On of the central tenets of my thesis work over the last couple of years is that progressives, and especially progressive Christians, cannot and absolutely must not abandon or dismiss the concerns and existence of white working class voters in rural areas of the country, especially the Midwest, Great Plains, deep South, and mountain west. Here’s a portion of what I wrote in my thesis:
For progressives who are especially attuned to situations of oppression and injustice, the plight of rural white working-class people should be a concern. Instead, they are dismissed because of their repugnant political beliefs, with no understanding of how or why they arrived at those beliefs. White progressives still advocate for and stand alongside black Americans, Muslims, or Hispanic people, despite the existence of some poll numbers showing, for instance, the level of antipathy among these groups for the rights of LGBT people.24 Why is the same consideration not extended to the rural white working class? Hochschild calls this the “empathy wall,” that which inhibits the understanding of another’s deep story, and the resultant inability to have empathy or understanding for those different from us.
Finally, this is a group that is largely disdained and derided by other populations. As noted above, Nancy Isenberg has traced this history of cultural alienation in her book. This has resulted in the determination by advocacy and political groups that rural white working-class people are not worth the time. One particularly pernicious narrative applied to them is the idea that they vote for and support candidates who go against their own interests. This infantilizing narrative robs rural white working-class people of their own agency. To reduce the interests of white working-class people to merely economic considerations is to reduce the humanity of these people, and to disparage their ability to make rational choices about their own lives. Additionally, it is a narrative firmly entrenched in a neo-liberal, market-oriented world, one where the only legitimate choices to be made (at least by those we look down our noses at) are strictly economic in nature. Christians especially should eschew such essentializing narratives about human beings.
Instead, we need to understand that people make decisions – rational decisions – for a variety of reasons that are ultimately personal for each person. If any economically distressed person chooses to vote for and support candidates or policies that are not directly beneficial to their financial well-being, but instead picks a candidate that speaks to their cultural, social or identity priorities, then it is important to view that as a legitimate and reasonable choice to make, even if we abhor the positions and policies endorsed by such a vote. Even more importantly, if Christians claim to care about these people, then we must understand the real reasons behind these actions, and take real, concrete steps to address them, rather than dismissing them as irrational and self-destructive actors undeserving of our attention. The electoral results of 2016 demand such a response, not to mention the inherent dignity of each person.
I believe this very strongly. Rural white working class folks drove the election of Donald Trump in 2016, thrusting on us the horror of the last 3 1/2 years. They bear a share of this guilt. But, we live in a democracy. We govern ourselves and make decisions about our future in community with the other citizens of this nation, and sometimes people win who we don’t choose. And, in a healthy democracy, we don’t just ignore the voices of those we disagree with, and make plans to defeat them through sheer force. Instead, we have a moral and civic duty to acknowledge the voices of our fellow citizens.
And, even ignoring the moral imperative, we have a utilitarian one as well. Rural working class whites still maintain political power in this country, at the national level for little longer, but certainly at the local level in different parts of the country for years to come. We must hear their voices, and try to understand what they are telling us about their experience of America in the 21st century. This isn’t to say we must agree with them, or accede to them. Far from it; we must reject their worst impulses. But, we must find a way to do that that doesn’t include demeaning or dismissing them.
I’m thinking about all of this today because of John Judis’ recent piece at the Washington Post, “A Warning from the ’60s Generations.” The piece a long, good look at the dangers facing today’s political left, and should be read seriously by those looking to move towards a more progressive America. But here is the section that grabbed me:
Today’s left has not embraced the separatism or the revolutionary fantasies of the last days of the ’60s left, but, as someone who was there, I find disturbing echoes in the present. I’ll list three. First, many on the left — and many more-moderate liberals as well — attribute Trump’s victory in 2016 and white working-class reluctance to support Democrats entirely or primarily to “white supremacy” or “white privilege.” They dismiss flyover Americans who voted for Trump as irredeemable — even though there is evidence that many supporters of Barack Obama backed Trump in 2016, and that many Trump voters cast ballots for Democrats in 2018. It is an echo of the ’60s left’s Manichaean view of Americans.
