An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America White Rural Rage has become a best-seller--and kindled an academic controv

[LauraInLA]

4. This book says it's talking about rural whites, but it ISN'T. The reason I shared both articles

(this and the one from Politico) about this book is that the rural studies academics who did the research used in this book, have said that the authors got their research wrong. For one thing, a lot of people they are quantifying as rural (and some of whom call themselves rural), AREN’T — they’re suburban and metropolitan.

The most important thing the authors got wrong, is that it’s rageful metropolitan whites who are the real threat to American democracy. By focusing on the rural element as the main problem, they are ignoring the much bigger source.

“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, they’ve 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.”