Male flight because too many women go to college so it's "girly?"
Two, what is working class? If we are going strictly by income, there are a lot of trades that make far and away higher salaries than careers that require college degrees and/or credentials.
And an aside that frustrates me as someone who works in higher ed: universities are not job training.
I, too, am interested in what we mean when we say "working class." If one doesn't have enough money to not work full-time, then aren't we all in some ways "working class"? As the middle class shrinks and the wealth gap increases, I think we need more precise language to talk about what we mean. I also find it interesting that the image "working class" conjures is a white blue collar worker either farming in rural America or in small town America on a factory line or in a trade (steel, etc.), but not Black or Brown people in urban communities working at hotels or grocery stores, etc.
I’ve been thinking a lot about education polarization. I’m graduating with a PhD in May and I have a faculty job lined up (in Kentucky of all places!) so I have been and will continue to be very invested in higher education. I think what the David Brooks piece hit on the nose is that education begets education. My grandfather has a doctorate, so does my dad, and I will in just a few months. We all attended the same, private though not elite, undergrad institution. My husband is the first in his family to go to college. It was interesting at our wedding to have the two families mix—my family that is entrenched in higher ed and his family who have cultivated a very specific technical skill set over years of working in their field, but have a high school degree or equivalent. I hated that my husbands family felt “dumb” in comparison to my family, because they are not dumb at all! They are some of the most intelligent people I know, and the work that they do is not something that I could do without lots of training. I think, in part, we’ve so segregated our society by intelligence as measured by standardized exams, that we’ve created classes of so called smarter and less smart people, when really we’re just looking at different skill sets. I blame the focus on STEM education. Even among college educated folks, there’s a hierarchy. STEM is the highest, with the soft sciences being next, and then the humanities and then business. Again, scientists are not any smarter than anyone else. They just have a specific skill set. I think the Cold War and our focus on technological innovation forced this hierarchy, where education became a national security issue, and specifically science education because of utmost importance. Because the fact of the matter is, as Maggie has said, Covid made very clear that the educated people are valued by society differently than folks who didn’t attend college. And it sucks.
This is all rambling, but I wanted to throw my two cents into the conversation. I heard Tressie McMillan Cottom say that she “loves education too much to ask it to do something it cannot do” and I will be thinking about that for a long time. What are we asking education to do that it cannot do?
You have hit the nail on the head here. This making of higher education and an advanced college degree into a status symbol has also divided America regionally. Intellectuals and advanced professionals tend to congregate on the East and West Coast, and some interior pockets that have concentrated high tech industry (i.e areas like Denver, CO who have specialized centers for aerospace and engineering industries). This leaves the rest of America to languish with far less talent, a lot less job opportunities, which leads to wide spread drug problems, unemployment, and poverty. This was the experience of J.D. Vance's childhood, and I have no doubt he sees the divide for what it is, so who can blame him for wanting to sick it to the intellectual elites who fled his home region and abandoned his people? Makes sense to me. I grew up in a small, farming community in rural Indiana. I fled as soon as I graduated high school, because I knew if I stayed there, I would be stuck there forever.
Probably from a cultural perspective that is true. From how the scientists see it, business is the bottom and I am around scientists all the time so that colors my perspective.
That sucks. Learning language is so important, whether English or another language! So many students can’t write, or comprehend text, or communicate their thoughts. Students need English and Spanish classes just as much as they need STEM classes.
I think about this in my marriage all the time. I have a lot more education than my husband and I think intellectual smarts and I sometimes get frustrated about not being able to talk about the ideas rolling around in my head in a way that makes sense to him. He has a lot of mechanical smarts and can fix anything and look at anything and understand how it works when I look at it and just feel dumb. I agree that we should value what everyone has to bring to the table.
