'Americans don't want to do those jobs' is what we have to tell ourselves to rationalize the disappearance of traditional blue-collar work from the grasp of the legal workforce.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: I have a masters' degree in educational administration and I taught public school for six years. I am also a highly skilled tradesman, and spent most of my career in that field. I have worked side by side with teachers and with skilled tradesmen. Without doubt, overall, the tradesmen are the really smart ones. Any of them could have gone to college and become a teacher. Relatively few teachers have it in them to become a skilled tradesman.
Education cannot accurately be measured by years in school and by college diplomas.
I feel like teaching and being a tradesman are two entirely different skillsets. Two different personal investments, two different interests. I don't think it's a question of intelligence or what anybody 'has in them', I think it's a question of what you prefer, what you're good at, and what you see as important in life. Each one requires a special skill. Not everyone who is a master of a subject can transmit it to others - it's not enough simply to know something, so teaching really isn't just about knowledge of a subject. I know for a fact that I have no skill in selling or making things whatsoever (I've tried both selling things and welding, and I was fairly shit at both of them), but I also just don't have that interest. I highly respect people who do. I also know I've doubled the grades of every child I've ever taught because I have a special ability to get down to the heart of what they're not understanding and why, and explain it in a way that gets through to them while simultaneously calming the nervous system, finding and overcoming the resistance and working with any learning difference I detect. Most teachers can't do that and don't even know that's what it takes because they don't know a rat's arse about how knowledge and learning works or care about the indiviual student, but that doesn't mean it isn't what it takes. We don't need to 'down' ANYBODY here, the whole point is it's not about one-upmanship, it's about admiring and respecting everybody's contribution.
I appreciate what you are saying. But I'll stick with the essence of what I said, keeping in mind that I was responding to claims by some people (as Adam pointed out) who presume that blue collar workers are of lesser intelligence or capability.
I had to learn to teach. A teaching license doesn't make someone a teacher. It is an art, and I respect all who are good at it, degree or no degree. But I also respect people who can get water to run from here to there in pipes. Same thing for electricity and wire. Same for auto mechanics who can figure what's really wrong, even when the computer readout has misdirected them.
One thing that you might want to consider: After teaching for six years, I started a contracting business. It was when I started hiring employees that I fully realized how poorly our schools prepare people to be functional employees. I don't want to get long-winded here, but if you want to discuss this, I'd be glad to.
I totally see where you're coming from, I stopped teaching at the university for amoungst other things the exact same realization: that we're not preparing our young people adequately at all, and I couldn't simultaneously help and betray them. I DIDN'T have to learn to teach, largely because I'm the 5th generations of teachers in my family (the first was my great-great-grandfather!) so it was kind of my lifeblood and the daily discussions around our house. Totally, a license doesn't *make* you anything: it can't show you how to give your full heart to young people, how to reach inside them and turn on that flame and feed it until it can stand alone and never go out. I am totally fascinated by other skillsets too, anyone who can make or fix anything or construct a company or sell has my unadulterated admiration. At the end of the day, I think the point is anybody can do any job BADLY, but it takes talent and skill to do actually any job WELL, and that should be appreciated, and it frequently isn't and/or can't be reflected in a paycheque. The only thing I don't like is anyone who is lackluster and lays claim to what they oughtn't to. Our economic and institutional models suck the lifeblood and dignity out of work in general (and pretty much everything else). I wish I had a magic wand to change all of that and restore mutual respect in the world single-handedly, but exchanges like this one here sort of restore my faith that that's possible. Thank you.
Great comment. I'm going to nitpick you just a little. Yes, you did have to learn to teach. But you had a ready assortment of mentors, so perhaps it seemed almost effortless.
And there was never a time of mutual respect among us all, so no magic wand can restore it. What we can do is keep working toward that goal.
So well put @Adam, I sensed something was very wrong 15 years ago at my "dream job" adjunct teaching graduate courses. So many of my fellow GenXers were raised on this subtle elitism only to find a very thin margin in the working world.
As it stands there is enormous dignity in blue collar work and indeed I find myself envying the aspects of autonomy to be found doing work that is too dangerous, too physical, or too uncomfortable for the rest of us.
