Joan Williams, Coalitions, and Getting Beyond the Wages of Whiteness and the Wages of Maleness

• Publication year: 2011
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 03

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 34, No. 3SPRING 2011

Joan Williams, Coalitions, and Getting Beyond the Wages of Whiteness and the Wages of Maleness

Robert S. Chang(fn*)

I. Introduction

Family is a complicated place. It is a place of tenderness and nurturing. It is a place of terror and violence. It is a key social and economic unit in our society, stepping in voluntarily and through necessity to provide what the market and the state are unable or unwilling to provide. We depend on the family to produce the next generation of those who will do our market and care work. We depend on the family to care for the older generation when they are no longer able to care for themselves and when the state fails to provide them with adequate resources. We ask a lot of family.

Professor Williams believes that we ask too much of family. She has engaged in a decades-long intellectual and political project that examines the ways in which the market and the state fail the family, specifically at the point where work imperatives meet and clash with family imperatives.(fn1) The weight of this failure is borne disproportionately by women who, within the heteronormative family context,(fn2) are pushed out, opt out, or remain in the work force, usually underutilized and under-compensated;(fn3) bear a disproportionate share of care responsibilities within the family;(fn4) and suffer economically and socially if they become divorced.(fn5) In Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, Williams continues a theme that she has emphasized throughout her work: Women are not the only victims of work-family conflict- men, too, are caught in "the straitjacket of conventional masculinity."(fn6)

Joan Williams, in Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, sets forth the theoretical and factual bases for developing a pragmatic political agenda to remedy a workplace that is hostile to families.(fn7) Although Professor Williams sees the power that courts have in this arena to effect change,(fn8) she concludes that real change must be effectuated in the legislative realm. Her goal in casting men as victims can be seen as connected to her overarching goal: "Writ large, this book is about reframing American politics."(fn9) Williams believes that in order to bring about policy changes that would result in a more family-friendly workplace to the benefit of men, women, and children, progressives must develop a coalition that includes the White working class, including White men.(fn10)

As a consequence, much of Williams's book is focused on the White working class and White men.(fn11) She justifies her choices because "political scientists tell us that white workers are the swing demographic of 'Reagan Democrats' who have shifted Republican since 1970."(fn12) This shift to the Republican Party is gendered: "working-class men have abandoned the Democrats in far greater percentages than have working-class women,"(fn13) justifying a focus on White men. Williams's analysis of this shift: [M]en have done so . . . in part because of white workers' anxieties over their increasing inability to realize the conventional ideal of what it means to be a "real man," that is to be a breadwinner able to "support his family." The ability to fulfill ideals of manliness has become a class-linked privilege.(fn14)

Professor Williams believes that the interests of the White working class and White men can be aligned with a progressive agenda to transform the workplace to the benefit of all workers and to have the salutary effect of reducing the current negative economic consequences experienced by women. The organizing principle revolves around what Williams presumes to be a shared answer to the question: "Should an employer be able to keep you from doing right by your family?"(fn15) She believes that "[b]uilding a coalition to enact policies that enable Americans to balance work and family responsibilities should be within the realm of possibility,"(fn16) but in order to be successful, the coalition must include this "Missing Middle."(fn17)

Although a significant portion of the book is about what Williams characterizes as the "Missing Middle," the book seems directed toward a certain group of progressives: reform-minded elites, many of whom are drawn from the professional-managerial class.(fn18) Williams exhorts these elites to take the lead to end the class wars.(fn19) These marching orders reveal that Williams intends the professional-managerial class to be a primary audience for the book's messages.

Williams recognizes that it is not just a one-way street: This is not to say that change needs to come from only one direction. No doubt some Americans in the Missing Middle are guilty of painting upper-middle-class Americans as unpatriotic, immoral, and more. But the question is whether progressives want to insist on an apology before they begin working to change a cultural dynamic that has had disastrous political consequences.(fn20) Reform-minded elites are supposed to take the high road, something they apparently did with regard to developing coalitions with racial minorities:Upper-middle-class progressives aptly addressed and incorporated issues of racial privilege; they should follow the same path with respect to class. The literature on white privilege shows how one can listen sensitively to the complaints of a less privileged group without insisting that they stop hurting one's feelings first.(fn21)

I agree with Professor Williams that in order to work together, both groups must put aside egos and hurt feelings. What I am less certain about is how far her blueprint takes us toward developing effective coalitions. It underestimates the powerful psychological forces at work and the investments that have been made in racialized and gendered identity formations-investments that present very serious challenges for persuading the Missing Middle to join forces with progressives to pass legislation necessary to alter the workplace, even if it is in the Missing...