By every measure, blacks in the USA suffer far more than whites: income, health, incarceration, education, mental illness, life span, etc. What causes this severe inequality? There are four suspects, four possible culprits: racism, moral weakness, class and culture.
Racism. The major cause surely is racism, but not current racism; rather, racism of the past. The prior letter argued that the 300-year-old system of racism was decisively overturned in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; that, notwithstanding residues of white racism, very rapidly a systematic/systemic pattern of anti-racism prevailed in all major institutions and broadly across the culture. However, previously, the abominable sin of slavery and then Jim Crow destroyed the black family: specifically depriving the father of his family and the family of their father.
When I first learned of this historical fact, perhaps at the age of 13, I was horrified by the sheer, grave, boundless evil of it. Only the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis compares with it. There have been many genocides and atrocities but this one was close to home. The slave system destroyed fatherhood, which is the very iconography of God. Unthinkably Satanic!
This damage to black family life, culture, masculinity and paternity is not easily or quickly repaired. We have a moral obligation to heal, as well as we can, the unthinkable damage done to the family and masculinity. We need policy and practice to ameliorate the wounds inflicted. But it is surely not fixed by any amount of money in the form of reparations, quotas, preferential treatment or the welfare system.
Indeed, the confidence and authority of the black father has been undermined, not strengthened, by social systems of dependency, entitlement, grievance, resentment and victimhood. These social systems emerged in the 1960s, precisely when the Civil Rights Movement attained victory, and concurrent with an even worse moral calamity, the Sexual Revolution. This later intensified the already troubling tendency of the black male to insecurity, infidelity and promiscuity. So we see: at that precise moment when racism was overturned, two poisons infected the black community: sexual chaos and habits of entitlement, dependency, grievance and victimhood. At this historical point, the 1960s, we see a certain divide within black America: into an emergent, prosperous black middle class and an under-society of poverty. This, we will see below, is the problem of culture, the real culprit of the crime of inequality.
Moral Weakness. We all enjoy stories of those who pull themselves, "by their own bootstraps," out of poverty to success, by sheer determination, will power, courage, and hard work. This is "the American Way." Arguably, it is more true today than ever as we have developed into a meritocracy, in which achievement, effort, talent, and determination are rewarded, regardless of race, ethnicity or class. Like every social order, our own has a hierarchy of class; but unlike the rigidity of caste systems, ours is remarkably fluid, with continual movement of individuals up and down the ladder of status and wealth. Many rise by way of effort and talent; others descend due to misfortune, discouragement, addiction, bad decisions, companionship and habits. The famous 1 per cent is a social fact, but there is constant movement in and out of that club. Among other consequences, this makes for a pervasive anxiety since no one can be certain of retaining their current status.
This "success by will power" narrative appeals especially to a kind of American conservative individualism. The affluent and powerful, who have "won" at this game (or aspire to) congratulate themselves and look down upon the less fortunate as lazy and incompetent. It is rooted in a Protestant and especially Calvinist sensibility that fell into subjectivism and individualism when it rejected the objectivity of the Catholic sacramental (efficacious) system, the authority of its (infallible) Magisterium, and the emphatically communal nature of Catholicism. Deprived of the certainty of the sacraments, of a trusted and objective authority, of immersion in a strong community, the Protestant, now isolated, sought other sources of consolation. So, for example, they discovered the "born again" experience in which the one time salvation experience carries an absolute assurance of final beatitude. In another direction, they revived an ancient belief that vice brings failure and virtue brings success and proof of internal goodness as well as salvation. So we find in our country the popularity of the very "prosperity gospel" (Joel Osteen) which weds belief in Jesus to capitalistic good fortune. This ethos underlies much of traditional Republicanism; the Catholic sensibility is allergic to it.
So, as a Catholic I have little sympathy with this narrative of individual success. While admiring determination, talent and effort, I am aware that achievement is never wholly private, isolated and individualistic. Rather, it flows from a rich, often unacknowledged web of relationships, opportunities, connections and synergistic interactions. Therefore we cannot perch from positions of privilege and patronize those who suffer unemployment, sickness, addiction and incarceration for their moral inadequacy.
