White Working Class

by Joan C. Williams, Liisa Ivary (Narrator)

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians—is on the outside looking in, and left to argue over the reasons why. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as “something approaching rock star status” in her field by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite’s analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in assumptions by what she has controversially coined “class cluelessness.”

Williams explains how most analysts, and the corresponding media coverage, have conflated “working class” with “poor.” All too often, white working class motivations have been dismissed as simply racism or xenophobia. Williams explains how the term “working class” has been misapplied—it is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. This demographic often resents both the poor and the professionals. They don’t, however, tend to resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities—just with more money.

White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people throughout the world who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise in populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers—and voters.


Listening Length: 3 hours and 28 minutes

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Economics, History, Audiobook, Race

4 pages, Audible Audio

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Professor Joan C. Williams is Distinguished Professor of Law, 1066 Foundation Chair, founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and Co-Director of the Project on Attorney Retention (PAR).

Reviews

[Jessica J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am of two minds in regards to this book. One one hand, I feel like Williams's statements largely reflect what I've seen growing up surrounded by the white working class in Appalachian Ohio and the cluelessness I've seen since moving to large East Coast metros. She lays out arguments that I've struggled to put words to: the white working class tends to resent social safety nets because they're not poor enough to benefit from them; Trump voters did have a higher average income than Hillary voters because the 1% skewed things but also because Trump voters were more likely to be in that "not poor enough" bloc than below the poverty line; it's unfair and unrealistic to expect the white working class in middle America to live by the values of the so-called "urban professional elite"; those elites talk about the struggles of the rural/small-town working class in ways that they would never talk about the struggles of poor minorities in urban areas because it would be considered racist.

But on the other hand, this is a brief book that basically reads like a lengthy series of essays built out of blanket statements. She relies heavily on personal anecdotes and the feedback of internet commenters. Though she references sociological studies and polling data in her footnotes, the book itself does not contain statistics or data to back up her claims [to make it more "readable," in her words] and so I was kind of left wondering "who is she to explain this stuff to anyone?" Her blanket statements can come off as a little condescending and I think she fails to adequately address the response that inevitably comes up when someone says that we need to stop demonizing the white working class: "They need to be more open-minded regarding race/sexuality/liberal values first."

(Sure, of course they do. But more of my liberal peers ought to recognize that it's a two-way street. We have got to change the way that educated, upper-middle class liberals in urban cores talk about and to the white working class if we are every going to get them to be more progressive. Think about the ways that you "other" them and recognize that you can work to understand their values without necessarily endorsing them. Most of all, recognize that insulting them is no way to win them over so stop making jokes about the fat, uneducated redneck stereotype then wondering why the people who are the butt of your jokes don't support you. Stop writing their needs off as unimportant because you think they're racist or sexist or xenophobic and stop pretending that that they're the only ones who are those things when Hollywood, the media, science, and higher ed all have diversity issues.)

But really, the biggest flaw in this book is that it lacks depth. The printed version looks to be less than 120 pages, and most of her chapters are 10 pages or shorter. They're primers that lay out an idea in the shallowest of terms: the white working class has different values than the urban elite. Well, yeah. How about more evidence, more engaged analysis regarding those differences and more concrete solutions regarding how to bridge them? In sum, this is a good starting point but it's hardly definitive.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joan Williams wants to “Overcome Class Cluelessness in America.” This is an admirable goal, and in many ways this is an admirable book (or brochure—it’s very short). But reading “White Working Class” (which, despite its title, gives equal time to both the white and black working class) makes the reader squirm. The reader appreciates the author’s, Joan Williams’s, attempts to objectively examine her class, that of the “professional-management elite,” or “PME,” but winces at her frequent inability to actually understand the working class, or to view the working class other than primarily as potential foot soldiers in the march of progressive politics.

I have, I think, more personal familiarity than most people with the class structures outlined in this book. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, so really prior to the dominance of what Williams today aptly calls the PME. My father was a professor and my mother a housewife, so we were part of the professional class, but my father was poorly paid and worked at a large Midwestern state university, and I attended a different large Midwestern state university for my undergraduate degree. So at best I was on the fringes of the PME—college educated, but with zero financial resources, and no connection to the coastal elites. However, I bootstrapped myself into the PME, attending one of the top law schools in the country and working for a decade as a corporate lawyer for one of the country’s top law firms, and later attending a top business school. So I am, or was, a fully-fledged member of the PME.

But then I became a tradesman (finish carpentry) for some years (odd change, I know), which didn’t exactly make me working class, but gave me working class wages and caused me to be often treated as working class, by both other members of the working class and by the PME (who probably often would have been astounded by my background, almost as much as by my law school roommate who for a time, for kicks, drove a bus at the Atlanta airport). From there, though, I didn’t return to the PME, but rather, after some years of grueling work, joined the third of Williams’s four social classes, the “rich.” I am now the sole owner of a manufacturing business, and wholly a self-made man, in that none of my earlier jobs or contacts made my current business successful. I employ more than a hundred people and am personally rich by any reasonable measure. So the only class relevant to this book I have not personally experienced is what Williams calls the “poor,” although it’s a stretch to say that I’ve ever really been working class—but I’ve had a lot more personal contact with being working class, and working class people, on a face-to-face basis of near equality, than the vast majority of people in the PME.

Enough about me (even though it’s my favorite topic). Williams starts by pointing out that most politicians use “working class” as a euphemism for “poor,” when the correct synonym is “middle class.” (Throughout the book Williams talks just as much about the black working class as the white working class, noting where their views are different and where they are the same, so as I say the title is misleading.) These are people “with household incomes above the bottom 30% but below the top 20%, [along with] families with higher incomes but no college graduate. This is the middle 53% of American families,” with a median income of $75,000. Williams correctly identifies that in recent decades not only has this group suffered economically, but their dignity has been stripped by the elite response to their unhappiness, which is to characterize them as racist, sexist, homophobic knuckle-draggers, from Archie Bunker to Obama’s “clinging to their guns and religion” to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” (though the latter two are not mentioned by Williams, an admitted Clinton dead-ender). And what they really want is dignity and respect, just like all of us. But America today is set up to ensure that they don’t have that, and the behavior of the PME is the worst aspect of this setup—which leads to the “populist, anti-establishment anger that welled up in the 2016 election.” Williams wrote the article on which this book is based (in the “Harvard Business Review”) immediately after the election, and this is the basic frame through which she views the working class—holders of legitimate grievances, wielders of righteous anger, who need to be corralled so they will support progressive policies while regaining perceived dignity and respect.

In addition to her own (often insightful) analysis, as well as comments from people made in response to her original article, Williams leans heavily on two sources. The first is the famous 2016 J.D. Vance memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which describes the working class through the prism of a member who mostly escaped to the PME via Yale Law School, yet who could not fully escape. The second is Arlie Hochschild’s study of conservative Louisianans, “Strangers in Their Own Land.” Supplementing this are various citations to books and periodicals, all liberal (and, oddly given current concerns about the media, including several citations to alternet, a far left-wing purveyor of “fake news”).

The rest of the book is organized around questions, which are the titles to short chapters answering each question—in essence, reacting to responses made to the arguments in Williams’s original article. “Why Does The Working Class Resent The Poor?” The short answer is that the working class thinks the poor are freeloaders, and that freeloading is immoral. Williams notes that the working class views hard work, responsibility, and provision for one’s family, especially by men, as moral virtues. By “hard work,” they don’t mean making life all about work, but rather not slacking and accepting risk and drudgery (including hardships like out-of-phase working schedules for couples, or physical danger for men) as the price to be paid for a decent living with dignity. Moreover, the working class values being straightforward and sincere, morally upright, and having high personal integrity. The poor are perceived as not having these virtues—and, because of means-tested benefit programs, they often avoid having to work, by taking the money of others. The poor get free Obamacare; the working class can no longer afford any insurance at all. For the working class, receiving welfare themselves erodes their dignity, their self-respect, and the respect of others for them. Whether working class people live up to these moral virtues as much as they would like, and whether other benefit programs such as Social Security disability are just as much welfare, are not relevant to the perception by working class that the poor are parasites. Similarly, Williams points out that policies like sick leave and minimum wage increases can help the poor, but they don’t help the working class nearly as much as what they really want: “jobs that sustain them in their vision of a middle-class life,” providing self-generated, not government-generated (which is an oxymoron), dignity and respect.

“Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals but Admire the Rich?” To me, this is the most interesting chapter, because I’ve been both professional and rich. The answer is really the same as why the working class resents the poor—because PMEs are viewed as lacking moral virtues. They may work hard—but they do it at the expense of family, and they are two-faced, climbers who value “flexibility” over grinding it out, and believe in the primacy of “self-actualization.” Moreover, professionals are perceived as arrogant parasites, but the rich are perceived as having “made it” on their own in a way a working class person can admire, or even dream he might accomplish as well. This resentment against PMEs is ongoing and constantly reinforced. PMEs mark themselves by where and what they eat, what they read, what meaningless “spiritual but not religious” belief system they supposedly follow—in short, by actively and deliberately demonstrating their “sophistication” relative to the working class, including in their personal interactions with the working class. Not being stupid, the working class notices, and concludes that PMEs lack essential virtues, just like the poor. Most of all, for PMEs (of all political stripes) “a key way they show sophistication is to signal comfort with avant-garde sexuality, self-presentation, and family dynamics.” The working class approves of this least of all; it undercuts everything they think is important. On the other hand, the rich, who are perceived by the working class as being honest, hard-working, and sincere, are largely immune from this opprobrium. The working class wants to hold to their values—but have more money, just like the rich. Williams notes that the working class support tax cuts for the rich because they “hold the promise of jobs” (and, I would say, because the rich are mostly perceived as having earned that money), and simultaneously support benefit cuts for the poor, because they are freeloaders. All this resonates with me as correct from my own experience, and my own perception of PMEs is pretty much the same as what Williams describes as the working class view.

Other chapters reject common criticisms of the working class, including demanding to know why they don’t move to where the jobs are (because work is not everything to life, because their local and familial networks are more critical to them than for PMEs, who rely on growing their own networks and are rootless) or go to college (Williams several times quotes the statistic that 2/3 of Americans lack college degrees, and the answer is that college is expensive and therefore risky, does not necessarily deliver a return, and the working class often lacks the support systems necessary to even apply to elite colleges, something Vance covers in detail). Williams also examines if the working class is “just racist” or “just sexist” and concludes that sure they are, but so is everybody else, even if the manifestations within each class are different, and for PMEs to dismiss the working class contemptuously on that basis increases divisions for no good reason—and leads to Trump.

Williams then turns to solutions for working class problems. Her primary call is for more vocational training and a de-emphasis on college—in a sense, a return to the 1970s, or to the world as Mike Rowe (whom Williams does not mention, but should) would have it, where men and women learn real skills with real value with which they can get good jobs, for while many manufacturing jobs may have disappeared forever, there are still may good jobs available, which often go begging. This call doesn’t even rate its own chapter, though. It’s mostly window dressing for her real “solution” and focus—how to co-opt the working class into voting for progressive politics they either don’t care about or actively despise.

Thus, Williams quickly pivots to focusing on getting the working class to understand that they too receive a lot of federal benefits, in order to soften them up to the joys of federal overlordship. It is certainly true that the working class gets more benefits from the federal government than it likes to admit. But Williams is tone-deaf and does not understand the working class attitude toward the government, which, like jobs, is largely about dignity and respect. Thus, Williams repeatedly uses un-ironically phrases like “bounty coming from the government” and calls for an advertising campaign where “Americans make short videos of their daily lives, thanking the government for some service or benefit that makes those lives possible—highways, the Internet, sewer systems, schools, etc., and ending with the phrase ‘Thank you, Uncle Sam!’” This misapprehends both reality and working class pride. Of course, Uncle Sam doesn’t make those things possible—taxpayer dollars do, as working class people know very well (hence their resentment toward welfare for the non-working poor), yet they are lorded over constantly by government employees who are, or at least view themselves by virtue of their employer, as PMEs. (Not to mention that at least two of Williams’s four examples are purely local government functions having nothing to do with Uncle Sam.) And that Williams thinks that it’s government services that “make lives possible” shows that despite her lip service to the jobs, family and religion that give working class people dignity, she really thinks that we are all just servants of the government, dependent on it for our very lives. Similarly, Williams is totally blind to the critical role of non-governmental intermediary institutions, largely destroyed by the government over the past five or six decades, in the lives of the working class, because PMEs don’t rely on intermediary institutions at all. In any case, Williams only focuses on hidden working class reliance on welfare because the working class’s failure to admit dependence on government interferes with their willingness to board the progressive train.

So in her last two chapters, Williams drops the mask and comes out as an aggressive left-wing partisan, complaining that “class cluelessness has brought us” Jeff Sessions, and Trump, “a president who was endorsed by the official newspaper of the KKK” (a fact she mentions twice in the book), who is also allegedly a racist, misogynist, sexual assaulter, etc. Williams complains that 29% of Latinos voted for Trump nonetheless, because they are “values voters, offended by the shock-the-bourgeois avant-garde element of the elite culture.” Not that she suggests any change to that element, or any part of the left-wing agenda, from abortion to gay rights. Instead, she calls for hiding that agenda, by “reframing American liberal politics,” while pretending to make compromises. She recommends using different slogans for abortion, by (bizarrely) claiming abortion is “pro-family.” She says liberals should cast immigration reform (i.e., allowing more immigration, legal and illegal, along with amnesty) as a benefit to people who employ “hardworking bussers and dishwashers,” while ignoring it costs the working class millions of jobs. As to civil liberties, apparently the only problem there is the (mythical) “registry of Muslims,” which liberals can supposedly use to rally the working class, since it’s a privacy issue that allegedly will resonate with the working class (pro tip—she’s wrong). We should view climate change through the words of farmers, not scientists (even though only a small fraction of farmers believe in AGW, not that Williams notes that). And so on.

There’s nothing wrong with being partisan, although a little more truth in advertising would help. But this is clueless partisanship. You know what word is missing here, and throughout the book? Guns. This is the emblematic issue. The working class is extremely attached to their guns, which they (correctly) regard as necessary to defend themselves against predatory criminals as well as the government itself, and which provide them the dignity of self-sufficiency and freedom. Williams avoids the topic, presumably because she does not understand guns, which I am sure she thinks are icky, and cannot see any way to “reframe” the liberal obsession with confiscating all the guns in America in any way that would not result in a violent reaction by the working class against liberal politics. But her failure to engage with this critical issue makes a mockery of her entire analysis, because if you can’t address this question, you don’t understand the working class at all.

Williams keeps muttering the word “compromise”—but she gives not a single example of where any moral view of the working class that opposes progressive politics should actually become enshrined in law. Instead, “compromise” means fooling the working class into voting for Democratic social engineering, while throwing them some job retraining grants. If Williams really wanted compromise, she would suggest supporting a candidate with many of Trump’s views but without his baggage. Or even Bernie Sanders. Instead, she suggests (obliquely) that Hillary Clinton could have been the champion of the working class. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s known as Peak Clueless. The reality is the working class voted for Trump because he promised to give them jobs and restore their dignity. He may well fail at that, but the working class is not going to be fooled that a traditional Democrat (or Republican) will solve their very real problems. The working class will not be mocked, and if Trump fails, the response is not going to be to join hands with PMEs to implement progressive policies, but probably something even less palatable to the PMEs than Trump.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up for attempting and at times clearly setting perimeters for definitions such as "middle class" or "poor" or "working class". She tried. It must be said that STILL they are not completely accurate, IMHO. All of the "classes" she designates do not connote with those same exact words re similar entities when they discuss them with each other presently. They don't.

For instance, in many places in the USA, those who have a family income of $120,000 are NOT considered "middle class" or "working class" but are considered rich. And that will probably make some of you laugh. Yet they are clearly in the top 15% of the populations that live there or even the top 10% of income. It certainly is NOT true for most middle class (all middle 53% of population income) to believe that $200,000 a year income is ANYTHING but rich. And yet many elites would describe themselves as "middle class" right there for themselves. So even her best definitions are not same/same to others. Not at all. Some of her stats re family $$$ income with at least 2 full time people working- in any state at all are also "off". Childcare and other considerations of home ownership want/need being apples and oranges to compare these people to each other. Working class and poor class are also not the same thing at all, and she does state this. That part she got quite accurately. In fact, many government supported poor never work at all. But her definitions are finer and better attempts than what I have read previously on this subject.

