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

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Yet as if an anticoagulant had been introduced into the American cultural bloodstream, smaller stories kept appearing, each suggesting an emotional tagline. There was the story of the Confederate flag as a matter of regional pride (“Don’t shame us”). There was the story of “my ancestors were too poor to own slaves” (“Don’t guilt-trip us”). There was the story of affirmative action whereby whites are victims (“Understand our resentment, desires, and needs”), and there was the story of moral strengths (“Black athletes who won’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance aren’t as grateful to be American as we are. We are the real patriots; respect us for that”). To this was often added the more familiar premise that most blacks were not as hardworking or law-abiding as whites. What these subnarratives shared, I felt, was the absence of historical context. It was as if the people I came to know strongly disavowed any unitary premise that fit my initial definition of racism. But given that, they adopted smaller narratives that hung free, the one from the other: one man was incensed by black athletes who knelt for the pledge but had no special feelings for the Confederate flag. Another complained about a friend’s son who was passed over for a place in college due to affirmative action but didn’t embrace the “slavery isn’t my responsibility” narrative. Disaggregated, such smaller narratives hung free, maybe to gather in some new way downstream. And to all this was the background presenc...