September 27, 2008
America, Americans, and Paradox
This post is a re-worked and extended version of a previous entry over at www.notesfromalargecontinent.wordpress.com
In his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville argues that democracy – and American democracy as the new democratic state par excellence especially – is inherently paradoxical. For example, while democratic peoples are ignorant and elect fools, who in turn produce mangled and shoddy legislation, the net outcome is a system in which unworkable legislation is quickly thrown out (for new legislators are rapidly elected), and the laws of the land are respected by a demos which views the democratically produced laws as its own. The net result: a good legislative system, despite poor legislators enacting poor laws. Likewise, commercial entrepreneurship causes men to become self-interested and alienated from each other, yet their same economic self-interest forces them back into the political sphere in order to protect their assets, thus re-kindling the contact with other citizens and promoting a quasi-republican political self-awareness.
After spending over 8 weeks in the United States, travelling from New York all the way to San Francisco, I noticed several things which might well be called paradoxical in the Tocquevillean mould. For example there exists a formal separation between Church and State enshrined in the US Constitution, yet the words “In God We Trust” can be found emblazoned upon every coin and bill, and where to be an atheist is career suicide for any major electoral candidate. More strikingly, and perhaps seriously, the notion of the “American Dream” is still foremost in every political campaign and believed in by most Americans (from what I could tell), yet America currently experiences levels of social mobility akin to the 1920s, and the current administration has focused on tax cuts for the super-rich, whilst reducing federal expenditure which could off-set this lack of social mobility. And yet, the upcoming November election looks like it could well reward the GOP, which has held the executive branch for the last 8 years and periodically dominated Congress during that period as well.
I wish, however, to focus upon one particular paradox: the deep commitment ordinary Americans genuinely hold to the idea of political liberty, and freedom of speech in particular, whilst evincing a systematic reluctance to employ that freedom of speech to meaningfully engage with those who hold contradictory views. I hope to illustrate this by recounting my experience of meeting two groups of rival protestors in southern Oregon. Although two months is not a long time to spend in a country, especially one the size of America, I believe the following serves as a microcosm of American politics generally, and illustrates quite strikingly the particular paradox I wish to discuss.
As I was driving through the small town of Bandon, Oregon, I saw what looked like a roadside vigil with a group of men and women standing on the side-walk waving large white flags. As I rounded the bend there appeared another group, slightly greater in number, waving the stars and stripes. Intrigued, I decided to pull over to go and enquire what was happening on the corners of this four-way junction in small-town America.
I approached the group waving white flags first, and was able to see that each flag carried the logo “Veterans for Peace” and a picture of a dove complete with olive branch in beak. I walked over to an elderly couple and introduced myself, explaining that I was on vacation from the UK and asking what was going on. The gentleman was very affable and happy to explain. Apparently everything had begun when the so-called “Women in Black”, a group emulating the movement begun in Israel-Palestine, started a road-side vigil on Friday evenings. As it was only 4.45 pm, the women in black hadn’t get arrived. What – I asked – where these “Veterans For Peace” doing? The answer: “to show solidarity with the women in black, in opposition to those guys over there”, pointing to the group waving the stars and stripes. Further intrigued, I asked who the other group were. “Well”, came the answer, “we’re the Veterans for Peace, and so I guess they’re the Veterans for War”. I asked what he thought of the war, and the obvious answer from both him and the lady he was with was one of condemnation – but a special kind of condemnation. “We’re veterans, you see, and we believe this war is not doing any good to any body. We want our men and women brought home safely as soon as possible – that’s why we’re the Veterans for Peace”.
I asked if it was OK to take a few pictures, to which the Veterans for Peace agreed, and then said that as I wanted to get both sides of the story I thought I should go and see what the so-called “Veterans for War” had to say for themselves.
I must admit, I was expecting the worst. As I walked over I mentally prepared myself by repeating that I wasn’t in Oxford anymore, and that it was no good getting into a fight with anybody out here, because after all nobody is converted at the roadside. And anyway, I told myself, it would be far more productive to simply listen to what these people had to say, no matter how strongly I disagreed with their politics or how unpleasant I might find them. Yet what the so-called “Veterans for War” had to say surprised me.
The first person I spoke to – who must have seen me speaking to the Veterans for Peace a few moments earlier – was friendly and pleasant, greeting me with a warm grin and a firm handshake. I asked him what was going on and he told me the following. He said that their protest was meant purely as a show of support for American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan – and stressed that it was about the troops. Indeed he was keen to say straight away that “we don’t necessarily support the President or the war: what we want is the best for our boys, and by being here we are showing that we support them, and that they are not forgotten”.
Further intrigued, I moved down the line and was introduced to a man named Airlee Owens (one of only two people, I must confess, whose name I know for sure, because not being a professional journalist I foolishly failed to take notes). Airlee is a great bear of a man, large in stature as well as in heart from what I could tell. Again he shook my hand firmly and greeted me kindly, keen to answer any questions I might have. He told me that although he didn’t start the vigil, he seemed to have become the spokesman for the group. “We didn’t start this to support the war necessarily” he said, “we started this because we are all veterans, most of us from Vietnam, and we don’t want the boys in Iraq to suffer the way many people did when they came back from Vietnam. You see, that was an unpopular war, and when the troops came home they were treated very badly: people would spit on them in the street, and the government basically abandoned them. Iraq is an unpopular war, and we don’t want the same thing to happen to the boys out there when they come home. So when we saw the women in black, we knew we had to do something in response. This isn’t – you’ve got to understand – a political protest. It’s about supporting the troops for as long as they are out there”.
I found this fascinating, and asked whether you could really have a non-political protest when one side is flying the stars and stripes, and the other flying white flags with doves on them. Airlee’s answer came quickly: “Sure you can. The flag isn’t supposed to be political – it should be a symbol of unity. Don’t get me wrong, we are all patriots – we love our country – but we fly the flag because we think it should be used to unite all Americans together. It’s a positive symbol, and one shown by the troops out there as well as by us back home”.
I noticed that the Women in Black were beginning to assemble on the other side of the road from the so-called – and apparently ill-described – “Veterans for War”. However there was another lone figure, occupying the final side at the four-way junction, standing proudly holding his own flag with signs declaring that “Defeatism Support Al Qaeda” and “Help Prevent A Nuclear 9/11″. OK – I thought to myself – surely this guy is going to be a jingoistic nut-case who I’m going to struggle to remain civil with – but again I was disappointed, albeit much to my relief. His name was Jim Nielson, and like everyone else I’d spoken to so far he was friendly and approachable. I asked why he was standing all alone, and the simple answer was that if the Women in Black and the Veterans for Peace occupied two corners of the junction, it seemed right that those supporting the troops ought to have two as well. We chatted briefly about Winston Churchill – Jim being keen to stress his admiration for a man who did not appease the forces of terror (and not leaving the perceived analogy with Iraq to the imagination) – and I got up the courage to propose something to him.
I suggested that after having spoken to people from both sides, I had to admit that it seemed to me like they disagreed about far less than perhaps they thought. I pointed out that both sides supported the troops – indeed, that both sides were composed of veterans and their wives – that neither side was necessarily expressing support for either the war in Iraq or for the Bush administration, and that all of them seemed to want the same thing: the best for ordinary Americans sent to wars in foreign lands. Yet as soon as I said this the shutters came down. Though Jim remained affable to me, his mood visibly changed: “no I don’t think so” he said, “those guys over there are quitters, they want to quit”. I tried to point out that while that was arguably true, in the grand scheme of things it seemed like only one wave of contention amidst a sea of agreement; both sides might disagree about how long the troops should be out there, but all professed a desire to support them for as long as they were there. I suggested that maybe a stronger protest could be made by both sides if they perhaps exchanged just one flag each – but Jim found the idea unappealing.
