Thinking about class

Ruy Teixeira at the Emerging Democratic Majority continues to write on the white working class and how Democrats can win them. According to his work, the problem of rebuilding Democratic support in this constituency is THE essential question. In a less distinctly political vein, the NYT is beginning a series examining class in America.

I welcome these discussions. For me, class is not about winning extra votes, or even about maintaining a stable democracy. It's a very personal commitment to what I believe is the essential problem of American life: the injustice that allows sons of privilege to coast through life while requiring the daughters of the poverty to sweat blood just to survive.

So I'm going to be following these discussions very closely, and commenting on them frequently.

Go read the first installment of the article. And take a look at the public opinion polls, which show some encouraging things (that class-based liberal policies enjoy widespread support) and some discouraging ones (taxing inherited wealth is unpopular).

I think the NYT article was generally a well-balanced one, although I question their definition of "meritocracy". The piece suggests that the formal barriers to economic opportunity have been removed, but that the background advantages of wealth and education as well as economic trends are creating new class stratifications. Is this really meritocracy? Do you really want to look me in the face and say that poor inner city Bronx kids are inherently less worthy of economic success than prep school kids in the Hamptons? I didn't think so.

Merit is about who deserves what, and by that definition, we don't have a meritocracy at all. What we have is an upper-class guild system in which the high-status/income professions require expensive credentials (PhD's, law degrees, etc.). Access to these credentials in turn is restricted by an educational system that only really educates a small segment of the population, who happen to be wealthy. Most public school kids outside affluent neighborhoods will never receive the intellectual training to enable them get into Yale.

Today's system is an aristocracy employing an egalitarian national myth in a ruthlessly Orwellian fashion. Just look at how any observation that there is inequality of economic opportunities leads to vengeful cries of "class warfare." Sure, the truly brilliant or lucky can climb to the top (or, depending on where they started, to the middle). But why is it that for some mere adequacy is sufficient for success, and for others exceptional talent and hard work is necessary? Does that sound like a "meritocracy" to you? Me neither.