PENDING BALKINIZATION?

An issue this blog will visit at some future point is whether people due to their nature hold a bias for their group.  That could be their race, their nationality or ethnicity, their locality, their age, their religion, even their gender.  And if that sense of belonging exists, to what extent does it exist?  How much does it trump other motivations, such as personal interests? 

Professional team sports count on people having a strong enough sense of loyalty to one’s locality to sell expensive tickets to witness their encounters with the representatives of other localities or to buy paraphernalia they can wear or otherwise exhibit.  All that is fine as long as it is considered a source of harmless fun. 

Yes, at times it has led to fisticuffs or strains within families, but for the most part, it is just a way to pass what would otherwise be boring interludes within one’s life.  This writer, in his past and when he lived in a more urbanized area, partook in such expenditures – he shared season tickets in baseball, basketball, and even football.  Plus, at times, he drove long hours to attend football games at his alma mater.  These days, though, all that has been abandoned and he follows only golf, a non-locality-based fandom.

          Yes, aging takes one through exotic turns.  But through all that, he agrees with the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  That historian writes:

Most Americans, it is true, continue to see themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily and trivially as adherents of a group.  Nor is harm done when ethnic groups display pride in their historic past or in their contributions to the American present.  But the division of society into fixed ethnicities nourishes a culture of victimization and a contagion of inflammable sensitivities.  And when a vocal and visible minority pledges primary allegiance to their groups, whether ethnic, sexual, religious, or, rare cases (communist, fascist), political, it presents a threat to the brittle bonds of national  identity that holds this diverse and fractious society together.[1]

One can almost hear the reaction to citing this concern.  The problem does not lie with individuals of one group being able to exert themselves in dominating others but of attempting to protect themselves – in terms of political power and/or economic standing – against those with power.  For example, the “Black Lives Matter” reaction to case police abuse goes beyond mere racial pride or promotion. 

To the extent they are legitimate protests of unjust treatment by government personnel, these need not be acts that undermine an otherwise unified nation.  Instead, they can be viewed as expressions of what minimally this nation needs to sustain to allow such a diverse nation to survive.  Therefore, as with most of reality, this topic is somewhat nuanced.

In that light, what Schlesinger has to say can be useful in finding a workable solution to what this blog is currently addressing; that is polarization.  Not only is this topic subject to nuanced realities, but it also plunges one into ironies that defy simple ideations or policy resolves over related problems.  The main irony is that a pathological adherence to group identity undermines the very individual motivation that spurs it into existence and maintenance.

While the motivation emanates from one’s natural proclivities, its manifestation undermines that individuality.  As Schlesinger points out, one loses him/herself, one’s identity, into the identity of a group.  In turn, the ideas, perceived interests, and other aims and goals of the group become inviolable and beyond questioning.  To the extent this is true, it adds to those forces sustaining the nation’s current malady of polarization. 

Again, ironically, how these problematic allegiances develop, even those that reflect racial/ethnic divides, has participants of such dueling to fall in line with one or the other of the grand national groupings – the progressive one or the conservative one.  Unfortunately, the current political landscape has Black Lives Matter “team up” on the progressive side and the white supremist group on the conservative side.  This is a shaky arrangement, but the realities of the current politics fall in line with such a division and they add to the general polarization.

And one is invited to guess over such developments:  is the nation the midst of a social collapse?  Has this descending digression taken on a life of its own?  “The contemporary sanctification of the group puts the old idea of a coherent society at stake.  Multicultural zealots reject as hegemonic the notion of a shared commitment to common ideals.”[2]

As that historian points out, what has sustained this nation – a nation without a common ethnic origin – has been an allegiance to ideals.  And those ideals include a commitment to democracy and human rights.  The nation’s constitution – admittedly needing some interpretation – spells out what that means.  It speaks of union and even striving to be perfect in that union.  Yet, in an age of natural rights, this basic sense comes into question – go figure.

And that historian points out another historical factor.  To be allegiant to the prevailing culture, by the historical setting in which it exists, does call for one to acknowledge the society’s Anglo-Saxon colorization.  The term “colorization” includes the notion that it has by natural evolutionary developments shifted to incorporate the influences of the various immigrant groups that have affected what Americans are culturally today.

Does the acknowledgment preclude the existence of a Little Italy or a Little Havana?  A China or German town?  Of course not.  These communities exist as transition spaces – both in terms of physical location and time.  Their ongoing existence even creates tourist destinations.  Why?  Because it’s a cheaper way to get exposed to another culture while still being able to speak English and be under the legal and political structures of the US.  Win-win!  And concerns over these communities underestimate the attraction of the overall American culture.

This writer can personally attest to this latter factor.  He can remember that in the fifties, living in a Latino home and wanting to be American and for all the efforts of multiculturalists, this attraction still exists.  What youngsters under that situation learn is that there is a way of being at home and a way of being beyond home and the neighborhood.  Most of these concerns turn out to be aesthetic in nature.

This gets solidified as the young person attains higher levels of education.  For the few that insist on holding on to the immigrant culture, fine.  The system can accommodate these exceptions, it has broad shoulder as long as the basic sense and administration of rights – individually and those of groups – are respected.

This blogger of late was entertained by watching a film from 1939 – the same year that produced Gone with the Wind.[3]  That other film, produced in a federated influenced society, portrays the values of that other construct.  The film, Let Freedom Ring,[4] is a story about the railroad extending into the West and its agents engaging in exploitive practices. 

While the film is a venue for Nelson Eddy (without Jeanette MacDonald[5]) to exhibit his “pipes,” it does illustrate how moneyed interests rode roughshod over disadvantaged groups including small farmers, immigrant workers (from various nationalities such as Italians and Germans), and modest townspeople.

There is one scene, toward the end in which all of these oppressed groups congregate – a social event – and become convinced that their group interests are aligned; and that commonly, they needed to unite to check the power of the railroads.  This mirrors the basic strategy E. E. Schattschneider in his book, The Semi-Sovereign People,[6] reports.

The main relevant message Schattschneider offers is that the disadvantaged need to unite to challenge and possibly win over the power machinations of the advantaged.  Divisions based on artificial factors – artificial in terms of what is at stake – such as ethnicity, race, religion, and other non-affectual factors interfere with this type of leaguing.  They lead to dysfunctional alliances or dysfunctional affiliations.  Of course, at times it is one of these attributes that is at stake, as with the Black Lives Matter movement.

This posting leaves the reader with a prophetic insight Schlesinger shares:

The republic embodies ideals that transcend ethnic, religious, and political lines. … But the experiment can continue to succeed only so long as Americans continue to believe in the goal.  If the republic now turns away from Washington’s old goal of “one people,” what is its future? – disintegration of the national community, apartheid, Balkinization, tribalization?[7]

The current state of polarization seems to verify this historian’s concern and to how it challenges the nation.  And, as such, it is a concern civics teachers should be addressing in their classrooms.

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[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 112-113.

[2] Ibid., 117.

[3] Victor Fleming (director), Gone with the Wind (Selznick International Pictures, 1939).

[4] Jack Conway (director), Let Freedom Ring (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, 1939).

[5] For the younger readers, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a duo who appeared in many popular films and were noted for their singing prowess.

[6] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[7] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America, 118.