Im-Politic: A Case for Reparations

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African Americans, education, GI Bill, higher education, housing, Im-Politic, immigrants, inequalty, mortgages, race relations, racism, reparations, wealth gap, white privilege, World War II

Here’s a RealityChek post I never thought I’d write, leading off with two ideas I never thought I’d consider: First, I’m warming a lot toward the idea of the U.S. government paying some kind of taxpayer-funded reparations to African Americans in compensation for at least one cut-and-dried historical episode of economically costly racism. Second, a main reason is that I and my family – and millions and millions of others like us – have benefited economically, and considerably, from the white privilege reinforced by this episode.

I’m still somewhat wary of a main possible result of reparations – that payment will generate an ever growing list of demands for more payments. I also remain concerned that reparations will ease much of the moral pressure felt by white and others who oppose reparations to eliminate sources of racial economic inequality ranging from lousy and inequitably funded public schools to discriminatory mortgage practices.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that these worries reflect overly simplistic “slippery slope”-type arguments to which I’ve objected in the context of other issues. Specifically, they too easily become excuses for avoiding many necessary actions. For they imply that citizens and political leaders are devoid of the judgment needed to make the kinds of distinctions any complex community or society needs to be able to identify in order to remain even minimally functional.

More important, a little research I conducted the other day brought to my attention an instance of massive, systemic racism that took place many decades after emancipation. It came in the form of the discriminatory implementation of the GI Bill of 1944, which denied more than a million black World War II veterans vital most of the opportunities created by the law to establish a foothold in the nation’s middle class, and beyond.

If you’ll remember, opening unprecedented economic opportunity to the men and women that risked their lives to save their country and indeed the world was the whole point of the legislation. The means chosen were low-interest mortgages and equally generous loans for buying businesses and farms, and stipends to finance higher education expenses. Given the importance of homes and other assets in amassing significant amounts of wealth, and of college and many vocational degrees in generating middle-class-and-beyond income levels, the strategy made perfect sense. And it worked like a charm for most of the white veterans who used it.

Inexcusably, however, as this account makes clear, most black World War II veterans were excluded from these programs by a combination of state-level official and informal barriers to participation. Just as important, the effects of this discrimination also hobbled the economic prospects of the descendents of these African American servicemen and women. One major piece of evidence – the decades-old yawning racial wealth gap, which results largely from the long limited home-owning opportunities available to African Americans.

And here’s where the story gets personal – for me and others whose ancestors only came to the United States in the late-19^th and early 20^th centuries. It’s absolutely true that our grandparents or parents never owned slaves, overwhelmingly had no hand in maintaining systemic American racism, and largely arrived from their homelands with little more than the clothes on their backs. It’s also true that many and even most worked like the dickens to achieve their share of the American Dream, and that many were the victims of at least informal discrimination at some point in their lives.

This history was long the principal basis for my own insistence that, if any reparations were to be paid, I sure didn’t owe any.

Getting down to my case, my father, and his peers in the ranks of my relatives and friends, also came from economically modest backgrounds and generally worked like the dickens. My own father was blessed with the most powerful mind I’ve ever encountered, and owed much of his success to this brainpower as well (as did so many others of course).

He didn’t buy his first home until 1963, and so just missed the chance for GI Bill mortgage assistance. But there’s an excellent chance that, despite his intellect and other talents, he’d have never gone to college without the financial aid provided by the legislation – which enabled him to attend full-time and not have to worry about helping to pay the family bills. Certainly, my grandparents never encouraged him to continue his education beyond high school. Without college, of course, there would have been no law school (at night, on top of working full-time), and without his law degree, my own upbringing mightn’t have been so comfortable, and my own higher education opportunities might have been very different.

Again, my father was so brilliant, and so driven, that I’m sure he would have achieved considerable professional success without the GI Bill. I’m similarly confident that the same applies to any number of his peers. But it’s entirely possible that they wouldn’t overall have achieved as much success. And on the whole nowhere near as quickly. More important, their GI Bill benefits relieved or at least partly relieved my father and millions of other white veterans of having to make the kinds of often difficult choices and accept the kinds of often family-straining tradeoffs that confronted black veterans denied these benefits.

As a result, some amount of reparations based on the economic impact of GI Bill discrimination seems justified to me, along with including GI Bill beneficiaries like me as payers.

