The elites portray themselves as good-doers. The could be some of that, of course, but there is a Machiavellian side to such displays too. Rob Henderson explains:

Elite overproduction happens when a society produces too many people who believe they deserve high status. To get there, they often try to align themselves with genuinely marginalized groups in order to unseat the current elites and replace them. A lot of the time, when you hear someone loudly criticizing elites, what you’re really hearing is an audition to join them—an attempt to co-opt the suffering of people who are actually mistreated.

Even if someone has never personally experienced hardship, they can point to history or to the struggles of people who share their traits and say: they suffered, I’m like them, therefore you should give me power. That might mean a spot at a university, a job at a prestigious firm, or some other coveted position.

What’s interesting is how this shift away from individualism and toward group identity makes it possible for someone who’s only ever known affluence and comfort to be rewarded, so long as they share something in common with a historically marginalized group. Meanwhile, the people who really have been mistreated may get nothing. And yet people seem surprisingly willing to go along with it.