Ashley Jardina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Her new book is White Identity Politics.From her interview with Sean Illing for Vox:
Sean Illing: So when did whites start thinking about their whiteness in a politically meaningful way again? And what precipitated this sudden awareness?Visit Ashley Jardina's website.
Ashley Jardina: My argument is that it’s the growing diversity of the United States. There’s this series of events that are in many ways a product of that increasing diversity. So I began by looking at the massive waves of immigration that happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and how that changed the demographics of the United States.
At this point today, it’s projected that whites will cease to be a majority by the middle of the century. This fact, which was brought into sharp relief by the election of Barack Obama, ignited a wave racial awareness among white Americans, and I think we’re still reckoning with the political consequences of this.
Sean Illing: What does the data tell us about how whites are defining their own anxieties or concerns?
Ashley Jardina: Deep down it’s about this fear that America isn’t going to look like them anymore, that they’ll lose their majority and with it their cultural and political power. It’s also tied up in the belief that whites are experiencing discrimination now.
The gains that racial and ethnic majorities are making, either socially or politically or economically, are coming at the expense of their group. In many ways, it’s about...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue