Edsall on Democrats' uphill battle in 2022, 2024, with attention to the white working class

The headline for Thomas Edsall's column is "Democrats are Making Life too Easy for Republicans," and an excerpt focusing on the white working class follows:  

At the moment, there is widespread pessimism among those on the left end of the political spectrum. Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at Brookings, replying by email to my inquiry, wrote that for predictable reasons, “Democrats face an uphill battle in both 2022 and 2024.”

But, she went on, “the problems are much deeper. First, the white working class that used to vote Democratic no longer does.” Sawhill noted that when she

studied this group back in 2018, what surprised me most was their very negative attitudes toward government, their dislike of social welfare programs, their commitment to an ethic of personal responsibility and the importance of family and religion in their lives. This large group includes some people who are just plain prejudiced but a larger group that simply resents all the attention paid to race, gender, sexual preference or identity and the disrespect they think this entails for those with more traditional views and lifestyles.

Messages coming from the more progressive members of the Democratic Party, Sawhill warned, “will be exploited by Republicans to move moderate Democrats or to move no-Trump Republicans in their direction.”

Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, is highly critical of the contemporary Democratic Party, writing by email:

Misguided focus on unpopular social policies are driving voters away from the Democratic Party and are mobilizing Republicans. Democrats used to be the party of the working class, but today they are instead seen as a party defined by ostensibly legalizing property crime, crippling the police and injecting social justice into math classes.

As a result, Westwood continued,

It is no surprise that this doesn’t connect with a working family struggling to pay for surging grocery bills. By abandoning their core brand, even Democrats who oppose defunding the police are burdened by the party’s commitment to unpopular social policy.

The traditional strategy in midterm elections, Westwood wrote, is to mobilize the party base. Instead, he contended, Democrats

have decided to let the fringe brand the party’s messaging around issues that fail to obtain majority support among the base. Perhaps the most successful misinformation campaign in modern politics is being waged by the Twitter left against the base of the Democratic Party. The Twitter mob is intent on pushing social policies that have approximately zero chance of becoming law as a test of liberalism. Even if you support reducing taxes on the middle class, immigration reform and increasing the minimum wage, opposing defunding the police or the legalization of property crime makes you an unreasonable outcast.  (emphasis mine)

In other words, Westwood is blasting purity tests. 

I have highlighted the column's comment about the rural-urban dynamic in a post at Legal Ruralism.  

On bell hooks' compassion for poor whites

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name, bell hooks, died this morning.  She was a prolific scholar known for her poetry, as well as her work on race, gender, class, capitalism and place.  

hooks ended her career at Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky, and while I thought of her as a Kentuckian, I didn't necessarily think of her as rural.  Still, this line from a bell hooks tribute in the New York Times caught my eye:

bell hooks was the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, who was born on Sept. 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Ky., [population 31,000] a small city in the southwestern part of the state not far from the Tennessee border.

Though her childhood in the semirural South exposed her to vicious examples of white supremacy, her tight-knit Black community in Hopkinsville showed her the possibility of resistance from the margins, of finding community among the oppressed and drawing power from those connections — a theme to which she would return frequently in her work.

Her father, Veodis Watkins, was a postal worker, and her mother, Rosa Bell (Oldham) Watkins, was a homemaker.

I've long found it interesting that hooks/Watkins chose to live out the final years of her career at Berea College, also in nonmetro Kentucky.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  I think it shows an attachment to place, not a lack of ambition.  

I've also always found noteworthy hooks' thoughts on class in particular her compassion for poor whites.  Here's an excerpt from her book Where We Stand:  Class Matters (2000):   

Most folks who comment on class acknowledge that poverty is seen as having a black face, but they rarely point to the fact that this representation has been created and sustained by the mass media ... The hidden face[s] of poverty in the United States are  the untold stories of millions of poor white people.  Undue media focus on poor nonwhites deflects attention away from the reality of white poverty. (p. 116-17)

A relatively recent bell hooks interview that proved controversial--at least with my students at UC Davis School of Law--is here.  What I see as the most provocative quote follows: 

For so many years in the feminist movement, women were saying that gender is the only aspect of identity that really matters, that domination only came into the world because of rape. Then we had so many race-oriented folks who were saying, “Race is the most important thing. We don’t even need to be talking about class or gender.” So for me, that phrase always reminds me of a global context, of the context of class, of empire, of capitalism, of racism and of patriarchy. Those things are all linked — an interlocking system.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.  

The working class and coronavirus (Part II): Pandemic throws inequality into sharp relief

I've been trying to write a nicely composed post on this topic for weeks now, but I'm giving up and providing just headlines, links, and brief excerpts, with featured stories arranged in chronological order. 

One of the earliest inequality stories by the national media was this one under the headline, "‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide, by Noam Scheiber, Nelson D. Schwartz and Tiffany Hsu, published on March 27, 2020 in the New York Times. Among the places featured was Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. Here's an excerpt:

In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the virus is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged — in access to health care, child care, education, living space, even internet bandwidth.

And across the country, there is a creeping consciousness that despite talk of national unity, not everyone is equal in times of emergency.

“This is a white-collar quarantine,” said Howard Barbanel, a Miami-based entrepreneur who owns a wine company. “Average working people are bagging and delivering goods, driving trucks, working for local government.”

Another early story focused on inequality played up the distinction between "essential workers" and the typically more privileged who are working from home.  "Location Data Says it All:  Staying Home During Coronavirus Is a Luxury."  Jennifer Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Denise Lu and Gabriel J.X. Dance reported for the New York Times on April 3, 2020.  The lede follows:

It has been about two weeks since the Illinois governor ordered residents to stay at home, but nothing has changed about Adarra Benjamin’s responsibilities. She gets on a bus nearly every morning in Chicago, traveling 20 miles round trip some days to cook, clean and shop for her clients, who are older or have health problems that make such tasks difficult. 

Ms. Benjamin knows the dangers, but she needs her job, which pays about $13 an hour. She also cannot imagine leaving her clients to fend for themselves. “They’ve become my family,” she said. 

