Working-Class Perspectives

Delivery worker riding a bike.

WCP: Beyond Economic Populism

January 5th, 2021

Debates about working-class voters often treat them as a marketing problem, a way of thinking that reflects the commentators’ sense of superiority to people they view as deluded, foolish, stupid,…

Still from the movie "Elf" in which the human-sized main character, Buddy, sits in a classroom with elf-sized children. All of the characters are dressed in elf attire.

WCP: Christmas (and Class) Behind the Scenes

December 22nd, 2020

We think of Christmas movies as feel-good reminders of the joys of the season, but as Kathy M. Newman writes in Working-Class Perspectives this week, they are also movies about work. And when we…

WCP: Rethinking Working-Class Belonging

December 11th, 2020

Belonging is a central theme and a strength of working-class culture, a source of pleasure and of collective agency. Yet it can also be divisive, emphasizing how “we” are different from “them” — a…

Members of the Durham University Working-Class Students Association hold protest signs.

WCP: Toxic Class Encounters

November 30th, 2020

While more working-class students have entered colleges and universities in the last few decades, neither the entitled behavior of more privileged students nor the prejudices against working-class…

WCP: Why Trump will lose Ohio

October 26th, 2020

After Donald Trump won Ohio in 2016 and Republicans swept statewide elections there in 2018, Ohio seemed to have moved firmly to the right. But as John Russo writes in Working-Class…

WCP: What Can Workers Expect from Amy Coney Barrett?

October 6th, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States poses a difficult question: does her faith commitment as a Roman Catholic preclude an interpretation of the law that is responsive to concerns of the working class?…

WCP: The Unsettling

September 28th, 2020

The wildfires in the West add one more disruption to working-class lives in 2020. People have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and their loved ones.…