As Silva reveals, many white residents (perhaps reluctantly) accepted an exchange of economic insecurity for the psychological comfort of white racial exceptionalism to deal with the changes. In fact, many whites interviewed for this book had constructed a working-class identity that rested primarily on their whiteness, leading one-time Democratic Party loyalists to support Donald Trump . . . Highly recommended.
Jennifer M. Silva is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. Her first book, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, examined the transition to adulthood for working-class Millennials.