Most of all I admire the existence of an actual apprenticeship roadmap that also provides feedback, guidance and correction on a path to actual job advancement. That is something many white collar jobs do not have, save for healthcare and perhaps IT.
Thank you Nathan for sharing your perspective and story.
I've noticed it, especially over the past 4 or 5 years. I didn't write about this but there is also the insecurity side that does exist for people who don't go to college. They're equal and opposite reactions to the same narrative.
I always encouraged my son to look at blue collar work too. He's about to apply for an apprenticeship so he can eventually become a licensed electrician.
Yes @Adam B. Coleman - one reason why I speak up often about this is to embolden others and to empower them to expect an institution to be able to demonstrate actual ROI before delaying the debt-free money they could be earning in the trades or elsewhere.
Also two extremely important questions to that end (ROI):
1. WHAT percentage of new grads are hired at the 3 or 6 or 12 month mark?
2. More importantly, HOW OLD is the data that this % is based upon (when did the class you're referring to graduate?)
Note that a lag on the second item could mask any slowdowns in the job market that has not yet impacted the % hired, as reported.
I missed that last part about your soon-to-be-electrician @Adam - for what it's worth pass on my congratulations and a pat on the back from someone who used to teach graduate school at a private university down the road in Philly.
The future looks bright indeed, pun not redacted :)
Well said. That "they do the work Americans won't do" line is always disguised as a pro-immigrant position, but as soon as you ask them to explain what they mean, it becomes clear that it's really a pro-industry position.
On another note, I can't be the only one who hates how the word "uneducated" is used nowadays to describe people who don't have a college diploma.
Thank you for this. I am a current 64 year old CEO that worked my way up from lots of blue collar jobs. The path I took was never looked down on... or at least I never felt it. I have an undergraduate degree in business, but I attended classes at night while working full time during the day.
One of my good friends from high school that never attended college owns an electrical contracting business. He is better off financially than I am. Another did landscaping work and grew a business. He is doing well too. Both are retiring before I will. I had worked in construction and had I not found computers, I probably would have been a contractor building homes.
There is another aspect of this point about the white collar lie... there is something psychologically beneficial to the human animal doing real physical work. Sitting at a desk looking at a screen and pressing a keyboard isn't natural.
There are over 8 million unfilled jobs in the US. I think we need to turn the tide on denigrating people that work blue collar jobs, and instead be critical of people not working to their capacity.
I think that's a profound summary of a complex problem. There are lots of layers to it, but that is the problem laid out in a nutshell. There should be a way of decoupling a job's perceived value, from pay, from class... I think the profit model is a bit thorny when it comes to 'vocational' jobs all together: for example, compassion, support and integrity are things you can't buy and you can't pay anyone to give you, but they are things that are essential for and that we all want in doctors, teachers etc. Institutional models where the state decides 'what these things are worth' are at best a farce when they're things individuals would pay handsomely for if they found them, but also can't actually have a price tag attached to them because they're not transactional in nature. All very interesting aspects of a complex problem
I agree with you. It's very complex, but this was something that hit me yesterday when thinking about the sheer volume of illegal labor we're dealing. I always go back to "How" or "Why" this happened.
The tradies (blue collar workers) are the ones filling the golf courses, joining exclusive gyms and driving the best caravans for cross country road trips in Australia. American elitists fool themselves with narcissistic superiority by valuing report writing and degrees over skilled labour that they rely on to run their houses, cars, boats and businesses.
Investing in training and sustaining a tradies workforce will be beneficial for the US.
Thank you for your post (I actually just discovered your work today!).
The only people being elevated into the middle class and higher by our universities and colleges are their growing administrative staffs (funded by taxpayers money). And it’s not putting them into debt!
I’m not sure after reading your post if you are blaming illegal immigration for the declining number of good paying blue collar jobs or if you’re suggesting that it stigmatizes those jobs. Whichever it is I’m not a fan of arguments that blame illegal immigration for anything. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am in favor of strictly enforcing our immigration laws (and our criminal laws) but I don’t see it as the root cause, or even as an intermediate cause, of the epidemic of underwhelming college graduates.
