The postwar United States has experienced many forms of populist
politics, none more consequential than that of the blue-collar
white ethnics who brought figures like Ronald Reagan and Donald
Trump to the White House. Blue-Collar Conservatism traces the rise
of this little-understood, easily caricatured variant of populism
by presenting a nuanced portrait of the supporters of Philadelphia
Mayor Frank Rizzo. In 1971, Frank Rizzo became the first former
police commissioner elected mayor of a major American city. Despite
serving as a Democrat, Rizzo cultivated his base of support by
calling for "law and order" and opposing programs like public
housing, school busing, affirmative action, and other policies his
supporters deemed unearned advantages for nonwhites. Out of this
engagement with the interwoven politics of law enforcement, school
desegregation, equal employment, and urban housing, Timothy J.
Lombardo argues, blue-collar populism arose. Based on extensive
archival research, and with an emphasis on interrelated changes to
urban space and blue-collar culture, Blue-Collar Conservatism
challenges the familiar backlash narrative, instead contextualizing
blue-collar politics within postwar urban and economic crises.
Historian and Philadelphia-native Lombardo demonstrates how
blue-collar whites did not immediately abandon welfare liberalism
but instead selectively rejected liberal policies based on
culturally defined ideas of privilege, disadvantage, identity, and
entitlement. While grounding his analysis in the postwar era's
familiar racial fissures, Lombardo also emphasizes class identity
as an indispensable driver of blue-collar political engagement.
Blue-Collar Conservatism ultimately shows how this combination of
factors created one of the least understood but most significant
political developments in recent American history.
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