The Third Tribe

strech says:

He’s not only missing the middle 50%; he’s missing the entire non-white population as well.  I’m not sure why Brooks didn’t notice this, since the book is Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Also, maybe Murray uses the same numbers elsewhere in the book, but he might be missing even more; Murray has a article in the WSJ:

People who qualify for my Belmont constitute about 20% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49. People who qualify for my Fishtown constitute about 30% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49.

So it might be even less than 50% of the white population.

However, I think the whole thing becomes another lecture about elites being out of touch with ordinary americans.  The test linked around does assert itself as generalized (although defining mainstream around class is questionable in itself):

In one sense, there is no such thing as an “ordinary American.” The United States comprises a patchwork of many subcultures, and themembers of any one of them is ignorant about and isolated fromthe others to some degree. The white ?fth-grade teacher from South Boston doesn’t understand many things about the life of the black insurance agent in Los Angeles, who in turn doesn’t understand many things about the life of the Latino truck driver in Oklahoma City. But there are a variety of things that all three do understand about the commonalities in their lives—simple things that you have no choice but to understand if you have to send your kids to the local public school, you live in a part of town where people make their living in a hundred different ways instead of a dozen, and you always eat out at places where you and your companion won’t spend more than $50 tops, including tip.
…..
So while there is no such thing as an ordinary American, it is not the case that most Americans are balkanized into enclaves where they know little of what life is like for most other Americans. “The American mainstream” may be hard to specify in detail, but it exists.

He proceeds to write a test based on a certain regional, largerly white culture, that to a large extent trancends class (as noted in the discussions on this site).  And while those paragraphs above seem to want to go on about “The American mainstream” as a cross-racial thing, the book is supposedly about white Americans, as are all his statistics.

Murray’s solution (in the WSJ article linked) – elites should move into non-elite (white) culture – has the effects of (a) not making any sense, (b) ignoring people that aren’t white; and (c) shaming elites for not being enough like real Americans “the American mainstream”.   How would elites moving to non-elite areas change anything?  Why would the non-elites follow their lead?  I doubt the non-elites are opposed to the values they’re supposed to learn, so is there something other than direct cultural factors causing the problems?Report