While the Woke may have demanded access to American institutions via hiring, firing, and promotions policies based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, it was the Center-Left who invited them in. Without the passive (and sometimes active support of the Center-Left, the Woke would be powerless
This sums up my political cognitive dissonance right now.While i find more common ground with th views of center left people(like Steven Pinker or Sam Harris),and i don't like the conspiracy thinking of right wing media(about climate change/covid vaccines/GMO foods etc.),I dont trust a leftist government to push back against wokeness,those people invited it in the first place.
I'm an Obama X 2, Trump X 3 voter & I have some common ground with center left as well. Most people who voted for Trump don't believe in conspiracy theories. A lot of that is fringe people on the outskirts. The mainstream conservative media (The National Review, Fox News, Forbes Breaking News) doesn't focus on conspiracy theories. That is more of the fringe media which we avoid.
Actually Forbes Breaking News on YouTube is my favorite now, because it is direct, live news without journalist opinions/narration. Just straight-up live news. No opinion. Form your own opinion.
Anti-Vaxxers & GMO foods used to be only Democrat, Leftist, Hippie, Crunchy California folks for many decades. Democrat RFK Jr did bring some of this MAHA in, but I would not say it is a common belief among most conservatives. I'm a physician and very pro-vaccines. Almost all Trump voters who I personally know are pro-vaccine, care about the Earth, and don't believe in conspiracy theories.
CBS News (a credible source) Biden officials even admitted "CIA assesses that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting." They say "low confidence" because "intelligence officials say it may never be resolved, due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities."
I personally knew that the virus was created in a research lab as soon as I noticed in 2020 that young, obese patients were dying in record numbers of SARS-CoV-2. As a physician, what I can tell you is that the COVID19 virus is the only virus that specifically targets and kills people living with obesity. People with an elevated BMI. There is no other virus that does this. There is no natural virus that does this. When I saw this, I knew SARS-CoV-2 was not a natural virus but rather a man-made virus. As a physician who understands viruses, I knew before lay people knew.
Who created SARS-CoV-2 & for what purpose? This is unknown but we can infer using clues. The USA is the most obese nation on Earth, thus I would speculate that SARS-CoV-2 was created to be unleashed on the USA. Was it the CCP seeking to destroy USA using this bioweapon? Perhaps.
However Democrats & Republicans both led a Bipartisan Investigation of Fauci for his Gain of Function Research in Wuhan Lab that gave rise to the pandemic.
"From the American Revolution until the 1960s, the upper class of the United States was dominated by a relatively homogenous group. They consisted overwhelmingly of: Male"
The upper class was always half female and this is not a nitpick. What is true is that the male half of the Upper Class was politically and economically dominant. The female half was socially dominant.
That's not a small thing at all. The way people educate their children, speak, dress, eat and in general set parameter of acceptable and not acceptable are crucially important and women police all of these in Anglo-Protestant society.
I really have an issue with thinkers who do not recognize this and integrate it into their analyses.
I agree with you. I was just trying to distinguish between what people are used to today and what happened back then.
Women who were married to men in the WASP upper class were obviously members of the upper class, and their daughters were very likely to marry within that class.
Many young people today do not realize how strict gender roles were in previous generations, and how much the leadership of political, economic, and religious institutions was almost 100% male.
I rephrased the relevant passage to make clear that I am talking about participation in institutions:
"From the American Revolution until the 1960s, American political, economic, religious, military, and social institutions were dominated by a relatively homogeneous WASP upper class. The leaders of these institutions consisted overwhelmingly of:..."
And in the original version, I noted that "spouses and daughters born into the upper class could play important roles, particularly in charitable organizations."
I seriously doubt it. That is the Bush family. They had more than enough money to take real photos, and they lived in the same location.
The photo includes Senator Prescott S. Bush (sitting, center) and three generations of his family, including son George H.W. Bush (top left), grandson George W. Bush (far left), and grandson Jeb Bush (fifth from left, standing, in shorts)
Exploring the changes of class makeup in culture over time can be helpful, but class isn't the defining feature that it once was. In fact, the American story is largely one of individuals and communities transcending the traditional class strictures of Europeans or the other major countries worldwide. The class distinctions gradually rose in urban centers as America grew and prospered, but in most of the country there was often only a very small and less significant "upper class".
