Randy D. McBee. Born to Be Wild: The Rise of the American Motorcyclist.

Extract

“The people who say that American workers and American companies can’t compete are making one of the oldest mistakes in the world,” President Ronald Reagan told a warehouse filled with Harley-Davidson workers in 1987. “We’re on the road to unprecedented prosperity in this country—and we’ll get there on a Harley!” (184). In his tribute to American patriotism and exceptionalism, Reagan was also sending the message that white working-class motorcycle riders—long seen as outlaws on the margins of society—were now accepted members of the Republican Party’s conservative coalition. What a long, strange trip it was!

In Born to Be Wild: The Rise of the American Motorcyclist, Randy D. McBee insightfully traces shifts in the public perception of bikers from the initial fear and suspicion of the 1950s through the racial upheavals of the 1960s and the gender clashes and political shifts of the 1970s. But he also documents how the arrival of foreign motorcycles—especially those made by Honda Motor Company, which dominated the U.S. market by the mid-1960s—transformed the ranks of riders by opening the road to a new generation of middle-class bikers who treated the purchase of a lightweight, mass-produced motorcycle as an act of consumption or convenience. By contrast, an earlier generation of working-class riders had proudly built or modified their own machines as a statement of identity or lifestyle.