X Close

America’s new caste system The education gap has dented democracy

Is college football the last great unifier? (Getty Images North America)

Is college football the last great unifier? (Getty Images North America)


November 16, 2024   8 mins

I’ve been teaching Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for a very long time. But only recently have I come to appreciate some of his deepest assumptions and their implications about the whole democratic experiment. In particular I’ve been thinking about the opening two paragraphs of the book.

I had always rushed past them, since they seemed anodyne. But Tocqueville mastered the art of making the boldest of claims in an off-handed way. These paragraphs are far more radical than they first appear. They’ve encouraged me to argue that the first and most necessary condition of democracy is the feeling of inclusion.

“Of all the novel things which attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of conditions. I had no difficulty in discovering the extraordinary influence this fundamental fact exerts upon the progress of society; it sets up a particular direction to public attitudes, a certain style to the laws, fresh guidelines to governing authorities, and distinctive habits to those governed.

“Soon I came to recognise that this very fact extends its influence well beyond political customs and laws; it exercises no less power over civil society than it does over the government. It forms opinion, creates feelings, proposes ways of acting, and transforms anything it does not directly instigate itself.”

To fully understand what Tocqueville means by “equality of conditions”, we need to appreciate how different the new democratic societies were. Tocqueville describes the old aristocratic societies as archipelagos of mini-societies inhabited by different classes of people with very different material conditions, and therefore different sets of emotions. But on each island there was a sense of inclusion and mutual recognition of others who faced those conditions.

The situation in the United States was destined to be something else. There were no pre-existing islands of privilege, thinking, and feeling. Instead the earliest Americans faced the same set of opportunities and challenges posed by their new environment — sparsely populated and vast, the land was also wild and untamed. Securing basic necessities was difficult for everyone, not just one class. And as settlement moved West, they had to learn the art of self-government for themselves. They were, in an almost unimaginable way today, starting over.

That task was made much easier, Tocqueville thought, by another kind of equal condition: ethnic and religious homogeneity. The first settlers shared an Anglo-Protestant cultural heritage, prizing religious liberty and a shared stock of concepts for engaging in politics. Paradoxically, it would turn out that a certain kind of homogeneity in early America helped give birth to principles that would one day be employed to defend diversity.

From these observations, Tocqueville drew two very important conclusions. First, since different human feelings are generated by different material conditions, those feelings should be considered brute facts as solid as the conditions themselves. The set of dominant emotions arising from the equality of conditions in democracies are crucial givens, so long as those conditions hold. Second, since the equality of conditions towards which modern societies are tending is historically novel, so too we should expect to see novel democratic feelings.

So what are the implications of these conclusions? If American democracy rests on a bedrock of brute factual similarity — similar challenges in life, aspirations and habits — then the emotional weather of the regime will depend on the degree to which that similarity holds. If it changes, if citizens feel they belong to separate realities, if a part of the population feels excluded, we should not be surprised if it sets off an emotional storm.

American democracy, then, does not rest ultimately on the principles of liberty and equality, as so many patriotic interpreters have assumed. Nor does it rest ultimately on religious beliefs, as his pious interpreters believe. It rests instead on a lucky break. The roughly similar material conditions that the first, roughly similar settlers faced when they landed naturally gave rise to feelings of inclusion and recognition, which spread throughout the entire society, not just on small islands of an archipelago.

Tocqueville’s observations about inclusion were not wholly original — thinking about the political significance of inclusion and mutual recognition in the Western tradition began with Aristotle, was elaborated in the Christian Middle Ages, and continues to play a role in Catholic theology today. But his application of them to modern democracy was.

In Tocqueville’s view, to sustain a democratic society, feelings must be engaged and then widely shared: what “keeps a majority of citizens under the same government” is the “instinctive and, in a sense, unconscious agreement resulting from like feelings and similar opinions”. What he has in mind here has nothing to do with an aspiration to Christian virtue, or the moral principle of equality, or appeals to a contrived notion of reflective civic patriotism. He is referring to a factual reality, a brute fact of congruence in the feelings of citizens and their general outlook on the world. Either it is there or it is not.

There still are contexts in which a basic congruence of feelings and outlook among Americans becomes apparent. Imagine you have been spending a few years in a foreign country, whose language you have learned and whose customs you have got used to. One day you find yourself in a restaurant seated next to a group of loud and garrulous American tourists. Suddenly you feel yourself beamed into a psychological and moral universe you only dimly remember. In it, everyone is open, even confessional, in their speech. Self-doubt and irony have fled the room, driven out by an almost oppressive bonhomie. The poor waiter has been asked for his first name and is informed that these new friends from downstate Illinois will be staying in touch.

How do you, the American observer, feel once they have left? The sound of familiar voices might come as a welcome respite from the rudeness of the French or the humourlessness of the Germans. You might feel the urge to pull up a chair and join them, knowing that you would be welcomed into the conversation. If you’ve had too much to drink you might even share your email address with them at the end of the evening.

But what if you have been straining to fit into this foreign culture and not appear American? What are you feeling as you stick your head more deeply into your copy of Le Monde and pray that the tourists leave soon? You are experiencing exactly the same set of feelings as the other American observer, just with a negative valence. You both recognise yourselves in your fellow citizens and feel implicated in their behaviour. Some inner string vibrates at the same frequency as those of these intruders, whether you wish it or not.

But, notwithstanding that example, we cannot deny that the feelings of democratic belonging have diminished rapidly in our contemporary democracies. A complex cultural gap has opened up in our democracies that we find much more difficult to bridge.

“A complex cultural gap has opened up in our democracies that we find much more difficult to bridge.”

Tocqueville’s subtle observation about the difference between Southerners and Northerners that he discovered on his travels might help us understand:

“If two men belonging to the same society have the same interests and to some extent the same opinions, but their characters, education, and style of living are different, it is highly likely that they will not see eye to eye.”