I decided it would be worth paying one last visit to the Veterans for Peace before heading on my way. I approached the couple I had spoken to earlier, and put the same proposition to them about the idea that perhaps both sides had more in common than they supposed. The reaction was basically the same, as the shutters came down straight away. When I pointed out that the so-called “Veterans for War” told me that they supported the troops but not necessarily the war or the President, the reply I received was that a poll of troops in Iraq showed them 6-to-1 for Obama not McCain – which was hardly a reply to the suggestion I’d voiced. I tried to point out what Airlee had said to me – that the vigil was about supporting the troops themselves to prevent a repeat of the post-Vietnam experience, to which it was replied dismissively that “the Republican Right has grossly exaggerated the treatment of Vietnam veterans”- a surprising response from somebody who was himself a veteran. When I voiced my suggestion that the two sides make a stronger protest by exchanging just one flag each I was again met by scepticism. I hadn’t the heart to point out that flying only white flags along the road from a group flying the stars and stripes could hardly be helping the cause of the Veterans for Peace in a country where so much is invested in the flag, and where so many connotations and assumptions are made when either the flag is or is not flown.
Yet what I think I was seeing that day was arguably a microcosm of American society and politics. The so-called “Bill of Rights” in the US Constitution provides for 5 key freedoms – of Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition and Religion. Americans are proud of these freedoms. Indeed, the words “liberty” and “freedom” enter into almost every piece of political rhetoric, and America is of course the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”, the self-proclaimed “defender of the free world”. If you visit any historical or cultural museum in America you will be bombarded with the constant message of the importance freedom and liberty, and how important it is to Americans, how deeply committed to these values Americas are. Indeed this can get a little nauseating, and after a trip to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia I swore I never wanted to hear the words “freedom” or “greatest democracy upon God’s earth” ever again. Yet ordinary Americans appear committed to these values in a deep and genuine way, as evinced by my experience in Oregon. Neither side objected to my talking to the others – indeed they were pleased that I wanted to hear both sides of the story. Neither side dismissed the others’ right to assemble or speak, and I genuinely believe that they would have opposed measures curtailing the political freedoms of the other side, and done so vigorously.
Which makes the following seem even stranger: from what I could tell neither side at those Oregon vigils talks to the other very much. They simply didn’t seem to know all that much about what the other side thinks, and this appeared to be because they haven’t asked. They’d seen the white flags, or the stars and stripes, or the black clothes, and assumed they knew exactly what their opposition thought and felt. There at the roadside I saw two groups of veterans, men and their wives with a shared common background, who all professed to want the best for ordinary young men in Iraq, yet who did not talk to each other. The one difference about whether support for the troops is best shown by calling for immediate withdrawal, or whether that is a decision of politicians and generals whilst hoping to raise public support for ordinary men and women in the meantime, was enough to put these groups on different worlds whilst standing only 20 meters apart. And they’ve been on different worlds for a long time: September 2008 will mark the third anniversary of the Friday evening vigils.
Driving away that evening I came to the following conclusion: what I saw in little Bandon was something of a microcosm of American politics generally. Both sides sincerely believe in the value of free speech, and of the importance that anyone can hear both sides of the argument if they wish to – and yet they themselves are happy to hear only their own. The other side is ignored and demonised, yet despite being so close not just physically, but in terms of background and outlook, they will not talk. Rather than hearing what the other side has to say, each would rather go on subscribing to their established pre-conceptions of why they are wholly right and the others are not only wholly wrong, but not even worth engaging with. This reluctance to engage with the opposition appears to be as defining and characteristic a feature of America as the commitment to freedom of speech and political liberty which these ordinary men and women on the roadside expressed to me that day.
For example, the campaigning for the 2008 Presidential election was getting under-way as I was still in America, and the pattern is essentially the same but writ large. Both sides profess a commitment to Liberty (and God), and lambaste what the “other side” thinks or does. Political speeches are delivered in TV-friendly sound-bite formula, designed not to refute or rebut the opposition, but to paint a simplified picture that can be sloganized and used to demonise the opposition. This is characteristic of, and contributes to, an “us versus them” mentality in wider American politics, which I believe was acutely manifested at the Oregon vigils.
First impressions, however, are rarely wholly reliable. A few days later I wrote up a report of the above for my on-line travel blog, and a week or so later both Airlee and Jim had come across it and sent me replies. At first glance, their replies appeared to contradict the above. They pointed out that they had tried to approach the other side, but the other side refused to engage. So much, it seems, for my thesis about refusal to employ that cherished freedom of speech. Yet a little close attention to what they said seems in fact to paint only a more detailed picture of the same phenomenon.
Jim wrote that “I have talked with the opposition and know their positions but from experience have learned that arguing is worse than useless because it hardens positions, causes irrational statements and makes enemies”. It is interesting that while Jim says he has “talked with the opposition”, from his own experience he has decided that arguing is not worth the bother. It is interesting – and also instructive – that Jim equates talking with argumentation, and I believe it is no accident although I don’t lay the fault at his door. Here another anecdote from my time in America is worth considering. Upon arrival in the USA, whilst waiting to be “processed” at immigration control, I watched a live “debate” on CNN between a McCain and an Obama supporter. CNN is one of the more respectable news channels in the USA (unlike, say, the virulently pro-Republican Murdoch propaganda machine known as Fox News), yet what I witnessed was the following. The issue being debated was gun-control, and the McCain supporter essentially said just one thing, though he said it often: “Obama is a gun grabber!” To this, the Obama supporter simply replied, “No he isn’t, he believes every American should have the right to own a gun!”…to which his GOP opponent simply repeated (albeit louder) “no, he’s a gun-grabber!”. And so forth. There was no attempt to engage with the issue of gun-control itself, or with the nuances and impacts of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Heller vs. D.C. over the reading of the 2nd Amendment and it’s problematic punctuation. In short, there was no attempt to engage in serious debate. There was only accusation, denial, and sound-bite politics.
Of course, I cannot say for sure that Jim and the Veterans for Peace behaved in this way when they talked to each other, but it would not surprise me if the scene had been similar. When I talked to Jim he was quick to label the other side as “quitters”, and when I talked to the so-called quitters, they greeted my attempts to engage them in debate by offering factoids and assertions which had little to do with the arguments I was putting to them. Given the examples set at a national level, I’m inclined to suspect that when Jim says he “talked” to the opposition, then argument and shouting is what resulted. But after all, he “knows what their positions are” already.
Indeed, what Airlee had to say seemed also to fit into the general pattern of observation. In an email he wrote to me that:
I would like to point out that there has been an attempt at discussion of our different points of view but we each are so polarized in our belief system that there is little hope of coming to a common agreement. In fact, at one point in time, I felt that perhaps we had all made our point and I approached one of the Veterans for Peace and told him that if he would talk to his people and call off the Friday night vigils I would approach my people and do the same. I never got a response from him.
As he puts it, they are so polarized that there is little hope. Yet it is interesting to reflect upon two things. Firstly, as noted above, both sides are polarized over pretty much just one issue, despite agreeing – or having common room for agreement – over much else. Secondly, as there is “little hope of coming to a common agreement”, the conclusion apparently seems to be that it is not worth engaging with the other side despite this fact. Although there has been an attempt, falling short of common agreement neither side seems to think it worth engaging with the other any further; either there is full, common agreement, or there isn’t. Either all can stand together, or all must stand apart. Finally, notice also the (I would say, characteristic) demonisation of the other side, and the corresponding intransigence: the other side never responded (ergo, it’s all their fault) yet his side would certainly not back down first – if the opposition was holding a vigil, then they certainly would not cease theirs. Of course, politics is a fiery business, and emotions run high when something like war is at issue, but nonetheless I feel much can be learned here.
