What Oregon Says About America

As we all know, the dominant explanation coming out of Oregon and Kentucky's differing Democratic primary results will go like this: Oregonians are wealthier, better-educated and racially homogeneous, and therefore free of the kind of racial politics we have seen in other states recently. Hence their support for Obama. Kentuckians, by contrast, are poorer, less well-educated and are in a state with legacies of racial difference. Hence their support for Clinton.

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First, as Sam Stein pointed out in a post two days ago, Oregon is indeed a working class state. Second, it is a mistake to imagine that Oregon is somehow free of the racial history that formed the nation more generally. Oregon's lack of diversity is not an accident -- it is itself a legacy of white supremacy.

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As Oregon shows, white working class people -- just like anyone else -- have the capacity to vote their concerns, interests and beliefs in terms other than race. Indeed, if Obama seriously addresses the problems of economically marginalized people, he may help find a way out of the racial machinations of the modern right.