Hand
on heart
An
American sociologist examines a political conundrum
Sep 10th 2016 | From
the print edition
Strangers in Their
Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. By Arlie Russell
Hochschild. The New Press; 351 pages; $27.95.
THE past is a
foreign country. But so too is the present, says Arlie Hochschild, an
American sociologist, of much of her own country. Ms Hochschild is a
devoted liberal from Berkeley, California, and her latest book,
“Strangers in Their Own Land”, is an astute study of America’s
“culture war” drawn from the perspective of the white
conservatives who feel they are losing it. But it is also a
Bildungsroman: one woman’s journey across the political divide, to
an empathy with those on the other side.
Based on five years
among Tea Party activists in Louisiana—a typical, if perhaps
extreme, Southern “red state”—“Strangers in Their Own Land”
will elicit comparisons with “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
by Thomas Frank, a bestseller in 2004. Like Mr Frank, Ms Hochschild
is concerned chiefly with what she calls the “great paradox” of
ordinary, hard-working Americans seemingly voting against their own
economic interests by supporting small-state Republican politicians.
And like Mr Frank, she is certain such voters would be better off
under the Democrats. Much of the book is concerned with the many
environmental disasters suffered by Louisiana as a result of
under-regulated oil and gas companies plundering its natural wealth
with the connivance of local Republican leaders. Where she and Mr
Frank disagree is over his central premise that such voters are being
duped by an unholy alliance of Fox News, unscrupulous corporations
and self-aggrandising Washington elites.
Ms Hochschild has
been praised for focusing on her subjects’ emotional lives. Her new
book is no exception. It is people’s emotional response, she
argues, that is the raw stuff of politics. What, then, do her
subjects feel? They see themselves as betrayed by
“line-cutters”—black people, immigrants, women and gays—who
jump in ahead of them in the queue for the American dream.
Southerners feel patronised and humiliated by northerners who tell
them whom to feel sorry for, then dismiss them as bigots when they do
not. They feel they are victims of stagnant wages and affirmative
action but without the language of victimhood: struggling Southerners
are not “poor-me’s”. They believe that they are honourable
people in a world where traditional sources of honour—faith,
independence and endurance—seem to go unrecognised: until Donald
Trump began offering hope and emotional affirmation.
It is a convincing
thesis, but not a new one. That conservative white middle-class and
working-class Americans feel a sense of betrayal and loss is familiar
territory. Ms Hochschild has little new to say about right-wing media
or evangelical Christianity. What she does say about prosperity
preachers and Fox News shock jocks duping their subjects by directing
their anger away from real sources of local grievance like oil spills
and gas leaks might confirm the argument she seeks to overturn. The
book’s appendix shows how misled Tea Party activists are on many of
their most cherished gripes, such as the size of federal government.
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, at the end of 2014 only
17% of the 143m American workers were federal, state-government or
military employees. The Tea Party activists she spoke to believe the
figure is around 40%.
Ms Hochschild offers
an entry pass to an alternative worldview, and with it a route map
towards empathy. In her book people like Janice Areno, a
Bible-bashing Pentecostalist who says the poor should work or starve,
become human. The anger and hurt of the author’s interviewees is
intelligible to all. In today’s political climate, this may be
invaluable.
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