Abstract
Based on 29 in-depth interviews during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we examine how Trump supporters engaged in a form of identity work that we call signifying aggrieved white selves. Taking an interactionist approach, we demonstrate how they used racial discourse and emotional communication to engage in three distinct forms of racial identity work: (1) othering racialized freeloaders, (2) criminalizing racialized others, and (3) discrediting racialized dissenters. Our study contributes to research on racial discourse and emotions and research on race and the 2016 presidential election, which emphasize linguistic or cultural frames and/or subjectivity rather than the dramatization of racial selfhood. We propose that signifying aggrieved white selfhood is a generic process and that racial identity work is a useful lens for analyzing how a foundational concept of critical race theory—namely, that race is a social construct—is reproduced in everyday life.
“Barack Obama lies about Black Lives Matter and intends to incite violence,” said one white man at a Jacksonville sports bar packed with Trump supporters after a nearby 2016 campaign rally. Another man encouraged others to gather around a pool table where he had placed an anti-Trump sign and bragged he took it from a Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporter after punching him in the face. Later, another white man ranted about “Black people who abuse welfare,” adding, “You know, that mom in the store who has six or seven kids hanging off the buggy like gorillas” with “kinky heads” trying to buy “chicken nuggets.” The violent braggart turned to a member of our research team, a curly-haired Latino sometimes mistaken as white, and asked, “Are you a swimming Democrat or non-swimming Democrat?” After nervously responding, “Swimming Democrat!” everyone burst out laughing. After a fieldworker verified that “non-swimming” meant Black, another white man exhorted he keep an “open mind” about Trump while assertively grabbing his arm. We soon headed for the exit, where a white woman bid us farewell by pulling down her pink tube top.
Although it may be tempting to interpret Trump supporters’ words as evidence of prejudice or internalized attitudes, doing so risks psychological reductionism and missing their performative nature. As Erving Goffman (1959) taught us, one’s words—regardless of intentions or authenticity—produces a self. Importantly, this self is not a psychological entity (e.g., a self-concept or collection of attitudes), but an image projected into a social scene. During the post-rally revelry, Trump supporters signified white selfhood by not only symbolically positioning themselves against the racialized others they denigrated, but also signifying that they were racially aggrieved. More specifically, by verbalizing suspicion of Black leaders and movements, fear of Black violence, and resentment of Black people using public resources, they presented themselves as aggrieved whites. Although the Trump supporters we interviewed for this study were more subdued than the bar revelers, our analysis reveals how they also signified aggrieved white selves. Their identity work resonated with the broader politics of “aggrieved whiteness,” which Mike King (2017) defines as efforts to maintain “white socio-political hegemony through challenging efforts to materially address racial inequality, supporting investment in policing, prisons and military, and perpetuating a narrative of anti-white racial oppression.”
In this article, we develop the concept of signifying aggrieved white selves, which is a form of “racial identity work” (Khanna and Johnson 2010) that projects an image of white selfhood antagonized by nonwhites’ alleged transgressions and supportive of corrective action. Trumpers’ identity work, defined broadly as processes that “create, present, and sustain” identities (Snow and Anderson 1987:1348), also symbolized themselves as morally and intellectually superior to racialized Others. As detailed below, our conceptualization resonates with theorizing about the construction of racial categories and white subjectivity, but is analytically distinct in its emphasis on signifying racial identity. Our identity work approach enables us to contribute to research on the 2016 presidential election and research on racial discourse, which emphasize cultural frames and/or subjectivity rather than the dramatization of racial selfhood. Although our findings are not generalizable to the larger population of Trump supporters or conservatives, we propose that signifying aggrieved white selves is a “sensitizing concept” (Blumer 1969:149) that may be usefully employed and developed in future research.
Literature Review
Most research on race and the 2016 presidential election emphasized Trump’s messaging or his supporters’ psychology. Trump’s racialized campaign amplified the traditional Republican Southern Strategy (Kivisto 2017), which employs racial codes or “dog whistle politics” (Haney-López 2014) to activate white support. Trump’s framing overtly impugned the moral status of people of color (Silva 2019). For example, his social media messaging emphasized Black “lawlessness, crime, and violence,” framed immigrants as terrorists and drug traffickers, and advocated for policing and deportation (Bailey and Nawara 2019:501). Some sociologists subsumed Trump’s racial framing into class-based processes such as (1) moral “boundary-making” (Lamont, Park, and Ayala-Hurtado 2017) 1 and (2) transformational “emotional politics” (Schrock et al. 2017). Although revealing Trump’s overt racialization and implicit emotionalization, such work neglects examining Trump supporters or engaging with critical race theory.
Survey research on Trump supporters and race emphasized presumed internalized racial attitudes and identities. Researchers found the following psychological measures associated with white support for Trump: (1) beliefs that Blacks are lazy and violent and doubts that police unnecessarily profile or brutalize Blacks (Swain 2018); (2) prejudicial attitudes about (Smith and Hanley 2018) or resentment toward (Hooghe and Dassonneville 2018) Blacks, immigrants, and Muslims; (3) white identity salience and anti-Black feelings (Levchak and Levchak 2020); and (4) the centrality of whiteness and lack of trust in science (Blankenship and Stewart 2019). Although some of this work invokes critical race theory 2 to situate/interpret findings (e.g., Swain 2018), most neglect its perspective—especially its conception of race as a social construct.
Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (2016) study of conservative white Louisianians departed from the aforementioned research by employing in-depth interviews and examining economic, environmental, cultural, and religious contexts. Yet, Hochschild (2016:135) minimized race when rendering interviewees’ talk as expressing an internalized “deep story”; defined as a “feels-as-if-true” story about how despite working hard and following the rules they have been denied the American Dream by a government enabling others to unfairly cut in line (Hochschild 2016:135). She mentioned the alleged line cutters were Blacks, immigrants, and refugees (2017:137), but eschewed a racial analysis in her efforts to empathize with subjects. Francesca Polletta (2017:607) said Hochschild’s approach felt like an “endurance test” and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2019b:19) pointed out it “says precious little about their racialized [and] xenophobic consciousness.”
As critical race scholars point out, people’s talk about race often reflects dominant cultural discourses that evolve to justify ever-changing formations of systemic racism (e.g., Feagin 2009; Omi and Winant 1986). Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2006) analyzed how interviewees invoked colorblind discourses emphasizing meritocratic effort, cultural difference, and individual preference to account for racial inequality. Such language obscures institutional policies and processes and blames racialized others for their own marginalization (see also Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith [1997] on “Laissez Faire racism”). In contrast to colorblindness, Joyce M. Bell and Douglas Hartmann (2007:910) found “diversity discourse” celebrates race yet nonetheless enables people to “disavow and disguise its structural roots and consequences.” Patricia Hill Collins (1990) revealed media discourse about middle-class Black respectability often contrasts with stereotypes of working-class Black violence, hypersexuality, laziness, and welfare dependency. Meghan A. Burke (2017) found progressive and conservative whites invoke diversity, color blindness, and stereotypes or “coded racism” when talking about racial matters. Angelique M. Davis and Rose Ernst (2019:763) uncovered the discourse of “racial gaslighting,” which refers to “pathologizing those who resist” racial injustice. Most racial discourse reflects a “white racial frame” that positions “whites [as] mostly virtuous and racial ‘others’ as often unvirtuous” (Feagin 2009:94).
Although studies of racial discourse and Trump supporters’ attitudes and deep stories differ in methodology and attention to systemic racism, most similarly frame respondents as expressing subjectivity. Survey research frames respondents’ discursive agreement with limited-choice questions as evidence of internalized attitudes that presumably motivate behavior; as David N. Smith and Eric Hanley (2018:44) put it, “attitudes inspired pro-Trump voting.” Hochschild (2017:135) rendered interviewees’ talk as expressing a “deep story” that reveals “the subjective prism through which [they] see the world.” Bonilla-Silva (2006) framed interviewees’ talk as expressing or justifying their subjective “view,” “beliefs,” “perception,” or “preference” (see, for example, pp. 31, 36, 38, 41, 47, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 92, 98) or “express[ing]” or “vent[ing]” their feelings (see, for example, pp. 78, 79, 81, 84, 86, 98). From a Goffmonian perspective, however, such words and nonverbal gestures—regardless of the research context—should be analyzed as dramaturgical acts (see also Mills 1940).
Analysts of racial discourse have invoked the notion of identity work, yet restrict its application to strips of talk that do not seem racist. For example, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2006:90) framed white interviewees’ testimonies of “positive interactions with blacks” as “self-presentation” rather than accurately expressing subjectivity. Burke (2017: 283) similarly framed interviewees’ suggestions they weren’t racist as signifying a “good white self,” which she painted as inauthentic based on other things they said which she did not frame as identity work (e.g., calling the police on Black boys). We build on this work by withholding judgment on whether Trump supporters’ talk was authentic or expressed internalized attitudes and more fully apply an identity work perspective. In doing so, we contribute to studies of racial discourse—which are often limited to its documentation (as Ashley Doane [2017] notes)—by showing how people use such discourses as resources for signifying racial identity.
Identity work refers to “anything people do, individually or collectively, to give meaning to themselves or others” (Schwalbe and Mason-Schrock 1996:115). The approximately 1,500 journal articles using the concept have focused on diverse identities (e.g., gender, sexual, race, class, age, and ability), settings (e.g., family, school, work, public, support groups, social movements, and interviews), and signifying processes (e.g., embodied practices, accounts and narratives, group rituals, and social media posting). Key to all types of identity work is “locating” or the symbolic affiliation with or disaffiliation from existing identity categories (Hadden and Lester 1978). Following Goffman (1959:7), self-presentation involves both intentionally “giving” and unintentionally “giving off” information. Thus, emotional communication—including nonverbal expressions (e.g., grimacing) and verbal expressions that claim (e.g., “I’m angry”) or imply (e.g., “That lying scoundrel!”) emotionality—can be analyzed in combination with discursive communication (i.e., the content of the talk) as signifying selfhood (J. Fields, Copp, and Klienman 2006).
Research on racial identity work, which refers to processes that constitute signifying membership in, and the meaning of, a racial group, reflects many of the aforementioned themes. For example, some mixed-race people manipulate their phenotype and employ cultural symbols to downplay whiteness and signify Black, Asian, or Latinx identities (Khanna and Johnson 2010; Storrs 1999). Atlanta Dominicans emphasize nationality and Mexicans emphasize middle-class status to disaffiliate their racial identities from stereotypes of Latinos as working-class Mexicans (Browne, Tatum, and Gonzalez 2021). Some Black women (Wilkins 2012a) present themselves as empowered by signifying anger toward and difference from white women they degrade as weak and promiscuous, while some Black men subvert the “angry Black man” stereotype and signify “moderate blackness” by displaying emotional restraint (Wilkins 2012b). Some whites emphasize they recognize racism and support activism to signify anti-racist identities (Hughey 2012), while others affiliate with rural lifestyles, drunken violence, and the confederacy to signify “white trash” identities (Eastman and Schrock 2008). Our analysis of Trump supporters’ identity work brings together several of these themes, including differentiation from racialized others, invoking cultural discourse or stereotypes, and the signification of emotionality.
