Maine Democrat Jared Golden doubles down in opposition to student loan forgiveness

The Portland Press-Herald (Maine) reported last week on U.S. Congressman Jared Golden's provocative statement opposing student loan forgiveness.  Golden, a Democrat, is a three-term incumbent from the state's second district, which leans Republican and includes vast rural areas.  Golden's career and politically pragmatic stances are discussed in three prior posts, which also provide more information on the demographics and economics of his congressional district.  

Golden's mid-August Tweet responded to a report from the Maine Beacon that Golden, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had received a donation from Sallie Mae after he was one of two Democrats who joined Republicans in May to oppose Biden's student-loan relief program.  (The other was fellow leader of the "yellow-dog coalition," Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, of southwestern Washington State).  Golden's Tweet led with 

I've always held the opinion that working class Mainers shouldn't foot the bill for someone else's choices. Once again, radical leftist elites prove they don't understand Maine.

It then included this text:   

Sadly, this is what the radical leftist elites are learning about "democracy" these days:  silence and destroy anyone who disagrees with your views or goals.  I stand by my vote and my opposition to forking out $10,000 to people who freely chose to attend college.  They were privileged to have the opportunity, andmany left college well-situted to make six figure salaries for life.  The Twitterati can keep bemoaning their privileged status and demanding handouts all they want, but as far as I’m concerned if they want free money for college, they can join the Marines and serve the country like I, and so many others, have in the past and many more will in the future. If they want a career and hard skills without college debt, they should join a union and enter an apprenticeship. But if they choose to attend college, they can pay back their loans just like working-class people pay back home mortgages, car loans, and many other expenses that people choose to take out loans for.

Golden's statement provoked lots of strong reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter.  One of those responding was Tiffany Bond, an independent who has twice challenged Golden in the past.  Bond broached the matter of the implications of Golden's position for rural Maine, writing:  

What the hell is wrong with you, Jared?  Rural Maine will have no dentists, doctors, lawyers, teachers or anyone requiring a professional education. You don’t understand rural Maine.

The Maine People’s Alliance account responded  “Really? I’m not sure the ‘Twitterati’ are the ones not understanding Maine right now.”

Academics responded, too.  History professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote, 

Heavens!  Did you really write this or have you been hacked?!? You always seemed a centrist voie of reason that represented your Maine district well.  What's with this "radical leftist elitists"?!? 

And University of Maine political science professor Amy Fried posted a few responses:

This language is divisive and nasty.  There is a real debate to be had about helping people go to and graduate college and if there are benefits to be gleaned by the whole society.  You've done nothing to contribute to that.  Just awful.  Don't think of running statewide, ever. 

An account holder called bre kidman's awkward blue check wrote: 

Yikes, bub.

Did you draw the short straw on making the cringe statement to get that Sallie Mae money for the team? You know college educated Mainers aren't making 6 figure salaries.

JS there are classier ways to quit Congress than slamming your constituents when they're down.

Then, from the same account: 

Also, real quick math question: how much money did Maine voters spend getting you elected to a job with a low six-figure salary?

The tone of Golden's statement--though not the substance--is in sharp contrast to the statement of another "rural" politician, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock who wrote in a New York Times op-ed in December, 2021: 

To overcome these obstacles [facing the Democratic party in rural America], Democrats need to show up, listen, and respect voters in rural America by finding common ground instead of talking down to them. Eliminating student loans isn’t a top-of-mind matter for the two-thirds of Americans lacking a college degree. Being told that climate change is the most critical issue our nation faces rings hollow if you’re struggling to make it to the end of the month.

Note that Bullock held himself out as representing what rural voters generally think, which is not necessarily the same as saying he would side with them on either student loan relief or climate change policies.  That is, we do not know what he thinks or what side he would land on faced with policies to ameliorate student debt or climate change.  What is clear is that Bullock's tone is more conciliatory than Golden's, that it leaves room for nuance and discussion.  Bullock's op-ed criticizes his fellow Democrats who are urbancentric in not thinking about rural concerns, but he does not call his fellow Democrats "radical leftist elites."  That's a pretty big difference.  