The "Professional class" was never the upper class in American society, but rather more of an "Upper-Middle class" that lived alongside middle and lower-middle class citizens throughout most of the country. Although they sometimes lived in nicer neighborhoods, they attended the same schools and engaged in the same civic activities among the general populace.
If the Professional class is now the new upper class, it's only because of an erosion of the middle class by misguided government policies and the schemes of leftist social engineers.
I disagree. Class stratification is stronger today than ever. In the past, America was stratified largely by ethnicity, religion, gender, and race. That type of stratification has declined enormously, but it has been replaced by class stratification.
European class structures is not relevant to this article.
The professional class with four-year college degrees dominates the middle and upper strata of virtually all our institutions (and often the lower strata). They have distinctive beliefs, values, and habits of consumption.
And, no, they do not "live alongside middle and lower-middle class citizens throughout most of the country." They are highly concentrated geographically in the more affluent neighborhoods of the large metro areas in the Northeast and Pacific coast. Even outside those areas, they do not associate with the other classes.
They rarely mingle with the working class or the poor. And for young people their parents are typically college-educated as well, so it is heritable. That is what makes it a class.
I do not find the term "middle class" to be very useful. The professional class like to think of themselves as "middle class" or "upper middle class" because it is uncomfortable for them to acknowledge how well off they are compared to the rest of the world and other societies in history.
What most people think of as the "upper class" is merely the most successful members of the professional class at any one time. They share far more in common with each other than differences.
This very much parallels the conversion of Zoroastrian Iran to Islam by the Arab conquests. Most Iranians seemed to have readily assimilated into Islam without a fight.
Yup. And the same occurred in the Indian subcontinent. And SE Asia. And Africa. All these countries lost their religions, their nationalities, their cultures & their languages. Arabization.
Thanks for an interesting article with a lot of truth.
Two questions.
1)Where did you get the idea that WASPS had lots of children?
My understanding is that well educated protestants of a certain generation always looked down on Catholics for having so many children and not managing their family size.
2) How do you know that (at least many) elite WASPs weren't more liberal than the average American in the past?
I think of my maternal grandparents who were quite waspy (my grandmother felt very guilty playing solitaire). Their politics definitely resembled the message in To Kill A Mockinbird. They were always very sympathetic to those struggling.
1) My point was not to compare WASPs to other ethnic and religious groups at the time, but to compare the upper class of the past to the upper class of today. Pretty much every ethnic and religious group had far more children in the past than today.
I do know that until 1900 high-status families tended to have more children than low status families. This was at least partly because children were likelier to survive to adulthood, and neonatal mortality was much higher then.
2) Applying the term "liberal" to American politics before 1960 is very tricky. The term is generally used to denote Left-of-Center politics. Neither Democrats nor Republicans before 1960 are anything like a 21st Century liberal Democrat (or even a 1980s liberal Democrat).
All the electoral data shows WASPs upper class voted for Republicans, although the Republican were much more ideologically diverse than today.
If you take the WASP values of Protestant religion and strong American patriotism, most Americans would consider them far right of center compared to today.
The Progressives from roughly 1890 to 1920 got a significant amount of WASP support, but I think that Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican) was its best representative. There is every reason to believe that WASPs preferred the non-Progressive wing of the Republican party, which is why it disappeared.
On racial issues, yes, it is likely that WASPs were more sympathetic to Blacks, but by todays standards, they would all be called racists.
I'd add that the elite today are one of the few groups with replacement fertility, though my definition of elite is top 1% income and not struggling NYTimes journos. It's still way lower than before.
Thanks for your comments. My impression is that elite WASPs then (late 19th century, early 20th century) were generally anti-alcohol, pro sterilization of undesirables etc.) That certainly was a different policy preference than elites today.
