Word. From the Nations Capital to wherever you are. Because the opinion that matters most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. Host thanks everyone for joining us for this really important conversation. Not just about this book, aboutu the challenges that we have of country people in the together. Elizabeth, this book, it was a thrill for me to read it here in part because theres a little confirmation bias going on with me and i think a lot of what youre talking about are things that ive experienced personally, from Rural America but also things ive been talking a lot about and to have someone write a book and provide all of this incredible research and Data Analysis that you do in this book that confirms what weve been saying for a long time, which is we are not all that different in this country peer and so the first question i have for you because i look at your bio and you have written about art in new york. Youve written about celebrity comes written about a lot of different topics but you havent written before about Rural America and so as the daughter of danville pennsylvania what drove you to write this book . Guest thats a wonderful question, stu heitkamp. Thank you for asking it and thank you for being with me today. Two reasons actually. I have a always been a student f culture. My earlier work i look in the production of culture, particularly artistic culture and creativity come byy later look, last book look at the conception of culture and, and why we consume certain culture and at other culture in that book i really started thinking deeply about this concept of Cultural Capital because sort of the resources we amassed in terms of education, in terms of what we read, what we watch, what we listen to and that these become signifiers to the world at large and something that resounded a member reading a sociologist piece on thise, whih really stuck with me, which is that everyone has culture i think would happenep and in my last book i really delve deeply into this was his idea that theres this elite Cultural Capital, New York Times, wall street journal, listen to npr, you went tove an ivy league university, you have a law degree. Univariate kind of attributes that associated with a particular kind of Cultural Capital and i really started thinking that we had this wrong that this was it, this was a form of Cultural Capital picked wasnt the only form of Cultural Capital peer i really start thinking about it visavis where i grew up because i grew up in a small town in rural pennsylvania. Im the daughter of irish immigrants. I was born in West Virginia, and this collision occurred where i washi thinking about this idea f Cultural Capital what he really meant and how its different for different people along with what was going on with the 2016 president ial election. Thats when these ideas started percolating for me, which was everyone in my circles and the media i was really talking about how w Great America was really angry and thats why they voted for donald trump and thats why we had this divided country peer i thought about the place i grew up and kept the place i lived, i dont know 13 years of my life, and i thought i think thats entirely whats going on. Its notme that its not some of the story but theres a deeper story. That was the kind of limit of understanding the culture of my hometown in Rural America and understanding more deeply what might be happening in Rural America rather than what i felt was stereotypical explanation of why folks voted for donald trump trendline when i was reading the book i actually thought that maybe a more appropria title for the thesis wasnt the overlooked americans but the misunderstood americans. Guest i like that. Host s but i think its absolutely true i think theres so much misunderstanding about come up with what that urban culture is, what the rural culture is in and y misunderstanding of the people who live in those places. E a lot of data on that. That i think is analyzed in a very macro sense. When people talk about rural, but you drill down and do great storytelling telling about the people who live and do great story telling about the people who live there but also draw some contrasts in how we need to lookok differently at the data looking at. And one of the spots that i was particularly taken with is this notion, because i get it all the time, that Rural America voted for donald trump because theyre the racist. And i think your book just does such a phenomenal job of exploring that avenue. Could you talk y a little bit about, you know, if you disagree with me on how this perception and attitude is about Racial Attitudes in Rural America, and then talk a little bit about why you made that such a big part of your book. Guest oh, thank you, thats a wonderful question, senator heitkamp. So theress a couple of things that really spoke to me when i was engaging in this research. First of all was my experience of living in small town america. But then, you know, as a social scientist you go in, you to do the homework, you say, well, my experiencexp is one experience. Theres a lot of observations out there that need to be undertaken. So i spoke to dozens and dozens of Rural Americans in all sorts of places from missouri to texas, to tennessee, to heart of appalachia, to pennsylvania, to ohio. And i asked them a lot of questions about, you know, Big Questions about democracy and then questions about equality in this country. And one thing that was abundantly clear to me was that Rural Americans were keenly aware and concerned about the issues of racial equality in our country as their urban counterparts. You know, it was the first thing that came to