White in SA are very pessimistic themselves and they stil backwards and are not 
prepare to be lead by blacks,without trying to be racist.The ANC constested all 
wards with an understanding of non racial and non sexist prosperous SA,that was 
strategic and u know white SA as usual voted DA,find out why...is this a policy 
vote or a white vote to white vote.bcoz ANC policies are non racial and are 
also of benefit to white SA,also DA policies are almost alike.but whites SA 
just don't prefer anything black in power.having DA in this country its not 
helpful for SA.we need a one party state to fast track service delivery. So 
white in SA are just not prepare to transform and be part of change in SA.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

-----Original Message-----
From: Norman Mampane <[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 07:21:14 
To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Why the white working class is alienated, 
pessimistic

Why the white working class is alienated, pessimistic
 Play Video CNBC  – Rick Santorum's Job Plan 
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By National Journal national Journal – Tue May 31, 10:17 am ET
By Ronald Brownstein
National Journal
Almost no one noticed, but around George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, the 
nation crossed a demographic milestone.
>From Revolutionary days through 2004, a majority of Americans fit two 
>criteria. 
They were white. And they concluded their education before obtaining a 
four-year 
college degree. In the American mosaic, that vast white working class was the 
largest piece, from the yeoman farmer to the welder on the assembly line. Even 
as late as the 1990 census, whites without a college degree represented more 
than three-fifths of adults.
But as the country grew more diverse and better educated, the white 
working-class share of the adult population slipped to just under 50 percent in 
the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey. That number has since 
fallen 
below 48 percent.
The demographic eclipse of the white working class is likely an irreversible 
trend as the United States reconfigures itself yet again as a "world nation" 
reinvigorated by rising education levels and kaleidoscopic diversity. That 
emerging America will create opportunities (such as the links that our new 
immigrants will provide to emerging markets around the globe) and face 
challenges (including improving high school and college graduation rates for 
the 
minority young people who will provide tomorrow's workforce).
[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]

Still, amid all of this change, whites without a four-year college degree 
remain 
the largest demographic bloc in the workforce. College-educated whites make up 
about one-fifth of the adult population, while minorities account for a little 
under one-third. The picture is changing, but whites who have not completed 
college remain the backbone of many, if not most, communities and workplaces 
across the country.
They are also, polls consistently tell us, the most pessimistic and alienated 
group in American society.
(PICTURES: Meet the GOP's 2012 Presidential Hopefuls)
The latest measure of this discontent came in a thoughtful national survey on 
economic opportunity released last week by the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic 
Mobility Project. If numbers could scream, they would probably sound like the 
poll's results among working-class whites.
One question asked respondents whether they expected to be better off 
economically in 10 years than they are today. Two-thirds of blacks and 
Hispanics 
said yes, as did 55 percent of college-educated whites; just 44 percent of 
noncollege whites agreed. Asked if they were better off than their parents were 
at the same age, about three-fifths of college-educated whites, 
African-Americans, and Hispanics said they were. But blue-collar whites divided 
narrowly, with 52 percent saying yes and a head-turning 43 percent saying no. 
(The survey, conducted from March 24 through 29, surveyed 2,000 adults and has 
a 
margin of error of ±3.4 percent.)
What makes these results especially striking is that minorities were as likely 
as blue-collar whites to report that they have been hurt by the recession. The 
actual unemployment rate is considerably higher among blacks and Hispanics than 
among blue-collar whites, much less college-educated whites.
(INTERVIEW: Paul Ryan's Finest Hour?)
Yet, minorities were more optimistic about the next generation than either 
group 
of whites, the survey found. In the most telling result, 63 percent of 
African-Americans and 54 percent of Hispanics said they expected their children 
to exceed their standard of living. Even college-educated whites are less 
optimistic (only about two-fifths agree). But the noncollege whites are the 
gloomiest: Just one-third of them think their kids will live better than they 
do; an equal number think their children won't even match their living 
standard. 
No other group is nearly that negative.
This worry is hardly irrational. As Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
economists Frank Levy and Tom Kochan report in a new paper, the average 
high-school-educated, middle-aged man earns almost 10 percent less than his 
counterpart did in 1980. Minorities haven't been exempt from that trend: In 
fact, high-school-educated minority men have experienced even slower wage 
growth 
than their white counterparts over the past two decades, calculates Larry 
Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
But for minorities, that squeeze has been partially offset by the sense that 
possibilities closed to their parents are becoming available to them as 
discrimination wanes. "The distinction is, these blue-collar whites see 
opportunities for people like them shrinking, whereas the African-Americans 
[and 
Hispanics] feel there are a set of long-term opportunities that are opening to 
them that were previously closed on the basis of race or ethnicity," said Mark 
Mellman, a Democratic pollster who helped conduct the Pew survey.
(PICTURES: Top 10 Monuments of D.C.)
By contrast, although it is difficult to precisely quantify, the sense of being 
eclipsed demographically is almost certainly compounding the white working 
class's fear of losing ground economically. That huge bloc of Americans 
increasingly feels itself left behind—and lacks faith that either government or 
business cares much about its plight. Under these pressures, noncollege whites 
are now experiencing rates of out-of-wedlock birth and single parenthood 
approaching the levels that triggered worries about the black family a 
generation ago. Alarm bells should be ringing now about the social and economic 
trends in the battered white working class and the piercing cry of distress 
rising from this latest survey.
Visit National Journal for more political news.

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