Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Coming Apart by Charles Murray

I'm feeling a little turned off by this book so far.
He knows exactly who his audience is... us... the "new upper class white people". He tries to knock us down a peg or two or at least show us how ignorant we are when it comes to other white Americans and how they are leading their lives...

And now, in Part two, I feel like we are dispassionately dissecting the lives and motives of the "lower class whites" and trying to decide what we are going to do about them and their departure from important American values. It is like an academic exercise or like analyzing a tribe of "barbarians" or gorillas.

I would be so offended by this entire book if I was the sort of person that would be living in Fishtown, but of course, the chances of me actually being interested in his book if I was are pretty slim. (But I also grew up in a Fishtown-ish town and I know a large number of cohabitating couples with young babies right now...)

So I feel like we're peering into a world we supposedly know nothing about and we're analyzing and judging it for the worse.

(My husband and I could do quite well on his little test, though, because neither of us come from upper class families to begin with.)

I guess we can all be offended by the OES term, too, though.

I still haven't figured out where Murray is going with this and I'm almost halfway through the book.


(Also, he pointed out in the beginning that white people will be a minority come mid-century, so who cares anyway? Shouldn't we be looking to the culture that is emerging now across the board with all types of people?)