The root cause is bad politics that sells a lie that if a kid goes to college it will guarantee him a six-figure job.
This ideal is not our current status quo and never can be. Why it isn’t can be explained with my favorite fallacy: the fallacy of composition—“[which] arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.” (Wikipedia) For example, when you’re sitting in a crowded stadium watching some event down on the field, if you stand up, you can see better, but if everyone stands can everyone see better? Of course not. (Credit: Thomas Sowell)
Like so many bad ideas, this fallacy was used to justify government coercion: government should fund and subsidize K-12 through college education because everyone who graduates from college gets better jobs and earns more money. The problem with this policy is that it is based on a provably false premise. (Read Thomas Sowell and Bryan Caplan)
I agree that we need to stop telling this lie to our kids and filling their heads with nonsense. On the hand let’s not conflate this problem with illegal immigration (99% of the people who are in our country illegally are doing no harm).
I think it's complex but I do think that the cultural shift away from wanting our kids to do blue collar labor has allowed people to be fine with illegal immigration to happen.
I didn’t attend college until I was twenty eight years old. Had to work my way up from a seventh grade education.
Let me tell you,, I was so disappointed. I fantasized about college. I thought that college would make me smart. Don’t get me wrong… I learned certain things that I still use today, but what I found at the college, and this was circa 1992, was leftist ideology.
I had one professor tell me to get with the program or fail for questioning lefty ideology.
After that, I just went along to get along. Told then what they wanted to hear in order to get that 4.0 and moved on. After two years, I’d had had enough. I really wanted to do four years, but could not play the friggin game. I call it the lie game. Pretend to be a leftist for good grades. This shit was going on in the nineties.
Obama’s college for all has a lot to answer for but was perhaps a reaction to this cultural trope rather than its driver. A lot of useless debt and disillusioned, directionless anomic lost boys will suffer before we can unwind this.
I know I'm bombarding this comments section but this article really got me thinking! I wonder if a problem isn't a huge 'straw man' that has been constructed socially. For example, if someone doesn't have the staggering intellectual dishonesty to override their own thinking process and a certain gift for rote memorization required to do well in academia, there's this 'straw man' figure that gets placed on them that suggests they must be incapable across the board. That figure or stereotype literally does not exist, I've never met anyone without some kind of spark or gift. It's sort of the same as if we lived in a culture where everyone was expected to play football like Ronaldo, and automatically anyone who couldn't was placed in a wheelchair because they were considered too incapable to be able to walk. We would think that was absurd, and yet we steer anyone who isn't considered academic into a role of 'inferior' and therefore 'incapable of handling certain responsibilities' (infantilization) because we somehow consider an ability to do well on standardized tests to be equivalent to intelligence, when the two things live on different planets. Test-taking is a certain skillset or character type, but it's got bugger all to do with innate intelligence. It isn't even a partial measure of it, and anyone with any degree of honesty and self-reflection inherently knows that, as well as the fact that assuming someone is incapable across the board because of that is incredibly reductive and not based in reality. Anyway, it just dawned on me that that reductive, simplistic way of thinking actually exists in our society and could be part of the issue.
Yes! You’ve perfectly captured something I’ve been quietly reflecting on for a long time.
I used to believe that success meant graduating college, hustling, and securing a 401k so I could attract a high-earning, white-collar partner—someone who could help build a life filled with the best of everything. But time and again, the men I dated who fit that mold turned out to have deeply toxic personalities that drained my spirit.
In the end, I found love in someone completely different. He never went to college and works a blue-collar job, yet he treats me with the utmost respect—the kind my parents value most. He may not earn as much as a white-collar worker, but his character, shaped by years of hard labor since he was 18, is worth far more.
He is my best friend. Plus, he can fix everything!