mind, you know, that people are treated differently, theyre treated differently becausebe of the cor of their skin, thats not right, weve got tohi do something abot it. And this was over and over again when id asked the question of do you think americas an equal place and, youno know, essentiay why or why not, you know . I dont think there was anyone who thought that american was an equal america was an equal place, and most folks said it was because people were treated unequally because of their skin color, some ventured into their class, how much hundred they make. But the racial element was very clear, the sensitivity to that. One thing when you do qualitative work, the people you speaking to, are they telling you what youou want to hear. They know im this west coast, you know, liberal academic. You know, my politics without even having a conversation with me. And so you think, oh, maybe theyre just w telling me what they know i want to hear. But i then looked at the university of chicago, and i know youre based there as well. You look at university of chicagos General Social survey, and they do these amazing surveys of folks, and theyve been doing it for decades on all sorts of issues. And i looked at the question on race and how rural versus urban americans responded. And, you know, the first, the topline takeaway is they largely feel the same way. They are, they are largely supportive and not supportive of social policies in equal measure. Andgg the biggest surprising takeaway for me was that some of the greatest champions for social intervention to elevate the black community, to elevate women were actually the least educated folks in Rural America. It wasnt, you know, the poster child of, you know, the progressive coastal elite that was, you know, responding, you know, to, you know, the support of certain kinds of social policies along the lines of race. It was actually these uneducated, Rural Americans who didnt have a high school degree. And i i thought, wow, that is a really surprising takeaway. And the survey results really corroborated exactly what the people i spoke to said, you know . Host yeah. And want to get into kind of the economics later on, but with i want to, i want to explore the work that you did in analyzing who is Rural America. I mean, if you probably and this is a generalization, and i hate that when i do it [laughter] but you probably talked to, you know, grab min at a mall, in sub you are ya or address someone downtown in manhattan and asked them who lives in Rural America, chances are theyre going to save conservative, older, white people who dont like us. And, you know, you do some great work talking about regional differences on who lives in Rural America. Can you talk a little bit about that . Because i say it builds on your warning to people who want to have an opinion about Rural America, builds on your warning that dont just draw with a broad brush stroke. The south is different than the midwest economically, and certainly the south has many more africanamericans who live in Rural America. In my neck of the woods, many more native americans who live in Rural America. Were seeing a growing number of hispanic people who have moved for Economic Opportunity in Rural America. Can you talk a little bit about kind of regional differences in demographics and and what prized you, what didnt surprise you and how that thatnd plays into kind of the prevailing at tuesday about Rural America. Attitudes about Rural America. Guest i think thats a really wonderful takeaway, is that, you know, to talk about Rural America, the million Different Things that is going on in these places. The one thing thats really clear to me is that even if were talking about social policy or were talking about Economic Development and we talk about rural versus urban america or just Rural America and this kind of takeaway that Rural America is in decline, you know, youve got to footnote that. I would actually argue that Rural America is thriving on a number of different metrics. But that there are certain regions that are in trouble, and theyre in a very different situation for economic, social and cultural reasons. So one thing that was really clear to me was that this idea of Rural America in decline really was actually a story about two two parts of america. One being appalachia, which is in trouble, and the other being the deep south. And these s are places that are economically depress canned, they have significantly depressed, theyave significantly lower percentages of the population with a bachelors degree or above, and there ismu not as much of the knowledge industry coming into them. And ill spend a little time with that in a moment. So thats, i think, a very different story than if you look at, foram example, you know, the eastern seaboard, if you look at the coastal west, if you look at the midwest which is thriving on so many different metrics. I mean, the heartland is, i mean, you know, if you want to have a great life, move to iowa. [laughter] i mean, they seem to be just, i mean, from the sheer numbers and the people i talked to, it seems like a great place to be. So i think that that is really important. And then in terms and you actually did a great job highlighting highlighting the heterogeneity of the ethnic and racial composition of these different rural areas. They look so much different the from one another. And also that they, yes, there are older folks in Rural America, but there are also younger folks. And one contrast i really like to make is, you know, when we talk about for vanity or city, right . For many of us los angeles, new york, washington, d. C. And so forth, and yet we also love, you