Sociologist Charles Murray, who is best known for his controversial 1994 study "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life," came to campus to speak publicly about his new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." He spoke with The Daily Princetonian about his views on the growing divergence between the American white working class and the socioeconomically superior white upper class.
Daily Princetonian: What inspired you to start writing the new book? What sparked your interest in this specific topic?
Charles Murray: Well, in a way, "Coming Apart" is the sequel to "The Bell Curve." So we — Dick Herrnstein and I — talk a lot about the formation of a new cognitive elite in "The Bell Curve," and we talked about the forces that were creating it, but we put it in terms of a developing process. This book, in effect, says, “Remember all those things we warned you about in 'The Bell Curve'? They’ve happened.” So that’s one of the motivations.
The other thing is that my wife and I moved to a town of 72 people in 1989 in rural Maryland and sent our kids to the local public schools, and we love it out there ... but we have also observed over the years a lot of these problems that I describe as part of the new lower class. So right before our eyes we’ve had the human consequence of the things I discuss statistically in "Coming Apart."
DP: You talk about a lot of the trends in towns like Fishtown and Belmont [statistical constructs of towns where the working and upper classes live, respectively, in "Coming Apart"]. What are the consequences of those changes?
CM: Well, I actually don’t even need to put it in terms of Fishtown; I can put it in terms of the place where I live. So the guy who does our cooling and heating has his own little business. He would love to hire a young person to learn his trade, and his trade makes a very decent living — we’re not talking poverty level, we’re talking middle-class income. He can’t find any young people around our area who want to do that. And the same has been true of other people we know who are plumbers or electricians or, you know, in a wide variety of other good occupations. You simply have a lack of interest in doing those things among a lot of people who don’t have jobs.
So that’s the kind of thing you see. We have seen in a town, where family values are very strong, daughters in these families who’ve had babies with no husbands, which their parents sort of look at that and say, "How could this possibly happen?” But it is creating a lot of difficulties for parents, for the mothers of the children and for the children themselves. So that’s the kind of thing that we see in human terms for real and the kind of thing that I discuss in statistical terms regarding Fishtown.
DP: And in terms of the causes of those changes, why are, for example, these daughters having babies out of wedlock? Why are people not interested in the plumber’s job?
CM: Well, that’s the question that I deliberately avoid talking about in the book. And the reason is that, I think, originally a lot of these trends were set in motion by the reforms of the 1960s. If I had gone through that argument in “Coming Apart,” everybody who was left-of-center would refuse to read the book. And my thinking is that, at this point, it doesn’t make that much difference what the original cause was, that we have seen cultural changes that are now driving these behaviors and we are only going to change them through cultural change. And cultural change cannot be driven by one side of the political spectrum; it has to be a broader consensus about the right thing to do, so I was very, very quiet about my own opinion of the causes for exactly that reason.
DP: You talk about the ways in which [members of the new upper class] don’t impose their values on the masses. What would that look like if they were to do that? How would they transmit their own cultural values?
CM: How would they preach what they practice?
DP: Exactly.
CM: I use that phrase in the book, that the elite doesn’t preach what it practices. Basically, the elites get married; they work real hard. In many ways, they behave admirably, but when it comes to issues like family formation, they say, “Oh, but there are lots of different kinds of family formations, and you can’t say one is better than the other.”
So what does "preach what you practice" mean? It doesn’t mean buying a bullhorn and going down to Fishtown and standing on the street corner. It means, among other things, starting to celebrate people who are trying to do the right thing and working hard at it. It consists of something which used to be absolutely standard, which is, if you were a man, for example, and you were working at a job — any job — supporting a wife and children, you were one of the good guys. You were seen as one of the good guys by your family, your community, but also by the whole nation. And it was the elites who were very important in sustaining that view, saying, “Okay, I may be an attorney, and you may be a plumber, but I authentically respect you for what you are doing.” That doesn’t happen anymore.
Along with that not happening, you also do not have disdain for people who aren’t doing the right thing. So it’s not a matter of imposing your values. You should instead simply make known what your values are, whether it’s at dinner parties with people in your neighborhood, whether it’s in the way you approach your job as a journalist. I don’t mean you should impose your values in the sense of fudging the facts; I’m just saying that it should inform your worldview. Your values should be informing what you do and all of the rest of it — it’s in the air.
So let’s go back to the case of a man who is not supporting the mother of his children or the children themselves — I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t a treat a man who behaves that way with contempt. He’s earned it.
DP: What are the ways in which we can solve some of the problems that your book talks about?