I blogged about Bullock's op-ed and the response to it in this post.

In any event, I'm curious to see how Golden's stance on student loan relief plays out when he's up for re-election next year.  I suspect there are rural and working-class Mainers on both sides of this issue.  For example, those trying to earn degrees or who are concerned about the cost of their children's educational aspirations may not agree with Golden. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism and First Gen Course Blog.  

Pollster Stanley Greenberg on appealing to working-class voters across race

Greenberg writes under the headline, "Democrats, Speak to Working Class Discontent."  My favorite thing about this piece for The American Prospect is Greenberg's focus on coalition-building among working-class folks, across racial and ethnic lines.  Here's an excerpt: 

Today, the Democrats’ working-class problem isn’t limited to white workers. The party is also losing support from working-class Blacks and Hispanics—a daunting 12 points off their margin since 2016, according to Ruy Teixeira.

* * *

After studying working-class voters for nearly four decades, I believe the trajectory can be shifted or reversed. But there is no room for error. There is no room for fools. There is no time for strategists who look down on or rule out voters who fail a purist civics test. There is also no room for sensibilities that keep us from clearly understanding our options.

* * *  

The emergence of Barack Obama signaled a shift in Democratic appeals. During the 2008 primary, Obama became the “change candidate” because of his early opposition to the Iraq War, not because he spoke to working-class discontent. At the Democratic Convention four years earlier, Obama had told a unifying story as an African American who saw only one United States of America, not separate Americas divided by race and partisanship. In focus groups before the 2008 convention, I was surprised by how many white workers were open to what would be the first African American president. Many of them would have scored high on any “racial resentment” scale, but they were not blaming Blacks for their current condition. They were blaming high-paid CEOs for outsourcing American jobs, and they were blaming NAFTA. Many decided Obama was different from other Black leaders and might govern for the whole country, not just work for “his own people.”  (emphasis mine).

If you govern for the whole country, you know that two-thirds of all registered voters never graduated from a four-year college. Well before the financial crash in 2008, they were angry. Employment in manufacturing had plummeted after 2000 from almost 18 million to 14 million jobs. Innovations in technology and structural changes in the economy were raising worker productivity, but the top 1 percent and then the top .01 percent were seizing all the gains in income.

During the 2008 campaign, James Carville and I, as heads of Democracy Corps, and John Podesta, the director of the Center for American Progress, convened a monthly meeting at my house in Washington to help fashion a Democratic strategy. Among the attendees was David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign chief. We created an “economy project” whose polling showed what should have been obvious. The Democrats’ most powerful message called for an end to trickle-down economics and a focus on creating American jobs and a government that worked for the middle class again.

But despite a deepening economic crisis, Obama didn’t talk much about the economy in his 2008 campaign. Under the banner “Change We Can Believe In,” he promised to get beyond “the bitterness” that “consumed Washington” to make health care affordable, cut middle-class taxes, and “bring our troops home.”

Cross-posted (with additional excerpts about rural voters) to Legal Ruralism.  

Bradley Jackson of "The Morning Show" as country mouse--or is it country bear?

I just started watching "The Morning Show" (Apple+) last week and was soon struck by the country mouse-city mouse dynamic the creators set up between Alex Levy, played by Jennifer Anniston, and Bradley Jackson, played by Reese Witherspoon.  Bradley is the new morning co-anchor, joining Alex, after her former co-anchor, a man, is deposed for sexual harassment in the era of MeToo.  

There are so many important themes in this show--not least the patriarchy, sexually predatory behavior by men, and--ultimately--women's empowerment.  Here, I want to pick up on two other themes that jump out--two themes that happen to be my pet issues:  rurality and class.  Bradley Jackson represents the rural kid from West Virginia--brusque, direct, rough around the edges even when she is gussied up in the fine New York duds the network provides her (she prefers pants to dresses, thank you very much).  She was raised working class.  Bradley is the country mouse foil to Alex Levy's super polished, conniving, and inwardly angst-ridden/falling apart city mouse. 

