As the new upper class increasingly consists of people who were born into upper-middle-class families andhave never lived outside the upper-middle-class bubble,When was this NOT true? Looking at what's actually on the quiz (outside the Life History section, which is just 'have you ever lived near poor folk'), I have a sick feeling that Murray is equating "upper-middle class" with urban and "ordinary Americans" with rural/exurban.
If you grew up in a working-class neighborhood, you are going tohave a high score even if you are now an investment banker living onPark Avenue. Your present life may be completely encased in the bub-ble, but you brought a lot of experience into the bubble that will al-ways be part of your understanding of America.* please understand that I think there are big, big caveats here.
Evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves described the Bell Curve as an example of racist science, containing all the types of errors in the application of scientific method that have characterized the history of Scientific racism:posted by defenestration at 7:46 AM on January 26 [9 favorites]
claims that are not supported by the data given
errors in calculation that invariably support the hypothesis
no mention of data that contradicts the hypothesis
no mention of theories and data that conflict with core assumptions
bold policy recommendations that are consistent with those advocated by racists.
Have you ever had a close friend who was an evangelical Christian?I have, but I think this is sort of a weird question, speaking as someone who has mostly lived in places where most working-class white people were Catholic.
He explicitly excludes Chipotle, even though the Chipotle is one of the most popular restaurants in the US.But on the other hand, I got a point for having seen The King's Speech, because it was one of the top ten non-child-oriented movies of 2010.
Why a list of nine chains instead of the more natural topten? Because one of the top ten is Chipotle Mexican Grill, which is to the casual-dining genre of restaurants as Whole Foods is to grocery stores.posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:04 AM on January 26
A lot of this opprobrium seems misplaced.A lot of the opprobium comes from the fact that Murray made a name for himself as a professional racist. He's also an extremely elite guy (Harvard undergrad, MIT PhD, town house in Georgetown last time I checked) who is telling us all what working-class culture is about, and that's a little annoying.
Being an opera fan was pretty much the norm among middle class whites in NYC a generation agoThis survey was carefully designed, though, to ensure that such people, their descendents, and their current counterparts don't qualify as "real Americans." The places they live are too big and/or metropolitan. They probably don't hunt, fish, or go to Branson. They're Catholic, not evangelical Protestants. The whole thing is rigged against working-class white ethnics.
the danger increases that the people who have so much influence on the course of the nation have little direct experience with the lives of ordinary Americans, and make their judgments about what’s good for other people based on their own highly atypical lives.may be his intention, but is it what the quiz actually shows?
• A lifelong resident of a working-class neighborhood with average television and moviegoing habits. Range: 48–99. Typical: 77.Look at the huge amount of overlap between these results. Think about the classes of 'white people' who are not included in these results. How can we talk about this as a useful quiz when your test result could put you in at least 3 different categories? Or where none of the categories reflect your actual living situation?
• A first- generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and moviegoing habits. Range: 42–100. Typical: 66.
• A first- generation upper-middle- class person with middle-class par- ents. Range: 11–80. Typical: 33.
• A second- generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot. Range: 0–43. Typical: 9.
• A second- generation (or more) upper-middle-class person with the tele- vision and moviegoing habits of the upper middle class. Range: 0–20.Typical: 2
It gives extra points to people who are evangelical Christians (but not, say, Catholics, who tend to be more liberal). That's a pretty big indication of political bias right there.15% of Hispanics in the U.S. are born-again or evangelical Protestants.
I figured it was there to filter out Hispanics, who might otherwise be counted as Real Americans.
. tab ordinaryamerican
ordinaryame |
rican | Freq. Percent Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
0 | 14,668 97.35 97.35
1 | 399 2.65 100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 15,067 100.00
Ordinary Americans certainly have a lot of problems, outnumbered as they are.Life sequestered from anybody not like yourself tends to be self-limiting.HE HAS DONE NOTHING TO SHOW THAT UMC PEOPLE ARE SEQUESTERED FROM NON-UMC PEOPLE.
America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway.Right, so what I read here is, "we (and by we I mean Americans, and by Americans of course I mean white people) maintained a cultural equality except for all those people who didn't count and for the purposes of my thesis they still don't count". But I don't know why they don't count. Then there's this:
I specify white, meaning non-Latino white, as a way of clarifying how broad and deep the cultural divisions in the U.S. have become. Cultural inequality is not grounded in race or ethnicity.What does this mean? How does it clarify the depth of cultural division by excluding the experiences of anyone who isn't a non-hispanic white?
"America outside the enclaves of the new upper class is still a wonderful place, filled with smart, interesting, entertaining people. If you're not part of that America, you've stripped yourself of much of what makes being American special."I was right. He is like a 19th century African explorer posing for photographs with the native pygmies. Also, reading that quote and Murray's WSJ piece I'm reminded of Citizen Kane, the scene where Jed Leland takes Kane to task following his defeat by Jim Gettys:
"You talk about the people as though you owned them, as though they belong to you. Goodness. As long as I can remember, you've talked about giving the people their rights, as if you can make them a present of Liberty, as a reward for services rendered. Remember the working man? You used to write an awful lot about the workingman. He's turning into something called organized labor. You're not going to like that one little bit when you find out it means that your workingman expects something is his right, not as your gift! Charlie, when your precious underprivileged really get together, oh boy! That's going to add up to something bigger than your privileges!posted by octobersurprise at 11:29 AM on January 26 [6 favorites]
* NASCAR fans are middle class and just as affluent as the U.S. population: 45% earn $50,000+ per year (96 index vs. U.S. population)40% of NASCAR fans are 'white collar'
* 1 out of 5 NASCAR fans is a minority.