“Valorizes, or at least tolerates, anti-social behavior, such as confrontational and even violent behavior. Most of all, it valorizes abusing power to forward one’s own ideological views at the expense of the rest of the nation“
Very good analysis. My husband & I are white, upper-class, highly-educated Millennial Obama X 2, Trump X 3 voters. We are parents of 3. Very MAGA. We live in a Major Metropolitan Area that is Solid Blue. I am quite literally surrounded by crazy white liberals who constantly scream hysterically about Pres Trump. I have to pretend to be one of them so I don't lose my job.
As a professional, you cannot be a Trump supporter. You'd lose your job. Same with my husband. Both of our families on both sides are MAGA. Some friends are MAGA, some Democrats & we all stay friends. But professionals & co-workers at work----crazy flaming liberals.
While I am extremely Patriotic & America First, the liberals I see are cosmopolitan, secular. They see religion as something for fools. They are enthralled & obsessed with other cultures (not their own). I am against Cultural Appropriation----but for a different reason. I see it as being Fake, Wannabe, Poser. Hilaria Baldwin-style. Embarrassing. Take pride in your own Country. Take pride in your own Faith. Take pride in your own Culture.
Your claim that DEI is undermining the quality of hirings is unsubstantiated. So is yourclaim that most of the “new” elite is single or unmarried or divorced. I would to see the figures on that. It reminds me of the childless cat lady argument. The figures will show that the richer the group, the higher the percentage that is married and with a stable family life. The poor are unmarried or divorced.
Diversity was first meant to include women. Women and men have the same bell curve distribution of IQ, for example. The result of hiring more women is that a percentage of the mediocre men, not in the right side of the bell curve, gets replaced by women from the top IQ grouping. The ones complaining are the very averagely talented men who only got their place in the past because women and ethnic minorities were excluded.
The same mathematical logic applies to ethnic minorities, the Brown and the Black. American schools and universities are so competitive that if a person is female, or Brown, beige or Black, only a very small group, their elites, get through the system and graduate.
Again, the averagely talented are replaced by the best of the women and ethnic minorities. That is why so-called diversity delivers, your average IQ and talent scores go up. But the large group of second best white, male individuals feel they are losing their God-given rightful places, and that hurts.
It is a commenting rule that you need to keep your comments to the main point of the article. This article is not about DEI. I barely even mention the concept.
You give absolutely no data to justify your argument. Nor are they really related to the main point of the article. This article is not about DEI. I barely even mention it. I have written about it elsewhere:
As for DEI, by definition, if you add the goals of Diversity and Equity to hiring, then you are getting less merit. There is no way around it. If DEI automatically created more merit, then there would be no reason to implement DEI in the first place.
I never claimed that "most of the “new” elite is single or unmarried or divorced." I have no idea where you got that from.
Hiring of women started long before DEI practices, so that is a different issue.
If you look at university admissions (where we have concrete data), the data is extremely conclusive that raising the percentage of blacks and hispanics requires lowering academic standards. Both groups have significantly lower GPAs and SAT scores.
It is not true that "American schools and universities are so competitive." The vast majority of universities admit most applicants. It is only elite universities that are very competitive.
Currently, 65.3% of female high-school graduates go to university, so it is clearly not "an elite" as you call it.
In universities, the group most negatively impacted by DEI are Asians, not whites. The percentage white does not change much.
We should let everyone into universities, regardless of their gender, race, religion, nationality. However, admission should be based on merit, not on inborn characteristics.
It's an open question why the elite ceded power. Was it an ideological decision? Were their talents no longer enough to keep themselves in power? Was it necessary to maintain cultural and political power?
For instance, probably one of the original expansions of the elite was to Jews. It seems obvious that the elite realized that IQ was becoming very important in the modern world relative to other traits, that Jews had a lot of it, and that any elite institution that excluded them would be at a disadvantage.
Similarly, most of the racial diversity slots go to people who are as least diverse as they can manage while still producing avatars that can plausibly "speak for" groups they want the support of.
One of the interesting alignments of today is that the Silicon Valley elite is fighting a civil war amongst itself between autist meritocrats and the woke. A civil war personified by Musk, Vance, and the rest coming out for Trump, but also backed up with data showing a huge partisan rift in tech that has developed this year.