Even if he found himself speaking to people of the same class, with the same economic interests, their characters, education, and styles of living were so different — mainly due to slavery — that mutual recognition and political friendship between them was difficult, and soon would become impossible.

Today the cultural gap in America is not a function of geography but of education. A certain level of education — basically a bachelor’s degree — is now required to advance significantly in society. We may forget in our little university and urban cocoons but only a little more than a third of adult Americans have such a degree. When I looked up the percent of Manhattanites with a university degree, which I assumed to be a little less than 50%, I discovered that it has risen to nearly 70%. It is only 23% in the Bronx. I had no idea.

And the consequences of this gap are not just economic. University does not only provide training for entering lucrative professions, it also socialises students into new styles of living, as Tocqueville called it, that are vastly different from those of the less educated. Graduates come out of the university with different ideas about how to comport themselves in public and at work, what to eat, how to entertain themselves, how many children to have and how to raise them, how to manage money, and how to take care of their health. Even the typical bodies of our cultural classes are notably different today.

The term caste is thrown around fairly promiscuously, but frankly I can’t think of a better one to describe the seriousness of the new cultural gap. If Tocqueville was right that extremely different styles of living can set apart even people who have shared economic and political interests, then we are in trouble.

A widely shared sense of exclusion, with all the attendant emotions of shame and resentment, is toxic to democracies. We are living with a new brute, generating fact that is triggering new feelings of distrust, contempt, resentment, antipathy, and withdrawal. A large class of white Americans is experiencing for the first time a range of emotions that American minorities, especially black Americans, have always had to contend with on a far vaster scale.

That is why I have come to take very seriously the expressed need to feel included, “to see people who look and talk like me”, beginning in our educational establishments. In a book I wrote a few years ago I treated such expressions as divisive, on the grounds that emphasising group identities can block people from recognising the wider common good. While that can be true, it is more true of diversity. There is, I think, a tension between the ideals of diversity and inclusion, since the former is centrifugal in effect and the latter is centripetal.

But the feelings of exclusion in Americans today extend beyond minority groups. The white working class feels it, the religious population feels it, the South feels it. Our common sense of mutual recognition is melting away and we have no idea really how to stop it. The crisis of inclusion extends far beyond our elite spats over college admission and corporate hiring.

Is there an institution that still helps Americans from different walks of life feel included? The only example I can come up with is college sports — and for a somewhat personal reason.

My late father never attended college. But he was a sports fan and had developed a vicarious attachment to the University of Michigan. The day I was admitted to the university was the second happiest day of his life, the happiest being the day he saw the team win the Rose Bowl. After he was widowed, he came to visit me every weekend and we would go to games together — football, basketball, anything. He started buying up paraphernalia and soon everything in his house was covered in maize and blue.

But the significance of the experience for him was not simply in watching university sports. It was that when we crossed campus together, he felt at home. He knew the streets and he knew the buildings. He felt somehow welcomed — even without a degree. And it certainly made him more willing to pay taxes for the university.

This story is not to say life is like football — quite the contrary. I am simply saddened and a little shocked to discover that I couldn’t think of a single other institution in American life that makes people from different education classes all feel included.

And even then, I’m not sure it’s still working. When I attended an Ohio State game last year, I marvelled once again at the class diversity of the crowd and the palpable sense of friendship among those who attended. But as I walked past the cars in the parking lot when the game was over, I saw nothing but bumper stickers expressing hate or contempt for fellow citizens who didn’t share the owner’s political outlook. What happens in the stadium, stays in the stadium apparently.

So, yes, we are in a very bad way.

***

This article is based on a lecture delivered at the conference “Beyond the Impasse: Theological Perspectives on DEI” at the Aquinas Institute in Princeton.


Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

89 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
T Bone
T Bone
25 days ago

Thought provoking piece, Mark. As a lifelong College Football fan, I completely agree with your last point.

I don’t necessarily buy the exclusionary aspect of “education gap.” I know that’s a popular theory in Professor Circles but in my opinion the gap is just traditional values vs progressive liberal values. The reason it seems like the cultural divide is caused by education gap is because college students are being educated by hyper-progressive professors.

When such a large chunk of the “college educated” are speaking an alien language with EU cultural values, it makes no sense to ordinary Americans trying to live their life. The real gap is between Social Engineers and ordinary people that don’t want to be engineered by experts; who themselves appear to lack common sense.

Tocqueville identified 5 key concepts crucial to American success: Egalitarianism, Populism, Laissez-Faire, Liberty, and Individualism. The College Educated Left despises the final three. They only care for the first two. That’s probably because their professors think of America as backwards and regressive. They think its backward and regressive because the nation’s peasants would rather take their chance struggling as individuals than merge into the collective hivemind dictated by the Gospel of Social Expert Control.

People get tired of being scolded by social experts who are frequently wrong on basic questions and don’t conduct any fact/value test before weighing the priorities of others. The Professor Class needs to humble itself. Yes, you are smart and impressive but that doesn’t automatically mean your worldview should drive the public consciousness.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

Totally agree with this. I think the author totally underestimates the significance of geography as well. The real divide in America is between coastal and urban elites vs flyover country. Someone with a BA in North Dakota has much more in common with a plumber down the street than someone with a BA in New York. I enjoyed the essay though and see its value.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

What utter garbage!

Brett H
Brett H
25 days ago

Why? Everything he said seems to make sense. What is it you disagree with?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
25 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

That it makes sense. THAT is his issue. CS’s world brooks no dissent to the dogma.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
25 days ago

Poor old Poo Fash has no argument and, like the rest of they/them’s freshly disenfranchised woke hierophancy, can only resort to abuse. Is your mood as blue as your hair was, Poo Fash, before you shaved it off? Have you made the ritual video of yourself sobbing in your car?

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
25 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

Oh, I’d pay money to see that.

Angus Douglas
Angus Douglas
25 days ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

What’s up with the abusive tone?

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
23 days ago
Reply to  Angus Douglas

You should always try to offend the woke as much as possible.

