{"id":6991,"date":"2018-10-01T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=6991"},"modified":"2018-09-30T19:49:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T00:49:41","slug":"how-class-privilege-shaped-kavanaugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2018\/10\/01\/how-class-privilege-shaped-kavanaugh\/","title":{"rendered":"How Class Privilege Shaped Kavanaugh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Photo of Yale Law School courtyard. Photo by stepnout, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than 20 million people<\/span><\/a> tuned in to the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing on Thursday. Many sociologists provided perspectives on the hearing, outlining everything from the <\/span>myths about rape <\/span><\/a>to the connections (and differences) with <\/span>the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas case<\/span><\/a>. In an <\/span>op-ed <\/span><\/a>for <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Shamus Khan<\/span><\/a> provides his take on how class privilege shaped many of Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s actions. <\/span><\/p>\n

In his book <\/span>Privilege<\/span><\/i><\/a>, Khan followed students at St. Paul\u2019s, an elite private school in New Hampshire. He describes how elite institutions, including the ones Kavanaugh attended, like Yale, foster privilege among their predominantly upper-class student bodies. This privilege includes ideas that students are \u201cexceptional\u201d and that the \u201crules don\u2019t really apply to them.\u201d As Khan explains in the article, <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes these schools elite is that so few can attend. In the mythologies they construct, only those who are truly exceptional are admitted \u2014 precisely because they are not like everyone else…Schools often quite openly affirm the idea that, because you are better, you are not governed by the same dynamics as everyone else. They <\/span>celebrate<\/span><\/a> their astonishingly low acceptance rates and <\/span>broadcast<\/span><\/a> lists of notable alumni who have earned their places within the nation\u2019s highest institutions, such as the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These narratives of privilege among the elite can have some pretty nasty implications. Khan cites research by economist <\/span>Raj Chetty<\/span><\/a> demonstrating that admission to an Ivy League school is rarely the result of educational aptitude, but rather extreme family wealth. He asserts that this class privilege, masked by notions of \u201cexceptional qualities,\u201d is tied to beliefs about special treatment among the elite. For example, Kavanaugh\u2019s supporters argue that he <\/span>deserves<\/span><\/i> the Supreme Court nomination and accountability for actions he committed years ago doesn\u2019t really apply to him. Khan illustrates further how this privilege also shaped Kavanaugh\u2019s actions on Thursday: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis collective agreement that accountability doesn\u2019t apply to Kavanaugh (and, by extension, anybody in a similar position who was a youthful delinquent) may help explain why he seems to believe he can lie with impunity \u2014 a trend he continued Thursday, when he informed senators that he hadn\u2019t seen the testimony of his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, even though a committee aide <\/span>told<\/span><\/a> the Wall Street Journal he\u2019d been watching.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In short, Khan\u2019s research demonstrates how class privilege has shaped Kavanaugh\u2019s actions from the outset, and how this privilege is cemented by the institutions and social circles around him. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 20 million people tuned in to the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing on Thursday. Many sociologists provided perspectives on the hearing, outlining everything from the myths about rape to the connections (and differences) with the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas case. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Shamus Khan provides his take on how class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,15,55,13,85],"tags":[29,105667,2526,39116,1522,39112,105668,16097,39114,105662,39110,449,105663,321,39115,3312,455,120,3830,3463,10413,176,727,19021,1430,105665,358],"class_list":["post-6991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-gender","category-inequality","category-politics","tag-class","tag-class-privilege","tag-court","tag-crime","tag-cultural-capital","tag-culture","tag-entitlement","tag-ford","tag-gender","tag-hearing","tag-inequality","tag-justice","tag-kavanaugh","tag-law","tag-politics","tag-privilege","tag-punishment","tag-sex","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-sexuality","tag-social-class","tag-socioeconomic-status","tag-supreme-court","tag-supreme-court-nomination","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6996,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6991\/revisions\/6996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}