The U.S. working class and its role in electing Trump

Joan C. Williams wrote a very informative and cool-headed piece in The Harvard Business Review on what the Democratic Party's strategy got wrong about working class U.S. citizens, and how much this influenced the votes of masses of people.

Williams summarizes several ways in which working class people are misrepresented by Democrats and mainstream media. She emphasizes, that working class people in the U.S. are usually solid middle class, nevertheless are usually presented as poor. Also, often when Democrats focused on policies benefiting the poor, they didn't take into account that these policies would not affect in any beneficial way the middle classes, including working class people. These are surely important and significant points to make, and Williams makes them with admirable clarity.

In this entry I want to discuss two issues she mentions:
- The fact that some working class voters turned away from the Democrats because they detest professionals, teachers, and researchers, and the rhetoric of Democrats was too intellectual.
- That 'manly dignity', male pride, is important to several working class voters.

Williams doesn't say that either of these two things is good. She just highlights them as something that a party that wants to win the elections cannot forget. This is very sound pragmatic advice.

My main issue is the following: while there certainly are many neglected aspects of working class existence these days in the U.S. which should have been addressed by the Democrats, the two attitudes highlighted by Williams and mentioned before are very hard to accept for someone leaning towards enlightenment ideals. Endorsing that people can improve themselves and their society underlies the drive for continuous social improvement. And hence it is very hard to campaign in a way that caters to voters who oppose academics, intellectuals, and white collar workers. Of course this doesn't mean that such voters are bad people. But it does mean that their views of how the world works are very one-sided: while recognizing the importance of skills, experience and expertise in some fields, they play down the importance and legitimacy of these aspects in other fields.

This is what the Republican party, the Christian church, and Trump have both relied on in making many perfectly obvious questions seem controversial:
There is no serious debate regarding whether evolution is the process through which humans came to be what they are.
There is no serious evidence showing that allowing equal pay and equal rights regardless of gender and race has any bad implications for society.
There is no serious debate regarding climate change. It is happening and it will be devastating.
Still, Trump and others have managed to present these issues as if they would still be open questions in the sense, that they haven't been substantially argued for and supported by evidence. They have.
What Trump and others relied on in undermining such perfectly legitimate expert consensus was in part the fact that a number of voters don't have basic science and cultural literacy, they don't understand what researchers, scientists, managers, etc. are doing, and they are suspicious or even antagonistic towards them.

These attitudes surely need to be changed. What to do? Since it seems that simple explanation, fun talks, public intellectuals, politicians who campaign to get the word out are not enough, Williams might actually be right: maybe we should rely on the man-pride of those voters who couldn't get on board with the Democrats because they felt neglected. It might be that if they think they are being cared for, they matter, and they are on the winning team, they would be more open to think in progressive ways.
Still, their resistance is worrying, and it is sad that this is what we would need to rely on. In the long run one can only hope that most people come to understand that in itself neither their social position, nor their gender, or how important they themselves feel that their problems are, can justify ignorance. This in turn will hopefully lead to a more informed and critical acceptance to science and society related issues. Such a stance would enable to endorse the views of proper experts and to neglect fakes. The general idea that the world is too complex now for us to look to one politicians who thinks he himself is the source of authority on every question needs to seep through.

Of course such a change would be much better facilitated by conversations than by talking down. On the other hand it is hard to have the patience to do this all the time, just to save the egos of people who are unwilling to adapt, but whom we do want the best for, and also need them on our team.

If interested in more depth in the connection between work, traditional gender roles, and working class life in affluent Western countries, Williams also has a number of publications, and her recent books (2012 and 2014) discuss these issues. I'm sure many readers would find them interesting, and they can provide plenty of insight.