I read this within an hour and 20 minutes. It's brief. And it displays nearly every single feature of judgment by an elite in her very writing for onus, asides, comparisons. IRONIC! So ironic, considering her subject and the title of the book.

Different classes of people want different things in their life. This is true. She begins to approach that quotient. They hold different values as important or primary. They aspire to close family living over all other considerations, or they do not. She does hit on these areas and does ask the questions that a liberal may ask to "know the other" about jobs and desired/deserved employments. And then she doesn't, even herself, really understand the answers she gets within the numbers stats. Because it is not the one she wants to hear? Not really, I don't think. It's more because in surveying this from a different place- she logically has set it into her own frame of top to down. Her religion statistics are interesting- especially upon happiness and success quotients outcomes of those holding religious practice and belief. She says she believes in no God (of course she uses the little g) but does believe in religion.

This is an attempt to redefine what "the others' eyes" see and want, after she defines those first terms I mentioned in the beginning paragraph of this reaction. But at points here, she doesn't even begin to guess correctly, the level of the repulsion against condescension intrinsic to her own value conclusions. Or the wanting more social engineering which have produced ever expanding crime and misery. No. Not even with her own extensive stats and research does she see any slide but toward her own governmental slats. Which is especially disheartening to read with the examples she gives of the "gifts" we receive in return. Because it is NOT about having a social net for people or bigger authoritarian government that people with a work ethic want at their core. Neither for lifestyle or for self-identity.

There are quite a few entire sections I could quote as valuable and approaching truthful. But I won't because of her lack of realization for her own cognition dichotomy. Because the book is so short, you can read it yourself. And in other areas, she is not as much wrong, as that her own elitist life's eyes are murky to a value judgment she can't see she has jumped over for assumptions. This book is written for liberals to read. Progressive liberals especially.

Anyone gets ignored for 30 or 40 plus years. They do notice. They also notice what levels of spending the "poor" have through state benefits that they completely miss. And some accesses which they can't even dream of attaining. (The example of the child care worker greeting the welfare Mom coming in to get her child toting her shopping bags from the Mall is merely the tip of the iceberg where I live.)

I rounded it up the .5 star for her effort to try. I strongly disagree with her evaluations that all families with one college graduate in their groups are classified as elites. Or those that have professionals in majority are in those elite designations, as well. It certainly is not that way where I have lived- in blue collar country. Many blue collar make MORE than their college educated son or spouse. So as hard as she did try, some of her definitions are skewed for many locales in the USA, IMHO.

"Over the past 40-odd years, elites stopped connecting with the working class, whom prior generations had given a place of honor."

That IS spot on.

The last sections that deal with various crux laden topics are 2 star at best. They are put there to "soften the blow" to her fellow elitists? Regardless, the compromises possible are even murkier.

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right after the 2016 presidential election, Joan C. Williams wrote an article for the Harvard Business review, then expanded that article into the present book. The very first thing I learned, which sounds obvious until you think about it, is that the working class isn't the same as the poor. I had conflated the two.

Basically, the dividing line between the white working class and the elites is not income level but education. The elites, that is, the managerial-professional class, is college educated, while the white working class is not. The author arrived at those terms, instead of the ubiquitous "middle class" and "upper class," since in America just about everyone calls themselves middle class.

The author also examines the increasing use of education for its signal value as opposed to usefulness achieving competency. Starting in the '60s, we became enamored of the value of a liberal-arts education, and the goal of practical learning fell out of favor.

She describes the double-whammy that hit the working class: their abandonment by the elites at the same time their economic status was sinking.

The classes have different mores, the white working class being fixed on hard work and staying the course, while the elites value self-fulfillment and merit. The mores of the black working class are closer to those of the white workers than to those of the elites. And the working class values their mores, just as the elites value theirs.

This is an important book even though sometimes less than incisive, and why not, if she's trying to say things that heretofore couldn't be said? Some of the difficulty may be trying to hew too closely to elite-speak, for example, the language of "privilege." She does not whitewash the white working class; if anything, she's too generous to the elite, making their mores morally equivalent to those of the working class, about which I sometimes had my doubts. Why should "merit" be morally equivalent to "hard work?" Well, maybe "merit" means competence--as opposed to "A" for effort. But that doesn't follow if "merit" means "success" and if the playing field is not level enough for working-class effort to result in "success," as in "financial success."

A couple of her points that were incisive: how the elites purify themselves of their racism, and cleanse themselves of their sexism, by deflecting their sins onto the white working class.

A difficulty is that Joan C. Williams neatly lays out the needed corrections but doesn't allow for the investment the classes, in particular the elites--who presumably have the power and wherewithal to make changes--have in their stories. Once you've sloughed off you sins onto the other guy, you're not all that motivated to take them back. A respondent to Williams' original article appreciated her rendition but expressed doubt anyone would pay attention or change. Scapegoating is great for in-group solidarity but not so great for peace.

In my many moments of discouragement all this looks like a zero-sum game. The elites side with the poor and the black, being against racism. Morality has a power component, though, and people are more likely to treat "morally" those whom they perceive as able to hurt them. Black Americans blame whites; blacks demand the allyship of whites and thus define the good whites. White elites blame the white working class. The white working class blames blacks, the poor, and the elites. All of the foregoing requires stereotyping, seeing others in terms of their presumed group characteristics rather than as individuals. People are invested in their stories and elevate blame to "speaking truth"--an adolescent mentality all around. It feels good but it doesn't work. Result: Donald Trump elected President. I came up with this paragraph, but the author does see this. As she says, the election of Trump does not help the problem of racism. If you want to keep Trump, no change needed; just keep doing what you've been doing.

So, yes, laying out the story in a matter-of-fact way, as the author has done, may not get at those underlying dynamics of why people are so invested in their pointing fingers and stories of the evils of others--fear, self-vindication, self-justification. On the other hand, there is value in laying out the story not as a conspiracy theory but as a problem to be solved. Somebody may do just that.


Although the author describes these class differentials as established categories, she does mention that they are relatively new. I think this elite class was not yet so clear in the 1950s and probably began forming in the '60s. Yet as described the classes do tend to come off as monolithic.


The Harvard Business Review article: https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-...

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a webcam had been trained at my face while I was reading this book my expression would probably have been one of slowly dawning horror. If a comic-strip thought balloon had been connected to my head, it might have read, "Oh dear. I guess I really do live in even more of a bubble than I thought I did."

This is the best of the 18 books I've read so far this year, and it is certainly the most illuminating of the four "How did Trump become president?" books I've read.

Emerging from a celebrated HBR article written in the feverish November days after the election and its shocking outcome, Williams has expanded her central argument into a compelling, direct, bracing and impressively short book. At 131 pages of text with another 50 pages of apparatus (notes, index), I read this book swiftly and with focused attention.

The reason White Working Class is so bracing is that while other books on the topic focus on the failures of working class conservatives to understand how badly the Republicans serve their economic interests (JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in The Own Land) or on how it was Hillary Clinton's fault for running a poor campaign (Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes' Shattered), Williams instead focuses squarely on how badly progressives understand the values and priorities of the white working class.

In other words, Williams argues, the problem is us.

Trump's rise isn't the fault of the Tea Party Republicans or duped Rust Belt workers, it's our fault, the fault of Democrats who not only have neglected to make a case that the Democratic Party understands the desires and needs of the white working class in favor of other groups but also have condescended to the white working class for generations.

It is neither trivial nor an accident, Williams argues, that moronic Homer Simpson is the most salient media representation of a white working class father who supports his family while his wife Marge stays at home to care for the house and children. Williams also mentions Archie Bunker and Al Bundy, and I'd toss Peter Griffin into the mix as well. White working class fathers visible in the media (which is not a common sight in any event) are obese, crude and stupid.

Folks on the left may fume and roll their eyes at Fox News and how it panders to the basest instincts of its viewers, but, Williams argues, the reason that Fox and its ilk have been able to convince the white working class that the mainstream media is the liberal media is that the mainstream media has abandoned the white working class by trivializing its values and priorities.

