If you ask American voters to name their biggest concerns, kitchen table issues always head the list.
It’s not a partisan issue. Everybody wants a good job, decent health care and affordable gas and groceries. But white conservatives have a more pressing concern: They are scared to death their tribe is losing its dominant position.
Donald Trump understands this. That’s why he keeps winning elections.
In 1953, the year of my birth, 89% of Americans were white; now it’s only 57%. In less than a decade, the white tribe will comprise a minority of Americans.
When I was a kid, white people weren’t just numerically dominant, we controlled all the money, the best jobs and held virtually every seat in Congress.
In my childhood years, a white cultural consensus was consistently reinforced by schoolteachers, preachers and politicians. The precise tenets of this consensus were rarely spelled out, but everyone knew the score.
“The precise tenets of this consensus were rarely spelled out, but everyone knew the score.”
White domination
The primary tenet of the white American cultural consensus was that the United States was founded by white people for white people. Our tribe settled the land, built the mines, mills and factories, established the universities and generated all the wealth. In theory, people of color enjoyed the full rights of citizenship, but their subordinate status was largely assumed.
When I was a child, most white people regarded themselves as more highly evolved, spiritually and intellectually, than people of color. It wasn’t a subject most people felt comfortable talking about, but the former inhabitants of “darkest Africa” were generally regarded as unready for democracy.
Conservative whites doubted the races ever would live as equals; liberals believed the day would surely come in the fulness of time, but the time never was now. The painful transition from enslavement to Jim Crow segregation to full participation in the social, financial and economic life of the nation was regarded as natural, proper and even inevitable. If it was to be successful, the slow march to racial equality couldn’t be rushed. That was the enlightened position.
Hard work and self-reliance
According to the white consensus, poor people, regardless of racial considerations, were responsible for their poverty. According to this moral logic, the dominant position of white people was entirely due to hard work and discipline. Government couldn’t help the poor without rewarding laziness and discouraging personal responsibility. Welfare programs were tolerated so long as they were directed exclusively to the “deserving poor.” The “undeserving poor,” by contrast, got prison.
America is a Christian nation
The white consensus also had a religious dimension. It was commonly assumed that the United States had been established as a Christian nation. A year after I was born, the United States added the phrase “one nation under God” to the pledge of allegiance, and it was generally understood that the God in question was a Protestant Christian.
In the wake of World War II, white status was conferred on Jewish Americans by progressive whites, but their refusal to embrace Protestant Christianity made them an alien race in the eyes of conservative whites, and Catholics fared little better. Because Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus comprised less than 1% of the American population in 1953, they were largely ignored. Atheists and agnostics, less than 2% of Americans at mid-century, were similarly invisible.
Democracy is a Christian idea
In the heart of the cold war, it was commonly believed America had been tasked by Almighty God to spread Christianity and democracy throughout the world. Because democracy was believed to be the political expression of Christianity, only a Christian people could make democracy work. It was a package deal. By a similar logic, Christianity was linked with free enterprise just as communism was joined at the hip with atheism.
“Because America was the defender of Christian democracy, enlistment in the military was regarded as the highest expression of patriotism.”
Because America was the defender of Christian democracy, enlistment in the military was regarded as the highest expression of patriotism. Those who chose not to enlist could at least celebrate the noble sacrifice of those who did.
Men and women are fundamentally different
I was born into a world in which men and women were viewed as fundamentally different. Men were suited to the world of physical work, administration and high finance. Women were temperamentally suited to domestic chores. Single women could occupy the lower rungs of the workforce, but with the arrival of children, the exclusive role of women should be as a mother to their children and a “helpmeet” to their husbands.
My mother was a highly intelligent and articulate woman who worked as a secretary before marriage and after my sister and I were in school. She often complained about having to fix the faulty grammar, disorganized sentence structure and sloppy thinking of her male bosses. But her subordinate role was non-negotiable. It really was a man’s world.
Sex outside heterosexual marriage is shameful
The white cultural consensus had a clearly delineated sexual component. For starters, sexual activity was restricted, in theory at least, to married heterosexual couples. Any other form of sexual expression bred social chaos and was considered illegitimate. Single mothers and dead-beat dads were publicly shamed because children needed a mother to keep the home fires burning and a father to bring home the bacon.
This was the day of the double standard. The sexual infidelity of men, especially prominent figures like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, were either met with a boys-will-be-boys shrug or simply ignored. Young girls were warned that dressing and behaving in a provocative manner could “get them in trouble.”
The pop songs, films and television offerings of my childhood focused on kissing and hand holding — explicit references to sex were scrupulously avoided. Married TV couples often slept in separate beds. Because same-sex attraction and pre-marital sex were not considered appropriate topics for “mixed company,” discussion of these matters was restricted to bars, military barracks and football locker rooms.