West Coast Tech has always been a separate power center from the Northeast "paper belt", but it seems the last four years have just been "too much" for some to continue to bend the knee.
First of all, remember that the WASP upper class did not lose power and wealth. Their descendants are still there. What they did was allow a huge number of other people into the class. This diluted their influence, but it did not end it.
Why? I think a big part of it was the massive growth in public and private bureaucracy. It was no longer possible to staff all these positions with members of a small upper class. The decision of corporations to hire college graduate was also important. Universities replaced marriage as the class-sorting device.
Finally, the massive economic growth from 1947-73, growth on non-ethnically segregated suburbs, and rampant intermarriage between white ethnic groups broke down many of the barriers. Then the Baby Boomers kicked in the door.
And, yes, the shifting politics of Silicon Valley are fascinating.
Always thought that what made America America was it's vibrant middle class and that the upper one was there to keep the rules of the game fair and square for all (that ALL being redefined over the centuries, granted).
You seem to be describing a cooptation system that diluted (from the bottom) the middle class without giving this new upper a true sense of responsibility or accountability, which is the same, while "freedom" became a "I can do whatever I want; who's going to stop me".
Should that be a reason for satisfaction? a humble writer here has her doubts.
Seen from the bottom, this looks more like: "I haven't had enough in my (humongous) piece of pie; let me come and show you how yours is mine too". We can be all left center we want, what does it really mean? We can be all upper, conservative, ... what do those concepts really mean: on the ground, not from a lofty leather armchair. From the window looking at a pristine view either one of those has a totally different smell, feel, or taste one would imagine. Either or, they both are respectable: both when truly authentically lived by have their place in society. Is it the case today? Or are we facing a big blop of undefined bourders where oportunistic calculations define what today's flavour will be? Tomorrow who knows? Is that how nations, statecraft and ultimately civilisation are built? Asking for a friend.
If so called upper class people, nouveau rich at most, think that left center is a good thing for people who are going to bear the weight of firing, relocating, declaring a few wars here and there, deciding who gets insurance who doesn't, who moves to oblivion, who is rushed under the spotlights of the moment...they're in for a surprise.
Mere point of view, grateful for the opportunity to express it.
One complication about this class system is that there are no good terms to talk about it, this makes the system rather opaque even to many of its own members.
For example, the old-money elites from the old upper class are typically referred to as "WASPs". However, there are many people who aren't members of that club who are technically White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. This has some interesting effects:
1) An Anglo who achieved success in the post-war boom might very well decide he is now a member of the "WASP elite" especially if he lives outside the small number of old-money strongholds and so hardly ever interacts with a 'genuine WASP elite'.
2) Someone, especially a minority or a recent immigrant, hears populist anti-WASP rhetoric and assumes it's meant to refer to all Anglos, or even all Protestants or all Whites, and not just a small number of elite families.
That is a good point that I should have made more clear. Being a white Anglo-German Protestant absolutely did not make one a member of the upper class. The vast majority of WASPs were farmers or factory workers or laborers. They were the same ethnicity and religion but a different class.
The key was intermarriage. A genealogist could trace exactly who was a member of the upper class based on how families were inter-married. Given todays’s technology, it would probably be fairly easy. Just start with the families that I listed and work backwards.
While the Woke may have demanded access to American institutions via hiring, firing, and promotions policies based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, it was the Center-Left who invited them in. Without the passive (and sometimes active support of the Center-Left, the Woke would be powerless
This sums up my political cognitive dissonance right now.While i find more common ground with th views of center left people(like Steven Pinker or Sam Harris),and i don't like the conspiracy thinking of right wing media(about climate change/covid vaccines/GMO foods etc.),I dont trust a leftist government to push back against wokeness,those people invited it in the first place.
Yes, I agree 100%. I will explain more why they did so in future essays.
I'm an Obama X 2, Trump X 3 voter & I have some common ground with center left as well. Most people who voted for Trump don't believe in conspiracy theories. A lot of that is fringe people on the outskirts. The mainstream conservative media (The National Review, Fox News, Forbes Breaking News) doesn't focus on conspiracy theories. That is more of the fringe media which we avoid.
