Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

What if—and hear me out—we are not actually the change we seek? But instead, as Musa al-Gharbi writes, “we are some of the main beneficiaries of the inequalities we condemn.” Who is we? Al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University, grew up in a working-class family but then became part of a group he refers to as “symbolic capitalists.” These are white-collar workers, but more specifically they are academics or nonprofit employees or government functionaries—people engaged in what he describes as: “nonmanual work associated with the production and manipulation of data, rhetoric, social perceptions and relations, organizational structures and operations, art and entertainment, traditions and innovations, and so forth.”

In his new book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, al-Gharbi argues that this class of people will never be paid that much—certainly not as much as the bankers and consultants or philanthropists with whom they associate. And that in order to gain status or advance their careers, they must signal their virtuousness. And that the signal they need to send is that they are concerned about the plight of certain groups of victims.

This is not the first time this has happened. Al-Gharbi chronicles a number of different “Awokenings” that have occurred over the years. The last one was in the late 1980s with the original coining of the term “political correctness.” As the academic market began its constriction, the faculty lounges became battlefields to decide who cared the most about women and racial minorities. In each case, al-Gharbi suggests that a constriction in the market for symbolic capitalists led to a heightened level of virtue signaling. 

Part of this is done through language. What is the most au courant term for referring to a particular group? What are someone’s pronouns? How can we “destigmatize” criminal or anti-social behavior using language? Just like political correctness became a source of mockery in the 1980s and 90s when people would eventually proclaim themselves ‘politically incorrect,’ so the same has started to happen with wokeness today. 

But it is not merely language that attracts the attention of symbolic capitalists. Al-Gharbi cites the work of Lionel Trilling who first observed that this class was engaged in a kind of “adversary culture.” Al-Gharbi explains, “Within the new elite class, people gained status through delegitimization and denigration of institutions, traditions, values, and ways of life associated with the middle class.” This has been particularly true of the nuclear family. He continues, "Although symbolic capitalists are most likely to disparage ‘traditional families,’ they are also most likely to have hailed from ‘traditional families’ themselves and establish ‘traditional families’ of their own."

Al-Gharbi observes what many conservative sociologists have noted before: these elites are not preaching what they practice. “It is striking that symbolic capitalists regularly and conspicuously denigrate to others the very strategies they use to ensure their own socioeconomic prosperity.” But it is not just by having children inside the bounds of marriage. These symbolic capitalists have a lot of retrograde behaviors and attitudes when it comes to their own lives. 

Their emphasis on the importance of physical attractiveness is one that might surprise some, given all the lip service they seem to pay to the problems of bodyshaming and the importance of fat acceptance. But al-Gharbi writes,

Highly educated and wealthy men … tend to be far more concerned than most about their partners being attractive and physically fit. It is perhaps not a coincidence that highly educated Americans, especially highly educated women, spend significantly larger shares of their leisure time engaged in physical exercise than most others, are much more concerned about their diets, and are more likely to pursue elective medical procedures—even as they encourage others (i.e., potential competitors) to look however they want and enjoy whatever body type they happen to have. 

All of this focus on physical appearance only helps with the assortative mating process that symbolic capitalists are engaged in. Women are more likely to prefer men with the same or higher levels of education and income as them. Meaning that wealthier men in educated professions are going to end up holding all the cards. Working-class men of all races suffer in this hierarchy. 

Meanwhile, as much as the symbolic capitalist men like to proclaim themselves feminists, the end of traditional structures of courtship and family have led to a hookup culture that hurts women most. “They try to convince themselves that it is empowering for women to emulate the purported male ideal of casual, emotion-free, commitment-free sex. And for some, perhaps it is.” But studies show that none of this really makes women happy. And the long-term implications are particularly problematic. As he notes: 

Faced with a shortage of men who earn as much as, or more than, themselves, a growing share of highly educated or high-earning women are deferring or opting out of marriage altogether rather than ‘marrying down.’ While unsuccessful men are being pulled into incel culture, growing numbers of successful women are identifying as ‘femcels’ and resigning themselves to indefinite celibacy….  

Similar to Rob Henderson’s book, We Were Never Woke presents a set of luxury beliefs and zeroes in on the hypocrisy of the people espousing them. But al-Gharbi seems hesitant to condemn all this hypocrisy. He notes, rightly, that we are all hypocrites in one way or another. And that “this text is not intended to provide people with clean answers, but rather to unsettle much of what is taken for granted.” He doesn’t want us to think in terms of “good guys” and “bad guys.” And though he notes that most symbolic capitalists are liberals, he also notes that most of what he will say also applies to right-leaning symbolic capitalists because they, too, attach great significance to language. It’s an odd point since most of the book is not in fact about symbolic capitalists’ primary focus on language but rather how different their language is from their actions. 

Conservatives in this camp, he writes, prioritize free markets above all else. These accountants and stockbrokers and entrepreneurs are also culturally liberal, he argues. Maybe—but to what extent are they engaged in any kind of attempts to tear down traditional institutions? Are they encouraging others to forego traditional families? They may be cowed by left-leaning symbolic capitalists into accepting woke doctrines in their workplace, but it is likely only because they know they will be cancelled if they don’t. In an otherwise deeply researched and observant book about his own milieu, it seems odd to have a throwaway section about another group with whom al-Gharbi seems to have little familiarity. Perhaps he believes this seemingly evenhanded approach will save him from the wrath of his symbolic capitalist colleagues. I wish him good luck with that.