Majority of Americans Believe U.S. Losing its Culture and Identity
May 11, 2017 in News by RBN Staff
A new study has found that 55% of the U.S. public believe America is in danger of losing its culture and identity.
Non-partisan research group PRRI has published a raft of statistics that underscore how insecure Americans, particularly white working class Americans, feel about their future.
Asked if the United States was “losing its culture and identity,” 55% of respondents said yes, with 68% of white working class Americans feeling that way.
Almost half (48%) of white working class Americans also feel that “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country,” while 62% believe that immigrants arriving from other countries threaten American culture.
65% of white working class respondents feel that “American culture and way of life has deteriorated since the 1950s,” while 52% believe discrimination against whites is now as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. 70% of white college educated Americans disagreed.
Asked if the American dream of working hard and getting ahead still holds true, 46% of white working class Americans agreed, while 48% said the American dream was once a reality but isn’t any longer.
Chris Menahan documents how some of these attitudes could have developed, citing a correlation between shifting demographics and the violent crime rate in America, as well as related problems like skyrocketing divorce rates, debt and out of wedlock births.
It’s obvious that white, working class Americans are becoming less and less hopeful about the future of their country, which is undoubtedly why many of them voted for Donald Trump.
With opioid abuse continuing to soar, white Americans who find themselves in a cycle of despair are simultaneously being lectured by the left that they have “white privilege,” although how this is supposed to be helping them in any feasible way is a mystery.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s efforts to bring jobs home will be enough to lift this demographic group out of the malaise they currently find themselves in, but the resentment is growing.