Why we chose Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
I read Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on American Right back in June 2017. To this day, I remember it as the non-fiction read having the greatest impact on my understanding of a group of people different to myself: that is, right wing Americans. I immediately recommended it to Ash, who also found it impactful. When I learnt about Stolen Pride, which functions as a follow up to Strangers in Their Own Land, I knew Ash and I had to choose it for Family Reads.
We used the StoryGraph buddy read feature, which lets you leave comments attached to page numbers complete as you go. That’s why I’ve structured this post a little differently from the usual open-ended Family Reads discussion. (And why it has a lot more quotes than I usually include!)
For all the efforts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. In Stolen Pride, Arlie Russell Hochschild argues that Donald Trump has turned lost pride into stolen pride and shame into blame, and that the result of his rhetorical alchemy has been to weaponize that shame and introduce a potent blend of anger and often violent rhetoric—undermining democracy and highlighting revenge.
Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where its residents faced the perfect storm. The city was coal jobs had left, crushing poverty arrived, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region more powerfully than anywhere else in the nation. Although Pikeville had been in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump. Hochschild’s brilliant exploration of how the town responded in 2017, when a white nationalist march came to town—a rehearsal for the deadly “unite the right” march that would take place in Charlottesville, Virginia, just four months later—takes us deep inside a community that defies stereotypes.
In Stolen Pride, Hochschild focuses on a group at the center of the shifting political blue-collar men. Long conversations over six years with mayors and felons, clerks and shopkeepers, road workers and teachers, ex-coal miners, and recovering addicts form the core of the book, movingly introducing readers to real people living deep within the political storm.
Hochschild’s great gift is to decode the emotional narratives that demagogues can speak to and lay bare the pain that lies beneath the rage. And in some of the voices she listens to, Hochschild hears an alternative to the inchoate anger, as she and her subjects imagine a way we might build bridges and move forward.
Goodreads
Our Discussion 💬
Changes from 2016 (Strangers in Their Own Land) to 2023 (Stolen Pride)
At the time, though, I did not foresee the continuing escalation of anger at “the other side” to hate and talk of “revenge”.
Stolen Pride, pg 5
Hochschild wrote this line in reference to the time described in Strangers in Their Own Land.🥲 It’s painful to reflect on the hope folks had when Biden ousted Trump. But Biden’s win did little, if anything, to improve the feelings of those turning to right-wing politics “to stop this perceived injustice” – to stop ‘line-cutters’ preventing them from achieving the American dream (the main subject of Strangers).
In 2014, 47 percent of Republicans agreed that a person is poor generally “because of a lack of effort on their part.” But by 2017, that rose to 56 percent. [Democrats dropped from 29% in 2014 to 19% in 2017]
Stolen Pride, pg 32
Stolen Pride functions as a follow up to Strangers. While it’s not strictly necessary to read Strangers first, Ash and I highly recommend Strangers for further context on understanding the average Trump supporter’s mindset. If you’ve ever asked “Why would someone support a person whose policies harm them?”, Strangers answers that question. That theme carries through Stolen Pride: the idea that voting Republican will help poor white people (especially men), when it doesn’t.
Interestingly, Republicans also have stronger faith than do Democrats in capitalism without government help or regulation – that is, raw capitalism.
Stolen Pride, pg 33
I N T E R E S T I N G L Y indeed! This was a key theme of Strangers in Their Own Land, which used environmental deregulation as its focal point.
The Big Ideas (IE Overall Theory and People’s Beliefs)
In 2000, coal had provided 52 percent of the nation’s electricity, but by early 2024 that had dropped to 16 percent.
Stolen Pride, pg 38
I had no idea that coal was that high in 2000. So that substantial shift from 2000 to 2024 was the first indication that things had changed more recently and dramatically than I knew for a lot of rural Americans.