In cities across America, many lower-income workers continue to move around, while those who make more money are staying home and limiting their exposure to the coronavirus, according to smartphone location data analyzed by The New York Times.

Charles Blow, New York Times columnist, observed on April 5, 2020, that "Social Distancing is a Privilege."  There he writes:

People like to say that the coronavirus is no respecter of race, class or country, that the disease Covid-19 is mindless and will infect anybody it can. 

In theory, that is true. But, in practice, in the real world, this virus behaves like others, screeching like a heat-seeking missile toward the most vulnerable in society. And this happens not because it prefers them, but because they are more exposed, more fragile and more ill. 

What the vulnerable portion of society looks like varies from country to country, but in America, that vulnerability is highly intersected with race and poverty.

From April 9, an op-ed in the New York Times by Walter Scheidel was titled, "Why the Wealthy Fear Pandemics."  He writes of the aftermath of the Bubonic Plague:

Because of this “destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish,” the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote, “the entire inhabited world changed.” 

The wealthy found some of these changes alarming. In the words of an anonymous English chronicler, “Such a shortage of laborers ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent for triple wages.” Influential employers, such as large landowners, lobbied the English crown to pass the Ordinance of Laborers, which informed workers that they were “obliged to accept the employment offered” for the same measly wages as before.

But as successive waves of plague shrank the work force, hired hands and tenants “took no notice of the king’s command,” as the Augustinian clergyman Henry Knighton complained. “If anyone wanted to hire them he had to submit to their demands, for either his fruit and standing corn would be lost or he had to pander to the arrogance and greed of the workers.”

As a result of this shift in the balance between labor and capital, we now know, thanks to painstaking research by economic historians, that real incomes of unskilled workers doubled across much of Europe within a few decades.

This is sounding ominous for the wealthy, but only if government responds appropriately to what is happening.  Scheidel is a professor of history at Stanford University.

This data driven story is one that launched the "The America We Need" series on April 9, from the New York Times.  It was published on April 10, by David Leonhardt and Yaryna Serkez.  The headline is, "America Will Struggle after the Coronavirus.  These Charts Show Why."  Here's an excerpt:

Inequality didn’t cause the coronavirus crisis. But it is making the crisis much worse, having created an economy in which many Americans are struggling to get by, and are vulnerable to any interruption of work or income and any illness. 

On this page, we present dozens of ways to look at American life that together provide a more meaningful picture than G.D.P. There is reason to expect that many of these indicators are already beginning to look worse, as the country grapples with both a pandemic and a recession. Together, they also help show the areas in which Americans will struggle to recover from this crisis.

Jason DeParle of the New York Times reports on "The Coronavirus Class Divide:  Space and Privacy," on April 12, 2020.  The dateline is Robesonia, Pennsylvania, and the initial subject is Mark Stokes, a student at Kutztown University, who shares a house with 10 other people:

Housemates come and go to jobs in fast food and a chocolate factory, sharing a single shower. Dirty dishes crowd the kitchen that no one cleans. Lacking a bed, Mr. Stokes, a freshman at Kutztown University, sleeps on the floor in the room of a friend who took him in when the dorms closed.

No stranger to hardship, Mr. Stokes, who spent part of high school living in a car, worries that the crowded conditions will expose him to coronavirus. But like many poor Americans, he says the sanctioned solution — six feet of physical space — is a luxury he cannot afford.

DeParle quotes Stokes regarding his current living situation: 

It’s just so many people in the house and there’s nothing I can do about it — it’s not my house.  You can’t be six feet apart when you have to rely on other people’s space.

Stokes is sleeping on the floor of his friend's room in the house.  His friend sleeps on the bed with her child.  Stokes talks of sitting in his car to get some privacy, and also of reciting affirmations to calm himself. 

DeParle quotes Stefanie DeLuca, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins: 

The pandemic is a reminder that privacy is at a premium among the poor — hard to find and extremely valuable.  Living in crowded conditions not only increases the risk of infection but can also impose serious emotional and mental health costs. The ability to retreat into one’s own space is a way to cope with conflict, tension and anxiety.

This is a deeply reported and powerful story that also features a recovering heroin addict living in a one-room trailer, along with several family members, in Oklahoma and several homeless folks living together on Whidbey Island, Washington.  I highly recommend the entire story.

From Patricia Cohen of the New York Times on April 16, 2020, "Struggling in a Good Economy, and Now Struggling in a Crisis."  Here's the lede:

An indelible image from the Great Depression features a well-dressed family seated with their dog in a comfy car, smiling down from an oversize billboard on weary souls standing in line at a relief agency. “World’s highest standard of living,” the billboard boasts, followed by a tagline: “There’s no way like the American Way.” 

The economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly hurled the country back to that dislocating moment captured in 1937 by the photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In the updated 2020 version, lines of cars stretch for miles to pick up groceries from a food pantry; jobless workers spend days trying to file for unemployment benefits; renters and homeowners plead with landlords and mortgage bankers for extensions; and outside hospitals, ill patients line up overnight to wait for virus testing.

Damon Winter, a photographer on assignment to the Opinion section of the New York Times, contributed this photo essay (text also by Winter), which was published o April 20, 2020.  It's titled "The Great American Divide" and features photos from central New York, Ithaca (home to Cornell) and Syracuse.  This is part of the New York Times "The America We Need" series.

This April 23, 2020  New York Times Upshot piece is framed in terms of "Who Has Enough Cash to get through the Coronavirus Crisis?"  Alissa Quart and Yaryna Serkez report that just 47% of Americans say they have enough savings to get through three months of unemployment:

Even before Covid-19, many Americans were living check to check, because of the costs of housing and child care, student debt payments, medical bills and the rest. Despite the cheery insistence of people like President Trump and personal finance gurus, the economic growth of the last decade had not brought wealth or security to most Americans. Fewer than half of American adults — just 47 percent — say that they have enough emergency funds to cover three months of expenses, according to a survey conducted this month by the Pew Research Center. 

