Does Elite Capture Follow from Elite Condescension?
Review Essay: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)[1]
February 10, 2023
We live in an epoch experiencing widening pendulum shifts implicating the mural of ethnicity, identity, and disadvantage. Sharp verbal volleys and intense linguistic swings consume the nation under the management of an increasingly venal group of elite overlords. Verbal volleying reflects anthropological and sociological cultural wars, more spiritual than political. Cultural conflict consumes scholars such as Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.
He commences his thoughtful book Elite Capture by emphasizing the claim that during the pandemic, police murders around the globe continued unabated as part of the racialized criminal justice divide. Insisting that there has been a pandemic of police violence during the Covid-19 epidemic and ignoring evidence that a police officer is eighteen times more likely to be killed during an encounter than an unarmed black man, Professor Táíwò offers a catalog of police killings that have sparked a spate of protests, including the sacking and pillaging of malls and convenience stores. Táíwò’s emphasis accompanies an enthusiastic embrace of identity politics premised on the unique experiences of blacks, women, revolutionary feminists, and lesbians.
Táíwò offers a cautionary concern regarding whether identity politics constitutes an essential tool allowing the bourgeoisie to maintain its dominance over the working class and notes that elites often engage in performative behaviors that ensure disparity continues; still, he argues that the worldwide response to police killings is constitutive of solidarity sparked by the organizing world of Black Lives Matter chapters. Seeking transformative, nonsectarian, coalitional politics while failing to specify solidarity’s constituent elements fully, Táíwò argues that one of his central aims is to explain how identity politics—perhaps even in the hands of privileged elites—equips “people, organizations, and institutions with a new vocabulary to describe their politics even though the substance of those political decisions are irrelevant or even counter to the interests of the marginalized people whose identities are being deployed.”[2] This objective appears paradoxical because elite moves are exemplified by the World Bank’s “Task Force on Racism,” the United Nation’s inquiry into anti-Black racism, and the CIA’s effort to produce deceptive videos filled with multicultural/multi-ethnic individuals.
Such behaviors by elite organizations and “Woke” corporations are rich in virtue signaling while fleeing the enactment of material reforms. To add a patina of revolutionary authenticity, such organizations rebrand (not replace) existing institutions by using elements of identity politics. In addition, substantial evidence suggests that Black Lives Matter’s leadership has increasingly gravitated toward becoming moral and financial grifters while proudly proclaiming their commitment to Marxist principles. BLM leaders maintain their stance, despite Karl Marx’s unrepentant commitment to anti-Black racism. Táíwò argues that elite capture stands between us and transformative identity politics. He seeks to remedy this situation by distinguishing between process and outcome on the road to rebuilding the “collective house.”
Despite such deeply felt aspirations regarding the possibilities inherent in identity politics, much data shows that elites benefit from capture. At the same time, working-class blacks, whites, and browns drift deeper into poverty. Still, there is much more to the story of disparity in America. First, readers should note, as an initial matter, that multi-ethnic elites have engaged in a series of moves that constitute a flight from democracy: the rule of the people, particularly rule or even influence by individuals who are seen as disadvantaged. Multiethnic elites see ordinary working-class people as members of the Res Idiotica (easily manipulated ignorant know-nothings), whose votes, but not their actual preferences are what is essential. Indeed, elites have succeeded in capturing democracy for one side of the ideological divide: the progressives. On this view, as writer Gergely Szilvay shows, progressives/liberals “concluded that the object was not to win the debate over who [conservative or liberal] could democratically enact better policies, but to seize democracy itself.”[3] Consistent with this claim, Pedro Gonzalez shows that what we are witnessing is not really a revolution but a counterrevolution of left-wing elites in the name of the oppressed. Meanwhile, over the past several decades, the nation has experienced the most significant redistribution of power and wealth from the middle and lower classes to the rich in human history.
Second, the data shows that the rich have impressed the “oppressed” into service for their benefit while twisting Thorstein Veblen’s focus on acquiring status tied to luxury goods to acquiring luxury beliefs. Luxury beliefs were displayed at the 2021 Met Gala, where left-leaning elites celebrated the imposition of COVID-19 regulations and their commitment to reducing income inequality by appearing maskless after paying upwards of $35,000 per ticket while their masked servants served drinks. This burlesque spectacle featured avowed socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wearing an expensive dress painted with the slogan “Tax the Rich,” as if she were storming the Bastille—not with weapons, but as a brash, insurgent, Marxist renegade who defended her appearance by stating that “[w]e really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working-class woman of color at the Met.”[4] Responding to her moral inferiors who attacked her appearance, she claimed they were driven by jealousy or provoked by white supremacy, misogyny, and colonialism.[5] In other words, so long as elite hierarchs justify their invidious imagination by demonstrating proper upper-class beliefs, even apparent incongruity can be forgiven after they endure the enormous burden of carrying the cause of the dreary poor to the world’s wealthiest, most privileged elites.[6]
Third, anyone familiar with the work of Thomas Sowell on the one hand and Peggy McIntosh on the other is prepared to note that there are two starkly different explanations for the existence of economic and social disparity in the United States and elsewhere. The two explanations—the bias narrative versus the development narrative—offer sharply contrasting views. Táíwò’s book, from its striking introduction to its end, operates consistently with the “bias” narrative instead of the “development” narrative to explain ethnic differences in incarceration rates, test scores, incomes, and fatal outcomes involving the police. The bias narrative, an increasingly strident view advanced by the Left, emphasizes Táíwò’s focus on outcomes rather than process. An outcome-focused idea strives for equality of racial outcomes (equity) in the distribution of resources and power.[7] This view favors Peggy McIntosh, who offers her “white privilege” thesis and asserts that American history is irredeemably riddled with systemic racial oppression, which thus explains all outcome differences. This viewpoint is enhanced by Nikole Hannah-Jones’ hypothesis suggesting that America’s founding and Original Sin began in 1619 when the first enslaved Africans landed in Virginia. Her victimhood thesis ignores data showing slavery was a human institution with deep roots in humanity. Indeed, Mansa Musa, perhaps the wealthiest person who ever lived, was the black ruler of the West African empire of Mali during the 14th century. Evidence proving that slavery was a human institution shows that much of his wealth was tied to gold mining, salt mining, and slavery, which included white European and black West African slaves.
