Mudsills, part 5 — demographics

I've talked before about who mudsills are, and how they were part of Trump's winning campaign. Even if they weren't THAT important, they were a factor. And, Trump being Trump was an enabler for them to be more vocal about racism, and the specific type of racism which is associated with them as a sociological group – largely working-class whites looking for someone lower on the socioeconomic latter for them to kick. Several social psychology books talk about this phenomenon; I've read a couple.

This post?

I am going to offer a few takes on the demographics of mudsills in their most common locales, which I have previously identified as "Appalachia extended" — this allows for the mudsills who moved to places like Flint or Milwaukee to work in the auto plants and similar. (Steel mills, the older ones, were actually in Appalachia, the northern end, of course.)

The demographics will concern the locales as well as the mudsills themselves.

First, they're likely to live in an area with at least 3 percent black and / or 3 percent Hispanic population. It's likely that both minorities will be in non-insignificant numbers.

But — neither minority is likely to be above 25 percent, and definitely both will not. The area will also likely have few Asian-Americans.

In other words – enough minorities to be "visible" but in a white-majority population. In Appalachia itself, and often in Appalachia extended, if blacks also moved there from the original Appalachia and nearby, attitudes and relations from original mudsill times will largely still exist. And, there will be just enough Hispanics to be perceived as job stealers, and perhaps seen in the light of stealing jobs that mudsills think blacks should have still been working anyway.

Diet and health are other demographic markers.

Mudsill-heavy areas are likely to be above average in smoking rate. Note that the national rate of adults who have smoked just once in the past year is at 15 percent, according to the American Hearth Association. That's more empirical. So is higher to much higher use of smokeless tobacco.

Education is a biggie. Clear evidence indicates that racism declines with collegiate and post-collegiate education. That said, as Brains points out, the likes of Stephen Miller and Kris Kobach show that college doesn't eradicate racism among either the educated or the rich. It just provides a broader ground for new plants to outgrow the weeds of racism.

These observations are generalizations. However, I state that they are generalizations and NOT stereotypes. Based on modern informal logic, my take is that if an observation applies to more than 50 percent of a population group, it's a generalization, not a stereotype.

Oh, and the 2016 elections seem to reflect this in voting patterns. The Atlantic notes that, among working-class white voters, sociocultural anxiety, and NOT economic anxiety, pushed such voters who indulged any anxieties toward Trump.