In their rush to save the world, woke celebrities actually cause more problems than they solve
Corporations, billionaires and celebrities are𒁃 all shrill champions o🌳f social justice causes — so why haven’t the problems been solved?
That’s♏ the central question that sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi aims to answer in his book “,” out October 8.
“There are social movements that are happening at the local level all around the country to pass differ🐼ent kinds of legislation to address pro🔜blems in concrete, successful and useful ways,” Al-Gharbi told The Post. “But the problem is a lot of times they become nationalized into a popular cause of elites — and then they stop being successful.”
Al-Gharbi, a professor of journalism, communication and sociology at Stony Brook University, explores how society’s elites are able to square idealistic notions ওof social justice with the rising economic inequality baked into t🌺heir lives — and why they trip over themselves to champion the downtrodden.
He pinpoints the emerging knowledge economy class he calls “sym𓆏bolic capitalists” — academi♒cs, consultants, journalists, administrators, lawyers, people who work in finance and tech — for perpetuating this hypocrisy.
“The people who work in these fields today are most likely to self-identify as anti-racists or feminists or environmentalists and so on,” he explained. “You’d expect that, as these people have grown in power and influence, you 🐟would see inequalities shrinking, social problems being resolved, greater trust in institutions — but instead you see just the opposite.
“There’s growing mistrust and dysfunction 🐭in institutions. Polarization a🎶nd inequalities are growing. Social problems are growing,” he added. “The book is trying to figure out what went wrong.”
Al-Gharbi says a perfect example of elites co-opting and ruining a movement is criminal justice reform. For years, a bipartisan consensus about the need for changes in the prison system was growing organically, culminating with President Trump signing the historic First Step Act in 2019.
But, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, the movement became a virtue signaling opportunity for elites and lost its stea🐼m.
“A lot of symbolic capitalists started seizing on the issue as a way of signaling how pure they are, how committed they are, how much better they are than other people,” Al-Gharbi said. “When they try꧅ to outdo one another, things 🐓can move into a really extreme and impractical direction — like, for instance, defunding the police and abolishing prisons.”
The problem with social justice activism among elites, Al-Gharbi argues, is that they self-appoint themselves to leaders🎶hip roles they have no right t💙o be in. ;
“They think that they should be the ones setting t𒁏he agenda and being the spokespeople, and they sometimes end up alienating a lot of longtime members [of social movements] who have been rolling up their sleeves and doing the work for a long period of time,” he explained. “They can end up discrediting the whole thing … by making it seem ridiculous and unpalatable to a lot of people🍬 who would have otherwise been on board.”
Al-Gharbi developed an interest in how elꦚites operate in society while studying at Columbia University for his PhD after ascending the academic ladder fr𝐆om community college in Arizona: “Watching the Trump election and then Covid-19 play out as someone who is new to this culture and these elite spaces made me want to understand what was going on here.”
That’s when he became fascinated by how, for all their virtue signaling and professed concern for the downtrodden, elites have been so remarkably ineffective at actually moving the needle on soꩲ🎉lving issues of inequality.
“A lot of symbolic capitalists are sincerely committed to social justice and really want to see the poor uplifted and the oppressed be liberated. I don’t doubt the sincerity,” he said. “But the problem is it’s not the only commitment they have. They also tend to have this sincere feeling that other pe♕ople should defer to them and listen to them.”
After all, it’s easy to advocate for defunding the police from your doorman building.
For Al-Gharbi, who did not grow up in elite spaces and is con🅰cerned about inequality, that tension is especially frustrating — and worth spꦦending a book exploring.
“I don’t disagree with a lot of the aspirations that people have about seeing the poor uplifted, about seeing people who are oppressed live with dignity in society,” he said. “But the specific modes and methods that symbolic capitalists typically rely on to pursue those goals are not only ineffective but often harmful to the people they are trying to help.”
