of women to plan their pregnancies and by extension their personal and economic futures, and to cut off social welfare benefits they believe disproportionately benefit African Americans and Latinos.

These white-male Trump voters, and the pundits and politicians bending backwards to cater to them, adhere to one central fallacy: All of their successes are earned by them alone, and all their failures are the fault of someone else. That the federal government has long offered massive although largely invisible subsidies to white men doesn't register when it contradicts this myth of self-sufficiency.

Nor does the concern for the working-class white man take into account the fact that other groups are doing worse. Minority workers are hurting more on economic measures such aswages and unemployment. And women are still poorer than men overall, making less in just about every occupation.

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While good-paying working-class jobs have been lost in recent years, women have increasingly adapted and sought out training necessary to meet the demand of jobs in health care. Many men have simply refused, deeming care jobs feminine and therefore below their station. Too many men are simply willing to put their masculine pride over providing for themselves — again, a calculus much of America has never had the privilege to make.

None of this means that we should neglect the needs of the white working class. But in focusing on what white working-class men have lost in a global economy that forces them to compete with a wider group of workers, we can't ignore that what they're demanding be restored is a world many Americans only wished we could live in — and that in voting for Trump, they sent a clear message that they want back the world that excluded most of us.

Jill Filipovic, a journalist based in Kenya and New York City, is the author of the forthcoming bookThe H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. Follow her on Twitter @JillFilipovic

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