The New York Times recently ran an article titled "The Failure of Progressive Movements," which tried to identify why recent fads such as Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter failed to enact meaningful change. One explanation offered is that, as commentator Fredrik DeBoer puts it, "today, left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job." As such, these movements prioritize "the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete."

It's not hard to see this in action: Modern progressive movements, including Black Lives Matter and much of the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry, seem woefully out of touch with ordinary people. A big focus in recent years has been rebranding "Latino" into the more gender-neutral "Latinx" in spite of the fact that only 2% of Hispanics use the term to define themselves and an astounding 40% find it offensive.

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Black Lives Matter focused on saving affirmative action and defunding the police, even though both policies are fairly unpopular with most of America and with a majority of black and Hispanic voters.

Much of the modern DEI discussion centers on people with immense privilege (for example, microaggressions toward highly successful musicians of color).

What's driving this disconnect? For one thing, the progressives who both lead and support these movements tend to be overwhelmingly wealthy and white. One study found that progressive activists are 80% white (the country as a whole is 69% white) and only 3% African American. These activists are also twice as likely to have completed college as the average person in America, more likely than members of any other political group to earn over $100,000 per year, and less than half as likely as the average resident to be poor.

Many of these activists use their privilege to distance themselves from the actual minorities and poor residents that they want to help. Tyler Austin Harper, a professor at Bates College and a frequent anti-racist commentator, argues that "rich progressives use multiracial books/toys to introduce commodified diversity into the lives of kids whose worlds have been systematically scrubbed of actual racial diversity by dint of where their parents choose to live and send them to school."

To put it another way: Laudable intentions aside, a lot of these social justice warriors are astroturfing diversity. They're virtue-signaling.

One solution to this disconnect would be for wealthy white "anti-racist" activists to get out of their bubbles and actually interact with the people that they intend to help. In Christian circles, many parents send their teenagers on mission trips to developing countries. The goal is partly to help those countries, but also to help their teenagers by giving them a sense of perspective and by helping them understand the problems that other people face.

Activists on the Left would benefit from doing something similar. If more activists were willing to spend time in the communities that they want to help, their priorities might change. It's hard to obsess over microaggressions when your friends don't know where their next meal is coming from. Their goals might change too: Police definitely need reform, but once you live in a place with rampant crime and interact with the human beings who want more law and order to keep them safe, "defund the police" becomes a little less cute.

They might even find themselves with wider appeal. True movements are born of the people, by the people, and for the people. Movements of, by, and for elites don't get very far.

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Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with the Foundation for Economic Education.