In Episodes 4 and 5, which I watched tonight, Bradley reveals--in her first appearance as co-anchor of the show--that she had an abortion when she was 15. Here, she brushes right up against being white trash. And while the abortion and the matter-of-fact way she discloses it are controversial and thus shake network executives, they also generate a younger following for the show.  The disclosure also inspires college students in Mississippi to stand up against state abortion regulations.  To them, Bradley is a hero.  Critical issues of generational difference and generational conflict are thus surfaced.  

Also notable is how the show's creators give Bradley the "Pretty Woman" treatment--putting her in posh clothing, including a private shopping spree at Barney's over the weekend before she begins her gig.  They do not, however, ask her to eliminate the slight twang with which she speaks.  

Another interesting scene is when The Morning Show "cleans up" Bradley's mom in West Virginia to bring her on air--reading from cue cards--to talk about what a great kid Bradley was growing up.  In fact, Bradley and her mom were frequently in intense conflict, and it is this ruse by The Morning Show's producers that causes Bradley to burst out and disclose a more honest portrait of her life in the Mountain State, including her teenage abortion.  

In another scene, Bradley is talking on air about a young adult author and says "ya"--as in "y'all"--rather than "Y", "A," as this term gets pronounced, with the letters articulated separately.  She handles it well, repeating "ya" in realization--or is it poking fun at herself?--and then saying it the way said by people in the know, upper class folks. 

I'm looking forward to more rural-urban differentiation in future episodes.  I'd also love to see some commentary on these issues, but so far, I've found only this piece offering a nod to Bradley's Appalachian roots.  (Oh, and there's this ad for the West Virginia hoodie Bradley/Reese wears in an episode of the show).  

Cross posted to Legal Ruralism.  

Is "class" about culture or economics?

Here is an interesting exchange about that question from "The Argument" podcast with Jane Coaston, interviewing Matt Taibbi and Michelle Cottle of the New York Times Editorial Board.  The topic of this issue, "Is Fox News Really All that Powerful?," dated June 30, 2021.  The first comment is from journalist Taibbi.  

If you ask what is Fox, who do they represent? They represent a lot of people, but apart from that, you can’t really say they’re backing a major swath of the institutional power in this country as you might have 20 years ago, or during the Bush years, when Fox News was what you watch to see what the people who are getting us into the war in Iraq were thinking. That’s not so much the case anymore.

I think there’s been a shift in terms of the political picture in this country, and it’s very much expressed by, for me, the censorship issue.

Jane Coaston

Michelle, what do you think Matt is getting right and wrong about this intersection of power. In my view, wealthy people tend to support whatever will keep them wealthy.

Michelle Cottle

I don’t think you can lump everything together. And I don’t think it works just as purely an economic proposition, especially because populism in this country may have economic roots, but the way it plays out in politics is not economic. It’s kind of ethnonationalist. What Trump was pitching was not an economic populism, that’s not where his policy —

Matt Taibbi

That’s not true.

Michelle Cottle

— that’s not where his policies went. What he was doing had a certain economic flair to it. But when you look at what really motivates people, it was the immigration issue. It was the, they’re coming for your kids issue. It’s — they’re destroying the American way of life issue. So it gets beyond economics pretty quickly.

Jane Coaston

And I would say — I wrote a piece a while back that, essentially, Trump ran as one thing and governed as another thing, and ran as kind of someone who could be all things to all people type of candidate, and then governed basically as Mitch McConnell.

Matt Taibbi

Well, I covered Trump’s campaign, so I was at his speeches. And it’s absolutely not true that there was no economic component to his address in 2016. It was a huge part of the picture. Obviously, race and immigration were central issues for Trump. There is absolutely no doubt about that. And he played on some of the worst instincts of the electorate.

But there were enormous similarities between the Trump movement and, for instance, the Bernie Sanders movement. And I heard people who I interviewed over and over and over again responding to all kinds of things in Trump’s message. I heard Trump argue against the antitrust exemption for health insurance companies. I heard him going after the press. The elitist press was a huge part of his presentation.

