Tuesday, November 15, 2016

You Didn't Notice Before? You Had No Prior Awareness of Your Privileged Status?

This really was a teachable moment.

“This election made me realize how much of a liberal bubble Yale students live in,” said Zachary Cohen, 20, a junior from New York City who edits a political journal here. That isolation left the campus largely unaware of anger and resentment elsewhere, he said. “I definitely had to come terms with the fact that there was this other half of America I had hardly seen.”

Speaking as a mid-westerner who has dealt with the casual snobbery of both the Ivy League and the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, I find this admission hard to believe.  I never met anyone in either institution who was unaware of her or his separation from the proletariat.  In fact, in both academia and ecclesia, the elites celebrate it and condescend to and mock those who are not of their class, albeit usually behind the closed door of social class.

This may have more to do with this student and his peers realizing not that the "other" exists, but that it has political power, too, and will use it.