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Arlie Hochschild was on BBC Radio 4, again, arguing for the need to reach out to Trump supporters ... highlighting their economic concerns & their "legitimate" grievances around loss of cultural status ... 
on why such liberal appeasement is part of the problem ...
on why such liberal appeasement is part of the problem ...
Hochschild's book, Strangers in their own Land: Anger & Mourning on the American Right, was published prior to the election of Trump & has become a goâto guide to explain the feelings & motivations of Trump supporters ...
It is presented as an account of white workingâclass America even though Hochschild herself says "Most of the people I interviewed were middle class" ... the white working class trope is something that was attached to this account retrospectively as David Roediger argues ...
In her book, Hochschild presents a âdeep storyâ that explains the situation that her participants believe themselves to be in. A deep story, she explains, âis a feelsâasâif story ⊠It removes judgment. It removes factâ ...
The story is one of hard-working white folk who are waiting in line for the American dream, but the line isn't moving, & then they see "line-cutters" pushing ahead of them ... who are those who are cutting in line? ...
For Hochschild, "They are affirmative action women who would go for formerly allâmen's jobs, or affirmative action blacks who have been sponsored and now have access to formerly allâwhite jobs" ... and this is all being legitimated by Barack Hussein Obama ...
All these injustices pile on to one another, including the fact that they feel accused of being racist by those from the North, even though they no longer use inappropriate labels to describe others, and this makes them feel like "Strangers in their Own Land" ...
These feelings need to be understood and they need to be reached out to as Hochschild said this morning on the Today programme ... but what does it mean to regard these feelings as legitimate? What would it mean to reach out to these people?
To the extent that their concerns are economic, then such issues can be addressed through inclusive policies that tackle economic inequality - such as raising the minimum wage, strengthening welfare & widening access to, among other things ...
The people Hochschild interviewed were not the poorest in the state, in fact they lived middle class lives in one of the poorest states but their lives were not characterised by poverty ...
Over 50 per cent of those living below the poverty line in the state where H did her ethnographic research are African American, they are also more likely to live in Cancer Alley than whites and are disproportionately at greater risk of getting and dying from cancer ...