T Bone
T Bone
25 days ago

Thanks buddy. I take that as a compliment!

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
25 days ago

The mewling from Champagne Socialists everywhere should leave us cold, because we’ve seen what makes them cheer.

Alan Lambert
Alan Lambert
22 days ago

OOOH, Champagne Socialist rearing your ugly head at last. Now that the Orange God has assumed his triumphant state have you stopped crying over your delusional and politically inept predictions of a Harris kleen sweep?

David Morley
David Morley
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

the gap is just traditional values vs progressive liberal values

But unless you see this as an emerging class distinction, and therefore something to be taken seriously and worried about, you’re just poking at people you disagree with.

Caroline Galwey
Caroline Galwey
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

They don’t like populism either.

Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

The Professor class is credentialed but neither smart nor impressive. The Professor class are generally ignorant of anything outside their realm of expertise, and even there, their complete lack of street smarts and common sense makes them into effectively idiot savants, and those that follow them into naive idiots. Thank God the majority of Americans saw through the BS and chucked Harris out. Hopefully Musk will clean house in Washington DC and remove most of the obstructive bureaucrats who think they know best but are invariably wrong.

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

Several years ago, to describe the crass, deliberately inaccurate depiction of America by political pundits on social media, I coined the expression “Tik-Tokqueville”.
It didn’t catch on.
Hey ho.

Chip Prehn
Chip Prehn
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

Prof Lilla’s article is very thought-provoking. As I read it, I thought how sad it would be if the Church were not a place wherein, like Michigan Stadium, people can find unity in their diversity. I realize that in too many churches class and ethnic differences are only magnified, but some parish churches in all “denominations” really are hitting the mark as well as or better than Michigan Stadium. … I do have one important question: Is it accurate to assume that there was an equality of condition in early America? I think there can be a deep cultural unity based e.g. on religion (Durkheim), such as (perhaps) the Massachusetts Bay Colony had (perhaps), but does this religio-cultural unity depend on an equality of condition or stem from it? It seems to me that it’s now been demonstrated that equality of condition in a free society is not going to last very long. The hard-working and the clever tend to end up with more material blessings than those who do not work hard or fail to use their heads. I do not know if this is a “law,” but it seems like one: Which would mean that, even in New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there probably was not equality of condition for very long (if there ever was any such thing). Americans are human beings, after all. I think historical scholarship shows that there were elites in every part of what became the USA, not just in the South. The obfuscating vocabulary and semantics about class differed in the North in comparison to the South, where many elites were okay with the designation “aristocrat;” but is it not the case that human societies always see the rise–rather quickly, all things considered–of the aristoi? If so, I wonder how this would alter Prof Lilla’s argument. I don’t personally read de Tocqueville to have assumed that a society, even that of the USA, can be simple and therefore unnatural. This view is corroborated by de T’s recognition that a good, sound democracy will after all have great complexity in terms of class, material conditions, education, &c.

T Bone
T Bone
25 days ago
Reply to  Chip Prehn

Great comment. Yes, I do believe a church congregation can achieve something close to the kind of unified diversity you’re referencing because I’ve seen it. Scaling and sustaining that is a the tricky part.

I completely agree with you about conditions. A hierarchy will grow in any place and any society so “material equality” is a bit of a misnomer. I think he’s correct that there was relative equality and I don’t object to a commitment toward relative equality as long as you’re not lowering the ceiling to raise the floor. Too many equalitarians want to punish high achievers for excelling outside the group. I think in a functional society, the high achievers are less dismissive and exploitive of the folks with less and that promotes a less resentful society.

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
24 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

In a more homogenous society people with similar values, views and behaviour patterns, maybe even IQ, have more similar outcomes; hence they are less heirarchical. In class-bound societies eg Britain until about 40 yrs ago, each class was fairly homogenous (obviously what struck De T. about USA was the lack of social classes – among whites).

Walter Schimeck
Walter Schimeck
22 days ago
Reply to  Jon Barrow

Wasn’t there an underclass of indentured, transported felons in the colonies almost from the very beginning? Early American society was probably less classless than de Tocqueville imagined, though it was certainly more culturally homogeneous than it is today.

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
17 days ago

You’re right, at least from a modern perspective. If you read De T it’s what he says though, and I can imagine that in the France/central Europe of his day different classes were something like different species. He doesn’t mean different material conditions but entirely different worldviews. The ‘aristocratic spirit’ that he saw held power throughout much of Europe up to his day (exceptions include possibly parts of Britain and Scandinavia) has now completely disappeared (as he foresaw).

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
24 days ago
Reply to  Chip Prehn

Many churches today are ‘woke’ making it difficult for traditionalists to attend…

Howard Ahmanson
Howard Ahmanson
22 days ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

And many are MAGA. But thanks to the Holy Spirit, many have consumed neither the yeast of the Pharisees (the woke) or the yeast of the Sadducees (MAGA) .

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
23 days ago
Reply to  Chip Prehn

I too am “saddened and a little shocked to discover that” the author “couldn’t think of a single other institution in American life that makes people from different education classes all feel included”. De Tocqueville famously mentions America’s churches as a source of its greatness and strength. From within a professor’s bubble I suppose religious institutions are easily overlooked. But my own experience is of churches at the hub of their communities, equalizing, uniting and reinforcing.

Alan B
Alan B
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

Reading comments like this about the “Professor Class” I don’t know whether to keep insisting that students work hard and not make excuses (no easy task these days), or just let them remain in ignorance to avoid some third party hassling me over a putative lack of humility. To choose the latter would only make college into more of a “finishing school” than it is already. But isn’t that the heart of the problem Lilla’s gesturing towards?

T Bone
T Bone
25 days ago
Reply to  Alan B

Can there not be some common sense balance between humility and confidence in one’s own subject matter brilliance?

Professors are subject matter experts. If Professors stay narrow this balance can be achieved pretty easily. It’s when the subject matter experts begins to widen the scope where problems come in. It may be true that there are overlapping, intersecting, interconnected strands that run through topics but anybody diving into Holistic Concepts needs to do so with a degree of humility.

