What’s the Matter with White People: Finding our Way in the Next America, by Joan Walsh
“Using her personal journey growing up in a blue-collar, Irish Catholic family, Walsh offers a window into the hopes, fears, racial anxieties, and political leanings of a group who have become in some ways all but invisible in a post-All in the Family era.”
--The Root
Joan Walsh addresses two tropes in What's the Matter with White People.
In one, Federal spending is propping up "social parasites" at a cost to the hard working white middle and working class. Uh-huh.
In the other, the "white working class" becomes code for a swath of voters too stupid or racist "to know they should be voting for Democrat politicians" and are dragging the country backwards. That's patronizing to working class progressives, visionaries, and activists of every shade and description— of which there are millions.
The editor at large for Salon.com, Walsh is cutting through the "us vs. them" thinking rife in political discussions today.
She uses her family’s working class Irish Catholic history and her fine analytic knowledge of political events in an attempt to analyze and change the narrative. What would "mending fences" really look like?
Here is a clip of Walsh discussing the multiple meanings of her title on The Tavis Smiley Show:
Watch Writer Joan Walsh on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.
Narrated by the author.
--Willow Pennell