Michelle Cottle

That’s not economics. We’re talking economics —

Matt Taibbi

It’s a class issue.

Michelle Cottle

No, no, we’re not talking about class and culture, because the cosmopolitan —

Matt Taibbi

I’m talking about class.

Michelle Cottle

Well, we were talking about economics, and that’s different. His pitch in 2016, as Jane points out, was not how he governed, and it’s not how he ran in 2020. So he pretty quickly discovered that the key to maintaining his popularity wasn’t to actually provide a huge tax cut for the struggling people. It was to tell them that the immigrants were coming for their jobs.

Is the white working class responsible for Trump?

Political journalists and academic scholars alike have continued to discuss the role of the white working class in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Yet a close look at statistical evidence suggests that this discussion may be politically motivated.

Let us begin with a discussion about the income of white Trump voters in the 2016 presidential election. The median household income of a Trump voter based on census bureau data is about $72,000, which is above the national household median income of about $56,000. Looking to the American National Election Studies data from November 2016,  we can further analyze who voted for Trump among different income levels.

First let us examine statistical results of only the white voters. Among white voters without a college education, Trump secured a greater percentage of votes for all income levels. Among white, college educated voters, Clinton secured more votes than Trump (and by a vast majority in the top 20% of income).

Next we turn to results for all respondents regardless of race. Among all college educated voters, Clinton surpassed votes for Trump modestly. Among all voters without a college education, those in the lower 80% of income gave Clinton more votes than Trump by narrow margins. However, the top 20% income group voted in favor of Trump by only a slight margin.

This data suggests that the election of Trump was not a result of the white working class, but a result of all economic class levels of white voters who do not have a college level education (see data analysis here), and a good number who do.

I feel this requires liberal media and all those who are frustrated with the election of Trump to recognize the factors that are at work here. The definition of white working class is still fuzzy and may take on several forms. For example, if we use a definition of the white working class as all white people who do not have a college education, which many have suggested before me, than the data does prove that the white working class elected Trump. However, I would not only look to lacking college education when describing the white working class, but also some level of blue collar, labor type working status in occupation. If such criteria is used, the white working class did not elect Trump, rather white voters of all types elected him. Furthermore, in this respect, not more than half of the white working class even voted. We might say that the white working class is more likely to abstain than to vote for Trump. But, then, they tend to abstain generally. 

Looking then to economic classes, we start to see a different story. For example, the American National Election reports that nearly sixty percent of white Trump supporters without college degrees are in the top half of the income distribution. In fact one in five Trump voters without a college degree live in households where income exceeds $100,000. Duke University Professor Nicholas Carnes and Vanderbilt University professor Noam Lupu wrote in their recent article (here) that media often refers to the education gap as poor people rushing to vote for Trump. In reality, many of the people without college degrees who voted for Trump were from middle and high income households. They refer to this as the basic problem when using education to measure the working class. The short of it is, blue collar workers are the ones perceived when discussing the white working class, but in the story of the 2016 election, they are not the reality. 

If we agree that Trump supporters came from all sections of the white American voter pool, the discussion of white working class among politicians becomes a tool of division. Republican's have used classism to divide and conquer opponents for many years. Here we have a party that deny's climate change, has systematically rolled back protections for workers, rolled back welfare programs and healthcare programs, and then can lead all of the liberals to hate the white working class instead of economic classes similar to their own. It becomes much easier to win over the white, not college educated population when they are being downtrodden by those on the other side (see the first three paragraphs of Joan C. Williams article here). I suggest a refocussing by politicians on the economic woes of the lower economic quartiles as a start to getting back to what the American voter is looking for. A champion of wage growth, job creation, education and healthcare support.

