By Alexander Perepechko

Published on April 26, 2015

In four previous essays on Barack Hussein Obama, I left unanswered the following question: “Are theorists of elites right that in a multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic or socially complex state the ruling class should be recruited almost exclusively from the dominant majority?” This question requires an answer after Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz announced his 2016 presidential bid. In his speech, Cruz dedicated the first 900 words to a detailed retelling of his origin story. That is more than most candidates will do. It seems as though Cruz plans to lean heavily on his biography to distinguish himself from the rest of the candidates and to send the message that he represents real change and the future face of America. That is exactly what Obama did during his own presidential campaigns. His background functioned as proof of how different he was from the rest of the candidates (Cillizza, 2015). After Ted Cruz, another minority candidate – Marco Rubio – announced his 2016 presidential bid.

The theory of elites gives few clues about this culturally sensitive matter. Neither bureaucratic advancement nor party patronage is the rule for a leader of a minority group. The rule is cooptation: the outsider must be like those who are already in. Indeed, the cooptation of leaders of minorities in the United States used to be quite successful. American theorist of elites C. Wright Mills (2000: 142) describes the two ways elites are formed: “Those who have started from on high have from their beginnings been formed by sound men and trained for soundness. They do not have to think of having to appear as sound men. They are just sound men; indeed, they embody the standards of soundness. Those who have had low beginnings must think all the harder before taking a risk of being thought unsound. As they succeed, they must train themselves for success; and, as they are formed by it, they too come to embody it, perhaps more rotundly than those of the always-high career.”
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