Recently, James Barham wrote about the growing class divide in the United States, in “The Parable of Belmont and Fishtown,” as portrayed by Charles Murray in his essay “The New American Divide” and a forthcoming book. (The working class are not bitterly clinging to religion and guns; they are undergoing a collapse of religious and family values.)
One troubling aspect of Charles Murray’s thesis is that he believes that intelligence is, generally, inherited. He worries about what will happen when, in upper middle class enclaves, the most talented people marry each other.
Oh please! Not this again! The infamous Bell Curve (racism, classism, etc.) revisited.
Murray is raising some critical issues about the drift of America toward a class-based society and class warfare as an inevitable outcome. So let’s expel the ghost of the Bell Curve right now, and then we can get on with what matters.
The Tale of Two Racehorses may provide a clue for how to proceed: