The dogma centres around issues of identity, especially pertaining to race, gender, and sexuality, and manifests as a fervent desire to protect those whose identities are viewed as marginalised and challenge those whose identities are viewed as dominant. However, there is one category of identity that is often ignored: class. In fact, focus on these other identities helps conceal it:
Altogether, lower-income whites make up about 40 percent of the country, yet they are almost entirely absent on elite college campuses, where they amount, at most, to a few percent and constitute, by a wide margin, the single most underrepresented group.
“Not coincidentally,” Deresiewicz argued, “lower-income whites belong disproportionately to precisely those groups whom it is acceptable and even desirable, in the religion of the colleges, to demonize: conservatives, Christians, people from red states.” (I recommend reading Deresiewicz’s article in full.)
Taken together, Salam’s and Deresiewicz’s view can be interpreted as this: anti-white rhetoric functions as a way for upper-class and upwardly mobile whites and select people of colour to distinguish themselves from less cosmopolitan whites, who also tend to be lower-income. Furthermore, many progressive environments encourage it, especially universities, and it conveniently helps obscure or rationalise their elitism—in part by shifting the focus away from class and in part by painting lower-income whites as immoral and thus unworthy.