Book description
"In this wonderfully insightful book, Joan Walsh shows how
America built a large and vibrant (although mostly white) middle class
that fueled the greatest economic boom in history and made a reality
of the American dream. Hers is the story of postwar America told
through a working class New York Irish Catholic family whose political
divisions mirrored the nation's. Moving and powerful, her account will
help people of all races think through how we can build a just and
prosperous multiracial America." -Robert B. Reich
"A brilliant and illuminating book about America since the
upheavals of the '60s and '70s. What's the Matter with White
People? is about the heart and soul of America, from our
Founding Fathers to Hillary and Barack. It's about our middle class,
which so recently flourished, and how it has been injured and
diminished almost beyond repair by greed and racist fear-mongering.
It's about America's greatness and delusion, the betrayal of the
working class, and the fragmentation of the Democratic party. It's
about how Walsh's own Irish Catholic family from New York was treated,
responded and fared in the years between Richard Nixon and Barack
Obama Walsh writes with passion, precision, and insight into how
racism has made such a bold public comeback. Her book was heaven for a
political junkie like me, somehow managing to be painful and
exhilarating at the same time." -Anne Lamott
"Joan Walsh's reflections and observations from her personal
journey as an Irish Catholic daughter of a Northeastern blue collar
family provide a unique window into the hearts, aspirations, anguish,
anger, fears, and pride of white working class voters during the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No one can properly understand
current class politics and race relations in America unless they've
read this book." -Dr. Clarence B. Jones
The size and stability of the American middle class were once the
envy of the world. But changes unleashed in the 1960s pitted Americans
against one another politically in new and destructive ways. These
battles continued to rage from that day to now, while everyone has
fallen behind economically except the wealthy. Right-wing culture
warriors blamed the decline on the moral shortcomings of
"other" Americans-black people, feminists, gays, immigrants,
union members-to court a fearful white working- and middle-class base
with ever more bitter "us vs. them" politics. Liberals
tried, but mostly failed, to make the case that we're all in this together.
In What's the Matter with White People?, popular Salon
columnist Joan Walsh argues that the biggest divide in America today
is not about party or ideology, but about two competing narratives for
why everything has fallen apart since the 1970s. One side sees an
America that has spent the last forty years bankrupting the country
providing benefits and advantages to the underachieving, the immoral,
and the undeserving, no matter the cost to Middle America. The other
sees an America that has spent the last forty years bankrupting the
country providing benefits and advantages to the very rich, while
allowing a measure of cultural progress for the different and the
downtrodden. It matters which side is right, and how the other side
got things so wrong.
Walsh connects the dots of American decline through trends that began
in the 1970s and continue today-including the demise of unions, the
stagnation of middle-class wages, the extension of the right's
"Southern Strategy" throughout the country, the victory of
Reagan Republicanism, the increase in income inequality, and the drop
in economic mobility.
Citing her extended family as a case in point, Walsh shows how
liberals unwittingly collaborated in the "us vs. them"
narrative, rather than developing an inspiring, persuasive vision of a
more fair, united America. She also explores how the GOP's renewed
culture war now scapegoats even segments of its white base, as it
blames the troubles of working-class whites on their own moral
failings rather than on an unfair economy.
What's the Matter with White People? is essential reading as
the country struggles through political polarization and racial change
to invent the next America in the years to come.
JOAN WALSH is editor at large of Salon and an MSNBC
political analyst. She spent six years as Salon's editor in chief.
JOAN WALSH is editor at large of Salon and an MSNBC
political analyst. She spent six years as Salon's editor in chief.
