When our mainstream media outlets refer again and again to the fiction that Donald Trump's support base is found in the disgruntled white working class, I always wonder, what has become of the black working class?
Are they are still working?
They never existed?
They're not working but still insist on supporting the free trade agenda?
Where exactly have they gone? The reason I wonder is because when I was a pre-NAFTA foot-soldier of the working class, I had black dudes around me all the time. I know they existed.
Where have they gone?
It's a popular conceit among the mainly white intelligentsia and journalsim elites that "working class" means white folks with less than a college education. That substantial quotient of the working class that didn't have white skin just got disappeared to somewhere...
But where?
When I was at Budd Automotive back in the '70's, there were black dudes everywhere on the shop floor. I know for a fact they lost their jobs just like the white dudes when the plant closed.
Ditto for the black dudes at Frankel Steel.
Ditto for the black dudes at Saint John Shipbuilding, where, by the way, I worked alongside black guys who could trace their family's heritage in North America at least 150 years further back than I could mine.
But the black working class is just GONE!
Nope, it's just the white working class that is so fed up with "the system" that they're stooping to supporting Donald Trump.
It's a mystery alright...
Truth is, the unemployed auto-industry black dude, the unemployed steel-fab black dude, and the unemployed black shipyard worker all have way more in common with their unemployed white working class brothers than they do with DeRay Mckesson.
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