In the coronavirus’s wake, those without savings may also be losing their jobs, leaving them with little to support their families other than the CARES Act relief from the government, help from charitable groups or GoFundMe or Venmo tip jar campaigns. This won’t be enough to save many families from ruin.

Lastly, here's a story from The Economist on April 27, 2020, which offers a global perspective on how the coronavirus is aggravating inequality.  It's one of a number of stories I've seen that highlights the likelihood of dramatic food shortages around the world. The headline is "Closing schools for covid-19 does lifelong harm and widens inequality," and it contrasts quarantined kids in Amsterdam and Paris with those in Dakar.

The all too rare story that talks about privilege in terms of class more than in terms of whiteness

It's this New Yorker story about Jeffrey Epstein and how he got away with what he got away with--for decades.  An excerpt follows:

For years, Epstein was able to operate and be fêted in the social, financial, and academic worlds, despite barely bothering to conceal his illicit activities. Visitors to his various homes would see young women there who looked as if they should still be in school. In Florida, in 2008, he had secured a shamefully lax plea deal, which U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta signed off on. (Acosta later became the Labor Secretary for Donald Trump, who had had his own interactions with Epstein; so, as Trump has practically been shouting on Twitter, did Bill Clinton.) Prosecutors there knew of dozens of alleged victims who were minors, but Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to a pair of state prostitution charges, which both hid and distorted the girls’ stories. The lack of respect for young victims is another pathology that extends beyond the Epstein case. Before the Miami Herald published an investigation of that deal last November, Epstein had managed to return to his life in New York, and to evade accountability. 

Money offers one explanation for why people seemed to ignore what was plain to see. But money, here, is really shorthand for a range of ways to exert influence.

Are rural and working class white women re-thinking their support of Trump?

Recent focus groups conducted by Stanley Greenberg (the Democratic pollster) and colleagues in Bangor Maine and perhaps some other places (on this point, the sources are not absolutely clear to me) suggest that working class white women may not be as loyal to Trump as working class white men.  In particular, working-class women are put off by Trump's crassness and bombast, while their male counterparts tend not to be.  Ronald Brownstein summarized in The Atlantic a few days ago, under the headline "Will Trump's Racist Attacks Help Him?  Ask Blue-Collar White Women": 

And a new set of focus groups in small-town and rural communities offers fresh evidence that the gender gap over Trump within this bloc is hardening.

In the Rust Belt states that tipped the 2016 election to Trump—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—few things may matter more than whether Democrats can fan doubts about Trump that have surfaced among blue-collar white women or whether the president can rebuild his margins among them with his polarizing racial and ideological attacks. 

“The white working-class men look like they are approaching the 2016 margins for Trump, but not the women,” says the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, in a judgment supported by public polling. “Clearly the women are in a different place.” Greenberg conducted the focus groups, whose findings were released today, for the American Federation of Teachers.

The Intelligencer also ran a story on the focus groups, quoting liberally from the Brownstein story.  Here's a link to the Greenberg survey/focus group docs. 

And here is my own 2018 law review article about rural and working class white women in the era of Trump.  I speculated that most working class white women see their economic well being (if one could fairly use the word "well" to express what I'm thinking about) as so connected to the jobs of their husbands and boyfriends that they are not troubled by Trump's bad behavior, including his crass language.  In other words, to quote James Carville, "It's the economy stupid."  I sure hope I'm wrong.  Interestingly, the Brownstein story above includes the following, which suggests that people are not voting based solely on their pocketbooks--that Trump's "exclusionary racist and cultural messages" are off-putting to them:

In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released earlier this week, fully one-third of adults who said the economy is working for them personally still said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance. An equal share of these voters said they now intend to vote against him for reelection. To offset that unusual defection among the economically content, Trump must maximize his margins—and turnout—among the groups that have been most receptive to his exclusionary racist and cultural messages: older, nonurban, evangelical-Christian, and non-college-educated white voters.

And speaking of blue-collar whites, here's a feature story from today's Des Moines Register out of Clinton County, Iowa (population 49,116), whose electorate twice backed Obama only to flip for Trump in 2016.  The headline is "Democrats' Hope for White House Success Run Through this Iowa County."  The story by Brianne Pfannenstiel features the chair of the county's Democratic Party, Bill Jacobs, who takes campaign organizers for the various presidential candidates on tours of his county:

When a new campaign organizer arrives in his corner of Iowa, he meets the person in the gravel parking lot outside the party’s headquarters, they climb into his gray Toyota minivan, and they set off for a drive. 

With the radio tuned to classic rock, Jacobs drives northeast along Liberty Avenue past the looming Archer Daniels Midland Co. plant, where a constant procession of grain trucks loops through to drop off corn for processing. 

He follows the curve of the Mississippi River where the city has invested in recreation and tourism. He points out the boarded-up retail shops on Main Avenue. 

"So much of the tour I give is talking about things that used to be here," Jacobs said. "We're really looking for the next big thing." 

He drives past the recently renovated lodge at Eagle Point Park, where the unions hold their annual Labor Day picnic.  (emphasis mine) 

Note the focus on what the county previously had and the need for economic revitalization.  The feature also touches on race--of course--and is well worth a read in its entirety. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism. 

What does this story have to do with the White Working Class? if anything?

I'm copying and pasting from my other blogs, but here I pause to ask:  are the hunters the white working class?  or are the white female strippers?  or are both?  If both, does this come down to a story about gender or is there a component of intersectionality?

A friend drew my attention to this story in South Dakota's Argus-Leader last month.  The headline is "Stripping, sex-trafficking, and small towns looking the other way," and it seems to support my long-standing argument that law and legal institutions are less present, less effective in rural areas, in part for socio-spatial reasons.  That is, material spatiality disables law because of the challenge and cost of policing vast, sparsely populated places.  Further, material spatiality reinforces (and is reinforced by) social expectations of law's anemic presence and role.

Here's an excerpt from Jeremy Fugleberg's story in the Argus-Leader.

