Yet 36% of working-class blacks and 48% of working-class Hispanics believe their children will do better than they. These attitudes stem from the tremendous leap forward that white working-class Americans made in the 1950s and 1960s. For 200 years, elites had encouraged a sense of white superiority to defuse class resentments and head off interracial class alliances. On average, white men with only a high school degree out-earned blacks with a college degree. And when liberals respond by framing equal rights as a matter of "compassion" or "tolerance," without mentioning the growing class divide, it's not entirely surprising that sections of the white working class mishear calls for diversity as endorsement of their accelerating marginalization.

Source: CNN September 23, 2016 11:48 UTC