White‑Collar Sympathy Gap

Professionals and symbolic elites express abstract solidarity with the poor but lack real understanding of manual‑labor lifeworlds, producing policy and cultural choices that fail those they claim to help. This gap is sustained by social distance, selective ethnography (or lack of it), and narratives that valorize ideology over observed hardships. — Recognizing this sympathy gap reframes debates about progressive policy, philanthropy, and cultural activism by focusing attention on empathy‑shortfalls and the material consequences of elite attitudes.