Don't miss reading Williams' White Working Class.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a certain underlying logic to many of these arguments, and it goes something like this: Democrats are actually better for the (white) working class than Republicans are, but Republicans win because they have better messaging. Therefore, Democrats need to work on their messaging.

Williams intuits that it's the first part of this logic that needs some re-examining: the point isn't that Democrats are *better than* Republicans--the point is, are Democrats *doing enough*? But the siren song of salesmanship ends up overwhelming Williams time and again. There's a kind of recurring fear that white working class voters will never vote for Democrats no matter how much they do for the working class--unless Dems change their tune and start treating the white working class with respect and dignity.

The trouble is, this kind of thinking simply presumes that Democrats *can* implement policies that are good for the working class--they just have to want to, and then they have to sell it. But neither step is necessarily that straightforward. Fighting against entrenched interests to put forward policies that will actually help the working class is not a matter of will alone; figuring out how to communicate the benefits of government isn't just a p.r. problem. Widespread distrust toward government was not achieved just by clever messaging. There was money behind it, a whole lot of money. Rather than rue Democratic fecklessness, perhaps that is where the analysis should start: with the money.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who voted for Trump? Williams sets out to identify these voters with this almost entirely anecdotal book (perhaps because it was literally begun the night of HRC's defeat), more of a pamphlet than its $23 hardcover price tag would indicate. Williams inserts herself into this story of the forgotten "white working class" with unaware disdain, writing harshly about her working class stepfather and old boyfriend as if they are from another planet than her self-professed "professional managerial elite" self. Her definition of working class, an annual income of roughly $41,000 to $132,000, seems an awful lot like middle class to this reader. And an income over $100,000 is approaching upper middle class, no? Williams does allow that a college degree coupled with a "working class" income (teachers, anyone?) vaults that earner into the "elite" or "professional managerial class," but what she fails to address adequately is that even those whites voted for Trump. (Only 51% of white college-educated women voted for HRC.) Therein lies the rub: regardless of class, whites on the whole voted for Trump. It would be too simplistic to label these voters as racist, but Williams could have examined why Trump's racist campaign rhetoric, et al, didn't turn off these white voters.

Update 7/16/17: I continue to think of this book's premise, and am reminded of it when I read in today's NY Times, "Last week a new Pew Research Center poll showed that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now believes that colleges and universities - the flash point of our current culture wars - have a negative effect on the country." About 75% of "Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents consistently say that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country."

[Peter Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/review/R1NJM8P...


I thought the first part of this book was interesting and educational. In the first part, the author, Joan C. Williams, examines the situation of the "white working class" ("WWC"). Williams attempts to be objective and sympathetic, and, frankly, chides her own class,i.e., the "professional managerial elite" ("PME"), for its snobbery against the WWC.

Williams' diagnosis is that the WWC is under substantial stress, a stress it deals with by forming deep but narrow networks based on family and proximity to others, discipline, religion, and promoting those virtues that make it possible for people to go to an unsatisfying job for forty years in order to bring home a sufficient income to keep a family fed, clothed and sheltered. Williams compares "settled families" - disciplined working class families - with "hard living families," aka the poor, who lack the virtues of discipline and give themselves over to dependence on welfare and addictive behaviors. One of Williams' observations is that the WWC, and other working class members, look down on the poor insofar as they find themselves working hard, sacrificing pleasure and being subjected to taxes, in order to give things to the poor without any strings. The WWC looks at this arrangement as fundamentally unfair.

In addition, Williams accurately points out that the WWC believes that it has been disrespected and mocked by the PME. Williams documents the slurs by which the WWC has been described as racist, sexist, atavistic, declining, irrelevant and the rest. Hillary Clinton's use of the term deplorable in 2016 played into the class resentment that existed on the part of the WWC against the PME. Likewise, Williams accurately notes that the feminism of WWC women is different from that of PME women. WWC women are not interested in the "breaking the glass ceiling"; they want their men to get jobs that can support the family. On the other hand, WWC men "walk the walk" with respect to child-care and maintaining the home, even if they don't "talk the talk." The PME, to the contrary, talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk, according to Williams.

As a "class migrant," I found a lot of surprising answers for things that I had experienced. My father enlisted in the Navy at 17 and become a "mustang Lieutenant" by the time he retired. He graduated college after retirement and became both a teacher and the owner of an appliance repair business. I was the first member of my family to go directly from high school to college. I put myself through college by running an appliance repair business. When I told my father that I was going to become a lawyer, his attitude was both pride and a certain sense that I was disgracing the family. Lawyers were always shyster as far as he was concerned. Until I read Williams' chapter on WWC attitudes to professionals, I had always had this sense of hostility toward professionals but I did not realize how culturally ingrained it was. Likewise, when I graduated from law school, I lacked the cultural awareness to understand that judicial clerkships were a kind of finishing school for lawyers. I immediately began to look for a "real job" because I didn't understand the resume value of a judicial clerkship. Finally, in my teens, I resented college students who spend more time on grievances and politics than on study. I went through college in three years with the idea that college existed for the purpose of getting a degree so that I could get a job. I did not view college as an extended period where I would make class connections. This seems to be examples of how I had internalized what Williams describes as the WWC attitude that life is not filled with second chances. I felt that I had one shot at college, and I had to do it once and do it right.

So, a lot of Williams description of WWC values seems to ring true.

Where Williams goes wrong is in her plan of action. After spending a dozen chapters advising her PME associates to treat WWC concerns with respect, she flushes her advice and begins to resort to stereotyping WWC concerns. Thus, Williams understands that the WWC antipathy for governmental intervention stands in the way of the WWC being a wholehearted member of the progressive alliance. Her answer to this issue is to explain that the WWC is ignorant of all the good things that the government does for them. Her solution to this problem is a series of advertisements where members of the WWC talk about all the good things they get from the government.

But why stop there? How about advertisements by celebrities? That was so very effective in 2016.

Obviously, as a pro-statist leftist, Williams can't acknowledge that the WWC antipathy has merit. Her answer, therefore, is to equate the "goods" that government gives the WWC, e.g., mortgage deductions, with the goods that it gives the poor, e.g., cell phones, and with the goods that it gives the rich, e.g., jobs and contracts.

One thing is not like the other.

Obviously, when a person is "given" a mortgage deduction, they are being allowed to retain that which was their's, to begin with. A person who keeps more of their income is only being "given" something insofar as they buy into the leftist premise that everything belongs to the government. A WWC understands properly that insofar as the government does not have a primary claim to the property of the WWC, then it does not have a primary claim to the property of a rich person either.

In other words, in order to make headway, Williams and her friends need to persuade the WWC that "property" means "stuff that the government really owns but lets you use." People who work very hard for their property are not likely to accept that definition, no matter what celebrity gives a thirty second soundbite.

Likewise, when the tire meets the road on issues like abortion, global warming or protection against terror, Williams' conclusion is that the WWC must surrender its interests and support the PME agenda, albeit repackaged under the heading of family values. Thus, abortion will be made acceptable to the WWC under the argument that anyone who values families should help ensure that adults who don't want kids shouldn't have them. But what happened to any concern about the religious values that support the anti-abortion position? To a secularist PME, such values don't exist. Further, why wouldn't WWC attitude not be "well, if you don't want children, don't have sex"?

The "climate change" argument was particularly precious. She makes an appeal for the support of farmers who are experiencing "desertification." But in the Central Valley of California, the biggest cause of "desertification" is the refusal of the PME class to build water infrastructure, i.e., dams, out of a concern for the environment. Farmers in California are not Democrats for a very substantial reason - the PMEs are destroying them by treating inland California like colonized territory.

Likewise, Williams proved herself tone deaf in talking about the 2016 election. Williams discussed the refrain of "lock her up" through a feminist filter, arguing that women have to be nice and competent and that Hillary managed to communicate only competence. But the point of "lock her up" was that Hillary had violated the law as a public official by putting national security information on an unsecured server. The WWC watched as the PME class contorted itself to avoid the obvious conclusion that if Hillary had not been Hillary, but had been a WWC member, Hillary would have been arrested and locked up. The WWC saw the evidence in the bizarre press briefing by FBI Director Comey where he laid out the evidence of Hillary's complicity but as a PME assured America that Hillary did not have a criminal intent. Any WWC member knew that they would never have caught such a lucky break.

