Why do Americans resent upward mobility?

http://www.slate.com/id/2270739/

by aarghh • 16 years ago

23 18 16 years ago

It might be true that our political leaders will become less educated and intelligent over time, but that will hardly be the case in other areas-- areas where higher merit actually correlates with success.

The main effect probably won't be a real shift in the types of people with actual power, but rather an increasing marginalization of our public institutions, like in other countries with ineffective governments.

mynameishere• 16 years ago

The writer is so badly (or purposefully) confused it's hard to know where to start. Well,

by expanding their admissions to include women and minorities while keeping standards high.

No. Again, no. There are very distinctly two sets of standards, one lower than the other, and it shouldn't require much elaboration as to why that causes legitimate resentment. or why it deviates from any real notion of a meritocracy.

The result of that expansion is now with us: Barack Obama

Umm, no. It's fairly clear to every non-brainwashed observer that BHO's skin color was a huge part of the elite's attraction to him. That behavior on the part of the (noun) elite, is distinctly not compatible with the maintenance of an (adjective) elite class.

Despite pushing aside the old WASP establishment—not a single WASP remains on the Supreme Court—these modern meritocrats are clearly not admired, or at least not for their upward mobility, by many Americans

Sigh. Replace "WASP" with anything and I mean any other term, "Black", "Jewish", "Italian" anything in the world and ask yourself, "Why would the blacks/Jews/Italians not admire the other groups pushing them out of power?" Why would that be reasonable?

The stupidity is almost overpowering.

anonymous245• 16 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with you. But upvoted for not censoring yourself.

spamizbad• 16 years ago

> ... the elite's attraction to him. That behavior on the part of the (noun) elite, is distinctly not compatible with the maintenance of an (adjective) elite class.

Please define what "elite" is in this case. I understand it's not the elite (ruling) class. Is that the new dog-whistle term for white-collar, urban, college-educated whites? Or the old dog-whistle term for well-off Jews? Neither? Both?

geebee• 16 years ago

I agree, this writer seems is generalizing hostility to "ivy league" with hostility to "elites" in general.

It frustrates me that Americans still tend to view Harvard (or maybe Yale) as America's most elite university. It is an extraordinary organization, of course, but it is (strangely?) MIA in engineering and many branches of applied science. Consider the US News and World Report's list of "most elite undergraduate colleges":

Harvard Princeton Columbia Stanford University of Pennsylvania California Institute of Technology MIT Dartmouth Duke University of Chicago

Now look at the top ten research institutions in Engineering overall..

MIT Stanford Berkeley Georgia Tech University of Illinois (Urbana) Carnegie Mellon CIT University of Michigan University of Texas (Austin) Cornell

So there's only one ivy here, and it isn't an especially high ranking ivy in the ivy pecking order.

I don't think people resent wealth at all in America. People have huge admiration for Andy Grove, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page. They have less love for Zuckerberg, but that's because they see him as a punk kid, not because they hate his product. There's plenty of respect mixed in there too.

To me, if you want to say Americans hate people who went to elite institutions, I'd ask: which elite institutions? The elite engineering schools, or the ivy leagues? Ok, maybe some "anti-intellectuals" may brag that they didn't go to Yale (which is stupid, I'll admit). But how many brag that they didn't go to University of Michigan, Illinois, or Texas?

I think it comes down to the notion that wealthy people are wealthy because they created wealth. Once an elite is viewed as a parisitic aristocracy, the admiration drops off a cliff. As it should...

... that said, I do think it's unfair to paint the Ivy League completely with this brush. But it is telling that these venerable, elite institutions have been surpassed by such a different (and often publicly supported) group of universities.

amadiver• 16 years ago

> I suspect the "anti-elite-educationism" Bell predicted is growing now

Much of this article would be improved if it could cite any other sources.

brc• 16 years ago

When I hear the word 'elitist', for me, it means 'one set of rules for me, another set for you'. Or, in another way, 'do as I say, not as I do'.

