White-liberal concern for forgotten Americans masks identity-politics dismissal

Evidence

We are told constantly we must remedy this anxiety: Who is speaking for the white working class? Who represents rust-belt America? Who is talking to the so-called forgotten American? Every time I hear the question asked, especially by white liberals, I sink deeper into a kind of depression or rage, because these are just nice ways of saying that white people matter more than others. Nice ways of saying that the only way we can defeat Trumpism is to leave behind, or put aside, concerns about justice with regard to black and brown people or women or the LGBTQ community because all of that is just bad identity politics. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 428

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the class-vs-race framing tension the reader is tracking across works on identity and recognition.