This Article Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free All Versions of this Article: 1065912908322408v1 61/4/704    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Olson, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics

Northern Arizona University, joel.olson{at}nau.edu

Scholars tend to agree that American politics has become polarized along partisan and ideological lines, yet the causes of polarization are in much dispute. The author argues that polarization and the culture wars are a consequence, in part, of the changing nature of white identity after the civil rights movement. The transformation of whiteness from a form of social standing to a norm produced ressentiment among whites, which Republican strategists mobilized by depicting Democrats as the party of intellectual snobs and undeserving rabble and the GOP as the party of the virtuous middle. Normalizing this middle and the snobs as white polarized whites along partisan and ideological lines, creating an incentive to win votes by appealing to hot-button cultural issues such as welfare, abortion, and gay marriage.

Key Words: whiteness • political polarization • culture wars • Spiro Agnew • ressentiment • virtuous middle

This version was published on December 1, 2008

Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 4, 704-718 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1065912908322408


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?