Class. Every society is structured by hierarchies of class. The worst example of this is Communism which expects to produce a classless, proletarian society but has given us ( in Stalin, Mao and Xi) the most vicious, violent and oppressive human societies ever. In a healthy society, every class and group enjoys security, prosperity, peace and its own prerogatives as it fulfills its specific responsibilities. Imagine feudal society at its best, around the 13th century in which every class had important jobs to perform but enjoyed its own benefits: knights and aristocrats, clergy, monks, peasants, craftsman, etc. The expansive, prosperous USA of the post-war period (1945-65), the world of my childhood, had a "Camelot" (however passing) quality to it: labor unions were strong, capitalists rich and happy, women mostly grateful to have their men home from war and out of the Depression, the Afro-American community growing more prosperous, Puerto Ricans finding opportunity in big America cities, and urban ethnic Catholics becoming comfortable bourgeois suburbanites. There was a big pie and everyone got a decent piece of it. Since then, the expansive middle class of my childhood has shrunk and left some with obscene levels of affluence and others with horrific circumstances of impoverishment.
In the more than 50 years since then, the pie has gotten bigger but the sharing of it quite unequal. More and more we are divided into haves-and-have-nots, winners and losers. The rich are richer and the poor poorer. There is movement up and down the ladder as there really are "winners" and "losers" due to talent, effort and hard work. But most people are limited by the circumstances of their class. At the lower end: bad education, health care, employment opportunities, wages, job security, and living conditions. At the other end: the opposite! Most are trapped in their social/economic class. Those in poverty, even the talented and well-intended, have the cards stacked against them. Those in the upper tiers, even when indulgent and incompetent, are protected by family shields of privilege.
This class structure is not ethnic or racial: it applies to all. So whether black/white/brown or whatever shade, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The basic inequality of our society is class, not race based. Proportionally, more blacks are trapped in the lower classes and that explains the racial divide. More blacks are stuck there because of the destruction of the family and fatherhood during slavery and Jim Crow. But the worst thing we can do in this situation is to favor one race or ethnicity and set it against the others. We need to work together as a society to improve life for all in poverty, regardless of color. Poor and working class folk need to work together politically, with their allies in the higher echelons, towards the common good that will lift all boats. While it is true that those centuries of slavery deeply destroyed the black family, at this point it is counterproductive to bring racial competition when all groups are suffering in the lower classes.
Culture. Culture is everything. We are each of us fruits of our specific culture with all its values, beliefs, practices, animosities, riches, legacy, hopes, virtues, vices, and aspirations. The primary root cause of poverty and injustice, I will argue here, in Culture. This is our culprit!
In college I read the work of anthropologist Oscar Lewis who in great detail studied the lives of the poor, especially in Mexico. Son of a Rabbi, and son-in-law of the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow, he did a PhD at Columbia University in 1940 and was a lifelong Marxist. As such, he sympathized with the poor and blamed poverty on capitalism in its class structure and individualism. But his anthropological descriptions, in vivid detail, of the day-to-day lives of the poor suggest an alternative, or possibly complementary interpretation, Culture.
He described poverty as far more than material scarcity, but as a vast, profound web of systematic, systemic, interacting behavioral pathologies: addictions, violence, promiscuity, poor work ethic, violence to women and children, sickness and disease, bad eating habits, crime and incarceration, and the absent or toxic father. Poverty here is a "matrix," an alternative universe which envelopes you in a myriad of pathologies and at its worst is a prison with no escape.
About 35 years ago, our family befriended Billy Sharkey, a homeless, part-time criminal, street guy and his family. One day I ran into his sister and asked casually about the family. She calmly said something like this: "Billy is in jail and has AIDs. Carlos, Luis and Joey are all druggies. Bobby just beat up our brother Danny because he stole his social security check. Debby just got evicted and is homeless with her five kids. Harry is in hiding from cops. Both his sons are in juvenile lock-up." And she went on. Billy himself (we were his godparents when he was baptized I am proud to say) had seven children scattered around the city by different women. This is the Culture of Poverty.
