Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the 2016 presidential election was on the first Tuesday of November. The election was actually on the second Tuesday of November. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for this error.
If the second Tuesday of Nov. 2016 was in fact a change election, an angry demand for help by a plurality and repudiation of the standing way of doing political business in so much of the country, one needs to ask specifically why and at whom this anger is directed.
The scapegoat of elites and elitism, and its punishment by the electorate, reads as good a partial explanation as any, and better than most.
But who exactly are these elites?
The externalization of blame onto distant parties eternally serves as one of the great human psychological defense mechanisms. Yet the most callous moral blindness often lurks inside us. When scraping together change for the Wendy’s value menu or paying for parking on Franklin Street, UNC students may not feel it. When still making student loan payments years into tenure, UNC professors may not feel it. Labor under no illusion.
UNC is a part of the elite the nation finds wanting.
Exclusion and elitism constitute universities, particularly this one. No diversity brochure plastered with easy smiles and bucolic tranquility can erase the practice of allowing in only those with the right grades, test scores, essays and ability to somehow pay.
UNC holds a ranking of 30 currently in US News & World Report, 47 in Forbes. Consider that those rankings come in on top of over 2,400 four-year institutions in the United States. Then consider that less than a third of Americans hold a Bachelor’s degree.
The quantitative implications of being a student or faculty at UNC, and how that places us as part of the elite, should be easy to grasp.
