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The American Dream
Whereas white conservative Louisianans like Mike Schaff generally “defined as racist a person who used the ‘N’ word or who ‘hates’ blacks,” Hochschild sticks to a sociological concept of racism as “the belief in a natural hierarchy that places blacks at the bottom, and the tendency of whites to judge their own worth by distance from that bottom.” This difference is crucial to understanding conservative Louisianans’belief that they are not racist, even though many mix their distaste for government welfare with horribly exaggerated and generalized media stereotypes about black Americans. In general, Hochschild says, the white people she met had little to do with or say about black Louisianans, but “spoke freely” about their feelings on Muslims and Mexicans. Many of the people Hochschild met in Louisiana thought of systemic racism as a thing of the past and saw no issue with casting their ballots for Donald Trump.
Racism Quotes in Strangers in Their Own Land
The Strangers in Their Own Land quotes below are all either spoken by Racism or refer to Racism. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 9 Quotes
Missing from the image of blacks in most of the minds of those I came to know was a man or woman standing patiently in line next to them waiting for a well-deserved reward.
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In this passage, Hochschild explores racial underpinnings of the “line cutter” concept. Hochschild suggests that, consciously or otherwise, Louisiana conservatives tend to assimilate all African-Americans to their mental image of the “line cutter.” Because so few white Louisianans have personal relationships with black people, Hochschild explains, most of their racial understanding comes from the “disparate images” presented in television and news. These images are bifurcated between representations of “rich mega-stars” and representations that associate black Americans with criminality and welfare, but few of the people Hochschild met in Louisiana could imagine a black experience analogous to their own feeling of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferen
Chapter 14 Quotes
How do you join the identity politics parade and also bring it to a halt?
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In this passage, Hochschild is describing the predicament white men faced in the 1970s. Frustrated that others began to “cut in line” by proclaiming special status based on their identities, white men felt uniquely left behind because they found themselves without any grounds for claiming cultural capital. Their work opportunities were getting worse, their church and region were disparaged in the national eye, and they faced no unique oppression as white men—except in their exclusion from identity politics. Minorities understandably blamed white men for their oppression, so middle-class white men with stagnant economic opportunities in the South felt they could Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Po
Afterword Quotes
Disaggregated, such smaller narratives hung free, maybe to gather in some new way downstream. And to all this was the background presence of a powerful truth—life had been hard for them and it could get a lot worse.
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In this passage, Hochschild illustrates the “smaller narratives” of racism that resound in Louisianan’s lives. Hochschild sees such narratives as “disaggregated” because they do not match up to form a “unitary” whole. Many of her interviewees have a deep-set belief in racial hierarchy even though they would never consider themselves bigots or explicit racists. Most recognize the horrors of plantation slavery but do not see the ways that system endures in the present and actually label black Americans “line cutters” when they point out ongoing discrimination. They condemn the white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville and even Donald Trump’s reaction to Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Elig
The history of the United States has been the history of whites cutting ahead of blacks, first of all through slavery, and later through Jim Crow laws and then through New Deal legislation and the post-World War II GI Bill, which offered help to millions of Americans with the exception of those in farm and domestic work, occupations in which blacks were overrepresented. And racial discrimination continues today.
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Here, Hochschild analyzes her Louisiana acquaintances’ ambivalent racism. None of the people that she meets deny the horrors of any of these particular racist policies, but most do not see systematic racial discrimination as a continuing problem in the United States. Accordingly, whites who feel that blacks are unfairly cutting ahead of them do not see the way the “the history of whites cutting ahead of blacks” remains embedded in the United States’ demographic structure and continues to write itself in the present. Hochschild’s Louisiana friends do not consider themselves racist because they see racism as explicit hatred for another Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident exped
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Racism Term Timeline in Strangers in Their Own Land
The timeline below shows where the term Racism appears in Strangers in Their Own Land. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 9 – The Deep Story
...being racists even though, “by their own definition, they clearly were not.” They think of racism as explicit hatred for blacks—Mike Schaff even admits to being a “former bigot” who “used...
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Hochschild offers a different, sociological definition of racism as “the belief in a natural hierarchy that places blacks at the bottom, and the...
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Afterword to the Paperback Edition
Hochschild explains that the events in Charlottesville were “rekindling a nationwide racism that had never disappeared.” Racist movements have waxed and waned with the times, in the...
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Hochschild concludes that Louisianans’ hostility to “unitary,” explicit racism is undermined by the racist “subnarratives” they still believe. They will condemn the KKK but...
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These Louisianans believe that liberal Americans’ “race consciousness was itself a form of racism” and feel that liberals define them by their whiteness. Ray Bowman worries that his son...
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