I think many of the distinctions we find so compelling in American life are manufactured -- sly political moves which trap people into a way of thinking about each other. I first noticed that compartmentalization when I lived overseas and would buy Time or Newsweek occasionally to stay in touch.
What was so odd when observed from other cultures -- places where fine lines weren't drawn between one group and another, or one way of looking at the world and another -- was the division of the news into, say, "national news," "religion" and "art" and "science" and "international news." Are these distinctions we naturally make in our daily lives? Or are they thought tools which have turned into very handy political tools for partisans who (for example) found a motherlode in the separation from religion from science or (say) art and "real" life? (In the case of art, it was great as long as it was easily comprehended and entertaining, dangerous when it strayed into the thought-provoking and complex, or challenged cultural verities.)
Karl Rove came up with a hyperdetailed system for dividing Americans into tiny groups who were then set against each other politically. But he wasn't the first. For years Democrats have clung to affirmative action. What this former Dem saw was a race-based system which should have been affirmative action for anyone unable to pay for their education. The Democrats meant well, but affirmative action has worked against the party in many ways. We don't need or like racial divisions. We've had way too much of that. If you think this is apostasy, take a look at this sensible piece over at "The Daily Dish." Patrick Appel begins with a quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates:
"For blacks, Jim Crow America meant, not simply white people not wanting to be around them, it meant a concerted effort to restrict the creation of wealth. Redlining wasn't just offering a racial preference to whites (indeed it actually punished whites for living around black people) it was a government-conceived and sponsored effort to devalue the homes of black people, thus draining what little wealth there was in the communities. When post-slavery Southern and Midwestern blacks--following Booker T's conservative line--created wealth by working the land, and building their own businesses, white terrorists violently undermined their efforts at every turn while the government refused to do its most basic job--protecting its citizens. ..."
We haven't emerged even now from the battlegrounds of economic warfare, god knows. Look at how corporations make out as "special people" in our society. Check out our courts and see how the poor are treated vs. the rich and lawyered-up. Look at job security now that many at the lower end have no way of getting to work that isn't very costly, while the impact of $4 gas is much easier on those with high incomes. Look at the minimum wage. Patrick Appel, who has always liked race-based affirmative action responds to Coates' piece with this:
"Conservatives often chastise liberals (often rightly) for social engineering, but it's hard to deny that the root of racial inequality was a massive system of social engineering itself, meant to economically advantage whites. Though the most malicious elements of that system have been dismantled, inequalities persist generation to generation partially because of prior meddling. These long-term effects are what make social engineering so dangerous in the first place. ..."
He's right. Both sides have used social engineering to gain political advantage. Appel has second thoughts now about "minority"-based affirmative action. He reads what Richard Rodriguez has to say about his experience.
"There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me — when my family was working-class, and we were struggling. But very early in life I became part of the majority culture and now don't think of myself as a minority. Yet the university said I was one. Anybody who has met a real minority — in the economic sense, not the numerical sense — would understand how ridiculous it is to describe a young man who is already at the university, already well into his studies in Italian and English Renaissance literature, as a minority. Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities — members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. ..."
No matter what their race! Agree! Most liberals are uncomfortable with the notion that they, too, may be race-conscious. The race-conscious basis for Affirmative Action always bothered me while the commitment to investing in education for those who otherwise couldn't afford it has always made good sense. The American fantasy persists. It hold that this is a classless society because we now feel free to laugh at snobs. But we're trapped, like it or not, in a society with huge differences in education, economic opportunity, and the ability of all to choose what kind of life they want to live, what kind of work they want to do. We are faced with a large and growing group of genuinely economically disadvantaged of all regions, education levels, and races. Equality of opportunity, the thing we say we most admire about our system, has become a fantasy, provoking a grim smile from those whose opportunities have been severely limited.
The conservative social engineering which kept blacks poor and segregated was socialism, pure and simple. The social engineering of (say) the Bush administration which greatly advantaged the upper tiers of our economic classes is also socialism. Bush socialism gave economic advantage to large industries and to individuals and families made fortunate by earlier, more egalitarian decades. The socialism we need now is based on a healthy understanding that we rise or fall together. In case you think it's bullshit that we rise or fall together, look at the economic blows we're sustaining right now as a nation. Look at what has happened to our financial system: its capitalist darwins, enabled by a Republican senator, have brought the entire economy down and created something which comes (economists are now saying) very close to a national economic depression.
The last thing we need is to perpetuate the belief that distinctions among people have inordinate importance. The last thing we need is a continuation of America: The Land of Us and Them.
