For one thing, it’s not Trump country. Most struggling whites I know here live a life of quiet desperation, mad at their white bosses, not resentful toward their co-workers or neighbors of color.

Guest op-ed by Sarah Smarsh @ NYTimes.com, July 19. Ms. (Smarsh is the author of the forthcoming “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.”)

WICHITA, Kan. — Is the white working class an angry, backward monolith — some 90 million white Americans without college degrees, all standing around in factories and fields thumping their dirty hands with baseball bats? You might think so after two years of media fixation on this version of the aggrieved laborer: male, Caucasian, conservative, racist, sexist.

This account does white supremacy a great service in several ways: It ignores workers of color, along with humane, even progressive white workers. It allows college-educated white liberals to signal superior virtue while denying the sins of their own place and class. And it conceals well-informed, formally educated white conservatives —  from middle-class suburbia to the highest ranks of influence — who voted for Donald Trump in legions [....]