The tea party warns of a New Elite. They''re right.

– October 25, 2010 10:34 AM CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Things would look even worse if I'd brought in Latino, Asian, Black, etc.,aspects of American life about which the New Elite is cluele

The tea party warns of a New Elite They're right.

All this has made the New Elite distinctly touchy (see Maureen Dowd's "Making Ignorance Chic"), dismissive (see Jacob Weisberg's "Elitist Nonsense") and defensive (see Anne

Applebaum's "The Rise of the 'Ordinary' Elite")

"Elite?" they seem to be saying "Who? Us?"

Why are the members of the New Elite feeling so put upon? They didn't object back in 1991, when Robert Reich said we had a new class of symbolic analysts in his book "The Work of Nations." They didn't raise a fuss in 2000 when David Brooks took an anthropologist's eye to their exotic tribe and labeled them bourgeois bohemians in "Bobos in Paradise." And they were surely pleased when Richard Florida celebrated their wonderfulness in his 2002 work, "The Rise

of the Creative Class."

That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial That its membersdiffer from former elites is not controversial What sets the tea party apart from other observers

of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans

Let me propose that those allegations have merit

One of the easiest ways to make the point is to start with the principal gateway to membership in the New Elite, the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities In the idealized view of themeritocrats, those schools were once the bastion of the Northeastern Establishment, favoring bluebloods and the wealthy, but now they are peopled by youth from all backgrounds who have gained admittance through talent, pluck and hard work

That idealized view is only half-right Over the past several decades, elite schools have indeed

of the freshman classes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other elite schools in the 1950s and 1960s were not accompanied by socioeconomic democratization

On the surface, it looks as if things have changed Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion ofstudents coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped The

representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased Yet the studentbodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class

According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's EliteColleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to

Soares's measure of socioeconomic status Only about one out of 20 such students come from thebottom half of families

The discomfiting explanation is that despite need-blind admissions policies, the stellar applicantsstill hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class and above Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55 percent of SAT-takers this year but got 87 percent of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent such

coaching buys only a few dozen points but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting

Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble

of privilege Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live

When they leave college, the New Elite remain in the bubble Harvard seniors surveyed in 2007 were headed toward a small number of elite graduate schools (Harvard and Cambridge in the lead) and a small number of elite professional fields (finance and consulting were tied for top choice) Jobs in businesses that provide bread-and-butter goods and services to individual

Americans, which make up the overwhelming majority of entry-level openings for aspiring managers, attracted just 1.7 percent of the Harvard students who went to work right after

graduation

When the New Elite get around to marrying, they don't marry just anybody One of the funniest and most bitingly accurate parts of "Bobos in Paradise" was Brooks's analysis of the New York Times's wedding announcements Go back to 1960, and the page was filled with brides and grooms who grew up wealthy but whose educations and occupations did not offer much

indication that they were going to set the world on fire Look at the page today, and it is studded with the mergers of fabulous résumés

Three examples lifted from last Sunday's Times: a director of marketing at a biotech company (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MBA) married a consultant to the aerospace industry (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MPP); a vice president at Goldman Sachs (Yale) married a director of retail

development for a financial software firm (Hofstra); and a third-year resident in cardiology (Yaleundergrad) married a third-year resident in pathology (Columbia undergrad, summa cum laude)

The New Elite marry each other, combining their large incomes and genius genes, and then produce offspring who get the benefit of both

We are watching the maturation of the cognitive stratification that Richard J Herrnstein and I described in "The Bell Curve" back in 1994 When educational and professional opportunities first opened up, we saw social churning galore, as youngsters benefited from opportunities that their parents had been denied But that phase lasted only a generation or two, slowed by this inescapable paradox:

The more efficiently a society identifies the most able young people of both sexes, sends them to the best colleges, unleashes them into an economy that is tailor-made for people with their abilities and lets proximity take its course, the sooner a New Elite the "cognitive elite" that Herrnstein and I described becomes a class unto itself It is by no means a closed club, as Barack Obama's example proves But the credentials for admission are increasingly held by the children of those who are already members An elite that passes only money to the next

generation is evanescent ("Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations," as the adage has it)

An elite that also passes on ability is more tenacious, and the chasm between it and the rest of society widens

What Herrnstein and I did not fully appreciate 16 years ago was how relentless this segregation would be It is hard to get numbers no survey has samples large enough to calibrate precisely what's going on with the top percentiles of the population that I'm talking about but the

numbers we do have, combined with qualitative data provided by observers such as Brooks, Florida and Bill Bishop, in his book "The Big Sort," are persuasive