Actually Forbes Breaking News on YouTube is my favorite now, because it is direct, live news without journalist opinions/narration. Just straight-up live news. No opinion. Form your own opinion.
Anti-Vaxxers & GMO foods used to be only Democrat, Leftist, Hippie, Crunchy California folks for many decades. Democrat RFK Jr did bring some of this MAHA in, but I would not say it is a common belief among most conservatives. I'm a physician and very pro-vaccines. Almost all Trump voters who I personally know are pro-vaccine, care about the Earth, and don't believe in conspiracy theories.
You restack a post that says Dems created a virus in China so it would leak all the way to US and use the pandemic to steal elections
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-covid-likely-originated-lab-low-confidence-assessment/
CBS News (a credible source) Biden officials even admitted "CIA assesses that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting." They say "low confidence" because "intelligence officials say it may never be resolved, due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities."
I personally knew that the virus was created in a research lab as soon as I noticed in 2020 that young, obese patients were dying in record numbers of SARS-CoV-2. As a physician, what I can tell you is that the COVID19 virus is the only virus that specifically targets and kills people living with obesity. People with an elevated BMI. There is no other virus that does this. There is no natural virus that does this. When I saw this, I knew SARS-CoV-2 was not a natural virus but rather a man-made virus. As a physician who understands viruses, I knew before lay people knew.
Who created SARS-CoV-2 & for what purpose? This is unknown but we can infer using clues. The USA is the most obese nation on Earth, thus I would speculate that SARS-CoV-2 was created to be unleashed on the USA. Was it the CCP seeking to destroy USA using this bioweapon? Perhaps.
However Democrats & Republicans both led a Bipartisan Investigation of Fauci for his Gain of Function Research in Wuhan Lab that gave rise to the pandemic.
https://reason.com/2024/06/04/anthony-fauci-gives-misleading-evasive-answers-about-nih-funded-research-at-wuhan-lab/
This line of commenting has nothing to do with the topic of the post. Take it elsewhere.
I agree with you. Christos Raxiotis was the one who brought it up (see above) & so I had to respond to him.
"From the American Revolution until the 1960s, the upper class of the United States was dominated by a relatively homogenous group. They consisted overwhelmingly of: Male"
The upper class was always half female and this is not a nitpick. What is true is that the male half of the Upper Class was politically and economically dominant. The female half was socially dominant.
That's not a small thing at all. The way people educate their children, speak, dress, eat and in general set parameter of acceptable and not acceptable are crucially important and women police all of these in Anglo-Protestant society.
I really have an issue with thinkers who do not recognize this and integrate it into their analyses.
I agree with you. I was just trying to distinguish between what people are used to today and what happened back then.
Women who were married to men in the WASP upper class were obviously members of the upper class, and their daughters were very likely to marry within that class.
"I was just trying to distinguish between what people are used to today and what happened back then." I don't honestly understand this.
Many young people today do not realize how strict gender roles were in previous generations, and how much the leadership of political, economic, and religious institutions was almost 100% male.
Of course they do. They even exaggerate it to exclude women's influence entirely.
My point is that a definition of the the upper class as male is simply incorrect.
It was always 50% female, and I'm not saying this from a feminist perspective, I'm saying this from a factual one.
(My attitude towards 2nd Wave Feminism is highly critical, BTW.)
I rephrased the relevant passage to make clear that I am talking about participation in institutions:
"From the American Revolution until the 1960s, American political, economic, religious, military, and social institutions were dominated by a relatively homogeneous WASP upper class. The leaders of these institutions consisted overwhelmingly of:..."
And in the original version, I noted that "spouses and daughters born into the upper class could play important roles, particularly in charitable organizations."
The third photo of the big family looks pasted together.
I seriously doubt it. That is the Bush family. They had more than enough money to take real photos, and they lived in the same location.
The photo includes Senator Prescott S. Bush (sitting, center) and three generations of his family, including son George H.W. Bush (top left), grandson George W. Bush (far left), and grandson Jeb Bush (fifth from left, standing, in shorts)
Exploring the changes of class makeup in culture over time can be helpful, but class isn't the defining feature that it once was. In fact, the American story is largely one of individuals and communities transcending the traditional class strictures of Europeans or the other major countries worldwide. The class distinctions gradually rose in urban centers as America grew and prospered, but in most of the country there was often only a very small and less significant "upper class".