White Pride
Of whites with a bachelor’s or higher degree and in the highest income bracket, only 15 percent said that their race was [important]… among those with a high school degree or less and whose households fell in the lowest income bracket, 30 percent answered that it was [important].
Stolen Pride, 17
Hmm, now why would that be? Perhaps because they have few other aspects of identity to find pride in? Turns out that concept is well-explored throughout the book, with one of the book’s main characters explicitly acknowledging this.
There’s much you do not have. We’re here to raise the value of what you do have – your whiteness.
Stolen Pride, pg 45
Matthew Heimbach’s messaging targeted folks of that mindset (ie white folks whose race is an important part of their identity).
He seemed to think that liberals wanted him to feel carried shame for the past sins of his people, and he stood ready to beat up anyone asking him to do that.
Stolen Pride, pg 55
This is another theme that was alarmingly illuminated and thoroughly explored in Strangers in Their Own Land.
White Privilege
“If it’s such a privilege to be born a white male, what could explain me except my own personal failure?”
Stolen Pride, pg 126
I found this line heartbreaking. It’s sad that this is what some people take away from the concept of privilege. Privilege explains that you have some advantages which others don’t (an advantage based on your race, with the case of white privilege). It doesn’t (or doesn’t intend to) say that if you experience failure, it must be exclusively personal since you have privilege.
[After befriending a 73 year old African American woman in a group for recovering addicts] “[…]In Appalachia we’ve had crippling accidents, black lung, poverty, coal towns with their company stores. If your husband got killed, you had to move out of your company-owned home so the next worker could move in.” But, James added, “the boss didn’t own you and yours for four hundred years. I got that.”
Stolen Pride, pg 247
Let’s go James!! He gets it! See how succintly he summed up the concept of white privilege? Maybe some folks need it reframed it was ‘racial setback’ or something, IDK. Then maybe they’d see it less focused on what seems to them an unrealistic advantage (ie an advantage that doesn’t actually help them), and more about how others are harmed or disadvantaged…
Other Concepts
[…] They say it’s bad to be color-blind because then you’re taking away a person’s heritage. Just because a person has a different heritage doesn’t mean they’re essentially different from me.
Stolen Pride, pg 130
A lack of understanding nuance is an important factor in both Strangers and Stolen Pride. Above is an example of two concepts that can exist at the same time. Yes, everyone is human and we have nearly infinite commonalities in that regard. But someone’s heritage and/or culture can mean they have a substantially different experience of the world than you do. So whether that different is ‘essential’ or not, both ideas can be true: don’t discount someone’s heritage, don’t think they are any more or less human than you are.
[Quote from an anonymous retired railroad worker] “[…] And I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’ But I hate seeing the Democrats gang up on him. Each time they do, I go back to him.
Stolen Pride, pg 237
In Strangers in Their Own Land, there was a singular quote that made me put down the book and silently scream “What!!” In Stolen Pride, the above quote provoked the same reaction. While I’ve come to understand a lot, this point is one that still leaves me asking, why??? I have never in my life felt the need to defend any politician like that. I understand to some extent the story of how Trump is ‘their’ bully standing up for them, but even after the worker gave so many examples of why he’s done with Trump, he still feels like he has to go back to Trump. Why?! Is it simply because Trump seems like one of them? Have I just never related enough to a politician? IDK… I’ll be stewing on this point for awhile.
Lastly, some thoughts on migrants:
“How ironic. Trump is asking us to hate Mexican migrants,” James observed, “but previous few Mexicans come here into eastern Kentucky. Even if they were, some of us are too busy packing up to leave eastern Kentucky to notice. And we’re being asked to look down on people leaving their country just like some of us are leaving our region. Whatever kind of border regulation you want, why are we asked to look down on or hate migrants? We don’t like it when people look down on us.”
Stolen Pride, pg 161
Matthew Heimbach
“A good wholesome American breakfast! No bagels.”
