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"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America

An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017

Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite―journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness.

Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.

White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1633693783
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press; First Edition (May 16, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781633693784
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633693784
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
Reviewer: Ted Lehmann
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Social Class - The Too Often Ignored Life and Vote Decider
Review: The White Working Class by Joan C. WilliamsIn White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) Joan C. Williams has written a challenging, persuasive book helping to answer questions often asked by people seeking to understand why and how Donald Trump won election as President of the United States by gaining the votes of people who seemed to have been voting against their own interests. In presenting her argument, Williams details how to coalition of liberal intellectuals, workers, and minorities has been broken because of their emphasis on identity issues and their loss of touch with the values and lives of the struggling people in the white working class. More important, she delineates how the Professional Managerial Elite (which she calls PME) has lost touch with the lives of those who do the work, blue collar Americans. Furthermore, she argues, that by dismissing this group as uneducated, fundamentalist, and racist, liberals and progressives have lost their loyalty and denigrated the values and beliefs that once formed the core of our society.The chapters of this cogently argued lively presentation, carefully supported by numerous citations, and garnished with sufficient anecdotes, personal experiences, and quotations, asks a number of questions that people comfortably ensconced in middle class, professional positions often ask about those whose family values, work ethic, and religious beliefs appear to be cutting them off from the success that the professional elite is enjoying. Chapter headings include: Who Is the Working Class? Why Does the Working Class Resent the Poor Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Move to Where The Jobs Are? Why Doesn't the Working Class Just Get with It and Go to College?Thse chapters ask whether the working class is just racist and sexist, explaining that while racism and sexism surely exist, the answers to these questions are much more nuanced and difficult than common argument has suggested. By forming chapters as questions, Williams encourages developing deeper understanding and more wide ranging discussion of how these questions may be answered. She always cites solid research leading to alternative approaches to solving the problems suggested.While arguing that racism and sexism still exist and are powerful factors in our society, Williams says that Americans are deeply uncomfortable with the concept and discussion of social class - its meaning, economic sources, and effects on our attitude and behaviors. She argues that not until liberals are able to re-connect with white, working class voters will they be able to consistently win presidential elections again. She holds that identity politics strike right where working class people are uncomfortable and afraid. Thus gender, race, sexual identity, and religious conviction stand as difficult touching points. She strongly acknowledges these differences while suggesting strategies for discussing the issues in ways that make crossing of difficult barriers more easy.She points out that many social and political postures of white working class voters and others are not racism, but fear. Fear of the unknown creates misunderstandings and confusing disjunctions in contemporary society. Especially poignant is Williams' demonstration that racism exists in all of us, but manifests itself differently through the application of class-based stereotypes. Her examples hit home to any thoughtful reader with the genuine power of recognition.White working class families are more generally associated with more closely knit families, often for economic and convenience reasons growing out of providing mutual support in a difficult and demanding living and working world. Elites, however, place their self concepts and advancement on mobility, college educations, and self-satisfied sophistication setting them apart and above. Basic questions like “Why don't they move to where the jobs are” or “Why don't they go to college, get educated, and move up?” are answered by understanding the values concerning family, religion, and work maintained by those in the white working class. The dilemmas created for those Williams calls “class migrants,” people who move from working class into professional and technical ranks, are heart rending in the descriptions of how people learn social and economic cues that mark them as different from their background, and then must deal with the dis-jointures they discover in being separated from their background and heritage. The term “fly over country,” which passes as sophisticated wit among the elite is deeply insulting to those who see that country as “Home.” By dismissing large parts of the country, and the values and hard-working lives of those who live and seek to work there, the sophisticated coastal elites are simply insulting and alienating those they need to understand most.Williams examines the kind of educational approaches, short of obtaining a college education, which would lead to appropriate employment in manufacturing for today's working class. She explores several approaches which would involve labor unions, schools and community colleges, and local manufacturers in training and empowering workers to become gainfully employed, while recognizing that older forms of heavy industry dependent on large employee populations are unlikely to return. Williams couples this with the family values and work ethic which would be reinforced by such arrangements. When placing racism, sexism, and fear of both Muslims and Latinos beside the greater fear of the inability to meet family obligations in the face of ongoing layoffs, she argues that its little wonder that white working class Americans were attracted by the promises of Donald Trump, no matter how blue sky they may turn out to be.Professor Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Hastings Foundation Chair, and the Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, earned a Master's Degree in City Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed her undergraduate degree in history at Yale University. She has written over seventy law review articles, including one listed in 1996 as one of the most cited law review articles ever written. Her work has been excerpted in casebooks on six different topics. She has been described as having "something approaching rock star status” by The New York Times.Joan C. Williams in White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017, 192 pages, $15.31/13.49) has written a readable, scholarly book about class, race, and gender. Some might consider that feat to be an oxymoron, but this volume performs a great service for anyone wishing to understand the phenomenon of Donald Trump's election and appeal to the range of voters he attracted. Williams manages this feat with a style that is both thoroughly analytical and warmly human, sprinkling her text with personal anecdotes and well-chosen examples taken from thoughtful people crossing many of the fault lines separating Americans from achieving mutual understanding. Both in the amount of information this book provides and the tone in which it is written, this book provides a service for scholars, policy-makers, and general readers. It make a genuine contribution to the discussion.I received the book as an digital download from the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle App.