Although the picture now looks more complex, and lacking access to statistical evidence, proper research materials, and, frankly, time, I am of course unable to argue for the following conclusions as anything more than a general impression derived from my time in the USA. Yet I believe there exists a striking paradox in modern American politics: there is a deep and fundamental commitment to political freedom and freedom of speech in particular, but a simultaneous systematic reluctance to exercise that freedom in a meaningful way.
The protestors at Bandon were seriously committed to each others’ freedoms of speech and expression, yet they did not employ that freedom to seriously engage with the other side, to discover why they were so polarised (or as perhaps it happens, not so polarised as they might think). Yet this is symptomatic of a wider American reluctance to engage with political opposition beyond the shouting of simplified slogans and denunciations. The American media routinely divides the country during Presidential elections into simply “red” versus “blue” states. The hugely complex – not to mention contentious and politically salient – issue of abortion is reduced to “pro life” or “pro choice”. Either you are “pro tax-cuts” or “pro big government”. You are either “pro war” or “defeatist” according to one side, or else “anti-war” or “imperialist” according to the other. Barak Obama presents himself as manifesting “hope” and “change”, whilst John McCain is thus painted as being anti-hope, offering “more of the same”. McCain presents himself as an experienced patriot who fought in Vietnam, hoping to present Obama as inexperienced and unpatriotic (a tactic only a couple of steps removed from reminding people that Obama is black, an effective political ploy in a nation still utterly obsessed with, and trouble by, race).
America appears to me a nation in which politics has been reduced to the art of slogan-forming, and which shies away from attempts to seriously deal with and engage in the questioning of difficult political issues. Americans truly believe in freedom of speech – yet it is the freedom to shout at the other side and paint them black which they prefer to practice, not the freedom of attempting engagement so as to make progress or to achieve understanding. The paradox of a population deeply and sincerely committed to freedom of speech, yet equally reluctant to use that freedom in order to engage with others who likewise posses it, would not have surprised Tocqueville at all.
I wish conclude on a somewhat sombre note. Tocqueville notes in the earlier passages of Democracy in America that many of the apparent weaknesses of democracy, through the mechanism of paradox, appeared in fact to strengthen democratic regimes: thus he saw aristocracy as fading into the past, and democratic times, peoples and societies as facts of the future. Towards the end of his work however, Tocqueville’s mood becomes noticeably darker, as he predicts the inevitable decline of democratic peoples and societies, ending either in “anarchy” or else “the worst despotism imaginable”. The sight of a free people in a free democratic system living under a political atmosphere which appears to systematically discourage meaningful engagement is an alarming and depressing one – though one might well look at Britain and see many (and increasing) similarities with the USA, although the thesis of paradox appears to hold less well here (we certainly lack the public and historical commitment to the affirmation of freedom to quite the America extent). Yet it is worth considering Tocqueville’s – admittedly hyperbolic – prediction that American democracy would eventually destroy itself and become despotic, when we are looking forward to the forthcoming presidential election. The winner in November will be determined by a handful of voters in “swing” states – probably Ohio and Pennsylvania – who will almost certainly be white, working class males. They will determine between two candidates who will have spent months demonising each other – and one should not underestimate the extent to which race will be the elephant in the room looming over a great many ballots – whilst treading a fine line between a myriad of highly complex issues reduced to simple “pro-this”, “anti-that” slogans, both attempting to maximise swing-voter appeal by occupying the perceived optimal political centre-ground. Whilst this is of course not “the worst despotism imaginable” by any means, one does wonder whether it constitutes “the greatest democracy on earth”.
September 24, 2008
Slipping through nets
Some recent experiences of mine have served to open my eyes to a few things which, being of a somewhat left-leaning persuasion, I had assumed myself to be fully conscious of already. Allow me to elaborate.
Today I was back in my old university town of Oxford. The reason being that I recently lost my job, and also defaulted on a lease for a flat in London (losing £250), so I am now in the process of trying to find work in a town where the rents are more affordable and I know an established network of people. As I was walking back to my old college to meet a former tutor, I passed two policemen who were hastling a homeless Big Issue seller. Now, the homeless man in question has been selling the Big Issue for at least the past three years, and doing so consistently on the same spot. Today he had perhaps 20-30 copies of the magazine with him, but had apparently forgotten to bring, or else had lost, his official vendor badge.
From what I could tell the two policemen were giving the man a very hard time by accusing him of being an illegal vendor and telling him he had to move on. There was a high police presence all around Oxford today, and I get the feeling they had been told to make the streets look tidy for some reason (perhaps some ‘important’ rich person was visiting?), hence the incident in question. (I can’t prove this, but I think it’s a good bet given the unusually low numbers of homeless people and unusually high number of policemen about today). From past observation I know the homeless man in question to have mental health issues, and the police were behaving in a very domineering and intimidating, albeit a calculated passive-aggressive, way towards him. Seeing this taking place, something inside me snapped and I decided not to just walk on.
I turned back and without introduction stated to the policemen that this was outrageous: I knew for a fact that this man had been selling the Big Issue for over three years on this spot, and it was clear from the number of his magazines that he was an official vendor – and that surely they had better things to do with their time than hastle the homeless?
The younger of the two officers asked me why I was getting involved and what business I thought it was of mine, to which I replied (somewhat nauseatingly) that “it’s a free country and I have a right to voice my opinion”. As is usual, the policeman at this point tried to bully me, employing his status as an authority figure in uniform, and demanding that I step to one side whilst he talk to me. I wasn’t in the mood for lectures and so I flat out refused, pointing out that I was doing nothing wrong and that he had no authority to make me stay, and so I walked away. He called after me but I ignored him.
Why did I do that? I’d like to say that it’s because I am a champion of the poor and downtrodden – a true socialist hero. But sadly the truth is more self-referential than that. The events of the past week and a half have brought something home to me: the ease with which people can slip through the net.
It’s an old adage, which I have frequently heard uttered, that people on the streets must be there because they deserve to be. This of course is an extremely comforting thought: it ameliorates the sense of guilt any decent person must feel when seeing the homeless, and especially when one is turning them down for support. It also shifts the burden onto the needy: if they are responsible for their plight, they are responsible for getting out of it. To challenge that commonplace remark, I’m now going to tell a slightly different story to my actual life-history, and we’ll see how well things turn out.
Imagine I didn’t go to Oxford, imagine instead that I went somewhere less prestigious which didn’t have a college full of established people looking out for me even after I had left. Imagine I didn’t do so well at school. Imagine that my mum had died, and my dad disliked me and had re-married, hoping to try and start a new life which didn’t include me in it. Imagine my parents hadn’t put money in a building society for me. Imagine that when I defaulted on a flat that was the last of my £250 I lost to Victor Michael, a particularly unscrupulous and devious estate agent in East London. Imagine that when I lost my job, I lacked the skills and references to haul myself into the recruiting agents’ offices, which are a living testament to the fact that the Marxist labour theory of value is not entirely empty. Imagine that my girlfriend got fed up with me and kicked me out. Imagine that my friends increasingly became sick of letting me sleep on their couches. Imagine that the job centre – which no longer employs job-guidance workers (thanks Mr Brown) – became an increasingly fruitless place to be (if that is possible). Imagine that because of my lack of permanent address, I could get neither employment nor a permanent place to live, lacking both secure income and proof of previous address for the last 3 months. Then imagine I couldn’t find a sofa for a night. Now imagine that my borderline mental health difficulties started to go through a bad patch (the charity Shelter states that 30-50% of people living on the streets suffer from mental health problems).
