Xenophobia, identity withdrawal, distrust of institutions… The white working classes are increasingly perceived as a source of instability for Western democracies. Justin Gest has studied them, combining quantitative work and an ethnographic approach
Election of Donald Trump, Brexit, rise of the populist right, even terrorist acts against ethnic and religious minorities in New Zealand, the United States or Canada… the comments and analyses of these otherwise disparate events often point the finger at the white working classes, increasingly perceived as an element of fear and instability for Western democracies.
But, concretely, what are they called? “Rednecks”, “White trash”, “Chavs”, “Angry white men”, the very way of describing them is already in itself revealing of part of the issues they are the object of. It is this complex work of defining and studying the white working classes that Justin Gest is tackling, Assistant professor of political science at George Mason University and already author of a noted book on a hot topic. This last book was based on field work in the cities of Youngstown (Ohio, United States) and Dagenham (London suburb, United Kingdom), as well as on an extensive use of available or collected quantitative sources. In this synthesis work, the author proposes a more global approach, but nevertheless still focused on the British and American cases.
How can we define this new minority?
The first major challenge, as the author points out, lies in defining the category itself. What are the white working classes (pp. 6-13)? The author proposes several parameters to frame them. The first is ethno-racial: these are “white” groups – which challenges the circumscription of whiteness – and “native”, which excludes both non-white and immigrant populations. The second is educational: the white working classes are defined by a limited level of education, without a diploma or with secondary education. The third is economic: they occupy manual jobs, or with a physical dimension. Justin Gest underlines that the perception (and self-perception) of the white working classes nevertheless varies from one country to another (pp. 9-14): if in the United Kingdom, the identity of the working class was a source of pride, in the United States, the strong belief in meritocracy made it less significant or less claimed.
However, these three pillars of definition are in decline in the era of globalization. Immigration generates more multi-ethnic societies than before. Mass education has broadened access to qualifications. Finally, the crisis in the industrial sector from the 1970s onwards caused the decline of large factories, but also the working-class sociability that had been gradually built up until then (unions, social fabric, pubs or clubs, working-class neighbourhoods). The combined result is spectacular: the white working classes have literally become, according to Justin Gest, a “new minority” (pp. 51-58). First, quantitatively: in 1940, 74% of employees were white and without a university degree in the United States. Today, the figure is only 43% (p. 25). Symbolically then: they are union-wise (p.140-145) and politically disengaged, culturally devalued and segregated on the periphery of the territories that are winners of globalization (see the particularly telling maps p.31-32).
What do the white working classes think?
It is indeed a feeling of multifaceted dispossession that Justin Gest, once this delimitation has been established, studies more particularly. Through a series of surveys, as well as data drawn from electoral surveys (pp. 67-109), he shows that the white working classes differentiate themselves not only from non-white minorities (whose economic difficulties they often share) but also from the white middle and upper classes. More hostile to immigration, globalization, and traditional elites than these other groups, they have ended up developing a social and political attitude of generalized defiance. Distrust of what is outside them, whatever it may be, has ended up becoming a mark of identity of the White working classboth in the United States and in Great Britain.
This mentality of distrust towards institutions leads the white working classes, to use the famous phrase of Archbishop Rémi, to burn what they had adored. The unions, now mainly established in the public sector or the middle classes, are criticized for their distance from the working world. The welfare state, built for the latter, is denounced for its supposed extravagant generosity (pp. 75-92) towards the “others” (non-white minorities, immigrants, “bad poor”), even though the white working classes still benefit greatly from it (pp. 92-99). Finally, the parties that had long prevailed in the electoral choices of the white working classes (Democrats in the United States, Labour in the United Kingdom), are now further removed from these (pp. 110-115), leaving room for a political alternative between radicalization and anomie. The privileged rise of the populist right in this electorate can therefore be understood as the occupation of a social group disinvested by traditional political elites since the 1990s (pp. 115-125).
A powerful book and questions
The book can raise many questions. Some of them concern the very definition of the subject. If in the United States, a more homogeneous white identity emerged from the 1930s, it was not complete, for example with the specificity (notably political) of the Jewish community. In Great Britain, the border is even more difficult to draw. Thus, are immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, who have weighed so heavily on the attitude of the British working world towards Brexit (pp. 89-92), not just as “white”, or even more so, than the working classes of the United Kingdom?
Another particularly sensitive issue is the prevalence of xenophobia, even racism, in the White working class is addressed, but in a cursory manner (pp. 63-66), and rather as an untheorized feeling of hostility. However, and the author shows this very solidly in the work, the white working classes are distinguished by a “alterophobia” much higher than the other groups in the societies studied, to use an expression of Nicolas Lebourg.
Finally, the work is limited to two national situations, which are admittedly easier to study with the existence of ethnic statistics. However, looking at other countries, starting with France, would probably confirm some of the features mentioned in this stimulating work – which are also found in recent studies. The author of this review, having coordinated a research project on the educational difficulties of Picardy from 2015 to 2019, thus found relatively similar elements there.
Justin Gest himself raises destabilizing questions, starting with the academic community (American, but also beyond). Why the crisis of the white working classes, which goes as far as “death by despair” (death of despair) of white American workers, has generated so little work or even interest on campuses? The author points out with even more acidity the white elites (notably pp. 19-24). According to him, they would cheaply shift the blame for the phenomena of racism, discrimination and injustices done to ethnic minorities onto the white working classes alone, juxtaposing a violent class contempt with a progressive discourse.
Written with a lively pen, solidly documented, combining quantitative work and ethnographic approach, Justin Gest’s book illuminates in an original, strong and empathetic way a central aspect of the current situation in Western democracies. As he notes in the last pages of the book (pp. 155-158), the way in which they will succeed or not in managing the demographic and symbolic decline of the white working classes constitutes one of their major challenges.