Blog Post #7

One of the readings I chose for this week is Wendy Anderson's, "Rebirthing a Nation," which touched on many of the overarching topics highlighted this week. Specifically, I will focus on the idea of the "other" and how it is being used to enable white victimhood and fragility. To contextualize this idea, Anderson describes the rise of the Tea Party and highlights Sarah Palin as one of the spearhead figures of the movement, "Sarah Palin's role as an outsider and descriptions of 'other' status contributed to the Tea Party's rhetorical embodiment of 'white victimology,' or white identity politics, in order to secure an 'outsider' status" (Wendy Anderson, p. 85). In other words, Sarah Palin was contributing to white victimhood by attributing characteristics of affluent white women (and men) in the Tea Party to "the other" and suggesting that they were under attack (using conservative feminist arguments).

I thought it was interesting how this tied into the Trump presidency in many ways. Similar to Palin, Donald Trump would create a narrative in which white people could better fit into "the other". For example, he created a narrative that white, working-class voters from rural and Rust Belt communities felt abandoned by the political establishment," (Lee Bebout) attributing this sense of being a part of "the other," thus enabling white victimhood. By building this narrative, agency can be stolen from minority groups and power dynamics can continue in favor of the white population.

Citation:

Bebout, Lee. “Trump Tapped into White Victimhood – Leaving Fertile Ground for White Supremacists.” The Conversation, 6 Jan. 2021, theconversation.com/trump-tapped-into-white-victimhood-leaving-fertile-ground-for-white-supremacists-150587.