In the past two days, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the opening paragraph to W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk”: “…the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”
The Civil War was not the metamorphosis of American race relations that some in the Union had hoped for. Post-Reconstruction, civil rights advocates found themselves at the bottom of a long ladder—and they’re still climbing. I have no doubt that the color line remains today, dark and ugly, scorched into interstate highways, civil courts, redlined mortgages, school zoning laws, and public housing projects. But there’s another line too, staring up at me every time I see a $6 carton of eggs.
If the problem of the 20th century was the color line, could the problem of the 21st century be the class line?
Bernie Sanders has been saying it for years, and he said it again on Tuesday night: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
This is another turn in the wheel of social inequality—an evolved, insidious form of segregation just as difficult to penetrate. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is evaporating away. Over and over again this election season, voters made it clear that the economy was their top priority. The cost of living, the cost of healthcare, the cost of education, of childcare, of rent, of groceries, of transportation, of utilities, of reliable internet access, of legal representation, of retirement, of clean water, of credit management, of public safety, of emergency services, of life insurance, of cell phone plans, of emotional counseling, of eldercare, of basic hygiene, of the clothes on our backs, and that carton of eggs—there’s a line down the middle, with “us” on one side and “them” on the other.
It would be wrong to spend the upcoming weeks and months raging that 72 million Americans are bigoted, sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic assholes. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are. But disparaging the other side because they don’t, to use David Brooks’s words, “speak in the right social justice jargon or hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue,” only tightens the class line hold on us all. There was a rightward shift across the board—to the point where even Vermont lost its democratic supermajority in the state legislature—and we can’t explain it away.
Brooks got it right: For all our pontificating about identity, equity, and justice, “there’s something off about an educated class that looks in the mirror of society and sees only itself.”
The Democratic Party has been losing me for a long time, and Tuesday night felt like the final nail in the coffin. After 2016, Democrats had an opportunity to listen to their constituencies, to change course and respond to desperate calls for change. Instead, we got Liz Cheney last month turning a vote for Harris into your suburban aunt’s dirty little secret. Democratic Party elites have completely failed to recognize that politics in this country are no longer liberal versus conservative, but status quo versus change. Trump gets that. He turned an old Democratic dream into reality: winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote with a multiracial working-class majority. It goes to show that voters aren’t interested in politicians who preach the sanctity of institutions and bipartisan chumminess anymore—that’s old news, and it hasn’t been working for a while now. Until voters see change in the material reality of their everyday lives, this is the world we’re living in.
In the weeks to come, there will be fingers pointed and accusations leveled at any number of things. America is racist and sexist, Democrats should have condemned Israel, Democrats should have amassed support for Israel, Biden should have dropped out sooner, Josh Shapiro would have been a better VP, there should have been an open primary, etc., etc., etc. I don’t see much use in rehashing what could have or should have been done. I’m furious, obviously. But I’ve also run out of patience for my own wallowing.
I think of Rebecca Solnit: “There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it’s sunny or raining.”
All I can hope is that we will keep walking, that we will save what can be saved, and that this will finally force the Democratic Party to recalibrate in line with the change Americans so desperately need.
Sophie Jager is a member of the class of 2025 and can be reached at sjager@wesleyan.edu.