Outclassed

How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back

By: Joan C. Williams

An eye-opening, urgent call to mend the broken relationship between college and non-college grads of all races that is driving politics to the far right in the US.

Is there a single change that could simultaneously protect democracy, spur progress on climate change, enact sane gun policies, and improve our response to the next pandemic? Yes: changing the class dynamics driving American politics.

The far right manipulates class anger to undercut progressive goals and liberals often inadvertently play into their hands. In Outclassed, Joan C. Williams explains how to reverse that process by bridging the “diploma divide”, while maintaining core progressive values. She offers college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives and their lives reflect their privilege. With illuminating stories—from the Portuguese admiral who led that country’s COVID response to the lawyer who led the ACLU’s gay marriage response (and more)—Williams demonstrates how working-class values reflect working-class lives. Then she explains how the far right connects culturally with the working-class, deftly manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to deflect attention from the ways far-right policies produce the economic conditions disadvantaging the working-class. Whether you are a concerned citizen committed to saving democracy or a politician or social justice warrior in need of messaging advice, Outclassed offers concrete guidance on how liberals can forge a multi-racial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.

©2025 Joan C. Williams (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Williams gets it. She makes the effort to understand the legitimate moral concerns of working class and middle class people, many of whom have been moving right-ward in recent years. Williams invites her readers to open their minds and hearts before passing judgment, and especially before designing policies or electoral campaigns. Williams patiently addresses many of the self-serving delusions that keep the college educated "Brahmin left" from understanding their fellow citizens. This book will be a service not only for that elite group, but for anyone who finds it hard to understand what on earth is happening in American politics." —Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern School of Business, author of the NYT bestseller The Anxious Generation

"In a sad irony, the left has become blind to the distress that has drawn whites without BA degrees to the politics of the right, Joan Williams argues, in her eye-opening, punchy, highly important new book. This has allowed the Merchant Right to deflect blame for its losses onto the class-blind Brahmin left. Williams lifts off those blinders, and shows a way to uncover cross-class common ground on such issues as race, gay rights, immigration, climate change. If you despair of serious conversation across the political divide, or have never tried it, this is just the book for you."—Arlie Russell Hochschild’s, author of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right

“This effective, well-written and thoroughly researched book asks a simple question: how can middle class liberals and progressives bridge “the diploma divide” separating them from the non-college educated to move the American political needle? Williams mobilizes wisdom, expertise, and impeccable political instinct to show the way and address a pressing need. This is why Outclass urgently deserves your attention. Now!”—Michèle Lamont, Harvard University, author of Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How it Can Heal a Divided World”