Is there an antidote to White grievance?

I’m troubled by the sharp rise of White grievance and resentment in America. It doesn’t take much to spot the politicians and pundits who use coded language, dog whistles, and conspiratorial tweets to fuel this resentment. The worst excesses seem aligned with a large segment of one political party. Conservative columnist Michael Gerson describes the current GOP as blatantly repositioning itself as “an instrument of White grievance”—and pursuing as its main legislative agenda “the suppression of minority voting.”

The why of all this misplaced White grievance appears to be anchored in two realities. First, there is, for many at least, a psychological sense that America is losing its Whiteness—what Toni Morrison once referred to as “the horror of lost status.” As immigrant and ethnic minority populations grow and White communities gradually lose their numerical advantage, a sense of White dominance begins to disappear. That a way of life might be receding, or a psychological sense of privilege or prestige might be waning, is enough to cause many to romanticize the past. Various boogeymen, from immigration to affirmative action, are viewed in terms of a theft of White resources. Loss is basic to this zero-sum view of racial identity.

The other reality inspiring White resentment is more aggressive. It’s a fear-based panic that typically involves some form of rage. Most White grievance is built on a perceived sense of being under siege. The aggrieved think of themselves as a persecuted people, wronged and under attack. In order to cultivate White victimhood, purported enemies must be fashioned or imagined—enemies who can then be targeted and attacked.