Elitism favors a select minority.
Elitism is a tendency, a position or a system that defends and promotes the interests or vision of an elite (or elite ). This means that it is a predisposition to favor the tastes and opinions of a select minority .
Privileged individuals
With elitism, those who make up an elite manage to impose their position on different issues, even on those issues that affect the entire community or groups that are not privileged. Elitism takes the elite as a group of individuals who are “superior” to the rest of the citizens in intellectual, cultural and moral terms, with which they have the “right” to decide over the rest.
While the people are marked as vulgar and uncultured, the elite enjoy a higher status . In this way, elitism implies trust in the designs of the ruling class, supposedly capable of promoting the progress of a nation without losing any type of privilege.
Elitism and anti-elitism
Since one interpretation of elitism is the assignment of power and privilege to a few, there are counter movements that rely on populism, communism, egalitarianism or socialism to achieve social equality. There are certain measures that can be used to fight this inequality more directly, such as taxes on the richest people.
Another form that anti-elitism takes is known as pluralism . It is a concept according to which the masses should exercise their right to make political decisions, either directly or indirectly, but with an equal degree of participation. Let us not forget that in reality this role is assigned to an elite that is not usually affected by government measures, and that does not understand the way the people who are affected live.
Opposite to elitism, therefore, pluralism offers respect and tolerance to all tendencies , positions and opinions of the people, so that differences can be recognized and not used against them.
Uses of the term
In colloquial language , the notion of elitism has several nuances and meanings. Sometimes it is used to refer to the attitude of contempt towards majority opinions and preferences . An intellectual who does not watch television and despises all viewers is an exponent of this elitism.
The concept is also used with reference to a context where the elite enjoy advantages that other members of society do not have. A club that only accepts as members people with a certain purchasing power and a certain educational level is an elitist institution.
To be part of an elite it is usually enough to be born into the right family.
Let's say that outside the limits of the academic meaning of the term, in our daily lives we use it as a tool of protest against unfair situations that privilege some to the detriment of others, simply for having greater economic resources or for being born in wealthy families . . We can complain about the elitism of an institution, a company or a particular person, even if their attitude does not exactly reflect this concept, but in everyday speech it is accepted as completely normal.
Just like other forms of discrimination, elitism understood as a set of barriers that arbitrarily limits the freedom of certain people is a social problem that does not disappear and that gives rise to different manifestations. Unlike animals, human beings do not always receive the respect we deserve, but in many cases we obtain it passively, by having a certain surname or by having inherited a fortune that gives us a free pass to the elite.