Don't think the wall is about race? Think again.

by digby





This is a series of tweets from Robert P. Jones from the new PRRI Poll:

“Who are we as a country? That’s the question on the table. And it’s getting fought out in this symbolic territory that symbolizes [partisans’] deepest values and conflicts with the other party.”

Don't think #TheWall is about race? [Disagree] Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class, among those who: 

-Favor wall: 74% 

-Oppose wall: 34%

Don't think #TheWall is about race? 2/3 [Agree] Discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minority groups, among those who: 

-Favor wall: 65% 

-Oppose wall: 24% 

Don't think #TheWall is about race? 1/3 [Agree] Killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents rather than broader pattern, among those who: 

-Favor wall: 75% 

-Oppose wall: 25%

Opinions about the wall have become deeply interwoven with attitudes about the larger changes in culture, demography and gender relations that are reshaping American society. While Trump and congressional Democrats are mostly debating the wall on the grounds of effectiveness and efficiency, polling also suggests that for each party the barrier has become a powerful symbol of whether these underlying changes in American life should be welcomed or resisted.

"Who are we as a country? That's the question on the table," said Robert P. Jones, the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization that studies public attitudes about religion and culture. "That's a really fundamental question. And it's getting fought out in this symbolic territory over something like a wall, which to both sides can symbolize some of their deepest values and conflicts with the other party."

The wall's symbolic resonance complicates the challenge of reaching a legislative compromise between Trump and congressional Republicans -- who are demanding funding for it as the price of reopening the federal government -- and Democrats, who not only view it as ineffective but are reluctant to validate a keystone of Trump's hardline immigration policies and what many in the party see as a symbol of racism.

During the 1970s and 1980s, political scientists and legal scholars described the battle over abortion rights as "a clash of absolutes" that crystallized the emerging cultural divide between the groups in society that welcomed more permissive attitudes toward sex and more fluid family arrangements and traditionalists led by the emerging religious right movement that mobilized in opposition to them.

In the same way, the wall may be becoming a "clash of absolutes" that crystallizes the key 21st-century cultural divide over the nation's growing ethnic and racial diversity.

"It may be the clearest and most honest debate we've had about the fault lines in the country, but only if you peel it back and recognize it's not just about" border security, said Jones. "With the shutdown and the centrality of the wall you can say at least the real issues are coming straight to the fore."

As I've written before, attitudes toward demographic, cultural and even economic change have become the central dividing line between the Republican and Democratic political coalitions.

Republicans mobilize what I've called a "coalition of restoration" revolving around the groups that express the most unease and hostility about the big changes reshaping America, especially older, blue-collar, evangelical and non-urban whites.

Democrats rely on a competing "coalition of transformation" centered on the mostly urbanized groups that are most comfortable with these changes, particularly young people (millennials and the first post-millennials, who will enter the electorate in 2020), minorities and college-educated and secular white voters, especially women.

In this sharply divided political alignment, the wall looms as a concrete (literally, in earlier versions of Trump's plan) manifestation of deeper views about whether these changes are rejuvenating the country or threatening its traditions.

Views on the wall and race relations correlate

Polling data from the Public Religion Research Institute's annual American Values Survey, conducted last fall, capture how closely attitudes about the wall track views on immigration, race and gender relations.

Overall in the survey, 41% of Americans supported building the border wall, while 58% opposed it. That's in line with an array of recent polls from CNN, the Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac and ABC/Washington Post showing support for the wall registering around 40%.

The Public Religion Research Institute poll is especially revealing because it asked opinions about the wall as part of a much broader survey examining Americans' attitudes toward a wide range of cultural and demographic changes. It found that wall supporters and opponents express virtually mirror-image views on those broader shifts, according to previously unpublished results from the poll provided to CNN.

It may be least surprising that views about the wall track with opinions about immigration's impact on American society. Wall supporters express vastly more hostile views than wall opponents about the impact not only of undocumented but also legal immigration.

In the Public Religion Research Institute survey, three-fourths of adults who support the wall say immigrants burden local communities because they use too many public services; two-thirds of wall opponents say immigrants are not an undue burden.

Two-thirds of wall supporters say it bothers them when they come into contact with immigrants who don't speak English well; three-fourths of wall opponents said it does not bother them.

Likewise, two-thirds of wall supporters say the growing number of immigrants "threatens traditional American customs and values," while four-fifths of opponents say the change instead "strengthens American society."

Over eight-in-10 wall supporters back a temporary ban on immigration from some Muslim countries, while three-fourths of wall opponents oppose a ban. And while nearly seven-in-10 wall opponents reject legislation to reduce the level of legal immigration, over eight-in-10 wall supporters want the US to accept fewer legal immigrants.

But views about the wall also closely correlate with attitudes about race relations.

In the Public Religion Research Institute survey, three-fourths of wall supporters said recent police killings of African-Americans were "isolated incidents" rather than "part of a broader pattern of how police treat" blacks. However, almost three-fourths of wall opponents saw a broader pattern.

Almost exactly three-fourths of wall supporters rejected the idea that "generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class." Nearly two-thirds of wall opponents agreed with that statement.

Perhaps most dramatically, almost two-thirds of wall supporters said discrimination against whites is now as big a problem as discrimination against minorities. Three-fourths of wall opponents rejected that view.

The gulf between wall supporters and opponents extends even to views about changing relations between men and women. Nearly two-thirds of wall opponents say the feminist movement accurately reflects the views of most women. Nearly two-thirds of wall supporters say it does not.

Just over three-fifths of wall opponents say the #metoo movement has helped "address sexual harassment and assault in the workplace"; less than half as many wall opponents agree. One in three wall supporters say the movement has "led to the unfair treatment of men"; only one-in-11 wall opponents agree.

On the broadest measure of gender relations, just 25% of wall opponents believe discrimination against men is now as great a problem as discrimination against women, while 74% reject that view. By a 54% to 45% majority, wall supporters say men do face as much discrimination as women.

On the most sweeping measures, wall opponents express enormous anxiety about the direction of social change in the country, while supporters are much more optimistic.

When reminded that the Census Bureau projects that racial minorities will compose a majority of the nation's population by around 2045, fully 82% of wall opponents said the effect of the change will be mostly positive, while only 16% believed it will be negative. Wall supporters took a very different view: 58% expected the changes to trigger mostly negative impacts, while just 38% expected positive change.

Three-fourths of wall supporters agreed that the "American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence." Almost two-thirds of wall opponents disagreed.

Perhaps most tellingly, the two sides produced almost exactly inverse responses on a summary question that collects attitudes on all the changes remaking American life. Fully 59% of wall supporters agreed that "things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country." An identical 59% of wall opponents disagreed with that sentiment.

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The problem is that in this "clash of absolutes," the wall has acquired such symbolic power for each side that it would require enormous dexterity to craft a solution that allows both sides to insist they have held firm.

In particular, as Jones notes, for Trump the wall has become the physical embodiment of his core promise: to make America great again by reversing the economic, cultural and demographic changes that his supporters believe have marginalized them.

"The way that Trump has talked about himself, even in the campaign, is as a kind of wall," Jones said. "All this talk that, 'I'm the only one who can stop the changes you don't like,' 'I am the only thing standing between you and hordes of people on the border,' 'I am the only one who can roll back the clock. ... I am the thing standing between you and chaos.' That's what walls symbolize.