👏👏👏 First time reader of your work here! You were absolutely on fire in this article, Mr. Coleman! It’s funny, I was watching the Jimmy Dore Show the other day and they touched on this same point. Our society made a huge mistake when we started telling our young people that the blue-collar trades were beneath them and getting anything less than a prestigious corporate job is a total failure. We also told them they were special and deserved everything they wanted and would get it. Boy has that not turned out well! It’s no wonder so many Millennials and Gen Z are disillusioned and miserable because they expected more from life than they got. But that was never a realistic thing to tell them. I would also add we need to quit telling young people a college degree is enough to get them any job they want. College degrees don’t matter as much as they used to because everyone and their grandmother has one now. Some degrees are so useless they aren’t worth the paper their printed on and are little better than toilet paper. I also couldn’t agree more that we need to stop touting college as the end all be all and those who choose not to go as less intelligent. We need to encourage young people to pursue whatever path they want in life. Whether it be college, going into the workforce or military or traveling. College is NOT right for everybody! We as a society need to stop telling people it is. It is also the case that this was done to get people used to illegal immigrants being exploited for these jobs because they provide cheap labor as they are desperate and will work for less. As a result, we made up this lie that illegal immigrants take the “dirty jobs American don’t want to do.” Well, we only don’t want to do them because we’re told that only stupid, uncultured, unsophisticated hicks do those jobs and if you pursue that line of work you screwed your life up. That’s complete bunk! These myths need to die once and for all! I’m sure the elites and big business loved every minute of the Southern Border Crisis. After all, it means they have a plentiful supply of cheap labor they can pay chickenfeed, it undercuts labor unions and means they don’t have to pay a decent wage or give benefits to a native born American worker. Here is a fact a lot of people don’t know: sanctuaries cities were originally a Republican idea! It was so rich people could protect their slave labor.
Thank you Adam. I read this essay this morning and have been thinking about it all day. I grew up in a blue collar situation (cattle ranch) and my dad didn't graduate from high school (he later got a GED). Now, I have a graduate degree myself and am a trustee at a small liberal arts college. I'm surrounded by colleagues who cannot relate to, and don't seem to appreciate the contributions of, the kind of people my family admired. People who were good with animals, who could plan and execute complicated irrigation schemes, who could operate and maintain heavy equipment, who could stack hay, dig post holes, brand calves . . . you get my drift. I miss those people.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: I have a masters' degree in educational administration and I taught public school for six years. I am also a highly skilled tradesman, and spent most of my career in that field. I have worked side by side with teachers and with skilled tradesmen. Without doubt, overall, the tradesmen are the really smart ones. Any of them could have gone to college and become a teacher. Relatively few teachers have it in them to become a skilled tradesman.
Education cannot accurately be measured by years in school and by college diplomas.
I feel like teaching and being a tradesman are two entirely different skillsets. Two different personal investments, two different interests. I don't think it's a question of intelligence or what anybody 'has in them', I think it's a question of what you prefer, what you're good at, and what you see as important in life. Each one requires a special skill. Not everyone who is a master of a subject can transmit it to others - it's not enough simply to know something, so teaching really isn't just about knowledge of a subject. I know for a fact that I have no skill in selling or making things whatsoever (I've tried both selling things and welding, and I was fairly shit at both of them), but I also just don't have that interest. I highly respect people who do. I also know I've doubled the grades of every child I've ever taught because I have a special ability to get down to the heart of what they're not understanding and why, and explain it in a way that gets through to them while simultaneously calming the nervous system, finding and overcoming the resistance and working with any learning difference I detect. Most teachers can't do that and don't even know that's what it takes because they don't know a rat's arse about how knowledge and learning works or care about the indiviual student, but that doesn't mean it isn't what it takes. We don't need to 'down' ANYBODY here, the whole point is it's not about one-upmanship, it's about admiring and respecting everybody's contribution.
I appreciate what you are saying. But I'll stick with the essence of what I said, keeping in mind that I was responding to claims by some people (as Adam pointed out) who presume that blue collar workers are of lesser intelligence or capability.
I had to learn to teach. A teaching license doesn't make someone a teacher. It is an art, and I respect all who are good at it, degree or no degree. But I also respect people who can get water to run from here to there in pipes. Same thing for electricity and wire. Same for auto mechanics who can figure what's really wrong, even when the computer readout has misdirected them.
One thing that you might want to consider: After teaching for six years, I started a contracting business. It was when I started hiring employees that I fully realized how poorly our schools prepare people to be functional employees. I don't want to get long-winded here, but if you want to discuss this, I'd be glad to.
