Oct 23, 2019
“Building a wall won't save America's crumbling middle
class,” Elizabeth Warren tells us. “Sanders healthcare will raise
taxes on the middle class,” a CNN headline reads. “There’ war on
the middle class,” a Boston Globe editorial laments.
The
term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it
could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo
card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and
protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and
“human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable
label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective
morality.
But
the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has
evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and
a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded,
and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete,
material positive rights of good housing and economic
security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling
us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than
anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism
without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor
and poverty.
This
week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and
Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s
Labor Center.