Got a 58. But I am a third generation (at east) upper middle class. My parents have degrees, Dad a PhD, Mom a master’s. 2 out of 3 of my siblings have master’s. The one with an associates made the most money, oddly enough.
Grew up surrounded by scientists, most of whom were at the top of their particular fields. Discussed astronomy with astrophysicists on camping trips, physics with a guy who worked with Fenyman at holiday parties. Played in bands and hung out in seedy bars for a long time. Worked in restaurants in very poor areas. Now I am senior system engineer for a fairly large company.
Have you always lived in a rural area, never in a city, small town or a suburb? Because in my experience people in those places have 50 neighbors, although the distance involved is going to be different depending on exactly where you live. * Of course, just because you have 50 neighbors doesn’t mean that you will know all of them or each of their educational levels - but that doesn’t mean you can’t discern the overall makeup of the neighborhood. I am not sure about my neighborhood now, because I suspect the education level of the buyers has gone up along with the house prices, but when I moved in, it was a working-class neighborhood much like the one I grew up in and the majority of residents did not have college degrees. There are all sorts of ways to get a general idea , like how do the neighbors look when they are going to or coming home from work - do they come home wearing a uniform with their first name embroidered on the shirt or wearing suits or “business casual”? If they come home wearing suits/“business casual”, that may not tell you much but if they come home wearing uniforms, they probably are mostly not college graduates. Or maybe you realize that of the approximately one hundred kids in your 8th grade class, ten or twenty of you went to college, while the rest went to a trade school of one sort or another , got into a union apprentice program or else got whatever sort of job they could get with a high school diploma (bank teller,supermarket cashier, work in a warehouse or driving a delivery truck,maybe retail store manager). Or you hear a lot of other parents saying their kids don’t need to go to college, it’s a waste of time and money, the parents themselves did just fine without college. ( you might find college educated parents accepting the idea of a kid not going to college, but they usually don’t actually *discourage *it)
*Someone living in an apartment building may have 50 neighbors just in that building. I live in a single family house within the city limits and have 40 houses on my block. My brother-in-law lives in a less-dense suburb and has at least 36 houses on his cul-de-sac, which is probably a mile long
The two questions with the most push back seem to be ‘ever known an evangelical [Protestant]’ and ‘50% neighborhood college grads’.
On the first one I agree that tends to create a geographic focus which isn’t entirely relevant to the less than middle class v upper ~20% now increasingly hereditary upper middle class+ which is Murray’s underlying focus (in the iteration of his research and book relevant to this quiz). But I’d reiterate the racial assumption (more relevant to a previous much criticized though actually not clearly ‘debunked’, IMO, Murray book) doesn’t really fit. Depending who is counting and definitions a larger % of non-whites are ‘evangelical’ or ‘born again’ Protestants than whites. Anyway it’s not a lot smaller %. And the question doesn’t ask if you’ve been close friends with a white ‘born again’ Protestant.
On the second I just went with what I assume is the general theme. We are sort of ‘gentrifiers’ though we’ve lived here over 30 yrs now. Most of our local friends have degrees AFAIK, I’m not in the habit of asking people. And college itself isn’t a clear class distinction across ages. Lots of younger college grads have a lower/working affect, but for older people it’s more common for those who didn’t happen to go to or finish college to still have a more upper middle affect. Anyway no one thing is a clear marker of class in US society. So even a social class quiz people liked would have more than a few questions (probably no such thing, different people will always say any quiz of social class per se in the US is BS).
Also class and politics interact but aren’t the same thing. Many criticisms seem to start from the assumption that if people vote for the same party (especially the Democrats) they are the same class and only ‘BS’ questions would distinguish them, and likewise dismiss any possibility that groups that vote mainly for Democrats and GOP could have anything in common class wise (for example white and black evangelicals are pretty polar opposites in GOP v Dem preference, white E’s more GOP than whites in general, black E’s not much if at all less Dem than blacks in general; that doesn’t make them totally different in all ways; Hispanic evangelicals OTOH do lean noticeably more, relatively, to the GOP than other Hispanics).
Otherwise, it looks like there is way too many defensive comments.
Take the questions as they are, dont analyze them to death, nor the quiz. Ever have fun in anything? :p:p
I would think that there are less people in a bubble than worldly. Bubble people are even shielded from that item…:D:D
As I said, with the exception of one year in college I have always lived in a rural area or a small town. Even today, while my small town has grown to about 19,000 people in 10.6 square miles, the area where is live is the least populated. My neighborhood contains less than 25 houses in a half mile radius, roughly 50% of those across a lake from my house. That stretches the definition of ‘neighbor’ in my book. Also, the majority of people in those homes are retired and have lived in the same house for over 30 years. It’s what realtors call an “established neighborhood”. Whether or not these folks, who are now in their 70’s and 80’s, are college educated never comes up in conversation. They have been retired longer than I’ve been a parent, and I’m now a grandfather twice over.