If Trump's trial was fair and just and we are to trust the system was not corrupt then why is it the system now broken because Hunter Biden was found guilty by a jury. Can someone explain this to me? I am so done with hearing how hard poor Hunter Biden's life is. This man has have every single opportunity in the world and tossed it aside. I have so little sympathy for him and his actions. Do we not trust the system that would have sentenced him before Trump took power or not?
There's very little about the justice system that is trustworthy beyond the people in it acting honorably, which is why it could have been weaponized by the incoming administration.
Great conversation as always! I agree with Sarah&Beth that it would be highly beneficial to begin 2025 with whiteboarding conversations, goal setting, that kind of stuff. I think having the “who are we and what do we believe” conversation matters before we can think about winning elections. And maybe in those conversations, we realize that winning elections isn’t the only goal. Like others have said, many of us are struggling with the morality of this election (and the past 10 years). For me right now, I want to be politically aware and morally actionable.
ALSO! I want to give a shoutout 🎉 to the editors/production team because I could tell an extra sharpness and continuity in this episode and in the conversation! Great work!!
This was one of my favorite episodes and I’ve been a listener for years. So many highlights. I felt both challenged and validated. Thank you Sarah and Beth for taking the time on this.
This was a great episode and yet I’m stuck on the fact that Beth didn’t like the Wicked adaptation. It feels really personal to me and I may have to talk about it in therapy (jokes)
There was so much to think about here. It was unsettling to hear your conversation about the negativity toward the professional class or "elite." The only people I have heard disparage the "elite" in non online conversation come from the household in my family that most matches the description of "elite". One member of the house is a lawyer for oil company, all are educated, they are by far the wealthiest of us and able to give their children the opportunities that come with that. I didn't understand who they thought the elite might be??
I really enjoyed this episode! I haven't seen Wicked yet because my husband and I need to find an afternoon where we can knock off of work early while our toddler is still in daycare, but I can't wait to see it!
Re: the campaign reflections, etc.: I've been thinking about the "wokeness" of it all, and what I can't figure out about LGBTQ+ people in particular is that public support for same sex marriage between 1996 and 2024 rose 42 points (with some slight fluctuation slightly higher in the last 5 years). I feel like the conversations around gender have freaked people out more acutely in the last few years and therefore, the discussions about transgender athletes and bathrooms have dominated some of the culture wars convos, but I struggle with what to make of these conversations in our body politic given that same sex marriage has been legal for nearly 10 years now and certain justices on the Supreme Court (look at you, Clarence Thomas) have signaled overturning Obergefell. I don't know if my comment is directly related to anything in this episode in particular - it's just something I've been thinking about a lot lately because those public polling numbers don't square with how much of the oxygen it's taking up in our political discourse.
As far as discussions about the Obama-era people and how Democrats should be moving forward, I found this video from Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches Media and co-author of Democracy in Retrograde, enlightening: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDA2CDCSzQ2/.
I’m listening a day late, battling a cold. Something about the Hunter’s pardon just wasn’t hitting right and then Beth gave me chills. It was weird, because I wanted Hunter pardoned? I don’t even fully understand why??? 🙄 that’s something else to contemplate.
But YES. Blanket all the PARDONS. How beautiful. Make an actual statement.
I’ve learned over the past few months that I projected a lot of positive intention on to Biden that he may not have actually earned at all.
On the topic of underestimating just how much Trump had permeated popular culture over the last 40 years - my husband and I were watching the 2002 rom com classic (lol) Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. Trump makes a cameo and I died a little. I feel like we need to go back and retroactively put content warnings on movies and TV where he just pops up without any real tie to the plot.
Ellen, I see you. When I saw Annie for my ninth birthday, I was so excited about movies. I learned all about the director and read magazines about the production and learned everything I could and then I pronounced that I was going to make movies when I grew up. And my dad said, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You aren't doing that." And here we are.
But people who use their childhood trauma (and drama) to make sure others are beat down are a real problem. Our next president is firehosing his trauma all over the rest of us and so are a lot of people who have power (real or perceived) in this country. It infuriates me. I can set a boundary against it in my personal life, but my righteous anger will simmer under the surface as long as I remain a second class citizen.