Dee Harris
Dee Harris
24 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

“It’s when the subject matter experts begins to widen the scope where problems come in. ”
For Brits that would be Gary Lineker on the BBC. Although if you Google him it makes no mention of his outspoken ‘progressive’ politics. 🙂

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
24 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

Within the UK political bubble, there are too many Arts and Humanities graduates pretending to have STEM expertise: it’s why we have a Climate Emergency and NET Zero policies that are ruining our industries. Just look at the Dept of Energy, both past and present.

I went to a West End show and marvelled at the high quality. Those on stage were good, but the scenery, the costumes,the whole production worked like clockwork. The dedication to their discipline is there for all to see. But they have been able to express their skills in public, which must be satisfying, and encouraging for those wishing to follow them.

And yet, for those that have spent years, decades even, studying and working in Science and Engineering projects, learning how to manage the multi-million pound projects, battling the physical world, if they don’t think ‘The Science’ of Climate Change and its current remedy is the answer, they are barred from discussing it on the BBC. And the country is going to be left with debt and no industry. Germany is in an even worse state in this regard, so it isn’t just a UK thing!

Another consequence of this misdirection is the lack of well paid, wealth creating, technical jobs, that the slightly less academic, but still bright, used to fill. And this is probably causing as much aggravation as not going to university to read some sort of History.

Eamonn Toland
Eamonn Toland
25 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

What shocks me about the US college system is the role of legacy, with the children of alumni/donors 7 times more likely to be admitted to their Alma Mater. You can throw bromides at meritocracy by prioritising the admission of first generation students whose parents didn’t attend college, but when inter generational social capital tips the scales so heavily, you have a fundamental bias towards mediocrity.

Dee Harris
Dee Harris
24 days ago
Reply to  Eamonn Toland

Nepo Babes?

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
24 days ago
Reply to  Eamonn Toland

Don’t worry about the rich sending their children to study the Arts, be concerned about those that need the skills to become highly skilled, wealth creating, workers.

And reduce the bureaucracy that so inhibits the wealth creators. It might alter school leavers dreams enough to create a better world.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
24 days ago
Reply to  Eamonn Toland

Re: legacy leading to ‘a fundamental bias towards mediocrity’. That doesn’t really hold. Harvard doesn’t admit all ‘legacies’; usually the student had to be up to snuff to get in. I have known many legacies who have not gotten in. That said, ‘mediocrity’ can enter the academy when someone, affiliated with any school or not, donates enough which compels the school to take their child. Some schools even set aside a small amount of such spots. But it’s not legacy per se which is a hindrance to excellence.

Eamonn Toland
Eamonn Toland
23 days ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

The fact that some legacies don’t get admitted doesn’t prevent there being a mediocrity bias. Why should legacy be a factor at all in undergraduate admissions? In Ivy League Schools it is often the deciding factor. If 50-50(ish) decisions come down to legacy, then you have an obvious bias. It really doesn’t happen to the same extent elsewhere, although there are some concessions for athletic prowess, particularly at postgraduate level.
When I was an undergraduate at Oxford it was seen as an enormous achievement to get onto the second university rowing or rugby team. The Blues teams were packed with Olympians and internationals taking a Masters. One Admissions Tutor admitted nine postgraduate students in one year, eight of which went straight on to play rugby, however the idea that undergraduate admissions should be influenced by anything other than academic ability and potential tutorial performance would be anathema in most universities outside the US.

Troy MacKenzie
Troy MacKenzie
24 days ago
Reply to  Eamonn Toland

The problem with this is that it doesn’t factor in DNA. If someone is clever enough to get into Harvard, it much more likely that their children will also be clever.

Eamonn Toland
Eamonn Toland
23 days ago
Reply to  Troy MacKenzie

In the studies I’ve seen, legacies “ought” to be 2X more likely to be admitted on objective merit – they are more likely to be smart and to attend good high schools. It’s the gap between 2X and 7X more likely that is the legacy impact.

John Croteau
John Croteau
24 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

OMG, wow! T Bone nailed it. I found Mark’s piece elitist, narrow-sighted, and frankly repulsive. My father, a WWII veteran and member of the Greatest Generation, admired his educated peers, who respected and trusted the working class. They mixed seamlessly at work, at church, and — on college campuses (mine was Penn State!). They loved and fought side-by-side for America. The working class isn’t downtrodden or disadvantaged. It’s the indoctrinated elitist class that is miserable with disdain for their fellow Americans. Mark seems to be one of them.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
24 days ago
Reply to  T Bone

The purpose of education is to enlighten and, if possible, broaden the mind enough to accept that what is sauce for the goose may also be sauce for the gander. People who flaunt and profess their traditional values fail to grasp that. They reserve the privilege of individualism to themselves while denying it to others and in the process keeping the idea of equality as far away as possible from their minds. At one time support for widening the franchise would have been seen as progressive and contrary to traditional values, as would have been such things as translating the bible into vernacular languages, including women in politics or allowing them to write cheques, emancipating homosexuals or the abolition of slavery. And I suspect the consequence of the end of slavery is what sticks in the craws of traditionalists most today. While they may grudgingly accept that people of colour should not be put in chains, they are uneasy with idea they should be put on par with those who are not black. And, horror of horrors, that they should be allowed to rise to governing positions. Hence we see opposition to Affirmative action dressed up in the guise, ironically, of opposing discrimination. Thus we see the persistence of the theory that Obama is not US born and its espousal by Trump and his followers in order to delegitimise his election as the President. Obama was the last straw, and the so-called self defined traditionalists swooned at Trump’s feet, impressed by his vigorous campaign to have five innocent black boys executed in New York, like ducks taking to water. Trump and those today professing to be traditionalists follow in a direct line from Wallace who could not stomach desegregation. As will be noted Trump’s battle cry is pretty much in the same spirit of that of Wallace’s Stand Up For America.