Examining emotional communication as a signifying act that produces self-imagery (e.g., Perinbanayagam 2017) is significantly different from how scholars of whiteness typically approach emotions. One approach develops sensitizing concepts about white subjectivity, including (1) “white fragility” (DiAngelo 2018)—feeling angry or ashamed when confronted with race; (2) “white vulnerability” (Jayakumar and Adamian 2017)—feeling unease about protecting privilege; (3) “white apathy” (Forman and Lewis 2015)—feeling indifferent about oppression; (4) “aggrieved entitlement”—feeling humiliated for not receiving expected privileges (Kimmel 2013); and (5) “white fatigue” (Flynn 2015)—feeling tired of thinking about race. A second approach develops broader theories of racialized emotions, including (1) the “phenomenology of whiteness,” which draws on Husserl to explore embodied experience within institutions (Ahmed 2007); (2) a Bourdieuian approach centered on “white habitus,” which refers to racialized socialization that “creates whites’ racial tastes, perceptions, feelings, [and] views” (Bonillia-Silva 2006:104) and “guides whites’ identity and sense of group membership” (Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick 2006:233); and (3) a positivist rendering of Herbert Blumer’s (1958) “prejudice as a sense of group position” argument, which measures whites’ feelings of racial threat, resentment, hostility, and superiority (e.g., Bobo 1999; Reichelmann 2020). Most of this work resonates or engages with W. E. B. Du Bois’ (1920) understanding of whites’ righteous anger toward Black people as resulting from their desire to maintain systemic racism (see also Lipsitz 2006). Our dramaturgical approach does not invalidate such work, it merely orients us to focus on the imagery produced through emotional communication rather than framing such communication as evidence of subjectivity to be theorized.
Although our interpretive framework contrasts with how race scholarship typically conceptualizes emotionality, it is well-designed to operationalize another of Du Bois’ insights for empirical analysis, namely, that race is a social construct. As Morris (2017:158) put it, “Du Bois argued unequivocally that whites and therefore race itself were socially constructed.” Although controversial in his day because it subverted the biological essentialism dominating the culture and academic sociology, viewing race as a social construct has become a key pillar in critical race theory and whiteness studies (Morris 2015:219). Cultural and historical approaches to understanding the symbolic construction of racial identity (e.g., B. J. Fields and Fields 2012; Omi and Winant 1986) can be complemented by interactionist analyses of racial identity work. Blumer (1958:5) advocated examining how “members of the dominant group”—whether “leaders [or] laymen [sic] . . . present characterizations of the subordinate group,” noting elsewhere that defining others “is, by opposition, to define one’s own group” (1958:4). Our analysis of how Trump supporters signify aggrieved white selves demonstrates that an identity work approach is useful in forwarding this tradition while contributing to research on racial politics and discourse.
Method
As Trump sought the Republican nomination in the spring of 2016, we were struck by his anti-establishment persona and media accounts of his supporters and rallies, and began planning a research project to better understand the developing political phenomenon. We designed this IRB-approved study in the spirit of Blumer’s methodological approach (e.g., Schwalbe 2020), which eschews rigid protocols in favor of an open, inquisitive, and inductive approach to data collection and analysis. As part of the larger study, members of the research team engaged in fieldwork at three rallies, gathered transcripts of rally speeches, and conducted pre-election interviews with 29 Trump supporters. As we explored data and engaged in what Blumer termed “inspection,” we developed analyses based on emerging patterns, one of which centered on interviewees’ talk of racial issues and developed into this article.
Most of our interviews were conducted during the two months prior to the election. We recruited participants through a group of college Republicans, a pro-Trump Facebook group, personal connections, a Trump rally, and referrals. Like most unfunded qualitative research, ours was a convenience sample and unrepresentative (see Table 1). All interviewees were white—although two also identified as Hispanic and one indicated Native American ancestry. Most (80 percent) identified as men. None self-identified as working class; 14 percent said lower middle class, 52 percent said middle-class, 24 percent said upper middle-class, and 14 percent said upper class. In terms of their highest level of education, 21 percent graduated high school, 14 percent graduated from a technical school, 41 percent were currently in college, 14 percent graduated from college, and 15 percent completed a graduate program. With regard to age, 41 percent were 19–24, 10 percent were 25–34, 24 percent were 35–44, 10 percent were 45–64, and 14 percent were above 65. Our sample was skewed toward the young and educated, and thus we cannot generalize our findings to the larger population of Trump supporters or conservatives. Following Herbert Blumer (1969), however, we instead aim to conceptualize a process that might be generalizable to other groups and contexts.
Formal Interviews with Trump Supporters.
Interviews began by reminding participants we were interested in talking to them because they were Trump supporters, arguably orienting them to speak as such. We asked them what they knew about Trump before the election, what they liked most about Trump, why they supported him, and what they thought were the most important issues facing the country. All respondents voluntarily brought up racial issues, but we did not ask them to talk about the same topics. Interviewers did ask for clarification, additional examples, and also engaged in reflective listening to facilitate conversation. The interview process and promised anonymity gave interviewees much freedom yet we do not assume to know their motivations when crafting responses. Because our interviewers were white or often read as white (as in the case of one Latino graduate student), respondents were likely to experience some racial comfort, but since we were affiliated with a university, we may have been seen as “liberals.” After interviews were transcribed, a Black faculty member and graduate student as well as a second-generation Turkish immigrant joined two original white members of our research team and participated in analyzing and interpreting the data, as well as writing this manuscript.
Our analysis developed inductively. We first independently read a sample of transcripts and compared insights about emerging themes, which included welfare dependency, crime, and BLM. Two members of our research team used these categories of talk to code all transcripts with a qualitative analysis software program, adding codes as new themes and variations emerged. For example, after initially assigning all data about BLM into an overarching code, we further coded data according to how they portrayed activists as ignorant, duped, violent, vandalous, inconvenient, and in need of policing and incarceration. We held regular “working meetings” for about eight months in which we talked through and engaged in coding, sorting, and conceptualizing data into three dominant and analytically distinct processes of racial identity work (see Table 2): (1) othering racialized freeloaders, (2) criminalizing racialized others, and (3) discrediting racialized dissenters.