So, Williams' book has some merit, but in the end, it shows that the left still cannot see reality as it is. I might have given it a three, but I felt that Williams did a good job of diagnosing the problem.

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an expanded version of an article the author wrote just after the election: https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-... .
The author describes herself as a member of the professional/managerial elite, born and bred, but says that forty years ago she married a “class migrant”, a man from a blue-collar background, and has spent her married life coming to understand his working-class family. This book is mostly a series of questions someone from her class may ask about the working class (and by the way, despite the title, she covers the black working class too, often contrasting their outlooks with that of the white working class). The book gives a sort of surface overview which sometimes lacks depth, but it does give the reader a valuable insight and the shorter, lighter approach may make the information readily available to those short on time. (For a more nuanced approach, I would read Arlie Hochschild’s wonderful "Strangers in Their Own Land".) She begins by defining her subject (“Who is the working class?”) as those two thirds of Americans without a college degree who are neither rich nor poor. They have household incomes above the bottom 30% but below the top 20%. They comprise the true middle class. (page 10) She then asks, “Why does the working class resent the poor?” (Answer: they view the poor as freeloaders. The true middle class is often taxed in order to provide programs for the poor, but those who are barely above the poverty level end up not receiving any benefit and perhaps paying more themselves.) Next question: “Why does the working class resent professionals but admire the rich?” (Answer: the professional class is suspect. They are perceived as “college kids” who had life handed to them and don’t know a real struggle. But, as one working class man said of the rich, “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have”. The ideal is actually to own your own business and not have to take orders from anyone. It is what the working class dreams of.) I have actually heard the next question posed from a colleague when speaking of those in coal country: “Why doesn’t the working class just move to where the jobs are?” Having just moved for a job myself, I answered, “it takes money to move----a not inconsiderable amount of money.” There is a deeper reason though: the working class needs their support system of family and friends. Life is hard and you wouldn’t want to give up the care and help of your network of family, neighbors, friends. Okay, next question is “Why doesn’t the working class get with it and go to college?” To me, this goes to the heart of a fallacy in our society. Not every job can or should require college. We really need a better system of training for skilled work, a system of internships such as Germany has. Nowadays, too, college may really be out of reach for many in the working class. It is just too darned expensive and a young person often finishes with an overhanging burden of debt. It is very logical to think hard about putting yourself into that situation. “Why don’t they push their kids harder to succeed?” Here there is a very real cultural divide. As the author says on pages 53-54: “Clear boundaries exist between parents and children, with prompt obedience expected: crucial training for working class jobs…..The ideology of natural growth prevalent among the poor and the working class contrasts with the “concerted cultivation” of the professional elite….Concerted cultivation is the rehearsal for a life of work devotion: the time pressure, the intense competition, the exhaustion with it all, the ethic of putting work before family.” Her concluding comment for this section is: “Concerted cultivation and work devotion, perhaps the two central institutions of life in the professional elite, each deserves a closer look. What’s the unspoken message of helicopter parenting----that if you don’t knock everyone’s socks off, you’re a failure? What’s the better message: that the key is to be a good kid, or that every child needs to be above average?” (page 57) She goes on to ask, “Is the working class just racist?” This is a delicate topic and she goes back in history to set the stage by saying, “An ugly racial dynamic arose after the Civil War when Southern elites pitted the white working class against newly freed black people by communicating that, although poor whites might be “white trash”, at least they weren’t black. By offering poor whites the “wages of whiteness”---the social dignity of membership in the dominant race---planters made them more willing to accept wages and farm tenancy contracts that left them dirt poor. This dynamic has a very long history…” (page 59) It’s divide and conquer, isn’t it? She also references J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, to contrast hard living to settled living. She cautions that the working class often unfairly associates these living standards with race. “Is the working class just sexist?” She posits that this may have more to do with the perception of economic status than actual sexism. “The notion that women belong at home while men went out to work emerged in the nineteenth century; from the beginning, it was a key way that elites distinguished themselves from the working class…..Among whites, the breadwinner role unites men, but stay-at-home motherhood divides women. For working-class white women, becoming a homemaker signals a rise in status, not only for herself but for her entire family.” (page 76) “Don’t they understand that manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back?” This again comes back to education and training for the higher skill level jobs that remain in manufacturing. We probably need more technical job training as opposed to more college degrees. (Related to this is her question, “Why don’t working-class men just take ‘pink-collar’ jobs?” This, too, comes back to job training.) She ends with several somewhat related questions that have a political tinge: “Why don’t the people who benefit most from government help seem to appreciate it?” (Her answer is that the programs are often not recognized as such and need to be better publicized. ) “Can liberals embrace the white working class without abandoning important values and allies? And “Why are the Democrats worse at connecting with the white working class than Republicans?” (She thinks the class cultural gap is at fault here. Speaking of the Democrats offer of paid sick leave and a higher minimum wage, she notes, “A few days’ paid sick leave ain’t gonna support a family. Nor is minimum wage. Working-class men aren’t interested in working at McDonlad’s for $15/hour instead of $9.50. What they want is a job that paves the way to a modest middle-class standard of living. Trump was the first politician in a long time to promise that. Many voters deeply appreciate the fact that at least he understood what they need.” (page 127)
This is a brief, timely look at some pressing issues. You may have noticed many books appearing which address the class divide and growing inequality. This book may perhaps best be considered an introduction before plunging into more in-depth material.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book trying to explain the White Working Class to the Professional Managerial Elite Class in the wake of Trump's election in 2016. Having lived amongst people in both worlds, I appreciated her ability to enter the mind of the WWC and provide rational arguments for their choices. A couple of times, she slipped into the "they're stupid and we have to explain this to them" mentality, but generally, she tried to show how their lifestyles consistently stem from an entirely different worldview. From my experience growing up in blue collar Oregon, I'd say she got the worldview about 80% right. Now the question which I don't feel qualified to answer is - did she do what she is trying to do? Did she present the WWC in a way the PME class can comprehend?

Personally, I found this book helpful in understanding why I think differently than many people I associate with today and questioning the basis of my expectations - are they the result of my childhood experience, or do they have merit on their own?

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This timely book compacted unique insights about growing class divide among different income levels, race, gender and educational backgrounds in our society today. I appreciated the researched and nuanced approach the author took to define commonly used labels of “poor”, “middle class” and “elite”. We can all agree that these terms were often overlapping, contradicting and confusing. With clarity, the author simply defined the “poor” as individual or family making less than $41,000 annually, where “white working class” making $41,000 to $132,000 with a median household income of about $75,000. She termed the top 20% of the income bracket the “PME (professional managerial elite) class” who are mostly college educated progressives. In this book, the author focused on the plight of the white working class who resent the poor for receiving government assistance, as they themselves struggle to make ends meet and feel deeply threatened by globalization, immigration, erosion of family value and religion.

The book raised a series of seemingly basic questions like “Why does the white working class recent the poor?”, “Why doesn’t the white working class just move to where the jobs are?”, “Why doesn’t the white working class go to college and get an education?” and “Is the white working class racist?” The author attempted to provide cultural, emotional and political perspectives to support more meaningful and nuanced answers. For example, white working class are reluctant to pack up and relocate because they are more dependent on closely knit families for child care due to economic reasons, and they are more tied to their communities for identity. The PMEs, however, powered by their college education, align their identities more with mobility and career advancement. The white working class value their religion because “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”. On racial attitude, the author feels that the liberals are just as bad as anyone else. The PMEs use “merit” as the gold standard, therefore people of color are viewed as lacking in merit. The white working class use “morality” to blame people of color as lacking in that quality.

What I learned from this book is that it’s important to not dismiss a significant portion of our citizens as “Archie Bunker, Al Bundy and Homer Simpson” of the world. Understand their political, emotional and economic needs will help all of us to have a dialog in ways that make overcoming the barriers possible, which in turn will improve and strengthen our democracy and society as a whole.

[Graeme Newell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a delightfully illuminating book that really showed me a few things about my own stereotypes and generalizations about white working-class people.

