This happens because even most liberals don't question some of the basic assupmtions of our socio-economic system. The communists had "the classless society" as an ideal, but we in America really believe in it. We don't want to acknowledge that our playing field isn't level, that you really can't get rich or become president if you were born in the wrong socio-economic stratum. Many liberals seem at the most to be concerned about the effect of privilege or lack thereof at the edges--the ways that extreme wealth can warp the system and give unfair advantage, the ways that extreme poverty can shut people out. But away from those edges of extreme poverty and extreme wealth, liberals seem as willing as conservatives to believe that your economic success and the level of formal education you can achieve really are a factor of your intelligence + your hardworkingness. We deny class stratification rigorously: everyone is middle-class except the very rich and very poor, so really everyone except the very poor has the opportunity to do whatever they want.
Liberals also tend not to challenge any of the basic American middle-class assumptions about the nature of work. Everyone is assumed to subscribe to the "work smarter not harder" ethic, where work that requires formal education is seen as "better" than work that requires lots of physical effort but less education. And since intelligence is falsely equated with formal education, it's easy to make the assumption that people in those less-formal-education-required jobs are dumb. Vocational schooling and trade apprenticeships don't really count as education after all. And working your way up to a position of greater skill and responsibility in a factory setting is just off the radar. "Everybody" knows that if you were smart enough for college, or smart enough to realize the importance of college, you wouldn't be working in a factory. Which is why Ted Rall thinks that "you and I"--fellow college-educated liberals--might be able to responsibly handle a lump-sum payment, but for "too many people" (ie. the too many people unlike our educated middle-class selves) there would be too much of a temptation to blow it on a spree on the casino.
And just for the record, I don't think that conservative pseudo-advocates for the interests of the working man have any more real respect for blue-collar workers than Rall does. The conservative approach to the blue-collar sector seems to be all about fanning/creating paranoia and feelings of persecution, and that isn't the way you approach people if you think they have a brain.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-12-28 12:40 pm (UTC)Liberals also tend not to challenge any of the basic American middle-class assumptions about the nature of work. Everyone is assumed to subscribe to the "work smarter not harder" ethic, where work that requires formal education is seen as "better" than work that requires lots of physical effort but less education. And since intelligence is falsely equated with formal education, it's easy to make the assumption that people in those less-formal-education-required jobs are dumb. Vocational schooling and trade apprenticeships don't really count as education after all. And working your way up to a position of greater skill and responsibility in a factory setting is just off the radar. "Everybody" knows that if you were smart enough for college, or smart enough to realize the importance of college, you wouldn't be working in a factory. Which is why Ted Rall thinks that "you and I"--fellow college-educated liberals--might be able to responsibly handle a lump-sum payment, but for "too many people" (ie. the too many people unlike our educated middle-class selves) there would be too much of a temptation to blow it on a spree on the casino.
And just for the record, I don't think that conservative pseudo-advocates for the interests of the working man have any more real respect for blue-collar workers than Rall does. The conservative approach to the blue-collar sector seems to be all about fanning/creating paranoia and feelings of persecution, and that isn't the way you approach people if you think they have a brain.