Strategies Used to Signify Aggrieved White Selves.
It was only during the subsequent months of collectively searching, reading, and taking notes on relevant literature, and writing, editing, and commenting on a digitally shared draft of the article that our conceptual framing and contributions crystalized.
Signifying Aggrieved White Selves
We begin our analysis by discussing the process of othering racialized freeloaders, which signified aggrieved white selfhood by blaming Blacks for their poverty and fleecing of whites, deriding immigrants for unfairly usurping resources and resisting assimilation, and rebuking Democratic politicians for enabling both groups’ alleged transgressions. We next explore how Trump supporters conveyed whiteness by criminalizing racialized others, which signified racial superiority and aggrievement by painting Blacks as violent due to family dysfunction and framing immigrants as drug traffickers, murderers, and terrorists. We then address the process of discrediting racialized dissenters, which involved legitimating police violence against Blacks and criticizing movement tactics. Regardless of the strategy employed, Trump supporters invoked cultural discourses and forms of emotional communication to signify aggrieved white selves.
Othering Racialized Freeloaders
Trump supporters signified aggrieved white selves by portraying non-whites as poor people who unfairly siphoned public resources (20/29 respondents, 123 references). Such narratives employed colorblind discourse to represent Black people’s economic struggles as rooted in their dysfunctional culture and invoked legalistic discourse to frame immigrants as undeserving.
Interviewees discussing poverty (20/29 respondents) drew on discourses of cultural racism and abstract liberalism (Bonilla-Silva 2006) to signify moral superiority over and disdain for poor people of color, whom they referenced 53 times. Black poverty is “a deeper issue than the media portrays it,” said Gary, who added, “it’s a cultural thing, you can’t do anything about it.” After framing Black poverty as a “crisis of culture,” Bill said, “people that choose to be on welfare just don’t have the desire [to] get out.” Kenneth said, “The culture of White America is a lot different from Black America. [I]n the culture of White Americans, if you are successful that means that you are doing better either financially or morally.” By emphasizing cultural difference, Trump supporters aligned their identity work with the politics of aggrieved whiteness, namely that “racialized material inequality [are] socio-culture racial failings” (King 2017).
Trump supporters also signified aggrieved white selfhood by symbolizing being unfairly fleeced by racialized welfare recipients (8/29 respondents, 19 references). After noting, “Blacks do make up a higher percentage of low-income communities,” Lucas said, “it’s automatically perpetuated as, ‘Oh, we’re better off so we have an obligation to help and give away what we’ve earned.’” Teresa said, “Unemployment’s a joke. All you do is fake that you went for an interview and people just milk it until it runs out.” “We pay the poor for doing nothing,” said another. Bill said when he lost a job and was denied food stamps even though a “McDonald’s” worker received them: “The only difference is that he is Black and I am white! That is discrimination.” Collectively these interviewees painted themselves as aggrieved victims of a racialized welfare system.
Some grounded their narratives of aggrievement in critiques of Democrats as enablers. Teresa said, “The percentage of people on food stamps have gone up since Obama got into office. [I]t’s ridiculous. Food stamps were supposed to be a leg-up [but] now it’s just this sustaining way of life.” They sometimes framed Democrats as not only enabling Black dependency but also bribing them in exchange for political support. Leo said: The Democrats literally have the Black community and the Hispanic community and even some poor whites on a government plantation of, “We’ll give you welfare, we’ll give you food stamps . . . and in return, vote for us.” But they just keep them on this cycle of government dependency, and they just keep the government check coming in the mail in exchange for a vote. So I think [Democrats] are just totally like political slave owners.
Here Leo invokes the language yet neglects the structural legacy of chattel slavery in ways that reflect conservative “Democrat plantation” discourse that renders Blacks “dependent on and beholden to . . . the Democratic Party” (Blow 2013). Painting Democrats as enablers integrated political and racial identity work: they signified themselves as aggrieved white Republicans.
What did Trump supporters say should be done to address Black poverty? Consistent with colorblind discourse (Bonilla-Silva 2006), those addressing the issue prescribed personal and cultural transformation (6 respondents, 9 references). Joe said the important questions were “How do we help them with family values? How do we [give] them some positive outlooks?” Kenneth thought folks should emulate his “African American friends [who] just made a decision to succeed.” “If Black communities don’t want to have problems then they need to be a lot more like white communities,” said Keith. Another suggested, “the way that you need to fix the racial problems is to get rid of the culture and to try to make it less tribalistic. [Black] people who are good [and] well respected end up actually leaving that [Black] culture and going into the . . . white culture.” Such anti-Black “solutions” aligned with political efforts to cut government spending on the poor—a key part of the larger politics of aggrieved whiteness—and signified themselves as smart white people who knew best how to fix inferiorized poor people of color.
When Trump supporters signified aggrieved white selfhood by framing immigrants as freeloaders (18/29 respondents, 42 references), they typically invoked legalistic discourse (see Brown 2013) with one word—“illegal”—which they referenced 70 times. Robert said, “We have to stop illegal immigration because they . . . are taking advantage of . . . programs that are paid for by the taxpayer.” Janice said, “it doesn’t seem right to me that the taxpayers are being burdened” to pay for schools to provide “children of illegals” a “free lunch, free breakfast,” and a “toothbrush.” Joe said “illegal” immigration “puts a burden on our system because those people by and large aren’t paying taxes [and] they are just a drain on society.” Conner claimed, “there’s millions and millions of dollars going into funding illegals in handouts [but] it shouldn’t be our responsibility . . . it’s just plain stupid!” Presenting themselves as resentful of implicitly racialized “illegals” who unfairly usurped their tax dollars signified aggrieved white selfhood.
