I think a decent amount of motivation for these reactionary tendencies is that they see the left as pandering to blacks without giving a shit about white rurals. They then support racism because they feel its justified.
Perhaps but those feelings long outstrip current day ‘identity politics’. Even much of the policies designed in theory to help workers, such as some of the unionization drives in the 30s, helped white workers disproportionally above black ones, precisely to prevent them from feeling ‘left out’. Any concession to black people or workers cannot be seen as ‘not giving a shit about rural whites’ otherwise we are accepting that 1. The dems really do pander to black people, which is certifiably false and 2. It is worth abandoning commitments to racial justice and equality to appease a minority of white rural people (not all certainly) that will not be happy if any attention is given to POC people ever.