CM: Well, when I say that cultural change is the prerequisite. Cultural change comes about in mysterious ways. The United States has experienced, for example, at least three religious Great Awakenings — in the 18th century, and the early part of the 19th century, and the late part of the 19th century — and it had huge non-religious consequences. How did that happen? Well, you had charismatic preachers who started to get attention, and those movements spread. You can’t plan it; all you can do is have deeply felt moral issues that you stand to talk about. That’s how the Civil Rights movement, a non-religious Great Awakening, occurred, and it occurred very rapidly, from the mid-1950s over the course of a single decade. It transformed the country.
So, given my view that cultural change is necessary, what is it in my power to do? I can write a book, and I can try to get people to start engaging in conversations about this. Beyond that, I don’t have any bright ideas.
DP: Do you think the political parties should adjust to these demographic changes to draw in voters?
CM: This is good illustration of the distinction between trying to achieve cultural change by talking to your neighbors and trying to achieve cultural change politically. So that, for example, in “Coming Apart,” I am obviously a big fan of marriage, both in terms of its value for the flourishing of children and in terms of its value in generating social capital. So I think marriage is wonderful. I think that for the Republicans to try to pursue policies like the Defense of Marriage Act, and other legislative attempts to prop up marriage, are disasters. Whereas I really want marriage to be strengthened, especially in the working class where it has deteriorated so much — that’s not going to happen because of anything that Congress can pass.
So the Republican Party, I think, needs to start talking about goals that are equally important but that can be promoted by policy changes, and I mean things like opportunity, ability to start a business and ability to live your life as you see fit — all of these things. We can take things that the government is doing wrong, and we can get the government to stop doing them, and that would be steps in the right direction. That would not alienate the majority of the population, as Republicans have alienated them on issues of abortion and gay rights and marriage.
DP: I have some friends that are conservative and are very big proponents of gay marriage because they see it as being something that allows people to have families and children within a marriage structure, a family structure. How do you personally feel about gay marriage?
CM: Well, I’ve been influenced by Jonathan Rauch, who wrote a very moving argument in favor of gay marriage in which he was clearly treating marriage very seriously. And he was arguing not just that it enables gays to have families in a sense but also that it enables them to consecrate intimate relationships that need to be accorded the respect they deserve. He didn’t make me an advocate of gay marriage; he made me decide not to oppose gay marriage.
I’m still a disciple of Edmund Burke, and Edmund Burke would say, “Look, this is an institution that is absolutely central to a culture’s functioning, and it has been going on for centuries — if not thousands of years — in a form similar to the one we have now. The reasons why it is defined the way it is are so deeply embedded in the culture that we really shouldn’t mess with this institution.” I still think Edmund Burke has a lot to be said in that position, but the political reality today is that we’re going to experiment with gay marriage as a change in definition, and I don’t see a point in delaying that experiment.
DP: And do you think it could possibly have positive consequences for gay couples who want to get married, adopt kids, form a more permanent family structure, that kind of thing?
CM: It could. And part of the reason I’ve changed my attitude is not just reading Jonathan Rauch. I’ve also been watching friends of ours — my wife and I have both male and female gay couples that we know — and their relationships look to us like they’re marriages. And in that sense, I was wrong. I really didn’t expect that long-term, devoted relationships of this kind would be nearly as common as they have turned out to be.
DP: You talk a lot about the aristocracy of intelligence, how you had the block with a lot of Harvard and Yale people on it, and how they met at elite institutions and got married …
CM: We are sitting in the belly of the beast.
DP: ... and having children that go on to have high intelligence levels and do well and that kind of thing. Have you seen Susan Patton’s letter to the editor, by any chance? What did you think about it?
CM: Well, many of the forces that are creating problems I write about in "Coming Apart" are actually the collateral effects of good things. It’s actually a good thing if people find it easier to marry a spouse who shares their interests and tastes and the rest of it, and who also who gets their jokes. It’s really important in a marriage that when one partner speaks, the other partner doesn’t have a blank look on his or her face. And so you really shouldn’t marry someone who is of vastly different intelligence than yourself.
However, I do advise everyone to try to find a spouse who is a little bit smarter than them. It’s very relaxing; I speak from experience. When you marry someone who is smarter than you are, you never have to explain anything that you said, and she always does get my jokes. She doesn’t always think they’re funny, but she always gets them.
DP: And that would go for both — men should look for someone smarter than they are, women should…?
CM: Yeah. I’m just saying it’s relaxing to be married to someone who’s a little bit smarter than you.
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