In the October issue of The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of America’s most prolific writers, has finally put into words why Donald Trump’s elevation to the presidency has placed the United States and the world in peril. Entitled  The First White President, Coates argues that Trump’s win in November was not the result of a disaffected and angry blue collar white electorate, but the choice of a majority of whites in every income bracket:

Trump’s white support was not determined by income…Trump won whites making less than $50,000 by 20 points, whites making $50,000 to $99,000 by 28 points, and whites making $100,000 or more by 14 points.

Coates attributes this notion, shared by pundits on both the left and right, of working -class whites support for Trump because of his populist message as a ‘theater at work…’, when the evidence shows whites overwhelmingly supported Trump ‘against accepted campaign orthodoxy, and against all notions of decency.” More importantly, six months into Trump’s presidency only the people who identify as white approve of the current White House occupant.

Coates gives a compelling reason for this focus on the white working – class – escapism – or the need to believe that class and not racism is the reason for Trump’s ascendancy:

…to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world.

Actions to address America’s problems with race and the need for whites to be ‘white’ would be the outcome, instead whites are an ‘existential threat to themselves’ as well as to the world at large, warns Coates. I addressed this very matter in a previous blog post. Arguing that whites – specifically the working and blue collar classes – see themselves as distinct and separate from Americans of color. What separates them is the very idea of ‘whiteness’ and with it the sense of protection from harm or foul. From the downturn in the economy to the scourge of drug addiction, whites are solely the victims of circumstances beyond their control, whereas people of color in similar circumstances are culturally predestined to be poor and ailed.

Yet, Coates took my critique further saying whites truly fear being the slave:

…a racist distinction…emerged between the “help” (or the “freemen,” or the white workers) and the “servants” (the “negers,” the slaves). The former were virtuous and just, worthy of citizenship, progeny of Jefferson and later Jackson. The latter were servile and parasitic, dim-witted and lazy, the children of African savagery.

…the panic of white slavery lives on in our politics today.

The need for whites to distinguish themselves from blacks has been manifested throughout our history. Notably, the separate but equal doctrine is a byproduct of the fear whites have of being seen or treated in the same way as the slaves or ‘negers’. Coates attacks this baseless fear with great effect, and rightly indicts conservative and liberal pundits alike who write sympathetic columns and articles lamenting the plight of the white working-class’s plummeting life expectancy and job prospects:

And so an opioid epidemic among mostly white people is greeted with calls for compassion and treatment, as all epidemics should be, while a crack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory minimums.

The purpose of this distinction?  To illustrate by the ‘bonds of whiteness’ what racial group is ‘closest to America’s aristocratic class’.

The responses to Coates’s analysis have already begun. With the usual suspects critiquing the style and not the substance of his words. It is a typical non-response…racism is so prevalent and intertwined in the nature and fabric of our nation, it stifles reflection and honest dialogue. Like Coates, James Baldwin warned that racism or white supremacy, “(has) brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they (whites) think they are white”, and he too was dismissed as hyperbole. But the election of Donald Trump has changed everything. It has shined a light on the insidious and guttural nature of institutional racism and will likely force white Americans to finally decide what kind of country America will be: a nation where the majority of its people are indifferent to racism to its peril, or a nation of people proudly and boldly embracing its plurality of races, gender, sexuality, and religion into a waiting and prosperous future.

Update: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay in The Atlantic is an excerpt from his new book We Were Eight Years In Power.