The "Professional class" was never the upper class in American society, but rather more of an "Upper-Middle class" that lived alongside middle and lower-middle class citizens throughout most of the country. Although they sometimes lived in nicer neighborhoods, they attended the same schools and engaged in the same civic activities among the general populace.
If the Professional class is now the new upper class, it's only because of an erosion of the middle class by misguided government policies and the schemes of leftist social engineers.
I disagree. Class stratification is stronger today than ever. In the past, America was stratified largely by ethnicity, religion, gender, and race. That type of stratification has declined enormously, but it has been replaced by class stratification.
European class structures is not relevant to this article.
The professional class with four-year college degrees dominates the middle and upper strata of virtually all our institutions (and often the lower strata). They have distinctive beliefs, values, and habits of consumption.
And, no, they do not "live alongside middle and lower-middle class citizens throughout most of the country." They are highly concentrated geographically in the more affluent neighborhoods of the large metro areas in the Northeast and Pacific coast. Even outside those areas, they do not associate with the other classes.
They rarely mingle with the working class or the poor. And for young people their parents are typically college-educated as well, so it is heritable. That is what makes it a class.
I do not find the term "middle class" to be very useful. The professional class like to think of themselves as "middle class" or "upper middle class" because it is uncomfortable for them to acknowledge how well off they are compared to the rest of the world and other societies in history.
What most people think of as the "upper class" is merely the most successful members of the professional class at any one time. They share far more in common with each other than differences.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-class-in-american-society
Your last paragraph seems to acknowledge that I am correct after all.
This very much parallels the conversion of Zoroastrian Iran to Islam by the Arab conquests. Most Iranians seemed to have readily assimilated into Islam without a fight.
Yup. And the same occurred in the Indian subcontinent. And SE Asia. And Africa. All these countries lost their religions, their nationalities, their cultures & their languages. Arabization.
Question is will this new Elites give up their current monopoly on power without violence?.
Lets see after November 5th
Thanks for an interesting article with a lot of truth.
Two questions.
1)Where did you get the idea that WASPS had lots of children?
My understanding is that well educated protestants of a certain generation always looked down on Catholics for having so many children and not managing their family size.
2) How do you know that (at least many) elite WASPs weren't more liberal than the average American in the past?
I think of my maternal grandparents who were quite waspy (my grandmother felt very guilty playing solitaire). Their politics definitely resembled the message in To Kill A Mockinbird. They were always very sympathetic to those struggling.
Thanks for the comment.
1) My point was not to compare WASPs to other ethnic and religious groups at the time, but to compare the upper class of the past to the upper class of today. Pretty much every ethnic and religious group had far more children in the past than today.
I do know that until 1900 high-status families tended to have more children than low status families. This was at least partly because children were likelier to survive to adulthood, and neonatal mortality was much higher then.
2) Applying the term "liberal" to American politics before 1960 is very tricky. The term is generally used to denote Left-of-Center politics. Neither Democrats nor Republicans before 1960 are anything like a 21st Century liberal Democrat (or even a 1980s liberal Democrat).
All the electoral data shows WASPs upper class voted for Republicans, although the Republican were much more ideologically diverse than today.
If you take the WASP values of Protestant religion and strong American patriotism, most Americans would consider them far right of center compared to today.
The Progressives from roughly 1890 to 1920 got a significant amount of WASP support, but I think that Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican) was its best representative. There is every reason to believe that WASPs preferred the non-Progressive wing of the Republican party, which is why it disappeared.
On racial issues, yes, it is likely that WASPs were more sympathetic to Blacks, but by todays standards, they would all be called racists.
I'd add that the elite today are one of the few groups with replacement fertility, though my definition of elite is top 1% income and not struggling NYTimes journos. It's still way lower than before.
