
Why do Americans resent upward mobility?  - aarghh
http://www.slate.com/id/2270739/
======
mynameishere
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.

~~~
geebee
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.

------
yummyfajitas
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
_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/>)

------
pandafood
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.

------
paulbaumgart
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.

------
sleepdev
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.

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brc
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.

------
lionhearted
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
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
Economic mobility != Social mobility

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

------
amadiver
> 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.

------
gojomo
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'.)

~~~
samfoo
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
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.

~~~
samfoo
Both. However, my only experience is with the west coast and my impression is
that the east coast is different in some respects.

On the west coast (in Seattle specifically -- but I believe the same holds
true in LA or the bay area) nearly all money is new money, which forces social
mobility to be tightly coupled with economic mobility.

Another significant factor is that, culturally, Americans (in my experience)
more closely associate wealth with success than any other nation and success
correlates directly to social value (and mobility).

While it might be possible to move up the economic rungs without moving up
socially, it's not generally possible to move up the social ladder without
correspondingly increasing your wealth.

(Disclaimer: I'm not by any means a member of the social elite -- to the
extent that such a thing exists in Seattle -- nor am I by any means "rich")

