(Above): (Inset, l-r): Arlie Russell Hochschild, Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley; Mindy Romero, Founder & Director, Center for Inclusive Democracy; Davin Phoenix, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UC Irvine.

By Sunita Sohrabji/EMS Contributing Editor

White voters, who overwhelmingly chose Donald Trump in his re-election bid, say they feel disenfranchised in a new America which prioritizes other races over their own.

According to exit poll data, three out of five white voters voted for Trump, baffling pollsters who believed the Administration’s record during Trump’s tenure would handily oust him from office. Almost 45 percent of college educated white women also voted for Trump, according to exit poll data.

In total, 74 million people voted for Trump, who, on Dec. 12, lost his re-election bid after the electoral college declared a win for Democratic contender Joe Biden, who won more than 81 million votes.

Arlie Hochschild, professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, has surveyed the Trump landscape for the past five years, ever since the businessman announced his bid for office on June 16, 2015, descending a golden escalator at Trump Towers in Manhattan.

The renowned sociologist spoke of her current research with blue collar workers in Appalachia, a very low-income, primarily white rural area in Eastern Kentucky. The coal-mining industry, which provides the majority of jobs in the region, is in deep decline as the U.S. moves towards greener energy sources.

At a Dec. 11 briefing organized by Ethnic Media Services, Hochschild said the stereotype of a Trump voter is the guy with the red Make America Great Again, pumping his fist in the air. Other images that come to her mind include Mark and Patricia McCloskey of St. Louis, Missouri, who brandished guns outside their home in June as Black Lives Matters protesters marched by; the McCloskeys went on to speak at the Republican National Convention.

But in Appalachia, a different sort of Trump supporter emerges: white people who believe they are a minority in their own country as they watch other ethnic groups eclipse them economically.

“They actually feel that life is rigged against them,” said Hochschild, noting that these voters get their picture of reality from Fox News, and CNN or MSNBC on rare occasions.

“They see that people of color are newscasters. They see black football stars and basketball stars getting multi-million dollar deals to advertise stuff. And they think ‘Wow they’re millionaires or billionaires. Gosh. Those blacks are really getting 1ahead.’”

“There’s a sense of being left out,” she said, adding: “They feel colonized by liberal culture, which says whites are bad: they are racist. And men are bad: they are rapists.”

“They feel like a minority group that is in decline, and they feel that people of color are rising while they are declining,” said Hochschild. She noted the anomaly: the economics of Black and Latinx households have largely been on a downward trajectory over the past decade.

In comparison to white voters, majorities of Black, Latino, Asian and Native American voters rejected Trump by large margins and turned out in force, helping defeat the incumbent President.