"Firehosing his trauma all over the rest of us" is such an accurate way to describe the last decade of politics!
My daughter wants to be a writer, and we talk about being a writer AND... We look into the stories of her favorite authors and learn how they were writers AND teachers or scientists or lawyers (until writing got big enough for them to be just writers). And how they incorporated their work experiences into their writing.
People only care about "nepo babies" when the "nepo babies" have something other people want. No one cares about the pharmacy or restaurant or auto body shop passed down through 10 generations. They care when someone gets a film made or a book published or an appearance on a red carpet.
Nailed it, Norma! Nobody cares that my grandfather taught my dad and uncle everything he knew about being a mechanic and employed them in his shop after high school graduation.
I am not sure I believe in presidential pardons at all. I don't give it a lot of thought because it doesn't come up that often, but at this point in time, I'm waiting for Biden to pardon all the people. He has a few more weeks and he needs to do all of it and why not? This is how we live now.
While we're talking about Pete Hegseth, I am also thinking about Bowe Bergdahl and his recovery during the controversial prisoner swap orchestrated by the Obama administration. I am also thinking about Rage Against the Machine: some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.
I am personally struggling with the “the professional class sucks” strain of analysis and public sentiment. Granted, I did in fact go to graduate school to become a counselor and my husband is a lawyer. I was a first generation college student who was encouraged by my own father not to date until I had gotten a master’s degree so that I wouldn’t be derailed from my education. I have always had a ton of ambivalence about my education because it has also been impressed on me in my extended family that one ought not have “more education than sense” and that it is my responsibility never to make anyone feel bad in my presence as a result of my education or intelligence. Not to mention, we are not any more financially secure than my blue collar electrician father was at our age. So it sort of feels like, I did the thing my parents hoped I would do, but I have to apologize for it all the time, and somehow I am “opportunity hoarding” when I don’t own a home and am one major car repair or medical bill away from financial ruin just like most people.
First of all, our backgrounds (down to the electrician dads!) have a lot of similarities and your comment resonated with me. ♥️
This doesn’t cover the entire professional class, but I work in higher ed and I feel like I am seeing a lot more clear eyed lately how much gas the academy threw on the Trump fire. I’m not saying it didn’t come from well intended places, but the smugness and elitism attached to those good intentions is real. For a long time I felt my working class background had to be overcome in my work (and I’ve never worked at an R1, let alone an Ivy or elite private school), but I figured out how to talk the talk so I made my way. I’m far from being an outlier in that regard. Why should we have to do that!? Isn’t education, of all things, for everyone? I could go on and on and on…
Yeah, I'm not going to apologize for being educated, even though I understand that I had a lot of privilege to get it. My bristly reaction is do non-college grads think we should be discouraging people from education and gaining expertise? Why do we not value expertise? I'm only an expert in a very small segment of life, and I'm certainly glad there are people I can turn to who know more about a thing than I do. Let's acknowledge the value of higher education and expertise without getting elitist about it. We can do both.
Having fled from a small town to go to college, and I, well, stayed gone, I think the bitterness comes from the fact the educated, highly talented people from the interior of the country are fleeing their hometowns for their education and then never coming back. The sentiment is very much, "Are you too good for us now?" Rural America desperately needs its talented young people to come back home and work to rise their communities out of poverty, unemployment, and decay. More often than not, they never come back. So, in the Rural American mindset, the educational elites are encouraging abandonment of their communities through liberal education.
Erin I feel this. There is some sort of cultural backlog in my opinion of what is considered working class. Was it this episode or a different podcast where that was mentioned. The knowledge worker is working class… I think it could be more of a backlash to the perception/situation that was created that a college education is the only honorable way to have a “real” job. We are mostly in the same boat.
