{"id":73232,"date":"2024-04-12T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=73232"},"modified":"2024-04-12T09:10:14","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T13:10:14","slug":"white-rural-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/04\/white-rural-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"“White Rural Rage”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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White Rural Rage<\/a> is a book by political science professor Tom Schaller and journalist Paul Waldman that argues that the 16% of Americans who farm or live in small towns are the biggest \u201cthreat to the world\u2019s oldest constitutional democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaller told Morning Joe<\/em> on MSNBC that rural Americans are \u201cthe most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.\u201d Furthermore, they are \u201cthe most conspiracist group,\u201d \u201canti-democratic,\u201d \u201cwhite nationalist and white Christian nationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And the leftwing media is jumping on.\u00a0 Amanda Marcotte in Salon<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>said she\u2019s tired of the media handling rural voters \u201cwith kid gloves,\u201d and that they need to pop the \u201cracist, homophobic, sexist bubble\u201d they live in. Michael Cohen of the Daily Beast<\/a>\u00a0said,\u00a0 \u201cthese aren\u2019t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals\u2026 they\u2019re facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, political scientist Nicholas Jacobs, whose research into the attitudes of rural Americans supplied some of those \u201cfacts\u201d the book drew on, says that Schaller and Waldman misconstrued the evidence.\u00a0 He answers their book in a Politico<\/em> article entitled What Liberals Get Wrong About \u2018White Rural Rage\u2019 \u2014 Almost Everything<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jacobs, who recorded the reactions cited above, says that the book \u201cis not an attempt to understand the needs and concerns of rural America. Instead, it\u2019s an outpouring of frustration with rural America that might feel cathartic for liberals, but will only serve to further marginalize and demonize a segment of the American population that already feels forgotten and dismissed by the experts and elites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacobs says that in all of his research, he has never found this \u201crage.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, rural America in virtually all of its demographics\u2013women, young people, poor, rich\u2013votes for Trump.\u00a0 But, he said, Democrats\u2013for whom rural Americans used to be an important part of their base\u2013would do well to try to understand why this is so.<\/p>\n

Rural Americans, he says, \u201care driven by a sense of place, community and often, a desire for recognition and respect.\u201d\u00a0 They have a strong \u201cbelief in self-reliance, rooted in local community and concerned that rural ways of living will soon be forced to disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn recent years,\u201d Jacobs says, \u201cthat rural political identity has morphed into resentment \u2014 a collective grievance against experts, bureaucrats, intellectuals and the political party that seeks to empower them, Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Resentment, he stresses, is not<\/em> the same as rage.\u00a0 Rage is irrational emotion; resentment is a rational response to an actual experience.\u00a0 Rural Americans have legitimate problems and grievances that the government has just not been addressing and has sometimes been exacerbating.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As for the specific charges in the book, Jacobs excoriates the authors for their misuse of sources, low-quality studies they rely on, and their logical fallacies in their analysis.\u00a0 Reliable evidence contradicts virtually every charge made in White Rural Rage<\/em>:<\/div>\n
(1) Jacobs\u2019 own research<\/a> has shown that the \u201cplace-based resentment\u201d he documents\u00a0 is not<\/em> based on racial prejudice.\u00a0 Furthermore, racial and ethnic minorities who live in rural areas\u2013about 20% of the rural population\u2013share the same resentments!<\/div>\n
(2) Studies of openness to authoritarianism show no geographic correllations.<\/div>\n
(3)\u00a0 \u201cRural residents are\u00a0less<\/i>, not more, likely to support political violence.\u201d<\/div>\n
(4)\u00a0 Jacob\u2019s own research found that 27% of rural voters\u2013both Democrats and Republicans\u2013believe that if the opposing candidate wins (whether Trump or Biden), the people should take action to prevent him from taking office.\u00a0 The book uses that information as evidence that rural voters are willing to overthrow democracy.\u00a0 But that\u2019s exactly the same percentage, 27%, of urban and suburban voters who believe the same thing!<\/em><\/div>\n
(5) Contrary to what the book says, rural voters are not more likely than urban voters to say that the opposing party is a \u201cthreat to the future of America.\u201d\u00a0 While 38% of rural Trump supporters believe that, so do 36% of non-rural Biden supporters!\u00a0 (In fact, I would add, this seems to be what the authors of the book believe.)<\/div>\n
Rural Americans are plagued with chronic health problems (exacerbated by hospital closures and few doctors), limited employment opportunities, infrastructure decay, funding shortfalls for schools, and government policies that have wrecked rural economies.\u00a0 Politicians of either party have done little to address them, and when they try, the results are often destructive of rural communities.\u00a0 Notes Jacobs, \u201cThe scars of federal tinkering \u2014 from land use policy to free trade agreements to dead-end retraining programs \u2014 are still very visible.\u201d<\/div>\n
He notes a poignant fact:<\/div>\n
\n
Rural Americans are the most likely to say that if given the chance, they would never want to leave their community, while at the same time they are the most likely to say that children growing up in their specific community will have to leave in order to live productive lives. Could any single policy solve that dilemma?<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Jacobs recommends taking advantage of the rural spirit of self-reliance to empower individuals and local communities to address their problems, giving them a sense of agency and taking advantage of their strong local ties.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the demonizing of\u00a0 White Rural Rage<\/em>\u2013which, according to an Amazon editorial reviewer, takes the \u201cbasket of deplorables\u201d slur to a new level\u2013only makes matters worse by confirming to rural Americans that Democrats look down on them with contempt.<\/div>\n
Last year Jacobs wrote entitled The Rural Voter:\u00a0 The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a mark of Schaller and Waldman\u2019s poor research that they evidently didn\u2019t read it.<\/div>\n
Photo via PxHere<\/a>, Public Domain<\/em><\/div>\n

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