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“To understand Dylann, you need to read The Hidden Injuries of Class,” Wachter said. What that book revealed was “how white working-class people in Boston, in South Boston, the more you interviewed them, what came out, especially after a few beers, is how inferior they felt to all the Harvard, Cambridge, bright, educated people.” In Wachter's mind, Dylann wasn't stupid, but he felt displaced. It was a case of class resentment. “And here's the funny thing: If I had a dinner party right here with just white Ph.D.'s, it would not be socially acceptable for me to make any slur to an African-American person or a Hispanic person or a Muslim, but if I refer to poor whites as rednecks—”

“Or crackers or white trash,” I interjected, saying the words he didn't want to say.

He grimaced but acknowledged them.

“That would almost be socially acceptable to say those things. It just shows you how alienated they are. And these poor white working-class guys, they must realize this. See? So maybe Dylann's family is a good example of downward social mobility. And Trump showed us this, that we underestimated how vulnerable and precarious self-esteem is for white, working-class people in this society. They not only see the white elites, but then they see…”

“They see us, black people, coming from behind, eclipsing them.”

Leaning forward in that tall chair, Wachter pointed at me for getting the answer right, and then he shrugged with his long arms out and asked the question he knew neither of us had an answer for.

“And, they say, ‘What are these people doing up there? What has happened to me?’ ”