Pikeville, Kentucky and surroundings make up the whitest Congressional district in America. So when white nationalists knock on the sheriff’s door asking for permits to hold a rally, would an innovative sociologist see opportunity to put a revealing spotlight on cultural phenomena? Arlie Russell Hochschild decided to come visit and talk with the participants and the intended audience. After all, this once-stable coal-mining region “combined declining opportunity and strong ideas about individual responsibility: if you succeed, you take credit; if you fail, you take blame. Where it was tough to succeed and easy to hit bottom, many felt stuck with an undeserved burden of shame. [The white nationalists were] coming to offer them a move out of it.”
The rally turned out to be a precursor to the “Unite the Right” violent day in Charlottesville, VA. Though the 2017 events in Pikeville were much tamer, Hochschild became acquainted with individuals with many points of view—and as has been a working model for this UC Berkeley professor emeritus, she has followed up for years with a cross-section of the community. Her gentle interviewing and laser-honed curiosity have brought out “deep stories” where generational hopes and expectations run up against disappointments — many but not all rooted in economics. The oft-confounding consequences and conundrums are laid out in her new book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right.
Hochshild believes that attached to the American Dream — of earning one’s way up, each generation succeeding beyond its predecessor — is a hidden paradox. “The presence of one’s region of economic opportunity and one’s cultural belief about responsibility for accessing it” has, in recent decades, created “a red-state world of lower opportunity and strict expectations, and a blue-state world of higher opportunity and less-strict expectations. Within the red-state world is a greater capacity for shame — and among these states are the majority of jobs tied to vulnerable resources that can run out or be off-shored.” So shame — and its escape valve, namely blame — grow in popularity and in extremeness of expression.
This book teaches through a loosely alternating structure: in some sections, Hochschild frames her updated concepts of emotional social trends, including the “pride paradox.” Elsewhere she is profiling individuals such as Matthew Heimbach. This rally organizer and neo-Nazi embraced a combativeness combined with smarts and skills — all to gather allies against those he would condemn for what seems to be chronic, envying bitterness.
There is Andrew Scott, mayor of the small, struggling town Coal Run, telling Hochshild how a variety of opportunistic swaths of the American population have jumped ahead in achieving a successful lifestyle that many hardworking rural families have been patiently struggling to earn. Even (and particularly, and proudly) when they have to pick themselves up “by their bootstraps.” Mayor Scott sees in Donald Trump a bully who has picked up a righteous cause in speaking up for these overlooked families and towns and pointing out the inequities they see.
Other members of Hochschild’s circle include victims of addiction to OxyContin, in affecting chapters that show the slippery slopes that lead to desperate trials for those who want to recover, as well as purgatorial stations that hold down those who don’t. There’s also Ruth Mullins, a Black retiree who answered a call to return home for family obligations and connectedness, and now watches outsiders’ influences with caution but also understanding of local community solidarity. Roger Ford is a local success story who puts his politics out front (as when he headed a pre-election pro-Trump vehicle parade) and who demonstrates one of Hochschild’s most interesting findings: the “most enthralled” that provide ongoing support for MAGA and related beliefs (for instance, the Tea Party of a dozen years ago) “were not at the very bottom — the illiterate, the hungry — but those who aspired to do well or who were doing well within a region that was not.”
Even someone like Roger Ford, the author observes, is susceptible to three kinds of loss: “the loss of coal-related jobs (absolute loss), a reduced value attributed to what one still had, such as heritage, land, and ingenuity (devaluation), and a declining value of rural life compared to a rising value of city life (relative loss).”
In a brief phone exchange, LEO asked Hochschild if she could see a stable or prosperous region just now demonstrating the beginning of the cycle that has befallen the coal regions. Her affirmative answer came with a shocking prediction that pointed away from resource-based industries and geographic regions. “The next hot spot for us to worry about that will melt down the understandings about pride and shame — will frighten people who won’t know how to win pride and avoid shame — will be the effects of AI. It’s already happening, and we’re not really looking at it.” “I think there are already people who have worked hard for their law degrees and now pore through documents,” she said, to provide an example, “and they’ll find all their training has come to naught.” As we discussed how this might have a devastating effect not just on much of the legal profession but perhaps also all educational institutions and everyone burdened with student loans, this sociologist-author’s perceptiveness gave perhaps more food for thought than can be handled by any healthy appetite.
Arlie Russell Hochschild will appear at the 2720 Frankfort Ave. location of Carmichael’s on Thursday, Sept. 12 at 7PM. The event is free, but registration is requested at carmichaelsbookstore.com.