I feel a struggle a little when we talk about the disparity in graduation demo graphics. There is something there that triggers and instant eye-roll to me when it is presented as a problem that more “black women are graduating than white men” doing some thinking in that and what is it really telling us/driving this shift. I just feel like some context is missing.
I think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying there will be enough women on the Supreme Court when there are nine. We want to say that civil rights, equity, etc benefit everybody, but in a lot of spaces resources are finite, and of course we’re not just going to achieve perfect balance.
Regarding the Wicked movie I’m questioning did I love it so much because I didn’t see the musical or maybe because I was craving something good because of how shitty I’ve felt since the election? I cried multiple times during it and am ready to see it again. I was shocked to hear Beth didn’t care for it.
Same! It was the joy I needed after coming off the election. I have been listening to the lyrics on repeat and there is such a through line to what is happening today politically. The fact that Cynthia and Ariana sang it live AND did their own stunts makes it all the more impressive (which is why I think her voice was “softer” in Defying gravity - harnesses and corsets and being flown all over!) Give this movie all the Oscars!!! Holding Space.
I was shocked Beth didn’t like it! I’ve seen it twice in the last week and like you I never saw the show anywhere else. But I found Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande to both be breathtaking and I sobbed both times. I cry just listening to the sound track. I was bummed they weren’t both sharing my obsession….but I love them just the same. 💚🩷
Can we talk about a few things re: men, higher ed, and working class?
First, this: https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/why-boys-dont-go-to-college
Male flight because too many women go to college so it's "girly?"
Two, what is working class? If we are going strictly by income, there are a lot of trades that make far and away higher salaries than careers that require college degrees and/or credentials.
And an aside that frustrates me as someone who works in higher ed: universities are not job training.
I, too, am interested in what we mean when we say "working class." If one doesn't have enough money to not work full-time, then aren't we all in some ways "working class"? As the middle class shrinks and the wealth gap increases, I think we need more precise language to talk about what we mean. I also find it interesting that the image "working class" conjures is a white blue collar worker either farming in rural America or in small town America on a factory line or in a trade (steel, etc.), but not Black or Brown people in urban communities working at hotels or grocery stores, etc.
I’ve been thinking a lot about education polarization. I’m graduating with a PhD in May and I have a faculty job lined up (in Kentucky of all places!) so I have been and will continue to be very invested in higher education. I think what the David Brooks piece hit on the nose is that education begets education. My grandfather has a doctorate, so does my dad, and I will in just a few months. We all attended the same, private though not elite, undergrad institution. My husband is the first in his family to go to college. It was interesting at our wedding to have the two families mix—my family that is entrenched in higher ed and his family who have cultivated a very specific technical skill set over years of working in their field, but have a high school degree or equivalent. I hated that my husbands family felt “dumb” in comparison to my family, because they are not dumb at all! They are some of the most intelligent people I know, and the work that they do is not something that I could do without lots of training. I think, in part, we’ve so segregated our society by intelligence as measured by standardized exams, that we’ve created classes of so called smarter and less smart people, when really we’re just looking at different skill sets. I blame the focus on STEM education. Even among college educated folks, there’s a hierarchy. STEM is the highest, with the soft sciences being next, and then the humanities and then business. Again, scientists are not any smarter than anyone else. They just have a specific skill set. I think the Cold War and our focus on technological innovation forced this hierarchy, where education became a national security issue, and specifically science education because of utmost importance. Because the fact of the matter is, as Maggie has said, Covid made very clear that the educated people are valued by society differently than folks who didn’t attend college. And it sucks.
This is all rambling, but I wanted to throw my two cents into the conversation. I heard Tressie McMillan Cottom say that she “loves education too much to ask it to do something it cannot do” and I will be thinking about that for a long time. What are we asking education to do that it cannot do?