It’s not hard to see how the story ends. My experiences of the past week have made me accutely aware of just how easy it must be for people who are less fortunate than myself to slip through the net. It has also made me a lot more grateful for what I have, my parents especially included. It also scares me, a lot.
So the next time you pass a homeless person on the street, don’t assume they are there because they deserve to be (and perhaps ask yourself: even if they did actually do some very stupid and bad things, can it ever possibly be right to say that someone really deserves to lose everything?). The person you pass on the street might be there, not because they deserve to be or have committed some terrible fault, but quite simply because they are a little less lucky than you, or for that matter me.
It’s a sobering thought.
September 23, 2008
In West Philadelphia, born and raised
This entry is adapted and improved from an earlier post over at www.notesfromalargecontinent.wordpress.com
I recently found myself in the fortunate position of travelling around the United States on a university-assisted grant. Being something of a self-acknowledged leftie cynic I arrived in the USA with a great many preconceptions and prejudices about what this nation, surely the foremost manifestation of the modern capitalist post-industrial society, would amount to. Although I was forced to revise a number of these over the course of my travels, the experience of stumbling into the wrong part of Philadelphia offered glimpses of an aspect of this self-proclaimed “Greatest Democracy upon God’s Earth” that many in Washington – or for that matter, soccer-mom suburbia – would prefer not to be reminded of.
Arriving at the Amtrak Station on 30th Street I took the subway 4 stops west to be within walking distance of the hostel I had booked for two nights. I asked at the subway station how to get to where I was headed, and at the time didn’t think much of the ticket vendor’s raised eyebrows upon hearing my destination. It wasn’t long before I understood.
Anyone who grew up in the 90s will probably recall seeing Will Smith star in the improbable sit-com The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, in which the young and poor Smith is sent to live with his rich Aunt and Uncle in California. Accordingly, many will have the words of the Fresh Prince theme tune grafted indelibly onto their childhood memories: “In west Philadelphia born and raised, in the playground is where I spent most of my days”. Until I got off the train at 46th Street west Philadelphia, I’d never understood what was supposed to be conveyed in that line.
For west Philadelphia is not the good part of the city of brotherly love. It’s not where tourists are supposed to go. In fact I had actually meant to book a hostel in the Penn State University area, but had clearly made a mistake because that is not where I ended up. My first thought when I got off the subway at 46th and Market was simply: f**k, I’m not supposed to be here.
What I’d walked into can, I think, be fairly described as the underbelly of the American Dream, the kind of place that people like me aren’t supposed to visit, and which many would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. But it does exist, and it’s places like this which, from a cursory glance, have not benefited one ounce from the Bush administration’s policy of cutting taxes for the ultra rich. If there ever was a trickle-down effect the stream dried up long before it reached this part of town. There are of course areas like this in every city in America, and probably the world, but whereas I’d previously trekked head-down through some sketchy areas of New York, I hadn’t yet seen American poverty up close.
Allow me to describe the neighbourhood I walked five blocks through to get to my hostel. The paving stones were broken and uneven, and a pale, yellow-green grass poked through the many cracks, growing in abundance at the edge of the sidewalks. Houses were in a state of disrepair, and rubbish lay un-swept at the side of the street. Most of the cars looked as beat and old as the roads they stood on – except, that is, for the conspicuously new blacked-out SUVs cruising slowly through the neighbourhood blearing out gangster rap. Around the corner from the hostel were nestled, amongst the boarded up shop-fronts, two 99-cent stores both of which displayed worn and dirty signs proclaiming “We gladly accept food stamps”.
It’s worth reflecting on that for a second. This is not the America of the 1930s, or even the 1980s, which a New York Times article I had read a few days before arriving in Philly noted was the last period (until 2008) in which food stamp use was not in decline. And don’t kid yourself into hoping that this sign was new. Food stamps have been a staple in this neighbourhood for a long time, at least if appearances are anything to go by.
As I walked through these streets to my hostel, I had two over-riding thoughts – or more accurately, I had one thought accompanied by an almost over-riding feeling of fear. I was afraid for two reasons; firstly because I had ‘tourist’ – and therefore ‘target’ – written all over me, and secondly because I am white. You see this is a poor inner city neighbourhood, and in American cities that usually – and in this case, certainly – means something else: a non-white neighbourhood. Was this fear an admission of a sub-conscious racism I hadn’t known that I possessed? Perhaps. Was my fear justified in the circumstances? Almost certainly. In any case my fear led to my thought: “get out of here, now”.
But I didn’t, mostly due to the fact the hostel had a no-refunds policy – presumably because otherwise people would take one look at the neighbourhood and go running back to the east city. The only thing that made me feel less scared as I was walking through these streets was the fact that I have heavy tattooing down the bottom of my right leg and happened to be wearing shorts. For the first time in three weeks of polite conversation with white middle class professionals, my choice of body art felt not like a cultural elephant-in-the-room of social awkwardness, but more like valuable camouflage.
As I was walking to the hostel a young black man stopped me and asked me for food. This, by the way, is not uncommon in the United States. Being asked for money is a daily occurrence in the USA – every time you exit a bus, train or subway station someone (usually black) asks you for spare change. However, a half-dozen times within the first two weeks of my travels I was asked directly for food, usually appended with a statement as to how long it had been since the person in question last ate. As I must confess to often doing, I made my excuses and walked guiltily away, whilst hoping that the guy in question wouldn’t take a fancy to the pack I was carrying.
I got to my hostel and rang the bell. A few minutes later the door was answered, and I tried – and probably failed – to sound confident in explaining that I had made a reservation. I was told by a young, well-built black man to wait outside. After five minutes he came back and told me I could come in. For the next 20 minutes I sat nervously on a dirty couch whilst he fiddled with a laptop and watched television, ignoring me completely – all the time praying he would say they had no records of me and were full-up anyway. But eventually he looked up and informed me they had my reservation, before showing me to my room. As it happens, the hostel was relatively clean, well-kept and safe. Most of the people staying there were long-term residents, working or looking for work and needing a cheap place to stay. This calmed me down as I concluded that the hostel was probably a safe refuge from the streets outside.
Yet it is worth putting this neighbourhood into further context. About a year ago I had a somewhat heated email exchange with an old member of my university who currently lives in New York. He had found a piece on an old blog of mine, and we got into an argument about politics, social economics and so forth. Quite a gulf of the political spectrum existed between us, but one thing that has always stuck in my mind was the comment made by my correspondent that Scandinavian social democracy was “the latest example of a failed socialist dream”. Now, I’ve never been to Scandinavia and so I cannot comment on its dreams, failed or otherwise – but I have seen the area around the 46th Street subway stop in west Philadelphia. If American society embodies the highest (though I use that term hesitatingly) manifestation of the Capitalist Dream, then this looked like a prime contender for the status of failure to me.
This was a neighbourhood where a 6ft, 21-year-old athletic male (i.e. me) makes an immediate resolution to be back inside his hostel before it gets dark, and not to leave again until the sun comes up. To record what this neighbourhood looked like I took a few quick pictures one morning after taking a hard glance around and being sure I wasn’t advertising my cherished camera for somebody who wanted it more than me, before stuffing it quickly back into my bag and moving on. Photographs, however, don’t really give a thorough impression. One really has to walk these streets to see how poor they are. Many (liberal) social commentators say that if you are black and poor in America, your life-quality is akin to that of people living in a developing nation. I’ve never been to a developing country, but this neighbourhood was as run-down and decrepit as the worst areas of Eastern Europe I visited last year. More Bulgaria than Pennsylvania.
