The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America

by Sarah Kendzior

Above all, we were told not to complain. Don’t complain about exploitation. Don’t complain about discrimination. Don’t complain that you feel trapped. Don’t complain, because the problem is not real—don’t complain, because then people will think the problem is you.

I am motivated today by the same thing that motivated me when I first wrote these pieces: I believe that problems, if exposed and documented, can be solved, and that suffering can be abated. It’s never clear what the result of discussing problems will be, but ignoring them is a clear road to destruction.

When neighborhoods experience business development, priority in hiring should go to locals who have long struggled to find nearby jobs that pay a decent wage. Let us learn from the mistakes of New York and San Francisco, and build cities that reflect more than surface values.

It is easy to decry a broken system. It is harder to figure out how to live in it.

In the post-employment economy, jobs are privileges, and the privileged have jobs.

The logic is that if people can literally survive on minimum wage—that is, not drop dead—then their wages are justified.

In authoritarian states ruled by tyrants, in democracies allegedly ruled by law, we find the same result: hardworking people let down by the systems that are supposed to support them. When the most you can ask from your society is that it will spare you, you have no society of which to speak.

Charity, as a supplement to justice, should be applauded. But charity as a substitute for justice is neither charity nor justice. It is cruelty.

Fiscal stability that relies on gifts is not stability. It is a guarantee of insecurity: income based not on work but on whim. Capricious generosity is not a replacement for a living wage, nor is it a basis for a functioning society. Charity is no substitute for justice.

By reducing a complex set of causes and conflicts to the rage of an amorphous mass, the Western media reinforce the very stereotype of a united, violent “Muslim world” that both the makers of the anti-Islam video and the Islamist instigators of the violence perpetuate.

When I was a child I watched policemen beat a man nearly to death, and I watched my country acquit them. I was shocked that police would attack a man instead of defending him. I was shocked that someone would record the attack on video and that this video would mean nothing. I was shocked that people could watch things and not really see them. I was shocked because I was a child. I was shocked because I am white.

Freedom of speech is protected by law but guided by emotion. We should not mistake legal sanction for personal approval, but we should also not mistake personal disapproval for a rejection of free speech. In free societies, people have the right to say hateful things. And those offended have the right to oppose and condemn them.

Information is power, but information is also freedom. With that freedom comes responsibility. Scholars can no longer question whether their work is relevant to a broader audience, because in the digital age, that audience is simply too broad. All scholarly work is relevant to someone—and the impact can be profound. Whether we allow that impact to be realized remains to be seen.

The problem in journalism is not that people are writing for free. It is that people are writing for free for companies that are making a profit. It is that people are doing the same work and getting paid radically disparate wages. It is that corporations making record earnings will not allocate their budgets to provide menial compensation to the workers who make them a success.

In the post-employment economy, is self-respect something we can afford? Or is it another devalued commodity we are expected to give away?