The author goes through each one of the major criticisms that elites have for blue-collar people. Then, in short order, she clearly and insightfully explains the motivations behind their choices. This book answers the question "what the hell are they thinking!?"

This is a delightfully short book full of pithy insights that those of us not raised blue collar have probably missed. I really learned a lot.

[Grouchy Editor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since November 8, there have been hundreds – possibly thousands – of published articles about that branch of humanity famously labeled “the deplorables” by Hillary Clinton. Many of these election postmortems are clueless and/or condescending attempts to dissect and explain (to liberals) the strain of American voter that supported and continues to support Donald Trump.

But some of these election analyses are insightful. Joan Williams’s "White Working Class" expands on a previously published essay and it’s mostly an evenhanded, enlightening study of the social gap between the country’s “Haves” (the elite) and “Have-a-Littles” (what Williams labels the “working class”).

Williams, herself a born-and-bred member of the liberal elite, occasionally slips into full-on Democrat mode (in praise of big government) and takes some unwarranted swipes at Trump (a pure racist, even when his supporters are not), but she also has the balls to lay most of the blame for our current House Divided at the hands of those who hold the most power: the elites.

It’s too bad she doesn’t stick to her strong point, the first two-thirds of the book when she concentrates on the evolution of class division. Toward the end of "White Working Class," Williams cannot resist tackling a host of other societal ills: abortion, race relations, illegal immigration, etc., and allows her inner liberal to promote the usual progressive remedies. It’s almost as if, after hammering liberals on their class cluelessness, Williams felt the need to soften the blow. – grouchyeditor.com

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is lot of good information here, though I winced when she mentioned JD Vance, a hypocrite in my view. Maybe it’s just the narrator, but I found it kind of off-putting and strident.

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a widespread narrative on the American political left that the people who voted for Donald Trump did so because they are stupid and racist. Joan Williams wrote this book to suggest that this is not necessarily so and, even if it is, it is counterproductive to say it out loud. Her counter narrative is that the Trump voter is reacting to the condescension of what she calls the professional, managerial elite (PME). They see this largely liberal group as wanting to combat climate change by mandating use of expensive light bulbs and eliminating hamburgers, while they drive big cars and fly off on vacation in big jet airplanes. They hear themselves being called racists for resisting integrated schools by the PME who send their kids to largely white private schools. And mostly they see PME members raking in six figure salaries just because they have college degrees which the Trump voter sees as largely unrelated to intelligence. Williams concludes that Democratic attempts to convert these voters by calling them stupid (or deplorable) haven't worked, so a better plan might be to address some of their economic concerns. She obviously believes that the white working class and liberal do-gooders can make common cause, possibly because, like myself, she saw Erin Brockavitch on cable the other night.

[Amy Holodak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily digestible and accessible, thought provoking and deeply relevant. Williams goes beyond the talk on the 2016 election, which inspired this book, to discuss HOW and WHY we talk about the white working class the way we do ("we" being twenty-first century Americans generally, and Democrats/Progressives specifically), and how that must change if we truly want everyone to have a seat at the table.

[Cody Sexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Class, more than anything else, is the crucial divide. Class trumps everything. But class isn’t just about how much money you earn. Nor is it an abiding characteristic of individuals. Class is a cultural tradition.
Williams spends the majority of this short, acerbic book explaining the worldview of the white working class, why they believe and behave as they do. And her message for the professional managerial class is blunt, just as elites ascribe structural reasons for poverty, so too should they recognize the structural factors behind the attitudes and behaviors of the working class.
But the definition of “working class” and similar terms is vague. In some circles, "working class" has actually become a euphemism for "poor," but Williams uses the term "working class" for those living a few rungs higher, Americans with earnings above the lowest 30 percent and below the top 20 percent, with a median household income of about $75,000. Some might consider this range to overlap with the middle class, but since almost all Americans consider themselves middle class, Williams decided that the latter term was too vague to be useful.
She structures the book around the nasty little questions that elites like to mutter about working class Trump voters at dinner parties. Questions like, Why doesn’t the working class get with it and go to college? Why don’t they just move to where the jobs are? Don’t they understand that manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back? Why won’t they take the pink collar jobs that are growing? Why do they refuse to get the training they need to better their lot, and why don’t they send their kids to college? Why do they cling to their guns and their religion? Above all, why do such people vote Republican and vote Trump? Don’t they want health insurance and a higher minimum wage? And how dare they criticize the poor when so many of them are on government disability or unemployment.
When passing judgment on the white working class, elites regard their own values about home life, helicopter parenting, constant uprooting, and work life, creativity, innovation, as the norm, oblivious to the fact that others may hold different ones, as Williams argues.
The white working class dream is not to become upper middle class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable, just with more money.
The working classes simultaneous fascination with the ultra wealthy and disdain for the professional class is not only about trickle down fantasies, it's about proximity. "Most working-class people have little contact with the truly rich," Williams explains, "but they suffer class affronts from professionals every day: the doctor who unthinkingly patronizes the medical technician, the harried office worker who treats the security guard as invisible, the overbooked business traveler who snaps at the TSA agent." "Brashly wealthy celebrities epitomize the fantasy of being wildly rich while losing none of your working-class cred," and "Trump epitomizes this.”
She also walks us through the sources of financial insecurity and hopelessness among the white working class. Jobs have vanished, job retraining is useless. Higher education is no sure step up for their children. Many working class kids live in “education deserts,” miles from any college or university. The return on education can be low, and the resultant debt cripplingly high.
The workplace has vastly different meanings as well. Working class families may not choose to relocate for a job because they care more about their community ties. They may prioritize stability and dependability over "disruption" because in working class jobs, disruption "just gets you fired.” And they may cling to religion because "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."
At a deeper level, both the left and the right need an economic program that can deliver middle class jobs. The right has one, which is to unleash American business. The left? They remain obsessed with cultural issues. I fully understand why transgender bathrooms are important, but I also understand why progressives’ obsession with prioritizing cultural issues infuriates many Americans whose chief concerns are economic.
The working class, of all races, has been asked to swallow a lot of economic pain while elites have focused on noneconomic issues.
In Stayin’ Alive, his powerful history of the “last days” of the working class, the historian Jefferson Cowie describes how the proud blue collar identity of previous generations disintegrated during the ’70s. “Liberty has largely been reduced to an ideology that promises economic and cultural refuge from the long arm of the state,” he writes, “while seemingly lost to history is the logic that culminated under the New Deal: that genuine freedom could only happen within a context of economic security.”
We, my family and I, are what Williams would describe as “class migrants” but we are still far from middle class or even working class as she defines it. But for elites, or anyone else, to write us off as racist is a telling example of how, although race and sex based insults are no longer acceptable in polite society, class based insults still are.
Liberals at every turn want to mandate which group merits the most sympathy. That we should all feel sympathy for people of color, for women, for refugees, for LGBTQ individuals. But caring about working class whites however always seems to be optional. Even 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.
I realize that this is a very unpopular opinion. One that runs counter to our current cultural narrative and that I risk making myself a leper among my friends, what few I even have, on the left or the right. But the biggest risk for us today is to continue to be class clueless, or worse class callous. If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring coal jobs back to Whitesburg, Kentucky, for example, the consequences could turn pernicious.
During my reading I never once had the feeling that this book was for anyone other than the "professional managerial elite" who are very much left leaning. Which is not to say others cannot read and find value in the book, but I did feel that many of the messages presented throughout the book were for the "clueless" "elites." Not those who, for lack of a better phrase, are living the "white working class" life.
Later in the book she does go “off the rails" a bit and seems to ignore much of what she prescribes in the first half of the book, reverting to her "coastal progressive elitism.” It’s almost like she wrote the first part of the book, took some time off, and then came back to finish it from a different perspective.
In the end, however, Williams does offer a concise, penetrating, and thought provoking account of the powerful resentments underlying much of contemporary American politics.

