Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 - 2010 (2012) - Charles Murray
Charles Murray is an American social scientist and author of many important books including his 1994 best-selling, The Bell Curve co-authored with Richard Herrnstein, a Harvard psychology professor and researcher. Murray himself is a Harvard graduate (history) who also holds a MIT PHD in political science and is a self-described libertarian. His following characterization of what he calls the “American project” provides an insight into his libertarianism:
“The American project...consists of the continuous effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit, coming together voluntarily to solve joint problems. The polity based on that idea led to a civic culture that was seen as exceptional by all the world.”
To better understand Coming Apart it is useful to recognize the six-hundred pound elephant in the room left over from The Bell Curve, i.e. Intelligence Quotient (IQ) or what Murray and Richard Herrnstein called cognitive ability. The thesis of The Bell Curve is: IQ can be measured unbiasedly and accurately, is the best predictor of life outcomes, and differs by race. The idea that certain ethnic groups are smarter than other groups is controversial and the book was the bane of liberals and progressives. According to Herrnstein and Murray, Asians are the smartest (cognitively elite) people in the world followed by White Europeans, Hispanics, and then black Africans. Litigating the validity of Herrnstein and Murray’s Bell Curve conclusions about race and intelligence is beyond the cope of this essay. However it is important to unde...
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... Economically speaking the middle class (and lower class) must have sufficient money to purchase the goods and services to sustain the economy. Socially the concentration of income and wealth in the hands has creating the situation well documented in Coming Apart. Politically is has destroyed the democratic idea of “one man, one vote.” In the Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the court ruled that donations to political campaigns constitutes free speech and cannot be limited by law. Their decision released a flood of money into electoral politics. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that six billion dollars was spend on the 2012 presidential election diluting the average citizen’s vote and influence and placing the levers of power fully in the hands of wealthy.
Works Cited
Coming Apart by Charles Murray
For starters I do believe that some of it has to do with geography and I also believe that intelligence is from opportunity. I feel like Jared diamond had completely left out that race was a large factor into the equation. When an entire race of people were deprived from education and precious opportunity. It also makes it harder for a certain race in the world to succeed In a system that was always put against blacks and other minorities. I feel that the races didn’t get to have an
Throughout the course of history, nations have invested time and manpower into the colonizing and modernizing of more rural governments. Imperialism has spread across the globe, from the British East India Company to France’s occupation of Northern Africa. After their founding in 1776, the United States of America largely stayed out of this trend until The Spanish-American War of 1898. Following the war, the annexation and colonization of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines ultimately set a precedent for a foreign policy of U.S. imperialism.
According to Gregory Mantsios many American people believed that the classes in the United States were irrelevant, that we equally reside(ed) in a middle class nation, that we were all getting richer, and that everyone has an opportunity to succeed in life. But what many believed, was far from the truth. In reality the middle class of the United States receives a very small amount of the nation's wealth, and sixty percent of America's population receives less than 6 percent of the nation's wealth, while the top 1 percent of the American population receives 34 percent of the total national wealth. In the article Class in America ( 2009), written by Gregory Mantsios informs us that there are some huge differences that exist between the classes of America, especially the wealthy and the poor. After
The most important way as to how the elite continues to control power is through the media. In Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010,” he speaks about how there is a new upper class made up of people in notable positions in society. This new upper class is composed of the narrow elite and the broad elite, in which the narrow elite has an effect on the culture, politics, and institutions in the nation while the broad elite only has an effect on the local level. While the elite once lived in neighborhoods that were slightly more mixed in terms blue collar and white collar success, they now live in what are considered Superzips, which are areas in which the 95th to 99th percentile of the most successful and well educated Americans live. White Americans constitute for 82% of Superzip inhabitants, compared to 8% Asian, and
Krugman challenges us to think about one question, “Why should we care about high and rising inequality?” (Krugman, 586) Some of the reasons inequality is a problem is the standards of living and the lack of progress in the economy for the middle and lower class families (Krugman, 586). These show that the distribution of wealth in the United States is not equal at all. There is also the damage that the inequality does to the society and the government. Thomas Jefferson once said, “The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.” Today that would mean that the middle class is the most important part of our society, however, the farther we move into the future the weaker the middle class becomes (Krugman, 587). The America that we live in is both unequal in income and social aspects. The rich do not live the same lives as those that are less fortunate and the less fortunate do not get to enjoy the perks that come with lives of the rich people. The inequality does not mean that it is unfair that the majority of the population
... pressure for someone to live up to. Each person has his or her own level of understanding, and there are no proven statistics that show a connection between race and intelligence.
