I too agree that its getting worse. I just spoke to someone today who went on an epic rant about white people 'losing the country' which is what I think is driving the reaction today. There is a palpable fear that 'white people' won't have exclusive control of the country. They now have to listen to Latino voices, Black Voices, Asian voices, Middle Eastern Voices, etc. Before they were just background noise but now they have power.
Before immigration was someone controllable and manageable for the xenophobic (I don't think racism is the right word)
I think a lot of it is also because of horrible economic policy has come down hard on rural and disaffected poor whites who are justifiably angry though they direct their anger at a minority which isn't the cause of their problem and this scapegoating is used cynically by politicians to enact policies which are even worse for them, only further strengthening their disdain for others.
A fair share of white people see the country as majority a white working class one. They acknowledge that the people are getting poorer but don't understand the reason why. To them it is because of the violent lazy blacks in the next two towns over and the unpatrotic non-English speaking illegals in the town next door who are making them poorer. Affirmative action is practiced everywhere. So just because the blacks are blacks and the latinos are latinos they get significantly more money than someone who is white. Yes your white friend isn't receiving enough food stamps to make ends meet, however the ghetto hood rat bad bitch welfare queen extraordinaire the next town over is reaping in food stamps, EBT, welfare checks, and everything else to the point where she makes bank and spends it all on rims and her weaves. So America does not have a problem with not giving enough welfare, it merely sucks a lot with the distribution of welfare. If you significantly cut the welfare blacks and latinos receive from affirmative action and then give that money to the hard working whites then things will balance out. This is precisely what "giving money to the people who need it!" means. That the people who don't need it (the blacks and browns) are going to have to give much of the portion of their welfare money to the people who do need it (the whites).
Government is evil because it make these policies exist. It is the government that is giving these people money from YOUR tax dollars. It supports giving minorities home owner grants to move into your neighborhood to make it more dangerous. It funds schools to increase bureaucracy and to help teach ghetto kids who don't want to learn. It supports affirmative action in hiring so companies have to suffer hiring incompetent ghetto black and brown people over the hardworking white man.
This is why so many whites think that the government is incompetent. Not because of healthcare websites, Katrina's bungling (mostly caused by the private sector anyway), or other things. But because the government helps these people who do not need to be helped.
There is also the fact that their communities are getting blacker, browner, and more foreign.
Univision is the most watched TV network, at white bars and dance clubs you will be more likely to hear black artists than white artists playing on the speakers, you can't openly say the word "fag" anymore, their daughter is bringing home friends who have non-white boyfriends or even worse it is your daughter's boyfriend who isn't white. These are the things that many white voters care about. Their vision of America is not a country that is a melting pot that is full of struggling people, but that it is a predominately white country of the I Love Lucy and Elvis age that is now threatened by people from different cultures that are changing that, and that is not a good thing all while ghetto sugar mommas are taking money away from the traditional nuclear white family.
It seems that many liberals do not understand these two things. "How can so many white people vote against their own interest?" well because to them it is their interest to take the surplus of welfare money from the black and brown communities to them. Unfortunately for them this isn't true so they are fighting something that doesn't exist. But the more these whites get squeezed the more they feel that inequality of welfare money is becoming more prevalent. The same with the anti-immigration stances. The reason why so many people don't support it is because they do not want people to come here in the first place. One more brown person in this country is one more person in this country who isn't spreading the culture founded on I Love Lucy and Elvis. Even if they are educated this rings true.
It isn't a uniquely American issue either, fascist parties are gaining prominence in Europe as well. People in Europe are terrified of Muslims and it's really pathetic because issues like mass immigration and welfare fraud are used by the bourgeoisie to distract people from the real problems in their lives.
I am always interested to how openly anti-Muslim Euro-GAF seems to be.Then again it is hard to see who is European and who is American in those threads.
