I went to the bank the day after the election (not to cash those Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton checks I was accused of taking at various points during the campaign). While waiting in line, a few people were talking about Clinton’s loss.
One person said to a couple others that Trump won because of those “rural” voters, and that people in cities, “you know, smarter people,” voted for Clinton.
I’ve seen this theme in article after article and tweet after tweet, not just after this year’s election, but also every election, because Republicans do better with those who do not have a college degree and Democrats do better with those who obtained a college degree.
I reject the premise that “more” education by way of a college degree makes someone smarter. First off, Trump only lost college graduates by 4 percentage points, and he won white college graduates by the same margin. He did lose those with a postgraduate degree by 21 points.
Trump only won those with a high school diploma or less by 6 points, 51-45. He won those with some college or an associate’s degree by 9 points.
So even if you assume that people who don’t hold a college degree are “dumb,” you can’t say all those people voted for Trump while the “smarter” people voted for Clinton. Other than those holding a postgraduate degree, there weren’t any big blowouts by either party when it came to college/non-college voters.
Commonly, those without a college degree are referred to as “less educated,” another divisive term designed to label those without a degree as dumb rubes who would vote Democrat if they knew what was good for them.
I don’t equate a college degree with being intelligent. Have you looked at some of the courses and degrees being offered on college campuses these days? There’s also the problem of colleges having become more about teaching students what to think rather than how to think.
But let’s say having a degree indicates that one is smarter. It doesn’t make them smarter in every subject. Someone with an engineering degree is clearly “smart,” but they might not know much about history or philosophy. It doesn’t instantly make them understand economic and foreign issues central to politics, either.
As an anecdote, here’s one of those “smart” people who supported Clinton saying she should “sue the United States of America” because she lost the election.
It all goes back to this elitist idea that college is the only way to be successful — or intelligent –—in this world. If you eschew college and join a trade — like welding or plumbing — you’re not dumber than someone who went to college, you just have a different kind of knowledge.
I would actually say that those who have not been in college for some time (whether because they graduated a while ago and have been in the workforce or never went in the first place) would have experiential knowledge.
They’ve lived in the real world, away from the insular college bubble of liberal thought. Things are different outside of academia, as this election has shown and as anyone who has graduated from college should know by now.
Further, as Charles Camosy wrote in the Washington Post, college students are only being subjected to one viewpoint, allowing them to dismiss any dissent as the result of stupidity, racism, sexism or bigotry (ignoring the irony of their own bigotry in the process).
“Thus today’s college graduates are formed by a campus culture that leaves them unable to understand people with unfamiliar or heterodox views on guns, abortion, religion, marriage, gender and privilege,” he wrote.
“And that same culture leads such educated people to either label those with whom they disagree as bad people or reduce their stated views on these issues as actually being about something else, as in Obama’s case.
“Most college grads in this culture are simply never forced to engage with or seriously consider professors or texts which could provide a genuine, compelling alternative view,” he added.
Having an alternative view doesn’t make someone “dumb,” and dismissing those without a college degree who voted for Trump as such is precisely part of what motivated them to vote for Trump in the first place.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