Following the 1890’s, the world began to undergo the first stages of globalization. Countries and peoples, who, until now, were barely connected, now found themselves neighbors in a planet vastly resembling a global village. Despite the idealized image of camaraderie and brotherhood this may seem to suggest, the reality was only discrimination and distrust. Immigration to new lands became a far more difficult affair, as emigrants from different nations came to be viewed as increasingly foreign. In the white-dominated society of the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the only way to truly count oneself as American was to become “white”. For this reason, the idea of race, a socially constructed issue with no real physical basis, has become one of the most defining factors which shape immigration and assimilation in the United States.
today. The upper classes have most of the power in the nation and use their influence and wealth to convert the United States income into benefiting their well being and financial stability. In the last fifteen years, the income of the upper classes has risen while the income of the lower classes
Wealth inequality is a real issue that needs to be fixed. The imbalanced growth of the upper class compared to the middle class is a danger to American society as a whole. The rich becoming richer while the middle class remains the same leads to a power imbalance, with the rich using their money to run the country the way they see fit while the middle class speaks to ears that do not listen. The issue of wealth inequality needs to be fixed by raising taxes on the rich.
Recently it has been commonly said that America is making progress to reach racial equality, and it is believed that soon the treatment of the whole population will be equal regardless of one’s race. Although, in the academic and artistic circles, racial equality is very doubtful and not a consensus. In the photograph above, a black man is being assaulted by a white cop during a peaceful protest that happened in London for race equality. While the aggression happens, the other cops just look at it without acting, as if it was normal and they were not liable for their actions. The photograph can be interpreted in different ways, but one main question comes up when analyzing it: How does the violence used by the police to oppress the black protester
Divisions within the social stratum is a characteristic of societies in various cultures and has been present throughout history. During the middle ages, the medieval feudal system prevailed, characterized by kings and queens reigning over the peasantry. Similarly, in today’s society, corporate feudalism, otherwise known as Capitalism, consists of wealthy elites dominating over the working poor. Class divisions became most evident during America’s Gilded Age and Progressive era, a period in time in which the rich became richer via exploitation of the fruits of labor that the poor persistently toiled to earn. As a result, many Americans grew compelled to ask the question on everyone’s mind: what do the rich owe the poor? According to wealthy
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
Loehlin, John C., Lindzey Gardner, and J.N. Spuhler. Race Differences in Intelligence. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1975.
“Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” written by Robert Reich, describes as the title says, why the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. In Reich’s essay he delves into numerous reasons and gives examples of each. It makes one wonder if the world will continue on the path of complete economic separation between the rich and the poor.
Money is an essential part of life where every people can satisfy whatever they need and every person in America has a chance to find a job. However, some of the people in the country wanted to go on with their life freely by being a part of a welfare. Furthermore, distribution of wealth is a huge demand of every citizen. Everyone today is trying to look down for every people in the lower class, as they did not give any benefit to the country, waiting for the benefits that they will receive from the government. For instance, when most lower class people have gone through a financial crisis due to overspending, insufficient fund or pay for their work to support themselves and/or their family. The example shows that lower class people made the economy of the country unstable, however, the middle class and the higher class is at fault as well. Furthermore, even though the benefit of that the lower class received is from the middle class, the middle class as well benefits from the higher class. To sum up, every class is at fault towards giving the country’s economy a positive