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The Confederacy convinced millions of poor white men — most of whom never owned slaves — that they had to fight and die for the interests of the plantation elite.

He suggested that an economic approach to affirmative action would disproportionately benefit Black people, who suffered the economic legacy of racial discrimination, and that poor white people should also be included as “a simple matter of justice.”

Starting in the 1930s, the federal government sorted neighborhoods in 239 cities and deemed redlined areas — typically home to Black people, Jews, immigrants, and poor white people — unfit for mortgage lending.

In addition to the error in setting, Steinbeck’s book made it seem as if the only people who were affected by the Dust Bowl were poor white farmers.

He writes, “The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against interests, so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to express their interests.”