My first resident at Magnificat Home was Farah, a very, very tough young black woman. Her baby's father was in jail and apparently a thug and a murderer. She had been a prostitute. She liked to fight. She came from the Culture of Poverty. Schizophrenic. She would yell out loud to herself in her room. I noticed she liked to read and to write. Intelligent. She described that in high school she finally got a single break: the English teacher saw her talent and encouraged her. He would give her lunch money and she would buy his and her lunch. They would talk. A wholesome, fatherly, mentoring relationship. The other students saw this and taunted her mercilessly. She had to leave the school. The one ray of light was overwhelmed by the darkness. At a point her behavior in our house became unbearable. One day I walked into the house to see her walking out with a bag of toiletries that had been donated. She was going out to sell them on the street. I offered her a choice: "I will reimburse you rent for the remainder of the month (about $300) and you walk out and never come back or I call the police and have you arrested". She took the money. I heard about a year later that she had died in Florida at about the age of 30. Sad life! May she rest in peace! This is the Culture of Poverty.
Billy was Irish descent, Farah Afro-American. The class structure and culture of poverty do not discriminate by race or ethnicity.
By the end of the 1960s Oscar Lewis was famous and controversial: his work was embraced by cultural conservatives (like myself) who see poverty as most fundamentally rooted in a deep, pervasive culture, rather than in mere financial scarcity. He was rejected by the New Left for "blaming the victim." He remained himself true to his leftwing politics even as he described in painful accuracy the actual lives of the poor. We cultural conservatives think, for example, of the waves of immigrants who came and lived in conditions of poverty and discrimination: Italians, Jews, Germans, Irish, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Asians, Arabs, etc. Within a generation or so these rose up as their children got education and work opportunities. They succeeded because of underlying cultural strengths: work ethic, religious faith, connection to a tight and supportive community, marital fidelity, sexual chastity (however imperfect) and above all the presence of a father in the home.
Lewis did not set class against culture; nor do I. But I do see that culture, especially the underlying religious and family structures, as well as work and education habits, is at the heart of poverty. I argue with my wife: she sometimes says that early in our marriage we were poor. I say we were sometimes broke, but never poor. Real poverty is not just lack of money; it is lack of agency, connectivity, synergy, religious faith and hope, masculine confidence and authority, education, virtue, and healthy habits of life. Real poverty is deep and intractable: it requires more than financial resources. But financial resources, wisely focused, are surely part of the solution. That is why I have always been a fierce cultural conservative but a moderate, pragmatic economic liberal. Neither a racist nor an anti-racist.
Let's return to the black community and the momentous changes of the 1960s. Three events: one good, two bad. The good one: the victory of the Civil Rights Movement and the triumph of anti-racism across society. The first bad: the emergence of a black underclass characterized by: male promiscuity and infidelity, absence of the father, crime, dependency on governmental welfare, low education, poor work ethic, strong mothers, bad health and diet, a vigorous feminine Christianity but little masculine faith, sense of entitlement, victimization, and grievance. The second bad event reinforced the first: the sexual revolution, the hegemony of a sterile, contraceptive mentality that tore sexuality out of marriage, aggravated the pathologies of cultural poverty for all races, but especially for the black community which had previously been deeply wounded in its family structure, specifically in regard to paternity.
Conclusion. The primary cause of racial inequality is entrapment in the Culture of Poverty which is itself blind to race and ethnicity. At the heart of the Culture of Poverty is the absent or toxic father. From this flows crime, unemployment, weak work ethic, bad health and the entire matrix of disempowerment.
The secondary cause is our class structure which has morphed into a great divide between the haves and the have-nots and keeps most of us stuck in our place.
A third cause is the past history of slavery which destroyed the black family and fatherhood.
Racism in our current society is not the problem. In the next and last letter on this issue I will argue that anti-racism is not true but that it makes the problem worse. Lastly, moral failure is not cause of inequality: we are all mostly products of our class and culture.
The proposal that the poor cause their own suffering by moral failure is the most odious of explanations: it is self-congratulation by the privileged who condescend and remain ungrateful for the benefits they enjoy in class and culture.
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