If the more intrusive tools of civil rights were not a temporary set of measures, as Justice O’Connor assumed, but a permanent regime, then everything appeared in a different light. Then working-class white people were not engaged in any heroic enterprise of welcoming their black neighbors. They were being ousted, rather, on someone else’s say-so, from their niche in American life. They were not saints but suckers. Although Obama was the opposite of an incendiary politician, this interpretation of things, as it sank in, had an alarming effect on the public, especially when it was coupled with
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