[Courtney Cameron-Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an eye-opening read. I've never understood why the white working class consistently votes against its interests. It's tempting to dismiss this voting segment as dimwitted, racist rednecks - but this is a condescending oversimplification that ignores the storm of socioeconomic and cultural factors that shape their lives. If you've ever asked yourself questions like, "Why doesn't the white working class relocate to where jobs are more abundant?", "Why does the white working class refuse to go to college?" "Are the white working class really an incorrigible bunch of bigots?", "Why is the white working class so opposed to social programs that would benefit them?", then this book is worth a read. The author humanizes this oft-reviled group and its quest for dignity in a changing world. She explains how the cultural illiteracy of progressive political messaging repels working class whites and what we can do about it. This book challenged me to rethink my personal biases and forced me to consider new perspectives. Good stuff!

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Review of the Audiobook

Published in June of 2017 by Blackstone Audio
Read by Liisa Ivary
Duration: 3 hours, 28 minutes
Unabridged

This small book grew from an article that the author wrote after the 2016 Presidential Election. She wrote this article to explain the results to her friends in what she calls the "professional elite". The article created a lot of buzz so she expanded it into a small, accessible book that I found to be very accurate.

Williams distinguishes the working class from the poor and the professional elite. In layman's terms, the working class is the middle class. It consists of factory workers, teachers, police officers, mechanics and restaurant managers. People with training and skills that literally go to work every day. The professional elite are doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, professors at elite universities and the political class.

Williams details why the working class looks at the world differently than the professional elite and why the policies and the general image offered up by the Clinton campaign was so thoroughly rejected by the working class.

As a person who comes from a working class background ...

Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2017/...

[Terry Tucker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not particularly impressed with this book. Perhaps I expected too much. As a former counterinsurgency advisor I was trained to analyze social disorder and the elements that lead to insurgency. The class differences referenced in this book are: a lack of political representation, economic instability, and the degree of distinction in our current form of government. This last element coupled with economic instability has created a perceived crisis in legitimacy. While many also see the financial elite as having literally escaped from justice (from the 2008 meltdown they created). Anyone that has been reading the news the last 10 or more years knows that there has been a significant decline in public morale and the legitimacy of government and wall street. All of this decay has enabled the violence and instability. The last 20 years, Universities ( I am a former professor) have gone out of the way to demonize nationalism. Developing a pride in ones culture took precedence over pride in country. Why there could not be both is a question that none have answered.
So although the art of social and economic change - urbanization, education, literacy, amd media have expanded our consciousness. The changes have also undermined authority and institution - and not necessarily a bad thing...Just say'n.
The rates of social expansion and political participation are high, but also transient and seem to follow emotion rather than the facts. This is evident as each week the media and the country loses its mind over some misstep in domestic politics - everything is now at a crisis level according to the media.
Bottom line is, I would rather suggest that one read the first 100 pages of Samuel Huntington's "Political Order in Changing Societies" and use that information to assess where we are currently in this so called class war.

[Rick Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought provoking analysis of class in United States from an Ivy League educated lawyer. This was written around the 2016 election as a “window into the souls of the working class” or some other such ethnographic tourism. That said, it seems to be a solid aggregation of information on class, and it’s presented in a way that I imagine is very digestible to the New Yorker types. (No not in snarky cartoon form) It’s interesting in regards to both how the author presents ideas and the ideas presented. Offering a window into class in a form the upper crust can palate. If I were ever to be invited to some such supper party, I assume stealing quotes from this book would make me a hit when the conversation inevitably would turn to “oh dearie me, I can’t believe the state of the world.” Thankfully I doubt I’m in danger of that scenario anytime soon.

While mostly good, the author tosses out some statistics that are questionable in their relevancy if not completely confusing. At one point she says if 50% of the women who voted for Trump instead voted for Hillary, then Hillary would’ve won the election. That’s great, if the pope wasn’t the pope he just be a weird dude named Francis with a funny hat.

I mostly agree with her points. But I do think there should be some onus to get ya thoughts right. I also still don’t fully understand the adoration Hillary gets and the way people talk of heartbreak at her failed campaign. Why do we need to make up scenarios where selected groups of people go back and vote differently? I’m not thrilled with the current off color Munster cheese in charge, but I’m don’t recall feeling depressed after Hillarys loss. Can someone write a semi patronizing ethnographic book explaining this mindset to me?

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought when I walked into Collected Works, an independent bookstore in Santa Fe and saw this on display I grabbed it thinking to myself (I have a habit of visiting a bookstore, not a Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores when I am in new places) ah, perhaps it will shed some light on the current mess that we find ourselves in. It did not. I am glad that I read it as it has all the things I have seen elsewhere in multiple publications and blogs and newspapers in 131 pages, in nicely defined chapters. For example: 'Why Talk About Class?' or 'Why Does the Working Class Resent Professionals But Admire the Rich? or 'Don't They Understand Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back?' All valid questions with no good answers. At the end of the book, there is a section titled 'Additional Reading' that asks the reader "If you want to know more about the working class and you want to read one book....... and the book is listed. And then asks the reader "If you want to read five more, add:" and five more books are listed. I have read several of them and with reading another I continue feeling like the U2 song, "I still haven't found what I am looking for." I have not and I have been looking for a long time. She attempts to answer as all the others have, but I am not convinced that an answer exists.

[Cameron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hits on a lot of good, but largely accepted views. I feel like you’d have to be a real CNN/MSNBC addict to not have an understanding of these problems. Not much gets pitched past that.

Short chapters means that claims/ideas lacked much depth and the author’s insistence on interjecting her personal life lacked relevancy and brought topics to a frustrating, abrupt halt.

“Why Don’t Working-Class Men Just Take “Pink-Collar” Jobs?” was so short and lacking substance that it probably shouldn’t have been it’s own chapter. Half of one of the chapter’s four pages relies on quotes ‘via email’ that honestly sounds fake.

"They are little man-boys who need 'manly' jobs and go crying to their mamas when they have to answer to a 'woman in a pants suit' or need to perform a task that doesn’t involve lifting 100 pounds or cutting through steel plates, one man opined in an email. Said
another,"Swallow your pride/dignity and go back to school, get a 21st century job Economies change. Real men and women with integrity don't expect to be handed a job or scapegoat others who get something they don't," commented Jerry Day.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it, but some of her terms are not so widely accepted. It's short which is great, but just don't let this be the last/only book you read on this topic. I highly recommend Arlie Hochschild's "strangers in their own land" it is bigger, she spent more time developing the ideas. But Joan Williams unlocked the whole idea to me. Of note, I had previously read JD Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" but missed all the importance of it. Now that I've read Williams, I think JD Vance's is more relevant. There is a great talk Joan Williams gives at the London School of Economics available on Youtube.

[Amber]

This book has gotten on my last damn nerve. It's this anthropology-like book from the working-class-whisperer. She's been tasked with decoding and speaking for the working class people who have elites scratching their heads. I would be more insulted if I didn't have a tiny shred of hope that this might be useful.

DNF

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Ted Lehmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

In White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) Joan C. Williams has written a challenging, persuasive book helping to answer questions often asked by people seeking to understand why and how Donald Trump won election as President of the United States by gaining the votes of people who seemed to have been voting against their own interests. In presenting her argument, Williams details how to coalition of liberal intellectuals, workers, and minorities has been broken because of their emphasis on identity issues and their loss of touch with the values and lives of the struggling people in the white working class. More important, she delineates how the Professional Managerial Elite (which she calls PME) has lost touch with the lives of those who do the work, blue collar Americans. Furthermore, she argues, that by dismissing this group as uneducated, fundamentalist, and racist, liberals and progressives have lost their loyalty and denigrated the values and beliefs that once formed the core of our society.

The chapters of this cogently argued lively presentation, carefully supported by numerous citations, and garnished with sufficient anecdotes, personal experiences, and quotations, asks a number of questions that people comfortably ensconced in middle class, professional positions often ask about those whose family values, work ethic, and religious beliefs appear to be cutting them off from the success that the professional elite is enjoying. Chapter headings include:
Who Is the Working Class?
Why Does the Working Class Resent the Poor
Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Move to Where The Jobs Are?
Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Get with It and Go to College?
Thse chapters ask whether the working class is just racist and sexist, explaining that while racism and sexism surely exist, the answers to these questions are much more nuanced and difficult than common argument has suggested. By forming chapters as questions, Williams encourages developing deeper understanding and more wide ranging discussion of how these questions may be answered. She always cites solid research leading to alternative approaches to solving the problems suggested.