Obviously, critical details would need to be worked out, along with the question of what other kinds of reparations should be considered and paid. But the GI Bill’s history amounts to a clear instance of the federal government, and many sub-federal governments, systematically awarding to one group of Americans benefits whose effects have lasted many generations, and just as systematically excluding another class of Americans with equally valid claims. And even though subsequent veterans aid programs have been put into effect much more admirably, this clearcut discrimination, moreover, has had lasting, damaging effects.

What could be more fair and ethical than openly acknowledging this inequity, and providing compensation to the victims? And seriously discussing other cmparaable wrongs that might be at least partly righted in this way?  

Im-Politic: Have Americans Got Family Policy All Wrong?

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David Brooks, education, extended family, families, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, nuclear family, social policy, The Atlantic, women

David Brooks has scored a four-bagger with his new Atlantic article on whether the recent American focus on maintaining and fortifying the nuclear family has been such a hot idea. He’s powerfully challenged the conventional wisdom about a long-time social and cultural institution and public policy goal. He’s taught readers fascinating and important lessons about American social history. He’s spotlighted a host of recent developments and trends on this crucial front. And (I guess this is just my own personal bag) in the process, he’s reminded me of what a clueless snob I can be in jumping to conclusions.

To continue momentarily on a personal note, I was staring in disbelief as I wrote most of the above, for Brooks, a New York Times columnist, has never struck me as much more than the kind of establishment conservative who long dominated the Republican Party and the right half of the mainstream media, and who’s spent the last three years bitterly inveighing against the rise of Trump-ian populism – without offering any useful suggestions as to what might replace it.

It’s true that Brooks had also made quite a name for himself as a social and cultural commentator, but I never paid much attention to these writings. If his new Atlantic article is any indication, that was a major mistake.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with Brooks’ main policy argument – that it’s no longer possible to restore the nuclear family’s primacy in American society, because that prominence only emerged because of overall national conditions in the post-World War II United States that simply can’t be replicated. In particular, I still strongly doubt that the developments that have weakened the nuclear family were inevitable, or were all inevitable, and are therefore irreversible.

I’m thinking of indiscriminate economic globalization and Open Borders-friendly mass immigration policies that have destroyed generations of middle class jobs and the incomes and economic opportunity they create; welfare policies that surely discouraged to some degree the maintenance, especially in the African-American community, of traditional two-parent families; the ever-mounting incompetence of the nation’s public primary and secondary schools; and a values transition that (thankfully) fostered greater social and cultural freedom and diversity, but that also unmistakably encouraged individualism, pointless exhibitionism, and the insistence on instant gratification to run riot, and all but scorned the idea of commonly accepted norms, self-restraint, and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

In other words, maybe the dominance of the nuclear family nurtured much of the economic progress and prosperity in particular that characterized the 1950s and 1960s, rather than the other way around.

But what I’m thinking mainly about today aren’t those big policy and (inevitably politicized) questions, but about some of the forms of extended families that Brooks mentioned prominently, and that I had completely forgotten about. Not that I’m the only one. But this blind spot recently led me in particular to ridicule someone and his outlook on life (not to his face, but to friends and relatives) who deserved much better.

It came at a wedding during which at one point, the father of the groom stood up to give his toast to the happy couple, and began waxing nostalgic (as parents at these moments understandably do) about the good old days of his son’s youth. He was anything but silver-tongued, but one point he made struck me at the time as especially absurd and revealingly parochial. Back then, he pointed out, so many of the aunts and uncles and cousins lived on the same block, and we saw each other all the time. But now, most of the family has spread out as far as – and he named a town a whole two towns, and only a few miles, away.

I found this hilariously small-minded, and missed few opportunities to bring up his remarks and what the volumes they allegedly and unflatteringly spoke about this kind of crimped perspective (which also characterized many attendees at the affair).

But as Brooks’ article pointed out, these types of extended families have been the norm for much of American history, and boasted and nurtured many virtues that sadly are in short supply today – like community and mutual support and the spread of constructive social and personal norms and values.

So as I was reading his piece, I began to think that yes, there’s a big difference between being able to spontaneously run into relatives just by stepping out the front door and seeing them on the front porch across the street, or at the supermarket, and needing to take a short drive two towns over in order to visit.

And I began thinking about the history of both sides of my own childhood nuclear family. My father’s father came to America from Lithuania and was aided almost as soon as he stepped off the boat not only by various Jewish-American charities, but by relatives that preceded him and by an organization comprised of other immigrants from the same town. He remained active in their affairs for the next five or six decades.

