The Working Class Don’t Care About Identity Politics
By: Aj Krow
Tags: Identity Politics, Election 2020, Politics, Biden, Working Class

The Working Class Don’t Care About Identity Politics

Frankly, they have other things to worry about

Photo by Margaux Bellott on Unsplash

In a surprising turn of events, Nancy Pelosi said this week in front of the House that because we have Biden as president-elect and a vaccine is coming, maybe a stimulus check isn’t needed anymore.

Meanwhile, people are being thrown out of their homes, can’t afford to pay their bills, have no food other than whatever schools or food banks are providing, and hospital bills are leaving them close to or at bankruptcy.

I work in a majority Hispanic high school. 96% of my students come from low-income backgrounds, and many struggle to speak English.

Every time a teacher tells a student they should go to college, they are turned off by it. However, when I once mentioned there are people like Bernie Sanders and AOC fighting to raise the minimum wage while discussing Democratic primary election candidates, the topic switched immediately from politics to:

“Dude, Costco is paying $12 an hour,” one student said.

“Bro, Sam’s is paying $13 an hour,” the other responded.

The other students’ eyes lit up in excitement.

This was a conversation I had with my students last school year. I wasn’t shocked. I was confused.

What should I as a teacher do to help students understand they can make much more money if they go to college?

This school year, I came to a great realization. Low-income students, and therefore, the lower-income and working class, don’t care about the distant future. They don’t care about political correctness, or protesting for the Black Lives Matter movement. They don’t care about how many genders there are, much less care about the violence happening between police officers and protesters.

They care about putting food on the table.

I will concede very quickly that politics is very relevant to the working class. For example, Amazon is hiring union busters to break up any meetings occurring in the workplace.

However, when it comes to socially woke political correctness, the working class doesn’t care because they have other things to worry about.

In psychology, there is a theory called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Maslow represents these needs in the form of a pyramid. On the first level are the basic needs, like food, water, air, and shelter. If these needs cannot be met, a person cannot move onto the next need, which is security and safety.

In other words, an Amazon worker cares more about providing his or her family with food and shelter than they do their own security or safety in the workplace. If anyone approaches them about protesting the corporation to fight for higher wages, they would immediately walk away from that situation, since their first needs in the pyramid can’t be met by joining a union.

If they lose their job while fighting for higher wages, they no longer have any reason to protest, since their focus will be on meeting their first need. If and when they find a job elsewhere, they will have no need in protesting Amazon, much less their new workplace, as they have no interest in losing what meets their first need: a paycheck.

How does this apply to the political landscape?

When President-Elect Biden announced his communications team would be only women, liberals rejoiced, saying this was a movement in the right direction.

The lower-income and working class don’t care about an all-women communications team. They want a stimulus check. They want a federal jobs program. They want lower taxes. They want to meet their first need on Maslow’s hierarchy.

The lower-income and working class are barely surviving on unemployment. They are on the brink of eviction, trying to make their ends meet, all while trying to figure out if their kids should go to school while a pandemic is raging.

Biden recently announced he will appoint the first Black Pentagon chief. Liberals were ecstatic for his decision in appointing more minorities to the position. Meanwhile, the lower-income and working class just shrugged. What is a Black Pentagon chief going to do that a white chief wasn’t doing?

(General Lloyd Austin has a history of supporting the war in Iraq instead of pulling out of an endless war, but his reputation and military deficit hawkery is a story for another time.)

This is why in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the poorest areas in Texas and in the U.S., the people turned out in higher numbers for Trump in 2020 than they did in 2016. Clinton won Starr County 9,246 to Trump’s 2,218 in 2016. In 2020, Biden took 9,099 votes in Starr County to Trump’s 8,224.

Why? It’s simple. Trump provided the working and lower class two things: a stimulus check with his name on it, and his anti-lockdown message in order to win over people who want to go back to work. A $1,200 check for families that make less than $20,000 a year is a lifesaver. That’s all Trump needed to do to win over the working class, and looking at Starr County, it’s clear he did just that.

If liberals want liberal policies to be implemented, such as rights for the LBGTQIA+ community, better police training, anti-racism training, or any other policies related to identity or race politics, we must first address the first need of Maslow’s hierarchy.

In order for more people to show up to vote, we first need to fight for the working class to get higher wages, paid maternity leave, paid vacation time, a federal jobs guarantee, and stimulus checks during a pandemic.

We had better options than Biden

When Tucker Carlson invited Democratic Presidential nominee Andrew Yang on his show, Carlson developed respect for Yang. People like Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, and Bernie Sanders don’t focus on identity politics and fighting fascism; they focus on helping people meet the first need: putting food on the table. Lowering healthcare costs and making it free for all people. Providing a federal jobs guarantee program to solve unemployment. Raising the minimum wage. Andrew Yang even addressed the need for jobs once artificial intelligence takes over the truck-driving field.

However, the people chose President-elect Biden. His agenda has been putting women and black people whose reputations are questionable in high-level positions and the media is celebrating it. Meanwhile, the working class is barely getting by, if at all.

If the people want identity politics to be on the table, our government first needs to address the first need on Maslow’s hierarchy. The working class wants jobs. They want stimulus checks. They want a higher minimum wage and representation in their workplace and fair treatment from their employer.

If Trump runs for President in 2024, he will use the same message to appeal to the working class: more jobs, higher wages, and lower taxes. If Democrats do nothing to improve the current working-class problems, it is very likely that counties like Starr county, who have voted blue for years, will flip red in the next Presidential election. Until then, Biden will likely place more women and minority people in high-level positions and claim that is progress for our country without addressing problems affecting the working class.