For this assignment you will need to do the readings found in the week 2, week 3, and week 4 folders:
Quadagno, Jill S. 1994. The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. Oxford University Press. Chapters 1 and 9.
McVeigh, Rory, and Kevin Estep. 2019. The Politics of Losing: Trump, the Klan, and the
Mainstreaming of Resentment. Columbia University Press. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
You will also consult the Pew Research Foundation’s report on Trust in Government:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/
Question 1(half a page double-spaced): How has trust in government evolved since 1958 according to the Pew research? You do not need to give every detail or percentage, but enough information so that a reader who does not see the graphs can understand the general evolution. So a few well-selected percentages and key moments can help.
Question 2 (one page double-spaced): How has the trust in government that Black individuals have generally compared with whites’ confidence between 1958 to 2022? (you can provide two-three key figures to describe this to the reader). Pick one specific policy from the Quadagno readings. Explain why the way it was handled would hurt the level of trust in government that Blacks have. Explain why whites would not be as affected.
Question 3 (half a page): McVeigh and Estep believe that it is more important to look at the number of individuals without college degrees in a community to understand whether its residents would support Trump, as opposed to looking at whether an individual without a college degree is more likely to support Trump. Why do they believe this? What is it about communities without many college graduates (according to the reading) that would make them support a candidate like Trump?
Question 4 (one page double-spaced): It is often believed that Trump gained the support of individuals who feel that they are not protected by the government anymore. How can the McVeigh and Estep article explain the declining level of trust in government among white Americans?
BONUS question: Is there any demographic or ideological characteristic that you wished the Pew research had looked at? Why?