My mother’s parents lived in a small apartment building in the south-ish Bronx that was full of related families. I spent the first nine years of my own life in a small apartment building in Flushing, Queens (New York City) that was dominated by two or three closely-related families. They not only socialized constantly; they took summer vacations with each other at the same bungalow colony a little ways upstate.

So most of my playmates were each other’s cousins. Moreover, I also went to grade school with and hung out with a bunch of Irish-American kids from across the street who were related as well. Meanwhile, when we were very young, the various mothers took their turns walking us the six blocks to and from P.S. 20. And at about the same time, when my brother was born, we moved upstairs to a larger apartment in the same building and my mother’s mother moved into our old place. I.e., instant babysitter!

These networks, by the way, didn’t vanish even in the suburban north shore of Long Island to which my family moved in the early 1960s. Even though single family houses had replaced apartment buildings, lots of our neighbors in our community were very chummy, and have remained so. Ditto for their kids. (My father was kind of standoffish for various reasons, but the sheer number of chuldren for my brother and I to play with and the advantages of car-pooling kept us at least in the outer reaches of these circles.)

Nor, apparently, was this community unique. I was very moved about a year ago to read a Facebook post from an alum of my high school (who I didn’t know but have connected with since) to another alum (who I didn’t know either and haven’t connected with) fondly remembering the days when all the families on their block held cookouts and other backyard parties together and went on outings and looked after each other’s kids.

And according to Brooks, these patterns and structures were common during the 1950s and 1960s:

“[N]uclear families in this era were much more connected to other nuclear families than they are today—constituting a “modified extended family,” as the sociologist Eugene Litwak calls it, ‘a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.’ Even as late as the 1950s, before television and air-conditioning had fully caught on, people continued to live on one another’s front porches and were part of one another’s lives. Friends felt free to discipline one another’s children.”

Brooks isn’t indiscriminately nostalgic for extended families, and rightly notes major drawbacks:

“[T]hey can…be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life.”

And no small matter: “[M]ost women were relegated to the home. Many corporations, well into the mid-20th century, barred married women from employment: Companies would hire single women, but if those women got married, they would have to quit. Demeaning and disempowering treatment of women was rampant. Women spent enormous numbers of hours trapped inside the home under the headship of their husband, raising children.”

Further, these extended families do tend to encourage parochialism that can too easily degenerate into outright ignorance of, indifference to, and even hostility toward the outside world, or certain major portions of it.

Is some kind of middle ground possible? Brooks insists that that train has left the station:

“Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal.”

Again, I’m skeptical about abject pessimism – just as I am about Brooks’ (cautious) optimism about the possibility of building a healthy society with many more non-nuclear families and many fewer nuclear families than even exist today. More important for now, though, is recognizing Brooks’ stunning achievement – which will force any but the completely closed-minded to start thinking.

Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

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college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Following Up: The New York Times’ Fake History of the U.S. is Spreading

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1619 Project, African Americans, education, Following Up, history, journalism, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, racism, Sean Wilentz, slavery, The Atlantic, The New York Times

Since Americans’ mistrust of the news media keeps getting stronger, it’s a safe bet that they’d be pretty upset to find out that one major news organization is playing a bigger and bigger role in shaping their childen’s education. And they could well become livid if they learned that this media influence in the schools is growing even as scholars in the relevant field are concluding that much of the material being propagated is bunk.

Yet that’s exactly what’s been happening with The New York Times‘ 1619 Project. As I reported in a post last year, the project, named after the year the first black African slaves were brought to North America, seeks to [its words] “reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” The Times‘ reason for undertaking this effort? Its conclusion that “our story” as a nation hasn’t been told “truthfully.”

As I explained last year, the big problem with the 1619 Project isn’t that reconsideration of any aspect of U.S. history (or any history) should be beyond the pale, but that a news organization like The Times has no qualifications to undertake this task. Even more troubling: The Times lately has endorsed the view that it should act like a news organization with a substantive agenda, or several of them. And one of them is writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Now confirmation has just emerged making clear that this bias has significantly infected the 1619 Project, and it comes not only from the ranks of America’s academic historians, but from historians with decidedly progressive views. Their case was summarized (at length) by Sean Wilentz of Princeton University, who concluded in a piece in The Atlantic (itself a pretty progressive publication) that although the role of slavery and racism in American history “remains too little understood by the general public,” The Times in many cases sought to fill the gap “through falsehoods, distortions, and significant omissions.”

