By Nadine Khoury, Harvard Class of 2020
“Everyone has a deep story.” It is our job is to respect and try to understand these stories. This was the fundamental message of our recent JFK Jr. Forum speaker Dr. Arlie Hochschild. During her talk, she challenged how many regard partisanship in this country – in fact, she may have even challenged its very meaning. For many, she has redefined what it means to reach out to the other side and not only try to learn about their opinions, but also try to understand on a deeper level. This pursuit defined her most recent work, I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump’s Biggest Fans. Here’s What They Won’t Tell You, in which she describes her experience spending time in a poverty-stricken Louisiana community that was home to some of the most passionate Tea Party supporters, who ended up supporting President Trump. She described that she went there to understand people’s daily lives, and explored what elements of their own experiences cause them to vote a certain way, or have certain political views, despite the fact that those views may not necessarily aid their living situations.
As she elaborated on her time in Louisiana, she commented that people’s motives were founded on a personal and emotional base rather than a policy one. Hochschild stated that when she asked members of the small town she visited about what politics meant to them, running beneath their replies was “an underwater spring” that she thought of as a deep story. She discussed this “deep story” extensively in her talk. It was “stripped of facts and judgments, that reflected the feelings underpinning opinions and votes. It was a story of unfairness and anxiety, stagnation and slippage… It was the deep story underlying them—an account of life as it feels to them.”
Arlie Hochschild speaks at the JFK Jr. Forum.
In an increasingly partisan and divided country, many on each side have found it quite difficult, or even impossible, to reach out and truly understand the rationale behind the views of people with different political beliefs. This difficulty made Dr. Hochschild a hit at the Forum this week. Finally, many in the room were able to understand how voters of a different region and demographic saw the election, on a personal level. Specifically, Hochschild broke down the “deep story” underlying the conservatives she met in Louisiana. In her interviews, she noted that many strongly identified with the following analogy:
“You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black – beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare …Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all … Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He’s on their side. In fact, isn’t he a line-cutter too? …As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. … The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your government anymore; it’s theirs” (Hochschild).
This was a remarkable moment because the audience could visualize the frustration in the shoes and perspective of a demographic so different than that of many of us at Harvard. Hochschild showed us that when one reaches out and keeps asking “Why,” and “How,” we can come out of the situation having truly understood and respected the point of view of the other person. This, for Hochschild, is the true definition of being an American: the idea that America is not just a country based on diversity in and of itself. It is also based on understanding and respecting the identity of each individual by reaching out to people who think differently and understanding the underlying force behind their deep stories.