Lays out the underlying logic of contemporary poverty governance in the United States. This book argues that poverty governance - how social welfare policy choices get made, how authority gets exercised, and how collective pursuits get organized - has been transformed in the United States by two significant developments.
Hard White explains how the mainstreaming of white nationalism occurred, pointing to two major shifts in the movement. First, Barack Obama's presidential tenure, along with increases in minority representation, fostered white anxiety about Muslims, Latinx immigrants, and black Americans. At the same time, white nationalist leaders shifted their focus and resources from protest to electoral politics, and the book traces the evolution of the movement'spolitical forays from David Duke to the American Freedom Party, the Tea Party, and, finally, the emergence of the Alt-Right. While the book argues that white extremism will have enduring effects on American electoral politics for some time to come, it suggests that the way forward is to refocus the conversation onsocial solidarity, and it concludes with ideas for how to do this.