Pheasant hunting season was once a homespun South Dakota tradition. But increasingly it is a commercial enterprise, one that comes with a dark side: sex trafficking and pop-up strip clubs that cater to hunters here for a good time.

The hunting season's dark side stands in stark contrast to South Dakota’s friendly, clean-cut image. It can be easy to overlook by small farm towns that increasingly rely on hosting a flood of rich pheasant hunters to offset losses from troubled agricultural markets. 

Pop-up strip clubs, while legal, have their own place in the shadow. They can trap freelance dancers in a web of exorbitant fees, throwing them into debt and making them vulnerable to being illegally exploited by traffickers and hunters. 

The story features Frank Day's bar in Dallas, in Gregory County (population 4,271), which has "become legendary as a South Dakota destination for groups of hunters, mostly male, sometimes wealthy, looking for after-dark entertainment." 

South Dakota is dawning to the realization that human trafficking isn’t just a big-city problem. It’s essentially modern slavery that does happen in the state, as (usually) men, control and manipulate (usually) women and sell their bodies for sex. 

It’s a shocking practice, one that can be masked as simply providing entertainment for hunters in remote communities. 

“These small towns allow this to happen because it’s a social norm, right? 'Boys will be boys,' that’s what we tell ourselves,” said Tifanie Petro, co-chair of the South Dakota West River Human Trafficking Task Force. “There’s this social acceptance because, ‘that’s just what happens here, that’s just what goes on during the rally, or during the pheasant season.’”

Fugleberg suggests that Gregory County authorities turn a blind eye to exploitation of strippers by establishments like Frank Day's, which becomes "No Wives Ranch" during pheasant season.  Fascinating.

So, what is the onus on local government to protect the women who come to work as strippers?  What would government protection look like in that context?  Is the exploitation mostly economic?  or is it something else?

The story suggests that these are the secret ingredients to sex trafficking:

South Dakota’s two largest tourist events, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and pheasant hunting season, both have the ingredients that attract sex traffickers: lots of men a long way from home, looking for a good time, with money to spend.  (emphasis added)

Interesting.  Maybe so.  I always assumed there was a pimp or profiteer or clear-cut criminal who was making a lot of $$$.  Is Frank Day's Bar making a lot of money during the period it is the "No Wives Ranch"?

Are these the ingredients to a patriarchal society, turning a blind eye to women not earning what they deserve.  But does that equate to sex trafficking?

I noticed a few years ago at conferences that what we previously called prostitution is now widely labeled "sex trafficking."  Hmmm.  Is all prostitution sex-trafficking?  To be more precise, is all sale of sex for $$$ sex-trafficking?  or only when a man or men are involved and are making the profit.

I really appreciate Fugelberg's reporting, but I'm trying to sort things out here. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism and Feminist Legal Theory.

Affirmative action for new minority group: white males

According to a recent Newsweek article, being a white male might put a college applicant at an advantage, but not the one that you might think. Apparently, white males are now considered a minority group among British universities. Statistics show that white men are underrepresented at approximately 10% of all higher education institutions in the United Kingdom—especially in fields of business and science where ethnic minority groups make up 70% of students. In response, the University of Essex and the University of Aston have announced plans to recruit more white men, putting them on a par with Black students and women engineers.

Aston and Essex's initiatives controversially follow a September warning by the Office for Students (which regulates British universities) that:

Institutions could be punished unless they give a higher proportion of top degrees to Black students,

The Telegraph reports. Despite the warning, Aston and Essex still found white male representation to be lacking in their institutions. The colleges relied on research published by the Higher Education Policy Institute which also indicated that more needs to be done to encourage young white males to apply for college, according to the Atlanta Black Star.

Notably, these statistics do not account for the class of the underrepresented men, only their race. However, Oxford University does intend to consider class status in a new initiative. The world renowned institution has introduced a plan to recruit specifically white men of working-class backgrounds. This too is subject to controversy since Oxford was accused of "Social Apartheid" last year after data showed 10 of its 32 colleges failed to admit a single qualified Black student with Advanced Levels or A–levels (a secondary school qualification).

Recent research indicates that some university staff have mixed reactions to recruitment schemes aimed specifically at white males because they fear the programs may lead to accusations of racism on the part of admissions offices, The Telegraph reports.

For example, a 2016 study led by education and youth development group LKMco (King's College of London) stated that, in response to initiatives addressing the underrepresentation of white working-class boys in higher education,

We found that people were quite uncomfortable with the idea of running a targeted activity with this group, in a way that we've not encountered, for example, targeting young black African men.

The low number of white males applying for colleges is an issue not unique to the United Kingdom. In America, too, males are enrolling in college at alarmingly low rates, according to The Atlantic. By 2026, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that 57% of college students will be women. The feminist in me wants to see this as a good thing—more women and less white men becoming educated might shift the current power dynamic over time. But, I think this statistic (and the United Kingdom studies) identifies a larger issue: working-class white males' aversion to education. This aversion must be addressed since better educated voters should result in better policy and (hopefully) more rationality.

American universities could address the decrease in WWC enrollment in a similar fashion as Aston, Essex, or Oxford. However, such an initiative would likely be met with skepticism in the United States—especially if the plan focused solely on recruiting white men without attention to class. Americans (myself included) probably question whether the dwindling numbers of white males in business and science is even really an issue. Wasn't attracting more women and people of color—and therefore fewer white men—the goal of affirmative action programs in the first place? Even so, people are quick to forget that working-class whites from rural communities face crippling disadvantages in pursuing education. Yet, the WWC is left out of racially-based affirmative action programs which purport to level the college application playing field. Are class-disadvantaged white applicants entitled to affirmative action? Or will they prosper because "if you're white, you'll be alright"?

White male privilege appears to be rampant in the United States where white males, quite literally, control the government and most major corporations. So, the belief that white men will be successful simply based on the color of their skin is somewhat understandable. But, as this course has illustrated, working-class white men are underrepresented in all facets of prestigious modern life—especially in elite education. I posit that it is time to abandon the traditional notion of white privilege when applied to the WWC. In the context of higher education, universities must consider an applicant's socio-economic background rather than racial-minority status alone if the educational system is to be improved and diversified. That, or, expand affirmative action programs to assist a new minority group: the white working class. 

