R-E-S-P-E-C-T

When economic inequality evolves into class separation – by neighbourhood, school, workplace, lifestyle, culture – the seeds of destruction for relational inequality are planted. Rather than looking the less fortunate ‘squarely in the eye’, the elite might instead come to look at them down their nose: ‘deplorables’ (Hillary Clinton), ‘they cling to guns or religion’ (Barack Obama, 2008), an ‘underclass’ (Bill Clinton, 1996) characterised by fecklessness, irresponsibility and idleness – not worthy, in fact, of our respect.  

Using word-association tests, researchers from Kansas State and Rice universities have attempted to gauge how Americans view the poor. Their average respondent described poor people as 39 per cent more ‘unpleasant’, 95 per cent more ‘unmotivated’, and twice as ‘dirty’ as middle-class Americans. As John A Powell, the director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in 2017: ‘[I]t is reasonable to conclude that middle-class and wealthy Americans’ social distance from people in poverty exists in a mutually reinforcing cycle with the contempt they feel towards them.’  

According to a poll by the Los Angeles Times in 2016, most of those who are not poor themselves think that welfare benefits ‘make poor people dependent and encourage them to stay poor’ (61 per cent) rather than giving ‘poor people a chance to stand on their own two feet and get started again’ (31 per cent). Meanwhile, those in poverty themselves were divided equally on the question (41 per cent). Most poor Americans (71 per cent) think it is ‘very hard for poor people to find work’, compared with just 25 per cent who think ‘there are plenty of jobs available for poor people/anyone who is willing to work’.  

The less successful are now returning the favour. Respect for ‘the elite’ among ordinary Americans has declined sharply in recent decades, as work by scholars such as Joan Williams and Arlie Russell Hochschild demonstrates. This has potentially profound political consequences, including the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. One of the reasons that Trump won is that working-class and middle-class white Americans felt that he was on their side, and was not condescending to them. In short, that he showed them a little respect.

Richard V. Reeves, The respect deficit.