As more people outside the white elite have been admitted into the most exclusive parts of our educational system, it has become harder and harder for rich white kids to prove they have any reason for their privilege.
A group of students at Richard E Rich Academy is ready to call uncle on the game. They claim that the task of justifying the place of rich white students in elite schools is too much for Gen Z to bear. It’s not fun. Excessive academic pressure causes depression. It’s a road to more brutal competition in the 80-hour week Wall Street jobs they don’t want.
These students are urging their white preppy friends to burn their merit badges and torch the system. “We are not special,” they admit. “Stop trying to make us prove white supremacy. We are just kids.”
The Rigged Game
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A hundred years ago, the Ivy League was an easy participation trophy for the preppy class.
The entire game of education was rigged to favor rich white kids and gave them an advantage in the rigged classroom contests of White Vocabulary, White Culture, White Clothes, White Alumni Legacies and White Male Rituals. The so-called meritocracy was a great way to guarantee that the George Bushes of this world would be able to “win” at school and feel good about themselves.
For a long time, it was possible to keep race, gender, ethnic, and class outsiders at artificially low levels through the use of quotas, alumni legacy preferences and affirmative action for boys. But it turned out that the game rigged to favor insider white males was one that other people were good at too.
More Players Means Less Places for Old Style Preppies
Elite schools first tapped into outside talent pools as a means to compete against other elite schools by recruiting athletes outside their ranks to beat other schools. That turned out to be a slippery slope. Fancy schools started competing against each other for SAT rankings and lab funding by bringing in high-scoring outsiders and international students. Title IX gave girls access to the sports scholarship pipeline. Pretty soon, the back gates of the Ivy League were propped open for students who could be of service to schools.
As the system of internal preference for rich white WASP males has weakened, there is extreme pressure on the elites to credentialize their children for academic competition and provide them with the resumes they need to compete against an increasingly large applicant pool.
The insider children are no longer competing against just each other and a few accomplished outsider ringers at their parents’ private schools. Over the last few decades, prep schools have aggressively recruited rich students who can pay the high tuition (and donate as well) from all over the world. Now the old-guard preppies at private schools are competing with the richest students across the globe.
No Game for Gen Z
Having created a game where pricey extracurriculars and finishing school touches like internships at NASA with your father’s friend and summer programs at Oxford were designed to make it hard for outsiders to compete, insiders are now scrambling to keep up.
WASP kids are burdened with justifying their presence in institutions where there are enough qualified Asian girls to fill every slot many times over. Rich white preppies are well aware that non-white students face discrimination in the admissions process. They know it is not a level playing field, and that makes it hard to feel authentic in their successes.
Racist workarounds to make preppies feel better about themselves, for example, the idea that Asian kids “try too hard” and are “pushed by their parents” have lost their power. (Listen to a Harvard alumni interviewer try to justify applying these racist stereotypes here on This American Life.) Preppies also try too hard and are pushed by their parents, and yet that gives them an advantage in the biased admissions process. It is no longer “effortless” to get ahead.
All the fun is taken out of being a preppy if you have to work so hard all the time to prove your supposed white supremacy that you have no time to enjoy lobster on the beach or snuggle time with your black lab.
There’s more to life than $30,000 lacrosse camps and $150/hr private tutors. Instead of meeting with your pricey college consultant and starting your own fake charitable foundation, you could be sneaking into the reservoir to swim at midnight or repairing scratches on vintage vinyl records.
The signature of an elite childhood is no longer privilege and pampering but grueling competitive contests for resume line items that take all the joy out of sports, music, reading, and hobbies.
Worse, participating in this inhuman grind has now become aspirational for middle and lower-middle-class families as well, spreading the pain.
Burn Your So-Called Merit Badges
In the generations that white kids have benefitted from succeeding at a game designed for them to win, the kids have lost faith in the hunger games their parents want them to play. Black culture, athletics, music, fashion, and vocabulary are much more meaningful and important to white preppies than old-guard preppy culture.
They don’t want your croquet mallets, your seersucker blazers or your whale belts unless one of their favorite artists sports them on social media ironically. Kids have learned on TikTok that parents forcing you into a pleasure role is bad for your mental health. Preppy culture is inherently racist and the admissions grind is its own generational trauma. Break the cycle.
Gen Z white preppies urge their white preppy friends to give up the game and burn their merit badges in a bonfire of their grandmother’s medical-grade marijuana. Yes, the drug of choice of preppies is no longer gin and tonic.
Note from The College Office
Students attending the protest will get extracurricular credits for joining Burn The Badge, and leadership positions are available for use on college applications.
Also Read: Admissions Bribery Scandal Good For Schools