The real reason Trump won: Misogyny

In an attempt to make sense of the current state of the democracy, Former President Barak Obama returned to the political spotlight in full force last month and made this comment about the current administration:

It’s not conservative. It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical.

(Watch the full speech here). It has been 648 days, 6 hours, and 28 minutes (but who’s counting?) of this circus that is the current political climate and, unfortunately, things are only getting stranger. Take, for example, Trump’s outlandish suggestion that he can abolish the existing right to citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. Clearly, our current president has not read the Constitution. This truly bothersome when recalling that Trump’s predecessor was a Harvard educated professor of constitutional law. So, where did our country go wrong?

The media likes to blame the outcome of the recent election on the Democrats’ loss of the white-working-class ("WWC"). The former President, however, disagrees:

You know, this whole notion that has sprung up recently about Democrats need to choose between trying to appeal to the white working class voters, or voters of color, and women and LGBT Americans, that’s nonsense. I don’t buy that. I got votes from every demographic. We won by reaching out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote.

If Obama is right, where does that put commenters like Esdall and Teixeira who fervently claim the lack of appeal to working-class whites is where Democrats went wrong? Maybe our former President is too optimistic or simply denounces identity politics, or even wants to build coalitions so this has to be part of his "party line." Whatever his angle, however, he is technically correct—the last administration’s strategy of appealing to all voters was successful for two terms. So, where did the Democrats go wrong?

Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, suggests that the Democrats’ failure to appeal to the forgotten American underclass was the primary issue. The Atlantic opined that fear of societal change and immigration policies motivated the WWC to support Trump. Senator Tom Cotton blames the loss of WWC voters on the media’s criticism of Trump’s WWC-esque characteristics (like eating McDonalds). I don’t buy it. Rather, I think the WWC’s support of Trump (and the Republican Party in general) is revenge based. To them, Hillary represented a liberal, highly educated, New York dwelling, feminist elite. Could the WWC get behind a Black president so long as he goes to church and has a family in the traditional sense? Yes. But a powerful, pantsuit donning woman? Absolutely not. Simply, the white-working-class and America in general was not ready for a female commander in chief.

But don’t take my word for it. From what I have gathered through notable WWC scholars such as Matthew Schmitz and Joan C. Williams, the WWC support traditional family values: e.g., where men are the bread winners and women are the caregivers. Clearly, Hillary is a threat to these values. Although she is married in the biblical sense (i.e., to a man), her marriage has been anything but traditional. And, in my opinion, running for president 8 years after her husband’s term is the most feminist revenge on Bill (for his infidelities) that Hill could procure. Not to mention she was appointed Secretary of State following her tenure as first lady and made a political name for herself separate from her husband.

Yet, Hillary’s successes are often used against her. As feminist legal scholar Joan C. Williams comments:

Hillary Clinton […] epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

Just like that we are back to subjectively judging women based on their clothes. Hillary’s affinity for pantsuits, common practice use of a personal server, and criticisms of Trump are powerful moves which would all be justified—if only she were a man. Yet, the fact that she is a woman puts a certain spin on otherwise neutral factors. How is challenging Trump’s fitness for office “condescending” yet calling Hillary a “nasty woman” is not? It is clear that this country’s problems with sex, gender, and male-female relations are worsening, and I believe they played a much larger role in the recent election than many think.

"Sparse country" at Harvard as derision of rurality and conflation with whiteness

Prof. Jeannie Suk Gersen writes in the New Yorker this week under the headline, "At Trial, Harvard's Asian Problem and a Preference for White Students from Sparse Country."  She is writing about the same landmark affirmative action case I wrote about a few days ago here.  And, as I predicted in that post would soon happen among commentators, Professor Gersen conflates rurality with whiteness.

Prof. Gersen, of Harvard Law, repeatedly uses the phrase "Sparse Country," capitalized even (perhaps for emphasis?  Is there a whiff of disdain--or more than whiff--here?) to refer to the 20 states from which Harvard makes a particular effort to recruit students.  (I want to know what 20 states constitute "sparse country" but Gersen does not list them; elsewhere the New York Times listed a few of them, including Montana and Alabama).

In his testimony, William Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions, who has worked in the admissions office since before Bakke, reminisced about his Harvard roommate in the nineteen-sixties, who was “a great ambassador” for South Dakota. He also testified about the letters Harvard sends to high-school students in Sparse Country who have P.S.A.T. scores of at least 1310, encouraging them to apply. The only Sparse Country students with such scores who do not get the letter are Asians; to receive it, an Asian male must score at least 1380. An attorney for the plaintiff asked why a white boy in, say, immigrant-rich Las Vegas with a score of 1310 would get the letter, while his Asian classmate with a 1370 would not. Fitzsimmons responded with generalities about the need to recruit from a broad array of states to achieve diversity.

The quotation marks around "great ambassador" suggest to me Gersen's derision of the rural experience and the notion that kids from rural places might have anything to teach urban kids, who are no doubt the Harvard student body default. 

When asked whether Harvard “put a thumb on the scale for white students” from Sparse Country, Fitzsimmons contrasted students who “have only lived in the Sparse Country state for a year or two” with those who “have lived there for their entire lives under very different settings.” Perhaps he meant that whites are more likely to be “farm boys” or “great ambassadors,” like his South Dakotan roommate. Or perhaps he meant that Asians are more likely than whites to apply to Harvard, less likely to be accepted, and more likely to enroll if accepted, so Harvard saves itself postage costs by reducing its recruiting of Asians. But the exchange highlighted a key question of the trial: whether the Harvard admissions process treats white racial identity as an asset, relative to Asian identity (or treats Asian identity as a drawback, relative to white identity).

This explanation of Harvard's desire to attract students from "Sparse Country" suggests another meaning of the phrase--that the sparseness refers to the dearth of applicants from these places, not necessarily to the low density of the population.

