Researching white working‑class communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Harris Beider ◽  
Kusminder Chahal
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
White Male ◽  
American People ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

This chapter discusses the researchers' positionality in relation to the research and the research participants for this study. As two UK-based, non-white, male researchers moving into potentially all-white spaces to undertake qualitative research, they both reflected on their perceived and actual identities and assumptions prior to, entering, and during the fieldwork. The dominant paradigm of the research was evident in their entry into the field. It cut across a highly charged and emotive 2016 US election campaign. Donald Trump's speeches during 2016 were littered with references that cultivated and encouraged differences between groups: describing immigrants as a potential threat to the American people; framing the problems experienced by white working-class Americans as caused by elitist decision-making and a politically correct media and culture that ignores the needs of white Americans; and suggesting that women need protection from foreign “evil” forces. The researchers recognized that Trump's speeches and rhetoric may create a febrile atmosphere, and that they would need to consider their safety and be conscious that, in some situations, conversations with white working-class people may be challenging and possibly unsafe. The chapter then details the methodological approach that led the research team to engage and interview 415 people across five cities. The team was committed to working in partnership with local activists, stakeholders, and residents wherever that was possible and appropriate.

scholarly journals A Review of the Popular and Scholarly Accounts of Donald Trump’s White Working-Class Support in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
Group Position ◽  
Benchmark Datasets ◽  
White Working Class

Popular and scholarly accounts of Trump’s ascendency to the presidency of the United States on the part of the American white working-class use different variables to define the sociodemographic group because there is no “working-class White” variable available in benchmark datasets for researchers to code. To address this need, the Author ran a multinomial regression to assess whether income, education and racial identity predict working-class membership among white Americans, finding that income and education are statistically significant predictors of working-class whiteness, while racial identity is not. Arriving at a robust definition of “white working-class” in light of these findings, the paper next turns to a review of the extant literature. By retrieving studies from searches of computerised databases, hand searches and authoritative texts, the review critically surmises the explanatory accounts of Trump’s victory. Discussion of the findings from the review is presented in three principal sections. The first section explains how working-class White communities, crippled by a dearth of social and geographic mobility, have been “left behind” by the political elites. The second section examines how white Americans, whose dominant group position is threatened by demographic change, voted for Trump because of resonance between his populist rhetoric and their latent “racist” attitudes. The third and final section explores the implications of a changing America for native-born whites, and how America’s increasing ethnoracial diversity is eroding relations between its dominant and nondominant groups. The Author surmises by arguing that these explanatory accounts must be understood in the context of this new empirical approximation of “working-class White”.

Ambivalent Relationships: London's Youth Culture and the Making of the Multi-Racial Society in the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Fuhg
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Youth Culture ◽  
Global Culture ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Class Youth

The emergence and formation of British working-class youth cultures in the 1960s were characterized by an ambivalent relationship between British identity, global culture and the formation of a multicultural society in the post-war decades. While national and local newspapers mostly reported on racial tensions and racially-motivated violence, culminating in the Notting Hill riots of 1958, the relationship between London's white working-class youth and teenagers with migration backgrounds was also shaped by a reciprocal, direct and indirect, personal and cultural exchange based on social interaction and local conditions. Starting from the Notting Hill Riots 1958, the article reconstructs places and cultural spheres of interaction between white working-class youth and teenagers from Caribbean communities in London in the 1960s. Following debates and discussions on race relations and the participation of black youth in the social life of London in the 1960s, the article shows that British working-class youth culture was affected in various ways by the processes of migration. By dealing with the multicultural dimension of the post-war metropolis, white working-class teenagers negotiated socio-economic as well as political changes, contributing in the process to an emergent, new image of post-imperial Britain.

British Television's Lost New Wave Moment: Single Drama and Race

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Liarou
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Black Population ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Audiovisual Material ◽  
British Drama ◽  
History Of ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
Written Sources

The article argues that the working-class realism of post-WWII British television single drama is neither as English nor as white as is often implied. The surviving audiovisual material and written sources (reviews, publicity material, biographies of television writers and directors) reveal ITV's dynamic role in offering a range of views and representations of Britain's black population and their multi-layered relationship with white working-class cultures. By examining this neglected history of postwar British drama, this article argues for more inclusive historiographies of British television and sheds light on the dynamism and diversity of British television culture.

Unification and Its Discontents

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
School District ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
The State ◽  
White Working Class ◽  
City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

Methodological foundations of plant protection from dangerous pests in nurseries of fruit and berry crops

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
A. S. Zeynalov
Keyword(s):  
Plant Protection ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Planting Material ◽  
Berry Crops ◽  
Quality Category ◽  
Phytosanitary Measures

In the production of planting material, it is important to choose a healthy, highly productive source material, with typical varietal characteristics, and, if necessary, their disinfection), as well as reliable protection against dangerous pests at further stages of cultivation. This requires a scientifically based methodological approach and phytosanitary measures in several areas. First of all, it is required to study and classify in detail hazardous pests and pathogens, select methods for accounting and identifying in accordance with their degree of danger and the quality category of planting material. Apply comprehensive measures to prevent the entry of pests in the territory of growing planting material and timely eliminate the centers of potential threat.

Reflections on the Production of a Working Class Academic

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
David Greene
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
White Working Class

A white, working class professor's reflections on his life and career.

White Working-Class Support for Trump

Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-35
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Cherlin
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
The Other ◽  
Community Study ◽  
Reverse Discrimination ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White Working Class

Why do working-class Whites support Donald Trump? The accepted explanation points to racial and ethnic resentment and anxiety about immigration, with economic factors secondary. Based on a community study, the author argues that feelings of reverse discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment reflect both racial and economic factors. This article explains why it is difficult to conclude that either factor was more important than the other.

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