Chris Ladd — The Last Jim Crow Generation

White voters born in the same year as Donald Trump would spend much of their lives in a world crafted to reinforce their sense of racial superiority. They came of age protected like a Soviet state-owned factory. Exposed suddenly to competition, some are not thriving. They are experiencing very real trauma as the world they once knew, a world dedicated to their protection, erodes away.

Paul Davis Taylor displays a Confederate flag in front of Little Rock Central High School, 1957. (AP Photo/File)

(Forbes Magazine)

White voters turning 70 this year are among Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic demographic blocs. His support weakens in younger age groups, especially those too young to have been shaped by Jim Crow. Shift to an older demographic in which voters, like former President George H.W. Bush, remember Hitler, and Trump’s support softens.

Oddly, in a nation reaching new heights of prosperity, freedom and international power, many white voters born in 1946 are lathered into a panic, desperate to “Make America Great Again.” Their hysteria defies ready explanation, but clues might be uncovered with a survey of their formative years. This is America’s last generation raised under Jim Crow.

Like Donald Trump, white voters turning 70 this year had already reached adulthood in 1964, the year that the first Civil Rights Act was passed. They started kindergarten in schools that were almost universally white. Most were in third grade when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. A good number of them would complete their public education in formally segregated schools.

Read the full article HERE.