Education functions as a status marker detached from personal blame

Evidence

In this and other ways, education serves as a peg on which to hang status; and, like “blood,” whether a person got the education or not is not his “fault,” or at least it is only the fault of an irresponsible youth, not a grown man. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2223

Categorization

• DEFINE: The striking simile ‘like blood’ frames education as an ascriptive status marker — a genuinely useful conceptual framing for inherited-like privilege.