I found the assertion in two otherwise unrelated articles that the white working class in America on average has higher rates of illegitimacy (which isn’t particularly surprising) and has lower rates of church attendance (which was surprising), one article comparing them to the 18th Century English underclass which before the great efforts of Wesley was often highly irreligious.And in voting trends for Proposition 8 banning homosexual marriage in California in 2008, both the poorest voters and the richest voters as a majority voted against it.
About the church attendance, yeah I knew that already and it’s not really surprising if you actually know people who are truly in the white underclass. I hate generalizing about people, but the “white underclass” as a rule couldn’t care less about attending church or being part of any other community social life. When they’re done with their shitty jobs, all they want to do is drink and sleep.
The OP needs to define what he means by “underclass” which, if he doesn’t know, is a derogatory term. Nonetheless, he needs to define it.
And he needs a cite that the prop 8 “poor vote” consisted mainly of whites. Most poor people CA are not white, which has becoming a non-white majority state.
I find the OP a bit ambiguous when he says “in voting trends for Proposition 8 banning homosexual marriage in California in 2008, both the poorest voters and the richest voters as a majority voted against it.” Does he mean they voted against Prop 8, or against gay marriage? Because as worded, I’d have thought the former, but everyone’s reacting as though it was the latter. I can only find demographic brakdowns on the voting by race and by religion and education, not socioeconomic group, so I’d like some clarity, and possibly a cite.
I’m pretty sure he means the latter, as the more affluent coastal cities of LA and SF voting against prop 8 and the “traditional” vote was for. But it’s a stretch to say that the white “underclass” (whatever that is) voted against the proposition.
There are definitely huge swaths of communities, usually among the poor, that are almost entirely anomic. The idea of right and wrong even existing is a foreign concept to them. Whether this is any worse than people with money or power who are fully aware of what values are but still choose to use their resources to lead crusades against sexual minorities, start pyramid schemes, etc is of course debatable.
Right. I grew up in an area which had a large white trash population. I assume that is the casual term for what we are talking about. These aren’t blue-collar people that are down on their luck. They are the ones in the trailer parks and beat up houses on the edge of town. It is often hard enough to get them to do something required liked get their kids to school on time let alone something optional like church. I don’t like to put too many fancy academic terms to their lifestyle. They are just plain trashy (usually multi-generational) and that defines most everything they do including criminal behavior and their version of morality if they have any left.
Watch the Netflix on-demand video The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia to see examples of this (it is a great documentary).
Could be a matter of the Christians losing influence and certain groups that never supported traditional values reverting to past behaviors now freed from the church again? I am surprised on the Prop 8 thing since such groups usually are anti homosexual. Maybe they don’t care about marriage or even didn’t understand the question.
This jibes with a lot of the families I knew growing up who could be described as “working poor.” That’s not to say they were atheists or even agnostics. A lot of them subscribed to a Christian worldview. They were just kind of ambivalent toward organized religion and had other things they would rather have been doing on a Sunday morning than sitting in a pew.
I will say, however, that the opposite tends to be true for poor Hispanic immigrants, who tend to be avid churchgoers and have pretty traditionalist views about the role of the church in their lives, even if they don’t always adhere too closely to its tenets.
I think it’s obvious that the loss of “traditional values” that has been occurring has followed the growth of inequality, and especially the collapse of earning prospects for males with no college, a phenomenon that began in the early 70s. People who feel like they’re shamefully poor aren’t going to go to church. People who are poor, but richer than they expected to be are.
Does it have to be church attendance? What if their Sunday practice, observed just as religiously (as it were), is getting together with buddies to watch televised football? How is that not a social-bonding ritual?
While I agree there is a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor, Mr. Murray’s book is a good example of confusing cause and effect. He basically extends the veiled racism of the southern strategy to include poor whites, tying the loss of their traditional industriousness to '60s liberalism. His thesis isn’t that surprising given his past.
As other posters have noted, the book attributes cause where there is none.
Have “traditional” values declined? Maybe, depending on the measure (church attendance? # of marriages? childbirth out of wedlock? something else?).
But by other measures, we’re doing pretty good. Violent crime is down over the same time period. And teenage pregnancy overall is also down over the same time period, even in this group of people. So, obviously, the decline of “traditional” values hasn’t led to the collapse of all aspects of civilization.
By a more plausible token, the failure of wages (particularly among people with a high school education or less, which would comprise a fair number of this particular group of people) to keep up with their more educated or wealthier counterparts over the decades is more plausible.
Basically, “it’s the economy, stupid” has rarely rung truer (yes, I know the usual context for that aphorism is elections).