In a recent column, Kevin Roose '09 complained of feeling peer pressure to pretend he likes National Public Radio when he'd rather listen to Shakira ("The sound of snobbery," Oct. 13). Roose correctly identified a tendency among academics and college students to deliberately pursue obscure cultural tastes to confirm their intellectual worth.
I plead guilty to such feigned elitism. I find myself displaying the Charles Dickens classics or the latest hot foreign novelist on my reading shelf, rather than the John Irving page-turner I'd rather snuggle up with before bed. I shouldn't be embarrassed by the trade paperback, but very often I am.
At a left-leaning school like Brown, cultural elitism comes with dangerous political implications. Student activists at Brown (and at other colleges) seem to believe liberal values and political awareness automatically empower us to act as reformers, to elevate a society composed of those less educated than ourselves.
Nothing frustrates me more than a liberal student-politician who throws up his hands in exasperation at a Republican electoral victory and shouts, "What's the matter with Kansas?" That student's condescension toward those distant populations he sees as ignorant precludes his ability to communicate with "Kansas" and have his question answered.
Trying to change the country by addressing its population as though we were their cultural superiors is a recipe for failure. Practicing such intellectual elitism only prepares collegiate liberals to fall into the traps that ensnare current Democratic politicians - particularly those from the Northeast - who often are lampooned by their opponents as intellectual snobs.
Harping on elite cultural tastes thus undermines our ability to contribute meaningfully to mainstream culture. The more we refuse to dip into majority culture, the less able we are to develop relevant solutions to real world problems beyond Brown's campus. The self-identification of NPR listeners gives credibility to the cynical claim that young reformers nestled within ivy-covered walls are unable to improve a world in which they are outsiders.
But students at universities like Brown are not really as separate from the mainstream as some people think. Each year, the Chronicle of Higher Education surveys 30 campus bookstores (including Brown's) to report the reading list of American college students. Top places last year went to "A Million Little Pieces," "Freakonomics" and "The World is Flat." The same titles show up on the Oprah's Book Club list. Most real college students aren't black-coffee-sipping eggheads reading Wittgenstein for bedtime stories and watching subtitled silent foreign drama on Saturday nights. Instead we're listening to OutKast, watching "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" and reading the bare minimum to get us through class.
If we emphasize our differences from mainstream culture, we hinder our ability to contribute to the political and social causes we are so eager to champion. To make matters worse, claiming these differences is completely unnecessary. Deep down, our tastes are not as refined as we feel pressured to boast. A genuine cultural examination of virtually any student body, including Brown's, belies the foundations of their supposed exceptionalism.
Not only do the cultural similarities partially disprove the cynics who would rather see collegiate activists back out of mainstream political discourse, they also should serve as a rude awakening to those truly pretentious activists who give substance to the cynics' claim.
As election season enters its final week, I know Brown students are busy working on campaigns or fantasizing in the Sharpe Refectory about the campaigns we hope to one day run ourselves. It would benefit us in such discussions of our political sentiments to pay attention to our profession of cultural tastes as well.
Instead of hiding behind barriers of sophistication, pretending to enjoy the music, books or movies we think we should, I wonder if coming out of our cultural closet to admit to more plebian tastes might actually improve our chances of making a difference in the world beyond College Hill.
Maha Atal '08 loves reading trashy novels.