j watson
j watson
25 days ago

An article that pulled one in further as one read.
Is the issue different with some uniqueness in the US? It seems a cliche but East & West Coast do feel different to rest, even for those who have never lived in the US. It seems US History, esp the Civil War, means some cultural differences remain deep rooted. I was always struck by how the US referred to itself as ‘a’ United States until 1865, and only ‘the’ afterwards. If the UK has some tensions between it’s constituent nations after hundreds of years together it seems inevitable some form of sub-conscious similarity persists across the Atlantic.
The universality of sporting allegiance we would recognise in the UK too. One’s football team allegiance cuts across other boundaries, and reassuringly the diversity of faces within crowds now significantly different to 30 years ago. It gives one great hope for the future (as of course do the actual make-up of the teams) that diversity and inclusion can be squared. I would add the Military too and it of course much bigger and invests more in it’s people in the US. 40 years ago when I joined the RN diversity wasn’t a feature at all, and a class-orientation remained strong. By time I finished, almost 20 years ago, things felt appreciably different and via impressions gleaned from one’s children who have gone on to serve too that trend has continued. I wish more had the opportunity that an enlightened military service can offer that breaks down caste.

David Morley
David Morley
25 days ago
Reply to  j watson

But if Lilla is right and education is the key divider, is also increasingly the main way of getting on, and is tied to distinct cultural beliefs and practices – then it is class distinction which is opening up in the US.

steve eaton
steve eaton
24 days ago
Reply to  David Morley

There has always been class division in the US. Universities and Colleges have always served as gatekeepers for the wealthy. It only started opening up to the lower classes when it started to train those lower classes in what the wealthy want them to do.
A difference between the UK and the USA is that the wealthy managed to keep alive that sense of egalitarian society among the lower classes. Not that they believed in it themselves, keeping a non-egalitarian society peaceful is after all their entire purpose. But they kept alive the notion that anyone can be anything they want to be if they only work hard enough. That keeps the lower and middle classes voting against their own interests because tey believe that someday they themselves will be among the wealthy.
More recently though it is becoming painfully obvious to even the dimmest among us that the US is a tiered society with different systems of law enforcement, different courts, different rules for banking and etc. And that very few people attain real wealth though many think they have the big house etc. But that is just on loan from the elite class who run the banks.
Most of us own debt and have little of the capital or wealth.

David Morley
David Morley
24 days ago
Reply to  steve eaton

Obviously there’s a lot of truth in what you say. But I would argue that class is more than simple inequality. And one of the key differences is that members of different social strata decreasingly identify with those outside that strata, and increasingly identify with those within it. In dress, cultural habits, morality etc.

j watson
j watson
24 days ago
Reply to  steve eaton

I’d add – there is clear voting behaviour difference between those with and without a College/Uni education. As more have gone through Higher Education the potential fault-line has been exacerbated because more notice the marked subsequent difference in status and rewards. In US, and to some degree in UK, the myth of meritocracy then apportions self-failing onto why someone has not been more successful. Too much perhaps had been ‘get your College degree to prove you deserve’ and if you didn’t then what you’ve got instead is what you deserved.
It’s the age-old false consciousness about economic inequality determined to place all the blame on the individual and little on the way the system functions. We all have agency of course, but the dice is loaded too.

Milton Gibbon
Milton Gibbon
25 days ago

I had always imagined the army to be the most egalitarian force in American society, with ranks being based upon merit rather than social background (unlike the UK) and less “politically represented” parts of the country – the South, African-Americans etc. – more equally treated than in society at large. I’d be happy to be corrected on this but as the author says, it won’t do to have the circuses of the day being the main unifying factor in American society. The UK has class baked into its sports which mitigates against this but it isn’t healthy in the American context.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
25 days ago
Reply to  Milton Gibbon

That used to be true about the Army and perhaps in some small circles like special ops units, it still is. Broadly speaking, no. The work of former Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mike Milley and SecDef Lloyd Austin, with their witch hunt to root out alleged white supremacists in the ranks, had the obvious effect – a huge drop off in enlistment among whites. The group that has historically died in combat at twice its proportion of the population has opted out, tired of being demonized for imagined shortcomings.

j watson
j watson
24 days ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Seen articles where the death rate for Hispanics and Blacks was higher in Vietnam than for Whites, as a proportion of total serving. Not so sure your last point thus correct

Matt Woodsmith
Matt Woodsmith
24 days ago
Reply to  j watson

That’s certainly true for the early years of Vietnam. I think Alex is referring to pre-integration wars, such as the two World Wars, the Spanish American war which would have been almost entirely white men fighting and dying.

j watson
j watson
24 days ago
Reply to  Matt Woodsmith

Yes but so far as US Blacks concerned they weren’t allowed to serve in the frontline in WW2.

David Morley
David Morley
25 days ago

I’m not sure we need to use the term “caste”. What is emerging in the US is “class” in the traditional sense.

It’s an observation made by Andy Warhol amongst others that in America people eat and drink the same things regardless of class. Similar things can be said of clothing. Coke, burgers, denim, chinos etc. But increasingly this is changing, and changing along class lines.

Most significantly, moral attitudes are dividing. What we refer to as woke (or “luxury beliefs”) is a de facto bourgeois morality, and one which excludes those who do not share it. Not accidentally though – that is the role it plays in providing class distinction.

Brett H
Brett H
25 days ago
Reply to  David Morley

What we refer to as woke (or “luxury beliefs”) is a de facto bourgeois morality, and one which excludes those who do not share it.
Very interesting comment,

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
25 days ago
Reply to  David Morley

Yes. And distinction is key, because a class defines itself by what it is not even more commonly than by what it is.
Other than that it’s possessions are status symbols and indicators of its class membership, more houses than a person can make use of for instance, or a similarly useless degree, such things are worthless. Worthless things however that a person will go much further out their way to acquire than things which could make them much happier if only they were content with being themselves, rather ‘members’. Such individuals in striving to distinguish themselves actually kowtow, diminish and demean themselves. But of course there’s no telling them that. Membership, you wouldn’t understand, is priceless!