know, akron, ohio, or buffalo in the same story. And yet they have a very different Economic Situation than, you know, these, quoteunquote, superstar the cities. I want to say its the same with Rural America. So Rural America has places that are stereotyped. Theyre poor, people do not have college degrees, they maybe have a higher proportion of folks who didnt finish high school, they dont have a lot of industry. Sure, absolutely those places they exist, and thats actually a real opportunity for policy to create more of a folktargeted intervention. But then you have like coastal new england or rural iowa or, you know, rural wyoming and, actually, those places have high home ownership, high employment rates, high median house hold incomes, and then you see the concentration of Industries Associated with them like agriculture in the midwest, but then you also see the trickling in of other Industries Like software and certain parts of finance that actually do end up in our rural areas despite the fact that we associate these as city occupations, city sectors. Host one of the things that i remind people because i think, again, that image of Rural America is really agricultural america. But a third of all Rural Counties are dependent on mineral extraction which has created,d, again, the places youre talking about where weve seen, you know, decline, appalachia, places where mineral extraction is not the economy that it used to be. And sobe want to, i want to tala little bit about rural selfimage because you do explore this whole thing in your book about cognitive dissonance, you know . Its kind of like here we are the rugged americans, individualists, we just count on ourselves and wee dont, you know, we dont need the government, we dont need to b, we dont need the boost up. But yet if you look, if im representing urban america and you see now gavin newsom has been doing a lot of interviews talking about blue staters edeconomies versus red state economies, a lot of thats driven by rural issues. And the and the per capita expenditure in Rural America from the federal governments much higher than per capita in suburban areas. And so you look at all these measurements and and this kind of attitude about who they are and how people look at them and i think in your book you drew a lot of, you know, examples from what people were listening to, what people were hearing in terms of their grievance. But can you talk a little bit about this chapter that you wrote on cognitive dissonance and what your conclusions were relative to kind of selfimage versus maybe the image urban america would have but also the image that data would plaintiff . Guest wow with would inform . Guest wow, thats a wonderful question. Thank you, senator heitkamp. Ive got a lot to say. [laughter] so let me cull up my thoughts here. This chapter starts out with this wonderful woman, shannon. And i met shannon through kind of a n of folks a network of folks i didnt know. Its its a method called knowball, snowball sampling where you kind of get contacts through the people you interview and so forth. And at some point, i landed upon shannons name, and i mailed her, and she emailed her and she wrote me back. That wasin one of the most warmg experiences of this book, was the fact that these folks who did not know me and had absolutely, there was nothing in it for them, every time id send them an email, they would respond. Immediately. I mean, and give me hours of their time. So shannon was one of those people. And when we first spoke, i, you know, i asked her my usual run ofes the questions, the same questions i ask everyone, and you know you did something i just kind of, i really liked her. Like, there was justs this kind of energy i got from her and just people, with we clicked. And yet what she would say was totally the opposite of how i thought about the world. You know . Just the weirdest experience of really liking her, wanting to, like, grab a coffee with her, and youre also thinking, wait a second. You are you havent gotten vaccinated, you made it very clear youre not planning to. You really dont believe in climate change. You question the 2020 election. Youre a big supporter of donald trump. You, and you are, you question marriage equality. And these were literally anat pa ma to my way of anathema to my way of being and my politics. And yet there was such a a warmth, and i enjoyed every time we had a chance to connect, i enjoyed it tremendously. And i thought a lot about this, and i realized that the problem and, you know, you cited the chapters title, cognitive dissonance the problem is, you know, this idea that that you feel these kinds ofme opposing sentiments about something, somet person, some issue, right . But in reality, i had to kind of breakthrough which i was losing sight of the things about shannon that were why i liked her. So i was focusing so much on this discord in our politics and not realizing there were really good reasons to like shannon. So one of the things that really kind of overwhelmed me was a question i asked all of the people i interview is if you had all the money in the world, what would you do . And, you know, people say all sorts of things. I would buy with my mom a house, i would go on vacation, i would pay off my mortgage, id donate it, youth know . Any number of things. But, shannon, when id asked her that question i had her that question, he said, well, i would buy an orphanage, and i would buy an orphanage for all of the children who have lostt their parents to drug addiction. Its aa real problem im paraphrasing her. And she said i would also buy all of the people, the people who were recovering drug addicts, i would b