Thanks for your comments. My impression is that elite WASPs then (late 19th century, early 20th century) were generally anti-alcohol, pro sterilization of undesirables etc.) That certainly was a different policy preference than elites today.
“Valorizes, or at least tolerates, anti-social behavior, such as confrontational and even violent behavior. Most of all, it valorizes abusing power to forward one’s own ideological views at the expense of the rest of the nation“
Jan 6?
Very good analysis. My husband & I are white, upper-class, highly-educated Millennial Obama X 2, Trump X 3 voters. We are parents of 3. Very MAGA. We live in a Major Metropolitan Area that is Solid Blue. I am quite literally surrounded by crazy white liberals who constantly scream hysterically about Pres Trump. I have to pretend to be one of them so I don't lose my job.
As a professional, you cannot be a Trump supporter. You'd lose your job. Same with my husband. Both of our families on both sides are MAGA. Some friends are MAGA, some Democrats & we all stay friends. But professionals & co-workers at work----crazy flaming liberals.
While I am extremely Patriotic & America First, the liberals I see are cosmopolitan, secular. They see religion as something for fools. They are enthralled & obsessed with other cultures (not their own). I am against Cultural Appropriation----but for a different reason. I see it as being Fake, Wannabe, Poser. Hilaria Baldwin-style. Embarrassing. Take pride in your own Country. Take pride in your own Faith. Take pride in your own Culture.
<I do believe that it was a key enabling factor of the Rebirth of the Totalitarian Left in the 21st Century.>
Link appears broken.
Thanks. Corrected.
FYI: here is the correct link:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-rebirth-of-the-totalitarian-left
Your claim that DEI is undermining the quality of hirings is unsubstantiated. So is yourclaim that most of the “new” elite is single or unmarried or divorced. I would to see the figures on that. It reminds me of the childless cat lady argument. The figures will show that the richer the group, the higher the percentage that is married and with a stable family life. The poor are unmarried or divorced.
Diversity was first meant to include women. Women and men have the same bell curve distribution of IQ, for example. The result of hiring more women is that a percentage of the mediocre men, not in the right side of the bell curve, gets replaced by women from the top IQ grouping. The ones complaining are the very averagely talented men who only got their place in the past because women and ethnic minorities were excluded.
The same mathematical logic applies to ethnic minorities, the Brown and the Black. American schools and universities are so competitive that if a person is female, or Brown, beige or Black, only a very small group, their elites, get through the system and graduate.
Again, the averagely talented are replaced by the best of the women and ethnic minorities. That is why so-called diversity delivers, your average IQ and talent scores go up. But the large group of second best white, male individuals feel they are losing their God-given rightful places, and that hurts.
It is a commenting rule that you need to keep your comments to the main point of the article. This article is not about DEI. I barely even mention the concept.
You give absolutely no data to justify your argument. Nor are they really related to the main point of the article. This article is not about DEI. I barely even mention it. I have written about it elsewhere:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/intro-to-my-diversity-equity-and
I will address your main points, however.
As for DEI, by definition, if you add the goals of Diversity and Equity to hiring, then you are getting less merit. There is no way around it. If DEI automatically created more merit, then there would be no reason to implement DEI in the first place.
I never claimed that "most of the “new” elite is single or unmarried or divorced." I have no idea where you got that from.
Hiring of women started long before DEI practices, so that is a different issue.
If you look at university admissions (where we have concrete data), the data is extremely conclusive that raising the percentage of blacks and hispanics requires lowering academic standards. Both groups have significantly lower GPAs and SAT scores.
It is not true that "American schools and universities are so competitive." The vast majority of universities admit most applicants. It is only elite universities that are very competitive.
Currently, 65.3% of female high-school graduates go to university, so it is clearly not "an elite" as you call it.
In universities, the group most negatively impacted by DEI are Asians, not whites. The percentage white does not change much.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-1
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-2-of-2
We should let everyone into universities, regardless of their gender, race, religion, nationality. However, admission should be based on merit, not on inborn characteristics.
Yale was where plantation owners learned how to get the natives to kill each other instead of them. Kurt Vonnegut
It's an open question why the elite ceded power. Was it an ideological decision? Were their talents no longer enough to keep themselves in power? Was it necessary to maintain cultural and political power?
