The wrapup

I criticized Tim Wise yesterday (a writer whose work, let me underline, I mainly admire) for falling into a barrage of stereotypes in characterizing rural, red-leaning people. The stereotypes he used are pretty standard "white trash" material: unhealthy, dirty, ill-educated, bigoted. I suppose I should be glad he didn't go on to make incest jokes.

I'm harping on Wise, though, because that one piece he wrote represents a whole bandwidth of commentary I often hear from the left, especially from other white progressives like me, and especially in online spaces. The pattern usually goes like this: some bit of cringe-worthy news emerges from or about the South. The news goes mini-viral among left-leaning sites and Twitter accounts. The commentary floods in about "flyover country," usually mobilizing the hoary old tropes and epithets reserved for "white trash."

I hear such comments occasionally even in person, especially at national academic conferences (where white progressives tend to be the majority or plurality of attendees). I've been in many a career advice session for graduate students, for example, where someone living on the East or West Coast confesses their mortal fear of getting a job in a "Podunk" town at Flyover State. One such student broke down into tears, insisting that because of their queerness they could never survive in "Trumpville." Heads around the room nodded in sympathy.

Not every head joined in, though. There were some of us there who live in the kind of places that get painted as Hell. I was fuming. I was thinking of my students, my LGBTQ+ students, who call that place home, who love and value their lives there. To be sure, many of them (as with all college students) yearn to move elsewhere. More power to them. But many stay, digging in, carving out a place for themselves in an environment other progressives regularly deem unlivable for any good or conscientious person.

There is, dare I say it, a kind of privilege involved in urban-West/East Coast progressives dismissing those beyond their borders as hopelessly backward. But of course I don't mean YOU! I can hear them say, I mean the bad ones! Isn't that always the shoddy defense of the stereotyper? In fact, isn't saying some variation of the "yeah, but I'm only talking about the real [slur], not good ones like you" the signal par excellence that you're committing a bigotry of some sort? (I say this as someone who has, to my shame, been caught in the middle of uttering that kind of defense.)

Such attitudes only confirm the stereotypes the right has about progressives: that we're elitist snobs who cloak our own prejudices in a mantle of "woker-than-thou" righteousness.

And yeah, I know: the right stereotypes the left just as much if not more. I'll go further: I think their stereotyping fuels much more lethal patterns of dehumanization and dismissal. For the record, I don't think both sides are equal. The right regularly pokes fun at progressives' "political correctness" or obsession with intersectionality, It's hard for me not to see all those criticisms as fragile anger at being called out for using harmful stereotypes. Why aren't red-leaning folk as concerned as progressives are about avoiding language and rhetoric that hurts people for who they are? Instead, almost all the criticisms of "PC" culture I read and hear concern how (mainly white, mainly hetero, mainly Christian) conservatives feel uniquely oppressed or hurt. Where's the outcry when Trump mobilizes racism or xenophobia or sexism?

So, sure--the right does this stuff too, even does it more and worse than the left ever did. But I'm talking to white progressives here, not to the right. And pointing to others' bad behavior to excuse your own is wrong.

Look, I'm not saying "be nice to people who hate you" (though most red-leaning people don't hate progressives). I'm not even saying that folk have to practice curiosity and understanding toward their political enemies (though I think these are admirable attitudes to adopt). That's not always healthy or safe for for people.

I'm just saying that, in your resistance to practices and mindsets you find harmful, try not to adopt a harmful mindset yourself. We can do better than classist cliches of conservatives.

Just had to get that off my chest.