While arguing that racism and sexism still exist and are powerful factors in our society, Williams says that Americans are deeply uncomfortable with the concept and discussion of social class - its meaning, economic sources, and effects on our attitude and behaviors. She argues that not until liberals are able to re-connect with white, working class voters will they be able to consistently win presidential elections again. She holds that identity politics strike right where working class people are uncomfortable and afraid. Thus gender, race, sexual identity, and religious conviction stand as difficult touching points. She strongly acknowledges these differences while suggesting strategies for discussing the issues in ways that make crossing of difficult barriers more easy.

She points out that many social and political postures of white working class voters and others are not racism, but fear. Fear of the unknown creates misunderstandings and confusing disjunctions in contemporary society. Especially poignant is Williams' demonstration that racism exists in all of us, but manifests itself differently through the application of class-based stereotypes. Her examples hit home to any thoughtful reader with the genuine power of recognition.

White working class families are more generally associated with more closely knit families, often for economic and convenience reasons growing out of providing mutual support in a difficult and demanding living and working world. Elites, however, place their self concepts and advancement on mobility, college educations, and self-satisfied sophistication setting them apart and above. Basic questions like “Why don't they move to where the jobs are” or “Why don't they go to college, get educated, and move up?” are answered by understanding the values concerning family, religion, and work maintained by those in the white working class. The dilemmas created for those Williams calls “class migrants,” people who move from working class into professional and technical ranks, are heart rending in the descriptions of how people learn social and economic cues that mark them as different from their background, and then must deal with the dis-jointures they discover in being separated from their background and heritage. The term “fly over country,” which passes as sophisticated wit among the elite is deeply insulting to those who see that country as “Home.” By dismissing large parts of the country, and the values and hard-working lives of those who live and seek to work there, the sophisticated coastal elites are simply insulting and alienating those they need to understand most.

Williams examines the kind of educational approaches, short of obtaining a college education, which would lead to appropriate employment in manufacturing for today's working class. She explores several approaches which would involve labor unions, schools and community colleges, and local manufacturers in training and empowering workers to become gainfully employed, while recognizing that older forms of heavy industry dependent on large employee populations are unlikely to return. Williams couples this with the family values and work ethic which would be reinforced by such arrangements. When placing racism, sexism, and fear of both Muslims and Latinos beside the greater fear of the inability to meet family obligations in the face of ongoing layoffs, she argues that its little wonder that white working class Americans were attracted by the promises of Donald Trump, no matter how blue sky they may turn out to be.

Professor Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Hastings Foundation Chair, and the Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, earned a Master's Degree in City Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed her undergraduate degree in history at Yale University. She has written over seventy law review articles, including one listed in 1996 as one of the most cited law review articles ever written. Her work has been excerpted in casebooks on six different topics. She has been described as having "something approaching rock star status” by The New York Times.

Joan C. Williams in White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) has written a readable, scholarly book about class, race, and gender. Some might consider that feat to be an oxymoron, but this volume performs a great service for anyone wishing to understand the phenomenon of Donald Trump's election and appeal to the range of voters he attracted. Williams manages this feat with a style that is both thoroughly analytical and warmly human, sprinkling her text with personal anecdotes and well-chosen examples taken from thoughtful people crossing many of the fault lines separating Americans from achieving mutual understanding. Both in the amount of information this book provides and the tone in which it is written, this book provides a service for scholars, policy-makers, and general readers. It make a genuine contribution to the discussion.I received the book as an digital download from the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle App.

[Crysty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many, many people would benefit from reading this book. I respect Joan C. Williams, enjoy her interviews, and believe that her understanding of social inequality across every spectrum of America is brilliant and more researched, experienced, and sagacious than mine will ever be. I also respect that she's working to end disparity at every level and for all people, and not just for a select few. This is an honest attempt at one of the hardest topics, and she gets closer to the truth than most.

That being said, this was a conflicting read. Williams, in a cringe-worthy moment of identity politics self-disclosure, shares a personal anecdote about her first boyfriends' father (himself a member of the white working class) accusing her of staring at him and his family "like an anthropologist", and it did nothing to change the fact I felt like the white working class was being explained to me by an anthropologist. Since this was clearly written for a progressive audience to help us understand another side of life, I would have expected her to include more stories and interviews with the actual working class (not just by quoting Arlie Hochschild, another sociologist-academic), supported by research and reputable conservative thinkers, to draw us into this world.

Her observations of the liberal coastal-elite distancing from their role in systemic-racism by blaming the white working class was more compelling to me than her debunking the all too-easy stereotype of the "poor-white, undereducated Trump supporter" (a presumption that Ta-Nehisi Coates also denounces in his latest essay, but for other reasons). It makes sense to me that Hilary Clinton failed to connect with these voters, and why the Democratic Party has lost their trust and yes, I see the logic in such a differing perspective, but it doesn't mean Williams successfully elicited an emotional connection to their values.

I hope this book does go on to inform how we vote and write policy and communicate via both mass and social media (all things which are sorely needed). But without interacting, conversing, and living alongside and among members of this community, I don't know that anyone should convince themselves that they are better equipped to tackle the divisiveness in our country for having read this book.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, I would like to start by stating that the title of the book is misleading. I am not white, yet I identified strongly with the author description of white working class. The author, indeed pointed out that values espoused by the white working class can also be found on other different races of working class. In short, working class people are the ones who are mostly non-college educated, having blue-collar job, and believed in values such as stability, security, respect to authority, religious and pro-life. However, in America, the trend shows that they are increasingly come to a clash with their more affluent fellow members of society, the Professional-Managerial-Elites, who unfortunately, often look down on them with condescension, and utterly tone-deaf to their problem.

Their jobs gone, either taken by illegal migrants or packed away overseas, values they cherished became increasingly ‘politically incorrect’, aggravated by their being caricatured as ignorant, bigot, or deplorable by the Elites, no wonder they turned to Donald Trump, the only presidential candidate that reached out to them. So what is the problem? Apparently, to the author, it was because of class cluelessness, especially in part of the Elites. The author give an example, in how a lawyer who earns $200,000 a year brazenly called herself as middle class, at the time when median income was $56,000 a year, putting her in the top 6% of income earners.

This class cluelessness was exacerbated with Democratic Party (yes, this book was written with white, Democratic-leaning, liberals as its target) focus on identity politics, pushing aside white working class’ economic concern even more to the sideline, ignoring their anger and dismissing it as racism as bigotry. Although short, I found this book interesting, and because of its short number of pages, easy to read. I highly recommend this book, while being a conservative myself, to liberals who seek to understand people on the other side in order to better reach out to them.

[Paul Huffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's said that genius is making the complex simple. Based on that, "White Working Class" is a work of genius. Joan Williams takes the complex subject of class values and attitudes, adds a vast number of studies, articles and data, and provides a concise, easy to read, pointed critique of the lack of understanding that educated elites (Professional Managerial Elites or PME in Williams' words) have regarding what is referred to as White Working Class voters. I spent my entire professional life as a manager, never having done any "real work" (which I freely admit). It was only in the last 10 years of my career, and especially the last 5 when I was in a senior corporate leadership role, that I recognized and internalized that the people who do the work were the core strength and asset of the organization. All of the management, leadership and strategic thought I had meant nothing if it did not translate into making the people who actually do the work more successful.

The gist of Williams' book, across many stereotypical values we hold of others, is that those of us in the educated elite - which includes most of both political parties - have forgotten the role and importance of the people that get the work done that sustains our society on a day to day basis. Contrary to 50 - 70 years ago when the worker was respected and celebrated, we now celebrate the celebrity leader, innovator, social justice warrior and/or philanthropist. Williams' shows the first step is recognizing the value that working people provide, and then to respect their personal values and perspective. We then have to put that new perspective into action and develop new approaches to making work valuable and both financially and professionally rewarding. This is something that can not be legislated however can be influenced by government and institutional action.

Trump has tapped into the alienation and anger of the large percentage of Americans who lack college degree and are working hard every day, He is not making a meaningful impact on their condition, however his rhetoric gives them more cause for hope than the focus of other politicians on other special interest or marginalized people. As Williams points out in some of her suggestions, making life better for working people will probably make life better for all those who are marginalized. It won't make life appreciably "better" for the PME, however those of us in that group already have it pretty good.