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551 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
551 reviews for:
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
Arlie Russell Hochschild
4.09 AVERAGE
sad
I didn't like this.
I felt that it reinforced this idea that displaced racists are 'true' Americans and we need to focus on and understand the people who are literally holding me and my descendants hostage.
I just don't subscribe to that nonsense.
Reading this simply solidified my feelings which are đź—Ł we need to separate.
I'm tired of racists and Conservatives are racists.
I don't care about them or their pain.
I REFUSE to care about folks who don't see me as a legitimate citizen of the country we BOTH inhabit.
Fuck these people AND their 'inner' pain.
Let them form their own white enclave so the rest of us can move on into the future.
These people are terrorists and produce a large amount of mass shooters.
They are toxic and their way of life needs to be destroyed and not tolerated or understood.
People are dying behind their bullshit harmful policies.
TL/DR: I don't care about the inner pain of Nazis🤷🏾‍♀️
I felt that it reinforced this idea that displaced racists are 'true' Americans and we need to focus on and understand the people who are literally holding me and my descendants hostage.
I just don't subscribe to that nonsense.
Reading this simply solidified my feelings which are đź—Ł we need to separate.
I'm tired of racists and Conservatives are racists.
I don't care about them or their pain.
I REFUSE to care about folks who don't see me as a legitimate citizen of the country we BOTH inhabit.
Fuck these people AND their 'inner' pain.
Let them form their own white enclave so the rest of us can move on into the future.
These people are terrorists and produce a large amount of mass shooters.
They are toxic and their way of life needs to be destroyed and not tolerated or understood.
People are dying behind their bullshit harmful policies.
TL/DR: I don't care about the inner pain of Nazis🤷🏾‍♀️
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Strangers in Their Own Land is a detailed look at the cultural divide in the US. The scope of this divide is deep (and wide), and Hochschild, a Berkeley sociologist, chooses to focus on a specific sector: the environment, corporate pollution, and regulatory practices. It's an interesting shift as so much rhetoric on the divide focuses on religion, race, and even healthcare. Those are mentioned here, but only as supporting the theme of environmental factors. She chooses to focus her studies on Louisiana, where corporate responsibility and regulations are very low, and pollution of land and waterways are very high, yet right-wing politics continue to thrive.
Bayous and riverways completely ruined with toxic waste, pets and livestock sickened and killed by pollution, higher risks of tumors and cancers in the human population, and sinkholes as big as football fields swallowing land, houses, and cars as a resulting of fracking...
Hochschild uses this metaphor of the "empathy wall" that she must climb over to view situations as her subjects do. As a reader, I found it difficult to climb this empathy wall with her. I was frustrated, and angered by this level of corporate irresponsibility, and the inaction (and even incentivization!) of the people and politicians. Hochschild constructs this larger "deep story" or myth of the right that she refers to a number of times in the book. This deep story in itself is quite compelling, and while it isn't MY myth, I can sympathize (rather than empathize?) with the plight. It's ruggedly individualistic, could be described as Randian in some cases, very "fend for yourself" (unless you look, talk, and worship like I do, then I'll help you... that is where I get tripped up on understanding...).
Needless to say, this is a challenging read, but one that I think truly gets to the heart of the political divide in the US. This same title could be used for a deep study on healthcare, race relations, etc. I appreciated that Hochschild focused on the environmental angle though, as it is one that is drastically underreported, and devastating on the personal and community level.
5/5
Bayous and riverways completely ruined with toxic waste, pets and livestock sickened and killed by pollution, higher risks of tumors and cancers in the human population, and sinkholes as big as football fields swallowing land, houses, and cars as a resulting of fracking...
"Pollution is the sacrifice we make for capitalism."
Hochschild uses this metaphor of the "empathy wall" that she must climb over to view situations as her subjects do. As a reader, I found it difficult to climb this empathy wall with her. I was frustrated, and angered by this level of corporate irresponsibility, and the inaction (and even incentivization!) of the people and politicians. Hochschild constructs this larger "deep story" or myth of the right that she refers to a number of times in the book. This deep story in itself is quite compelling, and while it isn't MY myth, I can sympathize (rather than empathize?) with the plight. It's ruggedly individualistic, could be described as Randian in some cases, very "fend for yourself" (unless you look, talk, and worship like I do, then I'll help you... that is where I get tripped up on understanding...).
Needless to say, this is a challenging read, but one that I think truly gets to the heart of the political divide in the US. This same title could be used for a deep study on healthcare, race relations, etc. I appreciated that Hochschild focused on the environmental angle though, as it is one that is drastically underreported, and devastating on the personal and community level.
5/5
This book has a race problem.
I'm not calling Hochschild a racist—I would hesitate to call anyone who participated in the Freedom Summer a racist, as doing what she said (in a throwaway parenthetical, no less) is arguably the ultimate act of allyship.
