April, 2024
Lincoln and Washington — Last month, when I wrote a mixed review of White Rural Rage, an important but flawed book about rural America, I had no idea that so many other readers would likewise find serious shortcomings in it.
First, there were complaints from scholars who claimed their own works had been distorted by the authors. Then high-profile publications weighed in with their own critiques, exemplified by The Atlantic's "An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America."
Some of the critiques are guilty of piling-on. The book may be flawed in multiple ways but its subject and message must not be overlooked. Its subtitle, "The Threat to American Democracy," is only too true. Critics themselves are often missing the main flaw of the book: the authors are short on solutions.
Pointing this out, and offering more insights per paragraph than the authors and critics combined, is Farah Stockman, from an unlikely source on rural realities, the New York Times. She provides new survey data that confirm what many of us know to be true, that there are many rural voters who would be receptive to Democratic candidates, and a return to two-party competition, if only Democrats would show up and engage on rural issues.
What issues? She names several. Those of us with a long presence deep in the heartland know many others, festering unattended from decades of rural abandonment by both political parties. Going after rural voters would seem to be an obvious Democratic political strategy, given these new survey data.
Let blinkered disputes about the book subside and more exhilarating work begin, toward real engagement with rural America.
