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Joan Walsh

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What's the Matter with White People?: Finding Our Way in the Next America Paperback – April 16, 2013

by Joan Walsh (Author)

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A CLEAR-EYED, COGENT CLARION CALL FOR ENDING THE DIVISIVE CLASS WARS THAT THREATEN THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM

In What’s the Matter with White People? Walsh argues that the biggest divide in America today is based not on party or ideology but on two competing explanations for why middle-class stability has been shaken since the 1970s. One side sees an America that has spent the last forty years bankrupting the country by providing benefits for the underachieving, the immoral, and the undeserving—no matter the cost to the majority of Americans. The other side sees an America that has spent the last forty years catering to the wealthy while allowing only a nominal measure of progress for the downtrodden.

Using her extended Irish-Catholic working-class family as a case in point and explaining her own political coming-of-age, Walsh shows how liberals unwittingly collaborated in the “us versus them” narrative and how the GOP’s renewed culture war now scapegoats segments of its own white demographic.

Part memoir, part political history, What’s the Matter with White People? is essential reading to combat political and cultural polarization and to build a more just and prosperous multiracial America in the years to come.

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD

Print length

351 pages
Language

English
Publication date

April 16, 2013
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.88 x 8.38 inches
ISBN-10

1476733120
ISBN-13

978-1476733128
See all details

Toni Morrison
15,772
Paperback
208 offers from $0.95

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A must-read. Engaging, thoughtful, provocative, utterly persuasive." -- Chris Matthews

“In this wonderfully insightful book, Joan Walsh shows how America built a large and vibrant (although mostly white) middle class that fueled the greatest economic boom in history and made a reality of the American dream. Hers is the story of postwar America told through a working class New York Irish Catholic family whose political divisions mirrored the nation’s. Moving and powerful, her account will help people of all races think through how we can build a just and prosperous multiracial America.” -- Robert B. Reich

“A brilliant and illuminating book about America since the upheavals of 60's and 70's. WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE? is about the heart and soul of America, from our Founding Fathers to Hillary and Barack. It's about our middle class, which so recently flourished, and how it has been injured and diminished almost beyond repair by greed and racist fear-mongering. It's about America's greatness and delusion, the betrayal of the working class, and the fragmentation of the Democratic party. It's about how Walsh's own Irish Catholic family from New York was treated, responded, and fared in the years between Richard Nixon and Barack Obama. Walsh writes with passion, precision, and insight into how racism has made such a bold public comeback. Her book was heaven for a political junkie like me, somehow managing to be painful and exhilarating at the same time.” -- Anne Lamott

“Joan Walsh’s reflections and observations from her personal journey as an Irish Catholic daughter of a Northeastern blue collar family provides a unique window into the hearts, aspirations, anguish, anger, fears, and pride of white working class voters during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No one can properly understand current class politics and race relations in America unless they’ve read this book.” -- Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Stanford University

“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE is really about what’s the matter with the white working class – more specifically, with the way they vote. Joan Walsh’s concern is with how the white working class has strayed from the New Deal coalition and from the Democrats….Walsh’s insistence on re-engaging with the white working class, powerfully backed up by her personal story, is the signal contribution of her book….She has forcefully reminded us that this is a problem that must be solved. Democrats would be well advised to embrace this imperative.” ― The New Republic

“Walsh is particularly moving when she tells the story of American politics through family. When the dying wife of a New York City cousin and copy makes her last phone call to Walsh to congratulate her for standing up to Bill O’Reilly, or when discussing her daughter Nora’s multicultural declaration, ‘I’m everything, Mom!,’ Walsh humanizes her class through her family and persuades through empathy-arousing story…[A] thrilling and moving family and political memoir that will help those who read it decipher the political spectacle that will unfold.” ― San Francisco Chronicle

“Joan Walsh draws on her experience with her extended Irish-American family in a lively dissection of a Golden Age that appears to be gone forever – or maybe is an illusion – in WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH WHITE PEOPLE?...Very readable.” ― Huntington News