I'm not sure if that's the context of the word as described in the article, but I get the suspicion that it's not an educational consequence, but an attitudinal one. It might be a backlash against perceived favourable treatment of one sector of the economy/group of people rather than an attack on education alone. If Sarah Palin is getting traction on terms like 'elitist', then it must be because this feeling resonates with the voters. And I don't see that one's education level is the sort of thing to really provide a rich wave of support. Which, to me, means that it must be something else.

pandafood• 16 years ago

What I resent is being tricked into spending my time reading 1000 words that could have been edited down to "why is populism an effective political strategy?" just so that an author that I've never heard of can tell me that they went to Yale.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

You know, it would be great if the author used something other than being accepted by the current "elite" (apparently defined by attending one of a few universities) as her definition of "merit":

"Barack Obama...Columbia and Harvard Law School...Michelle Obama...Princeton and Harvard Law School...Clarence Thomas...Yale Law School, and Supreme Court justice.[...]

In America, the end of the meritocracy will probably come about slowly: If working hard, climbing the education ladder, and graduating from a good university wins you only opprobrium, then you might not bother."

Glad to know that merit == went to Harvard/Yale. I wonder where the author of this article went to college?

falsestprophet• 16 years ago

Glad to know that merit == went to Harvard/Yale. I wonder where the author of this article went to college?

Yale (http://www.anneapplebaum.com/anne-applebaum/)

gojomo• 16 years ago

From what I know of other cultures, the more appropriate question might be, "why do Americans resent upward mobility less than other cultures do?"

See:

In the rest of the English-speaking world, 'Tall poppy syndrome':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

In Japan, "the stake that sticks up gets hammered down" (though this may be more about nonconformity than success):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_proverbs#Sayings

In Scandinavia, 'Jante Law':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jante_Law

(American individualism, materialism, frontier-mythology, immigrant-mythology, and rootlessness are all potential explanations for a warmer appreciation of the idea of the 'self-made success'.)

samfoo2• 16 years ago

I lived in New Zealand (as an American) and discovered Tall Poppy Syndrome while I was there: It drove me mad. Even talking about any of your successes is seen as ostentatious, regardless of the context.

The article mystifies me from a global perspective. Americans to me seem obsessed with upward mobility. The "American Dream" is a dream of upward mobility, for goodness sake.

Why do we resent taxes on the rich, even when we're poor? Because we expect one day that we might be that rich person. One's skin color or religion is largely irrelevant in the US compared with the amount of money that you have. This is not the truth in many places.

arethuza• 16 years ago

When you say "upward mobility" do you mean economic or social mobility (or both)?

In the UK there is a non-trivial relationship between the two.

sleepdev• 16 years ago

Wouldn't the opposite of a meritocracy be an entitlement society? Somehow putting the whole emphasis on acceptance into "gatekeeper" schools strikes me more as the latter.

lionhearted• 16 years ago

It seems like when people say "anti-intellectual," they're not classifying engineers, chemists, doctors, architects, and people studied in management in that group.

Lawyers are the most heavily represented profession in all three branches of government. Personally I'd like to see more people that have to deal with real world constraints like the hard sciences, engineering, and market constraints taking government leadership positions, and less positions going to people who've spent their whole life doing purely theoretical work. But I don't think that's an anti-intellectual position to take.

lotharbot• 16 years ago

Stated another way, when people refer to "intellectuals" in this context, what they mean is "people who are completely detached from reality and critical feedback". They're referring to people who live in a world of pure theory, where advancement comes from impressing others who live in that same world of pure theory. There is some backlash and resentment against those who make a lot of money (often taxpayer money) without producing anything the public considers worthwhile.

I don't know any "anti-intellectuals" who resent engineers, doctors, architects, or capable businesspeople. There is a little resentment for scientists, but it's typically reserved for those in highly theoretical/abstract parts of science, especially those who make public policy recommendations based on theoretical work. And there is a lot of resentment for lawyers and politicians.

known• 16 years ago

Economic mobility != Social mobility

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

Why do Americans resent upward mobility?

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