earn dignity and respect by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love: you earn your way to be loved. The anthropology of the meritocracy is that you are not a soul to be saved, you are a set of skills to be maximized.
And the big lie at the head of the meritocracy that is corrosive is that people who have achieved more are worth more than other people. If you want to tear apart your society, that is a good lie to introduce. Our society does
a reasonably good job of taking off the moral
lens and helping us see life through an
economic lens, making us more morally numb.18
This raises, of course, a question that was asked back in 2016 by Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks. In that study, the researchers found:
Mobility optimists may simultaneously express hostility to the “rich” or “1 percent” and harbor doubts about the “fairness” of the economy. But they may also retain a belief in the promise of their own (or their children’s) economic prospects that insulates them from reacting to historical trends with more vigorous support for policy reform efforts.19
If true, then the consequence would be “the broader hope that ‘rising citizen demands for redistribution can reshape the policy environment’ … appears, at best, to be very slow in coming and to be countered by a very power- ful set of forces including mobility trope.”20 So no matter how much a person “believes” or “hopes” their children will experience greater opportunity and hence live a better life, it will probably not happen. And quite possibly, it would be naïve to think that the rage or the political violence will end any time soon.
Which brings us to insights provided by Derek Black. Black, the son of a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and close friend of David
Duke, was raised to take over the white
nationalist movement in the United States. But Black has subsequently publicly renounced
white nationalism and apologized for the actions of his family and himself. For which his own family has disavowed him.
Black is very open about how, when he attended college, friends and associates
created an open and safe environment where his perspectives and beliefs could not just be stated but challenged. It was this environment and challenge that caused him to reevaluate his upbringing. In consequence, he could no longer reconcile the hatred and fear perpetuated by his family and by their friend David Duke with this environment of acceptance, open debate, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
But what makes the story stand out is Black’s argument that people need to understand deeply how much people believe in their personal communities, no matter how disturbing the views they hold are to others. In the community in which Black was raised, people supported one another. They acknowledged their well-being and economic situation, and embraced the common origin stories that underpinned their perspectives and belief systems. Outside individuals and groups who criticize these people oftentimes fail to understand how “normal” these groups are: their members possess bachelor’s and advanced degrees, they hold jobs that care for
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Black provides an articulate response to why it does little good to simply criticize these people and such communities. People believe in their personal communities, no matter how disturbing the views they hold are to others.