Sit-ins finally made class privilege fail to shield white elites from civil rights costs

Evidence

In this climate, white businessmen found themselves increasingly attracted to the logic of segregationists. Throughout the reign of the moderate coalition, these forces had steadily expanded their defense of segregation to move from a negative argument founded in starkly racist fears to a more measured rationale predicated on the middle-class entitlements and individual rights that “forced integration” supposedly threatened. In the earlier rounds of the struggle over segregation, such arguments had found ready audiences among working-class and middle-class whites. But in the wake of the sit-ins, they held a much broader appeal, and earlier class divisions within the white community seemed ready to be wiped away. The white elite who usually dismissed segregationists as “rednecks” complaining about nothing now found that they too worried about the personal costs of civil rights change. While the privileges of class had let them escape the course of residential desegregation and school desegregation, such differences did nothing to shield them from the sit-ins. Their fellow whites had reconsidered their politics in the wake of their personal confrontations with the civil rights movement, when residential desegregation struck working-class neighborhoods and when school integration alarmed middle-class parents. Now, as the civil rights movement struck home for them, too, the white elite found itself forced to do the same. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 461

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Lays out the mechanism by which each class stratum in turn converts from moderation to rights-based segregationism once personally confronted — the chapter’s thesis in full form.
• XREF: Directly relevant to modern conservative coalition-building studies noting similar conversions as costs of egalitarian policy reach each new class. — connects to: Business elites backed racial moderation primarily to protect profits — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 88; Sit-ins taught businessmen that racial progressivism hurt their profits — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 416; Sit-ins inverted the property-rights logic that had defeated residential segregationists — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 417 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Economic privilege fails to secure full citizenship privileges for racialized Muslims #corroborates (0.85) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 471
• Class privilege fails to shield Muslim Americans from racialized surveillance. #corroborates (0.82) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 473
• Ethnic assimilation granted whiteness privileges regardless of class #contradicts (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 413
• Racial ideas were deployed to deflect economic class resentment away from elites #corroborates (0.72) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 711
• Oppression of racialized others primarily serves the wealthy, not ordinary white people #corroborates (0.72) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1410