The confidence, or overconfidence, of the rich

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Interesting:

Many of us, though, wouldn’t even have tried the hurdle. If I’d had Ms Sands otherwise decent CV, I’d have looked at that job spec and ruled myself out as unqualified. Ms Sands, obviously, did not.

In this, she’s following many others. Tristram Hunt has become head of the V&A despite no experience of curating or of running large organizations. David Cameron wanted to become PM because he thought he’d be “rather good” at it – a judgment which now looks dubious. And the last Labour government asked David Freud to review welfare policy even though, by his own admission, he “didn’t know anything about welfare at all.”

These people have something in common: they come from families sufficiently rich to afford private schooling*. And they are not isolated instances. …

One thing that’s going on here is a difference in confidence. Coming from a posh family emboldens many people to think they can do jobs even if they lack requisite qualifications. By contrast, others get the confidence knocked out of them (16’20 in)**. As Toby Morris has brilliantly shown, apparently small differences in upbringing can over the years translate into differences not only in achievement but also in senses of entitlement.

The point is not (just) that people from working-class backgrounds suffer outright discrimination. It’s that they put themselves forward less than others, and so save hirers the bother of discriminating against them. …

Herein lies an issue. In hiring Ms Sands (and no doubt many others like her) the BBC is conforming to a pattern whereby inequality perpetuates itself. This suggests that the corporation is badly placed to address what is for many of us one of the great issues of our time – the many aspects of class inequality – because it is part of the problem. And it compounds this bias by focusing upon other matters instead – for example by the incessant airtime it gives to the (Dulwich College-educated) Farage***. Bias consists not merely in what is said and reported, but in what is not – in the choice of agenda. In matters of class, the BBC is not impartial. …

Post external references

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    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/02/class-confidence.html
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