People Like Us

“People Like Us” employs multiple literary devices and careful word choice to create an opinion piece backed by demographic data. The piece paints a picture of a country in which residents increasingly cordon themselves off into communities where they fit in.

Brooks’s arguments gain much of their force from the research he cites to back up his claims; however, it is important to note that writers can frame objective, statistical information in ways that are either more or less subjective. Brooks’s section surrounding academia is a good example. The primary data Brooks presents to uphold his claims is a voter registration poll by a major conservative-leaning think tank that reported that 90% of arts and sciences professors who are registered with a political party are registered as Democrats. The poll found that 54 out of 59 party registered Brown professors were Democrats, with similar trends from other schools suggesting a preponderance of liberal and progressive views among academics. Brooks presents this data in contrast to the general population, arguing that in a proportionally representative university system, “32 percent of professors would be registered Democrats and 31 percent would be registered Republicans. Forty percent would be evangelical Christians” (Paragraph 13). After presenting this data, the article concludes that “any registered Republican who contemplates a career in academia these days is both a hero and a fool” (Paragraph 14). This use of hyperbole is effective in its impact as a piece of writing, yet it obscures the incomplete reality of the data. Neither Brooks nor the poll include any information about the political leanings of professors who aren’t registered with a party, and the voter registration data the poll relies on does not include schools like law, business and medicine, which might be more welcoming to conservative views. Although the extremely high prevalence of Democrats among the professors who were polled suggests a definite trend, the article presents academic employment as virtually off the table for anyone with Republican-leaning views or strong Christian beliefs.

Another question when considering the intention and effects of “People Like Us” concerns the demographic that Brooks wrote it for. If Brooks’s arguments are accurate, the readership of an opinion piece by a public intellectual in an issue of The Atlantic is a very small, very specific slice of the American populace. The text itself reveals what this group might look like when it asks the reader to think of their 12 closest friends. The essay uses this thought experiment, originally devised in Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, to illustrate the rarity of college degrees among the United States population: Brooks asks the reader to narrow down their friends to those who did graduate from college, then pick those with a graduate degree, and then those who graduated from a small list of elite universities. The paragraph concludes by stating that the probability of randomly selecting more than four friends who graduated from those colleges is less than one in 1 billion. If the reader is someone who does fit in this very small category, this paragraph is likely effective, showing that even if they do see themselves as valuing diversity, they are part of a very niche group. This information may have less of an impact if the reader is part of the vast majority who cannot say they have multiple friends with elite degrees.

Ultimately this shows that in writing this essay Brooks is addressing people like himself: intellectuals with elite educations and well-connected friends. This becomes clearer at the end of the article, when the author suggests that it is more important for individuals to live “diverse lives” than for institutions to promote diversity on a superficial level—a suggestion in keeping with Brooks’s conservative roots, which generally prioritize individual solutions over collective ones. Brooks challenges the reader to seek out novel experiences in order to gain an understanding of different types of people. He writes, “If you live in a coastal, socially liberal neighborhood, maybe you should take out a subscription to The Door, the evangelical humor magazine; or maybe you should visit Branson, Missouri” (Paragraph 18). The socially liberal, upper-middle-class coastal population, which comprises most of The Atlantic’s subscriber base, is the clear audience for these suggestions; the fact that many readers have likely never considered doing any of these things (and may be hesitant to take Brooks’s advice) makes the arguments more effective.

The essay includes little analysis to support the argument that segregation in modern America is primarily self-selected. It is clear that Brooks believes that many divisions are intentional—that people simply want to live with people who are like them. For many of his examples (and for much of his readership), this may in fact be true. When a Washington, DC, lawyer chooses to live in either a Maryland or Virginia suburb, or when a shopper for a $3 million apartment chooses one New York City neighborhood over another, the political leanings of the neighborhood may indeed be the defining factor, with home price, commute time, quality of schools, and other features comparable. Similarly, when someone chooses to live in Boulder, Colorado, it is likely that they enjoy outdoor pursuits and have left-leaning political views. However, they must also be part of an economic class that can afford the high cost of living in such an exclusive area, and “People Like Us” provides few examples of self-segregation in more economically disadvantaged areas. Although “People Like Us” does state that income influences where people live, it downplays the effects of income on geographic mobility. Some of the lowest-income areas of the country have the highest number of residents born in the same area where they currently live, whereas high-income destinations like Boulder are home to many transplants from across the country and the world.

The argument that diversity is decreasing over time is also debatable. For example, interracial marriages have become increasingly common since Loving v. Virginia overturned bans on them in 1967. According to Pew research, in that year just 3% of marriages were between people of different races (Livingston, Gretchen, and Anna Brown. “Intermarriage in the U.S. Fifty Years After Loving v. Virginia.” Pew Research Center, 18 May 2017. Accessed 4 May 2022). By 1980, this had increased to 7%; by 2015, the rate was 17%. Although this does not disprove that Americans prefer to live around people similar to themselves, it shows that “People Like Us” uses specifically selected data to make its central arguments, while ignoring data that may suggest something else.