Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Oct 10, 2025

Kevin M. Schultz, a history professor at UIC, dives into his provocative book on the complexities surrounding white liberals in America. He explores the myriad of views on this group, revealing how their identity has morphed over time and become a mirror for societal anxieties. Schultz discusses the historical attacks on liberalism and the pressing need for political fragmentation to pave the way for a multiparty system. With sharp insights on civil rights critiques and the interplay between liberals and socialists, he offers a refreshing take on the state of American politics.

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INSIGHT

Liberalism As A Contested Label

Kevin Schultz argues the book traces how the term "liberal" shifted into a contested, protean label rather than a stable identity.
He frames liberalism's decline as rhetorical: different groups redefined and attacked the center from multiple angles.

INSIGHT

Polarization Hides Centrist Majority

Schultz links mid-20th-century polarization to the shrinking political center and disappearing bipartisan governance.
He warns Americans often agree on issues but hear only polarized extremes, obscuring common ground.

ANECDOTE

FDR Coined Liberalism In US Politics

Kevin Schultz recounts discovering FDR's 1932 speech where he first used "liberalism" in an American context.
He describes FDR shaping the term to defend a regulated capitalism via the New Deal.

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A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them.
If there’s one thing most Americans can agree on, it’s that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism’s beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can’t manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they’re so self-hating.
This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz’s lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.
Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.
With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics.

Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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