As for Prof. Gersen's conflation of whiteness with rurality, it is arguably supported by Fitzsimmons' distinction between students who have not been in Sparse Country for very long and those who have been there all their lives.  That is, immigrants are moving into "Sparse Country" (as I have written about here and my colleague Michele Statz has written about here), and I would hope that Harvard would not devalue those immigrants simply because they have not lived in rural America for very long.  Indeed, those immigrants are probably valued by Harvard because they represent racial and ethnic groups generally underrepresented at Harvard--regardless of whether they are admitted to Harvard from rural or urban places.

One issue that is not explicit in Prof. Gersen's musings is the distinction between "Sparse Country" as rural and "Sparse Country" as urban.  This gets at the issue of scale:  Is the scale of the "state" helpful if we want rural voices at Harvard and similarly situated institutions?   I have often argued (in conversation, though perhaps not explicitly in my publications) that admitting the children of doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers and such from Billings or Missoula or Bozeman Montana (or, Salt Lake City or Albuquerque or even Rapid City or Sioux City) is really nothing like admitting the real "farm boy"--or, more importantly, farm girl--from one of these states.  So if Harvard sees "Sparse Country" as 20 states, it's missing out on the complexity of the dramatic variations within those states.

The best seller Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover, helps to make my point.  Tara was raised by fundamentalist Latter Day Saint parents in southern Idaho--which is NOTHING like being raised by wealthy retirees in, say, Sun Valley, or even as the daughter of physicians in Boise.  Do we really want to look at issues like diversity of lived experience at the level of the state?  Or do we need to look to a lower scale to achieve more authentic diversity?  Doesn't the phenomenally successful Educated help us to see that distinction quite clearly?

Cross-Posted to Legal Ruralism.

If the white working class won’t support Ocasio-Cortez because of a $3,000 suit, why did they elect Trump?

After winning an upset victory against Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could make history as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. So, of course it is only fitting that there is major controversy over her clothes. Yes, you read that correctly: her clothes.

For some background, Ocasio-Cortez is a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist with aspirations

to create an America that works for all of us—not just the wealthiest few,

according to her campaign page. Ocasio-Cortez runs on a platform that prioritizes the needs of working families and seeks to implement pro-working-class-policies such as Medicare-for-all, free public universities, and a guaranteed job program. The young politician frequently describes her own background as working-class—pointing to her Bronx upbringing, her mother’s occupation as a housekeeper, and her immigrant family’s economic troubles.

Ocasio-Cortez could be the working-class leader the Democratic Party needs to finally appeal to white-working-class ("WWC") voters, but an outfit choice has apparently aligned her with privileged elites instead. In a photo-op with Interview Mag last month accompanying a conversation with an editor, Ocasio-Cortez is shown wearing a sharp emerald blazer (Gabriela Hearst $1,990), matching trousers (Gabriela Hearst $890), and black pointed-toe heels (Monolo Blahnik $625). Photos of Ocasio-Cortez in the roughly $3,500 suit standing next to New York construction workers quickly prompted an uproar in the conservative web-space, many naming her a hypocrite.

These commenters appear from their profiles to be of the WWC demographic:

Is Ocasio-Cortez more of a limousine liberal than a socialist? . . . She’s wearing a more than a month’s salary for most Americans…and she’s going to lecture us about income inequality and why we should trust her and her ilk with our money. No—hell no. - Matt Vespa, Town hall

[S]ocialists looooove money. . . . Same goes for the hot new socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's everywhere now as she runs for a New York seat in the U.S. House. And with that comes money — and bling. - Joseph Curl, Daily Wire

No, she's a real socialist. This is what socialism is. You tell the people that they deserve more, and those stinky 'rich' people aren't paying their fair share. Then you join the ranks of the elite, bu[y] expensive clothes, lake houses, Audis, etc., and you're set. This is socialism. This is literally what it is. America First, Reddit

Popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk questioned Ocasio-Cortez's allegiance to the working-class on Twitter:

a) The alt-right doesn’t seem to understand the concept of magazine shoots

b) You don’t get to keep the clothes, duh

c) I don’t “pretend” to fight for a Living Wage & Medicare for All. I do it.

d) Get used to me slaying lewks because I am an excellent thrift shopper pic.twitter.com/Nd2m6WoCxF

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) September 15, 2018

Kirk's tweet received 16,105 retweets and 37,677 likes, and although he does not purport to speak for the WWC, many may find Kirk's argument compelling. Ocasio-Cortez's outfit choice was also critiqued on prime time television. In a segment on Fox News show Fox and Friends, hosts Katie Pavlich and Pete Hegseth mocked Ocasio-Cortez for her 'expensive tastes.'

Pavlich started by saying: The rising star of the Democratic Party has expensive tastes for a socialist. For a photo shoot for Interview Magazine. Her pant suit — appropriate — retailing more than $2,800 alone. And the shoes $600 bucks.

As the studio gasped in shock and awe, Hegseth chimed in: It's tough being a socialist. It really is.

Pavlich then added: I mean I want a pair of $600 shoes. I think she should redistribute…hypocrisy at its best.

As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out in her response to Kirk, however, the clothes weren’t even hers—as with all magazine shoots, the outfit was borrowed from the designer for publicity purposes. But viewers of Fox News—who are primarily white and many working-class, CNN reports—will probably stop the inquiry at was was aired on Fox and Friends and align her with privileged elites.

Ocsasio-Cortez—who almost lost her family home to foreclosure after her father’s death, went to college on student loans, and currently lives in the Bronx on a working class salary—should certainly be considered working-class. Like members of the WWC, Ocsasio-Cortez

grew up seeing how the zip code one is born in determines much of their opportunity.

She has more in common with the WWC than any wealthy Republican politician, but it seems that the commentators above will look for any minuscule reason to disregard Ocsasio-Cortez as a privileged liberal. By bringing attention to Ocasio-Cortez's expensive clothes (which, again, were borrowed), conservative media paints the self proclaimed working-class champion as someone who, instead, cannot possibly relate to the WWC.

