threatened, they can’t change, they can’t listen.”^150 What causes people to change their
minds are conversations designed to make a connection with them, through honesty and
empathy. That worked when activists canvassed to assess—and create—support for
transgender rights.^151 Two-thirds of the recent sea change in acceptance of marriage
equality stemmed from a gradual process of people changing their thinking.^152
Fear of “brown people” and anti-immigrant feelings may stem from the fact that mass
immigration returned to the United States in the 1970s for the first time since 1910^153 —
which has coincided with the white working class’s fall from blue-collar grace. It’s easy
to confuse correlation with causation, and there’s some of that going on, associating the
good old days with the old white days.
Another factor is that there has been more immigration to rural areas.^154 Jennifer
Sherman found that those who remained in the rural area she studied after the local mill
closed down stressed the importance of place, which “conveniently conceals their
inabilities to easily adapt to unfamiliar circumstances.” Fear of what lay outside the
isolated valley where her subjects lived was a strong motivating factor in their decision to
stay.^155 These were not people well equipped to cope with a massive influx of
immigrants.
One way to help ease tensions is to create a national discourse that acknowledges and
respects traditionalism and hard work, values shared by both immigrants and working-
class whites. In the 1990s, Lamont found approval of immigrants for exactly these
reasons.^156 A difficult challenge is that working-class whites, themselves disciplined by
rules, tend to disapprove of those who don’t follow them. True immigration reform would
make this problem abate or disappear, but that hardly seems on the horizon.
The road will be a bumpy one, and there’s a lot we can’t control. One thing we can
control is the elite’s class condescension, which has driven working-class whites into the
arms of the far right. Arlie Hochschild reflected back on Louisiana whites’ sense of loss,
and whom they blame. “I’ve had enough of poor me ,” said a mayor who started out as an
instrumentation foreman at Phillips 66. “I met this one black guy who complained that he
couldn’t get a job. Come to find out he’d been to private school. I went to a local public
school like everyone else I know. No one should be getting a job to fill some mandated
racial quota.”^157
Note the class resentment. Because I study social inequality, I know that even Malia and
Sasha Obama will be disadvantaged by race, advantaged as they are by class. But
- Is the Working Class Just Racist?