That’s a bad example, if I remember US history right the civil rights movement was mostly supported by academics and the intellectual elite. It also had at the very least the sympathy of non-Southern newspapers. Or in other words, opinions among say professors and influential newspaper editors in the 1960s was probably closer to majority opinion on the subject in 1970s and even 1980s, than the majority opinion of their time. I think that’s actually the relevant group to watch, since this is an analysis of the role of opinion makers.
This is actually true for a lot of things. The opinions of those in power and quite often those in public have basically for the last 100 years or so always basically lagged for 20 years or so behind the prevailing opinion on a subject on a random Ivy League university. The charitable way to interpret this is that there exists something like moral progress and universities are a reliable truth finding mechanism and thus tend to get it right first. The alternative interpretation is that universities and the media are much more opinion makers than truth seekers and that the Ivy Leagues class are basically the institutions that determine the parameters of a status competition among the elites (which then both trickles down due to imitation, as well as gets spread by media and legislated by government) every generation.
Under that interpretation they hold massive power over society. Reflecting on that I think that would more or less make them the ruling class.
As I noted in my later reply, the Civil Rights movement is older than the 1940-1960 period. Advocating federal anti-lynching laws predates the 20th Century. Yet Strauder v. WV is reasonably representative of elite opinion of the time. See also Shipp v. United States, where the Supreme Court held a sheriff in contempt and sentenced him to a few months for allowing a lynching.
So you basically interested what drives changes in ruling class opinion? And feel comfortable with more or less equating elite opinion change with social change?
I’m interested in what attempts to cause social change actually “work.” A theory that activism never works seems no more consistent with the evidence than a theory that activism without elite support is the primary cause of social change. On the specific example we’re discussing, the evidence seems to be that the NAACP was activist, not a “ruling institution” from its founding (1909) until some point in the post-WWII period. Yet the NAACP created conditions that led to enormous social change.
That’s a bad example, if I remember US history right the civil rights movement was mostly supported by academics and the intellectual elite. It also had at the very least the sympathy of non-Southern newspapers. Or in other words, opinions among say professors and influential newspaper editors in the 1960s was probably closer to majority opinion on the subject in 1970s and even 1980s, than the majority opinion of their time. I think that’s actually the relevant group to watch, since this is an analysis of the role of opinion makers.
This is actually true for a lot of things. The opinions of those in power and quite often those in public have basically for the last 100 years or so always basically lagged for 20 years or so behind the prevailing opinion on a subject on a random Ivy League university. The charitable way to interpret this is that there exists something like moral progress and universities are a reliable truth finding mechanism and thus tend to get it right first. The alternative interpretation is that universities and the media are much more opinion makers than truth seekers and that the Ivy Leagues class are basically the institutions that determine the parameters of a status competition among the elites (which then both trickles down due to imitation, as well as gets spread by media and legislated by government) every generation.
Under that interpretation they hold massive power over society. Reflecting on that I think that would more or less make them the ruling class.
As I noted in my later reply, the Civil Rights movement is older than the 1940-1960 period. Advocating federal anti-lynching laws predates the 20th Century. Yet Strauder v. WV is reasonably representative of elite opinion of the time. See also Shipp v. United States, where the Supreme Court held a sheriff in contempt and sentenced him to a few months for allowing a lynching.
So you basically interested what drives changes in ruling class opinion? And feel comfortable with more or less equating elite opinion change with social change?
I’m interested in what attempts to cause social change actually “work.”
A theory that activism never works seems no more consistent with the evidence than a theory that activism without elite support is the primary cause of social change.
On the specific example we’re discussing, the evidence seems to be that the NAACP was activist, not a “ruling institution” from its founding (1909) until some point in the post-WWII period. Yet the NAACP created conditions that led to enormous social change.