As a result, today’s left has become fond of a political strategy that discounts the importance altogether of winning over the white working class. Such a strategy assumes Democrats can gain majorities simply by winning over people of color (a term that groups people of wildly varying backgrounds, incomes and worldviews), single women and the young. One recent article in the left-wing Nation declared: “Since the 1980s, Democratic candidates have proven that they can win elections while losing whites without a college degree by a significant margin.” It’s a questionable strategy for Democrats — in a presidential election, it could cede many of the Midwestern swing states to a Republican — but it is even more questionable as a strategy for the left, which has historically been committed to achieving equality by building a movement of the bottom and middle of society against the very wealthy and powerful at the top.
The last point is really important. Democrats and leftists can cede Midwestern whites to the right. But, first, 2016 showed us that that is a political loser as often (or more often) as it is a winner. Spin the math just the right way, and you get a GOP sweep of purple Midwestern states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It’s really hard to win without those states.
Second, Judis is right. One of the central tenants of democratic socialist/leftist politics has long been a commitment to fighting for the rights of working class people. To now just abandon those people is to abandon the history of leftist politics around the world. The left can’t just give up on these people because they have become susceptible to the racist, xenophobic, and bigoted politics of the right. The left needs to find a way to better speak to the economic and cultural concerns of all working class peoples.
Again, this isn’t to dismiss the racism and bigotry being exhibited by these groups. But, I think these tendencies are a symptom of other ills for rural working class whites, not a first-order driver. As Judis notes, many of these voters voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. This simple fact refutes the idea they are somehow irredeemable. Recent history shows us otherwise. But, with an ever shrinking pie of economic interests, these voters are seeing the cultural sphere as the only one left to them. Strongly addressing the siphoning of economic power from rural, working class areas is the way to address the racism and bigotry that are increasingly coming back into vogue there.
As I wrote in my thesis, the Church has a large measure of blame to bear for the plight of the rural working class. Here is what I wrote in my thesis:
I am making two primary claims about the state of the church: it is failing the people it is meant to serve because of a theological deficiency that causes it to be irrelevant to the life of the community on one hand, and unable to tell a coherent story about what it is, what is important, and what it takes to be a disciple on the other. Consequently, the people who have long depended on the church to provide a way of understanding and encountering the world no longer have it as guide and are thus becoming susceptible to other stories and institutions. This is the result of the world changing in the wake of the Enlightenment, the rise of the liberal nation-state, and the project of modernity; because of these things, the church no longer is relevant to the life situations of people, because it does not know what story it is trying to tell.
[…]
I think that it is this specific confluence of events – well into the decline of the institutional church as a relevant voice in the lives of many Americans, meeting the long strain of fear-based politics, right at a moment of unique geopolitical and economic stability in world history – that brought about such a unique political phenomenon as the Trump presidency. Rural white working-class people played a large role in this moment, finding as they did a narrative that spoke to their situation in a way Christianity no longer seems able to.
The Church has failed its members because it no longer presents a convincing, theologically grounded, and unique story about why it exists. So much of the church – left and right – is so concerned with contemporary cultural and political relevance that it has become essentially indistinguishable from the rest of American culture. When this is the case, the Church faces two terrible outcomes: it either becomes a wing of political and social forces driven by traditionally liberal and Enlightenment ideals (this is the fate of conservative churches in America), or it becomes useless and superfluous to other civic institutions (this is the fate of liberal churches.) Either way, the Church is no longer telling the story of Christ; instead, it is telling its own, modern story, disconnected from the traditions of the past (post-modernism at its worst.)
The Church needs to find its unique voice again. This is how it will become relevant to the needs of people today. And this is how those rural, working class whites will find some meaning outside of xenophobic and nationalist politics again. We cannot give up on them, or leave them behind. But we can’t feed their worse impulses either.
