A prominent Harvard professor argues increased economic prosperity for blacks led to racial backlash that empowered Trump

• Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent professor of history at Harvard University, said President Trump was elected at least partially because of resentment that stemmed from the increased prosperity of black Americans.
• "Between Martin Luther King's death and now, the black middle class has doubled and the black upper-middle class has quadrupled," Gates said in a New York Times interview published Tuesday.
• Some studies since the election found Trump successfully tapped into racial resentment among white Americans that helped propel him to victory.
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Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr, a professor of African-American history at Harvard University, said in recent New York Times Magazine interview that President Trump was elected as a result of resentment stemming from increased economic prosperity for black Americans.

Gates, the host of PBS's "Finding Your Roots," was asked whether "the energy driving the current moment" was a reaction to progress for black Americans and the election of the first black president, Barack Obama.

The prominent academic was uncertain about attributing a root cause behind mounting racial anxiety among white Americans, but he noted black people are better off economically than they were a half-century ago.

"Between Martin Luther King's death and now, the black middle class has doubled and the black upper-middle class has quadrupled," Gates said.

He continued: "But simultaneously, if you look at the wages of white workers - the chance of your kids doing better than you if you were in the white working class, that's over."

Real wages among white workers that haven't budged upward significantly in the last four decades - capping at around 13.2% for the middle class, according to the Congressional Research Service.

That trend, combined with fewer people growing up and becoming better off than their parents, helped generate resentment, according to Gates.

"So you might look at a black family in the White House, all these black people who joined the upper-middle class, and there's a kind of collective 'What the [expletive]?'" he said.

"It's the curve of rising expectations," Gates said. "When it's interrupted, people go nuts."

Multiple explanations abound for Trump's 2016 victory, but some studies have found in recent years that the president successfully tapped into racial resentment among white Americans. He campaigned on curbing immigration into the United States and has since imposed a travel ban affecting 11 countries throughout the Middle East and Africa.

The racial wage (and wealth) gap between white and black Americans persists. The average black family still only has 10% the wealth of a typical white family, data from the Federal Reserve shows.

And the black-white wage gap continues to widen across education levels and income distributions, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.