White Working-Class Youth
Krickus, R. J.
CONTRARY TO WHAT the news media, academics, and the "cosmopolitan" Left imply, the average American youngster is not doing his thing on a university campus. By 1985, it is estimated, only 14...
...found that the performance of his white students in the Kensington area of Philadelphia approached that of black ghetto children...
...In the Highlandtown-Canton area of Baltimore onethird of the high school students drop out and in the Mayfield-Murray Hill district of Cleveland the figure is 50 percent...
...Binzen's findings will not shock even the casual observer of working-class communities where inferior teachers and inadequate facilities characterize the educational system...
...A declining faith in government prevails in the "reformed" cities as well, for as James Q. Wilson has observed, many big city mayors seem more concerned about foundations, urban consultants, and agency chiefs in Washington than about the complaints of their constituents...
...Lewis Carliner, in a recent workshop devoted to the problems of young workers, found they 2A presidential commission was formed to studyunrest on college campuses after students weretragically killed at Kent State and Jackson State...
...As usual in our economic system, the workingman subsidizes the rich and well-connected...
...But a respite from our monotonous work was secondary to the keen pleasure we derived from the thought that the boss knew what we were doing, but could not do anything about our protest...
...I have traveled widely throughout the urban North in the last year...
...Staff people, speech-writers, and researchers in Washington remain in an appalling state of ignorance about working-class youth...
...Judson Gooding writes, in Fortune, that tedious and repetitious jobs have provoked auto workers to sabotage the assembly line...
...On my visits to working-class communities, I have found neighborhood organizations springing up where none had existed before...
...The alienation of many black youths has been mollified by virtue of the black community's invigorated sense of group identity...
...In these circles one still hears talk about crypto-fascists controlling the construction unions and Nazis in hard hats running amok on the streets assaulting students...
...Some 14,000 workers are killed in industrial accidents every year, yet concerned citizens have notexpressed alarm about this appalling statistic...
...SINCE THE END of World War II, a myth has evolved that the American worker has become entrenched in middle-class affluence...
...He knows that if he violated the laws the col 1 A growing number of working-class kids smoke pot, wear long hair, and favor hippie-type clothes, but in many cases these kids are as straight as their parents on other matters...
...The process was foolproof and simple...
...Lacking the educational perspective or experiences that broaden one's social vision, the working-class youngster, as his parents, feels threatened by the changes swirling about him...
...We are talking about the single largest proportion of our youth, yet in-depth studies of their psychological, social, economic, and political problems are hardly available...
...We are asked to understand college dissidents, to sympathize with their problems, and to make an effort to communicate with them...
...Corruption is highly visible, the streets are unsafe, and there is a feeling that "their own" politicians are selling them out...
...Those who apologize (continued on page 517) for the excesses of the student revolutionaries and the Panthers contribute to the stereotypes by which workers see radicals as subversives and liberals as hostile to the working-class American...
...The double standard that treats the alienation of middle-class youth sympathetically and denies the plight of the young worker promotes such stereotyping...
...Journalist-teacher Peter Binzen in his White Town U.S.A...
...Many young workers are both resentful of Washington's neglect and fearful of programs they deem prejudicial to their communities...
...Late bloomers who find themselves trapped in dead-end jobs are rarely given a second chance...
...II IN ONE of the few recent studies of workingclass youth, William Simon and John Gagnon write: When compared to the most conservative andminimal goals set for contemporary education—except perhaps the dubious goal of insuringreasonably conformist behavior—schools in the NOTEBOOK working-class areas can only be described as undramatic disaster areas...
...They want a greater say in decisions affecting life in the plant...
...This cultural chasm accounts in part for past neglect of the working class and forms a roadblock to a firm political coalition with lower-middle-class whites...
...They are cynical about management's pronouncements regarding the "public interest," since they often work in filthy surroundings under unsafe conditions...
...Consumer prices are rising faster than wages...
...In the cities and suburbs where the young workers live, they have good reason to be cynical about government...
...Nor should we overlook the problems that confront the young workingman in his community...
...Against the backdrop of poverty and racial prejudice, this may not offer much consolation...
...The crisis of urban education is by no means confined to nonwhite communities...
...College preparatory curricula are grossly inadequate...
...IV A GROWING NUMBER of young workers seem to be becoming politically restive...
...No wonder the drop-out rate in workingclass school systems is alarmingly high...
...A study of production workers by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan disclosed that two-thirds of the respondents believed they had no prospect of advancing beyond their present jobs...
...CONTRARY TO WHAT the news media, academics, and the "cosmopolitan" Left imply, the average American youngster is not doing his thing on a university campus...
...We cannot hope to eliminate poverty, racism, urban blight, and defense spending beyond our security requirements unless we gain rapport with those youngsters who drive trucks, clerk in department stores, and pump gas...