We know, for one thing, that the New Elite clusters in a comparatively small number of cities and

in selected neighborhoods in those cities This concentration isn't limited to the elite

neighborhoods of Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San

Francisco It extends to university cities with ancillary high-tech jobs, such as Austin and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle

With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker

on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end

Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous

Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing

to them

They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million

Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result

of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth

in the accusation

Part of the isolation is political In that Harvard survey I mentioned, 72 percent of Harvard seniors said their beliefs were to the left of the nation as a whole, compared with 10 percent who said theirs were to the right of it The political preferences of academics and journalists among the New Elite also conform to the suspicions of the tea party

But the politics of the New Elite are not the main point When it comes to the schools where theywere educated, the degrees they hold, the Zip codes where they reside and the television shows they watch, I doubt if there is much to differentiate the staff of the conservative Weekly Standardfrom that of the liberal New Republic, or the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute from those of the Brookings Institution, or Republican senators from Democratic ones

The bubble that encases the New Elite crosses ideological lines and includes far too many of the people who have influence, great or small, on the course of the nation They are not defective in their patriotism or lacking a generous spirit toward their fellow citizens They are merely isolatedand ignorant The members of the New Elite may love America, but, increasingly, they are not of

it

Charles Murray is the W.H Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of

"Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."

OCTOBER 25, 2010

Outlook: The tea party warns of a New Elite They're

right

WHO IS "OF AMERICA"?

Why is it that the qualities, traits, and

tendencies you cite as being central to

mainstream America have so little to do

with, say, Latino or African-American

culture? Are they elites as well or just not

American?

– October 25, 2010 10:34 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Things would look even worse if I'd brought

in Latino, Asian, Black, etc.,aspects of American life about which the New Elite is clueless

– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM

ABOUT THE HOST

Charles Murray

Charles Murray is the W.H

Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of 'Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality.

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

I'm Charles Murray, looking forward to chatting about

yesterday's article on the New Elite It's my first time

with this format and software, so don't be surprised if

there is a glitche or two at the beginning

– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM

NEW ELITE?

I grew up in rural northern Wisconsin I was raised an evangelical Christian I went to college at a state university I live in the metro D.C area, and am financially secure This was the "American Dream" we all aspired to Now, because I don't follow NASCAR, like country music or recognize soybeans (I grew up in dairy country), I'm no longer a real American? By your own admission, only 1/3 of Americans still live in rural areas or small towns Why do they get to be the real Americans? Why are their values and experiences more "American" than mine?

– October 24, 2010 11:01 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

I'd kind of hoped that people would realize the quiz was tongue-in-cheek Sounds to

me like you actually scored pretty high on the quiz, but, let me repeat, the quiz is not psychometrically up to snuff Heuristic was the intention

– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM

SO CALLED "ELITISM"

I've heard tea party participants and Republican candidates for office cry about elitism but they point at things like ivy-league college attendance

as their evidence Isn't it a good thing that well-learned people are

engaging themselves in the business of the Republic?

– October 25, 2010 10:34 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Think about the entire experience of life affluent suburb as a child, to a selective college, on to law school, immediate big income it's an incredibly restricted experience of American life

– October 25, 2010 11:01 AM

ROCCI FISCH WRITES:

The tea party warns of a New Elite They're right

– October 25, 2010 11:02 AM

WHAT'S NEW ABOUT THIS BUNCH?

The wealthy elite have long been accused of being out of touch ( The George HW Bush flap about the price of milk, and the flap over checkout scanners comes to mind) What makes this bunch even more so?

– October 25, 2010 10:32 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Actually, the first Bush was an exception Think of the life histories of Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Carter all people with working class

or middle class backgrounds

– October 25, 2010 11:03 AM

MURRAY'S IMAGINARY U.S.A.

Time and again, this essay describes as "mainstream" or "quintessentially American" things that the vast majority of Americans don't do: living in a small town (80% of Americans don't), reading Harlequin romances (85% don't), watching The Price Is Right or Oprah (more than 90% don't), belonging to Rotary or Kiwanis (99+% belong to neither.) It isn't just "elites" who don't do these things; the average person doesn't do them (Nor follow NASCAR.) They're not even majority behaviors amongthe groups where they're more prevalent: the rural-and-small-town, the poorly educated, the old So Murray's quarrel is actually with the REAL mainstream

America, is it not?

– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

I don't think there is any one behavior that a large majority of Americansshare The issue is the extent to which you've been exposed to a lot of things that your fellow Americans do Do you have any personal experience, for example, with blue collar life in the US? If no, you've got a big gap in your

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Most of the people I know in the New Elite are doing a pretty good job

of passing success along I know a whole lot of their children who are making out like gangbusters, and very few who are not going to replicate their parents' success

– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM

WHAT IS "MAINSTREAM"?

Several times, your article refers to "mainstream America" and implies that this demographic outweighs the "new elite," but no numbers are provided and it is poorlydefined within this article So my question is two-fold: a) what are the criteria for an American citizen to be a member of "mainstream America," and b) exactly how large

is this particular demographic and how does it compare to the size of the "new elite" demographic (also not quantified)?

– October 25, 2010 11:01 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

You'll see a book with all those nos in about a year or so that's where the article came from, but journal articles are not what the Post publishes

in Outlook

– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM

BLUE COLLAR JOBS

The Blue Collar Jobs are disappearing anyway To be a "real american" now, shouldn't you have had a service industry job? I'm pretty sure everyone can identify with working at a mall or slinging fries at McDonalds

– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Sure Blue collar was a short-cut You've just gotta know some people who have jobs where their feet hurt at the end of the day If you don't, and you've never held such a job yourself, you've got a problem

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

The antidote has to come from within The New Elite have got to make sure that their children get out of the bubble They are really the audience to which I am preaching

– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM

CHARLES MURRAY: THE NEW ELITE

Do you think the world view differential of average Americans versus elite

Americans have a bigger impact? Example: Gallup says that 80 percent of

Americans identify as non-liberal, whereas you cite 80 percent of elite Americans self-identify as liberal Is this a bigger factor than their "living in a bubble" as far as you are concerned with explaining their "disconnect?" Love your book "The Bell Curve" by the way, it should be a standard College Text!

– October 25, 2010 11:06 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

The politics are important, but people fixate on it Stopped and realized that all the thoughts I want to add to that are way too long to deal with inthis format

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Actually, I've come to have a fondess for Bill, after having been, let's say, not on his side during the 1990s If you grow up as he did, you never leave that part of your experience behind

– October 25, 2010 11:12 AM

NO BLUE COLLAR EXPERIENCE?

Whoa, wait So I was supposed to drop out of college and find a manufacturing job

in order to gain this precious blue-collar experience? Or more realistically, why isn't

a knowledge and respect for those who do those jobs enough?

– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

All I can say is that I've propagandized my own children The saying around the Murray house by one of my daughters is "Dad's idea of the perfect summer job is to work at McDonald's by day and clean toilets by night."

– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM

GLENN BECK

Do you think Glenn Beck represents mainstream America? Should he?

– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

I'm on record as being not a Glenn Beck fan

– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM

INTERESTING THEORY FOLLOW-UP WITH DATA?

I am pre-disposed to agree with you Recognizing that bias, I was wondering if you were going to take this thought to the next step and support with the sort of data you provided in earlier books?

– October 25, 2010 11:11 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

I'm already two-thirds of the way through the book I would give a lot to have access to all the proprietary data that advertisers have about market segments, when it comes to lifestyle distinctions, but there's a fair amount of data in the public domain

– October 25, 2010 11:15 AM

CHARLES MURRAY: THE NEW ELITE; FOLLOW UP

I look forward to your book then; in the meantime, do you have any journal articles coming out that can "tide us over?"

– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

No Just taking a few days off to prepare this article was a luxury I'm up against a deadline I'm going to have a hard time meeting

– October 25, 2010 11:15 AM

NOT JUST THE ELITES?

Isn't there an argument to be made for the fact that most people don't know a lot about cultures outside their own? The elites don't understand middle America, middle America doesn't understand inner city minorities, inner city minorities don't understand the elites and so on indefinitely

– October 25, 2010 11:12 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Yes But it doesn't make much difference to public policy when a factoryworker doesn't know much about life in Potomac, MD It makes a big

difference when the people in senior positions don't know about life a working-class neighborhood.

– October 25, 2010 11:16 AM

ADMISSIONS POLICIES

I've always enjoyed your work, Charles I've read that the group that is truly

discriminated from getting into the elite schools are rural and small town whites That actually the elite schools in their hunt for campus "diversity" fall all over each other to admit students of color on scholarships, whereas white middle-class studentshave little chance It seems it's these admissions policies that contribute to and exacerbate exactly the kind of cultural divide about which you are talking Do you agree?