Trump supporters’ racial identity work symbolized indignation when painting immigrants who refused to assimilate to “our ways” as unworthy of assistance (10/29 respondents, 37 references). Jason said, “You come here, you should learn English. We shouldn’t help anybody [who] does not follow our traditions.” Teresa said she resented immigrants who “cluster together [and] don’t want to learn English. [T]he government is spending all the money to set them up, house them, and [yet] they don’t want to assimilate.” As Collin put it, Once you get here and get that citizenship, your allegiance is to the United States of America—not the country you came from. You need to adopt our culture, our rules, and abide by them. [Y]ou should be able to write and talk in English . . . Don’t come here and expect all women to wear burkas. [A]ssimilate to our country by being American.
Invoking a discourse of assimilation enabled Trump supporters to signify indignation about the government funneling their taxes to help immigrants refusing to adopt “our” culture. Aggrieved whiteness relies on erasing history; in this case, the early white colonizers clustering together and refusing to assimilate to Indigenous cultures is conveniently left out of the story.
Trump supporters also signified aggrieved white selves by contrasting the alleged support of nonwhite immigrants with the alleged neglect of citizens. Echoing others, Owen said, “I can’t really get on board with anybody coming here until every man, woman, and child in our country—especially our veterans that are living on the street—are taken care of first.” Duke said, “we take in people from a different country and give them our tax dollars when we have homeless veterans . . . it is totally unethical!” Shirley overtly invoked emotional language: I’m a faithful mom, I run a small business, and I’m taxed to the point of desperation [and] yet my child can’t get any help because he is American. But at the same time, any freakin’ immigrant that comes in here illegally gets free benefits, healthcare, eye care, let’s give them free food stamps, let’s, uh, I can’t—like, I think it’s disgusting seventeen times over! It’s terrible! It’s horrible!
Here Shirley presented herself as an aggrieved American businesswoman of faith penalized by a “disgusting” system that funnels resources to “any freakin’ immigrant.” Overall, respondents signified themselves as aggrieved whites whose culture was threatened and wallets were raided by “illegals” receiving more support than hard working citizens and valiant veterans.
Trump supporters’ racial identity work was bolstered by promoting solutions to immigration that were consistent with the larger politics of aggrieved whiteness; namely that the state should limit immigration (24 respondents, 92 references). Jason simply said, “I just think we should make immigration harder.” Owen exclaimed, “We need to shut down immigration 100%!” Shirley said, “the borders are a disaster . . . there should definitely be a wall.” Echoing others, Miguel said, “Building the wall I think is completely feasible because . . . it actually costs less than the amount of money that the United States has to pay to cover welfare or even education for illegal immigrants.” Although all doubted Mexico would pay for it (as Trump promised), they said the wall would “protect us” (Robert), “defend borders” (Bill), “secure the border” (John), and “would be a good thing” (Duke). This rhetorical support for anti-immigrant policies answers the implicit question that respondents’ racial identity work raised: “If you are so disturbed by immigration, what do you think should be done?”
Criminalizing Racialized Others
Most Trump supporters also signified aggrieved whiteness by framing racialized others as criminals (25/29 respondents, 185 references). As Blumer (1958:6) noted, whites often construct race through the “denunciation of the subordinate racial group [as] unfit and a threat.” Such framing often involved criminalizing others or constructing them as violent criminals and terrorists, which resonated with more overtly racist imagery—although they typically invoked notions of cultural deficiency or legalistic discourse rather than biological inferiority.
Trump supporters often employed a discourse of cultural racism (Bonilla-Silva 2006) to signify that they—as white people—were irritated with the alleged crime-promoting Black family and culture (12/29 respondents, 15 references). Using the empirically discredited (Jones and Luo 1999) notion that Black culture is to blame for poverty and crime (i.e., the culture of poverty thesis 3 ), Janice said, “I think that this violence stems from [their] single moms [and] the culture within the African-American community.” Kenneth said, “In the ghettos there is a culture of almost badness . . . where the worse you are, the most respected you are.” Bill noted that Black men are “in jail [because] they have no one to tell them what is right or wrong.” “There’s no dads in the environment” (Joe), “they don’t have a father” (John), and “they don’t have any fathers to discipline the household, so they get affected by their peers a lot” (Keith). The implication was that fatherless Black youth created a dangerous culture. Degrading the Black family symbolized interviewees as morally superior and aggrieved whites.
Interviewees also signified aggrieved white selfhood by invoking the discourse of Black crime and violence (8/29 interviewees, 43 references) which has long served as a means to justify white supremacy (e.g., Collins 1990). Daniel said, “Violence is a big thing in those communities. It’s insane.” Echoing Trump, they often invoked “Chicago” as a racialized “code word” (Lamont et al. 2017:176) to paint Blacks as criminally violent. Christina said, “there are murders in Chicago every weekend, the statistics are unbelievable.” Conner said in “Chicago [there’s] just an impossible amount of death and injuries due to fighting, gun fire.” “You look at the crime that happens in Chicago on a weekly basis, it’s terrifying . . . It is absolutely crazy,” said Greg. We can see here how Trump supporters used emotional and hyperbolic language, such as “insane,” “unbelievable,” “impossible,” “terrifying,” and “crazy” to signify they were particularly aggrieved and righteously judgmental.