Justin DaMetz 
The premise of your article (I will also assume your thesis) is the exact reason the Democrats are losing. This entire post is not about understanding, but about changing. From the perspective of the people you are talking about, can you explain the terms “xenophobic and nationalist politics”? Along the same lines, have you spoken to people you claim are indoctrinated with “racist, xenophobic, and bigoted politics”? I am willing to guess you are ignorant of the actual beliefs behind these terms you have labeled 50% of the population.
The problem before you in truly understanding the conservative stance is that you have accepted the language of the left with little actual thought to how it devalues your fellow citizens.
1) They are nationalists. They want a free, protected nation that places higher value on its own citizens then the citizens of other countries. They want legal immigration based on a set of standards set forth by the government that all must follow.
2) They are not ‘xenophobic’. That is a liberal distortion designed to attack a fellow citizen that has an opposing political view. They want immigrants willing to enter legally, believe in our political structure and use the freedoms of this country to build better lives for themselves. Not simply hide in the shadows, never assimilating to US freedoms and living on the government dole. Just as all of the ‘white working-class’ relatives did.
3)They are not ‘racist’. Again, this attack by the liberal is one used to label an argument they don’t agree with. It comes from numerous directions such as; immigration, education, urban life, etc. While I won’t disagree that there are true racists on both sides, that is a minority and not what you are hitting at. Curbing tides of illegal immigration is not racist. Pointing out the failure of liberal policy in inner cities is not racist. Pointing out the failure of urban bussing or affirmative action programs in education is not racist. They are rather different views on addressing a similar problem. Because they believe there different methods to fix problems with respect to minorities, does not make them any more rasict than your solution make you a racist.
4)They are not ‘bigoted’. Again, a word used by liberals because of policy disagreements. You have essentially used 4 liberal terms that have the exact same meaning. However, I believe you will tie this word to the LGBT movement. Unwittingly, by attacking 50% of the population as bigoted because they hold apprehension toward LGBT, you have completely disrespected their belief in the importance of family. Every honest study shows that a two-parent household incorporating a male and female has the best results for a population over the long term. These traditions held by this 50% of family life are doctrine and the core of what they believe. Force-feeding them with drag queen story hours and endless gay relationships on TV is a slap in the face. However, the biggest point you get wrong is that this 50% could care less about what you do with your own life. It’s the demand by liberals that they accept as gospel all forms of the LGBT movement that has them pushing back.
With regard to the church, the Bible has not changed. Just how it is used. You, as a prime example, have chosen to use the Word of God as a political tool. Questioning the soul of the individual if they voted for Trump? The words of Christ are meant on an individual level and on an individual level we are judged. If you want to reach the ‘white working-class’ stop judging their soul by how they vote. Unlike you, many have separated politics and religion with the understanding that regardless of the candidate, they are dealing with a sinful/flawed human. Rather, they see a growing economy, decreased racial tension, no overseas wars and a president that puts the citizens (all citizens regardless of color or creed) of the US first.
Stop telling us we are [insert liberal attack word] and start seeing us as intellectual equals with different ideologies. I don’t expect that to happen, because doing so will require you to acknowledge your failings in your own life. Jordan Peterson had a great line with regards to the liberal desire to engage in large societal change, “People have things that are more within their personal purview that are more difficult to deal with and they are avoiding, and that generally, the way they avoid them is by adopting pseudo moralistic stances on large scale social issues so they look good to their friends and neighbors.”
Maybe, instead of challenging the ‘white working-class’ and expecting them to change, you could learn from them. Ask them why immigration policy is so important to them. Ask them why the traditional family values hold so much weight. Ask them why electing a sinner to better the country isn’t anti-Christian. You might learn that their views are well thought out, well developed and done with a love you are rejecting because your liberal views have little to no foundation in tradition or religion.