...supporters are slightly more likely to be male and less likely to be lower-income.55% of Tea Party supporters make more than 50,000 a year, compared to 50% of the average population. (On preview the NYT poll is even more comprehensive - 20% made over $100,000 a year compared to 14% average)
John Calhoun: With us the two great divisions of society are not rich and poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.
So while there is no such thing as an ordinary American, it is not the case that most Americans are balkanized into enclaves where they know little of what life is like for most other Americans. “The American mainstream” may be hard to specify in detail, but it exists.He doesn't seem to be saying that every "real American" is the same (i.e. no, there aren't a lot of people who are white pickup truck drivers who make less than $70k and shop at Wal-Mart, and he isn't suggesting that), he seems to be saying that "real America" is made up of a lot of people who share common experiences (the folks who make sub-$70k and shop at Wal-Mart share a significant overlap in experience with the $80k engineer who drives a pickup and goes on a fishing trip every year, etc.).
Choose two random middle- or working- class families from New York and choose two from rural/smalltown Illinois or Indiana or Ohio and I have a hunch that the midwesterners would be more likely to have more in common than the New Yorkers.If that's what he's trying to say, then I think he needs to make some sort of argument about why it's significant.
the problem being is that these people are "normal" only because they believe they are and don't live in diverse enough environments to shake them from that beliefOk, but I think that Murray is like Brooks, in that he's not writing for those people. He's writing for elite people, and he's playing into their stereotypes and exploiting their anxieties about being out of touch with "real" Americans.
But it remains true that people who have a need for the things that a pickup truck can do are usually engaged in activities that people in the new upper class often don’t do at all. . .Most pickup trucks purchased by working class / middle class people are never used to do the things a pickup truck can do. They are used as passenger vehicles, transporting people, one at a time, to their non-pick-up truck using jobs. Anyone whose job involves'what a pickup truck can do will likely be driving one of the fleet owned by the boss.
Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?. . . Carpal tunnel syndrome [doesn't count].Anecdatum: My brother works at a foundry. He started out working with materials, but a few years back transitioned to pattern handling. Now he spends half his time moving patterns around with a hi/lo and the other half tracking them in Microsoft Excel. Did he stop being working class? Half-classed?
Have you ever walked on a factory floor. . . had a job that entailed routine visits to factory floors . . . worked on a factory floor? I was prompted to use this question because of a personal experience. . . a quarter of a century ago. . .Bdudbe? Many working class people will have to answer 'no' to all three variations of this question. The disappearance of jobs that take place on factory floors is a major source of the real problems of working class people. In fact:
Well, he does say that some answers are correct...Sigh. He simply (and rather obviously if you ask me, although I concede I do frequently find things obvious that seem somehow to elude others) means within the context of how the test is scored for it's purpose of roughly measuring how in touch you are with the the vast underbelly of america.
All clear now?Not really, because of this:
9. Have you ever had a close friend who could seldom get better than Cs in high school even if he or she tried hard?So I think you're just wrong, and he does think that stupidness, or at least being friends with stupid people, is a hallmark of working-class culture. This is kind of unsurprising, coming from the guy who wrote a whole book about how black people were genetically and environmentally predisposed to be stupid.
Score 4 points for “yes.” I use this question as a way of getting at the question I would like to ask, “Have you ever had a close friend who would have scored below the national average on an IQ test?” I can’t ask that question, because readers who grew up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood or went to school with the children of the upper middle class have no way of knowing what average means. The empirical case for that statement is given in detail elsewhere, but it may be summarized quickly. The typical mean IQ for students in schools that the children of the upper-middle class attend isaround 115, compared to the national mean of 100. In such a school, almost all of the below-average students, the ones you thought of as the school’s dummies, actually were above the national average. Even if the students were arranged in a normal distribution around a mean of 115, only 11 percent of the students could be expected to have IQs under 100. But they probably weren’t normally distributed, especially at a private school that uses a floor of academic ability in its admission decisions. So if you went to upper-middle-class schools and think you had a good friend who was below the national IQ mean, and are right, it had to have been one of the students who was at the absolute bottom of academic ability.
(although I quite agree with what seems to be the general premise of the book. I'm pretty puzzled that people are leaping in to reject the idea that the American upper class are becoming increasingly out of touch with the American lower class just because it happens to be Charles fucking Murray who said it out loud)Nobody is rejecting the idea that the American upper class is out of touch, although I'd really query the "increasingly," and I'm not sure what he's talking about is really the "lower class." We're doubting the good faith of this particular author, who is demonstrably evil and whose contempt for working-class Americans is pretty evident if you're capable of reading even a little bit between the lines. And I'm not sure why you're allowed to be partial towards a point of view, but everyone else who subscribes to it is jumping on a bandwagon.
I think the nearest thing to an actual measure of the upper class being out of touch with the lower would be intergenerational social/financial mobility.Then why not base his findings on that, rather than a questionnaire about people's hobbies and eating habits? Why design those questions to be so heavily weighted towards figuring out whether someone is white and not from a major metropolitan area? Is your social mobility negated if you continue to eat at Applebees? Is the social mobility or lack thereof of a person less significant if they live in a big city or listen to hip-hop rather than country?
Murray: Well, America has never been about maximizing wealth or international power. America has engaged in what I call and others have called the American project. It consists of the continuing effort begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit.
Is the White Working Class Coming Apart?
Charles Murray's Imaginary Elite
What the Founders Would Tell Charles Murray
Social Science Minus the Science
Now All Americans Are Losing Ground
Answering a Murray Defenderand
Postscript to the Murray Review.
Poor, White, and Republicanby George Packer, The New Yorker.
What to Do About ‘Coming Apart’by Thomas Edsall in The New York Times.
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posted by valkyryn at 6:40 AM on January 26 [2 favorites]