It may be a statistical blip, but there were a lot of stories and columns these past few days addressing the question of the new ruling class in America.
First, there’s John Derbyshire on the rise of the “labor-virgins” “What seems to be going on here is a war against the notion that any American citizen should do any kind of non-academic work before the age of 25 — before, that is, a college degree and a couple of years of law school have been completed….I have noticed that if, among 30-something colleagues, I mention one of my own school or college summer jobs — factory or construction work, dishwashing, retail sales, bartending — my colleagues will look amused, and a bit baffled. How come a guy as well-educated as Derb was shoveling concrete? Boy, he’s a real eccentric! No, I’m not. Those experiences were perfectly normal for a person of my generation. They’re just not normal any more, not for children of the American middle and upper classes.”
Next there is Ross Douthat on the discrimination elite colleges employ against working class whites, especially those from rural “red” parts of the country. “For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications…while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances…The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.”
Then there is Victor Davis Hanson trying to define some aspects of the cultural elite, with this telling comment on race, “On matters racial, it gets complicated since advocacy is one thing, living another. The cultural elite use “pull” to get their kids into college, money to live in a “good” neighborhood, and “networking” to marry and “place” like others from a good background. All that remains unspoken and rarely articulated. Why so? Because otherwise the logical ramifications of such a liberal belief system would be to live in the San Jose or Fresno mixed suburbs, to have their children school with the “other” at Cal State Stanislaus or Indiana State, and to marry their children to Rick Lopez or Tyrone Hiller to encourage “diversity.”
Finally, here’s a Politico poll showing some of the gaps between the elites in DC and the rest of the nation.
The overall picture is not new. Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites was published 14 years ago, and various folks on the Right have been complaining about elites for longer than that. But the pattern seems to be becoming clearer. The Left has become an alliance between the educated professional/managerial class and racial minorities, and it is increasingly comfortable acknowledging that. The old working class unions in private industry are dying, the real union pull in the Democratic party is found in the public sector unions. And while most public sector union members aren’t really members of the elite or ruling class, they tend to be hangers-on and camp followers. Besides their obvious self-interest in big government, their aspirations and lifestyles are modeled on the elite. Likewise, there are what could be called the support staff: artists of various flavors, owners of trendy shops, members of the mid-level news media–people who depend on or are aspiring to elite status.
Money matters, of course, but it matters less than other lifestyle indicators, for example, buying organic food. Even more it’s based on a shared disdain for Middle America, something that Middle America has been discovering.
Interestingly, this elite class lacks many of the distinctions that might have formerly distinguished elites. For instance, very few lawyers graduating from top schools know anything of philosophy, history, literature or art beyond the smattering needed for idle chit-chat at social gatherings. Far more important than true culture is proper moral posturing. For example, support gay marriage and you’re enlightened, oppose it and you’re a bigoted boob–that the person supporting it might be a philosophical philistine and the person opposing highly educated in philosophy matters not.
What will become of this? I’m not certain, but I think that there is more realization of the divide that has developed, and I think that Middle America might be angry enough to do something about it. Unfortunately, all to often the proposed solution is to simply give more power to those causing the problems. Education won’t be fixed by federalizing it, but most suggestions involve more money, administration, and central power.
