Yes, just quickly doing the test chaging that answer from checking “rode the Greyhound” to not checking “rode the Greyhound,” I got a difference of one point, with the “rode the Greyhound answer” scoring one point higher than the other. (And this was simply marking the first answer for every question, with “10 years” entered as the fill-in-the-number answer for the first question, and leaving all the multiple choice answers blank [except the hitchhiking one, where I only chose or didn’t choose the first option of taking the Greyhound] and other-fill-in-the-blank questions as “0.” This gave a score of 73 for riding the Greyhound vs 72 for not.)
So riding the Greyhound appears to be at least a point towards not living in a bubble.
39, but I’m very atypical. Both my mother and I suffered from lifelong depression problems. As a result I am poor and under-educated for my potential, and socially isolated from both upper- and lower-class demographics… I don’t drive a pickup truck or drink imported beer.
Do you mean lower? The lower your score, the more you live in a bubble. I would assume at least the stereotype of Frasier Crane would suggest a low score. Though it sounds like he grew up in a working class family (I can’t remember–all I remember is his dad was a retired cop. I was not a dutiful watcher of the series), so a mid-range score might be possible for him.
I don’t drink beer and I don’t watch much in the way of TV series (I do watch a ton of sports, though, I should get credit for that!).
The test appears to think “being in a bubble” and “living somewhere that people aren’t all stereotypically white” are synonymous. In the village I lived in, it was rare to see people who weren’t white. How is that not a bubble?
Yeah, the test simply seems to be looking for how closely you are connected to working class and poorer class America. I took the quiz and answered the questions with what I thought were “stereotypically working class and rural” answers. I got a 92. I then answered the questions in what I would call “stereotypically white, college-educated, ivy tower liberal” answers, and got 2.
I actually went the other way with the assumption on the pickup. ie. It was purchased for the utility of hauling stuff. Tools and materials for manual labor, whether part of your job or just as a part of what you do.
I agree, I’d like to know how the author is weighting different answers.
Yeah, I thought for a moment that there was a possibility of it being nuanced, so if you answer consistently working class answers or consistently ivy tower answers, you’d both score high, being in different types of bubbles, but that does not seem to be the case. It seems to be as simple as “how much do you connect to “middle America (and military)” type of thing.” Pickup truck ownership would score you points for not being in a bubble, just like the Greyhound question.
I don’t agree. The proper definition of racism is belief in a categorical difference between people based on their race which justifies a societal system which discriminates based on race. ‘The best of X shall be below the worst of Y’. Being non-racist does not require a belief that all human talents are absolutely uniformly distributed by race and ethnic group. It requires a belief in discriminating against individuals, or accepting such behavior.
IOW there’s more than one way in which the term is misused. You gave one which I also agree with. But categorizing any research or discussion of racial (or ethnic) background and the statistical distribution of various talents which finds anything other than ‘nothing to see here’ as ‘racist’ is another misuse IMO: it’s the one which applies when calling Murray a ‘racist’.
If his scholarship and evidence were shoddy enough it might be reasonable to infer bad motives. But IME it’s simply assumed it is, then the inference made. IMO opponents of that book have, at most, presented plausible rebuttals. They’ve come nowhere near showing it’s a sham or deliberately wrong.
I was surprised it was so high, because I think of myself as living in a bubble, being exactly the kind of white, liberal educated, privileged, Northeasterner that apparently is disqualified from being a real salt-of-the-earth Amerricun.
*
0–43: A second-generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot. Typical: 9.*
This description does fit, however. My life trajectory has been atypical, and I guess I have “gotten out a lot” more than most of my friends and colleagues. For example, I’ve worked “blue collar” jobs and have evangelical Christian friends.
Count me in amongst the folks who assumed that yes on the pickup question put you outside the bubble. That happened to be a yes for me, but not because pickups are either necessary or “cool” amongst my compadres. (My ex is an avid whitewater kayaker and rafter, so a pickup with a cap is really practical. I think he enjoys the coolness factor, but it’s cool BECAUSE it’s different, not because it fits in)
The “over 50% of neighbors with college educations” was an easy one for me. Yes, all around. If you live in a certain kind of neighborhood, the answer is obvious.
I just googled it, and my whole zip code has around 70% with a bachelors or higher. The town I grew up in is about 65%. Overall, that town is more diverse, and the percentage was probably lower when I was growing up, but I lived in a very nice neighborhood with stocked with people with “professional” jobs.
The only place I’ve lived that I was unsure about was where I lived after college for a few years. I think of it as being generally a lot more diverse and tending toward lower-middle-class, but it turns out to have an overall 50% rate of bachelors-or-higher. Couldn’t guess at the numbers for the particular neighborhood, but it was in a nice enough part of town.
I think that there were periods in my very early childhood that could have changed my score, but I assumed the quiz referred to my post-adolescent life.
