The psychological roots of Appalachia's political transformation

In Stolen Pride, ethnographer Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote a kind of sequel to her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, about Tea Party supporters in Louisiana. In Stolen Pride, she attempts to understand the recent political shift toward white supremacy across the country and the world by studying the emotional motivations of Trump voters in one community in Appalachia. She focused her research on Kentucky’s 5th District, one of the whitest, poorest, and most conservative. It has changed from a progressive, union-driven region to a hub of nationalist and supremacist politics. Hochschild connects the rise of white nationalism there to economic decline and a “pride paradox,” where residents value hard work but feel shamed by diminishing opportunities. Trump’s appeal lies in redirecting their frustrations outward, offering pride while scapegoating others. Hoschschild made use of data from the ANES 2020 Time Series Study to measure the presence of white voters’ empathy for people of color. And with data from the openICPSR project, New Area- and Population-based Geographic Crosswalks for U.S. Counties and Congressional Districts, 1790-2020, she was able to compare 5th District voting behavior in the 1996 and 2020 presidential elections.