Trump supporters’ racial identity work also involved signifying aggrievement with restricting policing. Mathew said, “we should bring law and order back to the country. [W]e should strengthen the police community.” Christina resented politicians and president Obama who “swear they [will] keep this country safe, yet they’re not doing that.” Gary said stop-and-frisk policies in New York helped the “shootings and stuff like that go down and I think that’s the good part, but the bad part is yes it does profile them but you have to.” After saying that he didn’t like gun control because it “strips down the Second Amendment,” James said, We can actually enforce the laws. There is a novel idea that doesn’t really happen, unfortunately, Stop-and-Frisking. In Chicago? [I]magine the amount of guns they would get off the streets . . . Policing doesn’t go far enough.
Echoing others, James and Gary presented themselves as white advocates for treating people of color as unworthy of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. As King (2017) notes, “expansions [of] the criminal justice system are symbiotically entwined with aggrieved whiteness.” Respondents’ rhetoric reveals signifying aggrieved white selves can blend narratives of Black criminality, cultural deficiency, and racialized policing.
Echoing Trump himself (e.g., Silva 2019), interviewees signified aggrieved white selfhood by portraying immigrants as drug traffickers, rapists, and murderers. Daniel said, “drugs come across the border,” Teresa said, “drugs [are] infiltrating the country,” Robert mentioned “a lot of illegal drugs are coming from Mexico,” and Garrett worried about “drug trafficking.” After saying, “they’re not legal people,” John referenced another campaign talking point: “there’s a person that came in here and killed Kate, in California . . . he had been sent out of the country four or five times and let back in. [I]t’s just awful that we just don’t enforce the law.” Teresa said, “rape is up, the crime is up from all these refugees.” Othering immigrants as murderers, Duke said he was concerned about “people being murdered by illegals,” and James stated, “illegal immigrants have killed. They have been deported three or four times and yet they get back in.” Here we can see how they portrayed themselves as not only morally superior whites by criminalizing immigrants, but also as resentful of so-called government enablers, who at the time were led by the first U.S. Black president and Democrat.
Trump supporters also signified aggrieved white selfhood by differentiating themselves from Muslim immigrants, whom they painted as particularly threatening via referencing terrorism 72 times. “I’ve talked to actual immigration officers,” said Keith, and “they’ve found prayer rugs [and] weapons coming across—they know that terrorists are using the border.” Mikayla said the most important problem facing the country was “ISIS” and blamed Obama for not cutting off their “oil supply.” Daniel said, “ISIS members [are] getting across an unsecured fence and getting into the U.S. and causing damage.” “Islamic terrorists are deadly! [N]o other organized religion does this on a daily basis,” said William. When asked to clarify what political correctness obscured, Miguel said, “Islamic terrorism.” “We are at war with not just radical terror, it is radical Islamic terror,” said James. By emphasizing “Islamic” the implication was that terrorism was less politically than religiously motivated. Leo was more explicit: “If you look into Islam, it’s radical stuff. It’s like sixth century stuff. It’s very violent. It’s basically a religion of conquest. And Shariah law is very, very sick. And I think it’s basically incompatible with Western civilization.” Leo and the others portrayed themselves as white Christians under attack by implicitly racialized Muslims. Presenting themselves as “whiteously” angry, they blamed Democrats and political correctness for putting citizens at risk.
Trump supporters’ recommendations for addressing the threat of terrorism further presented themselves as aggrieved whites who demanded radical state intervention (10/29 respondents, 44 references). Miguel supported an “immigration ban on . . . Muslim countries,” “extreme vetting,” and “removing potential terrorists on the FBI watchlist who happen to be Muslim, as in maybe sending them to Guantanamo Bay.” Although he thought some people might “freak out because it’s unconstitutional or like a police state,” Leo said he “love[s]” the idea of “banning Muslims from coming in” and “like[s]” the idea of “doing surveillance on mosques.” Lucas advocated for “suspending immigration from countries where terrorism is a serious problem.” Robert worried Syrian refugees could be terrorists and suggested the United States confine them to “safe zones within Syria.” Even though he did not think all refugees were terrorists, he said: “If I gave you a bag of skittles and one of them was poisoned, would you grab a handful? No.” Collectively these Trump supporters signified they were the kind of white people who were so aggrieved that they supported suspending the constitution, sending Muslims to tortuous detention, and banning all Muslim immigration.
Discrediting Racialized Dissenters
Most Trump supporters also signified aggrieved white selves by discrediting racialized dissenters (24/29 respondents, 85 references). The contemporary movement against police brutality, which interviewees referenced as “Black Lives Matter,” is a “racial event” that fosters cultural debate (Doane 2017). Drawing on the Trump campaign’s discourse of racial gaslighting that discredits movements for racial justice (Davis and Ernst 2019), interviewees projected white selfhood by blaming Black victims and portraying protesters as ignorant and disrespectful aggressors. Such rhetoric symbolized irritation with and indignation toward BLM activists, whom they framed as needing more forceful policing and incarceration.
As Shantel Gabrieal Buggs (2017:540) argued, “For many whites, if misbehaving black people would just obey, they would be able to walk away from encounters with law enforcement alive.” When interviewees invoked this discourse, they signified superiority over and a lack of sympathy for Black victims (6 respondents, 7 references). They suggested that Blacks interacting with the police would be fine if they “actually listen to the cops and follow commands” (James) or act “overly respectful because [police] want that respect” (Daniel). Keith put it bluntly: “If they had behaved differently, they probably wouldn’t be dead right now.” Miguel said the killings are “in self-defense,” adding that Alton Sterling—who police shot in Baton Rouge— “was reaching for a gun.” Lucas similarly said the police are “just doing their jobs [and] in many circumstances the quote ‘victim’ actually had a gun and was threatening police.” As armchair judges, Trump supporters convicted dead Black people as provoking the white officers who killed them, severing empathy bridges with victims and aligning themselves with executing state violence.