“As the United States becomes a ‘majority-minority’ culture, while the GOP doubles down on racial and cultural appeals to rev up its demographically threatened white base in 2012, Walsh talks about race in honest, unflinching, unfamiliar terms, acknowledging not just Republican but Democratic Party political mistakes – and her own. This book will be essential reading as the country struggles through political polarization and racial change to invent the next America in the years to come.” ― The Urban Politico

“Using her personal journey growing up in a blue-collar, Irish Catholic family, Walsh offers a window into the hopes, fears, racial anxieties and political leanings of a group who have become in some ways all but invisible in a post-All in the Family era.” ― The Root

“A must-read….Drawing on her own upbringing, [Walsh] sees more parallels than most people care to admit between the conditions, some self-imposed, that lead to white immigrant poverty and those that lead to black poverty.” ― Greenwich Post

“Both a very personal story and a historical take on hot-button issues in American politics.” ― Express Milwaukee

About the Author

Joan Walsh is editor-at-large of Salon and an MSNBC political analyst. A New York native, she attended the University of Wisconsin, and now lives in New York City and San Francisco, CA.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone; Reprint edition (April 16, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 351 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1476733120
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1476733128
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.88 x 8.38 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,014,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,334 in Political Parties (Books)
- #8,356 in History & Theory of Politics
- #57,113 in Memoirs (Books)

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Joan Walsh

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I'm editor-at-large for Salon.com, and an MSNBC political analyst. I was Salon's editor in chief for six years, and before that, its first fulltime news editor, going back to the days of the Clinton impeachment. I'm a regular on "Hardball with Chris Matthews," "The Ed Show" and "Politics Nation," and I'm on a range of other MSNBC shows, too. You know me from jousting with Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly, Dick Armey, John Kasich, Liz Cheney and other conservatives. I've also enjoyed a couple of go-rounds on "Real Time with Bill Maher."

I've written for publications ranging from Vogue to the Nation, and for newspapers including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining Salon in 1998, I worked as a consultant on education and poverty issue for community groups and foundations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation. I wrote the Rockefeller monograph "Stories of Renewal: Community Building and the Future of America." (You'll recognize some of this work in "What's the Matter with White People?")

I love baseball and before this my only venture into the book world was being co-author of "Splash Hit: The Pacific Bell Park Story," about the building of the San Francisco Giants legendary waterfront stadium. I live in San Francisco with my dog Sadie and occasionally my daughter Nora comes to visit from New York.

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Phyllis S., NYC

A Brilliant and Feeling Woman's Political Journey (I loved it except for the title)

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2012

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This is an extremely intelligent, engaging book on American politics that is also a memoir. It is written unabashedly from the perspective of a liberal Democrat who is an Irish-American, raised in a strongly Catholic home. Joan Walsh is an editor at Salon.com and a political analyst on MSNBC. I've watched her on TV and read some of her columns but I never guessed just how perceptive she is--or how tough in her appraisal of fellow Democrats. She gets to say a lot more in this book than she does as a talking head on television--and she has things to say that matter.

The book has a somewhat unfortunate, even deceptive title. First of all, Walsh doesn't find much wrong with white people except that the white working class and the labor movement have been largely abandoned by the Democratic party--or let us say the arugula wing of the Democratic party. Second, one would expect a snarky sociopolitical treatise from that title, but this book is not snide or condescending in tone. It is a much more personal book than you might expect. Walsh writes about her steadfast liberal father (who was educated by the Christian Brothers and was in many ways a traditional Catholic) and her mother, who was frightened by the chaos of the 60's and wound up voting for Nixon. The portraits of members of her family are vivid and often quite touching, and we see how these relationships impacted Walsh personally and politically. The image of her going to the ruins of the World Trade Center with her cousin, a member of the NYPD who tried to save survivors of 9/11, stays in my mind. Again and again, Walsh emphasizes her ties to her "people"--she sees herself as what she is, a daughter of the Irish Catholic working class. (The material on the historical journey of the Irish in America is fascinating.)