Instead (and oddly enough), it seems that the WWC identifies more soundly with Republican figures like Donald Trump. Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, claims that when the liberal media makes fun of Trump's hair, his orange glow, the way he talks, his long tie, and his taste for McDonalds, the WWC somehow sees this as insulting them.

What I don’t think they realize is that out here in Arkansas and the heartland and the places that made a difference in that election, like Michigan and Wisconsin, when we hear that kind of ridicule, we hear them making fun of the way we look, and the way we talk, and the way we think.

Apparently the WWC are quick to overlook Trump's taste for $17,000 Brioni suits and the fact that he has never been and never will be working-class (See Trump's $413 million inheritance from his father here). Although Trump may pretend to understand the struggles of the working-class, his policies have certainly done nothing to alleviate them.

Unfortunately, the divide between the Democratic party and the white-working-class is larger than ever. It is this animosity that pushes the WWC toward uber-wealthy real estate moguls and away from candidates, like Ocsasio-Cortez, who understand their plight.

For a discussion on the role of gender in the animosity between the WWC and Democratic party, see a related blog post here.

Jotos: masculinity, erotic practices, and working class imagery

I was raised in milieu where joto was synonymous with effeminacy, and masculinity with heterosexuality. Only when I entered teenage-hood, when I became increasingly aware that I was what adults referred to as curioso, did I notice that joto-ness could take many forms. And that just like heterosexual men, jotos could construct their masculinity in opposition to femininity and the specter of a fagness—failed masculinity embodied in an effeminate man. (See Dude You’re a Fag) But jotos’ relationship to masculinity is complicated by their object of desire, which is often masculine men.

In our hypersexualized culture, jotos are intimately familiar with one pernicious rule of thumb: jotos desire masculine men, not fags. This generalization pervades queer spaces as "gay culture morphs into ‘straight-acting dudes hangin’ out," and the categories "Masc only, no femmes or fatties. Straight acting, straight appearing" signal the sorts of intimacies that gay men crave. (See Introduction to Why are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?) Thus, it’s unsurprising that one of Pornhub’s “most viewed gay categories” is “straight guys,” and that popular gay searches include “straight first time,” “straight,” and “straight friend.” What is surprising, however, is that some popular gay searches include descriptors that are linked to the working class, including “redneck” and “cowboy.”

Moreover, data for gay searches in the United Kingdom track America’s. In the UK, popular gay searches include “straight first time,” “straight,” and “straight friend,” plus “british chav.” The latter word, "chav," connotes a person “of a low social status.” And some find the word to be “a nasty, coded attack on the working class.” One has to wonder why these erotic trends/desires persists despite recent cultural progress on gender and sexuality issues.

So while “redneck” and “cowboy” may be erotically fashionable in joto circles today, in the past other class-based, hyper-masculine imagery filled queer landscapes. In 1970s San Francisco, for example, the “clone” was front-and-center. In Gay Macho, Martin Levine, describes the gay clone as an “articulation of gay masculinity... that used sexual activity as a major vehicle of gender confirmation” and that relied on the performance of intelligible sexual scripts that openly and visibly embraced “masculine definitions of masculinity” through working class attire. (p2, 12, & 29) That helps explain, in part, why the dynamic membership of the Village People included a cowboy, a construction worker, an officer/sailor, a GI soldier, a leather-daddy/biker, and a Native American. Racial undercurrents aside, one wonders why the group didn’t include a doctor, lawyer, or businessman—I guess the imagery those professions evoke wasn’t masculine enough! Still, in parodying the hyper-masculine working-class imagery that was commonplace at gay clubs, the Village People managed to expose the fragile nature of masculinity. It seems the more aggressively or blatantly one performs masculinity, the queerer one's performance becomes. That's why the group is often regarded as campy.

South of the border, in México, jotos also have an erotic fondness for masculinities linked to working-class imagery, especially the chacal. In Cinemachismo, De La Mora describes chacales as men who have sex with men, and who are “specially linked to the working class.” (p189) Another writer characterized the chacal as a “macho, rude, tanned, beefy, man from a barrio.” In other words, a chacal is an emerging iteration of a queer masculinity that is strictly linked to class. After all, a well-off person wouldn’t live in a barrio, though he could go there for sexual escape. It remains to be seen whether the chacal will become a fixture of México’s “gay animal kingdom” that jotos use to navigate sexual landscapes. For now, the chacal resides in a sexual limbo, where he “is the image of the macho and the joto a feminine fantasy... [and] his resistance to expressing desire toward his male sexual partners reinstalls [him] in a doubtful heterosexuality.” (Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity, p136-37)

Personally, it troubles me that even when I attempt to subvert gender norms or queer spaces, I remain attracted to iterations of working class masculinities that seem inextricably linked to heterosexuality—ever hear of lumbersexuality! It seems that so long as jotos construct their masculinity, erotic practices, or desires in relation to a triad that fastens working class imagery, masculinity, and heterosexuality together, the emotional pain that some of them endured when they realized they were “different” will continue tormenting future generations of jotos. That is why jotos must be critical of the ways in which culture sutures insidious heteronormative desires in their psyches. And that jotos learn “to desire from within the heterosexual norms and gendered structures” that replicate the status quo shouldn't excuse our inaction. (Homos, p7) After all, historically, the status quo hasn’t been kind to jotos.

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.

Elite hypocrisy about working class white and rural women? The case of the West Virginia teachers strike

I've been keeping an eye on elite bashing of working class and rural whites for years now, and I published my first article about it as long ago as 2011.  But the election of 2016 brought the badmouthing to a fever pitch, and I've occasionally blogged about the phenomenon, such as here and here.

One "series" I see on Twitter begins:  "And in today's episode of:  I Bet I Know Who You Voted For..." That is the common  preface to re-Tweets of headlines that could previously have appeared in the "Darwin Awards" or perhaps the petty crime pages of a local paper.  I'm pasting one below.  It re-Tweets a Fox News Tweet that reads "Substitute allegedly brought boxed wine to school, vomited in class."