Stolen Pride, pg 44
What a quote to encapsulate someone’s white supremacy. Matthew Heimbach, orchestrator of the 2017 white nationalist march around which the book centers (and the more infamous Charlottesville rally), is a fascinating character. Reading about him can feel like the literary experience of “can’t look away from a car crash”.
“Everyone else in the theatre cheered for Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker,” Matthew recalled. “But I thought the Imperial stromtroopers were way cooler.”
Stolen Pride, pg 51
Imagine this: You’re a kid in class watching a movie with your classmates. There’s an obvious bully in the movie. You’re sitting there wondering “How come my bully doesn’t see that he’s just like the bad guy in this movie!” You eventually learn that almost everyone views themself as the hero, not the villain. Now here is a guy (Matthew as quoted above) literally identifying with the villains of the story. How alarming.
Although deeply interested in history, Matthew had the ability to gloss over or deny great mountains of historical fact when he felt such facts personally belittled him and his ancestors.
Stolen Pride, pg 56
This is another right-wing trick that Ash and I have a hard time reckoning with: the trick of simply choosing which facts to accept or discard as truth. I thought about a video I once saw from someone whose dad just chose not to believe whatever he saw in the news about people suffering, and then he didn’t have to feel any emotion about it.
Variations of Racists
“A guy from the Proud Boys called. ‘We’ve seen all the trouble Antifa caused in Berkeley,’ they told me. ‘We carry guns and we’re coming in to support you.’ I told the man, ‘We appreciate your offcer, but we’re not asking for you to do that.”
Stolen Pride, pg 13
Ash: Can you imagine you work for a town and the PROUD BOYS call you up like “Hiya, we wanna help!” Bizarre!
Jenna: So alarming 😭
Each group had its own identity, which it yearned to display, but no group wanted to risk being confused with others. The Aryan Brotherhood and Dirty White Boys weren’t sure what they had in common with those proclaiming Nog Är Nog. The KKK reject the Masons, and Identity Evropa didn’t care about them one way or another. It was not in the charter of the KKK to deny the reality of the Holocaust, but to the neo-Nazis that denial was center stage. While some groups didn’t differ from other extremist groups in headlined beliefs, they privately disliked each other personally.
Stolen Pride, pg 49
Ash had commented just, a few pages before this one, how it’s a little weird to read about how all the racists are racist differently. When I got to page 49, I agreed that it is super alarming (sorry I know I’ve already used ‘alarming’ 8734 times in this post) to read about all these different groups trying to come together and show off their different brands of racist extremism. It’s one thing to read their names in a newspaper article. It’s another to embed yourself in it and see them working ‘together’. So strange and unfamiliar to read someone talking like this quote below:
“The Klan’s a religious organization, you know, dead set against drugs, not like the neo-Nazis.”
Stolen Pride, pg 98
Stylistic Choices
Authorial Presence
“One one arm, I see Klan symbols, and on the other, Native American symbols,” I observe neutrally. “What are your feelings about the relationship betwen whies and Native Americans?”
Stolen Pride, pg 107
Above is an example of how Hochschild has at times a crucial authorial presence in this book. (In contrast to The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family, whose author Jesselyn Cook is entirely absent.) Hochschild allows herself the important role of prompting and revealing the characters when necessary, giving greater context and framing to their opinions than if she remained absent.
I was wondering what those criteria were [for being considered de-radicalized] when Matthew said in passing, “North Korea’s prison system is a model for the world.”
Stolen Pride, pg 187
Ash noted it’s moments like the one above that make you realize Hochschild must be a rather witty person IRL.
When I offered this account of the bully to friends on the left, they were baffled. Who was the first bully? What was he doing that was so bad? Wasn’t Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill giving good jobs to rebuild the middle class? Didn’t that bill actually help workers in red states more than blue states? What could they be talking about?
