Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016) is an in-depth exploration of the rise of the Tea Party movement in Louisiana by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. In an effort to understand the Tea Party and bolster her empathy for political opinions oppositional to her own, Hochschild spent five years getting to know residents and conducting interviews in and around Lake Charles, Louisiana. Hochschild argues that by understanding one another’s “deep stories,” one can bridge political divides with empathy and understanding. Strangers in their Own Land was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was selected by The New York Times as one of the “6 Books to Understand Trump’s Win.”

This guide refers to the 2016 hardcover edition by The New Press.

Summary

In Part 1 of Strangers in Their Own Land, Hochschild investigates what she terms the “Great Paradox,” or the practice of particular groups of individuals voting seemingly against their economic self-interest. By way of example, she cites the residents of the area surrounding Lake Charles, Louisiana. This region has higher-than-average rates of water pollution, but its voters favor politicians who do little to regulate polluting industries or protect citizens from environmental disasters.

She speaks first with Mike Schaff, a former oil industry worker whose town was forced to evacuate after Texas Brine, a drilling company, caused a massive sinkhole. This sinkhole destroyed much of the area and a considerable portion of Mike’s own property. Schaff, a passionate Tea Party supporter, has long opposed the kind of governmental regulations that could have prevented the sinkhole and, much to the author’s confusion, opposes them still in the wake of the disaster. For Hochschild, Mike embodies the “Great Paradox,” and she seeks to understand him better through overcoming what she terms an “empathy wall,” or a barrier to understanding other people because of vast differences in belief systems.

Hochschild then speaks with Lee Sherman, a pipefitter who had been tasked with illegal toxic waste dumping in the area bayou. This bayou is by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, a company that employed him and many members of his family for decades. Like Mike Schaff, Lee Sherman has been directly victimized by polluting industries and lax environmental regulations but rejects such federally or state-mandated regulations as “government overreach.” Hochschild also speaks with the Areno family as well as area residents impacted by Pittsburgh Plate Glass’s toxic waste dumping in Bayou D’Inde. The Arenos witness the destruction of their bayou with sadness, but because of their devout Christianity and their assertion that the Democratic party does not support their religious views or cultural identities, they continue to vote for Republican candidates whom they know will do little to address environmental pollution in the area. In an effort to better understand people like Mike, Lee, and the Arenos, Hochschild explores the history of Louisiana politics. She learns that in a state with so few resources or economic prospects, industries like oil are seen as one of the few paths toward economic stability and that governmental regulation of industry is seen as an impediment to both industry and state success.

In Part 2, Hochschild speaks with Bob Hardey, the mayor of a small community named Westlake. Westlake is home to Sasol, a South African petrochemical company that Hardey sees as the key to his town’s economic success. Both Hardey and the town of Westlake do not ultimately benefit from Sasol as much as they had hoped, but the author notes everyone’s continued support for the industry, even as it fails to deliver on its promises to area residents. In Westlake, Hochschild finds echoes of what is becoming a dominant ideological position: The preference for industry over regulating bodies and a deep-seated resentment over tax dollars spent in service of developing and instituting governmental regulations. Hochschild realizes that both church and media do much to shape political beliefs in Louisiana, and through a series of interviews, she comes to understand that most people feel that the church could better perform many of the roles that government plays: Charity, welfare, and social support should be, in the eyes of many she speaks to, the purview of the church. For individuals like Mike, Lee, and others, their tax dollars are wasted by the government and would be better spent through individual savings and donations to churches and charitable organizations.

Part 3 focuses on the deep story that Hochschild encounters in Louisiana. She provides her understanding of the deep story, asking readers to imagine waiting in line patiently to achieve the American dream, working harder toward the promise of economic success and greater upward mobility than past generations. She argues that, for many Louisianans, that “patient waiting” had been interrupted. A new set of people began to cut the line, according to the residents. This group of “line-cutters” was comprised of people of color, women, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. This line-cutting was facilitated by the US government through programs such as affirmative action and welfare and through leftwing support for identity politics and unfair social practices. Rather than seeing societal conflict through the prism of class conflict (as does the political left), the right sees a battle for limited resources between hard workers, on the one hand, and the recipients of taxpayer-funded “breaks” on the other.

In Part 4, Hochschild examines historical trends that have contributed to the development of Tea Party conservatism, both in the South and nationally. Beginning during the years leading up to the Civil War, Hochschild looks at the impact of the South’s plantation-based economy not only on affluent white people and enslaved people but on the “poor white” subsistence farmers who were relegated to the worst tracts of land because they were not able, like the planter class, to purchase large tracts of fertile farmland. This subset of the population was further disenfranchised during and after the Civil War, when the North not only imposed its morals and political leadership on the South but also intervened in Southern affairs and Southern governance. There was widespread resentment for northern “carpetbaggers” who profited off southerners during the post-emancipation years, and the gulf between the South and the North began to deepen. The author traces the exportation of Northern morals and ideology through the civil rights era, arguing that many in the South felt that their honor and identities were impugned by northerners. They felt stereotyped as racists, “rednecks,” and “hillbillies,” and many, she argues, still feel the sting of those pejoratives, especially as so many examples of those stereotypes proliferate in the media. The author finishes her research in 2016, as Donald Trump’s ascent to political power became indisputable, and she argues that much of what drew Louisianans to the Tea Party also led them to support Donald Trump in the 2016 election.