Published in 2008, I thought I was a bit late to the party regarding Outliers: The Story of Success, but having done a search, there haven't been any discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's work on here, so I thought I'd introduce everyone here to a book that provides a rigorous and detailed argument for many core progressive values, in particular our recognition that our society is not an equal playing field, and that various social and economic constructs give others tremendous advantage, while making it impossible for the less fortunate to succeed. He argues for radical new (and progressive) ideas for giving the less fortunate the opportunity to succeed and how this will ultimately be good for all of society. He also debunks the ingrained conservative belief that anyone who wishes to succeed can succeed, and that those who are successful got there got there on their own merits.
Gladwell begins by discussing the idea called "The Matthew Effect", coined by Robert K. Merton in 1968, which comes from the New Testament book of Matthew:
For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
We see this today in our economic system. The more money you have, the easier it is to make even more money, while the opposite is also sadly true. Those with little money have to spend proportionally more of it in order to stay afloat.
But this also applies to other things we may not think of. Those who show talent in childhood are given the opportunities to become even better while the unlucky ones are left behind. In hockey, they get the superior training camps. In schools, they get the superior teachers. After a few years, they really are better than the rest, even though everyone started with just a small difference in talent.
What makes this system unfair is that the criteria we use to select the chosen few is not always the fairest system. For example, he makes the observation that hockey players are heavily populated by those who are born early in the year. A great number of hockey's players are born in January, February or March, while almost no hockey players are born in November or December. The reason for this is because early childhood programs have a cutoff birthdate of January 1, which means that those born in January have a great age advantage to those born in December. While that may not matter for adults, for children, those extra months make a big difference. They're bigger, more mature, have better skill. These children get picked for the special teams where they get more practice, have better coaches, etc. so that by the time they are adults, they're exponentially better than those unlucky few born late in the year. And they got that way not because they were necessarily more talented, but because they born early in the year.
Gladwell goes on to point out other selection factors we may not have considered. He observes that the biggest tycoons of the industrial revolution: Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc. were all born in a certain decade. In an even smaller window, the biggest giants of the computer industry, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer, Eric Schmidt, etc. were born in the late 1954 to 1955. Being born in almost the same year, they came of age in the exact time in history where their particular skills became needed. Were they a few years older or younger, they would never have become the men they are today. He tells the story of the perfect set of events that allowed Bill Gates to become the man he is today, that even though he is undeniably talented, it was an extremely fortunate set of events outside his control that created the opportunity to succeed.
Perhaps even more important, he goes into detail about how our upbringing is a crucial factor in whether we succeed in the future. For example, he cites a study in which children with lower class parents are brought up with a different parenting style than children with middle to upper-class parents. Upper-class children are overwhelmingly brought up to be more assertive and feel more entitled; social skills which ultimately allow them to achieve things that those who are meeker do not. He also goes into detail about how our ethnicity plays a great part in whether or not we succeed. For example, he shows why Asians are better at Math, why the Jews in New York in the early 1900's were perfectly suited to succeed in the garment industry, and why the culture of Koreans and Columbians made them more prone to plane crashes.
In probably one of the best validations of affirmative action, he talks about a study in which law students accepted to the University of Michigan through affirmative action got lower grades while in school, yet, when the students were evaluated later in life, (in Gladwell's words, "the only metric that counts") they were equally as successful as their supposedly smarter counterparts. Disadvantaged students may not start out at the same level as their culturally advantaged counterparts, but they are just as likely to succeed once given the opportunity to do so.
Gladwell's thesis in his book is that though it does take a great deal of hard work to become an "Outlier", nobody succeeds in life without a great deal of historic, ethnic, and societal factors outside of his/her control. There is no such thing as a "self-made man". By understanding and accepting these influences, and by alleviating these influences when we can, we can maximize the conditions in which those who can succeed have the opportunity to succeed.
This is what we as progressives believe. We believe in a meritocracy. But we also believe that those born to upper classes have infinitely better chances to succeed than those not so lucky. We understand that those not so lucky face overwhelming disadvantages which make it virtually impossible to succeed, but that we as a society can introduce programs (many of which are administered by the government) in order to level the playing field, or at least provide opportunities for more to succeed. We reject conservative notions that everyone has an equal chance to succeed and that one's success is all their own doing, and the destructive corollary, that one's "unsuccess" is their fault.
I hope that I have done Malcolm Gladwell's work justice here. I definitely recommend reading the whole book, which I have only scratched the surface of. I would also like to recommend a couple of talks Gladwell gives discussing his book. They provide a lot of insight into his work, and will change the way we think about the society in which we live.
At the 92nd St Y in NYC (YouTube)
At UPenn about Outliers
What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce
On Minnesota's Tipping Point