Another re-Tweets this Fox News Tweet:  "Woman charged with choking teen for blocking view at Disney fireworks show."

On a related note, here's an item from Instagram just a few days ago, from the account called guerrillafeminism that reads "happy international women's day except the 53% of white women who voted for trump."

Pat Bagley, the cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune (whose work I greatly admire, by the way--both cartoonist and paper), has referred to Trump's "idiot followers."  I could provide many more illustrations of this phenomenon.

With that background, you can imagine my surprise--but also delight--when I saw this Tweet from Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress, which bills itself as an

independent nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

Despite the "nonpartisan" billing, I see Center for American Progress as clearly left leaning (a good thing in my book!).  Tanden's Tweet reads:

The teachers of West Virginia are heroes.  They deserve good pay and a real raise.  I stand with them.

Now, I don't recall any past Tweets by Tanden blasting Trump supporters, though I do recall some highly critical of Trump.  That's fine by me.  It's a line I've drawn myself--at least in the last year or so (I was a bit less discriminating--a bit more knee jerk--as I reeled in the wake of election of 2016)  I readily take aim at Trump but try to be more thoughtful and circumspect re: Trump supporters.  I'm looking to understand them, trying to listen empathically. (I've got a whole law review article forthcoming about female Trump supporters, delivered as the key note address at the Toledo Law Review symposium in October, 2017:  The Women Feminism Forgot:  Rural and Working Class White Women in the Era of Trump.  I hope to have the text posted soon on my ssrn.com page).

But the bottom line is that some things I saw on Twitter about the West Virginia teachers--many sympathetic comments of the sort Tanden shared--had me wondering if the lefties doing this Tweeting realized that many of the folks they were lauding and advocating for had no doubt voted for Trump.  That is, these newfound labor heroes with their wild-cat strike were one and the same with (many) reviled Trump voters.  Some 68% of West Virginians voted for Trump!  Could I possibly be seeing praise for these women--praise from the left?   These are the same women that many lefties on Twitter have said "get what they deserve" if they lose their healthcare (thanks to Trump's effort to dismantle Obamacare) or face further economic decline (thanks, for example, to the long-term consequences of Trump's tax reform law).

(Btw, I was at an Appalachian Justice symposium at West Virginia University College of Law in Morgantown from Thursday Feb. 22 'til Saturday Feb. 24th, and I got to see the picketing--and hear the honking in support--first-hand, which was pretty cool.  One of my favorite signs, this published in the Washington Post, is below )

Michelle Goldberg, a relatively new columnist at the New York Times who is writing a lot about gender issues, offered up this column under the headline, "The Teachers Revolt in West Virginia."  She called the strike "thrilling," noting that strikes by teachers are unlawful in West Virginia, which became a right-to-work state a few years ago, and where unions do not have collective bargaining rights. Yet, Goldberg writes,

teachers and some other school employees in all of the state’s 55 counties are refusing to return to work until lawmakers give them a 5 percent raise, and commit to addressing their rapidly rising health insurance premiums.

Goldberg further explains that the "obvious impetus" for action is West Virginia's awful pay of teachers, which ranks 48th in the nation (read more analysis here).  She also discusses the critical role that health care/health insurance plays in the labor dispute:

 In the past, solid health care benefits helped make up for low wages, but because West Virginia hasn’t been putting enough money into the state agency that insures public employees, premiums and co-payments have been increasing significantly.  

Ah, there's that health care problem again, by which I mean you should read this and this, among other sources cited and discussed in that forthcoming Toledo Law Review article. 

Having pored over many, many mainstream media reports of white working class Trump supporters in places like Appalachia (you guessed it, all discussed in that Toledo Law Review article!), I was struck that the women Goldberg identified and interviewed did not appear to be Trump supporters.  Quite to the contrary, these women are held out as having responded to Trump's election by becoming part of what is popularly known as "the resistance." I was delighted to learn about and hear from these women, but was Goldberg unable to find any Trump supporters among the striking teachers?  I would very much have liked to have heard their attitudes about the strike, also in relation to their support for Trump.  Did they reconcile the two?

Here are excerpts/quotes about the two women Goldberg did feature, Jenny Craig, a special education teacher from Triadelphia (population 811, northern panhandle) and Amanda Howard Garvin, an elementary art teacher in Morgantown (third largest city in the state, home of WVU):

Craig described the anti-Trump Women’s March, as well as the explosion of local political organizing that followed it, as a “catalyst” for at least some striking teachers.

Goldberg quotes Craig:

You have women now taking leadership roles in unionizing, in standing up, in leading initiatives for fairness and equality and justice for everyone.

Goldberg also quotes Garvin:

As a profession, we’re largely made up of women. ... There are a bunch of men sitting in an office right now telling us that we don’t deserve anything better. 

Oh how I LOVE that quote.  In the wake of Trump’s election, Garvin added, women are standing up to say: 

No. We’re equal here.

I sure hope Garvin is right that the sentiment and movement are as widespread as she suggests--and as Goldberg implies.  If this is accurate, liberal elites--including feminists--will have to give Craig, Garvin and so many more like them their due.  (Indeed, teacher strikes may be in the works in the equally "red" states of Oklahoma and Kentucky, too).  That will challenge deeply entrenched stereotypes about folks from this region (read more here and here), which will in turn serve all of us quite well.  

By the way, the strike succeeded, with the teachers getting what they held out for.  You can find more exciting coverage of the West Virginia teachers strike here, here and here.  And don't miss this by WVU Law Professor and education law expert, Joshua Weishart.  

The question that all of this leaves me with is this:  What can the WV teachers strike teach us about how to build and sustain cross-class coalitions, including among whites?  How can these intra-racial coalitions interface with cross-race coalitions for even stronger pacts among progressives? And what role will gender play in all of this coalition building?  

Other hopeful news of change in relation to women and the national political landscape is here, here and here.  

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism, Feminist Legal Theory, and UC Davis Faculty Blog.