Out-Classed by Williams J C

Out-Classed by Williams J C

Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award 2025, Long list

An eye-opening, urgent call to mend the broken relationship between college and non-college grads of all races that is driving politics to the far right in the US.

Is there a single change that could simultaneously protect democracy, spur progress on climate change, enact sane gun policies, and improve our response to the next pandemic? Yes: changing the class dynamics driving American politics.

The far right manipulates class anger to undercut progressive goals and liberals often inadvertently play into their hands. In Outclassed, Joan C. Williams explains how to reverse that process by bridging the "diploma divide", while maintaining core progressive values. She offers college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives and their lives reflect their privilege. With illuminating stories --from the Portuguese admiral who led that country's COVID response to the lawyer who led the ACLU's gay marriage response (and more)-- Williams demonstrates how working-class values reflect working-class lives. Then she explains how the far right connects culturally with the working-class, deftly manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to deflect attention from the ways far-right policies produce the economic conditions disadvantaging the working-class. Whether you are a concerned citizen committed to saving democracy or a politician or social justice warrior in need of messaging advice, Outclassed offers concrete guidance on how liberals can forge a multi-racial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.

Joan C. Williams is a Hastings Foundation Chair and Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. What Works for Women at Work, coauthored with Rachel Dempsey; Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Clash and What to Do About It; and The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict, coauthored with Heather Boushey, are just a few of Williams' publications. Williams is widely cited as a social class expert. Visit JoanCWilliams.com for additional information.