The bias narrative is radically opposed to the development narrative favored by Glenn Loury and others, which implies that ethnic differences are often tied to family structure, family and ethnic, cultural values, differences in human behavior, and the like. The data favor the development narrative, showing that many non-black minority ethnic groups—Syrian Americans, Taiwanese Americans, Filipino Americans, Indonesian Americans, and Korean Americans—have higher test scores, incomes, lower crime rates, and incarceration rates than white Americans.[8] Correlation is not necessarily proof, but additional evidence by economists shows that the single most significant determinant of success in the United States is being raised in a stable, intact family, a prevailing characteristic of African Americans from 1890 to 1950. From this view of the cathedral, the most important house to be rebuilt is the family home, which is currently riven with disrepair and targeted for demolition by BLM leaders. Rebuilding the black family, properly understood, constitutes one of the most basic forms of resistance against the power and influence of elites, who would transform us all into vassals to fulfill their political, cultural, and moral ambitions.
That is not what concerns Professor Táíwò. Instead, he emphasizes rebuilding a house that draws on the preferences of elites. Elite concerns include climate change and being antiracist, anti-capitalist, and anti-carceral. Cultural elites, for instance, demand carceral equality without first demanding equality in the commission of crimes, a view that contrasts sharply with the concerns of residents of the predominantly black neighborhoods where I grew up. But there is more. For example, he argues that labor unions allow workers to bargain collectively over working conditions and wages. He claims that organized workers should use their leverage for goals far beyond wages and benefits and historically have often done so.[9] Táíwò argues that unions were pivotal in dismantling Jim Crow segregation but fails to acknowledge labor union history fully. This history is riven with proof showing unions and progressives subordinated and excluded minorities and women from the labor force in the name of progress.[10]
Táíwò then advances his concern for student debt, an issue that disproportionately affects individuals who have attended elite universities. Consistent with this view, President Biden’s loan forgiveness program unsurprisingly benefits the well-off, is regressive, and amounts to a money transfer to the upper middle class paid for by poorer individuals.[11] Despite such real-world evidence, Táíwò maintains that these policies are necessary to build a new house grounded presumably in solidarity. The question is: for whom? This question answers itself: building the New House allows elites to rule in the name of the oppressed even if the shape, color, and architecture are changed.
In an age of swiftly moving pendulum shifts, this conclusion should whet our appetite to resist elite control. To do so will require two things. For one, following Sheena Mason, we must work to eliminate the category of race, perhaps before eliminating racism (a concept that provides immense benefits to those who would subjugate based on racial categories—white supremacists and progressives—and race hustlers who profit from the maintenance of racial categories—antiracists and globalist elites). Second, we must confront attempts by our cultural elites to maintain control of our lives and communities with courage. To do otherwise would allow elites to follow Chairman Mao’s forecast—stating there is a great disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent—to come true here just like it has already come true in China.[12] This would allow blacks and virtually everyone else to be shoehorned into various identity groups and then deprived of agency while being victimized by elite condescension.
[1] Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) (2022) (Haymarket Books, Chicago).
[2] Id. at 9.
[3] Gergely Szilvay, “An Analysis of Orban’s “Illiberal Democracy,” The European Conservative, (October 4, 2022) https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/orbans-illiberal-democracy/.
[4] Glenn Greenwald, “The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly Covid Images from the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace,” Glenn Greenwald, September 14, 2021, *5–*9, https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-masking-of-the-servant-class?s=r.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Táíwò, at 13.
[8] Harry G. Hutchison, Requiem for Reality: Critical Race Theocrats and Social Justice Dystopia, (forthcoming, January 2023) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Requiem-for-Reality/Harry-G-Hutchison/9781637586556.
[9] Táíwò, at 109.
[10] See, Harry G. Hutchison, “Waging War on the ‘Unfit’? From Plessy v. Ferguson to New Deal Labor Law,” Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 7 (2011): 1, 1–46 (explaining Progressives’ contribution to racial subordination and eugenics).
[11] Linsey Burke, and Adam Kissel, “Seven Reasons Why President Biden’s Student-Loan Debt Transfer is Bad for America,” The Heritage Foundation, (August 29, 2022) https://www.heritage.org/education/report/seven-reasons-why-president-bidens-student-loan-debt-transfer-bad-america
[12] Harry G. Hutchison, Requiem for Reality: Critical Race Theocrats and Social Justice Dystopia, (forthcoming, January 2023) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Requiem-for-Reality/Harry-G-Hutchison/9781637586556.