After spending a night in the hostel I braved the five blocks to the subway to visit the more tourist-friendly areas of Philadelphia. Mostly I visited the historic area where I reached my absolute saturation point with public American history and the relentless repetition of the American national myths. Perhaps this was bound to happen having visited rather too many historic sites relating to the American Revolution, but the contrast between the public face of the American Dream and the neighbourhood I would be returning to added anger and indignation to my feelings of saturation.
Take, for example, the story of the Founding Fathers. According to the museums and visitor centres of Philadelphia the tale goes as follows: The Founding Fathers were stalwart defenders of the liberty of the ordinary man. Inspired by the anti-absolutist writings of Locke and Paine, they over-threw the wicked, arbitrary, unjustified and dictatorial rule of colonial Britain, asserting the rights of all men – who were self-evidently created equal, as recorded in the Declaration of Independence – to found a free democracy and enshrine the principle of individual liberty. Thus was founded the Greatest Democracy in the World. Somewhat embarrassingly, these founding fathers were all slave-owners – but that is overlooked by employing contextual excuses, and pointing to George Washington who “eventually saw the evils of the institution” by providing for the emancipation of his own slaves upon his death.
Another telling of the story, however, might go like this: The Founding Fathers were a group of wealthy, self-interested, slave-owning, white male patriarchs who rebelled against British rule not in the interest of handing freedom and democracy to the ordinary man but out of a desire to avoid paying taxes and to establish a political system in which they could become predominant, exploiting the natural wealth of land stolen from an indigenous population to maximise their own prosperity. After achieving independence they did not institute universal suffrage, did not extend the rights of women, and continued to uphold the institution of slavery. Indeed, prominent individuals like Jefferson are now known to have fathered mixed-race children whom they kept in bondage. The Founding Fathers couched their arguments in the terms of Locke and Paine to attract popular enthusiasm, but in truth desired to establish a system in which the elite property owners of the colonies achieved unrestrained dominance.
Naturally the truth lies somewhere between these two accounts. Yet you’ll hear not a word against the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia. One would be forgiven for believing (as many Americans apparently do) that they were saints upon Earth, the founders of the self-proclaimed greatest democracy in the world.
Of course all nations have their national myths, and in many ways it is no surprise that many Americans are as proud of their nation as they are; in many respects it is something of a global winner, after all. Yet journeying in from 46th and Market in west Philadelphia the endless repetition of the claims to the greatness of America and its founders – and the implication, intended or not, that the rest of the world is wholly inferior by comparison – became almost too much to bear.
For example, consider the near-incessant rhetoric of the importance of freedom and liberty anyone visiting America will encounter. A particularly sharp example of this can be found at the Liberty Bell Centre in Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is – according to the dozen displays you must pass before you reach it – a symbol of freedom the world around. Its story I can surmise for you as follows. Cast in England and brought to Philadelphia where it served as the state house bell, it was evacuated during the War of Independence so as ensure the British didn’t capture it. After the British were repulsed it was rung as a symbol of liberty. The famous and distinctive crack is the result of attempts to fix a smaller fault in the bell. One day the bell was ringing for Washington’s birthday and it cracked to the top, silencing it forever. In the 1830s the Abolitionist movement adopted the now-named Liberty Bell as a symbol of freedom in the struggle to end slavery. After the Civil War ended in 1865 the bell was taken on a tour of the USA to help encourage the process of reconciliation. Many world leaders have been photographed with it, including Nelson Mandela. Americans view it as a symbol of freedom.
At the Liberty Bell Centre this information is stretched out to a dozen, highly repetitive displays before you get to the bell, all of which reinforce a constant message: America loves freedom, and all Americans are free. While this is arguably true, it might be worth considering what kind of freedom some Americans enjoy. If you live near 46th and Market your freedoms will involve some of the following: freedom to prostitute yourself to feed yourself and your children, freedom to buy, smoke or sell crack, and with higher likelihood than other parts of America, freedom to get shot.
The displays at the Liberty Bell Centre also do a fairly proficient job of papering-over some basic problems contained within the symbolism of the Liberty Bell. For example, while the Bell may have become a symbol of freedom during the Revolutionary War, the founding fathers who claimed to hold the truth that all men are created equal to be self-evident didn’t themselves see it as self-evident that some men shouldn’t be slaves because of the colour of their skin. It took almost 90 years after the Declaration of Independence before Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation – in an act of great personal vision and determination and in the face of much opposition – declaring that black men as well as white were born free and equal. The Liberty Bell Centre deals with this tension by briefly noting that the Founding Fathers were slave-holders constrained by an unfortunate and contextually-excusable moral blindness, before quickly pointing out that the Abolitionist movement in 1835 adopted the Liberty Bell as its symbol. It is not mentioned that in 1835 the Abolitionists were widely viewed as crackpots and dangerous radials, and that it would be another 28 years until slavery was in fact abolished, and arguably not until the 1960s that African Americans would achieve anything like equal political status throughout the United States.
There is however something even more significant in the public rhetoric of freedom, and in the constant re-telling of American popular myths than just the subtle re-working of history so as to present a more palatable, straightforward and sanitised version of the past. Rhetoric about freedom is often disingenuous, particularly in the mouths of politicians and populists – after all, no politician ever tells their electorate that they are against freedom, especially not in the land of the free (and the home of the brave)! Yet in America the word ‘freedom’ seems to have suffered a hollowing-out so as to become little more than a populist platitude. Its endless repetition – by politicians especially, but also in museums, films, television and other sources of popular culture – seems to have bored out any serious reflective content upon what freedom meaningfully amounts to. Americans have no doubts that they are free, but if pressed on exactly what their freedom amounts to, things get much trickier. Like some subtler form of Orwellian Newspeak, all Americans will confirm that they love freedom and are themselves free. But whether the freedom being valorised is the freedom many Americans – the 42million with no healthcare? the un-unionised wage slaves of Walmart? those living on and next to the broken streets of west Philadelphia? – really enjoy is quite another question.
Returning to my hostel for the final night I received an insight into the strange ironies and paradoxes that seem to characterise many aspects of America. Aiming to find a quiet spot to read before going to bed, I walked through the communal living room in which a dozen or so residents were crowded around a TV set. The subject of much amusement and interest was a reality TV-show in which failed contestants from previous reality shows compete to earn a large sum of money by behaving in generally debauched, outrageous and childish ways. The programme, it turned out, was called I Love Money. I glanced out of the window onto the broken streets, abandoned cars and the households feeding their children with food stamps, before turning back to the people transfixed upon the television in the room before me. It is often jokingly remarked by the British that Americans have no sense of irony, and perhaps that’s true. As for outrage, indignation, sadness and disgust, whether ordinary Americans never had such capacities, or rather had and lost them, is an altogether more troubling proposition.
September 21, 2008
Don’t be too sorry for the bankers
The recent collapse of the City never-never land, in which fictitious capital and imaginary money was used to prop-up unsustainable systems of finance motivated by greed, all carefully overseen and permitted by a Labour government too frightened and pusillanimous to dare to regulate the deity of free-market capitalism, has gained just a tad of media attention.
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With the collapse and bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers last Monday, various sections of the press have reported in agonising terms how some poor investment bankers have lost “everything” (The Metro, last Tuesday). The BBC reported a story of a man who was turning up for his first day at work, only to discover he’d been fired before he got there – he simply didn’t know what he was going to do. Now as it happens, I can sympathise with that.
