The 136 conversations took place in roughly the same way: Pleasantries would be exchanged, a recorder started, then UC Berkeley researchers asked middle-class Californians to dig deep. Who deserves government assistance? What values do you hope to instill in your children? What do you think about undocumented immigration? What is the American dream, exactly?
Those wide-ranging interviews form the basis of aself-scrutinizing new book from Berkeley professors G. Cristina Mora and Tianna Paschel, titled Normalizing Inequality: How Californians Make Sense of the Growing Divide. It describes how Californians understand the profound inequality around them, including the mental gymnastics and contradictions necessary to reconcile those disparities with the state’s reputation as a progressive land of opportunity.
In part, the book’s focus came from questions Mora’s children asked about what they observed out of the car window on their drive to school. “Why is it that we live in one of the most expensive places on the planet, with so many resources and in such a progressive area, and yet all these people are also on the streets? The juxtaposition was just wild,” she said.