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

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.”