My column this week looked at how the success sequence works for Utah. Back in 2012, I wrote a review of sociologist Charles Murray’s fearless book on a widening socioeconomic divide, and how nonjudgmentalism was making the gap worse.
Enjoy!
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Remember white people? The entertainment industry, academia, and the legacy press obsess over the nation’s incontestably expanding diversity, but about 200 million Americans trace their lineages to Europe. The seed of the British Isles, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary still comprises a strong majority of the U.S. citizenry.
It’s a group that Charles Murray thinks is in big trouble. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, meticulously documents his concerns.
Murray avers that whites who are well-suited for a globalized economy, and thus richly rewarded for their brainpower, increasingly isolate themselves from the rest of their countrymen. As the educated and wealthy marry their own kind, have kids, and settle in distinct enclaves, they’re building a bubble that shields them from the everyday experiences of regular folks. Meanwhile, whites with no more than a high-school diploma and scant marketable skills have abandoned the mores that prevailed for centuries. Their lives are fraught with drama and discord.
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