John Croteau
John Croteau
24 days ago
Reply to  David Morley

Neither term — caste or class — works. The separation is not hierarchical, as the luxury belief crew would have you believe. America was founded on the pursuit of happiness. The educated elite happen to be some of the most miserable people to others and to each other. Take Hillary, for example
Some are waking up after Trump’s rout of America’s latest election. You can’t call him, RFK, Nicole Shanahan, Elon Musk, or Tucker Carlson underprivileged or uneducated. With the days of censorship and legacy media echo chambers over, more and more elitists will come to realize the error of their ways. Ana Kasparian comes to mind.
They are true, classic Americans.

Saul D
Saul D
25 days ago

Is a factor that the west has lost the nobility of making things? The settlers turned the earth into farms, and the riveter was always respected by the engineer and architect due the the mutual respect for the physical, which was then further reflected in sports.
Now, it seems, half the world spends its time writing reports and bullet-point charts without understanding the struggle of ‘making’. They become eternal scolds and critiques, rating other people’s work as if the people who did that work are somehow a lesser class than the masters of the Powerpoint charts.

Paul T
Paul T
25 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

In the workplace this is exemplified by HR departments whose staff seem to think they are all at the most senior level and the little people doing the work don’t need their calls answered or their queries dealt with; there is unconscious-bias training and the like to to force on the workforce. It is a department in most businesses that is somewhat ideologically captured.

rick stubbs
rick stubbs
25 days ago
Reply to  Saul D

For sure. Plus many among the intellectual class in the US are convinced the greatest service to the country and fellow citizens is performed by the free public offering of their opinion. That is quite insufferable obviously..

Steven Targett
Steven Targett
25 days ago

I’d suggest the military but leftist liberals are a very rare breed there particularly among the rank and file.

Eric Lubliner
Eric Lubliner
25 days ago

The military?

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
25 days ago

” … their characters, education, and styles of living were so different — mainly due to slavery — that mutual recognition and political friendship between them…soon would become impossible.”
I wonder if this mistaken assumption is at the heart of the Liberal hatred of all things Southern.
Because, of course, slavery had almost no effect on the lives of most of the men who fought for the Confederacy. The huge plantations with their hundreds of slaves were a phenomena of a few counties in a few States. The rest of the South experienced slavery in pretty much the same way that the North did; slaves were a small portion of the population. Some were maids and laborers, some were craftsmen; wheel-wrights, furniture makers, distillers of fine whiskey, etc. All, North and South, were owned as chattel property; an inescapable shame for all of us.
But just because academic “consensus” insists that slavery was the one, singular cause of the Civil War doesn’t mean that we should believe it.

Alan B
Alan B
25 days ago

Tocqueville was on the ground in antebellum America. Lilla is referring to what Tocqueville observed. Read Tocqueville!

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
24 days ago
Reply to  Alan B

Tocqueville was an aristocrat. Did he spend much time in the homes of the lower classes, the ones who’s grandsons would fight in the Civil War?
I could be wrong, Tocqueville was a close and sympathetic observer; but I wonder if his observations weren’t at least somewhat biased.
It never occurred to me to read Tocqueville. You’re right, I should.

Ardath Blauvelt
Ardath Blauvelt
25 days ago

It’s fairly simple: we claim virtue for including diverse minority populations, carefully excluding diversity of thought. Thereby increasing the intensity and importance of differences that matter. Cheering on a sports team is playground inclusion, the serious, adult team work of reality takes more work and courage. More heart and brain. Fake, shallow inclusion has yielded deep, intentional division. Tolerance is not acceptance and a nation scorned and shredded by its own, provides no shelter or protection. We are discovering that it’s the only umbrella we have. Some would have us make it whole, again.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
25 days ago

“A widely shared sense of exclusion, with all the attendant emotions of shame and resentment, is toxic to democracies.”
“(F)eelings of exclusion in Americans today extend beyond minority groups. The white working class feels it, the religious population feels it, the South feels it. Our common sense of mutual recognition is melting away and we have no idea really how to stop it.”
Gosh, and which party has specialized for decades in creating exactly this kind of divisive toxicity as a way of staying in power – Divide and conquer and what not?

Russ W
Russ W
23 days ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

One must admire, if in disgust, their effectiveness; they’ve sold ridiculous myths, perverted language, all with a religious fervor ignoring the attendant outcomes via inversion of morals. Hmmm … who are the real fascists now?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
25 days ago

A couple of thoughts. First, highly credentialed Manhattan is a train wreck, and in some of the ways that the left pretends to care about, inequality being at the forefront. It is awash in homelessness, vagrants, drug addicts, and criminals who are allowed to run wild. If that is the anticipated outcome of having a large number of degreed people in the population, that is not a good selling point.
Second is this: “If citizens feel they belong to separate realities, if a part of the population feels excluded, we should not be surprised if it sets off an emotional storm.” Separate realities like “men can get pregnant, too” or separate realities like my opponent is literal Hitler? Because, yes, that has happened. So has the second part about exclusion, usually created by the overreach of the people tied to the first part who, ironically, talk incessantly about INclusion.
I’d say the system is more tribal than caste-based. Think of the Indian tribes before colonization – people who often looked alike but otherwise, had little in common other than a border, slaughtering one another and engaging in ritual conquest. We’re not at the violent point yet, but who knows.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
25 days ago

And the sad irony is that many of the ‘educated caste’ lack the basic pre-requisites of being fully sentient human beings, eg, compassion, humility, and generosity to their fellow human beings, qualities which surely traverse superficial barriers such as formal education.

Andrew Buckley
Andrew Buckley
25 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Totally agree, far too many of the so called Champagne Socialists in the UK are at the forefront of wage abuse with poor pay for their “staff”, looking down on Tradespeople, bemoaning the late arrival of their Deliveroo. All the while by avoiding knowledge of how all the “little people” keep their closeted lives on the go.
Mind you all for supporting Pride Week and paying lip service to minorities.

