Outraged by White Rural Rage
I don’t like to slam books, especially those ahead of mine on the best seller list. It might seem like petty jealousy. But one recent release, White Rural Rage by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, is seriously flawed.
For starters, the authors write as if economic class no longer exists or matters. According to this book, all rural white people, or at least most of them, share similar racist attitudes. Class distinctions between bosses and workers, rich and poor, are meaningless.
Because Schaller and Waldman view the world through their anti-class, whiteness lens, they don’t consider the possibility that working-class voters share common attitudes across geographies. Contrary to their thesis, the research for my book found no discernable differences in attitudes on hot-button social issues between urban, suburban, and rural white working-class voters.
As Democratic Party pollster Mike Lux reports, “these voters wouldn’t care all that much about the cultural difference and the woke thing if the Democrats gave more of a damn about the economic challenges they face deeply and daily.”
Where’s the beef?
Schaller put his cards on the table during an interview on MSNBC, during which he called rural Americans “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.”
The authors also claim it is getting worse. In defending themselves in the New Republic, they write that “as the rest of the country moved away from Donald Trump [in 2020] rural whites lurched toward him by nine points, from 62 percent to 71 percent.”
But voting for Trump is not the same as being a bigot. In fact, the data in my book shows that white working-class voters, rural and otherwise, are growing more liberal, not illiberal on key social issues.
Anti-immigrant?
“Are you in favor of granting “legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least 3 years and not been convicted of any felony crimes?” (Cooperative Election Study)
White working-class in favor:
2010: 32.1%
2020: 61.8%
Anti-gay?
“Should gay or lesbian couples be legally permitted to adopt children?” (American National Elections Study)
White working-class in favor:
2000: 38.2%
2020: 76.7%
Increasing racism?
“Agree that most blacks just don’t have the motivation or willpower to pull themselves out of poverty.” (General Social Survey)
1996: 56.8%
2021: 32.8%
Furthermore, our data, which is derived from three large multi-year voter surveys, shows that from 20 to 50 percent of white working-class non-Democrats are liberal on social issues.
What about Sherrod Brown?
If white rural racism is the key to all politics, then why do significant numbers of rural voters in Ohio support Senator Sherrod Brown, who in 2018 ran about 12 percent ahead of Biden in 2020? In fact, Brown, who votes liberal on social issues up and down the line, ran significantly ahead of Biden in every rural county.
Brown’s connection to working-class voters might have something to do with his willingness to take on Wall Street for ripping off workers again and again. It works politically because enough of those supposedly bigoted white workers care a lot more about never-ending job instability than they do about wokeness.
In his excellent review (and evisceration) of White Rural Wage, Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist, points out that:
“Democrats who give in to the simplistic rage thesis are essentially letting themselves off the hook on the politics, suggesting that rural Americans are irrational and beyond any effort to engage them.”
It’s not white rural rage. It’s not irrational rage either. Rather it’s very clear-eyed working-class anger as insatiable corporate greed tears up their lives.
When Democrats, like Sherrod Brown, show the courage to fight against Wall Street’s war on workers they gain working-class support.
Maybe it’s time for a little more Democratic Party rage?
Hi, my name is Ada and I am a board member of el Tribuno del Pueblo, a national bilingual newspaper dedicated to sharing stories from progressive movements. Can we republish your piece? You can check out our website here: https://tribunodelpueblo.org/home/
While it's not exactly fair to comment on a book I haven't read, there are warning signs.
I started with your link to the poll work by Mike Lux--solid data and practical recommendations. His 2nd item says "Voters in these counties tend to think Democrats lack an economic plan, but they see the GOP as the party of wealthy corporations and CEOs."
Maybe because this research is aimed at Dem party strategists and he is being diplomatic, Lux leaves unmentioned that the Dems do have an econ "plan." Continuing support for the neoliberal belief that The Market knows best. Also unmentioned is how the economics of this abstract entity dismisses devastated communities and destroyed environments as externalities. However, Lux's careful wording implies that for pragmatic reasons, (let alone that it might be fair or humane or moral,) offering some alternatives or ameliorations to the harsh system would be helpful politically. Anyway, the data gathered by this set of polls also very much support your work. And call into question the assumptions and interpretations of //White Rural Rage.//
Next, I read reviews of //Rage// both pro and con on several sites. Including by academics who seem to support the basic themes as well as angry criticisms by conservative rural people and by those on the far left who frame everything as class warfare. I can't say for sure if any of these views are representative of what the book actually says.
The reviews on Amazon that are pro seem to me often to reflect a liberal intellectual bias--they already "know" this Other is ignorant, bigoted, and dangerous, so the book just reinforces their beliefs. Aside from the anger of the con opinions, a few presented logical critiques. Among them comments that apparently another writer, Nicholas Jacobs, whose book //The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America// (2023) is on similar issues to //Rage// said on a radio interview that Schaller and Waldman cherry picked the data he and his co-author Daniel Shea developed and used it for their own ends. A commenter on Amazon who gave //Rage// 3 stars noted that Jacobs did a review on "Politico" 4/5/24 saying that the authors of //Rage// had misused the research done for //Rural Voter.// If so, pretty damning.
I'm left wondering whether there's anything objective to //Rage// at all. The MSM that tends to repeat these horror stories--including the NYT and MSNBC--seem to me to serve as disseminators of "info" that justifies Dem party neglect or outright condemnation. If "those people" are all only uncultured violent bigots, then they're undeserving of any sympathy whatsoever and no need for D econ or social policies that might help them.