...They will tell you that government, the major parties, union leadership, management, and the media are insensitive to their needs...
...The prospects of the young drop-out (600, 000 American youngsters drop out of high school every year) and the recent high school graduate may be even more dismal today than a decade ago...
...The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, in 1968, 65.4 percent of our high school graduates sought employment upon graduating and did not enter college...
...But in many cases this restrictive outlook is less a sign of anti-intellectualism than a clear insight into the economics of higher education...
...The son of a corporation executive who is rewarded with a social disease as a consequence of a weekend fling at a crash pad can go to a free clinic and receive medical attention...
...Last summer an Office of Education analyst told me that he had nearly completed a study of our nation's educational priorities before realizing he had overlooked the needs of white noncollege youth...
...Reassessing their position, the environmentalistsgained the interest of the workers when they zeroedin on conditions in the factories—oil-strewn floors, leaking gas, smoke emissions, and so on...
...Much like the black youth who is caught in a racial bind, he is ensnared in a socioeconomic bind...
...As of today, the take-home pay of the average factory hand or clerk with three dependents is slightly over $100.00 per week...
...Young environmentalists had decided that pollution was an issuethat would spark the interests of workers in thatgrimy industrial city...
...Lacking seniority, he is likely to be laid off during economic slowdowns, and this threat has prompted many young workers to leave better-paying positions in industry for municipal jobs as policemen or firemen, which pay less but offer more job security...
...e Having recognized the need for community organization, a caveat is in order...
...On the rare occasions when working-class youths receive attention (usually as a by-product of investigation into the problems of affluent youngsters), they are depicted as racist, superhawk cultural yahoos...
...Meanwhile, the young gas station attendant who may be cursed by the same affliction must shell out $10 or $15 for a penicillin shot...
...The implication that all construction workers are bent on suppressing dissent through violence and the tendency to label the workingman a "hard hat" is fashionable in liberal and radical circles alike.4 Many working-class Americans, believe that revolutionary elitists are exploiting their privileged position to side-step the rules by which "straights" must abide...
...lege kids break, he would be arrested without much fanfare or discussion about the grievances that led to his antisocial behavior...
...Like black people of all ages, he derives emotional support from the activities of leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King...
...But the white working-class youth has no role model to help him reduce his frustration...
...In the hippie areas of our larger cities numerous free services are made available to estranged middle-class youngsters, yet one does not find these same services in working-class communities where the need is at least as great...
...Fourteen years ago I worked the "graveyard shift" in a can factory...
...The Rosow Report documents that at the outset of his work history, the young worker may earn a relatively good salary...
...In many industries they are the backbone of the rank and file...
...Over the long pull, a secure job may be less important than the disappearance of work options that can engender a sense of accomplishment in one's work...
...Approximately 40 percent of the auto workers are under 35 and in some auto plants 70 percent of the production-line workers are under 30...
...There is, of course, Joe, an abomination that deserves mention only because many otherwise thoughtful people on the Left believe that the stereotyped Joe Curran fairly represents what the American workingman would be like if his "natural instincts" ever rose to the surface of his consciousness...
...By 1985, it is estimated, only 14 percent of America's population will be graduates of four-year colleges...
...How many movies has Hollywood produced in the last ten years that sympathetically treat the frustrations of working Americans...
...These working-class youths comprise a subculture in which affluence is not taken for granted...
...Unfortunately, this belief deters him from adequately dealing with problems germane to his own well-being...
...The truck driver, supermarket clerk, and steel worker's wife are rarely the subject matter of TV documentaries, much less of TV drama...
...The most articulate members of the liberal and radical Left often live in a cosmopolitan subculture that is alien to the average workingman...
...George Wallace was the first national political figure to appreciate the depth of their despair and he provided them with a way of mobilizing their discontent and channeling it politically...
...NOTEBOOK In the past, workers could feel some security from the knowledge that a more stable or higher paying position was within reach if one stuck it out...
...He is not unfeeling about the plight of the poor and disadvantaged, but he was taught and he believes in the American credo that a man's success or failure depends upon whether or not he is prepared to work hard for what he wants...
...This may account for the rising incidence of drug abuse in factories, high rates of turn-over, and mounting absenteeism...
...2 At the same time, they are impatient with their union leaders and the older workers...
...But the same kind of compassion and indulgence must be directed at the bulk of our noncollege youngsters, for they too have legitimate problems...
...Vocational schools often are mere holding areas for problem students...
...Workingclass whites are in desperate need of neighborhood structures to mobilize power but many, if notmost, of our pressing domestic problems—housing, education, employment, medical care, etc.—require a national thrust to extract massive assistancefrom Washington...
...This means the construction ofa new political coalition of blacks, working-classwhites, liberals, students, and Democratic radicals...
...The young worker has been bedazzled by the allure of new automobiles and a suburban home filled with luxurious furniture and laborsaving appliances...
