The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America

by Sarah Kendzior

Most human rights, policy, and development organizations pay interns nothing, but will not hire someone for a job if he or she lacks the kind of experience an internship provides. Privilege is recast as perseverance.

“I think right-wing populists hate the ‘liberal elite’ more than economic elites because they’ve grabbed all the jobs where you get paid to do something that isn’t just for the money—the pursuit of art, or truth, or charity,” notes David Graeber, an anthropologist whose ideas helped shape the Occupy movement. “All they can do if they want to do something bigger than themselves and still get paid is join the army.”

Since I receive no money from the sale of my work, I have no idea whether anyone purchased it. I suspect not, as the reason for the high price has nothing to do with making money. JSTOR, for example, makes only 0.35 percent of its profits from individual article sales. The high price is designed to maintain the barrier between academia and the outside world. Paywalls codify and commodify tacit elitism.

Only 3.8 percent of American families make more than $200,000 per year. But at Harvard University, 45.6 percent of incoming freshmen come from families making $200,000 or more. A mere 4 percent of Harvard students come from a family in the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes, and only 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles. “We admit students without any regard for financial need—a policy we call ‘need-blind admission,’” Harvard’s website proudly proclaims. Harvard charges $54,496 per year for tuition, and room and board, but waives the fees for families making less than $60,000 per year. This would be a laudable policy were Harvard admitting low-income students in any significant numbers, but they are not. Instead, they fill their ranks with the children of the elite portrayed in Miller’s

In the American media, white people debate whether race matters, rich people debate whether poverty matters, and men debate whether gender matters. People for whom these problems must matter—for they structure the limitations of their lives—are locked out of the discussion.

we continue to live in an era of hysterical panic about invented catastrophes and false reassurances about real catastrophes.

Complaint is often perceived as an alternative to action. Those who complain are criticized as “just complaining,” instead of “actually doing something.” But for marginalized and stigmatized groups—racial and religious minorities, women, the poor, people who lack civic rights—complaining is the first step in removing the shame from a lifetime of being told one’s problems are unimportant, nonexistent, or even a cause for gratitude. Complaining alerts the world that the problem is a problem.