Trump supporters also signified aggrieved white selfhood by invoking statistical discourse to position themselves as intellectually superior to and frustrated with Black activists (5 respondents, 5 references). Joe, a self-described “data nerd,” said that because there are “more white deaths than there are black deaths at the hands of police, [the] movements are in fact falsely rooted.” Keith claimed, “if you look at the statistics, a lot of white people die too.” Referring to advocates for racial justice, Daniel said, “it really isn’t about evidence for them, it’s about the feeling of oppression.” Lucas said, “It’s just frustrating to witness people who make a generalization out of several little isolated issues.” “When you look at it objectively,” said James, if you have all these African Americans shooting other African Americans but you don’t complain about that, but when one cop shoots a Black man and you go nuts and you burn down cities, how do Black lives really matter?
Overall, such racial identity work used statistical posturing to discredit BLM activists as irrational and signify themselves as mathematically enlightened and justifiably aggrieved.
Framing “the media” as purposefully misrepresenting police shootings and duping BLM activists was another way respondents symbolized racial superiority and aggrievement (7 respondents, 11 references). As Lucas put it, “the media covers it a certain way, with a certain spin, and then they (activists) automatically get interested.” Duke said, “it’s only when the big media . . . got all riled up that Black Lives Matter decided to be known and seen.” James claimed activists responding to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson “rushed to judgement . . . because the media drives it.” Others said the media used “little tricks . . . to make it look as if [the police] did something bad” (Keith), makes “it seem like it happens much more often than it does” (Greg), and ignores cases of white victimization that “never made the news” (Gary). Janice pointed to media coverage of Obama: “I hear Obama inciting [BLM] through a lot of the things that he says about African-Americans and racism [but] I think all lives matter.” Overall, they signified frustration with the media, which they framed as fostering false aggrievement in gullible racialized activists while hiding the reality of white injury.
Some Trump supporters presented themselves as aggrieved whites by portraying BLM as inconveniencing, which both differentiated themselves from Black activists and signified irritation (4 respondents, 4 references). Jason advised, “You shouldn’t be stopping traffic on a highway, preventing other people from getting to work to do their job. [Y]ou’re affecting other people’s businesses.” Shirley said, “when you block an ambulance from getting a child to the hospital because you wanna make a statement, that is not peaceful.” Duke asked, “Why do you have to shut down expressways and affect other people’s daily lives when we have nothing to do with it?” Kenneth suggested BLM instead focus on “civil debate.” Such whitesplaining positioned themselves as white consultants advising BLM leaders—patronizingly referred to as “you”—on how to be less irritating to people like themselves.
Several interviewees signified aggrieved white selfhood by painting BLM as vandals and violent (12 respondents, 25 references). Owen said, “I am 100% against [the] destruction of people’s personal property and premises.” Jason said, “Black Lives Matter extremists should have been shut down the minute they started setting fire to buildings, cars” and Keith said, “these people destroy their own towns, their own hair salons and Walmarts and pizza shops.” Daniel said BLM was influenced more by “Malcom X because he was anti-white people” than “Martin Luther King Jr. who just wanted equality.” Mikayla said, “I just don’t think that they should be violent,” and Matthew said, “I disagree when their protests get violent.” Miguel castigated activists for “killing police officers” and Lucas said activists chanted, “What do we want? Dead police! When do we want ‘em? Now!” Garret mentioned that “the Black Lives Matter group is calling for targeting police officers” and worried his family and others were at risk: It’s violence against people that could have nothing to do with the situation at hand—and that kind of stuff spreads—and it really concerns me. As a dad of two young kids [who’s] watching news footage of stuff going on, I’m like, “My God, I can’t believe that is in America.” You think you are in a foreign country where the government has no control.
Although Trump supporters’ talk varied, they collectively portrayed Black activists as irrational self-harming vandals and violent anti-white cop-killers who threatened their own families rather than people whose families and friends were targeted by killer cops. In doing so, they signified themselves as aggrieved whites who were morally and intellectually superior to BLM activists.
Rather than eliminating police brutality, Trump supporters emphasized the need to control the movement, aligning with the broader politics of aggrieved whiteness (6 respondents, 9 references). Owen said activists “should be prosecuted 100 percent” and protests should be “shut down instantly.” Teresa proposed Obama should “have squashed . . . the riots.” Jason suggested activists who burn the United States flag “should be arrested” and Shirley said if they “step on the flag, [they] should be put in jail for treason.” After lauding Ronald Reagan for killing some of Qaddafi’s children after he “got a smart mouth,” John lamented the lack of “force” or will to “retaliate” against those who step out of line “not only internationally, but in our own country.” He then added, The minorities, or, for instance now, Black Man’s Lives, Black People Matter—whatever the hell they call that—you have to respect the law. You have to respect the policemen [because] they protect us. And the minute that fails, if we don’t back them (the police) up, then we’re getting worse and worse, and that’s what’s happening to us.
John and the others placed themselves in the unmarked white “we” who backed the police using force and incarceration to control those protesting police killing Blacks. By emphasizing that state power should quash resistance to racism, Trump supporters’ racial identity work resonated with the larger politics of aggrieved whiteness.
Discussion
Trump supporters drew on a variety of cultural discourses to construct Blacks and immigrants as racialized Others in ways that signified aggrieved white selves. Invoking colorblind racism (e.g., cultural deficiency, meritocracy), well-worn stereotypes (e.g., welfare cheats, drug traffickers, terrorists), and legalistic othering (e.g., illegals, criminals), interviewees symbolically positioned themselves as morally and intellectually superior yet threatened by and angry with darker skinned Others. Emphasizing that they also resented Democrat enablers of alleged racial transgressions integrated racial and political identities so as to present themselves as white Republicans. Trumpers’ identity work resonated with the broader politics of aggrieved whiteness, which advocates divesting from ameliorative social programs and policies while investing in policing, incarceration, and nativist border policies. Signifying racial selves and justifying systemic racism are thus two sides of the same racial discourses.
