Charles Murray, one of the authors of the infamous book The Bell Curve, has come out with a new book, this one about classism and “White America”. Given his history, it’s no surprise that people are lining up to trash the thing, and with good reason: his quiz for how thick your “upper-class bubble” is essentially a test of membership to one particular group of people in this country: whites who are mainly rural, conservative, and Evangelical Christian. As this subset of America is itself makes up a minority of the country, I really don’t understand what point he is trying to prove, other than some people aren’t members of that group.
I took the test, and received a score of 33, which puts me squarely in the category of “A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle class parents.” My parents were certainly middle class; I would generally not consider myself upper middle class from a wealth perspective. Perhaps from an educational standpoint maybe, although there were no questions on who paid for that college and post-graduate education, just one of a whole host of questions that were omitted for him to prove a point.
My low score is supposed to be indicative of how out of touch I am with the “common man”, though, and with this, I do have to disagree. First, the questions are quite arbitrary, and even counter to what he is trying to prove: is buying Budweiser, now owned by InBev, more “American” than buying a beer that is brewed within 30 miles of my house and employs workers only in America? Why would I go to Applebee’s when I live in an area that has much better restaurants available for the same price? Sure, I understand that in many places, basic cable, chain stores, and terrible beer are all that is available. However, should I choose to live in a place that allows me a wider array of choices, have I somehow lost touch with the zeitgeist?
Second, as pointed out in one of the links, there is little correlation between scoring highly and having empathy for, well, for whomever Murray thinks needs the help, so the rural, conservative, Evangelical Christian viewpoint that is so rarely heard these days. David Brooks, he of the salad bar at Applebee’s, has no idea what life is like for the hourly worker. Nor would Murray, frankly: the world is quite full of highly-educated pundits who continually lecture us on what the “less educated” and “lower classes” want, without ever actually deigning to find those things out for themselves. Look no further than Murray’s belief that poorer people choose to work less and so are at fault for their poverty (and yes, we’ve heard this before).
Murray, like a lot of people on one side of the aisle these days, think that problems such as unemployment, low wages, and foreclosures are due to personal moral failings. They refuse to see any of the large-scale structural changes both in the economy and in the policies of our own government that have led to these issues. After all, it is far easier to blame the individual than to seriously take a look at our society and ask if there are things we could change through policies to make things easier for those who are less well off. Especially if it means people like Murray would have to both 1) pay more taxes, and 2) have some real empathy for people instead of the fake stuff.
I certainly have few illusions that my beliefs make up anything near a majority of the country. I know they don’t. All the same, though, I don’t think I need to regularly eat at Chili’s to participate in a discussion about why a huge chunk of people are falling behind in this country. In fact, I want such a discussion, unlike those like Murray who simply blame the victims.