– October 25, 2010 11:11 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

The universities are squeezed (though I don't have much sympathy for them) They are so aggressive about ethnic diversity, that they don't have a lot of slots for

socioeconomic diversity Summers was openly worried about this as president of Harvard, but I don't see much being done about it

– October 25, 2010 11:18 AM

MURRAY MISSES THE MAINSTREAM

The bigger question, Dr Murray, is what do you know about blue collar life and the mainstream? With your quiz, the picture you painted of "ordinary" America is part nostalgia and part a vicious vision of violence and ignorance Tongue in cheeck indeed You see mainstream America as undereducated rural/small town veterans who enjoy watching fast cars, brawls, country music and game shows, who are hooked on apocalyptic religion and who join civic clubs That your idea of humor? You are a Harvard BA and MIT PhD according to your article, you are the new elitist

– October 25, 2010 11:16 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Well, I did grow up in Newton, Iowa, with a father who had only a high school education, and have lived for the last 20 years in a little blue-collar/farming town in Maryland (we're not talking horse country here), sending my kids to local public schools I'm not COMPLETELY out of touch

– October 25, 2010 11:19 AM

The role of religion

I would bet that a great number of the elite are secular and the commoners at least nominally religious Is a lot of the rhetoric we hear about God from people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin really a kind of proxy for

"our assumptions about how life is supposed to work are not being respected by the people who think we're rubes"?

– October 25, 2010 11:17 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

It depends on which aspect of the elite you're talking about The academic and intellectual elites are extremely secular, but not business elites

– October 25, 2010 11:20 AM

.BREADTH OF EXPERIENCE

You claim that the new elite are limited in their experience, which somehow makes them less American than blue-collar workers and low-class citizens However, virtually all colleges nowadays heavily favor applicants with more well-rounded experience (community service, job experience, athletics, travel abroad, mentoring, etc.), and many of these experiences expose those so-called elites to members of other demographics Does this somehow "not count," just as poverty-line living in graduate school "does not count"?

– October 25, 2010 11:14 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Yes, I suppose having to punch the community service part of your application to Harvard is better than nothing But there's a Lady Bountiful aspect to a lot that (Thursday night, 6-7:30, soup kitchen)

– October 25, 2010 11:22 AM

BLUE COLLAR VS ELITE

I work in Ballston with a bunch of DOD lawyers Back a few yers ago over at the mall these elitist snobs were turning up their noses at the auto techs from American Service Center I chimed in they make more than you do What Yeah a journeymen level tech gets half the labor so they are making about $60 a hour with bonus for a 40-hour week No huge student loans paid, etc., and they making about $130k+ and are 27-years-old That LLB or JD gets you far huh!

– October 25, 2010 11:19 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

One of the worst things about current HS education is that it tells kids that they can either be lawyers or work at McDonalds, and never talk about the many interesting and well-paying jobs that are out there I think the TV show Dirty Jobs is one of the great public service shows out there.

– October 25, 2010 11:23 AM

POLICY IMPLICATION?

What are the policy implications of your thesis? I would guess that a New Elite would be, for example, more likely to send troops into harm's way and less likely to provide useful tax incentives for individuals, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will support a particular troop involvement in Afghanistan

or a particular tax cut program (or for that matter a tax increase)

– October 25, 2010 11:21 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

As I said in another post, I want the New Elite to start questioning the choices they'remaking for themselves and their children Do they really want their kids to grow up

in a hothouse? Do they really want to live in gated communities (gated figuratively

or literally)? Is that the way to a satisfying life?

– October 25, 2010 11:24 AM

THE NEW ELITE

Isn't the real crux of this division in our society traceable to the loss of manufacturingjobs in the U.S.? When I was growing up, it appeared that career choices narrowed totwo: work hard (trade jobs) or work smart (college, professional or semi-professionaljobs) Both seemed to pay well albeit the professional jobs did sit at the top of the heap, at least in prestige Since we have become a service based economy we no longer have that choice and relative evenness of the distribution of the economic pie

is gone Your thoughts?

– October 25, 2010 11:20 AM

CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:

Assembly-line jobs are really boring In many ways, the skilled jobs out there now are a lot more interesting and rewarding than they used to be think about all the new technical specialties taht the economy has thrown in the last few decades But don't get me started about the evils of the role the BA has come to play in Ameircan life

– October 25, 2010 11:26 AM

ELITE IS BAD?