The American Professional-Managerial Elite's Hostility toward the White Working Class: Causes and Consequences
Location
Littlefoot A Room 124A
Start Date
22-4-2023 10:30 AM
End Date
22-4-2023 11:45 AM
Publication Date
2023
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Law | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Description
The identification and delineation of White Working Class (WWC) deaths of despair in the United States, pioneered by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, is rich in implications, particularly regarding the relationship between America's professional and managerial class (PMC) and the WWC. Case and Deaton's work is nicely supplemented and culturally contextualized by Joan Williams' writing regarding misperceptions of the WWC. It is particularly important to recognize the thinly concealed hostility that elites harbor toward the WWC, alluded to by these authors but deserving further elaboration and analysis. This presentation applies cultural materialism's epistemology and criteria for defining economic exploitation to suggest that the elite's disparaging attitude toward the WWC is not simply a reaction to WWC racism, reactionary "grievance," or alleged ignorance. Rather, PMC scorn is a variety of systematic othering replete with adroit victim-blaming, incubated in a political economy that has not only failed to protect all working class individuals and families from the depredations of automation and globalization, but has--just as importantly--benefited the PMC materially through the more predatory aspects of capitalism and endemic rent-seeking behavior in present-day America.
The consequences of this economic configuration in an increasingly polarized United States society have already proved calamitous. Among the most glaring is a mortality rate from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States that stands far above those of other G7 countries, and de facto impunity for Donald Trump, the former US president whose office orchestrated a violent repudiation of the last presidential election results.
This presentation will strive to address any prima facie rejections of its approach to the study of hatred by basing its argument in rigorous critical thinking, i.e. the logico-empirical operations of science, with judicious selection of authoritative facts and conceptual contributions. Most of the conceptual groundwork appears in the Coleman 2020 book review essay, "Understanding --And Misunderstanding--The White Working Class: Two Must-Read Studies for the Helping Professions," Journal of Progressive Human Services, DOI: 10.1080/10428232.2020.1862400
Description Format
html
Recommended Citation
Coleman, Sam, "The American Professional-Managerial Elite's Hostility toward the White Working Class: Causes and Consequences" (2023). International Conference on Hate Studies. 52.
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/icohs/2023/seventh/52
Full Text of Presentation
wf_no
Media Format
flash_audio
Session Title
Hatred Against the “Other”
Type
Panel
The American Professional-Managerial Elite's Hostility toward the White Working Class: Causes and Consequences
Littlefoot A Room 124A
The identification and delineation of White Working Class (WWC) deaths of despair in the United States, pioneered by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, is rich in implications, particularly regarding the relationship between America's professional and managerial class (PMC) and the WWC. Case and Deaton's work is nicely supplemented and culturally contextualized by Joan Williams' writing regarding misperceptions of the WWC. It is particularly important to recognize the thinly concealed hostility that elites harbor toward the WWC, alluded to by these authors but deserving further elaboration and analysis. This presentation applies cultural materialism's epistemology and criteria for defining economic exploitation to suggest that the elite's disparaging attitude toward the WWC is not simply a reaction to WWC racism, reactionary "grievance," or alleged ignorance. Rather, PMC scorn is a variety of systematic othering replete with adroit victim-blaming, incubated in a political economy that has not only failed to protect all working class individuals and families from the depredations of automation and globalization, but has--just as importantly--benefited the PMC materially through the more predatory aspects of capitalism and endemic rent-seeking behavior in present-day America.
The consequences of this economic configuration in an increasingly polarized United States society have already proved calamitous. Among the most glaring is a mortality rate from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States that stands far above those of other G7 countries, and de facto impunity for Donald Trump, the former US president whose office orchestrated a violent repudiation of the last presidential election results.
This presentation will strive to address any prima facie rejections of its approach to the study of hatred by basing its argument in rigorous critical thinking, i.e. the logico-empirical operations of science, with judicious selection of authoritative facts and conceptual contributions. Most of the conceptual groundwork appears in the Coleman 2020 book review essay, "Understanding --And Misunderstanding--The White Working Class: Two Must-Read Studies for the Helping Professions," Journal of Progressive Human Services, DOI: 10.1080/10428232.2020.1862400