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In 10 days I was due to start a job as a specialist teacher, something I was very much looking forward to and knew from past experience I would enjoy. What could be better than getting bright 14-18 year olds enthused about ethics or railing about rights, and even getting paid (a very good) salary for the privilege? Yet today I received a very apologetic and sincere email from my employer (and I daresay friend) informing me that she is very sorry but, after extensive attempts to find a solution, she simply cannot afford to take on a full-time member of staff. Indeed, she is extremely worried about the future of her own fledgling business – until this summer doing extremely well off the back of much hard work, dedication and competency – given the current economic climate, and by the tone of her email things don’t seem to be looking good for them.
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Now things could have been a lot worse for me. I could have signed a contract for a 1-year lease on a property in London, locking me into monthly rent payments I would now be in no position to afford. With hindsight that luckily did not happen, because my friend had to pull out at the last minute after a flood of rejection letters were making it clear he was not going to get a job anywhere in London (he has a First from Oxford). The £250 in deposit fees that I lost on Thursday now seem like small-beans compared to what might have been.
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Now call me naïve, but the credit crunch seem rather unfair given how many people it is affecting and going to affect who did not themselves knowingly abuse a system that could not be sustained. Yet not only that, but significant portions of the recent media coverage seem to me to be quite off in their reportage. When we are told that traders at Lehman Brothers have lost “everything”, to what extent is that true? I guess with the revelation of an unspoken rule that bonuses were reinvested in Lehman Brother’s shares – thus inflating the company’s value with money which, having never been withdrawn, therefore didn’t actually exist – it might sound more plausible that some of these people lost “everything”. I guess if you are able to spend your entire £45-100+ annual salary without saving a penny, and put all of your grotesque bonuses into now worthless shares, you might fairly be said to have lost “everything” following such a collapse. Well, that is if “everything” means selling the yacht and the Ferrari, scaling your house down and waiting until this crisis blows over so that you can land a job at the JPMorganChaseGoldmanSachsWachovia behemoths that will by then be happy to take you back on.
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Of course I cannot reasonably tell you that I have lost “everything” – far from it. My girlfriend has said she will let me continue living in her flat until I can find a job and my own place, and if things get really bad I can always retreat home to my parents’ place. Yet I’m feeling the sting today – and I feel somewhat outraged. I have lost my job before it even began because for over a decade the City Boys have happily stuffed their own coffers by playing a system they all knew to be unsustainable. This system was actively encouraged by a Chancellor turned Prime Minister who is (nominally?) the leader of a (nominally?) Labour party. The events of the last two weeks must surely be the final nail in the coffin of the record of this administration. The rich, ruling classes have consistently been allowed to improve their own situation and standing whilst the poor (or poor-er, I’m hardly destitute myself) are left behind and expected to pick up the pieces. No prizes who is going to be burdened with the costs of central bank bailouts, or who will suffer when the HBOS-LloydsTSB monopoly goes into full effect post-crunch.
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For many years it angered me when people would claim political apathy on the grounds that ‘they are all the same’. But right now I am struggling to see why we shouldn’t all gleefully vote for the ex-Eton, ex-Oxford, ex-Bullingdon Club Top Toff David Cameron. After all, it can’t seriously be any worse can it? At least the Tories might not rub salt into the wound of economic hardship by adding the insult of obsessive state surveillance and authoritarianism to the socio-economic injury.
But you know what? I will be ok. I’m resourceful, well connected, and have a network of people who look out for me. Bloody hell, let’s not forget that I have a degree from Oxford. For me, the worst case scenario is that I have to do a job I feel I’m over-qualified to do for a few years, whilst the poor bastard who would otherwise have got it stacks shelves in Tescos. It’s the people further down the ladder that I really worry about. When the press talks of bankers losing “everything” I find it hard to believe, let alone empathise with. When those who live hand to mouth lose their jobs, the term “everything” may take on an altogether more desperate and fatal meaning. I wonder how the media will report things then, given how Tony assured us that we are all middle class now.
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September 18, 2008
Being careful about creationism
The recent uproar at the revelation that “10%” of Britons are creationists who deny the theory of evolution (according to the BBC), and the outrage following the suggestion by Michael Reiss, education director of the Royal Society and an ordained Church of England clergyman, that creationism be taught in British schools, has prompted much indignant and (secular) self righteous response. This can especially be found in the pages of the ‘high brow’ press, where proud rationalists and public intellectuals complain that science lacks the respect it deserves. They point to the terrible example of America, where something with no scientific basis can achieve equal status in science classrooms with what the scientific community regards as the only explanatory game in town. They warn that it could happen here.
And they right, it could happen here – but this attitude of righteous indignation and the lavishing of scorn upon the opposition is what paradoxically feeds the creationists’ strength. It is worth slowing down and reflecting before we continue on our merry course bashing away at the creationists. Likewise, it is worth making a serious effort to resist the temptation of overtly or implicitly dismissing them as brainwashed and backward bumpkins. For there is more at work here than a simple “science versus stories” contest – and to lose sight of the subtle dimensions in play by assuming that science must always trump stories risks inadvertently handing victories to the other side. If you are wondering what kind of victories, you could do worse than asking Sarah Palin.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in evolution – after all I’m not a backward bumpkin who dares to resist the mighty rationalist conclusion of western empirical research and the scientific method. Not for me the bowing down and unquestioning acceptance of authority from above. At least, so I’d like to think. Yet it occurred to me the other day that perhaps I am not so different from a creationist after all, at least except for the fact that I believe humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor rather than being created ready-made 6,000 years ago by an old bloke with a white beard who sits on clouds waiting to judge us. Those last sentences might sound hopelessly self-contradictory, but bear with me.
If I ask myself why I believe in evolution, not creationism, if I am being totally honest I cannot reply that it is because I boldly follow the facts wherever they lead – and that the facts lead back way more than 6,000 years. This is because I am not an evolutionary biologist, not even a scientist. I’m a part-time political philosopher who watches too many old episodes of Have I Got News For You. The reason – at root – that I plumb for evolution over creationism stems from the fact that this is what my parents and school teachers told me was true when I was younger. For sure, I have supplemented this with a little reflection and concluded that the rudimentary theory of which I am aware makes enough sense. Gradual selection over immense periods of time based on suitability in terms of survival and reproduction in a given environment does explain how we might share a common ancestor. But have I studied the fossil record to check for myself? No. Have I examined similarities in DNA structures to verify the scientific claim? No. Have I even bothered to attempt to understand the nuances and complexities of a theory much developed since Darwin? Not even once.
Of course, the fact that I am an atheist helps sustain my adherence to the evolutionary account. Due to the fact I don’t believe in God – and this I have spent more time seriously reflecting upon (being a philosopher at heart) than evolution – I have no viable alternative than what the scientists tell me for explaining the origin and diversity of species. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that to a significant extent I take what the scientists tell us at face value, and believe in it because science and scientists act as an authority to which I defer. I trust that authority and consider myself unqualified to judge against it – and so I don’t. So it seems that my adherence to evolution over creationism is not rooted in the fact that I am more rational, more thorough, or more hard-nosed about, and aware of, metaphysical truth than any creationist necessarily need be. It owes far more to my trusting in the authority of those who claim – and probably rightly so claim – to know more about this than me.
So let’s now change the picture a little. Imagine I am from a deeply religious family and have been brought up believing that the authority of God – revealed through His written word in the Bible – is the ultimate authority. Sure, some of the stuff in the great book sounds kind of strange, but then who am I to question such eternal truths? I’ve heard of this evolution malarkey, but frankly it sounds pretty far fetched – we all came from slime billions of years ago? As if! What makes far more sense is that God – whom I know in my heart of hearts to exist – created us all separately and by purposeful design. Sure I accept the authority of God fairly unquestioningly, but if I’m going to accept anyone’s authority I’d rather accept His than that of some angry puffed-up bloke from Oxford shouting about his God Delusion.
