commented Erin Brown.* (“Fly-over” is another casual class insult that passes for wit.)
“We try to be right-living, clean-living people,” a former pipefitter told Hochschild, who
also noted her friends were proud they had the “moral strength to endure”^164 and talked
of “being churched ” with as much pride as her crowd might talk about being “highly
educated.” They were proud of their Christian morality and deeply wounded when it was
depicted as homophobic ignorance. Said one Tea Party member, “the American Dream is
more than having money. It’s feeling proud to be an American, and to say ‘under God’
when you salute the flag, and feel good about that. And it’s about living in a society that
believes in clean, normal family life.”^165
Hochschild recognizes that her Tea Party friends felt a loss not only of blue-collar jobs;
they also felt a loss of blue-collar honor. “For along with blue-collar jobs, a blue-collar
way of life was going out of fashion, and with it, the honor attached to a rooted self and
pride in endurance.” The communities they are so proud of are commonly depicted as
insular and closed-minded.^166 A gospel singer told Hochschild how much she loved Rush
Limbaugh. Hochschild was mystified until she realized that her attraction to Limbaugh
stemmed from her sense that Limbaugh was defending her against insults she felt liberals
were lobbing at her—that “Bible-believing Southerners are ignorant, backward, rednecks,
losers. They think we’re racist, sexist, homophobic, and maybe fat.” Rush Limbaugh
protected their pride.^167
If you don’t want to drive working-class whites to be attracted to the likes of Limbaugh,
stop insulting them. More than that: seek to understand and respect the logic of their
lives. Acknowledge that their folkways work as well for working-class lives as
professional-class folkways work for elite ones.
Doesn’t white working-class people’s sense of entitlement to decent jobs reflect white
privilege? Sure it does: even during the glory days, when blue-collar whites’ wages were
spiraling up, and the FHA was helping them buy homes, those jobs and houses were not
equally available to African-Americans.^168 But for the left to dismiss white working-class
demands on grounds of white privilege... what’s the message? That white working-class
people aren’t entitled to the American dream? Isn’t the right message that all Americans
are, regardless of race?
Another crucial step is to apply to the white working class the kind of analysis applied to
other groups who face structural disadvantage. We bend over backward to understand
why many poor women have children very early, attentive to the structural factors that
- Is the Working Class Just Racist?