Hey, have you taken the “Do you live in a bubble?” quiz? It sounds like fun.
I tried taking it but to me it’s meaningless. I grew up in a different reality, and after the phrase “high-prestige professions such as physician and attorney”, I realized I was wasting my time. The quiz offers zero space for immigrants.
Clarissa's Blog 
Do what I did…. fudge.
Since I haven’t actually lived in the US in over 20 years I applied some level of interpretation to the answers.
In your case think of high prestige professions in the USSR (either in money or social terms) rather than literally doctors or lawyers.
Alternately you could think of a couple of locals that you’re close to and give the kinds of answers you think they might give.
I ended up with a second group least insulated 46 which sounds about right.
“The quiz offers zero space for immigrants.”
Well immigrants by definition tend to live in some kind of bubble.
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Immigrants (or long-term visitors) know the correct answer …
It’s the Americans who are living in the bubble, because the questions only make sense if you answer them as if you’re an American.
My favourite from the quiz: “Have you been on a factory floor?”
Yes, with a major caveat: I was wearing “executive hi-viz” so I could see how our products were being made.
Apparently PBS hadn’t reckoned on some rogue executive-like person wanting to have a stroll on the factory floor for some non-pleb kind of reason. 🙂
[… and imagine if they’d even considered the possibility that the factory floor was in another country … such as the United Kingdom … OR EVEN CHINA …] 🙂
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“Well immigrants by definition tend to live in some kind of bubble.”
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It’s Charles Murray who created the quiz, and he’s assuming some interesting things about American classes — the one about fishing, for instance. He assumes there that only the lower class / working classes fish in America. Here in the South, almost everyone fishes. The upper class fish with giant boats, while the working class fish off docks at the public parks and state parks: there’s his class difference.
My father was an engineer, but I grew up fishing and shrimping. We had a boat and went down the bayou, as we say in New Orleans, at least a couple weekends every months.
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“It’s Charles Murray who created the quiz, and he’s assuming some interesting things about American classes — the one about fishing, for instance. He assumes there that only the lower class / working classes fish in America.”
-Agreed. While further north, in many urban and suburban areas, many people don’t fish at all, simply because it’s not really an option in such an area. That doesn’t imply anything about their class, either. Of course, if you’re closer to a lake or ocean, you’re more likely to find higher populations of people who fish.
The factory floor thing really bugged me, too. In a place where there are maybe two factories within a two-hour driving radius, how are most people supposed to have set foot on the factory floor? That just doesn’t make sense. And why wouldn’t headaches or carpal tunnel count as job-related pain?
There are far too many assumptions Murray makes. The uniformity of social structures in the United States, for one. A ton of stereotypes, for another.
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Of course he makes a whole bunch of stupid assumptions. He’s the son of a Maytag executive who burned a cross next to a police station.
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What’s really interesting is that living in a bubble is reserved, for this fellow, for folks who are highly educated, travel, read massively and are comfortable in the world at large. At the same time, living in a tiny town and not knowing anything but what’s immediately close, not having explored the world, not having any physical, cultural, intellectual, professional, etc. mobility – that’s somehow not living in a bubble.
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” living in a tiny town and not knowing anything but what’s immediately close, not having explored the world, not having any physical, cultural, intellectual, professional, etc. mobility – that’s somehow not living in a bubble”
I think the bubble is not realizing that people like those you just described exist and are their fellow citizens and deserve more than condescension and/or pitying scorn.
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In this sense I’d say you’re out of the bubble. But how many of your colleagues are and/or how many of your fellow grad students were?
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“I think the bubble is not realizing that people like those you just described exist and are their fellow citizens and deserve more than condescension and/or pitying scorn.”
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“I’m so sick of academics competing with each other as to who is more proletarian”
What kinds of things do they use to prove their proletarian credentials?
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Like living in “the bad part of town” by choice and feeling oppressed. 🙂 And I also have a colleague who knows all about poverty because she knows somebody who can’t afford health insurance. This makes her feel very superior because of how worldly she is. 🙂
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Ah, there is also bragging about occasional eating at fast food places. People are all like, “I’m so gangsta, I ate at McDonald’s.”
