Politics & Power Quote by Iris Chang

America loves class as an aesthetic but hates it as a diagnosis. Iris Chang’s line needles that reflex with a historian’s impatience: we talk endlessly about “the elite,” “the 1%,” “coastal liberals,” “old money,” but stumble over the plain, structural phrase “ruling class.” Her target isn’t just ignorance; it’s a cultural habit of laundering power into lifestyle, pedigree, or “achievement,” so hierarchy feels incidental rather than engineered.

Boston is her scalpel. The city markets itself as meritocracy headquarters: universities, hospitals, biotech, abolitionist lore. It’s also a place where lineage, neighborhood, accent, and school ties still map status with almost European clarity. Chang’s aside - “even in Boston” - is doing double duty: Boston is offered as the exception that proves the rule, and as evidence that even a comparatively class-literate American city won’t comfortably name who governs and how. If Boston can’t say “ruling class” out loud, what hope does the rest of the country have?

The subtext is about language as civic anesthesia. “Ruling class” implies coordination: people and institutions that set rules, shape policy, and define normal. American discourse prefers individual villains or inspirational strivers; it’s safer, less radicalizing. Chang, who wrote about atrocities and state power, is attuned to how societies avoid naming perpetrators and beneficiaries. Her question mark isn’t uncertainty so much as an indictment: the silence is the point, and it serves someone.