What’s arguably worse, as Wilentz’ account makes clear, The Times not only blithely brushed off all of the historians’ critique. It doubled down on its propagandizing.

And here’s what’s clearly worse: The paper’s efforts to introduce this shoddy excuse for scholarship into school curricula have been succeeding. According to this report, 1619 Project materials are now being used or will soon in school systems in Chicago; Newark, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and Buffalo, New York. A New York City school is teaching with the Project as well, And The Times is working with an important ally – the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which has produced a variety of “curricular resources,” including “a reading guide for the issue, activities to engage students, and more.

It’s bad enough that American journalism keeps spewing out Fake News. It now needs to be spreading Fake History? And the nation’s schools need to be swallowing it?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Amazon’s Fishy HQ Decision

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Alexandria, Amazon, D.C., education, Long Island City, New York City, STEM workers, tech, The Partnership for New York City, Washington, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Everyone who’s followed Amazon’s highly publicized search for a second headquarters site (which wound up choosing second and third headquarters sites) knows that New York City and the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia were selected because of their abundant supply of world-class tech workers. Or at least that’s what the on-line retail behemoth said.

Except a leading business group from New York – which has applauded the city’s win – has just come out with some projections completely belying this claim.

According to The Partnership for New York City, “Amazon is the first tech mega-company headquarters to locate in New York City, a breakthrough that will solidify the city’s future as a leader in the world’s fastest-growing industry.”

But in its latest quarterly Dashboard NYC, which tracks leading indicators of the city’s economic performance, The Partnership also forecast that, of the 25,000 net new jobs likely to be created directly by the new Amazon facilities in Long Island City, Queens, and the nearly 90,000 increase in the region’s payrolls that will be generated indirectly, 68 percent won’t require a high school education. In fact, 18 percent won’t even require any formal schooling. And another ten percent will be fill-able by folks with only some post-high school education.

As a result, fewer than one-third of these jobs (some 32,000) will require a bachelor’s degree of some kind. It’s true that a relevant college or graduate degree isn’t needed for success in technology (as most dramatically demonstrated by the founding of Microsoft by Harvard dropout Bill Gates, and the creation of Apple by Reed College dropout Steve Jobs). Indeed, a recent analysis of Census Bureau data reports that fully 35 percent of the country’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce lacks a bachelor’s degree, and that 80 percent of this subgroup have had only some college courses.

But it’s also true that far from all of the 32,000 total Amazon-created jobs that will require completing an undergraduate college education will be science and tech positions. For instance, many will certainly come in managerial or administrative positions at Amazon itself, and in all non-Amazon companies that add new hires because of Amazon, or that are created because of Amazon, that won’t require a special tech background.

I’m certainly not qualified to second-guess Amazon’s decisions. And maybe the situation in the Washington, D.C. area is significantly different (though this article indicates that it’s not – albeit not in the way you may think). What does seem clear, though, is that the company hasn’t been leveling with the rest of the country (or the world) about its new headquarters decision. And when the dissembler is the world’s second largest U.S.-based publicly traded non-government employer (behind WalMart), that should raise a question or two.

Im-Politic: Why Prioritizing Dead White Guys’ Literature Isn’t Bigoted

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academia, critical thinking, culture wars, education, higher education, identity politics, Im-Politic, literature, racism, scholarship, The Washington Post, Trump, Viet Thanh Nguyen

One of the most dispiriting findings in recent years about the state of the nation concerns evidence that colleges are failing to achieve a fundamental goal: improving students’ critical thinking skills. (Click here, here, and here, for some leading studies showing that these institutions have failed to teach undergraduates “how to sift fact from opinion, make a clear written argument or objectively review conflicting reports of a situation or event,” in the words of a typical description of the conclusions. Here’s a dissenting view.)

And if Viet Thanh Nguyen, a University of Southern California professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist to boot, is the slightest bit typical, then it’s painfully obvious that a main reason for this sorry record is that way too many college faculty lack these skills themselves.

As presented in a Washington Post article yesterday, Nguyen’s argument is…well, it’s actually hard to tell what his argument is. As best as I can surmise, he’s upset that, in too many instances, American college students are discouraged from reading non-western literature, and that young literary scholars are discouraged (by continuing bleak job prospects stemming from intolerant appointment committees) from researching and writing on these works.

