Flashback to May 2008 — Ed.
Clinton’s white voters lack the salient feature of the white experience– privilege. As Stuff White People Like suggests, privilege nowfunctions as a rarefied club that excludes people based not on theirskin color but on their economic status, personal tastes and aestheticsensibilities. The website tips toward progressive emblems of privilege(public radio), but because plenty of Republicans like iPods andfarmers markets, it’s safe to say the actual cohort is bigger than that(or at least could support a sister site about white love forMcMansions, mega-churches and golf).
Yes, this club is still called “white,” but as time goes on, thatwhiteness becomes more conceptual than literal. You don’t have to bewhite to be “white.” You just need enough disposable income and thedesire to buy the lifestyle accessories and adopt the points of viewthat were once exclusively associated with it.
So where does that leave Clinton’s last-ditch voting bloc? Barred fromthis new whiteness (and apparently unwilling or unable to make commoncause with others who are also outside the pale), the people who handedClinton a decisive victory in West Virginia on Tuesday have beenstripped of so much social currency over the last few decades that youwonder if a new racial category — called “off-whites” perhaps? — isabout to emerge.
West Virginia had too few delegates at stake to matter much. Still,it’s been easy to get the feeling that some people, particularly thosein the Stuff White People Like demographic, have concluded that theplace is so backward it doesn’t matter at all. They were egged on by amedia that appeared at times to be reporting on something asinconsequential as a homecoming queen election.
The problem is, voters like those in West Virginia don’t see it thatway. They may represent a shrinking demographic, but, as all thecampaigns know, there are still enough of them that they can’t beignored. The catch is that in an election in which race plays such aprominent role, the greatest tension may not be between black and whitebut white and off-white.