You have hit the nail on the head here. This making of higher education and an advanced college degree into a status symbol has also divided America regionally. Intellectuals and advanced professionals tend to congregate on the East and West Coast, and some interior pockets that have concentrated high tech industry (i.e areas like Denver, CO who have specialized centers for aerospace and engineering industries). This leaves the rest of America to languish with far less talent, a lot less job opportunities, which leads to wide spread drug problems, unemployment, and poverty. This was the experience of J.D. Vance's childhood, and I have no doubt he sees the divide for what it is, so who can blame him for wanting to sick it to the intellectual elites who fled his home region and abandoned his people? Makes sense to me. I grew up in a small, farming community in rural Indiana. I fled as soon as I graduated high school, because I knew if I stayed there, I would be stuck there forever.
I would argue that the humanities are actually at the bottom of the list.
Probably from a cultural perspective that is true. From how the scientists see it, business is the bottom and I am around scientists all the time so that colors my perspective.
I teach Spanish at a STEM/Career Tech high school. The English teachers and I feel very much bottom of the hierarchy 😆
That sucks. Learning language is so important, whether English or another language! So many students can’t write, or comprehend text, or communicate their thoughts. Students need English and Spanish classes just as much as they need STEM classes.
I think about this in my marriage all the time. I have a lot more education than my husband and I think intellectual smarts and I sometimes get frustrated about not being able to talk about the ideas rolling around in my head in a way that makes sense to him. He has a lot of mechanical smarts and can fix anything and look at anything and understand how it works when I look at it and just feel dumb. I agree that we should value what everyone has to bring to the table.
If Trump's trial was fair and just and we are to trust the system was not corrupt then why is it the system now broken because Hunter Biden was found guilty by a jury. Can someone explain this to me? I am so done with hearing how hard poor Hunter Biden's life is. This man has have every single opportunity in the world and tossed it aside. I have so little sympathy for him and his actions. Do we not trust the system that would have sentenced him before Trump took power or not?
There's very little about the justice system that is trustworthy beyond the people in it acting honorably, which is why it could have been weaponized by the incoming administration.
Was it a “spotlight tracker”? What was that term….Sarah had such a great description of the cabinet nominees….
I think it's just someone in it for the fame, chasing the spotlight, so to speak.
Great conversation as always! I agree with Sarah&Beth that it would be highly beneficial to begin 2025 with whiteboarding conversations, goal setting, that kind of stuff. I think having the “who are we and what do we believe” conversation matters before we can think about winning elections. And maybe in those conversations, we realize that winning elections isn’t the only goal. Like others have said, many of us are struggling with the morality of this election (and the past 10 years). For me right now, I want to be politically aware and morally actionable.
ALSO! I want to give a shoutout 🎉 to the editors/production team because I could tell an extra sharpness and continuity in this episode and in the conversation! Great work!!
This was one of my favorite episodes and I’ve been a listener for years. So many highlights. I felt both challenged and validated. Thank you Sarah and Beth for taking the time on this.
This was a great episode and yet I’m stuck on the fact that Beth didn’t like the Wicked adaptation. It feels really personal to me and I may have to talk about it in therapy (jokes)
I said the same to my husband!!!! I feel betrayed 😆😆😆😆 (just kidding ladies)
There was so much to think about here. It was unsettling to hear your conversation about the negativity toward the professional class or "elite." The only people I have heard disparage the "elite" in non online conversation come from the household in my family that most matches the description of "elite". One member of the house is a lawyer for oil company, all are educated, they are by far the wealthiest of us and able to give their children the opportunities that come with that. I didn't understand who they thought the elite might be??
I really enjoyed this episode! I haven't seen Wicked yet because my husband and I need to find an afternoon where we can knock off of work early while our toddler is still in daycare, but I can't wait to see it!