I totally see where you're coming from, I stopped teaching at the university for amoungst other things the exact same realization: that we're not preparing our young people adequately at all, and I couldn't simultaneously help and betray them. I DIDN'T have to learn to teach, largely because I'm the 5th generations of teachers in my family (the first was my great-great-grandfather!) so it was kind of my lifeblood and the daily discussions around our house. Totally, a license doesn't *make* you anything: it can't show you how to give your full heart to young people, how to reach inside them and turn on that flame and feed it until it can stand alone and never go out. I am totally fascinated by other skillsets too, anyone who can make or fix anything or construct a company or sell has my unadulterated admiration. At the end of the day, I think the point is anybody can do any job BADLY, but it takes talent and skill to do actually any job WELL, and that should be appreciated, and it frequently isn't and/or can't be reflected in a paycheque. The only thing I don't like is anyone who is lackluster and lays claim to what they oughtn't to. Our economic and institutional models suck the lifeblood and dignity out of work in general (and pretty much everything else). I wish I had a magic wand to change all of that and restore mutual respect in the world single-handedly, but exchanges like this one here sort of restore my faith that that's possible. Thank you.
Great comment. I'm going to nitpick you just a little. Yes, you did have to learn to teach. But you had a ready assortment of mentors, so perhaps it seemed almost effortless.
And there was never a time of mutual respect among us all, so no magic wand can restore it. What we can do is keep working toward that goal.
So well put @Adam, I sensed something was very wrong 15 years ago at my "dream job" adjunct teaching graduate courses. So many of my fellow GenXers were raised on this subtle elitism only to find a very thin margin in the working world.
As it stands there is enormous dignity in blue collar work and indeed I find myself envying the aspects of autonomy to be found doing work that is too dangerous, too physical, or too uncomfortable for the rest of us.
Most of all I admire the existence of an actual apprenticeship roadmap that also provides feedback, guidance and correction on a path to actual job advancement. That is something many white collar jobs do not have, save for healthcare and perhaps IT.
Thank you Nathan for sharing your perspective and story.
I've noticed it, especially over the past 4 or 5 years. I didn't write about this but there is also the insecurity side that does exist for people who don't go to college. They're equal and opposite reactions to the same narrative.
I always encouraged my son to look at blue collar work too. He's about to apply for an apprenticeship so he can eventually become a licensed electrician.
Yes @Adam B. Coleman - one reason why I speak up often about this is to embolden others and to empower them to expect an institution to be able to demonstrate actual ROI before delaying the debt-free money they could be earning in the trades or elsewhere.
Also two extremely important questions to that end (ROI):
1. WHAT percentage of new grads are hired at the 3 or 6 or 12 month mark?
2. More importantly, HOW OLD is the data that this % is based upon (when did the class you're referring to graduate?)
Note that a lag on the second item could mask any slowdowns in the job market that has not yet impacted the % hired, as reported.
I missed that last part about your soon-to-be-electrician @Adam - for what it's worth pass on my congratulations and a pat on the back from someone who used to teach graduate school at a private university down the road in Philly.
The future looks bright indeed, pun not redacted :)
This article is pure fire, bordering on a sermon. Preeeeeeeeach!
Thank you sir!
Well said. That "they do the work Americans won't do" line is always disguised as a pro-immigrant position, but as soon as you ask them to explain what they mean, it becomes clear that it's really a pro-industry position.
On another note, I can't be the only one who hates how the word "uneducated" is used nowadays to describe people who don't have a college diploma.
I hate that term too
Thank you for this. I am a current 64 year old CEO that worked my way up from lots of blue collar jobs. The path I took was never looked down on... or at least I never felt it. I have an undergraduate degree in business, but I attended classes at night while working full time during the day.
One of my good friends from high school that never attended college owns an electrical contracting business. He is better off financially than I am. Another did landscaping work and grew a business. He is doing well too. Both are retiring before I will. I had worked in construction and had I not found computers, I probably would have been a contractor building homes.
There is another aspect of this point about the white collar lie... there is something psychologically beneficial to the human animal doing real physical work. Sitting at a desk looking at a screen and pressing a keyboard isn't natural.
