Is it just me, or do many self-identified liberals seem to look down on poor people and others from communities who have low or no access to education?
Almost every time there's a major event such as the pandemic, U.S. elections, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I see a subset of liberals quickly blame the "uneducated and ignorant" people who hold certain views about a given event.
Now, make no mistake: there are absolutely many misinformed, inaccurate, and/or downright harmful beliefs that one can hold, but when a portion of society have been disenfranchised, denied access to basic education, and been abused and neglected by the same governmental and media institutions they're supposed to trust, what else can we expect?
People can thumb their noses all they want at a poor person who genuinely believes that a COVID vaccine will kill them or that the GOP have the solution to their poverty, but it seems to me that beliefs don't originate in a vacuum. Moralizing and invariably attributing such people's disillusionment to some condemnable ignorance doesn't help when under different circumstances, many of them would have markedly different worldviews.
I saw this first-hand when I was in the army. A fellow conscript from a rural area, who was illiterate, said that one of his biggest wishes was to be able to read and write. Expectedly, he also had religiously conservative views per the norm in his largely poor rural area.
Blaming him for being "uneducated" would simply miss the point. Of course he is; nobody is born with a master's or a PhD. This is someone the education system, social security, and society at large have largely failed. Realistically, is he going to be a religious conservative, or is he going to listen to liberals in suits and air-conditioned lecture halls talking about how ignorant and reprehensible he and people like him are for having the views that they do?
I feel like some liberals could benefit from studying and understanding the social, economic, and political conditions that shape people's perspectives instead of clinging to a one-dimensional narrative that moralizes more than it makes an effort to realistically analyze why and how people hold the beliefs that they do--and how to go about changing the problematic aspects thereof in a practical way.
Discuss.