...It is difficult for him to sympathize with dissident behavior.' He is inclined to condemn the activities of long-haired youth, student demonstrators, and articulate black activists who, when breaking the rules of the game, seem to receive sympathetic support from the mass media, government, and the educational system...
...While it is fashionable to debunk coalitions that smack of the New Deal, a coalition of this kind is the only feasible road to democratic change inthe United States in the 1970s...
...That's not so...
...yet the Negro who shares the workbench with a white youth feels "plugged into" the movement for social change...
...Today job dissatisfaction is prevalent among workers who have been reared in an era of prosperity and are but dimly aware of the depression...
...But in the 1970s most workers cannot anticipate moving up the job ladder in this fashion...
...But marriage and growing family responsibilities gradually erode his income, and his salary fails to keep pace with his expenditures...
...Simon and Gagnon found that the single largest group among the youngsters they studied were family-oriented apd by and large adopted the worldview of their parents on most issues...
...It is often assumed that these young people have become melded into the American middle class...
...Such outbursts of frustration are not new...
...They rarely provide instruction that is pointed to the demands of the student...
...Lacking a job record or proper vocational training, young workers encounter serious employment difficulties...
...Proponents of community development have made exaggeratedclaims about citizen power and participation...
...Academia has been turned on by the "counter calture" and campus unrest, but it pays little attention to the life-style of the young factory worker, the political socialization of his co-workers, and the plight of his wife...
...Owners of modest homes pay a disproportionate share of the taxes, yet their streets, schools, and recreational facilities are in a state of disrepair...
...It was a common practice several times an evening to shut down the endless flow of beer cans...
...But as of 1967, 61.7 percent of the white families living in New York City earned $9,000 per year or less...
...Unlike their fathers, promises about future benefits do not silence them...
...Given the Administration's campaign to wrest working-class votes from the Democrats and the latter's natural inclination to stave off a GOP raid, one would think that adroit operatives in both parties would be uncovering relevant data about this sought-after target...
...Yet the young men and women who are portrayed in such one-dimensional terms must grapple with the same kinds of problems—"who am I," "how should I spend my life," "is my work meaningful"—which produce alienation among campus youth...
...The son of a factory worker with college potential is too often shunted off to industrial school or pushed out to work...
...A crumpled can or one turned in the wrong direction would ultimately foul up the system...
...The mass media's treatment of young workers also reflects the tunnel vision of middleclass America...
...In the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, the Department of Labor states that $11,236 is needed to maintain a moderate level of living for a family of this size...
...This afforded us a rest...
...Outside the South his movement was nourished primarily by young white workers...
...In North Newark, Southeast Baltimore, and Lake County, Indiana, to cite a few examples, working-class whites are forming community organizations as progressive alternatives to right-wing demagogues who have been attempting to exploit the white communities' alienations A final word of caution...
...True, working-class parents do not encourage academic achievement to the extent true of middle-class families...
...My failure to get through was not unanticipated, for in my neighborhood (the Clinton Hill area of Newark) socioeconomic problems were deemed a function of one's personal inability to cope, and not as manifestations of a larger social problem...
...are concerned about their "civil rights" at work —unfair disciplinary procedures, shift assignments, and overtime duty...
...A growing number of young workers are dissatisfied with their jobs...
...This is a somewhat generous explanation, since there is convincing evidence that many academics who pander to the fashionable just do not think working-class youth are worthwhile research material...
...Their antipollution campaign, however, prompted the workers to respond with aslogan of their own: "Pollution love it or leaveit...
...This age group is growing in absolute numbers at a time when the supply of jobs for which unskilled youth can qualify is declining...
...Coverage is intermittent at best, usually superficial, and always manifests a parochial (class) bias...
...I know of a "youth agency" in Health, Education and Welfare that has a three-fold classification of youth in the United States—"black," "Mexican-American," and "college student...
...Try though I did, I could not induce my co-workers to relate their dissatisfaction to the corporate structure or political system...
...This rising militancy explains wildcat strikes not sanctioned by union officials (work stoppages jumped by 50 percent in the period 19651970), dissident caucuses within the union movement, and attempts to break away from present unions altogether...
...4 An example of activists' defining the workingman's problems through a middle-class prism occurred last year in Gary, Indiana...
...Consequently, the take-home pay of the average salaried worker, in terms of purchasing power, was less in 1969 than it had been in 1968...
...We should...
...While most white workers rejected Wallace, his appeal to them was a symptom of their estrangement from our NOTEBOOK mainstream institutions...
...He sees no exit from a life of economic insecurity, boredom, and an income never quite providing him with the resources to acquire those things he wants...
...Approximately 21 million Americans between the ages of 15 and 29 are out of school and never graduated from a college...
Vol. 18 • October 1971 • No. 5
