Elitism

From dKosopedia

Elitism is the perpetuation of the values of an "elite."

"Elite" can refer to two groups:

1. Those who want to maintain a self-perpetuating oligarchy's social/political/economic domination.
2. The small group consisting of the best of the best in a given field.

A depressingly large number of people cannot distinguish between the two meanings, probably due to anti-intellectualism.

As the term is most often used, it is a silly misnomer. When somebody calls someone else an "elitist," it means that the accuser views the accused as being "high and mighty," "snobbish," or generally having a holier-than-thou attitude. It's also often attached to the term "liberal" (i.e. "those liberal elitists want to take away my guns and make my kids gay"). In reality, most people who are termed "elitists" are actually very well-educated and more knowledgeable about the subject in question than an average Joe.

It has also been used as a code word for "uppity black guy", for example when Obama proved himself to be a normal person rather than a collection of anti-black stereotypes, republicans took this to mean he's "elitist". The logic is that when a black person like Obama is "acting white", he's being pretentious, trying to claim a higher place in society than his skin color allows him.

However, some people prefer to act like complete dicks, and have a superiority complex without actually having any formal basis to back it up. These people are assholes rather than elitists, because being termed an "elitist" implies that you actually do have a legitimate reason to be part of the elite.

References

• This article uses material from the Rationalwiki article "Elitism". Unless this article is re-written from scratch it must include this citation.