Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America

by Ben Bradlee

She loved to read and excelled academically, yet she felt “a deeply anti-intellectual vibe,” and that it was never cool to do well in school. She never thought she was someone who could be dated or thought of as attractive. She actually made up a fake name—Lauren—in an attempt to be more accepted, but never used it. “My friend said, ‘Alia, no one is going to start calling you Lauren!’” Off at Barnard, Habib felt liberated. “I was surprised that people think I’m pretty! It was shocking to me. Or that people like that I’m smart. I never looked back.” She thinks many whites in Luzerne County view issues such as drugs, welfare, and crime through a racial prism. “There is this sense among a lot of people that blacks and Latinos are getting more benefits than they are—to the town and county’s detriment. This is a very widely held view. A sense that ‘they are taking from people like us’—taking jobs and safety in the community—and that’s consciously or unconsciously part of what Trump spoke to. And Wilkes-Barre has a crime problem that is understood in racial terms. Newcomers are seen as drug dealers or benefit scammers. I think this informed people’s vote, and there was no sense that the Democrats helped them—just people of color.

The "she" is Alia Habib, 40, a Wilkes Barre native, who suffered from local racism and anti-intellectualism. This passage very well sums up much of the take on things by local whites.