William Simonds
William Simonds
24 days ago

I suspect the whole “inclusion/exclusion” deal is a luxury more viable in direct proportion to population density. Something like: the group you want to exclude others from has to be big enough to not be just a few snobby people. Rural America, where I have lived most of my life (and I have a graduate degree) is characterized by communal/community identification, not strata. My closest friends are fisherfolk, shop workers, the occasional doctor, a lawyer, and a former college professor whom I couldn’t be further from in political beliefs. None of us have time for “exclusion.” We’re too busy being good neighbors.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
24 days ago

One of the differences is between the credentialed, secure, bureaucratic life of the educated class and the scrappy insecure life of the uncredentialed.
The uncredentialed don’t get no stinkin’ respect for the challenges they face.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
24 days ago

As I read this, I suddenly recalled something from my own life. I can say with great confidence that hroughout my life, even in the parts of my childhood i can still recall, whenever I have been to a place, whether a hotel, restaurant, or store that caters to the upper class and might be described as upscale or even fancy, I have always felt a vague sense of discomfort without ever quite understanding why. It always made me slightly more aware of my surroundings, more alert, anxious without any identifiable reasoning. It was primal, instinctive, automatic, and unnerving. I never knew what it was, but this article sparked some possible epiphany. Perhaps it was my admittedly dim sense of social awareness telling me that “these people are not like me” and “I do not belong here” without the underdeveloped social parts of my brain ever going any further than that, thus I felt like a mouse in an open field who has never seen a hawk but is instinctively wary. In my adult life, I have come to avoid such places, and I have developed a sense of distaste for decadence, vanity, and the outward display of affluence, not that I could afford it anyway.

I wonder if the wealthy and the privileged who populate such places feel the same as I do when they walk into a truck stop, or a McDonald’s. I suspect perhaps they do, and I would bet they also come to avoid such places. Perhaps accusations of racism, xenopobia, etc. are simply rationalizations to make the reality of true inequality more palatable, a comfort to those who find themselves surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the unwashed masses. How easy it then becomes for us to inhabit separate restaurants, separate stores, separate hospitals, separate media, and eventually separate realities. A society once defined by equality and civil cooperation becomes one of hostile camps fueled by distrust, suspicion, and paranoia.

This does not bode well for our nation. It’s government was made in a different time by men who faced a very different reality, something De Tocqueville understood. They shared a certain hostility towards the notion of nobility and aristocracy and they built it into the very bones of the system of government they created. The aristocrats must see now that they cannot win. The Constitution, the founding fathers, and the American spirit of defiance and rebellion are the only things that ever held the place together. The aristocrats are fighting with ghosts, and the ghosts are winning, because ghosts, ideas really, cannot be fought with only money and power. Ultimately ideas must be fought with other ideas, and their ideas are artificial constructs built upon about half a century of actual success and a mountain of hubris.

I share the author’s and De Tocqueville’s observance of how important America’s unusual historical circumstances were in shaping the nation’s history up to the present. I have often described the country’s wealth, success, and power as an accident of history, an anomaly unlikely to ever occur again. I believe that centuries from now, if people are still around to do the recording, they will attribute the failures of this age to the improbable rise of the USA to global hegemony and how its unusual history made it uniquely unsuitable for such a role. Really, you folks over in the UK were better at this empire business.

Ian Wigg
Ian Wigg
24 days ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

The difference is “Old” money compared to “New” money.

“Old” money has nothing to prove, is totally comfortable in their skin, and couldn’t care less about how people see them. They’re as at ease having a pint with farm labourer as a duke (and they and the duke will likely be the scruffier of the three.)

“New” money is about perceptions.

It takes at least several generations to go from one to the other.

And “Three from manor house to workhouse” as they saying goes.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
24 days ago

Historically, what were these inclusive institutions that have seem to disappeared? I guess religious institutions were inclusive groups of the past, but what else existed? The homogenous colonial environmental conditions of America’s untamed nature are not coming back.

Tom Williamson
Tom Williamson
24 days ago

That task was made much easier, Tocqueville thought, by another kind of equal condition: ethnic and religious homogeneity. The first settlers shared an Anglo-Protestant cultural heritage, prizing religious liberty and a shared stock of concepts for engaging in politics. Paradoxically, it would turn out that a certain kind of homogeneity in early America helped give birth to principles that would one day be employed to defend diversity.

The author mentions this fact and then immediately skates past it, on the way to his central argument regarding equality of material conditions. But this paragraph contains the seeds of a far more difficult thesis: What if people from different parts of the world are, at our essential cores, different?
What does that imply for the future of “diversity?”

Dorian Grier
Dorian Grier
24 days ago

Perhaps it is a University v University of Life gap. I have a graduate degree but my late husband was a highly skilled, Tech educated construction professional and I have socialised more happily with the latter group. I also worked in operations management so most of my teams and co workers where not university educated. Perhaps that has influenced my politics as I have voted for Trump three times.
Which has resulted in my relatives and friends who I grew up with (most double degree educated), looking down their noses at me as another deplorable. It is sad as they are the disrespectful and divisive ones.
I have lived in the UK since 1991 and certainly since the Blair era, I feel a damaging and ever bigger equality divide is between the public and private sectors.

Joe Donovan
Joe Donovan
24 days ago

Does UnHerd not know the difference between Michigan and Michigan State? This is like confusing Manchester United and Leeds!

Jeff Dudgeon
Jeff Dudgeon
24 days ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

Baffled by the final comment about the bumper stickers at the match. Presumably these were pro-Trump and thus hateful. Am I wrong?

Howard Ahmanson
Howard Ahmanson
22 days ago
Reply to  Joe Donovan

No university with “State” in its name is ever Ivy League.

