To tear down the walls that divide Americans, we must first understand them. In the essays of “Bone of the Bone,” journalist Sarah Smarsh combines memoirs with political analysis and journalistic criticism to map cultural differences.
The “red state” and “blue state” descriptions have always been inaccurate, she says. Worse, calling large swaths of the country “Trump country” suppresses voices of resistance, especially those within the white working class.
What’s missing from most news reporting, Smarsh argues, is the tradition of journalism that has won her awards and earned her the admiration of President Obama. “True stories are made up of two strands, spiraling together: the particular and the universal,” she writes. Her stories reveal truths about the economic structures and political decisions behind the individual stories of those whose lives are affected.
Much of the coverage of America’s working class has gone badly wrong in recent years, including coverage of Donald Trump’s 2015-16 campaign: National reporters misunderstood the terms they were using to label the alleged billionaire’s followers. As Smarsh writes, “The problem starts with language: Elite pundits regularly misuse ‘working class’ as shorthand for right-wing white men with tool belts.”
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Because so many local newspapers have gone out of business in the Internet age, most of the country has far less coverage from journalists who know their local communities well. Instead, we get national publications like the New York Times that send a correspondent for a day or a week, parachute into a community, and—all too often—report primarily on the people whose opinions fit a preconceived narrative.
During the 2016 presidential election, while national journalists seemed to be constantly reporting from an Ohio restaurant full of disaffected white men, an ethnically diverse coalition of working-class people emerged 26,450 Kansas residents received overwhelming support Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) becomes the Democratic nominee — far more votes than Donald Trump received in the Republican race (17,062). Two years later, Kansas residents elected a Democratic governor. So why haven’t the national media and the Democratic Party focused on Kansas and similarly diverse states? Because by representing the working class as a monolith, important stories and organizing opportunities are ignored.
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The inability to understand Kansas politics continues: In 2022, when Voters in Kansas When the overwhelming majority voted to protect abortion rights, many in the national press were surprised, but quickly moved on to an investigation into how women’s anger over the loss of bodily autonomy had influenced even such a “conservative” position.
Smarsh, who lives in Kansas, knows better. He writes that there “has been no Trump country at all,” but that Kansas, “like many red states, is a manipulated, black-money-rich place where election outcomes can have more to do with who votes and whose votes are counted than with the character of the place.” By tapping into local expertise and including the stories of individuals, journalism can be inoculated against such misrepresentations.
Smarsh’s ability to weave stories—including aspects of her own life—places her in the tradition of working-class journalism embodied by Studs Terkel, Barbara Ehrenreich, and others. Writing about people whose work is essential but whose humanity is ignored has allowed Smarsh to expose the internalized class prejudices and fears of many Americans.
That’s why “Bone of the Bone” appealed to me. As a working-class kid, I grew up with many of the issues Smarsh describes. Now that I’m an adult and a writer, I see that many journalists who cover the working class have no relevant life experience and haven’t bothered to understand the lives of others.
The deep empathy that animates Smarsh’s prose is matched by a rigorous intellect committed to revealing and explaining the structural causes of our current cultural moment. Her 2014 essay, “Poor Teeth,” thoughtfully separates a convenient elitist myth from the painful reality of poor Americans.
In America, “bad teeth” are often the result of lack of access to dental care, which is not covered by health insurance; a lack of nutrition in early childhood; lack of access to fluoridated water; and the consumption of cheap calories or junk food, which Smarsh says she craved as a child “to produce dopamine in a difficult home.” Paying for orthodontics is unthinkable for many Americans. Smarsh writes that she was fortunate that her permanent teeth came in straight, although she suffered from years of tooth and jaw pain that her family could not afford to treat.
Contrast that with the shorthand of much media depiction, in which being “toothless” is seen as a symptom of moral depravity, a lack of self-care, possibly a meth addiction. It’s one of many comforting stories the “haves” tell each other about the “have nots” — as when they pretend that type 2 diabetes is due to bad choices, or imagine that poor nutrition is a result of impulsiveness rather than affordability, or assume that health care is available to anyone who wants it. Smarsh’s essays (one of which quotes me) make it clear that she has had enough of such superficial and facile dismissals of inequality.
Smarsh was the first in her family to graduate from college, and her experience refutes the right-wing propaganda that college education brainwashes students into liberal views. For her, it was the great inequality during and after college that changed her politics and attuned her to social injustices. She felt acutely the unfairness of “excelling on campus while paying my own way through college, only to graduate in poverty due to a lack of social capital” while “less capable children of affluence walk into prestigious internships and lucrative jobs.”
In “How Does Arguing with Trump Voters Work for You?” Smarsh tells the story of Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps, who founded the Kansas-based hate group the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps-Roper grew up in a community dominated by her fanatical grandfather, whose virulent hatred of LGTBQ+ people fueled the group disgusting protests and garnered national attention. Smarsh writes that Phelps-Roper’s youth and limited education left her “able to evaluate information profoundly distorted.” In an interview, Phelps-Roper spoke of kind strangers who “showed me mercy when I didn’t seem to deserve it,” people whose willingness “to suspend their judgment long enough to have those conversations with me completely changed my life.” She went on to denounce the hate group.
In the “write them off” tone of arguments about national divisions, reaching out to someone like Phelps-Roper would be seen as hopeless. But people are reachable, Smarsh points out.
She argues that a combination of factors has eroded the opportunity for Americans to understand each other. Millions of people live in areas of the country that suffer from economic inequality, state-imposed educational restrictions, and election interference. Elected officials there do not represent the views or interests of most voters. And yet, when outsiders slap labels like “Trump country” or “red state,” they ignore existing solidarity and opportunities for further empathy to develop.
Ascribing monolithic characteristics to diverse individuals fuels anger on both sides. The complacency of those who enjoy privilege alienates those who do not, and furthers right-wing goals to divide and conquer.
Blaming the residents of the “red states” for their problems is just a modern version of “Let them eat cake.” Such rhetoric often leads to revolutions.
Lorraine Berry is a writer and critic living in Oregon.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
