Joan C. Williams Outclassed

Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award 2025, Long list An eye-opening, urgent call to mend the broken relationship between college and non-college grads of all races that is driving politics to the far right in the US. Is there a single change that could simultaneously protect democracy, spur progress on climate change, enact sane gun policies, and improve our response to the next pandemic? Yes: changing the class dynamics driving American politics. The far right manipulates class anger to undercut progressive goals and liberals often inadvertently play into their hands. In Outclassed , Joan C. Williams explains how to reverse that process by bridging the "diploma divide", while maintaining core progressive values. She offers college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives and their lives reflect their privilege. With illuminating stories --from the Portuguese admiral who led that country's COVID response to the lawyer who led the ACLU's gay marriage response (and more)-- Williams demonstrates how working-class values reflect working-class lives. Then she explains how the far right connects culturally with the working-class, deftly manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to deflect attention from the ways far-right policies produce the economic conditions disadvantaging the working-class. Whether you are a concerned citizen committed to saving democracy or a politician or social justice warrior in need of messaging advice, Outclassed offers concrete guidance on how liberals can forge a multi-racial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.