White Working Class, With a New Foreword by Mark Cuban and a New Preface by the Author: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

by Joan C. Williams

One class migrant recalled her struggles in high school: “Learnedness itself was suspect, and making a display of learning was simply not done; in school as elsewhere, the worst failure of character was to get a ‘swelled head.’ You could do intellectual work, though, if you called it something else. We called it religion.”41 For many in the working class, churches provide the kind of mental exercise, stability, hopefulness, future orientation, impulse control, and social safety net many in the professional elite get from their families, their career potential, their therapists, and their bank accounts.

The professional elite values change and self-development; working-class families value stability and community.

recent study found that 38 colleges, including five in the Ivy League, have more students from the top 1% than from the entire bottom 60% of the income distribution. Far less than 10% of college students in the middle three quintiles of family income go to very selective schools, and less than 3% go to elites or Ivys.101

When a Harvard-educated lawyer went into public interest law, his working-class parents found his career path mysterious. “What did they expect?” I asked. “Isn’t this what they wanted?” Nope: “What they wanted was for me to stay in [the Rust Belt city where he grew up] and buy a big car and a big house. Sort of like the real estate agent my mom worked for.” What they wanted was to keep him home, in body and mind—just with more money. That’s not what they got.114

Professors who would never let a racist comment pass their lips openly embrace “the stereotype of the southern redneck as racist, sexist, alcoholic, ignorant, and lazy. . . . redneck jokes may be the last acceptable ethnic slurs in ‘polite’ society,” reports a Southern class migrant.119

Clear boundaries exist between parents and children, with prompt obedience expected: crucial training for working-class jobs.122 Class migrants often note with shock the disrespectful way professional elite children talk of and to their parents. Noted bell hooks, whose father worked for 30 years as a janitor, “we were taught to value our parents and their care, to understand that they were not obligated to give us care.”123

Ppl thnk dsrspct sign of power?

His message is an important one: what his family needs is not a lecture about racism but a conversation about fear. “Telling people they’re racist, sexist, and xenophobic is going to get you exactly nowhere,” said Alana Conner of Stanford. “It’s such a threatening message. One of the things we know from social psychology is when people feel threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen.”150 What causes people to change their minds are conversations designed to make a connection with them, through honesty and empathy. That worked when activists canvassed to assess—and create—support for transgender rights.151 Two-thirds of the recent sea change in acceptance of marriage equality stemmed from a gradual process of people changing their thinking.152

gospel singer told Hochschild how much she loved Rush Limbaugh. Hochschild was mystified until she realized that her attraction to Limbaugh stemmed from her sense that Limbaugh was defending her against insults she felt liberals were lobbing at her—that “Bible-believing Southerners are ignorant, backward, rednecks, losers. They think we’re racist, sexist, homophobic, and maybe fat.” Rush Limbaugh protected their pride.167

Another crucial step is to apply to the white working class the kind of analysis applied to other groups who face structural disadvantage. We bend over backward to understand why many poor women have children very early, attentive to the structural factors that make that a logical choice and the cultural factors that make it an attractive one.169 But when it comes to working-class whites, social structure evaporates. I have never heard anyone fault inner-city black people, and say they deserve to remain in poverty, because of their refusal to move where the jobs are. But working-class whites? Their refusal reflects “stubborn immobility.”

Would working-class whites be so furious about “political correctness” if they were among those whose challenges were recognized?

The decline of vocational education has meant that American employers can’t depend on a stream of employees with the specific skills they need. Employers have responded by “up-credentialing”—requiring college degrees for jobs that do not require college-delivered skills—as a way to weed out those who lacked the smarts or self-discipline to complete a college degree. This up-credentialing has two bad effects. Using college as a proxy for diligence and smarts, of course, disadvantages working-class kids who are smart and diligent but not college grads. It also means that a significant proportion of college grads do jobs that don’t really require college. As a result, a quarter of college grads and advanced degree holders will work for a lower median wage than associate degree holders.204

Companies need to better define what skills they need, and develop private-public alliances to develop a local talent supply chain. High schools, community colleges, and universities should work with local businesses and with unions to develop educational and training programs that lead to industry-recognized certifications that provide employers the assurance that a worker has specific skills needed for specific jobs.