There are over 8 million unfilled jobs in the US. I think we need to turn the tide on denigrating people that work blue collar jobs, and instead be critical of people not working to their capacity.
Thank you for sharing your story.
I appreciate it.
I think that's a profound summary of a complex problem. There are lots of layers to it, but that is the problem laid out in a nutshell. There should be a way of decoupling a job's perceived value, from pay, from class... I think the profit model is a bit thorny when it comes to 'vocational' jobs all together: for example, compassion, support and integrity are things you can't buy and you can't pay anyone to give you, but they are things that are essential for and that we all want in doctors, teachers etc. Institutional models where the state decides 'what these things are worth' are at best a farce when they're things individuals would pay handsomely for if they found them, but also can't actually have a price tag attached to them because they're not transactional in nature. All very interesting aspects of a complex problem
Thank you Helen!
I agree with you. It's very complex, but this was something that hit me yesterday when thinking about the sheer volume of illegal labor we're dealing. I always go back to "How" or "Why" this happened.
The tradies (blue collar workers) are the ones filling the golf courses, joining exclusive gyms and driving the best caravans for cross country road trips in Australia. American elitists fool themselves with narcissistic superiority by valuing report writing and degrees over skilled labour that they rely on to run their houses, cars, boats and businesses.
Investing in training and sustaining a tradies workforce will be beneficial for the US.
You nailed it.
Thank you!
Thank you for your post (I actually just discovered your work today!).
The only people being elevated into the middle class and higher by our universities and colleges are their growing administrative staffs (funded by taxpayers money). And it’s not putting them into debt!
I’m not sure after reading your post if you are blaming illegal immigration for the declining number of good paying blue collar jobs or if you’re suggesting that it stigmatizes those jobs. Whichever it is I’m not a fan of arguments that blame illegal immigration for anything. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am in favor of strictly enforcing our immigration laws (and our criminal laws) but I don’t see it as the root cause, or even as an intermediate cause, of the epidemic of underwhelming college graduates.
The root cause is bad politics that sells a lie that if a kid goes to college it will guarantee him a six-figure job.
This ideal is not our current status quo and never can be. Why it isn’t can be explained with my favorite fallacy: the fallacy of composition—“[which] arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.” (Wikipedia) For example, when you’re sitting in a crowded stadium watching some event down on the field, if you stand up, you can see better, but if everyone stands can everyone see better? Of course not. (Credit: Thomas Sowell)
Like so many bad ideas, this fallacy was used to justify government coercion: government should fund and subsidize K-12 through college education because everyone who graduates from college gets better jobs and earns more money. The problem with this policy is that it is based on a provably false premise. (Read Thomas Sowell and Bryan Caplan)
I agree that we need to stop telling this lie to our kids and filling their heads with nonsense. On the hand let’s not conflate this problem with illegal immigration (99% of the people who are in our country illegally are doing no harm).
I think it's complex but I do think that the cultural shift away from wanting our kids to do blue collar labor has allowed people to be fine with illegal immigration to happen.
And I appreciate you becoming a new subscriber!
I completely agree with that.
Have a good weekend!
I didn’t attend college until I was twenty eight years old. Had to work my way up from a seventh grade education.
Let me tell you,, I was so disappointed. I fantasized about college. I thought that college would make me smart. Don’t get me wrong… I learned certain things that I still use today, but what I found at the college, and this was circa 1992, was leftist ideology.
I had one professor tell me to get with the program or fail for questioning lefty ideology.
After that, I just went along to get along. Told then what they wanted to hear in order to get that 4.0 and moved on. After two years, I’d had had enough. I really wanted to do four years, but could not play the friggin game. I call it the lie game. Pretend to be a leftist for good grades. This shit was going on in the nineties.
That's crazy.
Obama’s college for all has a lot to answer for but was perhaps a reaction to this cultural trope rather than its driver. A lot of useless debt and disillusioned, directionless anomic lost boys will suffer before we can unwind this.