Peter Everett
Peter Everett
24 days ago

To sport, as a mechanism of inclusion, I would add music. It is a shame that, by fragmenting into market genres that align with age, race, region and sex, music has affirmed rather than eroded the new caste system. It was always thus (‘race records’ were there from the beginning) but for a while (thanks to Tamla Motown, Stax and the Beatles) music helped rather than hindered inclusion.

David Sharples
David Sharples
24 days ago

While it’s true that there is a dividing line between education and not in today’s America, the Author misses (not surprisingly) the main source of discontent.
Our Elites, with all their degrees and letters after their name, have attended Universities that for the most part did not educate but indoctrinate. They had all the “right” indoctrination, have all the “right” friends, read all the “right” publications, and think all the “right” things. Problem is what they think is “right” is all indoctrination. It’s the common man and woman, uneducated, that can see through all the BS.

Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
24 days ago

This is happening across the developed world. In Britain, at the very point that the class system was increasingly becoming irrelevant, a new class system of credentialism has replaced it and though ostensibly based on merit, I think we all know there is quite a disparity between the prestige that some degrees bestow and the ability individuals who hold them. We have replaced the aristocratic titles of old with academic ones and so are seeing a return to class based politics.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
24 days ago

Good piece. The US is in a very bad way. Trump is its last chance but even he can’t stop the emergence of complex cultural gaps as new globalised elites (identifying with each other at home and abroad but never with their fellow citizens) emerge. Loyalty to the state means nothing to the globalisation class except having a passport. The deliberate exploitation of race and ethic differences by the US Democrats for electoral gain has exacerbated the problem but, even if the Democrats abandon such crude exploitation of voters, the direction of travel will be difficult to reverse.

John Riordan
John Riordan
24 days ago

An excellent Sunday read, very thought-provoking. And this isn’t the first time the views of Alexis de Tocqueville have made me wonder how he managed to be so prophetic.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
24 days ago

First let me confess: I have a graduate degree from an “elite” university and I am ashamed to say that I was, until recently, an education snob. These past few years have turned me into a hater of elite universities with their indoctrination of students, lack of free speech, and belief that they know best for everyone. Disgusting hypocrites! I no longer donate, and have written to presidents of universities, to no avail, about my disgust. I hope Trump will make them change, but it will be difficult.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
24 days ago

This is a central thesis in last book by Emmanuel Todd .

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
23 days ago

Many in the American “working class” have gotten through universities of varying quality over the last several decades. Some adopted far left ideas, and some did not.
Similarly, many children of middle, professional, or educated parents have or have not obtained bachelor’s degrees. Some studied music or philosophy, for example, while others studied finance, law, engineering, or other major fields of study. They in turn made varying levels of income, and have varying political views. There are of course Republican, libertarian, or conservative attorneys, accountants, engineers, businesspeople, or tech workers, just as there are unionized laborers or tradesmen who are fairly leftist.
The real divisions are between two main groups of people. One group thinks that our government, which lately has no idea how to actually govern, should exert heavy controls on energy, economic activity, and social relations, to create some sort of progressive, “multiracial” utopia. This has turned out very poorly in “progressive” areas, not least of all for racial minorities.
Hence Trump, for whom the other group voted. Trump voters tend to believe in free markets, free speech, and a government controlled not, entirely, by hyper-educated elites, but by the voters, and by those who rose on their own merits, such as JD Vance, or Tulsi Gabbard, with the odd renegade like RFK, Jr coming along.
Trump essentially held a finger to the wind, and noticed that the liberal-left establishment was failing, and ignoring everyday Americans. I’m inclined to agree, despite my master’s degree and passport, which is why I voted for him.

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
23 days ago

I too am “saddened and a little shocked to discover that” the author “couldn’t think of a single other institution in American life that makes people from different education classes all feel included”. De Tocqueville famously mentions America’s churches as a source of its greatness and strength. From within a professor’s bubble I suppose religious institutions are easily overlooked. But my own experience is of churches at the hub of their communities, equalizing, uniting and reinforcing.

David Kingsworthy
David Kingsworthy
23 days ago

Indeed, with my college degree in hand as of the early 1990s I set about seeking a cultured lifestyle, sneering at rural and small-town people at every opportunity. But having married a small-town girl and moved to one 10+ years ago, I have grown to like the plebes and moved once and for all away from the higher caste.

Delta Chai
Delta Chai
23 days ago

I found this a very interesting and thought-provoking article, thank you!

> There is, I think, a tension between the ideals of diversity and inclusion, since the former is centrifugal in effect and the latter is centripetal.

I keep thinking about this analogy and how it might apply to various issues. But while I think the distinction between diversity and inclusion is an important one, the more I consider it the more it becomes clear that the analogy doesn’t quite work.

Inclusion is centripetal, yes, and centrifugal for those who are too far out.
Diversity isn’t centrifugal, it’s expanding the area of what is seen as acceptable, and softening the definition of what’s the centre. Diversity is the size of the area where forces cancel each other out.

An example of something which is actually centrifugal could be a culture of individualism, where people actively look for a niche they can uniquely occupy, thus seeking to get away from the centre.

And diversity and inclusion aren’t mutually exclusive. For example, legalising gay marriage can be seen as expanding the range of what is deemed acceptable and thus as promoting diversity, but arguably the effect is also centripetal in that it draws a group of people in towards more of a traditional lifestyle.

Howard Ahmanson
Howard Ahmanson
22 days ago

The young men in the picture are clearly going to “State,” which is clearly not an Ivy League school. So they don’t represent the Ivy League elite. What do they represent, those who attend less prestigious universities?

Theron Hamilton
Theron Hamilton
19 days ago

“… since the former is centrifugal in effect and the latter is centripetal.” Nicely crafted.

Laura Sirdevan
Laura Sirdevan
18 days ago

Another De Tocqueville quote: “I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom…But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism – but they will not endure aristocracy”
From Second Book, Chapter 1: Why Democratic Nations Show A More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality Than of Liberty.