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“…that’s somehow not living in a bubble.” Yes, this, exactly. Murray (an intellectual himself) commits the Romantic fallacy of believing that working class life is somehow more authentic than any other sort of life. So people who are working class, and who live like (he imagines) working class people live are, to him, authentic and real.
Therefore they don’t live “in a bubble,” their lives are the real lives. Their experiences are the genuine American experience. (Worshiping at the Evangelical church. Fishing. Joining the military. 4th of July parades. Eating at crap restaurants and liking it.) Everyone else, though, they have false lives, and need to have their bubbles popped.
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People who romanticize poverty are the ones who never really experienced it. It’s only picturesque from the outside.
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Yes, precisely. Murray can be Romantic about working class poverty because he knows nothing about it, aside from — perhaps — interviewing some workers a few times.
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Right, so, most Americans then — and you thought I was simply being flippant. 🙂
I suppose for this PBS person, Canary Wharf is a kind of “bubble”, rather than a sort of highly exclusive neighbourhood for things that end with Plc and the people who work within those things …
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The quiz is written by Charles Murray, the same guy who co-authored The Bell Curve.
Further, the dude himself lives in a bubble. Ethnic food sit down restaurants are cheaper than chain sit down restaurants and they give you more food. And why this weird aversion to the fast food restaurants people actually go to? Knowing all five insignia of the armed forces doesn’t mean you’re working class. “Manager” is almost meaningless since there is title inflation and you often have the title so the bosses can avoid paying you too much. Working class isn’t always rural. And why ask about body parts hurting yet exclude your hands or your eyes? This weirdly excludes clothing manufacturers or dry cleaners or beauty salons. And the grade question completely excludes the existence of people with learning disabilities as if IQ is the only reason someone would consistently make Cs even with trying.
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By far the best question on the quiz:
Have you ever participated in a parade not involving global warming, a war protest or gay rights?
My answer: yes (as a kid I was in a horseback riding club that participated in some local parades and then I was in marching band) and I’d be able to answer yes without either of those too….
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‘Have you ever participated in a parade not involving global warming, a war protest or gay rights?”
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Not bubble, I’d say as it is about civic engagement (in a country without civics but still….)
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All these things are true about the quiz but it diagnosed me fairly well — second generation or more upper middle class who has made a point of getting out a lot. I am, although the getting out a lot has partly to do with my working class relatives … still, accurate for quizzes of this type.
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I was going to say, Consider the Source, it’s Charles Murray, but many others have beaten me to it. It is well-established that the man is a charlatan. He starts off with his conclusion and then finds research, however weak and sketchy, to support it. Talk about a bubble!
My results said I am formerly middle-class, now upper-middle class. How I wish! This quiz does not control for bank accounts and other assets.
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I took this quiz and I was like WTF? It said I was upper middle class and lived in a bubble, primarily because I don’t go to the movies or watch network TV. I do eat at chain restaurants, watch sports and could recognize the military insignia because I have relatives in the military, but since I don’t watch Tv or go to the movies I’m in a bubble. Plus I live in New Jersey, nobody fishes unless it’s off a pier in the summer or drives a pickup because of the gas prices, this quiz made no sense at all.
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Yes, how about the people who don’t buy a pickup because they don’t have the money? Are they upper class too?
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My older brother drives an enormous Ford pickup truck the size of a yacht and it has every modification on the market, that does not come cheap and would certainly be out of the reach of any working class person unless they won the lottery😀 He makes a lot more than me so he can afford it, by that standard he would be working class according to Mr. Murray😆
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PS, pickups are expensive unless you get a beat up used one. A better question to ask would have been if you drove a used American car over ten years old, those are a lot cheaper
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Remember that “Do You Live in a Bubble” Quiz you took on Facebook? It was Written by a White Supremacist.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2018/08/real-americans-live-in-small-towns/
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Rebecca Solnit is a militant idiot, and Murray is not “a white supremacist.” The blog you linked has gone completely to the dogs in recent years.
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And now I’ll have to hide the post under a password because it opens me to charges of being a Nazi her is personally responsible for murdering people or at least making them “feel unsafe”, which is the same thing, really. That’s how things are these days.
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