White America: how did we get here?

Since the time of honest racial segregation in America—when whites wrote down race-based rules of exclusion—we have been formulating modes of dishonest segregation: denials of equality and inclusion in areas such as housing, criminal justice, employment, interpersonal relationships, and private organizations.

Once institutionalized, this dishonest segregation becomes subconscious for us whites: we do not create race-based rules, we just live by the status quo. We are not racist, after all, we just call balls and strikes. We're objective when pressing charges, citing criminal statistics, administering standardized tests, drawing political districts, or selecting the best candidate.

Many whites were born into this dishonest America: told that ours is a diverse country, only to be raised in all-white neighborhoods and sent to local property tax-supported, largely white schools, with few opportunities placed in our laps to have black friends.

By the time Rodney King made the news, we had to learn of the goings on of our own country from strangers on the screen—we had no loved ones who experienced institutionally tolerated racial prejudice or violence. We knew no faces on which to see pain. We had no connections.

Twenty years later, and what has changed? Inequality remains. Informal segregation remains. This is still a dishonest America. Whites only know more because there are more cameras, not because of an increase in interracial neighborhoods, places of worship, or other voluntary activities or organizations.

This reality does not create people without tolerance, it creates people without empathy. It is difficult, and perhaps unnatural, to feel empathy for a group excluded from your childhood, education, community, and workplace—especially when you are simultaneously told they are not actually being excluded.

Our crisis today is not that us whites are any more racist than anyone else, it is that we do not engage in empathy. We see a country that functions reasonably well for us and fail to ask how well it works for others. Whites need to view #BlackLivesMatter not as implying other lives do not matter, but as a plea for empathy, a plea to help create a country that works just as well for others as it does for us.

Our crisis tomorrow is that any unrest—any threat to change the status quo, any risk of this country continuing to work as well for us as it did in our childhood—will push white people to increasingly blame others. In accepting the Republican nomination for president in 1968, Richard Nixon stated, “When a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial violence … then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.” Nixon could not have possibly been talking to black America, fresh off the heels of a century of Jim Crow and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was talking to white people—the same people presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump excites by the promise of making America great again.

As we did in 1968, we risk looking to a presidential candidate who promises to restore order and, implicitly, ensure that America continues to work well for us whites.

We do not need to make America great again for us white people. We do not need to tell ourselves that police officers are increasingly targets of violence. We do not need more excuses to dig our heels into the status quo. We need to begin a social evolution in which our influence is real: we must listen to how America works for all minorities—Black, Latino, Muslim, LGBTQIA, Disabled, women, etc. Real understanding will foster empathy between communities, allowing for the creation and promotion of more inclusive spaces, institutions, and policies. Through listening to the voices, pain, and strife of our fellow Americas with whom we may not live, work, or pray, we can begin to create the nation we were raised to believe we already had.  

My American Values: True Mobility

The second installment of the My American Values series focuses on what can be called the ‘American Dream’. While my last post concentrated on American law, the values discussed herein cannot easily be found in our founding documents, but more in the national story that Americans tell themselves. Note again that is post is subjective and personal.

What is it?

First, the ‘American Dream’ must be defined. In 1931 James Adams wrote the following in The Epic of America:

[The American dream is] of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

This definition implies “better and richer and fuller” for each successive generation, evidenced by the later mention of such possibility existing “regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position”. Thus, there is a generationally progressive element to the Dream. The Dream is both collective and individual; we as a nation dream to be better off than our parents and each individual dreams to be better off than his/her parents.

Note that this Dream isn’t inherently zero-sum: the individual wants more pie (for example) than his/her parents, and the society wants to make available more pie for everyone—no one necessarily wants a larger percentage, or  slice, of the pie—just more in an absolute sense. Yet while it isn’t inherently zero-sum, it often does manifest as such—getting ahead mean more people ‘below’ you and fewer ‘above’ you. This is perhaps most interestingly aided by the American tradition of immigration; immigrants come to make up the ‘bottom’ which has been vacated by the newly mobile. Indeed, the zero-sum version of the American Dream requires immigration. Note that the Statue of Liberty states, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” not ‘give me your educated, your English-fluent, your elite’.

Is it a dream?

Yes, it is only a dream. For the American Dream to be a reality, there are a few necessary conditions.

First, the nation’s economy must grow—there must be more ‘pie’ to go around than the previous generation in order for more people to be better off than worse off. If the economy is stagnant, some people may trade places, but in the end each person’s gain is another’s loss. I hope I’m not the first to tell you that our GDP had negative growth in 2008 and 2009, and our growth rate hasn’t been over 4% since 2000.

Second, in order to satisfy the “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” part of the Dream, there would need to exist an equal opportunity for each U.S. citizen to achieve a measure of success. I don’t feel I need to argue that a child born to a poor non-English speaking single parent, through no fault of his/her own, faces unequal opportunity for success than a child, through no virtue of his/her own, is born into an affluent family with a stay at home parent in suburbia. We have a long way to go here.

Third, each generation must give to their children a world capable of success. The American Dream requires parents to want better for their child; to actively equip them with better tools and lessons for life than available to themselves. Because when a generation is 20-30 years old, that generation can’t command the economy or government. Influential institutions in the U.S. are commanded by those in their 50s and 60s (and increasingly 70s, as well). That generation has failed their children. They have gifted us a world where jobs are less available than when they were our age and where education—even adjusted for inflation—is greatly more expensive then when they went to school. What’s worse is that the generation doing this to their children, the Baby Boomers, was given unprecedented opportunity and growth by their parents! What are their parents called? That’s right—The Greatest Generation. In short, the ‘Baby Boomer’s have given their children a world worse than their parents gave them. In American Dream parlance, they are failures.

Does it exist?

Perhaps. However, in order to be successful (defined in the standard education/profession/economic way), one must behave, dress, and sound a certain way. For example, you’ll find few political, media or business leaders without a strong (and unaccented) command of English, without wearing the typical Euro-centric ‘business’ outfit of a suit and tie, without Euro-American values, Judeo-Christian beliefs, hetero-normal identity, etc. Thus, social mobility is encouraged, but you have to look, sound, and act the part. It’s not only that you have to ‘Americanize’, but you have to ‘elitify’ (a term I have coined to mean ‘to become like the predominant elites’), as well.

Thus, we encourage low-income and low-class born and naturalized Americans and immigrants to work hard and get only at the cost of shedding their previous identities. The working class has put down the beer and pick up the wine. The urban and rural must either lose their respective accents or relegate themselves to a lifetime of code-switching. Immigrants must don suits and learn English quickly. All must learn to value capitalism, education, the institution-centric paradigm, etc. The present elite does not look much different than their parents’ elite—and I can tell you that tomorrow’s elite doesn’t look much different than today’s elite. Thus, to really grab the American Dream, one must give up who one’s parents were. One must elitify.

And it is this elitification process which bothers me the most. Without it, the American Dream would represent true mobility—but instead it is a farce. True mobility would mean being able to retain the values and identities of your parents while still being successful. American stories like The Beverly Hillbillies, The Nanny, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are so interesting because the main characters don’t go through this elitification process where everyone expects they would.

Thus, my American value is not the American Dream—but the value of true mobility. America is often called a melting pot, but we must be careful with this metaphor. Elitification is like a fondue—all sorts of cheeses are added but in the end they create one homogeneous flavor. True Mobility is like chili—many ingredients are added, but each retains its individual flavor and identity while still succeeding as part of the whole. This value is more American because it conforms better with the Declaration of Independence; that we are all equal and through liberty—not conformity—can we pursue our happiness.