On Trump and "dumb southerners"

A recent New York Times story reveals that Trump once used the term "dumb southerners" to refer to the Georgia-based relatives of his then-wife, Marla Maples.  Here's an excerpt from the story by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, "'I Don't Talk that Way,' Trump Says.  Except When He Does," quoting Jeane MacIntosh, former deputy editor of the New York Post gossip column, "Page 6": 

Ms. MacIntosh had called Mr. Trump one day in May 1997 to ask him about a tip she had received that his second wife, Marla Maples, had purchased two gold Lexus cars and that he had made her return them. 

“He said, ‘I have something better for you,’” Ms. MacIntosh recalled in an interview on Wednesday. If she dropped that story, he said, he would give her bigger news — that he planned to divorce Ms. Maples. When Ms. MacIntosh pressed him on why, he “essentially blamed her family,” she said, referring to Ms. Maples’s Georgia-based relatives. 

“Are you old enough to remember the show ‘The Beverly Hillbillies?’” he asked Ms. MacIntosh. 

She replied yes, and Mr. Trump laughed and said, “That’s exactly her family, except they came to New York City instead of Beverly Hills.” Ms. MacIntosh added, “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said she was constantly surrounded ‘by an entourage of dumb Southerners.’” He even adopted a fake southern accent to mimic Ms. Maples’s mother, Ms. MacIntosh said.

Northerners ridiculing Southerners is, of course, old news.  I've written about it most recently here.  But coming from President Trump, these words and attitudes become political news because he has relied so heavily on southern white voters to put him in power. 

The incident reminds me of a time early in my teaching career when a student who had grown up in greater New York City approached me about five weeks into the semester and said something like this, "You know, Professor Pruitt, we didn't think you were very smart at the beginning of the semester, because of your accent and such.  But you really have quite a vocabulary, and we've changed our assessment of you."  Gee, thanks!  At least that student had remained open to changing her assessment over the course of those early weeks.   

A damning commentary on how northern elites/academics see the rural, white South

Adam Kirk Edgerton published a powerful essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week.  The title nicely sums up his points--and speaks volumes in doing so:

What's Wrong with Being from the South?  Just Ask an Academic in the North.  

In short, northern academics (and I would say northern elites more broadly) exhibit enormous know-it-all type hubris that casts the South as not only monolithic, but monolithically toxic.

Like Edgerton, I grew up in the rural South.  I left nearly three decades ago and for 19 of the intervening years have been an academic in the West.  Based on my experience as one in whom both southern accent and southern identity linger, I'd say the word "West" could well be substituted for "North" in that Chronicle headline.  I've written some about the phenomenon and my experiences here.  I hold myself out as an ally for progressive causes, but progressives are typically (at least) a little suspect of me. 

Edgerton, now a PhD student at Harvard, writes of his journey through academia, beginning as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina.  A gay man who dressed in pastels and white linen, a favorite teacher summed him up favorably and then asked how he had "escpae[d]" the rural community where he grew up.  His professors judged not so much him as they judged his community of origin; he was viewed as an anomaly by those who assume the worst of his prior neighbors and friends.  Things got worse when he headed north, into more elitist territory.  Edgerton writes:

In the well-educated Northern imagination, the rural South is a vast, forbidding wasteland of poverty, prejudice, and despair.

That kind of crass regionalism creates well-earned suspicion of ivory-tower elites. The stereotyping works in both directions. Each sustains the other, leading to electoral results that help neither the professors up north nor the pig farmers where I grew up. Regionalism creates openings for populists to exploit and worsen these divides. These attitudes pit rural against urban, college-educated against non-college-educated. If those of us in academe are truly so smart, we ought to be the ones taking the first step toward bridging this divide.

Unfortunately, the opposite is occurring. In the age of Trump, anti-Southern attitudes seem to have crystallized and worsened throughout higher education. Any Trump-voting area, in fact, seems to be fair game for ridicule. These attitudes undercut the efforts of those seeking to advance the rights of marginalized groups in regions of the country where evidence-based scholarship might be needed the most.

* * * 

It is strange to me that so many academics cannot see when they show prejudice against the rural, the religious, and the less formally educated. We are trained to recognize systematic bias in terms of race and gender — but we remain too often unaware of our geographic prejudices. These prejudices are casual and rampant, and undercut the credibility of much good work. Too often I find myself in academic settings where the white working-class phenomenon—the Trump-voter stereotype—is taken as fact at the expense of more evidence-based conversations about the suburban affluent, where many academics grew up and Trump voters are also concentrated.

