According to the prevailing narrative, it is a disadvantage to be non-white as compared to white. To be LGBTQ as compared to straight. To be a woman as compared to a man. To be a religious minority as opposed to a Christian. To be neurodivergent or disabled as compared to being neurotypical and able-bodied. Undergirding this narrative is tons of empirical data showing that, on average, people who belong to these latter categories do in fact fare worse in life, as a result of structural disadvantages, ongoing stigma and more. However, this isn’t quite the whole picture.
Understanding these identities as strictly stigmatised or disadvantageous makes it hard to explain why so many contemporary elites go out of their way to paint themselves as members of historically marginalised and disadvantaged groups – often stretching the truth to do so. To understand that tendency, we need to look at the origins and contemporary workings of a relatively new and increasingly powerful elite formation.
Starting in the interwar period and rapidly accelerating in the 1970s, there were shifts to the global economy that radically increased the influence of the ‘symbolic industries’ – science and technology, education, media, law, consulting, administration, finance, non-profits, NGOs and advocacy organizations and so forth. Rather than providing physical goods and services, people who work in these fields traffic in useful knowledge or technical skills, novel and compelling ideas, social networks – and their social prestige or credibility. Because everything in these industries ultimately boils down to what you know, who you know, and how you’re known, we can refer to these professionals as ‘symbolic capitalists’.
I’m a symbolic capitalist. If you’re reading this, there’s a strong chance you’re a symbolic capitalist too.
One defining trait of symbolic capitalists is our commitment to social justice. We are the group most likely to self-identify as feminists, antiracists, environmentalists or allies to LGBTQ people. Politically, we’re overwhelmingly aligned with parties of the Left.
Many of our professions are explicitly defined in terms of serving the common good as impartial adjudicators, knowledge producers, facilitators and advisers. Journalists, for instance, are supposed to ‘speak truth to power’, serve as a voice for the voiceless, and democratise knowledge in the service of democratic self-rule. Academics are supposed to follow the truth wherever it leads and tell the truth as they see it, without regard to whether it serves anyone’s financial, political or other ends.
From the outset of the symbolic professions, the high pay, autonomy and prestige symbolic capitalists enjoy has been tied to our altruism – including and especially our advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable, marginalised and disadvantaged in society.
This mode of legitimation set the stage for a unique form of status competition within the symbolic professions: those who are perceived to be more effective at, or committed to, promoting the common good and (especially) helping the least among us also tend to be perceived as more worthy of prestige, deference, autonomy and so on. Meanwhile, folks who are successfully portrayed as possessing values, priorities and behaviours that seem unworthy of their profession – those who come to be seen as selfish or myopic, as serving elite interests at the expense of the broader public or as parasitic on society rather than advancing the greater good – will often find their jobs in the symbolic professions, and their social status, in a precarious position.
And so, for more than a century now, symbolic capitalists have sought to enhance their own prospects and undermine rivals through appeals to ‘social justice’. And, as detailed at length in my new book, in moments when these competitions grow particularly fierce, the symbolic professions tend to get rocked by ubiquitous ‘cancellation’ and censorship campaigns, extreme moral grandstanding, growing activism and politicisation within the professions and their outputs, and growing polarisation around expertise as a result. We saw this cycle play out most recently throughout the 2010s.
Over the course of the last century, however, the nature of these intra-elite struggles changed in important ways. For instance, in the wake of America’s Civil Rights Acts and other legislation, the symbolic professions grew more diverse (although they remain highly parochial compared to most other lines of work). This ultimately opened up a new front for ‘social justice’ competition.
Rather than simply being allies and advocates for the marginalised and disadvantaged, growing numbers of elites and elite aspirants positioned themselves as literal embodiments of historically marginalised and underrepresented groups – as avatars or representatives who could make strong claims on behalf of said groups (even though they tend to be highly unrepresentative of those populations, in truth). Today, many symbolic capitalists simultaneously portray themselves as advocates for those victimised by society and as people who have been personally victimised by society on the basis of immutable characteristics they happen to possess.
There are many incentives for contemporary elites to position themselves this way:
For one thing, minority elites are often exempted from critique, and can elide blame for social problems or unfortunate states of affairs. When people rail against the ‘millionaires and billionaires,’ for instance, they tend to focus on people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos rather than Oprah and Jay Z (who are also billionaires).
