AEI scholar discusses new cultural divide

Charles Murray, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), spoke to the University community last Thursday about the widening cultural gap between social classes.

The event was sponsored by the AEI Executive Council at Hopkins and featured free Chipotle for all attendees. Senior Natalie Boyse, a member of the AEI Executive Council, introduced Murray to the audience.

“We decided to bring Charles Murray to campus because he is interesting and somewhat controversial,” Boyse said. “The AEI Campus Programs initiative aims to stimulate the competition of ideas at Hopkins so we try to pick speakers who are different and who will rouse debate on campus.”

Murray garnered national attention in 1984 after the publication of his book Losing Ground. In Losing Ground, Murray observes that despite increased social aid since the 1960s, poverty conditions in America have continued to worsen — a statistic that he attributes to a shift in the general public’s understanding of poverty. While individual citizens were once considered responsible for their own well-being, the general consensus now finds the state at fault for poverty. Losing Ground, with its polemical statements, was credited by many sources to have led to the enactment of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.

In his most recent book, Coming Apart (2012), Murray theorizes about the unforeseen cultural gap that has persistently widened the divide between American classes since the 1960s.

“The premise of the book is very straightforward: Over the last few decades we have developed new types of classes. We have seen a divergence on basic cultural norms, participation in basic institution, etcetera,” he said.

Murray based his analysis on a sample of white Americans ages 30 to 49, setting 1960 as the baseline, before clearly defining the terms he uses.

“The upper middle class is different from the elites,” Murray said. “It simply refers to people with a college degree who hold managerial positions. The working class comprises people who have a high school diploma at most and hold a blue collar job.”

Murray first explained the formation of a new lower class before examining the evolution of the upper class since 1960.

“Very basic institutions that shaped the quality of community life have deteriorated markedly in the working class and opened up a gap between them and the upper middle class,” Murray said.

To exemplify this, Murray used marriage as an example.

“In 1960, of the white upper middle class, 94 percent were married. By 2010, that number had dropped to 84 percent,” Murray said.

The contrast with the working class is sharp.

“In 1960, 84 percent of 30 to 49 year old white Americans forming the working class were married. There has been a huge change since then. In 2010, only 48 percent were married,” Murray said.

Murray described the implications of the new patterns in marriage.

“When marriage drops, fundamental changes in the socialization process of children occur,” he said.

Murray not only noted the statistical tendency of children to do better when they have married biological parents, he also noted the role of the two parent family unit in building better communities.

“A great deal of all the things that make a community work (attendance of civic events, involvement in local politics, etcetera) is shaped by parents who are trying to shape the environment their children will flourish in,” Murray said.

Murray also explained the role of “peer” supervision in well-networked communities.

“In 1960, if you were a male in the prime of your life, you were supposed to work, or try to work,” he said. “If you didn’t you were stigmatized like crazy by everyone: your parents, your sister, your wife, everyone. Consequently, all males were in the labor force almost.”

Murray claims that people today are less eager to get married because society’s view of marriage has changed, making it less of an essential part of adulthood.

Switching to his analysis of the evolution of the upper middle class, Murray noted that colleges today have become more selective.

“In the 1952 Harvard freshman class, the mean score on the SAT verbal was 583. By 1960, it was 680,” he said.

Murray joked about the implications of more high-achieving students in college.

“This increased the chances of marrying someone from your own class, which is good because you want someone who gets your jokes,” he said, triggering a wave of laughter from the audience.

“But increased educational monogamy has introduced an element of homogeneity that has consequences,” he added, on a more serious note.

According to Murray, the social landscape has transformed as a result of this evolution in the upper middle class. He illustrated his point by taking the example of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. In 1960, 24 percent of adults who lived there had a college degree and the median family income was $55,000 (in 2010 U.S. dollars). By 2000, the median family income on the Upper East Side had increased to $183,000 and 75 percent of adults living there had a college degree.

Murray believes that cultural homogeneity has become problematic insofar as it is now more difficult to empathize with different types of people.

“The upper middle class in so incredibly distinct. Have you ever walked on a factory floor? Not worked, just seen,” Murray asked. “You are fundamentally impeded in sympathizing with the people who hold those jobs everyday for their whole lives. You can’t do it, you don’t know what its like.”

Murray created and published a test on PBS’s website that evaluates people’s capacity to understand other people and put themselves in their shoes.

“It has questions such as ‘have you lived for a year or anytime in your life with a family income below the poverty line?’ ‘Have you lived in a neighborhood where less than 50 percent of your neighbors had a college degree?’ ‘Have you ever owned a pickup truck?’” Murray asked.

In the end, Murray believes that understanding the sources and the features of the problem is the only way to find an effective solution to it.

“Until we are ready to realize the reality of the cultural shifts that have occurred, we are going to be looking for solutions that have no relationship to the problem. These changes were not bad in and of themselves but they have powerful collateral trends that are problematic to the functioning of society,” he said.

Members of the audience were impressed by Murray’s research.

“The students that I have talked to really enjoyed it and were very interested in what Dr. Murray had to say about the changes we are seeing in American Society today. The event was refreshing because Murray was not political and instead just emphasized how important it is for the elite to stay in touch with the rest of American society,” Boyse said.

Boyse believes that Murray’s analysis is particularly relevant in the context of the “Hopkins bubble.” His speech resonated as a call for the Hopkins community to “get out there” and experience Baltimore in the way that Baltimoreans do.

“All the students at Hopkins are working hard to become successful and most strive to become part of the elite. It is important that those students who become part of the elite recognize the importance of diversifying the types of people they interact with and the detrimental effects of surrounding themselves only with people of similar socioeconomic status,” Boyse said.