Common Ground between People Inside and Outside of the “Bubble”

Recently, Charles Murray has declared that, among whites, the upper class and the working poor live in different worlds with different values, and there’s an amusing test here that one can take to see how close one is to the poor. I owe this to Mark Spahn, and like him I got a score of 5 to 8 (meaning that I’m more in the bubble of the rich than I thought I’d be).

Anyway, one instance of common ground between the people inside and outside of the upper class’s “bubble” is the devotion that both groups have to the same team sports. Both groups like one or more of baseball, football, and basketball. When I first got involved in soccer in the 1970s, my naive view was that these upper class people, as well as those near the bottom aspiring to be part of their world, would be the first ones to move away from our sports to soccer since they seemed to be open-minded and internationally oriented, but that didn’t happen, and I instead found myself surrounded by a surprising mix of frat boys, sorority girls, people in the military, and suburban parents with small children. With the rise of soccer in our schools, there are now young people from both groups who are soccer fans, but the level of support for soccer is still very much below that of baseball, football, and basketball.

Let me make a few comments on the quiz.

It didn’t ask how one gets news. People in the bubble get their news from NPR, the NY Times, and the Nation. Those outside generally get it from the local newspaper or tv station, I guess.

People in the bubble hate Wal-Mart and McDonald’s and people outside generally like them.

People in the bubble sneer at the art of Thomas Kinkade, while those outside generally like his work.

People in the bubble either live on a coast or want to live on a coast. Those outside have no problem with living elsewhere.

There are more criticisms of the quiz in the comments here.

Let me note an oddity among those in the bubble. This was a young woman I met about a year ago who came from a very wealthy family. Her grandparents own lots of artwork and are on the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, plus she was majoring in art history at a high-priced college. She seemed like she must have had a very cosmopolitan upbringing. So, how did she spend her childhood? She said her family, in addition to their house in a big city, owned a ranch and she spent lots of time there in the summers learning how to ride horses and rope cattle. Roping cattle? It’s not exactly what I think of when I think of those in the bubble.

Update: See here for a better version of the quiz, one that has an explanation for why there was a range of scores on the other site.

I do have to complain about Murray's assertion that Chipotle is like Whole Foods. A Chipotle just opened up in my town, and it has been mobbed. The people there don't seem like the type to go to Whole Foods. Nor is it likely that a Whole Food would ever open up here.

Comments

[Steve Burri]

I was a 16.

"In other words, you're so embedded in mainstream America that you need to visit the bubble once in a while."

Is it OK that I still come here and visit sometimes?

[John Pepple]

Absolutely, though I don't really think of myself as much in the bubble. After all, I couldn't give myself points on the restaurants because we don't have them in our town. There were a few others like that.

[nydwracu]

I always thought Chipotle was a black thing. Also, in what universe are cigarettes not upper-class? The only people I know at my college who don't smoke have health problems that prevent them from smoking.

[John Pepple]

Re: Chipotle. In my town, there are very few blacks, and like I said, the Chipotle has been mobbed, mostly but not exclusively by young people. I haven't seen any blacks there yet.

You may be right about smoking, though. My wife, who teaches at Kenyon College, says lots of the students there smoke, and because its tuition is so expensive, most of the students are upper-class.

[J. Reed Anderson]

Just took the test, too, and a couple of thoughts: No points on the beer question because I don't drink; you've got to be almost of a certain age to know what Trailways was; and the smoking thing is nearly definitive these days among the folks I know. The upper class I know are nearly apostolic in their anti-smoking. All the smokers I know work for a living, as the adage goes.
And Thomas Kinkade? I love and own Thomas Kinkade. Of course, I also have cars and truck parked in the woods around the house, and a shooting range just outside the back door. I came up with a 13 of 20.

[J. Reed Anderson]

Excuse me, I meant to write that I scored between 13 and 16.

[John Pepple]

I don't know what to say about the smoking issue, so I'll leave it to others.

I rather like Thomas Kinkade, but if I were to say that in front of my wife's colleagues, they would get hysterical since that is not the sort of art that people like me are supposed to like.