Reviewer: Judy McDonald
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Hybrid Class
Review: Excellent read for those of us who are interested in bridging the divide between what this writer has defined as the white working class and the elite. However, it did not include what I have defined as the “hybrid class”, of which I and many of my friends belong. It consists of people born, raised and loved by white working class families, that went to college willingly and enthusiastically and evolved into what this book defines as an elitist. We are proud of our growth, yet still love and admire our working class families. We walk on eggshells when visiting family gatherings because we know exactly how and what our family members think and feel; however, they have no clue what we hybrids think and feel. The writer confessed she is from an elite background who married into the working class. She is trying very hard to “understand” them, but we hybrids know they are “our people” and in many ways, they are us. We love the working class independence to not accept government assistance, we fight for our country (every male in my family has been in the military), we admire their strength and endurance. We want them in our foxhole with us. We also know their racism, bigotry, and misogynistic leanings are very deep. This book will be read by mostly elitists and hopefully, they will better understand the white working class for all their strengths, and try to communicate with them better on what we all have in common. I would like to see more working class folks read this book as well so both groups can discuss it calmly; however, my experience has been that the white working class won’t read it because it is perceived by them as a condescending book written by an academic (elitist). As a hybrid, I am careful with my words with my elitist family as well as my working class family because they truly are polarized. There are a lot more hybrids out there than are recognized. They need to be addressed as well. We may be the key to a coming together in the future.

Reviewer: JK Oregon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Revealed my unexpected class bias
Review: While always considering myself part of the working class, this book helped me see that as a professional, I was culturally in a different population cohort with different goals and different ideas than the majority of the working class. For example, whereas I thought it natural to move for a better job, this book explained that the concept of moving for a job opportunity is characteristic of the professional/management elite and actively disdained by the true working class, who more value living close to family and friends and putting proximity to them ahead of career moves. This was all new and helped me understand friends and, especially, family members who share those values, rather than mine. There were many other similar revelations that values I thought to be universal in the US were indeed unique to my cohort.So, for professionals and managers, I highly recommend this book. It's short, an easy read, and full of insights that will make the US sociological and political aspects much clearer.

Reviewer: Ruy Braga
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Obrigado.

Reviewer: Howard Robert Griffiths
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is an excellent and short (clearly the author is only interested in clear communication) examination of some of the most pressing problems in the USA today - the demonisation of the White Working Class by the liberal elite and the consequences thereof.

Reviewer: Christophe Faurie
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Parti d'un article écrit le jour de l'élection de Donald Trump, cet ouvrage est une étude de l’intérieur de la « classe laborieuse blanche » (White Working Class). Son message tient en une phrase : « Si vous vous souciez de changement climatique, de droits à l'avortement, d'immigration ou d'incarcération de masse, vous feriez bien de vous soucier, aussi, de bons emplois et de dignité sociale pour les Américains de toutes races, qui n'ont pas fait d'études supérieures » (Préface). L’élection de Donald Trump a une cause systémique. « L’élite » qui dirige le pays est une élite intellectuelle. Elle veut faire la nation à son image. D’une part elle veut imposer ses valeurs culturelles, qui ne sont pas partagées. D’autre part, et c’est le point essentiel, elle veut construire l’économie sur le primat du diplôme. La classe laborieuse blanche et les emplois qui la font vivre n’y auront donc pas leur place. Déjà ses conditions de vie se sont tellement dégradées qu'elle n'en peut plus. Elle n'aspire qu'à la vengeance. Or, la vision de l’élite est fausse. Le progrès ne va pas remplacer l'homme, mais augmenter ses capacités. Il peut apporter de « bons emplois » à l’ensemble de la population, sans qu’elle ait besoin de faire des études supérieures. Ce qui serait la solution à ses maux. Le livre reprend, point à point, les critiques de l'élite vis-à-vis de la classe laborieuse. Il montre que tout ce qui paraît « mal » n’est que la manifestation de la culture d’un groupe humain, tout à fait respectable.

Reviewer: Cliente de Amazon
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Buen Libro que provee información documentada que sirve para entender la situación social de los Estados Unidos y que también ayuda a entender la polarización que están sufriendo muchas sociedades alrrededor del mundo.

Reviewer: Barbara koch
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Very interesting

Customers say

Customers find the book very readable, interesting, and worth reading. They also describe it as thought-provoking, offering quantitative research and anecdotal insights into thinking, culture, and the white working class.

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