The Deceived Majority: Politics and Protest in Middle America
Vree, Dale
Book Review/Dale Vree The Old False Consciousness Shuffle • • This book by a Brandeis sociologist and his assistant is the product of eight years of research on the resistance to the proposed...
...No, he generalizes about all of Middle America—which would be all right were it not for the fact that Fell-man's generalizations show that he, himself, has not learned the lesson of Brookline-Elm...
...Unlike the organization-class professionals (who were responsible for planning the highway), Middle Americans are "home-centered" people who have a good Burkean love of their "little platoons" and who do not take well to the idea ct being forced to leave home and neighborhood...
...is to view highly charged opposition to a government plan as old-fashioned sentimentality or the selfish response of a handful of uninformed people" (p...
...What happened is that the Nixons, Agnews, and Wallaces Managing Editor Wanted The Alternative is looking for a managing editor to begin work in Bloomington, Indiana this June...
...it is, therefore, with utter amazement that I read Fellman's analysis of Middle America's place in American politics as a The Deceived Majority: Politics and Protest in Middle America by Gordon Fellman in association with Barbara Brandt Transaction $9.95 whole...
...What I find so strange is that while our oracular sociologist will exonerate Middle Americans of the charge of false consciousness on tlit local issue of building a highway, he will not exonerate them on the really big issues such as foreign policy, race relations, law and order, tolerance of dissent and deviance, the integrity of the family, and the like...
...wise" (p...
...On those issues, Fellman joins with the organization-class (of which he concedes he is a member) in the perpetuation of "class-ism" upon Middle America...
...hence, they are "frequently surprised and angered at the extreme emotion and the occasional violent reactions of neighborhood people to the plans for demolishing their neighborhoods...
...Fellman will have no truck with those contending that the Brookline-Elm innocents were cognitive and cultural cripples suffering from "false consciousness...
...Box 877, Bloomington, Indiana 47401.have "deluded" Middle Americans by "deflecting" their wrath away from the "real issues" onto "scapegoats...
...But he deviates a bit from other New Leftists in his belief that Middle Americans—that is, lower-middle-class working people—need "liberation" too...
...Fellman suggests that this was particularly so in the Brookline-Elm case, since the planning professionals probably saw no value in maintaining a neighborhood which—given their refined lifestyles and "superior" tastes—likely struck them as being a virtual slum...
...According to Fellman, the reason why the highway was so threatening to the Brookline-Elm residents was that its construction would have required the destruction of their neighborhood, forcing the residents to move elsewhere...
...Cosmopolitan organization-class professionals, not being "home-centered," are unable to empathize with Middle America...
...lipwermiddle-class hostility to busing is heavily based on precisely this attachment to home and neighborhood...
...36 The Alternative: An American Spectator March 197...
...Boneheads, lazyboots, and dogmatists need not apply...
...Well, it's all very simple (if you don't think explanations require evidence and if you can believe in conspiracy theories...
...M Fellman very astutely points out, these organization-class influentials fought the issue on their own terms and largely fox their own selfish reasons...
...Please send resumes with references and brief samples of your writing to Adam Meyerson, The Alternative, P.O...
...199) of Middle Americans regarding the integrity of their neighborhoods, but all of their other feelings (against moral deviants and political militants of all and sundry kinds who, it just so happens, find their safest haven within the precincts of the organization-class) we are not to respect, because here, you see, the supine slobs of Brookline-Elm, U.S.A...
...but not very often or systematically other...
...Fellman is most eloquent and persuasive in his defense of the Brookline-Elm residents...
...But Fellman observes that they would not have won if it had not been fox the fact that their opposition was coordinated and led by powerful defectors from the organization-class, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, 527 other professors from Harvard and M.I.T., and many others...
...But the trouble, asserts Fell-man, is that Middle Americans have been venting their frustrations against the wrong groups of people...
...lies, one wonders, now that the Middle Americans in Southie—and all the SoutlBostons of this land—need them sr badly...
...Fellman...
...We are all aware that Middle America has been seething with resentments and hostilities...
...Whereas they should be attacking the "rich-and-powerful class" and its "organization-class" allies, instead they have been picking on their exploited comrades, the blacks et al., as well as innocuous "eggheads" and dissenters...
...Fellman is not content to limit himself to an analysis of a single case study...
...Where are these organization-class al...
...A common first impulse...
...have been duped by the machinations of scapegoaters in the ruling class...
...23-29...
...To put ii another way, Middle America's interest: are supported by organization-class peo...
...ple when they coincide with their own...
...In view of the current busing controversy separating the cosmopolitans and the "parochials," I am especially attracted to his conclusion that "the natureand worth of neighborhoods should be determined not by supposedly 'objective' other-class outsiders, but primarily through the eyes and values of the people who live there" (p...
...by means of its henchmen in the "organization-class" ("bureaucrats, managers, academics, doctors, lawyers, ministers, and other professionals –and intellectuals...
...He will empathize with Middlr Americans when their feelings and inter ests coincide with his own—which is, tr use his own words, "not very often o. systematically...
...The book is intended to be a case study in "classist" oppression, that is, "discrimination by members of one social class against members of another" (p...
...Fellman is a New Leftist who supports the "liberation" of the Third World, as well as such inhabitants of America as blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, women, students, and homosexuals...
...Only the McGoverns, we are told, are addressing themselves to the "real issues" (pp...
...Fellman implores us to respect the "feelings" (p...
...we welcome applications only from industrious souls with a good liberal education, a sense of humor, and a mastery of English prose...
...231...
...It is his conviction that Middle Americans are oppressed by the "rich-and-powerful class" (capitalists et al...
...161...
...Those obtuse primitives in Middle America who have not, pierced the veil of mere appearances and phony issues are sorely afflicted with that endemic disease of the brain, false consciousness...
...Sadly, Fellman is, himself, hit owr best case study in organization-class du plicity...
...Says Fellman: only when urban traffic congestion anc pollution affect the organization-class dc its members move into action...
...Book Review/Dale Vree The Old False Consciousness Shuffle • • This book by a Brandeis sociologist and his assistant is the product of eight years of research on the resistance to the proposed building of a highway (the "Inner Belt") through the Middle American Brookline-Elm neighborhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Amazingly, the Brookline-Elm residents did win their fight against the highway...
...Has Galbraith come to then rescue...
Vol. 9 • March 1976 • No. 6
