Yes — I mean, I think everyone does have the ability to learn, and to be introspective, and to speak up. David Brooks is strongly implying that some people (no college, low-income) do not have this ability, and that they need to be shown "respect" despite being unequipped to show respect to others. And of course it's possible to respect someone as a person without respecting all of their beliefs (a topic I wrote about a few days ago), but Brooks doesn't get into that. What he's saying falls more on the latter side: "we" need to respect their disrespectful beliefs, or else we're committing the greater disrespect. His thesis is of course patronizing to working-class people and therefore he's doing his own flavor of disrespect.
Everyone can care about others and do better. Every time someone chooses not to, they're making a choice to downgrade their own character and skills.
It has nothing to do with their formal education. Brooks has a degree in history from the University of Chicago, and it doesn't prevent him from projecting nonsense onto everyone who isn't a straight white man.
He assumes that all straight white men like himself have the same tendency toward prejudice that congeals into bigotry. Some 40 years ago, he studied history and began working as a journalist, and despite the wealth of knowledge he ought to have gained, he still chooses to "other" people of different races, genders, and sexualities. He projects the same tendency toward bigotry more intensely onto those he "others" for (unlike himself) lacking that college degree.
I think I know how it works psychologically for him. After all, if he finds it distasteful to be inclusive and if he refuses to do that work, he'll want to do two things:
1. Make himself feel better by saying that, because being inclusive is so cognitively difficult for him, others with less formal education must find it impossible. He thus announces he'll refrain from doing the work to become more inclusive as an act of benevolence and social equalizing with those who are (in his imagination) unable to do it. Social justice = snobbery, and he's not a snob — that's basically his argument for excusing himself from the character work he needs to do.
2. Make outright prejudiced statements, which is what he really wants to do anyway, while shifting public scrutiny off his own character by claiming that the prejudices originate somewhere else. He blames an entire demographic (people with no college degree) for supposedly inevitably succumbing to these prejudices. Thus he — because his college degree allegedly gives him the intellectual power to choose his values — makes the choice to side with prejudiced people. He sympathizes with the downtrodden demographic of white grievance who (in his narrative) express their general dissatisfaction through racism and sexism, and he pseudobenevolently grants them the "respect" they deserve by siding with their prejudices and appointing himself as their mouthpiece.