Edgerton's entire column, beautifully written, is well worth a read in its entirety. My current law review article, which makes many similar points, is here.

Edgerton's focus on this North-South divide brings to mind the words of Prof. Arnold Weinstein who does a series of Great Courses lectures on American literature. Weinstein, of Brown University, says this (which I've had transcribed) about a scene from Faulkner's Absalom! Absalom!, a scene between a "Northerner" and a "Southerner" in a Harvard dormitory:

Now Shreve, you may remember, is Canadian, which is another way of saying, he’s a Northerner. And like many Northerners, I can speak to this teaching from a Northern university, coming from the south, having taught Faulkner to audiences of students who were predominantly from the North. For the North, the South is one grotesque place – it certainly was, at least, at the time Faulkner was writing – it’s a circus! And uh, you’ll have phrases like “it’s better than Ben Hur,” which is what Shreve will tell Quentin. Or there will be other references as well, to the South as a kind of, a really odd place. “Tell me about the South,” Quentin says, what he keeps hearing up in Cambridge: “Tell me about the South.” “What’s it like there?” “What do they do there?” “Why do they live there?” “Why do they live at all?”

Uh, the South is exotic, unreal, like Mars – and, some of the oddness, the quaintness, the extravagance, the quirkiness, of the South – is in the narrative framework, is in Shreve’s questions, it doubtless comes from Faulkner’s own experience living up in the Northeast, and, the beauty of the book is, Faulkner puts this squarely in the middle – he deals with it. So that, whatever you as a reader, particularly a Northern reader, an incredulous reader, as a reader that wants to guffaw and say “this doesn’t make any sense, what kind of crazy people are these?” it’s already happening in the book, it’s right in front of your eyes.

So this story of Sutpen, who is Faulkner’s central figure from the Civil War, a plantation owner who was the novel’s tragic hero, or tragic center, I should say, he’s a pretty weird type, for Shreve, as I said Shreve says “it’s better than Ben-Hur!” Shreve can’t get over the way that everybody is related to everybody in the South, everybody is Aunt this, Uncle that.

Now what I want to say is, this conversation between Shreve and Quentin, between a Northerner and a Southerner, is more than just a kind of clever frame for containing the story, for getting the story out. Because you could say that, you could say that, “well it’s just a device, let’s get to the real stuff,” for example, this is during the Civil War. It’s much, much more than that. It’s more intricate, and it’s more interesting than that. Think the way I represented it – the conversation between a Northerner and a Southerner – can you see that at the dialogue level – at the storytelling level – Faulkner sets out to replay the Civil War. He’s going to once again, test what kind of understanding, what kind of relationship, what kind of conflict, takes place between Northerners and Southerners. So that the telling of the story is constantly to be thought of as in subsets, a kind of commentary on the story, or is a way of re-imagining the story, as a way of perhaps getting out of the tragic determinism of the story.

And so, in this Harvard dormitory, something very important is going to take place. We’re going to see a paradigm of Northern/Southern relationships.

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Edgerton's essay also brought to mind this op-ed, published in the New York Times earlier this month, by Alabama native Alexis Okeowo.  The headline is "No One Really Understands the South," and she opens with an anecdote of a black friend from Chicago who who asked her "Why do black people still live in the South"?  :

My friend was viewing the Deep South through the lens that popular culture and most of the country outside the South also use — the same stereotypes I heard when I left Alabama to go to college in the Northeast.

I also liked Okeowo's attention to attachment to place and the power of home:

I’ve long seen a strain of thinking that residents of rural areas, with their failing infrastructure, closing health centers and diminishing jobs, should simply leave, pick up and move to cities for more opportunities and a higher standard of living. Why stay in a place that is falling apart? Or that has a history of oppressing people who look like you? But over a family’s generations in one place, the idea of home solidifies, becomes unshakable.

