The Intersectional Problems Facing Working Class Men

The idea of “intersectionality” originated with black feminism. Black feminist activists noted that they experienced racism on account of being black and sexism on account of being women. But their experience wasn’t simply racism + sexism, but was its own unique thing as well.

One does not have to agree with the way the idea of intersectionality is applied today to recognize that there’s something valid about this basic observation. Black feminists were both out of place among white feminists and out of place among the black power activists, a male dominated milieu.

This same idea applies in many other contexts. Consider, for example, working class men. They suffer from the general challenges facing men in our society today, but also from the challenges facing the working class. As with black feminists, their experience is not simply working class + men, but has unique aspects as well.

Richard Reeves’ American Institute for Boys and Men recently released a study looking at the state of working class men.* It’s a brief eleven-page paper, but with many sobering graphs.

For example, there’s been a significant decline in the share of working class men who are actually working. In fact, non-working class women are now more likely to be employed than working class men are.

Part of that is because traditionally male dominated working class employment sectors have been in decline.

This chart on employment by race and class is revealing of the scale of the challenges. Although there’s a large white-gap black in most statistics generally, here we see that non-working class black men are significantly more likely to be employed than working class white men.

Lastly, I’ll post this chart of widening gap in deaths of despair (that is, from drugs, alcohol, and suicide), with working class men by far the highest level.

There are many other pieces of data in the report, including the reasons why working class men aren’t employed, gaps in Covid deaths and on-the-job deaths, marriage rates, and number of friendships.

How to improve this is a very serious challenge. Part of it comes from the intersectional experience I mentioned. When I was young, there was far less class separation between the working class and those with college degrees. They lived together in the same communities. They shared the common American mass market culture of that era. That is, they consumed many of the same products, watched many of the same TV shows and movies, etc.

Today, the working class and non-working class increasingly inhabit parallel worlds. The geographic, consumer habits, and mores - much of the experience of life - of the college educated are distinct from those without. The city where I live is 75% people with college degrees, for example.

Even for those of us who want to help working class men improve their fortunes, we don’t necessarily have the perspective necessary to design public policy. Nor do we even relate well to the working class on a personal level.

I grew up in a rural white working class milieu. I still enjoy hanging out in Southern Indiana and with the people there. But could I easily relate well enough to a working class man there experiencing life challenges such that I could be a help to him? Realistically, I’m not likely to become friends with someone in that situation. And if I did, I think I’d struggle to be a positive influence.

The vast majority of my readers here are college educated men, and the information I provide is mostly useful to men with degrees. The types of cultural diagnostics and self-improvement ideas I provide are not likely to be relevant to the average working class person.

People have pointed this out to me - and they are right. But it doesn’t mean I have any ideas about how to change this. (One person who is working on it is Michael Foster, whose suburban Cincinnati church is focused on what he calls “blue collar confessionalism”).

There is where the basic idea of intersectionality is relevant. Although those of us men with college degrees in theory have a certain gender solidarity with those who don’t, and do in fact have some things in common, the social class element creates a relational chasm that’s difficult to bridge given the way social classes have diverged into parallel societies in recent decades.

This makes addressing the challenges of working class men especially difficult. We must continue to try to find a way forward, but with humility.

Click over to read the whole AIBM report.

* Note for this report, working class is defined simply as: doesn’t have a college degree. This is a limited definition but a common proxy. And there’s no good way to create a robust definition that also enables you to easily slice the data that way.