Re: the campaign reflections, etc.: I've been thinking about the "wokeness" of it all, and what I can't figure out about LGBTQ+ people in particular is that public support for same sex marriage between 1996 and 2024 rose 42 points (with some slight fluctuation slightly higher in the last 5 years). I feel like the conversations around gender have freaked people out more acutely in the last few years and therefore, the discussions about transgender athletes and bathrooms have dominated some of the culture wars convos, but I struggle with what to make of these conversations in our body politic given that same sex marriage has been legal for nearly 10 years now and certain justices on the Supreme Court (look at you, Clarence Thomas) have signaled overturning Obergefell. I don't know if my comment is directly related to anything in this episode in particular - it's just something I've been thinking about a lot lately because those public polling numbers don't square with how much of the oxygen it's taking up in our political discourse.
As far as discussions about the Obama-era people and how Democrats should be moving forward, I found this video from Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches Media and co-author of Democracy in Retrograde, enlightening: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDA2CDCSzQ2/.
It's because transgender issues have been swelling up before gender issues can be reckoned with.
That’s a really good point, Norma! I hadn’t thought about it like that.
I’m listening a day late, battling a cold. Something about the Hunter’s pardon just wasn’t hitting right and then Beth gave me chills. It was weird, because I wanted Hunter pardoned? I don’t even fully understand why??? 🙄 that’s something else to contemplate.
But YES. Blanket all the PARDONS. How beautiful. Make an actual statement.
I’ve learned over the past few months that I projected a lot of positive intention on to Biden that he may not have actually earned at all.
Ah well, time will tell?? Maybe??
I feel you. All the Biden negativity on the podcast and elsewhere has really taken me aback.
On the topic of underestimating just how much Trump had permeated popular culture over the last 40 years - my husband and I were watching the 2002 rom com classic (lol) Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. Trump makes a cameo and I died a little. I feel like we need to go back and retroactively put content warnings on movies and TV where he just pops up without any real tie to the plot.
Here is his filmography, so we can all be warned (thanks, Wikipedia):
Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
The Little Rascals (1994)
Across the Sea of Time (1995)
Eddie (1996)
The Associate (1996)
54 (1998)
Celebrity (1998)
New York: A Documentary Film (1999)
Zoolander (2001)
Two Weeks Notice (2002)
Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven (2007)
Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? (2009)
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011)
He showed up in an episode of Sex and the City too I remember! I know you are listing films though
Wow. That really spans a lot of genres. Lol
Ellen, I see you. When I saw Annie for my ninth birthday, I was so excited about movies. I learned all about the director and read magazines about the production and learned everything I could and then I pronounced that I was going to make movies when I grew up. And my dad said, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You aren't doing that." And here we are.
But people who use their childhood trauma (and drama) to make sure others are beat down are a real problem. Our next president is firehosing his trauma all over the rest of us and so are a lot of people who have power (real or perceived) in this country. It infuriates me. I can set a boundary against it in my personal life, but my righteous anger will simmer under the surface as long as I remain a second class citizen.
(I'm still joyful, y'all. Don't forget that.)
"Firehosing his trauma all over the rest of us" is such an accurate way to describe the last decade of politics!
My daughter wants to be a writer, and we talk about being a writer AND... We look into the stories of her favorite authors and learn how they were writers AND teachers or scientists or lawyers (until writing got big enough for them to be just writers). And how they incorporated their work experiences into their writing.
People only care about "nepo babies" when the "nepo babies" have something other people want. No one cares about the pharmacy or restaurant or auto body shop passed down through 10 generations. They care when someone gets a film made or a book published or an appearance on a red carpet.
Whew. That is some real truth, Norma.
Nailed it, Norma! Nobody cares that my grandfather taught my dad and uncle everything he knew about being a mechanic and employed them in his shop after high school graduation.
I am not sure I believe in presidential pardons at all. I don't give it a lot of thought because it doesn't come up that often, but at this point in time, I'm waiting for Biden to pardon all the people. He has a few more weeks and he needs to do all of it and why not? This is how we live now.
While we're talking about Pete Hegseth, I am also thinking about Bowe Bergdahl and his recovery during the controversial prisoner swap orchestrated by the Obama administration. I am also thinking about Rage Against the Machine: some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.