I cannot help wonder if Edgerton and Okeowo can be apologists for the South in ways I cannot because of their other identity characteristics.  Do Edgerton's gayness and Okeowo's blackness insulate them from some of the suspicion that I, a straight white woman, evoke among progressives?

Lastly, Edgerton's comment also brings to mind a comment by Helen Gurley Brown, long-time editor of Cosmpolitan magazine, who once said of her Arkansas upbringing, "I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror." Gurley Brown had apparently crossed over to the other side--that of northern elites.  Maybe her emotional and cultural migration was entirely voluntary, or maybe Gurley Brown felt social pressure to disown the South, in the same way class migrants often feel pressure to disown their families of origin.

Cross posted to Legal Ruralism.

Pitting rural against urban, black against white in the safety net work requirement debate

I blogged last week about the high-profile media attention being showered on a proposed Michigan law that would exempt counties with high unemployment rates (8.5% and above) from work requirements being imposed on Medicaid.  Then a related piece was published in the New York Times Upshot.  In "Which Poor People Shouldn't Have to Work for Aid?" Emily Badger and Margot-Sanger Katz quote Heather Hahn, a senior fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services and Population at the Urban Institute.

The problem, Ms. Hahn and others say, is that geography captures just one kind of barrier to employment. “If you’re taking only the geography as the structure,” Ms. Hahn said, “it’s really overlooking the much more obvious racial structure.” African-Americans who face racial discrimination in the job market are more likely to have a hard time finding work. 

And people who can’t afford cars and live where public transit is inadequate have a harder time. So do the poor with criminal records, or those without a high school diploma, or people with problems securing child care.

Policies that exempt high-unemployment places, but not people who face other obstacles to work, selectively acknowledge barriers for only some of the poor. In effect, they suggest that unemployment is a systemic problem in struggling rural communities — but that in poor urban neighborhoods, it’s a matter of individual decisions.

They then quote David Super of Georgetown Law, who studies public benefits programs.    

The hardships of areas that have seen industry leave are very real; the hardships of rural areas that have had jobs automated away are real.

* * * 

But so are hardships that come from a lack of child care or transportation, he said. “It is troubling that one set of conditions are being taken seriously and another are being scoffed at.”

One thing both Hahn and Super seem not to realize is that public transportation and child care deficits are much more acute in rural communities than urban ones (a point made, with lots of data back up, in my 2007 piece on welfare reform as a mismtach for rural communities."  And the problem of criminal records  looms large for the chronically unemployed in rural places, too.  Employers don't want to hire these folks, even when they are white.  (And I do acknowledge that the criminalization of poverty and the war on drugs have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color).

I agree that we should attend to all of these barriers to employment, but the "rural v. urban" and "black v. white" framing is divisive.  It echoes the "who's worse off" or ranking of oppressions frame that has become too common amidst the proliferation of identity politics.  It fails to seek common ground.  Which reminds me that today is the second Monday in the 40 days of action invoked by the revival of Martin Luther King, Jr., Poor People's Campaign.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.

What can we learn about class from the “Real Housewives”?

I confess: I am addicted to the various Real Housewives (RH) series that air on Bravo. Indeed, I have watched the majority of the series over the last ten-plus years. Each series follows five to six wealthy “real housewives” as they live out their lives, mingle with each other, and deal with “real world” problems that afflict the rich—including upgrading from one mansion to another. For this reason, some writers refer to the series as “Rich Women Doing Things.”

Currently, I enjoy watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (RHOBH), of New York (RHONY), and of Atlanta (RHOA). RHOA is the only RH franchise series featuring an all black female ensemble; both BH and NY feature white women only. The RH franchise has been a great success. The first series, the Real Housewives of Orange County, premiered in 2006, and has been renewed each year since then. Further, RHONY and RHOA are each on their tenth season, and the RHOBH is on its eight season.