Stolen Pride, pg 206
The book focuses mostly on the POVs of ‘the other side’. However, every now and then, Hochschild includes some commentary like this that reminds the reader of how baffling some of these right-wing perspectives seem to those us of on the left. I like that she doesn’t have to spend too much doing this (presumably as most readers of this book are left-wing). On the occassions when she does use this technique, it helps drive home the differences between left and right in today’s America.
Voice
The writing style is accessible and digestible with a nice flow. It feels like hearing from a good lecturer in an undergrad university class. You can clearly understand that Hochschild is a knowledgeable sociologist from how she explains and analyzes things. She has an educated view and theory that inform her work. But the writing isn’t overly presumptous. Anyone without knoweldge of sociology can pick up and understand this book. Here is a excerpt that Ash and I think exemplifies the book’s style:
Let me briefly lay out a few premises before continuing, because these premises form this story’s backdrop. Pride and shame signal the juncture between the identity we hold out to the world, and how the world responds to our identity. Pride functions as an emotional “skin of the self,” so to speak; it signals when our identity is safe, accepted, and admired, and when we are in danger of rejection. It is our inner response to our outer appearance. Shame alo feels like a “skin”-one we wish to shed. We all feel a desire for pride and fear of shame.
Stolen Pride, pg 25
Editing
One minor critique I’ll offer is that the book is poorly edited. There are many spots missing an opening or closing quotation mark. There are also several spots with awkward phrasing, like this one (underlining is mine):
When asked how often movies and television portray people who live in their area in a fair and accurate way, half of those living in urban places said yes […]
Stolen Pride, pg 214
Complementing The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
Coincidentally, Ash and I both read The Quiet Damage while waiting for our holds of Stolen Pride to come in. The two make excellent complementary reads. I wondered if we would hear much about QAnon in Stolen Pride. It’s not mentioned often, but one of the main subjects of Stolen Pride worries about a friend of his falling into QAnon conspiracies (Ash commented, “Is Harry in the qanon book? 😅😂”). So if that’s a thread you’re interested in pulling on, definitely pick up The Quiet Damage.
One topic briefly touched on in Stolen Pride that’s explored more deeply in The Quiet Damage is the practice of cutting people off when they’re engaging with radical dangerous beliefs that differ from yours, and how difficult it is for extremists to find support in shedding their beliefs. That’s something that’s quite sadly illuminated by the end of The Quiet Damage.
The United States offered no easy off-ramp from what seemed, then, like the stick shame of extremism.
Stolen Pride, pg 186
Sundry Notes
This book introduced Ash to the McCoys and Hatfields. She finally looked them up about halfway into the book because they were referenced several times. I knew vaguely about them as legendary feuding Americans but I had thought they were more apocryphal than real.
One of the book’s subjects gives the origin of redneck stemming from the coal wars. Loyal union men, protesting against scabs, wore the company uniform including a red scarf. Ash and I both thought redneck came from suburnt necks of labourers. So I looked it: it appears the primary older origin story is the suburnt neck. The labour story, though, is also true.
Ash and I were both impressed when we realized author Arlie Russell Hochschild is 85 years old and already had an established body of work about women’s labour from the eighties and nineties before she turned to the topic of understanding the political divide. One can only hope to be half as accomplished by that age.
Rural Republicans don’t care about the January 6 insurrrection; they don’t see it as a real issue and wonder why Democrats keep making a big deal about it (pg 199)…
The notes and bilbiography start on page 279, for a total of 104 pages.
Final Thoughts 💭
We both gave this book ★★★★½. Recommended for anyone trying to get a grasp on why the right-wing has exploded in popularity.
Further Reading 📰
🍂 Read an excerpt
🍂 Author webpage @ UC Berkeley
🍂 Interview @ The Guardian
🍂 Reviews: Micah @ First of the Month
🍂 Related: I’ve reviewed both of the books frequently mentioned in this post: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right and Jesselyn Cook’s The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family.
What books have you found that helped you understand the ‘other side’ or the current political climate?
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