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Showing Original Post only (View all)An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America White Rural Rage has become a best-seller--and kindled an academic controv [View all]
Last edited Fri Apr 5, 2024, 05:50 PM - Edit history (1)
Hat tip to ocelot2 for finding this article!!!
Rage is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritarianism that they claim make white rural voters a unique threat to American democracy. White Rural Rage is a screed lobbed at a familiar target of elite liberal ire. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the authors appeared on Morning Joe, the book inspired an approving column from The New York Times Paul Krugman, and its thesis has been a topic of discussion on podcasts from MSNBCs Chuck Todd and the right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk. The book has become a New York Times best seller.
It has also kindled an academic controversy. In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice, alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white rural Americans. I spoke with more than 20 scholars in the tight-knit rural-studies community, most of them cited in White Rural Rage or thanked in the acknowledgments, and they left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.
White Rural Rage illustrates how willing many members of the U.S. media and the public are to believe, and ultimately launder, abusive accusations against an economically disadvantaged group of people that would provoke sympathy if its members had different skin color and voting habits. That this book was able to make it to printand onto the best-seller listbefore anyone noticed that it has significant errors is a testament to how little powerful people think of white rural Americans. As someone who is from the kind of place the authors demonizea place that is rural in the pejorative, rather than literal, senseI find White Rural Rage personally offensive. I was so frustrated by its indulgence of familiar stereotypes that I aired several intemperate criticisms of the book and its authors on social media. But when I dug deeper, I found that the problems with White Rural Rage extend beyond its anti-rural prejudice. As an academic and a writer, I find Schaller and Waldmans misuse of other scholars research indefensible.
After fact-checking many of the books claims and citations, I found a pattern: Most of the problems occur in sections of the book that try to prove that white rural Americans are especially likely to commit or express support for political violence. By bending the facts to fit their chosen scapegoat, Schaller and Waldman not only trade on long-standing stereotypes about dangerous rural people. They mislead the public about the all-too-real threats to our democracy today. As serious scholarship has shownincluding some of the very scholarship Schaller and Waldman cite, only to contort itthe right-wing rage we need to worry about is not coming from deep-red rural areas. It is coming from cities and suburbs.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/white-rural-rage-criticism/677967/?gift=xvLgBqzb2OTKrrgtPA3CYkWJaQW8RhN37FM-HbaqJX0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share