White Working Class

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America ~ by Joan C. Williams, 2017, social science, 154 pages

This book explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided and rooted in class cluelessness.  Joan C. Williams says that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor" — but the working class is, in fact, the purportedly disappearing middle class, who 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 and hostile toward foreigners, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.