The Lines That Divide America

Think of waiting in a long, slow-moving line, like the security lines at an airport. What’s your emotional reaction when you see someone cutting ahead of you, or shifting into a faster-moving line that you are not allowed to join? What if you are pulled aside for extra questioning, for no apparent reason?

Lines can bring fairness and order to what might otherwise be a free-for-all. There’s even a science, called queuing theory, that examines the optimal ways to make lines move equitably and efficiently. But they don’t always work that way; sometimes, they can operate to institutionalize unfairness and inequality. That’s why Arlie Russell Hochschild uses lines as a metaphor for the challenges facing contemporary American society in her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.

Hochschild argues that, for many years, America’s economic and social class structure resembled an orderly queue. The promise