Additionally, individuals from populations that have been persecuted, exploited, oppressed, or excluded are often held to possess special knowledge or insight that others do not have access to. They are also perceived as more truthful and ‘authentic’ than others – especially with respect to issues discursively marked as salient for their group. For instance, lesbian, gay and bisexual people are held to understand sexuality better and speak more honestly on the topic than ‘straight’ people. Those who are female or transgender are assumed to understand gender better and to speak more authentically on gender issues than ‘cishet’ men. Ethnic and religious minorities are held to speak with unique authority on matters discursively associated with their group (in the US that means, for instance, listening with extra deference to Black people on policing, Hispanics on immigration and Muslims on terrorism – notice there are often troubling implicit assumptions that seem to be built into these deference practices).
Likewise, there is abundant research suggesting that diverse teams are more innovative, less biased and better at problem-solving as compared with groups that are more homogeneous. This research has often been (mis)translated into a perception that diverse individuals are inherently more creative and objective than others. ‘Diverse individual’, of course, is a contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, the perception remains that those who can be defined as ‘other’ in some sense may be especially well suited for the kind of work symbolic capitalists do, or they’ll add especially high value to organisations.
Those who lay claim to minoritised identities are often held to be morally superior to others as well. Many argue that placing people from historically marginalised and disadvantaged groups in positions of power will render institutions more ethical. Summarising the mentality that prevails in many symbolic capitalist spaces, Richard Rorty argued, ‘The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which . . . members of previously victimised groups . . . have somehow come into possession of more foresight and imagination than the selfish suburbanites. These formerly oppressed and newly powerful people are expected to be as angelic as the straight white males were diabolical.’
Under the right circumstances, laying claim to historically stigmatised identities can also render people eligible for special opportunities (e.g. hiring, promotion, admission, publication preferences) intended to make up for historical exclusions and injustices. In other cases, people who can lay claim to the ‘correct’ identities can receive special accommodations with respect to complying with social norms or meeting meritocratic standards.
Paradoxically, affiliation with historically victimised groups can simultaneously be used to enhance perceptions of merit. Racial and ethnic minority elites are widely presumed to have had to overcome significant bias, discrimination and perhaps privation (given that many people associate nonwhiteness with poverty) in order to achieve the same feats as white peers. LGBTQ symbolic capitalists are presumed to have had to overcome significant homophobia, transphobia and heteronormative expectations in order to embrace who they truly are and achieve professional success. Those who lay claim to various forms of disability and trauma are held to have triumphed over social stigma, pernicious stereotypes and the difficulties of navigating infrastructures and institutions ‘not built for them’ in order to flourish in the sphere of competition. And as the old saying goes, women have to be able to do all the same things as a man but ‘backward in heels’ in order to break through the ‘glass ceiling’, overcome misogyny and beat men ‘at their own game’.
By leaning into these perceptions, claimants can paint themselves as more meritocratic than their résumés or CVs might convey, because all their accomplishments are held to have been achieved in a competition rigged against them. To the extent they meet or exceed the scores, credentials or achievements of more ‘privileged’ peers, this is held to be due to exceptional raw talent, perseverance, courage and so on.
Meanwhile, people who cannot easily lay claim to minoritised identities – native-born, able-bodied, neurotypical, cisgender, heterosexual, white men – are widely depicted within the symbolic professions as privileged, ignorant, entitled and depraved. They’re held up as the source of virtually all the world’s ills. It is posited that institutions will be much improved when ‘those people’ are eventually replaced by ‘diverse’ alternatives.
Consequently, in highly competitive arenas where perceptions and relationships govern everything (such as the symbolic professions), contemporary elite aspirants face immense professional and psychological pressure to find some way to identify not just as an ally to minoritised populations, but as a minority oneself – as LGBTQ, neurodivergent, disabled and/or a ‘person of color’ (the more identities one can lay claim to, the better!) – even if they have to bend the truth to do so.
Unfortunately, as elites have grown increasingly preoccupied with laying claim to formerly stigmatised identities, the discourse around those identities has been increasingly gentrified. Instead of the struggles of working class black people, we are presented with the travails of highly educated professionals. Instead of focusing on people who are severely handicapped by physical or mental disabilities, mental illness or neurodivergence – people who actually need help – the emphasis is on celebrating the accomplishments of photogenic and successful people from more privileged backgrounds who claim to possess the same conditions (sometimes self-diagnosed). The ‘wretched of the earth’ have virtually disappeared from view among symbolic capitalists. Even the language to refer to ‘those people’ and their conditions has been largely erased through imposed linguistic hygiene. Under the guise of ‘centring’ and assisting the marginalised and disadvantaged, we largely seek to elevate ourselves.
As ever, symbolic capitalists talk a lot about ‘social justice.’ But the truth is, we have never been woke.
‘We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite’ is published by Princeton University Press. Order your copy here.
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