Authoritarianism
“It should come as no surprise that a brand of Christianity committed to literal hellfire would embrace authoritarian policies.”
Supporters of the white consensus believe it is the only glue holding American society together. For this reason they support law-and-order politics, prison expansion, the war on drugs, harsh penalties and vigorous border control. It should come as no surprise that a brand of Christianity committed to literal hellfire would embrace authoritarian policies.
The white consensus abides
In 1953, most white citizens believed America had been shaped by this white American cultural consensus and would not long survive without it. The white consensus was thus a package deal; you couldn’t reject one tenet of the consensus without jeopardizing the entire program.
In recent decades, of course, every tenet of the American white cultural consensus has been critiqued, discountenanced and ridiculed, especially within the academy, the entertainment industry and elite circles. In fact, most liberal whites inhabit social niches in which these ideas have been largely rejected as relics of a thankfully bygone age.
But in many sections of America, particularly the rural South, the white consensus is almost as potent as it was in 1953.
It is often claimed that religion is downstream from politics. I would argue that, in the United States at least, both politics and religion live downstream from the old white consensus. White conservatives have hitched their wagon to the entire package; white liberals believe that the program must be scrapped in its entirety.
“Both politics and religion live downstream from the old white consensus.”
The civil war over the white consensus plays out at the margins of white politics
Black and Latino conservatives readily endorse some aspects of the white consensus (particularly the sexual and patriarchal bits) but push back against the white supremacist flavor of the program. White Democrats tend to be more socially liberal, and far less religious, than nonwhite Democrats. Nonwhite Republicans are more concerned with racial equity and inclusion than their white counterparts.
Many white voters neither accept nor reject the old white consensus. They can be swayed by arguments for fairness and equal rights, and they can also be influenced by the need to protect traditional American values (code language for the old white consensus). Because they don’t follow the news very closely, and rarely think about politics, religion, or the culture war, they are less likely to vote than are more ideologically driven white people. And when they do vote, they are primarily concerned about the price of gas and groceries. These nonideological whites can sway the outcome of elections, but the political game is driven by white people whose primary interest is in preserving or abolishing the old white consensus.
The rumored demise of the white consensus
Prior to Trump, both conservative and liberal thought leaders tiptoed around the white cultural consensus. Having grown up in Arkansas, a pragmatic center-left politician like Bill Clinton was elected and re-elected by tipping the hat to the white consensus: ramping up the war on drugs, building prisons, “reforming” welfare, enforcing the border and occasionally sniping at Black radicals like Sista Soulja. Ronald Reagan depended on the support of old white consensus groups like the Moral Majority, but his immigration policy was downright liberal by contemporary standards.
At the turn of the 21st century, most mainstream politicians regarded the old white consensus as a relic of the past. It might remain influential in the deep South for another decade or two, but its downward trajectory seemed obvious. Americans were celebrating Martin Luther King Day and electing the first Black president.
By now, it is obvious that rumors of the death of the white consensus had been greatly exaggerated.
Trump and the white consensus
White evangelicals are quick to declare their fidelity to the Bible, but their deepest commitment is to the old white consensus. They stick with Trump because no other politician has been willing to champion their cause with such shameless consistency. His whites-only immigration policy, his exclusion of nonevangelicals from the White House, and the elimination of women and people of color from the highest ranks of the military is clearly designed to return the nation to 1953.
“Trump may have won the unqualified support of most white evangelicals, but that isn’t enough.”
Trump may have won the unqualified support of most white evangelicals, but that isn’t enough. He also needs the grudging support of nonideological whites and a considerable number of conservative Latino and Black voters. He accomplished that feat in 2024 but is unlikely to score a repeat.
Nonideological whites will support a man like Trump so long as prices are stable, jobs are plentiful, the nation is at peace and salaries are rising. People of color who embrace the traditional sexual morality and patriarchal aspects of the old white consensus won’t tolerate the kind of blatant racism we have witnessed in the first half of Trump 47.
From the moment Trump descended on his golden escalator, MAGA has been about restoring the old white consensus. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Many evangelical pastors are uncomfortable with blatant white supremacy, but they dare not speak against it. So long as Trump fondles the Bible on occasion and says nice things about God, he can pass as a man of faith. To the horror of many, he has become the face of white evangelical Christianity.
We are in desperate need of a Christian message that subjects the old white consensus to gospel scrutiny. We must build a Christian ethical vision rooted in justice, fairness, kindness and, above all, universal and unqualified love. Will that message put butts in the seats? Probably not. But Jesus leaves us no option.
Alan Bean
Alan Bean leads the nonprofit Friends of Justice and lives in Fort Worth, Texas, where he attends Broadway Baptist Church.