Since then I’ve been on a quiet rampage. When she received a new energy-efficient refrigerator that, to her delight, cost her only $100, I pointed out that it was compliments of the Obama stimulus program.223 When fire fighters came to her house to check her smoke alarms and make sure the house was safe, I gently pointed out that that, too, was a government benefit. When she marveled one day that she had a full meal at the senior center for only $3, again I mentioned that the bounty she’s enjoying comes from her government. This should not be a one-woman campaign. In Suzanne Mettler’s must-read book The Submerged State, she points out that most Americans don’t know about the subsidies and benefits they receive from their government. In 2008, a survey asked Americans whether they had “ever used a government social program, or not.” Of those surveyed, 56.5% said they never had. In fact, 91.6% had.224

One reason working-class whites associate the government only with subsidies for the poor is that many subsidies for the middle class are submerged—visible only to policy specialists (I learned this in grad school at MIT). These include the mortgage interest deduction, student loans, and tax exemptions for retirement and health benefits. In 2007, the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction cost taxpayers four times as much as Section 8 public housing subsidies,229 but knowing that is the province of specialists.

Many Americans don’t even know that Medicare is a federal program. A man stood up at a 2009 town hall held by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-SC) and told him to “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Inglis politely explained, “Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government.’” Inglis told the Huffington Post, “But he wasn’t having any of it.”230 Similarly, when Trump took office, some celebrated the repeal of “Obamacare,” which they saw as a government welfare program, not realizing it was the same as the “Affordable Care Act.”231

Conservatives have engaged in a sustained, decades-long effort to popularize negative attitudes toward government. They have been tragically successful. Only 19% of Americans say they can trust government always or most of the time, which is among the lowest levels in the past half century. Only 20% say government programs are well run. But when asked about programs one by one, Americans see a major role for government not only in keeping the country safe from terrorism (94%) and responding to natural disasters (88%) but also in ensuring safe food and medicine (87%), protecting the environment (75%), strengthening the economy (74%), and setting workplace standards (66%).232

Governments help them do this. Local and state governments supply police and firefighters, who protect their homes and families. The federal government protects citizens through the military and FBI. State and federal environmental agencies protect citizens from toxins and pollution. The Food and Drug Administration ensures food safety, which is no mean feat, and protects us from unsafe drugs.235 The Federal Trade Commission protects against identity theft and against those scammers who swindle grandmas. All this we take for granted; it makes news only when an agency messes up.

Another fruitful theme is the way the federal government has helped make the United States uniquely prosperous and innovative. Nearly two-thirds of Americans own their homes thanks to the FHA, Fannie Mae, and other entities that are run, or were founded and nurtured, by the federal government.240 Our scientists make breakthroughs important for people throughout the world, due to support from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. The Agricultural Research Service developed strains of super-grains that have helped the poor the world over escape starvation, and the Cooperative Extension Service gives America’s extraordinarily productive farmers the know-how they need to produce abundant food.

When Trump railed that he was going to put Hillary in jail, that didn’t sound un-American to many voters. Having a president summarily jail a defeated opponent violates separation of powers, trial by jury, and the presumption of innocence. The fact that more voters were not repulsed by Trump’s statements is linked, I believe, to the demise of civics. It’s time to bring back the teaching of American values. We can do so without descending into jingoism or nationalism.

My strongest message is this: business-as-usual isn’t working. Is the LGBTQ community better off with Jeff Sessions as attorney general, who as a senator received a 0% rating from the Human Rights Campaign?255 Are people of color better off with a president who was endorsed by the official newspaper of the KKK?256 Are immigrants better off with a president who has described them as criminals and rapists? Are women better off in a world with a president that sexually assaults women and brags about it?

Many Latinos are “values voters,” offended by the shock-the-bourgeois avant-garde element of elite culture. “For many Hispanic Americans, the cultural changes of the past 15 years have been very hard. Trump, for many, is a return to the mother’s womb,” said Roberto Rodríguez Tejera, who runs a Spanish-language talk show in South Florida. Some Latino citizens fear that undocumented immigrants will take their jobs; roughly a quarter of Latinos favor Trump’s wall. Polls show that Latino voters care about many of the issues the white working class cares about, notably jobs and terrorism.259 Learning how to talk respectfully with the white working class will help Democrats reach Latino voters, too.

A coalition is like a family in two ways. First, it involves trading. If you get your way on this, I’ll get my way on that. That’s the glue that keeps a coalition together. A coalition’s like a family in another way, too. We need to cut one another some slack. When you show up for Thanksgiving dinner, you don’t shove your political views down Aunt Josie’s throat; that would signal to her that you don’t value your relationship with her. And it would signal to your family that you don’t value your relationship with them.

I recognize that it’s hard to cut anyone slack when what you’re arguing about is perceived as a human rights issue. This is true in the abortion debate (for both sides);

The white working class is important not only for strategic but also for ethical reasons. Ideally, no politician should ignore whole swaths of the country. And the left professes to care about diversity and level playing fields. But they can barely look class issues in the eye.