Reply #90: I think this thread is stumbling over the issue of CLASS...

[Romulox]

It's not that "smart"=elitist. It's that education is strictly rationed in this country on the basis of class.

Elitist = someone who advances the interests of the upper classes. In general, US institutions of higher learning are nothing much more than class-replicating machines. This is, incidentally, why lower-class whites resent affirmative action to such a degree; affirmative action, by its very design, takes pressure off the upper classes to make any class based reforms (as minorities are disproportionately over-represented in the lower classes, though the absolute number of lower-class white Americans is much higher,) and indeed, helps maintain the class-based stratification that has come to define American society.