Polarization, a
bedeviling state of affairs affecting the current American political scene, has
been attributed to a sense of identity.
The journalist Ezra Klein makes that connection in his book, Why We’re
Polarized?[1] And no aspect of identity is more intensely felt
then when it comes to racism, the bugaboo of the American story.
The
social scientific work that has been most linked to the study of this problem –
the scholarly study that painted this problem’s broad implications – is An
American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal.[2] That two-volume work (over a thousand pages)
has, through the years, had an enormous influence on public policy especially
during the Johnson Administration. But
as the years have gone by, one of the work’s central – albeit unproven – thesis
has been subjected to increasing criticism.
That
criticism, if true, gets at explaining a central motivating force feeding the
current polarization; but that is getting ahead of the story. Myrdal in his work – and that of his
extensive team of social scientists that combed the South to acquire the raw
data upon which his study was based – assumed that Americans had/have a set of richly
espoused values and supporting beliefs in an American Creed.
That
creed has been composed of certain substantive qualities; those being liberty,
justice, and equality that would be demonstrated by extending fair opportunity
to everyone. This, in turn, casts
Americans as being a moral people harboring a moral consciousness of the realities
that runs counter to this creed.
Yet,
his study documented the obvious and extensive realities African Americans
experienced in their daily lives within the area of study, that of the South. That existence was characterized by a
social/political/economic existence that resembled nothing approaching liberty,
justice, and/or equality.
All
Americans needed to do to become unconflicted with this “dilemma” was to stop
discriminating against blacks, which the study proposed was the main cause of
that minority population’s deplorable conditions. Maribel Morey writes,
As he prepared the final manuscript,
Myrdal collected countless studies and memoranda illustrating the leading role
of racial discrimination in creating racial differences in the United
States. He commissioned original
memoranda from over forty leading social scientists on topics including racial
stereotyping, patterns of racial segregation, and black labor.[3]
Under the current state,
many question this self-imaging many Americans seem to have about the type of
people they are.
The primary cause for the state of race relations to this
day, some would argue, is not so much a lack of living out one’s espoused
values. The disease is more entrenched. To have a viable ongoing issue in a viable
polarized state of political affairs, one needs a significantly established set
of beliefs that counter this higher “moral” character. Why did Myrdal, a sophisticated, “impartial” foreigner
not see what many today judge to be obvious?
One
can look at Myrdal and the individual situation he and his wife were
experiencing during the development of this work to understand potential ulterior
motives or biases for the slant the final product took. They were Swedes in America while Nazi
Germany was imposing its unspeakable crimes on Europe – but that’s another
story. Leave it to suggest that the
Myrdals wanted to project a more humane image of America that could more boldly
counter that of Germany.
What is relevant here is that this higher moral view of the
American psyche underestimated the strength and united commitment by many to allow
the wrongs being imposed on blacks. It
seems to have missed the strengths of senses of right and wrong that went
counter to this alleged noble democratic creed.
And this was not just in the South but in the North and West also. Evidence?
Well, one need only look at the state of blacks in the ensuing years until
today.
Yes, there have been improvements, but are they of the
degree to prove what Myrdal postulated? Morey
quotes Yale sociologist, Maurice Davie, “Though the treatment of the Negro is
without doubt the greatest challenge to American democracy, the conscience of
white America does not appear to be as aware and disturbed as Myrdal thinks it
is from the rational moral standpoint.”[4] And she further reports on the work of Ernest
Campbell.
That work tested Myrdal’s assumption on three-hundred
Southern university students. He found
that this “moral,” deep-seated disposition is not passed on to significant
numbers of people when it comes to dealing with people of another race. “Further, a segregated system provides its
own set of counter-norms, a rationale, that justifies the system while it helps
the actor in the system to compartmentalize or re-interpret the American
Creed.”[5] One, so affected, senses no resulting
contradiction, therefore, he/she feels no angst over the obvious state of incongruency.
What this current state of polarization has done, a message
earlier stated in this blog, is to help lay bare this incubation of a problem –
in this case stemming from such rationalizing or sustaining a “moral” view that
justifies the inequality in the treatment of blacks. But what is worse?
Is
it a belief that Americans will ultimately not tolerate inequality and champion
a fix – i.e., that ends discriminatory practices – or is it this rationalization
or counter value system? If one believes
the fix will inevitably come, to be successful, one is in effect ignoring an
opposition that finds segregation as either irrelevant or in line with the
nation’s basic principles.
That is, the Myrdal assumption underestimates the
challenge. What seems to be needed are
extensive conversations over basic attitudes, values, and dispositions that in
a polarized atmosphere seems well beyond what is possible. Yet, what better atmosphere to start these basic
discussions than in civics classrooms that impart a curriculum favoring the federation
of its citizens of all races, ethnicities, gender, ages, etc.?
There,
in those classrooms, one can hold sacred an American Creed as defined by Myrdal
but understands there are competing images about what Americanism should be. This blogger would add it is not enough to
identify the gap between the creed Myrdal identifies and competing images of another
American value system, but that the sought-after image needs to be fuller and
more comprehensive of the forces at play.
There
needs be a reasoned rationale for the creed’s existence, as one offered by
federation theory. And pedagogically,
that should lead to a developed content and instructional processes to handle
the entailed challenge, not in an accusatorial tone, but one that invites
inclusion.
[1]
Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New
York, NY: Avid Reader Press).
[2] Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York,
NY: Harper and Brothers, 1944).
[3] Meribel Morey, “Are Americans Really Champions of
Racial Equality?” The Atlantic
(April 12, 2015), accessed August 10, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/are-americans-champions-of-racial-equality/389826/ .
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
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