General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America White Rural Rage has become a best-seller--and kindled an academic controv [View all]LauraInLA
(442 posts)Schaller and Waldman are right: There are real threats to American democracy, and we should be worried about political violence. But by erroneously pinning the blame on white rural Americans, theyve distracted the public from the real danger. The threat we must contend with today is not white rural rage, but white urban and suburban rage.
Instead of reckoning with the ugly fact that a threat to our democracy is emerging from right-wing extremists in suburban and urban areas, the authors of White Rural Rage contorted studies and called unambiguously metro areas rural so that they could tell an all-too-familiar story about scary hillbillies. Perhaps this was easier than confronting the truth: that the call is coming from inside the house. It is not primarily the rural poor, but often successful, white metropolitan men who imperil our republic.