I am personally struggling with the “the professional class sucks” strain of analysis and public sentiment. Granted, I did in fact go to graduate school to become a counselor and my husband is a lawyer. I was a first generation college student who was encouraged by my own father not to date until I had gotten a master’s degree so that I wouldn’t be derailed from my education. I have always had a ton of ambivalence about my education because it has also been impressed on me in my extended family that one ought not have “more education than sense” and that it is my responsibility never to make anyone feel bad in my presence as a result of my education or intelligence. Not to mention, we are not any more financially secure than my blue collar electrician father was at our age. So it sort of feels like, I did the thing my parents hoped I would do, but I have to apologize for it all the time, and somehow I am “opportunity hoarding” when I don’t own a home and am one major car repair or medical bill away from financial ruin just like most people.
First of all, our backgrounds (down to the electrician dads!) have a lot of similarities and your comment resonated with me. ♥️
This doesn’t cover the entire professional class, but I work in higher ed and I feel like I am seeing a lot more clear eyed lately how much gas the academy threw on the Trump fire. I’m not saying it didn’t come from well intended places, but the smugness and elitism attached to those good intentions is real. For a long time I felt my working class background had to be overcome in my work (and I’ve never worked at an R1, let alone an Ivy or elite private school), but I figured out how to talk the talk so I made my way. I’m far from being an outlier in that regard. Why should we have to do that!? Isn’t education, of all things, for everyone? I could go on and on and on…
Yeah, I'm not going to apologize for being educated, even though I understand that I had a lot of privilege to get it. My bristly reaction is do non-college grads think we should be discouraging people from education and gaining expertise? Why do we not value expertise? I'm only an expert in a very small segment of life, and I'm certainly glad there are people I can turn to who know more about a thing than I do. Let's acknowledge the value of higher education and expertise without getting elitist about it. We can do both.
Having fled from a small town to go to college, and I, well, stayed gone, I think the bitterness comes from the fact the educated, highly talented people from the interior of the country are fleeing their hometowns for their education and then never coming back. The sentiment is very much, "Are you too good for us now?" Rural America desperately needs its talented young people to come back home and work to rise their communities out of poverty, unemployment, and decay. More often than not, they never come back. So, in the Rural American mindset, the educational elites are encouraging abandonment of their communities through liberal education.
Erin I feel this. There is some sort of cultural backlog in my opinion of what is considered working class. Was it this episode or a different podcast where that was mentioned. The knowledge worker is working class… I think it could be more of a backlash to the perception/situation that was created that a college education is the only honorable way to have a “real” job. We are mostly in the same boat.
I feel a struggle a little when we talk about the disparity in graduation demo graphics. There is something there that triggers and instant eye-roll to me when it is presented as a problem that more “black women are graduating than white men” doing some thinking in that and what is it really telling us/driving this shift. I just feel like some context is missing.
I think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg saying there will be enough women on the Supreme Court when there are nine. We want to say that civil rights, equity, etc benefit everybody, but in a lot of spaces resources are finite, and of course we’re not just going to achieve perfect balance.
Regarding the Wicked movie I’m questioning did I love it so much because I didn’t see the musical or maybe because I was craving something good because of how shitty I’ve felt since the election? I cried multiple times during it and am ready to see it again. I was shocked to hear Beth didn’t care for it.
Same! It was the joy I needed after coming off the election. I have been listening to the lyrics on repeat and there is such a through line to what is happening today politically. The fact that Cynthia and Ariana sang it live AND did their own stunts makes it all the more impressive (which is why I think her voice was “softer” in Defying gravity - harnesses and corsets and being flown all over!) Give this movie all the Oscars!!! Holding Space.
I was shocked Beth didn’t like it! I’ve seen it twice in the last week and like you I never saw the show anywhere else. But I found Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande to both be breathtaking and I sobbed both times. I cry just listening to the sound track. I was bummed they weren’t both sharing my obsession….but I love them just the same. 💚🩷