Switching back out of character, hopefully you see where I am going with this. It is dishonest to claim that as believers in evolution we are somehow following a more ‘rational’ path which leads us to unquestioningly challenge authority in a way the pusillanimous creationists fail to do. Most of us who are not scientists but ascribe to evolution do so more on the basis of faith than fact. Sure, the facts fit the faith pretty well – but if I was a creationist, wouldn’t I say the same in support of the opposite conclusion?
There are many reasons why I think it is worth keeping these things in mind – and just so you are sure I’m not pushing some post-modernist relativist line that all beliefs are equal. They are not. But being aware of what is in play here matters. Firstly, and quite simply, because it is not very nice to be rude to people (well, sometimes it is but those are special cases) and there is something especially obnoxious in being rude to people assuming them to be unenlightened fools poorly comparing to one’s enlightened self, when upon reflection that claim holds up less well than one would like. Secondly, and more importantly, it is dangerous in the extreme to treat creationists as foolish bumpkins for political reasons (as well as the fact that if they are right then we evolutionists are all headed south). This is because treating people like fools tends to make them feel, well, a little upset. And few people were ever convinced through being upset.
The danger of our scientists, public intellectuals and even proud every-day believers in evolution like myself scornfully deriding the foolish creationists – or for that matter, being perceived as scornfully deriding supposedly foolish creationists – is that this is not endearing behaviour. A far more tactful strategy, and one more likely to succeed (if having evolutionary theory proudly recognised as the only game in town is the goal) is to take the time to come down from the soap box and really make sustained efforts to explain why evolution hits and creationism misses. For sure, this will be difficult when it brings in issues like faith, belief and the meaning of life. And I appreciate that, for example, Richard Dawkins tries hard to explain and argue his case on intellectual grounds. But until he sheds the popular perception of being an aloof intellectual bully, no matter how good his arguments are few creationist will be listening until they feel that he respects them as equals.
Tackling creationism properly means taking head-on arguments such as the claim that evolution is not 100% proved, so there is still an element of faith involved, and that this faith is no different to belief in God. It is no good simply to mock or dismiss such reasoning – it must carefully be explained that although there may be some faith involved in both evolution and creationism, the kind of faith is not the same, and the explanatory weight of each is significantly different. We must resist the urge to reply to the remark that ‘evolution is just a theory’ by responding curtly with the words ‘yes, but theories are generally better than stories so what’s your bloody point?’.
This is because stories matter. America stands as the warning example of a failed approach to the presentation of the public face of evolutionary science. Self-assured that the mighty authority of science would trump the stories of the Bible, the intellectual left of America simply assumed that creationism would never get a foothold, would never seriously compete with the great scientific theory of evolution. They were wrong, as the numerous creationist biology teachers in high schools across America will testify to. To avoid the same thing happening here it is no good to rest on laurels and lecture the public as to the wisdom of science, then expect that public to accept such wisdom upon faith alone. When it comes to matters of faith, many people would rather plumb for a God who created them specially and keeps them in His plan, than for a complex and difficult-to-get-your-head-around theory about how we are all really monkeys or lemurs or slugs or something. [Sorry for change in text size, wordpress is being unruly]
So be kind to creationists this Christmas – you may find it’s not only a better way to behave, it’s also a better strategy to pursue.
September 17, 2008
The Myth of the Society of Equality of Opportunity
One of the most astute moves ever played by Tony Blair – a politician whose deftness and manipulative skill appear almost fantastical compared to the clunking fists of his now flailing successor – was to invoke in the minds of a naturally conservative-leaning but disenchanted middle class the idea of a classless society. To put it into voters’ heads that “we are all middle class now” was a stroke of genius. Not only did it mollify the Labour party in the eyes of the “property-owning democracy” of Thatcher’s legacy – after all, if there is no working class, how could Labour any longer be perceived as the party of the unions or the great unwashed masses? – it made people feel comfortable about New Labour’s cynically effective occupation of the political centre-ground, for so long the preserve of the Tory party. Thus Blair with one masterful stroke both reassured those wary rightist whom Neil Kinnock had failed to woo (and who had thereby handed the country over to John Major for five more years), whilst placating those already established Labour voters troubled by Blair’s unashamed repositioning of Labour ever further to the right.
There exist two key components, amongst others, to the success of Blair – and New Labour generally – instilling in ordinary people the belief that Britain’s is a society which, by the close of the 20th Century, had transcended class. These key components are meritocracy and equality of opportunity. Both are inter-connected, and both are far trickier concepts to bring under control than a New Labour spin-doctor would ever like you to know. Ask any academic political theorist about these two concepts, and watch as they roll their eyes and ask if you really want to pick up that rock and attempt to count those woodlice, which you will inevitable set scurrying about. But I have a passion for woodlice, so here goes.
First of all, it is worth recalling that the term ‘meritocracy’ was not introduced into the English language as a term of approval – though post-Blair (not to mention Clinton and other pioneers of the Third Way or of ‘Triangulation’) you’d be forgiven for not knowing this. Rather, ‘meritocracy’ was originally conceived by Michael Young in his 1958 work The Rise of the Meritocracy in which Young depicted a distopian society gone terribly wrong. A society in which the rich and powerful justified their wealth and influence over the less fortunate by claiming that they merited what they had and that the less fortunate were less fortunate because they deserved to be. Young was deeply troubled by the prospect of a society in which the needy were abandoned on the grounds that such neediness was itself considered proof of their deserving to be abandoned. But he was also worried by the possibility that a society could endorse a public policy of simply abandoning the needy even if the need really were responsible for their desperate state – let alone the likely reality that the vast majority would not be so responsible. This background is worth bearing in mind when discussing meritocracy because Young’s vision warns us of the dangers of pronouncing upon what people deserve, why they deserve it, and how much desert really ought to matter when it comes to helping or abandoning fellow human beings.
Of course, when Tony Blair advocated the meritocratic society he wasn’t referring to what Young had in mind. Blair meant something like ‘a society in which people do well because they deserve to do well, and are not constrained by their colour, sex, sexuality, class, religion and so forth’. And that all sounds very laudable – isn’t that something we should all endorse? Well, with the proviso that the word ‘deserve’ in that sentence probably means ‘judged by the standards of a capitalist market economy which rewards competitive ruthlessness and self-serving acquisition of wealth in order to obtain certain goods and positions deemed by the capitalist ethos to be of value’, it sounds about right. We might want to add a proviso which runs ‘and even those who don’t do well because they don’t deserve to – because unfortunately for them they were born a little slower than their economic rivals, or suffer from persistent bad luck combined with poor market choices, and so on – are nonetheless looked after and cared for by the rest of society regardless of the fact they don’t “deserve” to reach the top of the capitalist meritocratic ladder’. Although that proviso might sound a little too, well, socialist for Blair and co. it seems that on the whole we think that it is surely right that bars should not exist to people’s socio-economic advancement due to something as arbitrary as the colour of their skin, or their choice of sexual partner, or their class background.
A rather sticky problem with meritocracy as the Blairists would have you understand it, however, should not be overlooked. The draw-back with meritocracy is that it creates intergenerational inequalities. For example, if my parents do well in the capitalist rat-race and yours don’t, then my parents are in a position to pass on to me not just wealth itself, but derivatives of wealth like access to improved educational resources (who is going to have the time to read their child bed-time stories? The affluent parents who can buy books, or the couple working over-time to pay the bills?). The problem is that even if we can say that my parents deserved to do well and yours didn’t – a big ‘if’ in itself – this creates inequality between you and me. The son of wealthy parents, I have a higher likelihood across a range of indicators to do well in a market-based society than you do if your parents are poorer. Yet surely I no more ‘deserved’ to be the son of wealthy parents than you ‘deserved’ to be the child of poor parents. Thus in order to establish a genuine meritocracy in the sense Blair was appealing to, it is essential to have that other key component mentioned earlier: equality of opportunity.