No, you can’t. I am a senior manager for a Fortune 500 insurance company responsible for data analytics. I wear jeans and a collared shirt to work every day. I have no college degree. I have working for me, in an entry level position, a rocket scientist. Literally, she has an advanced degree in aerospace engineering. She couldn’t find a job in her field without relocating, which she did not want to do. More and more, people with advanced degrees are working entry level, blue collar or service jobs, whether by choice or necessity. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.
All that to say: It’s a poorly designed poll and, therefore, meaningless.
And was that also true for your entire life , that people with advanced degrees would commonly work entry level blue collar or service jobs? I think not, not unless you are a lot younger than I am. Because it was not common in the '60s or '70s or '80s to have a college degree and work as a truck driver or a mechanic or in a warehouse or in a retail store or restaurant .* And if you remember my original post , I also mentioned other indicators- for example, if only 20% of your child’s classmates went to any sort of college, it is very unlikely that 50% of then had at least one parent with a college education. If 30% of the people you started high school with dropped out, it is unlikely that 50% of them had at least one parent with a high school education.
I'm not saying the quiz is well-designed or useful - I'm just saying it's possible to know whether you have *ever* lived in a neighborhood where the majority of your neighbors did not have college degrees without having specific information about each neighbor. Even if it isn't possible for you to know , it doesn't mean it's impossible for everyone.
Did it happen sometimes? Of course, especially temporarily. But there were not neighborhoods full of mechanics, truck drivers and warehouse, retail , and restaurant workers, 50% of which had college degrees.
45, but that’s because an awful lot of questions were, “Have you ever…” Well, yeah. Once. Oh, and I answered the pick-up question ‘yes’ because I had a '68 El Camino in my youth but I don’t think that’s what he was driving (heh) at. Also, I thought the military insignia question was odd, skipping from “at least one” to “all five.” I knew instantly four of the five (missing the Air Force insignia – all those sergeants) so it seems odd to exclude the middle between perfect and practically nothing.
OTOH, I would have scored a lot higher on the chain restaurant question if Texas Roadhouse had been substituted for Outback. The one is three miles from where I live and the other is ten (and I don’t like Outback much, anyway).
I agree with RTFirefly’s post but, perhaps, attribute it to poor methodology rather than fraud.
According to Murray, with a score of 54, I’m “A first-generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and movie going habits.” Nope. Parents were white collar professionals. I don’t watch TV. I saw none of the movies listed. I’m college-educated and progressive.
A few of the issues I have with the quiz:
Anyone who checks “NO” to the question on cheap beer in one’s fridge gets bubble points. What if you’re an MWA who doesn’t drink beer? What if you don’t drink at all? If I happen to prefer cheap beer, how would that get me out of the bubble? Murray says, “The disdain of the new upper class for domestic mass-market beer is nearly as intense as its disdain for people who smoke cigarettes.” No stats, no cites.
Murray claims if you’ve lived in a small town, you’re more in touch with MWA. The college towns I’ve lived in (not as a student) were under 50k and couldn’t be described as MWA. Also, there are over 1200 US towns with pops under 50k and a Black majority. Grow up in one of those, and you get lots of “white mainstream” points.
Murray believes if you spent any time in a blue collar neighborhood, you’re magically in touch with MWA. I lived in a neighborhood distinctly blue collar, but it was blue collar DEMOCRATS in the 60s—hardly the MWA of today. We moved to another neighborhood, and I have no idea of the educational background. A high school diploma got you a lot farther then.
I was constantly thinking of Harold & Maude, when Harold’s mother was filling out his dating profile for him.
I got the score I got, which I guess is what it is. But I’m not sure it’s a particularly useful piece of information. I mean, I’m either a detached snob or one of the writhing masses lodged in the muddiest corner of the sty, right?
I got a 57. I grew up in a small town in northern Indiana, worked in a factory there, and attended a Baptist church for a couple of years (it was not a good fit for me).
Total bubble boy here. I would have scored less bubblesque if I’d answered yes to the long distance bus question. I have traveled by bus a couple of times, but they were short trips of less than 130 miles and I was in college at the time, so I didn’t think they counted. And in one case, it was only because I had just missed the last train.