Our focus on racial identity work enables us to contribute to research on the 2016 election. Although some studies reveal how Trump’s words and campaign messaging stereotypically framed Blacks and immigrants, they typically subsume race into class-based processes (e.g., Lamont et al. 2017) and/or neglect examining Trump supporters themselves (e.g., Bailey and Nawara 2019). Most research on Trump supporters employs survey methods to correlate alleged internalized attitudes with Trump support (e.g., Levchak and Levchak 2020) or interview methods to examine gender construction (e.g., Dignam et al. 2019; Erichsen et al. 2020) or class-centered “deep stories” (Hochschild 2016). In contrast, we use an identity work perspective to analyze how Trump supporters signified white selfhood by denigrating racialized Others as freeloaders, criminals, and discreditable dissenters.
Our identity work approach also enables us to contribute to scholarly conversations about racial discourse and subjectivity. Studies of racial discourse typically frame interviewees’ race talk as expressing subjective attitudes and feelings—although some analysts define whites’ denials of racism as inauthentic identity work (Bonilla-Silva 2006; Burke 2017). We build on this work by more fully adopting an identity work approach and withholding judgment on what kinds of talk may or may not be authentic. Whereas researchers often document racial discourse—which Doane (2017) suggests fosters analytic stagnation—analyzing how people invoke discourse to signify racial identities may be one path forward. In addition, whereas race theorists have developed concepts that allegedly reveal or measure white subjectivity (e.g., white fragility/resentment/prejudice/vulnerability/hostility) that some theorize constitutes a racialized habitus that “guides whites’ identity” (Bonilla-Silva et al. 2006:233), a dramaturgical approach draws attention to how people use emotional communication to signify racial identity.
Our study’s methodological limitations inhibit us from making statistical generalizations, meaningfully comparing groups of respondents, and analyzing other important aspects of racial identity work. Our relatively small convenience sample over-represented young educated men and thus does not enable us to generalize our findings to the larger population of Trump supporters. If we had recruited more purposefully and gathered fieldwork data from groups of supporters and online pronouncements from Trump supporters, we could have triangulated the data and made a stronger case for the representativeness of our findings. An even more rigorous design with elements of random sampling (e.g., see Bonilla-Silva 2006) not restricted to Trump supporters would have enabled us to make broader claims surrounding the applicability of our findings to whites, and to make meaningful comparisons based on class, sexuality, gender, education, and political affiliation. In addition, because our interview questions were open ended and geared toward generating conversation, we did not ask all respondents to talk about the same racial topics, which limited our ability to meaningful compare participants or examine how they position themselves with regard to other racial discourses (e.g., diversity discourse).
In addition, our reliance on interview data restricted our ability to examine social interaction, group and organizational contexts, temporal and embodied processes, and the social conditions and consequences of signifying white selfhood.
Despite such limitations, we believe that signifying aggrieved white selves should be considered a generic process or “sensitizing concept” (Blumer 1969:149) that can be usefully employed and developed in future studies. Our analysis suggests that key elements of the process include: (1) invoking intellectual and moral discourses to signify superiority, (2) using emotional communication to convey judgment, disgust, fear, hostility, indignation, and a lack of empathy; (3) wielding cultural frames to provide ideological cover for systemic racism; and (4) erasing historical narratives or contemporary facts that might otherwise neutralize racial grievances. Much of the aforementioned work on whites’ racial discourse and subjectivity clearly resonate with these and other themes in our analysis, despite its grounding in different interpretive traditions. The value of an identity work approach is that it directs analysts to examine the microsociological processes through which racial categories are reproduced and made meaningful. As such, it complements historical analyses of processes about and provides a framework to empirically analyze the foundational notion in critical race theory that race is a social construct (e.g., Du Bois 1920; Omi and Winant 1986).
Although our analysis of aggrieved white selfhood focused on examining Trump supporters’ words as signifying acts rather than expressions of emotional subjectivity, their identity work likely affected subjectivity. We agree with Blumer (1958:3) that “understanding prejudice must be sought in the process by which racial groups form images of themselves and others.” As Arlie Russell Hochschild (1979) points out, the words people use to construct such imagery and interpret reality shapes how they feel. Such interpretations and feelings, as George Herbert Mead (1934) suggests, can become unreflexive habits or, as Bonilla-Silva (2006) might put it, constitute a “white habitus” that orients one toward sustaining systemic racism. Because Donald Trump used the White House bully pulpit and the 2020 election to further promote a discourse of aggrieved whiteness (Goldberg 2020), not only the presidency but the souls of white folk may be stake.
Whether Trump’s Karens, Chauvins, Proud Boys, and insurrectionists remain mobilized depends on the effectiveness of muting, condemning, and invalidating the discourses upon which their aggrieved white selves exist. However, an army of “Red Hats” may have found aggrieved whiteness so pleasurable (see e.g., Bonilla-Silva 2019a) and become so discursively self-sufficient that canceling Trump will not lessen their commitment. We may not know if they are standing down or standing by until another national call to action against a manufactured crisis grounded in the politics aggrieved whiteness is issued. But paying attention to what they say and the selves they signify in the present may very well clue us in to what we can expect to see in the future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the members of FSU Sociology’s Inequality and Social Justice Working Group for providing feedback on this paper. Thanks also to Pierce Dignman, Ben Dowd-Arrow, and Haley Gentile for research assistance.
Author Contribution
Coauthors are listed in alphabetical order.