Equality of opportunity is the lynch-pin of a society which is generally meritocratic in a sense that I believe most left-leaning people wish to endorse – the society in which people are not unfairly held back by arbitrary aspects of their person, history or situation, and who are instead judged upon their merit (though perhaps not their merit alone, as Young would be keen to remind us). Equality of opportunity is the guarantee that even if I am born to richer parents than you are, you will nonetheless have the same opportunity to do as well in life as I have. Equality of opportunity is thus something which we can see as not only important in itself – who but the self-avowed snobs of the upper classes could with a straight face publicly denounce such a thing? – but is essential if we are to have anything like a meritocracy in Britain today. Yet if Britain is really the ‘classless society’ Blair pronounced it to be, if we are really ‘all middle class now’, then surely we must live under a meritocracy – and in that case, we must surely have genuine equality of opportunity. For if this is not a meritocracy in Blair’s sense, then surely it must be a society of class. And if we lack equality of opportunity, we in turn cannot have meritocracy.
Thus, 11 years after Blair was elected to power partly on the back of pronouncements about this fabled classless society, it is worth reflecting on the extent to which Britons really do enjoy equality of opportunity. I hope to have cleared some of the more tricky conceptual undergrowth hidden by Blair’s appealing rhetoric, so that it can now be seen why it really matters to the state of the modern British class system whether even the deserving enjoy a genuine equality of opportunity.
In considering this it is worth reflecting upon something as basic as the inheritance tax. There is periodic uproar in the right-wing media about the so-called “death tax”, and in the USA following the 2001 repeal of the estate tax, inheritances of up to several million now have the potential to be accrued tax-free. Now it seems clear that a 100% inheritance tax is going to far – we all want to leave something behind for our children after we die, and many people need and appreciate the funds left to them by deceased parents and other relatives. Yet it is hard to reconcile the act of leaving sums of money – even that which is fairly and deservedly acquired through hard work – to those who themselves have done nothing to earn it, thus placing them at an economic advantage relative to those whose relatives could not bequeath them such great sums. Now this is not to say that inheritance is thereby wrong, or even that it is automatically incompatible with a genuine meritocracy or with equality of opportunity. But it does raise the question about the extent to which these things are compatible. If one genuinely desires a classless society, it becomes difficult to justify allowing people to bequeath sums to their children and relatives which privilege their economic (and thereby social) status.
Let us, however, leave the controversial issue of inheritance to one side and concentrate on a more anecdotal account in bringing into question the existence of modern British equality of opportunity. It is frequently remarked that while the poor in Britain have become better-off in absolute terms compared with 20 years ago, the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1979. Although one might be tempted to point out that as a developed OECD country with (until 2008) 15 years of continuous economic growth, it would have been utterly disgraceful if the poor weren’t getting better off now that 20 years ago. We might, however, be inclined to forgive this gap between rich and poor if it could be demonstrated that, in some sense, the rich were getting richer because they deserved to be, and that the increase in relative poverty was in turn reflective of the fact poorer people simply deserved less. While we might still wish to heed Young’s warnings and question whether economic desert should be the only concern of even a capitalist market-based society, perhaps such knowledge would placate us. My contention here is that we should not feel placated because such knowledge has little potential for basis in fact.
Take, for example, my friend who I shall refer to only as L. L is female, and comes from a modest, hard-working family in the North East of England. Her parents have worked continuously since the age of 16, and have supported L and her sister on a modest income. L excelled in school – a state comprehensive – and became one of the first members of her family to attend university. Indeed, she managed to break down what appear to be a number of traditional barriers to equality of opportunity by gaining admittance to the University of Oxford, and at a statistically male-dominated college. Though finding the intense, competitive and often macho Oxford environment at times intimidating and oppressive, she worked hard and earned a solid degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (all subjects dominated by white males, where one learns mostly about dead white males).
So far this sounds like a meritocratic success-story – but don’t jump to any conclusions just yet. In being female and state-school educated, with parents who had themselves never attended university, L had apparently smashed down the walls – indeed a recent Observer article noted that although independent schools account for only 7% of school children in the UK, 40% of Oxbridge students come from the private sector – L had made it into an institution which still disproportionately favours those who are privately educated. Thus despite the glaring lack of equality of opportunity in respect to gaining access to Britain’s elite educational institutions (though one should hesitate to lay the blame solely at the door of the university – the ailing state education system is also an important factor), L seemed to have triumphed. Surely all the doors were now open? With a degree from Oxford, isn’t it common knowledge that one can do anything?
You’d be surprised. L was dismayed to find that in making numerous applications to positions of employment she was declined on the grounds of having too little work-place experience. Enquiring as to how this experience might be gained, she was advised to apply for internships. Yet as anyone who has travelled to London in pursuit of such internships will know, outside of investment banking or management consultancy – two professions L found less than appealing given her political and ethical stances, not to mention her partiality for weekends – internships are rarely paid. Rather, graduates are expected to work for free on the promise of a CV reference. Of course, for those without relatives in London and who lack parental financial support to the tune of several thousand pounds, interning thus becomes an effective impossibility. Looking for another route into the employment sectors she felt she had earned the right to be considered for, L noticed that post-graduate qualifications were often looked upon favourably by prospective employers. She duly applied for postgraduate study, was delighted to be accepted – only to be informed that her fees would amount to several thousand pounds per annum, not including living expenses, and that she did not qualify for even partial funding. Her parents simply could not afford to subsidise her education, and so she was forced to decline her place. Ultimately L did take a brief internship with a prominent management consultancy firm – but she freely admits that it is unlikely she would have made it onto the programme if a friend’s father (the friend being, of course, an Oxford connection) was not a prominent member of the organisation and hadn’t ensured her CV was picked out from the thousands of declined applications.
In short, what L discovered is that despite hard work and the over-coming of many barriers to reach even the ivory towers of Oxford, that was not enough. To get anywhere near the top jobs that even the privileged graduates of Oxford and Cambridge are promised, she discovered that money still calls the shots, and connections still get you the jobs. It is fair to point out that as an Oxford graduate L is still placed to command a far better salary than most ever will – and that is surely true. The point, however, is that even somebody like L – deserving, hard-working, academically gifted and persevering – could not make it off the back of merit alone. If somebody like L finds that this ‘meritocracy’ is one whose cogs are greased by money that she does not posses, what hope for the less naturally able, for those with less dedicated or fortunate parents, for those whose schools were poorer and know nothing of the mysterious ways of Oxbridge, for those – and there are many – born into families poorer than L’s?
This is not a society of equality of opportunity. This is not a society where the rich are getting richer because they deserve to. This is a society in which money still matters. This is not a classless society. If opinion polls are anything to go by, the Eton and Oxford educated millionaire David Cameron will be our next prime minister. Tony Blair always cared a great deal about his legacy. 13 years after he walked into Downing Street to the tune of “things can only get better”, the election of David Cameron will constitute a suitable appendage.
Thus spake
Greetings all, and welcome to my latest internet time-wasting project.
This blog is intended as a successor to Clicheguevara, which was good while it lasted but had reached the end of its natural life. Over here at Bad Conscience things will (hopefully) be changing a little. I’m planning on making this blog more consistently high-quality in its output. So there will be fewer posts going up less frequently than at my old site, but the aim is to thereby create more things that are actually worth reading.
