THEY VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY FOR TRUMP: The Scots-Irish As Indigenous People: “The academic ‘discourse’ about white privilege acknowledges rhetorically the reality of class differences amongst whites, but in practice this issue never realizes itself in any actionable manner.”

Plus:

All this leads to the strangeness of American in 2012 which might perplex outsiders. For example, Malia Obama, the daughter of two individuals with law degrees from Harvard, would be able to benefit from affirmative action,* because she lacks white skin privilege. In contrast, the child of a poor family from Appalachia who was white would not gain any preference, because by their nature as a white person they had the right of white skin privileged from which they benefited. You might assert here that there are points in favor for geographic and class diversity at elites schools. But from what I have read Thomas Espenshade’s work shows that elite universities tend to discriminate against rural and lower class whites (as well as Asians) to maintain diversity through admissions of sufficient numbers blacks and Hispanics. Note: well connected whites with high socioeconomic statuses are doing fine under the current dispensation.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: In the comments, a reference to David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. Though as a single subject knockoff, Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America isn’t bad. I see Webb as a plausible 2020 Democratic nominee if the Democrats are smart, which is to say probably not . . . .