rust belt

Attention Trump: Meet the Real Forgotten Americans

Leonard Steinhorn

If Trump really wants to speak for forgotten Americans, he would travel to the Mississippi Delta and the rural Black Belt of the American South, where conditions are so wretched and dire that even a struggling Rust Belt factory town might seem like a bountiful paradise of opportunity and wealth. Campaign events tell the real story of who’s forgotten and who isn’t, and the verdict is clear: White working-class voters in the Rust Belt are far from forgotten.

A Diverse Ethnic Community Breathes Life into Buffalo, N.Y.

Anthony Advincula

Once known as the “City of Light,” thanks to the hydroelectric power generated by nearby Niagara Falls, Buffalo’s fortunes turned with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1957. Many of its white residents soon began to leave, and by 1967 race riots rocked much of the city. Today the unemployment rate lingers at just above 10 percent, while census data from 2011 ranked the city fifth poorest among those with populations of more than 250,000. Rates of crime and childhood poverty are also high. 

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