At one time, manual laborers were usually Democratic while affluent people were typically Republican, but eventually, working class people who were conservative–with regard to social and religious issues–started supporting Republican candidates; people with more education started supporting Democrats in greater numbers (122).
Social Class and Voting – Roskin
This reference to white workers being “thrown out of employment” recalls Black No More, in which a white labor force is manipulated by their employers into being preoccupied with race, so that it’s possible to exploit them. George Schuyler writes “…so long as the ignorant white masses could be kept thinking of the menace of the Negro to Caucasian race purity and political control, they would give little thought to labor organization” (p. 44; Modern Library edition).