Over the course of these past few weeks we’ve been increasingly inundated with phrases like “working class white voters”, “white, blue-collar voters”, or simply “working class whites.”  The rampant use of these stereotyped groups in relation to voting patterns is always used in context with Barack Obama’s candidacy.   However, these attempts to point out divisions within our country among racial lines have failed.

Mostly the continued attempts fail because it’s blatant how incorrectly they’ve defined me, and millions of other people.  Being white isn’t relevant to voting patterns unless we’re trying to highlight and blow racism in this country out of proportion, which many appear hell-bent on doing.  If we look below the surface, we can more clearly see that voting patters among so called “working class whites” is as diverse and wide ranging as America is itself. 

I remember reading Wes’ blog about how he was struck by the diversity of members submitting to our site.  So I went back and browsed some more on our mosaic and I had to laugh at these continued attempts to racially profile and divide us. The diversity I saw within those submissions is more to the point of what America represents… and sure enough, there are plenty of us so called “working class white people” in there.

Of course we don’t have to go back very far to remember how well Barack put this himself when delivering his now famous keynote address…

“The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.”

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”