Search Results

This chapter has two aims. The first is to do what the proponents of the conventional wisdom about workers never do, namely, test their ideas using actual data on U.S. politics. The second is to begin answering this book's larger research question: Why are working-class people virtually absent from American political institutions? The chapter begins by identifying the stage in the candidate entry process that screens working-class people out. Along the way, it also tests two common ideas about the underrepresentation of workers, namely, that workers seldom hold office because they are not fit to govern and because voters prefer affluent candidates. The chapter shows that these ideas do not hold water: workers are not underrepresented in public office because they are less qualified or because voters dislike them, they are underrepresented because they just do not run in the first place.

This chapter explores the personal or micro-level factors that discourage qualified workers from running for public office. Using surveys of citizens, candidates, and political party leaders, it shows that workers are less likely to run for public office because they do not have the free time or the economic security to do so, and because they are seldom encouraged by political and civic leaders. These factors differ from what people often hear: for instance, it is not just the high monetary costs of campaigns that discourage workers (those costs deter workers and professionals alike, actually), it is the high personal costs associated with campaigning—burdens like taking time off work and losing out on income during the race—that seem to make running for elected office impossible for many qualified workers.

This chapter uses what has been learned about America's cash ceiling in the previous chapters to sort through the various reform proposals that observers have floated throughout the years. Some are essentially pipe dreams: they would work, but they are completely infeasible (like quotas for working-class politicians or replacing democratic elections in the United States with government by lottery). Others are long shots, ideas that would probably help, but would take decades to execute and would require massive changes to American society. The interventions that seem to have the most promise are reforms that specifically target working-class people and directly address the resource and recruitment gaps that elections naturally create—reforms like political scholarships, seed money programs, and candidate training programs.

This chapter opens the discussion on why working-class Americans—people employed in manual labor, service industry, or clerical jobs—almost never go on to hold political office in the United States. It suggests that the economic gulf between politicians and the people they represent—a so-called government by the privileged or white-collar government—has serious consequences for the American democratic process. Although journalists and scholars have always had hunches about what keeps working-class Americans out of office, to date there has been almost no actual research on why the United States is governed by the privileged or what reformers might do about it. This book tries to change that. It argues that workers are less likely to hold office not because they are unqualified or because voters prefer more affluent candidates, but because workers are simply less likely to run for public office in the first place.

This introductory chapter begins by considering the opposing views about the American working class, in particular the portrayal of the American worker as apolitical. It then presents the background of the current study, detailing the author's rationale for observing the working-class people of Greenpoint–Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is argued that in order to understand the political consciousness of the American working class, attention must be paid to the skirmishes in the background as well as to the actions of the vanguard. How groups act outside of the unions and outside the more dramatic events of the century needs to be examined as well. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter aims to shed light on the gates that keep workers out of office in the United States. Elections themselves appear to be the root cause. The analysis focuses on the two features of elections that seem to be behind the micro-level inequalities documented in Chapter 3, namely, the high and rising burdens associated with campaigning and the insular world of candidate recruitment. The practical anxieties that keep individual workers from running appear to stem from the very nature of elections in a representative democracy. The encouragement gaps that workers experience seem to arise from the basic logic of the candidate recruitment process, the fundamental challenges that lead many recruiters to simply look for new recruits within their own mostly white-collar personal networks.

This chapter summarizes African American commentary on respectability politics and lays out the details of the TJMS’s refusal to engage in it, most particularly in its resolutely pro-working-class orientation and philanthropy. It provides abundant crew and audience contributions that illustrate this refusal and orientation, with specific attention to labor—how the show brings a particularly black-identified “grown&sexy” aesthetic joi de vivre—the assertion of the superiority of responsible age over careless youth, of finesse over flamboyance—to often-denigrated, stressful workplaces and their workers, including police and military personnel. In so doing, the chapter documents the class, race, occupational, and geographic range of the TJMS audience. It lays out how the show handles celebrity politics, the range of ways in which crew and audience play with language, at times ridiculing ungrammatical audience members, and enjoy teasing people for being “country” or “old-school.” But it also positively documents working-class black boomer nostalgia, and justified annoyance with “these kids” and their ignorance of “real” soul music. Finally, it thoroughly considers TJMS’s “whiteness studies”—their complex takes on black/white differences, white racism, and anti-racist whites. It also lays out TJMS’s globally anti-racist “we are the world” vision—including Muslims—and a model of black adult political and social responsibility which may or may not be associated with Christianity.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how the term “white working class” became weaponized and used as a vessel to describe people who were seen to be “deplorable.” The national narrative appears to credit (or blame) white working-class mobilization across the country for the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US elections. Those who take this position see the white working class as being problematic in different ways: grounded in norms and behaviors that seem out of step with mainstream society; at odds with the reality of increased ethnic diversity across the country and especially in cities; blaming others for their economic plight; and disengaged from politics. While the conventional narrative about Trump, and his relation to the white working class, has the benefit of being presented as a straightforward connection to a forgotten majority, the experiences and conversations collected in this book offer more nuanced and challenging findings about the other America. Indeed, the rise of Trump and the association with the white working class needs to be placed in the wider context of a surge in support for populism in many parts of the world. Ultimately, the book explores how white working-class Americans view race, change, and immigration.

This chapter discusses the researchers' positionality in relation to the research and the research participants for this study. As two UK-based, non-white, male researchers moving into potentially all-white spaces to undertake qualitative research, they both reflected on their perceived and actual identities and assumptions prior to, entering, and during the fieldwork. The dominant paradigm of the research was evident in their entry into the field. It cut across a highly charged and emotive 2016 US election campaign. Donald Trump's speeches during 2016 were littered with references that cultivated and encouraged differences between groups: describing immigrants as a potential threat to the American people; framing the problems experienced by white working-class Americans as caused by elitist decision-making and a politically correct media and culture that ignores the needs of white Americans; and suggesting that women need protection from foreign “evil” forces. The researchers recognized that Trump's speeches and rhetoric may create a febrile atmosphere, and that they would need to consider their safety and be conscious that, in some situations, conversations with white working-class people may be challenging and possibly unsafe. The chapter then details the methodological approach that led the research team to engage and interview 415 people across five cities. The team was committed to working in partnership with local activists, stakeholders, and residents wherever that was possible and appropriate.

This chapter looks at how the inexpensive automobile extended camping to the mass of middle-and working-class Americans. During the 1920s, some African Americans, like their white counterparts, had grown wealthier and embraced a variety of short and extended recreations, including such nature-based activities as relaxing at the beach, swimming, picnicking, fishing, hiking, participating in the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, enrolling at summer camps, and family camping. However, when several new national parks opened in southern states during the 1930s, the campgrounds were racially segregated. For one African American, William J. Trent, Jr., this was unacceptable, and he waged a long and often lonely campaign to officially desegregate all national park campgrounds.