Trumpism defines the ‘working class’ in a very narrow way

As the son of UNITE-HERE Local 5 members, I know better.

Photo: UNITE-HERE Local 1 and unitehere1.org

Trumpism wraps itself in the banner of the working class. Its champions boast of defending forgotten men and women, of bringing back dignity to the laborer.

But behind the bluster is a troubling question, “Who do they really mean when they talk about the working class?”

Because if you look at the policies they promote, the rallies they hold, and the people they elevate, the picture becomes clearer and smaller.

The “working class” in Trumpism is not a mosaic of America’s labor force. It is a narrow, curated image: mostly white, mostly Christian, and often Christian nationalist.

It is the steelworker in Ohio, but not the housekeeper in Honolulu. It is the coal miner in West Virginia, but not the farm laborer in the Central Valley of California. It is the cop in rural Indiana, but not the home health aide caring for your grandmother in Chicago.

Photo: UNITE-HERE Local 5 and unitehere5.org

I was born and raised in Kalihi, Honolulu in a union community where the definition of working class was never so small.

We were the children of janitors, housekeepers, cooks, bus drivers, and laundry workers. Our families were members of UNITE-HERE Local 5, a union that organized not just for fair wages but for dignity, for healthcare, for respect on the job, and for immigrant workers with thick accents and deeper dreams.

These workers weren’t just part of the working class. They were the working class.

My father was a proud union man. My mother, a fierce advocate for service workers’ rights. They built a life in the margins: Filipino immigrants in the shadows of the luxury hotels they cleaned.

And they built it with pride, perseverance, and solidarity. That is the true face of labor in America. A working class that prays in many languages. That eats arroz caldo for breakfast and rushes to clock in by 6:00 a.m. That sends money to family back home while trying to pay for braces and school uniforms here.

Trumpism doesn’t speak for these people. In fact, it uses the myth of the working class to erase them.

It pushes policies that vilify immigrants, weaken unions, and strip healthcare.

It cheers ICE raids in meatpacking plants and threatens TPS holders with deportation, all while giving tax breaks to billionaires and grinning next to union-busting CEOs.

This is not a movement for labor. It is a movement for nostalgia, for an imagined past when whiteness and Americanness were synonymous, and where the “working man” wore overalls and carried a lunch pail but never spoke Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Jamaican Patua, or Haitian Creole.

Trumpism’s working class is not the America I know.

The America I know is the back-of-house worker in Vegas and the Uber driver in Queens.

It is the janitor in Des Moines and the teacher’s aide in El Paso.

It is the undocumented worker helping rebuild homes after hurricanes while ICE waits at the Home Depot.

These are the people who make the country move.

So when I hear Trumpists talk about honoring the working class, I ask, “Which one? Because I know the one I come from.”

We built solidarity across skin tones and faiths.

We fought for contracts that included translators and cultural competency.

We fought to ensure that no one, absolutely no one, would be invisible in their labor.

The working class is not a symbol.

It is not a campaign slogan.

It is not a backdrop for populist theater.

It is real people with real families and real sweat on their brows.

If your definition of working class only includes those who vote like you, look like you, or pray like you, it’s not a definition. It’s a dog whistle.

I am the son of the working class. And I refuse to let it be redefined by those who never honored its full humanity to begin with.