White Working Class

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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.