Walsh's description of how we got into the political straits we are in--how race and identity politics divided the Democratic party--is a shrewd summing up of 50 or so years of American politics. From a liberal point of view, it is often an account of mistakes and lost opportunities. Walsh may be overly kind of the Clintons, particularly Bill--never really noting how his personal failings played into his opponents' hands. But this is basically a balanced account. I could not help comparing her critical take on one prominent Democratic senator--by no means the worst of the lot--with a puff piece in the Times I happened to read around the same time. While supporting Obama, Walsh does not (thank heaven) idolize him. (A little known detail sticks in my mind. Have you noticed that credit card interest rates often now amount to usury--or what would have once been considered usury? Not too important, unless you are a struggling person who has to rely on this source of credit. Hillary as a senator voted to rein credit card interest in. Obama did not.) As Walsh sees it, Obama has a way to go before he can be regarded as a tribune of the working masses.

A strong central theme of the book is this: how do we get white working class--people like Joan Walsh's Irish Catholic relatives--back into the Democratic fold? (Hint: Maybe we should offer them some real, serious, bread-and-butter economic help?)

If you are a Republican you are probably not going to love this book. But I hope the president reads it, even if just to be reminded of what he of all people hopefully already knows. (Please, Mr. President. It's an enjoyable read.) I personally could not put it down. Highly recommended.

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MaryS

Still Wondering?

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2014

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I still am in the dark as to why people, especially poor white people, vote against their own self interest. I was hoping this book would provide some answers but either I missed that part, although I did read the whole book, or Ms. Walsh is still having some difficulty expressing those reasons with greater clarity. At least she knows this is an enormous problem in our society and she is out there asking the questions that need to be asked and eventually answered if we are ever going to return to a society where class mobility, not class stagnation, is the norm.
I give her four stars for such great historical perspective and a good read.

9 people found this helpful

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V. M. Ricks

Catalyst for Change

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2012

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Walsh does both political parties a very important service. She chronicles their contemporary political choices and important recent heroes and sheroes into a personal story that not only rings true, but provides focus, direction and the broad strokes of a plan for how to get out of this mess, assuming we are willing.

From her high perch as News Editor at Salon and go-to Commentator on key television networks, Walsh provides context and a long-term perspective on where we are now and the choices people and political parties made to get us here. Far too often, in this racially divided country, we fall from one extreme to the other. But the rich and significant back story is often missing. Walsh provides that back story. It extends from her parent's days near the beginning of the Depression to now. Ethnicity (here specifically the Irish Catholics), race, and especially classes have each been pitted against the others. We have reached the point in history where the poor whites are struggling as desperately as some blacks.

Combining their indignation and fighting for each other might serve these groups. Instead, Fox News and the 1% fight the flames of fear and scarcity, and especially the poor undereducated whites are not able to deconstruct the arguments. Walsh succeeds in doing that with her personal family story that is a great humanizer. Her family story provides concrete details that the drama that has played out is typical while being unique.

In far too many historical narratives, the financial connectors are often missing -- but Walsh never allows us to drop that important catalyst for change. Financial institutions are the bridge that financed the Transatlantic Slave Trade that made the United States. These institution have the vested interest in keeping people divided. That way, they always win. Walsh does the country a big service by exposing how they continue even today to use multiple systems, but especially the political party system to elevate the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. Thank you.

Vinita Where are we? & How did we get here?: Wanted: Honest and Straight Talk about the Transatlantic Slave Trade

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Top reviews from other countries

Saanich

Interesting and Informative

Reviewed in Canada on October 28, 2012

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I am 3/4 of the way thru this book and I love it. It is well written and very interesting to me. It covers a lot of the period when we were living overseas and I did not follow U.S. politics as much as I do ordinarily.

Of course I am a liberal and agree with Joan Walsh on politics. She writes stuff that I did not know when I lived in the U.S.
I am enjoying the book immensely.

Carol Marica
Canada

sue beaumont

What's the Matter with White People: Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was

Reviewed in Canada on February 19, 2013

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this is a must read
explains so much
we have so much to learn - this is a good teaching guide

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