“Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded.

In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, and tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.”

(via Princeton Press)

On the evening of Thursday March 27, Harvard faculty and students gathered in the PBHA parlor room to hear from Musa al-Gharbi on his most recent novel, We Have Never Been Woke. With his insight as a sociologist and assistant professor for the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University, al-Gharbi writes on the consequences of the elitism exercised by the social class he calls “symbolic capitalists.” In front of his audience on Thursday, he made a point to emphasize that we, as community members of Harvard, are nearly all part of the symbolic capitalist class. He defines this as a demographic of educated, democratic, white-collar workers in the upper middle classes who condemn social inequality, yet benefit from these lasting forms of socioeconomic inequality. Symbolic capitalists consider their professions to be altruistic, and primarily for the benefit of those with less fortunate lots, and yet are in fact among the highest paid.

It’s true that this class of people– including politicians, journalists, and academics – may genuinely be interested in social justice and correcting societal inequities. The issue, however, is that symbolic capitalists think that they are more deserving than the people who they claim to represent. To this end, Al-Gharbi explained that “symbolic capitalists have virtually always been mistrustful of the very populations they are supposed to serve,” and the primary objective they care about is preserving their own elite status. He urged that it is especially important for people like us at Harvard to remember that “you can’t really be an egalitarian social climber.”

This begs the question: If we are all condemned as hypocritical social capitalists, what can we do? What if some of us symbolic capitalists have genuine motives? According to al-Gharbi, we cannot change the culture of symbolic capitalism overnight. He encouraged us that awareness is the first step in a multi-decade process of this reversal. Further, when making choices in our daily lives or careers (like holding up signs at a protest or deciding to attend law school), al-Gharbi asked us to reflect:“Who are we really doing this for?” In other words, this requires asking oneself if you are going to a Black Lives Matter protest to assuage your own white guilt or to make tangible change for the Black people of America. If a person wants to make tangible change for the victims of social injustice, al-Gharbi would encourage them to instead find ways to “help concrete people create concrete change.”