Despite the misnomer Real Housewives getting lost on the wealthy women featured in each series--their rich people problems don’t affect the vast majority of (working class) housewives--the series offers an unwitting social commentary on class (gender, and race). By class I mean the je ne sais quoi attributes of class that belong in the nebulous discourse of culture, and include the social scripts and habitus that signal a person has class. Think of the characters in the Beverly Hillbillies—another great social commentary on class—whose pairing of material wealth with lack of class, is precisely what elicited laughs.

Unlike the characters in the Beverly Hillbillies, however, the women in the Real Housewives seemingly have an abundance of wealth and class. Here are a few tropes that cut across the RHOBH, RHONY, and RHOA series, and provide insight on what it takes to be a woman of a certain class these days, i.e., to be a classy woman.

First, having a group of gay male friends that you refer to as “the gays,” and can summon to provide you comedic relief, beauty and fashion advice, or raise your mood is part-and-parcel of being a woman of a certain class. In the current season of RHOA, for example, NeNe Leakes, a former stripper turned Broadway star, hosted a “girls and gays” soiree in which her female guests were supposed to bring along their gay friends to “drink and kiki.” But as one of “the gays” pointed out to NeNe’s guests, “it’s kinda like your white friend sayin’ bring your best black friend.” Hmm! (Season 10, episode 4) Further north, in RHONY, Sonja, who was once married to one of Morgan Stanley’s co-founder's son, threw a house party for her gays, because she “love[s] spending time with [her] gays.” And “when they come, [she’s] more vulgar, more ridiculous than them.” Who knew that gay men were ridiculous to begin with! According to Sonja, her gays are all about “living in the moment, let’s have fun, let’s laugh, and let’s get laid.” This in sharp contrast to her female co-starts, whom she describes as judgmental. (Season 10, episode 2) In short, being a woman of a certain class entails having your very own coterie of “gays” whom (wait, they’re objects!) that you can play with to feel better.

Second, owning and running a business for which you do practically nothing but pretend to be incredibly busy is part of being a classy woman. In RHOBH, Dorit launched a swimwear line named "Beverly Beach." In the show, Dorit tells others that she’s incredibly busy, and we get glimpses of her making slight adjustments to her designers’ sketches—crossing out what she doesn’t like, critiquing samples on live models, and profusely worrying about meeting the deadline for the premier fashion show. But since other people complete the majority of the design and administrative work, we see that Dorit has enough time for a girls trip to Germany with her costars. (Season 8, episode 15) Personally, I can’t recall the last time I took an oversees vacation right before a pressing deadline. Meanwhile, in the South, Porsha Williams, the former wife of a NFL player, continues “running” her hair extensions business, and contemplates opening a hair salon. Although she has “never ran a salon before, never had one, just visited one as a patron,” she’s hoping to open a hair salon in three months. She doesn't care about the minutia of business, like whether it’s “better to have [stylists] do the booth rent, or is it better to have them on commission.” After all, that’s what your “team” will figure out. (RHOA Season 10, episode 3) Thus, being a woman of a certain class means running and managing a business where your greatest contribution is lending your name, and where you're able to take credit for work of others.

Third, setting aside professionalism when engaging with one’s employees goes hand-in-hand with being a classy woman. For example, Lisa Vanderpump, a restaurateur with an estimated net worth of $75 million, likes reminding her employees who’s boss in the RHOBH cross-over series Vanderpump Rules. Has your boss ever described you as a “lost puppy,” or made sexual innuendos at your expense after agreeing to give you a second shot? Lisa has. Being a classy women also entails reminding your employees that you write their paychecks and referring to them as "bitches" when appropriate. Well, at least that’s what we can learn about class from Grammy Award winner Kandi Burruss of RHOA.

Admittedly, I can’t afford to engage in conspicuous leisure or consumption like the RH women can. But in my milieu referring to gay men as “the gays,” taking credit for others’ work, and mistreating employees hardly signals having class. And while there are other examples of recurring themes in the RH series that provide insight into what it means to have class today, these three examples help elucidate one point: but for being wealthy, individuals wouldn't be regarded as classy.

Thank you "Real Housewives" for shedding light on the illusion of high class performance.