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It’d be nice if you would read my posts with the same charity you claim I am lacking. But, as has long been clear, you have an image of me that you speak to, that doesn’t often reflect where I actually am or what I am actually saying.
For the record, I speak to many of these working class, rural whites quite often: this the people I come from, my family and friends and all the people I grew up with and love. I am the only liberal in my family, the only liberal in the group of friends I grew up around, one of the only liberals in the small Kansas I hail from and return to every holiday. This is what spurred me to write about them in the first place. And, contrary to your accusations, I do listen to them; in fact, the entire premise of my thesis, and this post, are that progressives should be listening to them. Now, this doesn’t mean we need to listen uncritically, or refuse to respond. But listening and having conversations is exactly what I’m after. I want to hear the things my people have to say, the things they feel are holding them back and causing them pain, and the reasons why they vote and act and think the way they do. I see my people as intellectual equals, as human beings with dignity and the right to their own ideas and beliefs and ideologies.
None of this means I have to agree. And none of this means I have to excuse the worse impulses of my own people. I use words like “xenophobia” and “Racism” and “bigotry”, because no attempt to whitewash or sugarcoat things changes what it is. There is nothing wrong with loving your country; there is something wrong with thinking you are better than someone else because of where you were born, or thinking that your nation has the market cornered on God or ideas or morality. And there is something deeply wrong when you put the interests of your country on par with, or above, the demands of your faith. This is what I consistently see and hear from my people.
There is nothing wrong with wanting immigrants to enter the country legally and openly; in fact, that’s exactly what I want to. There is something wrong with thinking people from south of the border are lesser, are unworthy of our nation, are “rapists” or “drug dealers” or “terrorists.” This is what I consistently see and hear from my people.
There is nothing wrong with identifying and pointing out the systemic and policy failures that consistently disadvantage people of color across this country. I’ll join you in those critiques, and in the demand for fixes. There is something wrong with blaming regular, working people for those problems, but ignoring it in rural white places, or somehow believing some people are more inclined to crime, drugs, or other moral failures because of their ethnicity or ancestry. This is what I consistently see and hear from my people.
There is nothing wrong with holding traditional views on gender or marriage. While I don’t agree, and I don’t think the arguments are theologically sound, I won’t penalize people for believing differently than me at a fundamental level, and in fact, I agree with some of the critique from the right on the dangers being posed to religious liberty by certain policies and discourses. There is something wrong with classifying an entire group of people as “sick” or “broken” for living fully into their selves. There is something wrong with ignoring well established science and records of experience when it comes to gender, sexual orientation, and identity, in favor of an outdated and scientifically-unsound view of those issues. And there is something wrong with supporting “treatments” and approaches that actively harm, and don’t work. There is something wrong with rejecting family, friends, and loved ones, without another thought, for expressing themselves. This is what I consistently see and hear from my people.
And finally, there is something terribly wrong with spending decades touting your ability to fuse your religious values with your political engagement, with spending that entire time lecturing every other group of people in the country for their voluminous record of moral and ethical failings, and then turning around and throwing all of that rhetoric out the window for the vague promise of a few federal judges and amorphous protections of religion, while turning a blind eye to the moral and ethical shortcomings of the very man you have invested your entire public witness in. And its appalling to do all that, and not to just ignore the failings of a “sinful/flawed human”, but to in fact claim that man to be somehow aligned with God, to be a modern day David or Cyrus or whatever the popular comparison is this week, to treat him as if he is the Second Coming, as if his faults don’t matter, somehow his narcissism and corruption don’t matter, when this entire time, you have been screaming about the faults of every public servant who is honestly trying to make the country a better place. That is what I consistently see and hear from my people.
Don’t come on to my blog, and lecture me about who I am talking to and listening to and trying to engage with and why. Don’t come on here again, like you do every time, and try to act like you are so far above the fray, like you have this figured out, like you are the expert on it all, and everyone else is at fault in our honest attempts at public vulnerability and conversation and idea development. Find the log in your own eye first.
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