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June 2, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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140
Paula
Clueless
about
Class
Ivy Leaguer says elites had better start treating the ‘White Working Class’ with respect
What could a University of Cali-
fornia law professor have to say
about the white working class?
Quite a lot actually. In the days
after Trump’s election, Joan
Williams wrote an essay about it
that went viral, with 3.2 million
people reading it online. Now it’s
been developed into a book,
“White Working Class: Overcom-
ing Class Cluelessness in Amer-
ica.” I interviewed her by phone
about the book May 24.
By Don McIntosh
The book is meant to do what?
The book is meant for anyone
who was surprised that Trump
won. It’s meant to explain why
he won and where we should go
from here. I heard in my circles
utter disbelief and confusion as
to why Trump won. It was crys-
tal clear to me, so I thought I
would explain it.
How do you know so much
about the white working
class? Well I attempted to read
every ethnography of the white
writing class written from about
1975 to about 2005, as well as
those published after. I’ve stud-
ied it for a very long time. I’ve
also lived it for a very long time.
I’m a “silver spoon girl. I come
from an elite family, but I mar-
ried into a white working-class
family nearly 40 years ago. The
book is really a book about the
relationship between the “Pro-
fessional Managerial Elite” and
the “White Working Class.” The
book describes the very different
assumptions, dispositions, cus-
toms, and folkways of these two
groups, and tries to explain them
in the hope of mending what is
a seriously busted relationship
between them.
What do you mean by “class
cluelessness”? Even socially
conscious people run through
their heads (and therefore inter-
rupt) the biases more privileged
people have typically have
against less privileged people —
when they’re talking about the
poor, or people of color. But
they don’t do that when they’re
talking about people from a dif-
ferent class, because they are
convinced, like most Ameri-
cans, that there are no classes.
Very often the cultural elite
speak extremely disrespectfully
of people in the middle. Think
of your cultural images, like
Archie Bunker (white working
class man as racist, sexist, and
stupid), or Homer Simpson
(white working class man as
stupid, pathetic, and fat), or
more recently the character
“Pennsatucky” from the first
season of Orange is the New
Black (white working class
women as ugly, coarse and
brutish). They’re using the kind
of stereotypes of non-elite peo-
ple that elites have used for hun-
dreds of years. And people who
would never knowingly let a
racist comment cross their lips
often use open class insults in
talking about working class peo-
ple. The most obvious example
is college fraternity parties
called “white trash” bashes.
University administrations
would certainly not allow that
kind of thing to happen if the in-
sult were a racial insult, nor
should they. They shouldn’t be
allowed to happen with class in-
sults either.
Is this book is written so mem-
bers of the professional man-
agerial elite have increased
empathy or stop exacerbating
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