For instance, probably one of the original expansions of the elite was to Jews. It seems obvious that the elite realized that IQ was becoming very important in the modern world relative to other traits, that Jews had a lot of it, and that any elite institution that excluded them would be at a disadvantage.
Similarly, most of the racial diversity slots go to people who are as least diverse as they can manage while still producing avatars that can plausibly "speak for" groups they want the support of.
One of the interesting alignments of today is that the Silicon Valley elite is fighting a civil war amongst itself between autist meritocrats and the woke. A civil war personified by Musk, Vance, and the rest coming out for Trump, but also backed up with data showing a huge partisan rift in tech that has developed this year.
West Coast Tech has always been a separate power center from the Northeast "paper belt", but it seems the last four years have just been "too much" for some to continue to bend the knee.
First of all, remember that the WASP upper class did not lose power and wealth. Their descendants are still there. What they did was allow a huge number of other people into the class. This diluted their influence, but it did not end it.
Why? I think a big part of it was the massive growth in public and private bureaucracy. It was no longer possible to staff all these positions with members of a small upper class. The decision of corporations to hire college graduate was also important. Universities replaced marriage as the class-sorting device.
Finally, the massive economic growth from 1947-73, growth on non-ethnically segregated suburbs, and rampant intermarriage between white ethnic groups broke down many of the barriers. Then the Baby Boomers kicked in the door.
And, yes, the shifting politics of Silicon Valley are fascinating.
Always thought that what made America America was it's vibrant middle class and that the upper one was there to keep the rules of the game fair and square for all (that ALL being redefined over the centuries, granted).
You seem to be describing a cooptation system that diluted (from the bottom) the middle class without giving this new upper a true sense of responsibility or accountability, which is the same, while "freedom" became a "I can do whatever I want; who's going to stop me".
Should that be a reason for satisfaction? a humble writer here has her doubts.
Seen from the bottom, this looks more like: "I haven't had enough in my (humongous) piece of pie; let me come and show you how yours is mine too". We can be all left center we want, what does it really mean? We can be all upper, conservative, ... what do those concepts really mean: on the ground, not from a lofty leather armchair. From the window looking at a pristine view either one of those has a totally different smell, feel, or taste one would imagine. Either or, they both are respectable: both when truly authentically lived by have their place in society. Is it the case today? Or are we facing a big blop of undefined bourders where oportunistic calculations define what today's flavour will be? Tomorrow who knows? Is that how nations, statecraft and ultimately civilisation are built? Asking for a friend.
If so called upper class people, nouveau rich at most, think that left center is a good thing for people who are going to bear the weight of firing, relocating, declaring a few wars here and there, deciding who gets insurance who doesn't, who moves to oblivion, who is rushed under the spotlights of the moment...they're in for a surprise.
Mere point of view, grateful for the opportunity to express it.
One complication about this class system is that there are no good terms to talk about it, this makes the system rather opaque even to many of its own members.
For example, the old-money elites from the old upper class are typically referred to as "WASPs". However, there are many people who aren't members of that club who are technically White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. This has some interesting effects:
1) An Anglo who achieved success in the post-war boom might very well decide he is now a member of the "WASP elite" especially if he lives outside the small number of old-money strongholds and so hardly ever interacts with a 'genuine WASP elite'.
2) Someone, especially a minority or a recent immigrant, hears populist anti-WASP rhetoric and assumes it's meant to refer to all Anglos, or even all Protestants or all Whites, and not just a small number of elite families.
That is a good point that I should have made more clear. Being a white Anglo-German Protestant absolutely did not make one a member of the upper class. The vast majority of WASPs were farmers or factory workers or laborers. They were the same ethnicity and religion but a different class.
The key was intermarriage. A genealogist could trace exactly who was a member of the upper class based on how families were inter-married. Given todays’s technology, it would probably be fairly easy. Just start with the families that I listed and work backwards.
“Some have called this “virtual signalling“. “
Isn’t it “virtue signalling”?
Oops. Yeah. Will correct.
LOL
Another great post by one of the best writers today on substack!