Last month I wrote extensively in the Public Square about Charles Murray’s important new book, Coming Apart , an analysis of the striking gap between the top of American society (Belmont) and the bottom (Fishtown).
In yesterday’s New York Times Murray answers critics who charge that he explained the problem but offered no solutions. Murray gives four, three of which are pretty thin.
1. Get rid of paid internships. It is true that the resume-building strategy of fancy unpaid internships is a very Belmont thing to do. But getting rid of one particular way to gather up credentials will only drive the children of elite to develop other strategies.
2. Drop the SAT for college admissions.Murray proposes substantive subject tests instead. I’m not sure this will help, and in fact might make things worse. A mediocre student can be tutored to competency in this or that subject, especially of parents have resources to pay for special classes. This is less true for the SAT, which can level the playing field for a bright kid from a big urban public school whose raw talent shows up in the high test scores.
3. Get rid of the BA as a widespread (and meaningless) job qualification. Employers us the BA as a proxy for character recommendations, because having the ambition and determination to carry on for four more years after high school says something about a young person. And what it says is precisely the difference between Belmont and Fishtown, which won’t go away just because one of the key signals of that difference gets suppressed.
4. Socio-economic affirmation action instead of racial and ethnic affirmation action. This recommendation can make a difference. For decades we’ve been using racial affirmation action to overcome the chasm that separated white America from Black America. The same can be done for the divide separating Belmont from Fishtown.
But it won’t happen. Racial affirmation action served the interests of Belmont, helping white elites solidify their status as “diversity managers.” Blacks don’t compete with Belmont; they are clients that depend on Belmont’s patronage. That would not be true of white Fishtown, which is why it won’t happen.
Bottom line: Murray offers policy solutions to what is a cultural problem. White elites refuse to support a common public morality that would serve to unify American, insisting instead on a self-serving ethic of therapeutic non-judgmentalism. That’s got to change; otherwise, this or that policy will just mask or shift the gap between Belmont and Fishtown.