But reading the book, I had a creeping sense that I wasn't included among the target audience for Hochscild's book, despite being a young liberal who has lived his whole life in what most would probably see as the coastal bubble. This creeping sense was pretty much confirmed in the book's final chapter, wherein Hochshcild writes two letters: one to liberal friends in Berkeley, and one to her newfound Tea Party friends in Louisiana. I'll focus first on the letter she writes to friends on the right wherein she outlines what she calls the liberal "deep story"—i.e., the story she believes to motivate her liberal friends' political beliefs:
"In [the liberal deep story], people stand around a large public square inside of which are ...museums, public art and theater programs, libraries, schools. They are fiercely proud of it. Outsiders can join those standing around the square, since a lot of people who are insiders now were outsiders in the past." (pg 235).
This last line forms the crux of what I see to be this books inadequate, borderline incompetent handling of race. First, although she states the people who are insiders now were outsiders, she is still referring to them as outsiders. These outsiders—namely people of color and the broader :GBTQ community—are excluded from her vision of the liberal deep story. In her liberal deep story, these outsiders join the people having the story—but their story isn't acknowledged, erased even.
Thus, some of the frightening writing from throughout the book, which seems to willfully ignore race, becomes exposed for what it is—race-ignoring. Take, for instance, this line from the book's second chapter. Hochschild is describing the socioeconomic geography of Louisiana, in particular how it has changed over time: "Along the great Mississippi, between it and New Orleans, stand majestic plantation manor houses surrounded by gracious skirts of green lawn where once lived the richest families in America," she writes. "Now tourist sites, they are overshadowed by giant neighboring petrochemical plants" (26). The glaring omission here, which I would hope is obvious, is any mention of slavery. Plantation families built their wealth on slavery. Here, Hochschild conveys to the reader an image of wealth that has left, even though the wealth she is describing is wealth built on one of the nation's greatest moral failures. I don't expect her as a sociologist to come out and call out that immorality for what it is, but why leave out any mention of slavery? I found this mystifying.
These omissions become even more questionable later on, in the first chapter of the book's closing section, when Hochschild ponders how the events of the 1860s and 1960s contributed to the rise of the Tea Party. Specifically, she examines the lives of poor southern whites during reconstruction, using a paraphrase of W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South. She writes: "Poor whites were driven back 'to the red hills and the sand lands and the pine barrens and the swamps—to all the marginal lands of the South.' To plant cotton and sugarcane, plantation owners destroyed forests, which deprived 'the farmer's table of the old abundant variety'... Marginalized and without demand for their labor, poor whites bore up under rude epithets—crackers, white trash, po buckra" (pg. 209).
In light of the current political climate, I don't have much left in me to pity whites in the South during reconstruction, much less see them as "marginalized," or see the "rude epithets" they had to bear as anything comparable to what Black people and communities have endured during the same time period. But her choice of language—"marginalized," "epithets"—felt like the construction of a false equivalency.
Hochschild does manage to interview a wide array of people, far from the broad brush people—myself included—used to paint Tea Partiers. But as a liberal queer person of color, I felt like this book was written with an idea of liberals that excluded marginalized liberals. Most damning is
the letter Hochschild writes to a liberal friend in the book's final chapter:
"Why not get to know some people outside your political bubble? You'll probably meet some very fine people who will teach you volumes about community, grit, and resilience" (emphasis mine, pg. 234).
And why should I want to get to know people who fail to consider me as fully human? Reasons unclear. What could they teach me about community, grit, and resilience that I haven't already learned from many family members and close friends that have endured hardship because of their identities?
And while Hochschild had no way of knowing this, I shuddered at the phrase "very fine people"—the very phrase Trump used to describe the neo-Nazis who killed a peaceful protester in Charlottesville, which, at the time of my writing this review, occurred just two months ago.
All in all, this book, while at times fascinating, ultimately left me feeling angry at liberals AND conservatives. Hochschild talked often about her attempt to scale the "empathy wall" that keeps liberals and conservatives from recognizing one another's struggles. I wish she had thought to help marginalized readers scale that wall with her.
I'm not calling Hochschild a racist—I would hesitate to call anyone who participated in the Freedom Summer a racist, as doing what she said (in a throwaway parenthetical, no less) is arguably the ultimate act of allyship.
But reading the book, I had a creeping sense that I wasn't included among the target audience for Hochscild's book, despite being a young liberal who has lived his whole life in what most would probably see as the coastal bubble. This creeping sense was pretty much confirmed in the book's final chapter, wherein Hochshcild writes two letters: one to liberal friends in Berkeley, and one to her newfound Tea Party friends in Louisiana. I'll focus first on the letter she writes to friends on the right wherein she outlines what she calls the liberal "deep story"—i.e., the story she believes to motivate her liberal friends' political beliefs:
"In [the liberal deep story], people stand around a large public square inside of which are ...museums, public art and theater programs, libraries, schools. They are fiercely proud of it. Outsiders can join those standing around the square, since a lot of people who are insiders now were outsiders in the past." (pg 235).
