What's In a Title? "White Rural Rage"

New book about "The Threat to American Democracy"

A new book by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman is getting a lot of press. The book’s description on Amazon is as follows:

White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage—stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media—now poses an existential threat to the United States.

Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans’ attitude might best be described as “I love my country, but not our country,” Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites’ anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy.

What caught my eye is the title: White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy.

It’s notable that such a frankly racist, condescending, and scapegoating title is now perfectly acceptable in New York (Random House) publishing circles. Imagine the same acquiring editor’s reaction if he received book proposals with the following similarly bigoted titles:

White Urban Smugness: The Threat to American Masculinity

Black Urban Rage: The Threat to American Public Safety

Female Emotional Lability: The Threat to American Domestic Tranquility

The acquiring editor would think the submitting author is insane. While White Rural Rage purports to examine the causes of distress and discontent among rural whites, the title all but guarantees that no one from this cohort will want to read it.