Conclusion
THIS BOOK DESCRIBES a relationship gone bad: that between the white working class
and the PME. Empathy’s a good place to start, but remedying this relationship will
require more. Like all good family therapy, it will require not just that the family
“troublemaker” learn to behave. What’s amiss is the family dynamic that cast the
“troublemaker” in that unhappy role. Changing that dynamic requires change on the part
of the family members who are “not in the wrong.”
It’s a simple message: when you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college
degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice. And when elites commit to
equality for many different groups but arrogantly dismiss “the dark rigidity of
fundamentalist rural America,”^289 this is a recipe for extreme alienation among working-
class whites. Deriding “political correctness” becomes a way for less-privileged whites to
express their fury at the snobbery of more-privileged whites. If you like what that
dynamic is doing to the country, by all means continue business as usual.
I don’t, for two reasons. The first is ethical: I am committed to social equality, not for
some groups but for all groups. The second is strategic: the hidden injuries of class now
have become visible in politics so polarized that our democracy is threatened. Another
key message is that elite truths don’t make sense in working-class lives. Working-class
truths do, and my hope is that I’ve provided a window into why. If we’re not going to
provide elite lives for the broad mass of people, neither can we expect them to embrace
elite truths.
Once the elite cast the white working class outside of its ambit of responsibility, the elite
did what elites do. They ignored those who print their New York Times , make their
KitchenAides,^290 tell them at the doctor’s to undress from the waist down. The
professional class first stopped noticing, and then they started condescending. Class
cluelessness became class callousness.
Much anxiety has been expressed about whether bringing the white working class into
focus will mean that privileged whites will stop caring about racism. I think that
remedying the relationship between the professional elite and working-class whites will
actually help people of color. I recall a conversation with Angela Harris, an African-
American law professor whom I was trying to interest in a joint conference on class.
Angela, with her inimitable candor, told me I was describing an issue among white
people. Implicit: not her business, but I should get on it. White-on-white crime, opined
another friend in critical race theory.
Conclusion