Think-pieces about the state of the national mood are as common in American bookstores as roadkill is on Texas highways. We have no lack of published authors willing to tell us what "we" think about this or that, and we can find any number of books with lurid titles to give us a frisson of excitement at the impending doom that will befall us because of "our" attitude toward this or that.

But...really...what do Americans think?

Author Alan Wolfe, with the help of several university sociological departments and two research assistants, set out in 1994 to produce a partial answer to that question. Wolfe's "Middle Class Morality Project" selected two middle-class suburbs from each of four cities -- Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, and Tulsa -- then interviewed in depth 25 people in each suburb about issues related to "racial and economic justice, the family, religion, obligations to the country, work, and civic participation."

Wolfe's resulting conclusions about middle-class Americans are encouraging. They worry about their children's future, but are skeptical of extremist and hateful "solutions." They take their own religious faith very seriously, but do not want to impose their beliefs on others. They feel uneasy about mothers choosing to spend time with their careers rather than their children, but believe that that decision should be made by the woman herself. They worry about the financial and social costs of immigration and welfare, but are wholeheartedly willing to help those who want to help themselves.

What Wolfe found, in short, was that middle-class Americans often reach practical and compassionate agreements across ideological boundaries that many consider to be impassable. Wolfe tossed out one possible explanation for why doing this is easier than it seems:

[I]f there is one aspect of political discussion that distinguishes intellectuals (liberal and conservative alike) from the people with whom I talked, it is that the former like to read symbolic meaning into all kinds of things -- the houses people buy, the way they raise their children, whom they have for neighbors, even what they eat and drive -- whereas the latter tend to believe that mundane matters are really mundane matters. [226]

 
This idea of Wolfe's might also explain the growing resistance in suburbia to conservative ideas -- as conservative intellectuals turn more to dogma and less to experience, their writings lose the force to move people in the middle class to meaningful action. As Wolfe puts it, "America is experiencing a culture war...but it is one that is being fought primarily by intellectuals, not by most Americans themselves."

Wolfe uncovers troubling trends in suburbia as well, the worst of which is a growing sense of helplessness and self-pity. Interviewees would complain about problems around them (e.g., soul-deadening materialism), yet be unwilling to take the obvious steps that would help to address them (e.g., re-order priorities and buy less) because they claim to be powerless in the face of larger social forces. Wolfe does not fail to note the unflattering contrast between these people's attitudes towards themselves and their attitudes toward welfare recipients.

In general, however, the picture Wolfe paints of middle-class America is one of bright colors and pleasing harmonies, and he provides compelling evidence of that picture's fidelity to the suburban experience. Though his book (of necessity?) is somewhat drier than the average think-piece about how "we" think, it is also considerably more enlightening.

Review posted: 1 October 1998