This last line forms the crux of what I see to be this books inadequate, borderline incompetent handling of race. First, although she states the people who are insiders now were outsiders, she is still referring to them as outsiders. These outsiders—namely people of color and the broader :GBTQ community—are excluded from her vision of the liberal deep story. In her liberal deep story, these outsiders join the people having the story—but their story isn't acknowledged, erased even.
Thus, some of the frightening writing from throughout the book, which seems to willfully ignore race, becomes exposed for what it is—race-ignoring. Take, for instance, this line from the book's second chapter. Hochschild is describing the socioeconomic geography of Louisiana, in particular how it has changed over time: "Along the great Mississippi, between it and New Orleans, stand majestic plantation manor houses surrounded by gracious skirts of green lawn where once lived the richest families in America," she writes. "Now tourist sites, they are overshadowed by giant neighboring petrochemical plants" (26). The glaring omission here, which I would hope is obvious, is any mention of slavery. Plantation families built their wealth on slavery. Here, Hochschild conveys to the reader an image of wealth that has left, even though the wealth she is describing is wealth built on one of the nation's greatest moral failures. I don't expect her as a sociologist to come out and call out that immorality for what it is, but why leave out any mention of slavery? I found this mystifying.
These omissions become even more questionable later on, in the first chapter of the book's closing section, when Hochschild ponders how the events of the 1860s and 1960s contributed to the rise of the Tea Party. Specifically, she examines the lives of poor southern whites during reconstruction, using a paraphrase of W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South. She writes: "Poor whites were driven back 'to the red hills and the sand lands and the pine barrens and the swamps—to all the marginal lands of the South.' To plant cotton and sugarcane, plantation owners destroyed forests, which deprived 'the farmer's table of the old abundant variety'... Marginalized and without demand for their labor, poor whites bore up under rude epithets—crackers, white trash, po buckra" (pg. 209).
In light of the current political climate, I don't have much left in me to pity whites in the South during reconstruction, much less see them as "marginalized," or see the "rude epithets" they had to bear as anything comparable to what Black people and communities have endured during the same time period. But her choice of language—"marginalized," "epithets"—felt like the construction of a false equivalency.
Hochschild does manage to interview a wide array of people, far from the broad brush people—myself included—used to paint Tea Partiers. But as a liberal queer person of color, I felt like this book was written with an idea of liberals that excluded marginalized liberals. Most damning is
the letter Hochschild writes to a liberal friend in the book's final chapter:
"Why not get to know some people outside your political bubble? You'll probably meet some very fine people who will teach you volumes about community, grit, and resilience" (emphasis mine, pg. 234).
And why should I want to get to know people who fail to consider me as fully human? Reasons unclear. What could they teach me about community, grit, and resilience that I haven't already learned from many family members and close friends that have endured hardship because of their identities?
And while Hochschild had no way of knowing this, I shuddered at the phrase "very fine people"—the very phrase Trump used to describe the neo-Nazis who killed a peaceful protester in Charlottesville, which, at the time of my writing this review, occurred just two months ago.
All in all, this book, while at times fascinating, ultimately left me feeling angry at liberals AND conservatives. Hochschild talked often about her attempt to scale the "empathy wall" that keeps liberals and conservatives from recognizing one another's struggles. I wish she had thought to help marginalized readers scale that wall with her.
WOW. Absolutely required reading for these topsy-turvy times.
this one mostly just made me sad. her analysis is so good; her methods are commendable. but g-d does it make me sad.
The “deep story” that the right holds is very sympathetic, and gave me another way to see how people have adopted right wing ideas that I don’t agree with. I’d be interested to see how this holds up following the Jan 6 insurrection and how the people in this book view what happened then and since then.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Arlie Russell Hochschild does a great job at scaling the 'empathy wall' and bringing the reader along as she works to better understand the driving narrative and values of the Tea Party and Conservative Right. I often hear friends quick to call Conservatives hypocrites, framing them with over-simplified 'gotcha' reasoning. Hochschild's journey and book help to break down some of these stereotypes into richer portraits. While still colored with contradictions, we are reminded that humans are inherently full of contradictions (never one-dimensional), and that is a much more useful way to approach our increasingly divided sociopolitical landscape.
This was such a hard book for me to read as a native of Louisiana. One wonders how sociologists manage their emotions when doing field research.
Definitely made me make a mental note to look up environmental groups in Louisiana to donate to.
Definitely made me make a mental note to look up environmental groups in Louisiana to donate to.