Publics, Crowds, Middle- and Working Class -- Mindless and Depraved
The “mindless and depraved” refer not to anyone in particular. Richard Butsch has an interesting introduction in his book The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals and I need to spend more time in the book itself. Consider these few notes as a summary of his argument, how socio-economic class identifies itself (or has its identity crafted) in the social sphere. This tension between classes can explain how some in the college institution see community college students as mindless and depraved crowds instead of intellectual publics, thus shifting attention and resources from the needs of the community to the skills of the few who meet the expectation of administration and faculty middle class ethos. By seeing the multicultural student's body as depraved and "other" (though Butsch doesn't address Said's orientalism), the tension exhibited in the passive-aggressive monitoring of the college student's body by the dominant-culture mind can be expla...