Historian Kevin Schultz says that “how you define a ‘white liberal’ is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.”
Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History, Schultz’s newest book, a criticism of modern liberalism, including the conservative project of crafting a caricatured image of a “liberal” and then aggressively attacking it.
He talks about the beef many Americans have with white liberals – libertarians, socialists, conservatives, and fellow liberals alike – such as being tolerant to the point of ushering in communism, believing in the power of the state, and possibly being capitalism’s “beard.” But most importantly, Schultz discusses how to fix this image with the goal of fueling the rise of a genuine multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.
Schultz is a former president of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History and currently serves as Academic Chair of UIC Global at the University of Illinois Chicago where he also chairs the history department. He’s the author of several books, including Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship that Shaped the 1960s.
