Shamus Khan, a sociologist colleague here at Columbia, returned to his elite secondary school as a teacher cum ethnographer. I have finally gotten around to reading his book, Privilege, which is superb.

The main reason to read the book, other than the voyeuristic peep into the Harvard of high schools, is an insight into culture and inequality in the US. An example:

…the new elite are not an entitled group of boys who rely on family wealth and slide through trust-funded lives. The new elite feel their heritage is not sufficient to guarantee a seat at the top of the social hierarchy, nor should their lives require the exclusion of others.

…Like new immigrants and middle-class Americans, they believe that anyone can achieve what they have, that upward mobility is a perpetual American possibility. And looking around at their many-hued peers, they are provided with experiential, though anecdotal, evidence that they are correct.

Instead of entitlement, I have found that St. Paul’s increasingly cultivates privilege. Whereas elites of the past were entitled—building their worlds around the “right” breeding, connections, and culture—new elites develop privilege: a sense of self and a mode of interaction that advantage them.

The old entitled elites constituted a class that worked to construct moats and walls around the resources that advantaged them. The new elite think of themselves as far more individualized, supposing that their position is a product of what they have done. They deemphasize refined tastes and “who you know” and instead highlight how you act in and approach the world.

Other insightful bits:

What students cultivate is a sense of how to carry themselves, and at its core this practice of privilege is ease: feeling comfortable in just about any social situation.

And this::

[In the past,] Elites knew who they were as a group, and they knew who wasn’t one of them. They were a “class” who protected their interests. They had a distinct culture that they isolated from others and used to distinguish themselves.

But today elites are far more “omnivorous,” culturally constituting themselves quite freely across social boundaries or distinctions. They no longer define themselves by what they exclude, but rather their power now comes from including everything. What marks elites as elites is not a singular point of view or purpose but rather their capacity to pick, choose, combine, and consume a wide gamut of the social strata.

The “highbrow snob” is almost dead. In its place is a cosmopolitan elite that freely consumes high and low culture, and everything in between.

Personally, there is not enough scholarly fame or rewards to make me go anywhere near my high school, but I’m glad someone else had the courage. I will stick to conflict zones.