I know I'm bombarding this comments section but this article really got me thinking! I wonder if a problem isn't a huge 'straw man' that has been constructed socially. For example, if someone doesn't have the staggering intellectual dishonesty to override their own thinking process and a certain gift for rote memorization required to do well in academia, there's this 'straw man' figure that gets placed on them that suggests they must be incapable across the board. That figure or stereotype literally does not exist, I've never met anyone without some kind of spark or gift. It's sort of the same as if we lived in a culture where everyone was expected to play football like Ronaldo, and automatically anyone who couldn't was placed in a wheelchair because they were considered too incapable to be able to walk. We would think that was absurd, and yet we steer anyone who isn't considered academic into a role of 'inferior' and therefore 'incapable of handling certain responsibilities' (infantilization) because we somehow consider an ability to do well on standardized tests to be equivalent to intelligence, when the two things live on different planets. Test-taking is a certain skillset or character type, but it's got bugger all to do with innate intelligence. It isn't even a partial measure of it, and anyone with any degree of honesty and self-reflection inherently knows that, as well as the fact that assuming someone is incapable across the board because of that is incredibly reductive and not based in reality. Anyway, it just dawned on me that that reductive, simplistic way of thinking actually exists in our society and could be part of the issue.
Yes! You’ve perfectly captured something I’ve been quietly reflecting on for a long time.
I used to believe that success meant graduating college, hustling, and securing a 401k so I could attract a high-earning, white-collar partner—someone who could help build a life filled with the best of everything. But time and again, the men I dated who fit that mold turned out to have deeply toxic personalities that drained my spirit.
In the end, I found love in someone completely different. He never went to college and works a blue-collar job, yet he treats me with the utmost respect—the kind my parents value most. He may not earn as much as a white-collar worker, but his character, shaped by years of hard labor since he was 18, is worth far more.
He is my best friend. Plus, he can fix everything!
👏👏👏 First time reader of your work here! You were absolutely on fire in this article, Mr. Coleman! It’s funny, I was watching the Jimmy Dore Show the other day and they touched on this same point. Our society made a huge mistake when we started telling our young people that the blue-collar trades were beneath them and getting anything less than a prestigious corporate job is a total failure. We also told them they were special and deserved everything they wanted and would get it. Boy has that not turned out well! It’s no wonder so many Millennials and Gen Z are disillusioned and miserable because they expected more from life than they got. But that was never a realistic thing to tell them. I would also add we need to quit telling young people a college degree is enough to get them any job they want. College degrees don’t matter as much as they used to because everyone and their grandmother has one now. Some degrees are so useless they aren’t worth the paper their printed on and are little better than toilet paper. I also couldn’t agree more that we need to stop touting college as the end all be all and those who choose not to go as less intelligent. We need to encourage young people to pursue whatever path they want in life. Whether it be college, going into the workforce or military or traveling. College is NOT right for everybody! We as a society need to stop telling people it is. It is also the case that this was done to get people used to illegal immigrants being exploited for these jobs because they provide cheap labor as they are desperate and will work for less. As a result, we made up this lie that illegal immigrants take the “dirty jobs American don’t want to do.” Well, we only don’t want to do them because we’re told that only stupid, uncultured, unsophisticated hicks do those jobs and if you pursue that line of work you screwed your life up. That’s complete bunk! These myths need to die once and for all! I’m sure the elites and big business loved every minute of the Southern Border Crisis. After all, it means they have a plentiful supply of cheap labor they can pay chickenfeed, it undercuts labor unions and means they don’t have to pay a decent wage or give benefits to a native born American worker. Here is a fact a lot of people don’t know: sanctuaries cities were originally a Republican idea! It was so rich people could protect their slave labor.
Thank you Adam. I read this essay this morning and have been thinking about it all day. I grew up in a blue collar situation (cattle ranch) and my dad didn't graduate from high school (he later got a GED). Now, I have a graduate degree myself and am a trustee at a small liberal arts college. I'm surrounded by colleagues who cannot relate to, and don't seem to appreciate the contributions of, the kind of people my family admired. People who were good with animals, who could plan and execute complicated irrigation schemes, who could operate and maintain heavy equipment, who could stack hay, dig post holes, brand calves . . . you get my drift. I miss those people.
Telling EVERYONE that they need to attend College is a sin