Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

A national service program could place young Americans of every race, region, and religion in a yearlong service project somewhere far from home. We could set up a nationwide high school domestic exchange program—high school seniors from the South could spend a month with families of students in the North, and the North could, in this way, go South. Coasts could go inland, the inland head to the coasts. In Gretna, Virginia; Fairview, Kansas; and Ragley, Louisiana, students could prepare by learning active listening and epistemology—how we know what we know—as well as history and civics. Students could lay solar panels on school roofs, build parks, plant gardens. Maybe I’m just dreaming. But in this dream, as students wash dishes, hammer nails, and plant seeds, they also take on the questions that so bitterly divide us.