He cites his own experiences trying to climb the academic career ladder, as well as a controversy that’s just broken out at Barnard College in New York City over the demands of “some English majors” for “greater diversity in their curriculum.”

At the same time, Nguyen makes clear that since such issues became a bone of contention in the late-1980s and 1990s, reformers who “demanded more space for works by women, people of color, the working class, the queer and the non-white” have “triumphed.” In fact, their victory had taken place by the late-1990s.

The author’s belief that these “culture wars” are flaring anew on campuses, and that a Donald Trump-fueled revival of “white identity politics” is mainly responsible, is also puzzling – to say the least. After all, neither the President nor his more extreme, racially motivated supporters seem to have many supporters in the ranks of U.S. professors or higher education administrators. Nor does there seem to be any scarcity of courses and degree programs in non-western literature and culture in American academia.

So Nguyen’s article flunks three basic texts of critical thinking – advancing a coherent argument, providing serious evidence on its behalf, and refuting major evidence-based counter-arguments.

Nguyen’s real beef seems to be somewhat narrower, but no less important:  A charge that higher ed’s English and American literature curricula, especially in courses covering their seminal works (i.e., their canon), don’t make enough room for non-white and female writers. But here he falls short of meeting another important critical thinking challenge: placing objects or ideas in their proper categories. Here’s what I mean.

The study of literature obviously has to include a study of the entire environment in which that literature is created – including its history, economy, social structure, other aspects of its culture, etc. But first and foremost the study of literature is the study of an art form (which can be both fictional and non-fictional in nature). Therefore, it’s primarily concerned with how and why and how this literature’s aesthetic features have evolved; how successfully and skillfully, and creatively or derivatively, various authors achieved their goals and sent their messages; what the artistry of these works can tell us about how their creators perceived and interpreted, both knowingly and unwittingly, the various elements of their environments, characteristics of human psychology, and the crucial ideas that have molded the human experience; how these factors in turn influenced these authors; what their works reveal about these circumstances; and what, if anything, they can teach us today.

To apply Nguyen’s complaint and this definition of literature to the American canon, there can be no doubt that throughout its history, the nation’s population has consisted of many racial and ethnic groups (and more than one gender). There’s no doubt also that the various forms of contact these groups and genders have had with each other have influenced the worldviews, and therefore the literary output generated by each.

But there’s also no doubt that the influence of white males of European descent has been dominant, and that this dominance was especially pronounced in the nation’s formative years and decades – when the ideas and values and perspectives that have (so far) contributed the most to American culture (and other elements of its environment) began crystallizing. And the degree of injustice in part responsible for this group’s dominance has no intrinsic bearing on its role and its lasting influence. Nor does the inarguable fact that the influence of these white European-descended men itself consists both of admirable and shameful aspects.

So it makes perfect sense that American literature courses, especially at the more general level, to date have emphasized the works of these white males. By extension, it makes perfect sense that much less emphasis has been placed on the works of authors from other groups. Indeed, Nguyen himself explains why: In his words, these authors have been “submerged, overlooked and forgotten.”

Now, if the aim is the entirely worthy objective of learning more about these marginalized groups as such, then of course exposure of their literature is essential. But the greatest responsibility for achieving this goal logically belongs with other academic disciplines – which focus on the histories, social structures, broader cultures, etc. of these groups. Acquaintance with their literature is also needed to understand how these groups have influenced the dominant culture.

And of course, as greater opportunities have opened up for marginalized groups, their output inevitably has become more influential as well, and requires more attention in order for purely literary studies to remain truly representative and accurate. For example, it’s clearly not now legitimate to study American literature as a whole since the early or mid-twentieth century without recognizing the substantial role played by female, African-American, and Jewish authors.

More recently, writers from other groups have gained significant audiences and critical acclaim. Their works will surely wind up making lasting notable and lasting contributions to the nation’s culture. As a result, they should surely be spotlighted prominently in future curricula, and in particular in survey-type as opposed to more specialized courses. In addition, scholars right now should by all means be debating which works should qualify for this status. But it’s far too early for academia to reach an intellectually respectable consensus on the matter.

Moreover, this more recent prominence of previously marginalized groups creates no valid reason for concluding that their contributions to the national canon have so far been comparable with the contributions of the dominant group for most of U.S. history. Think of it this way: As stated above, Jewish authors have played an important role in American literature since roughly the middle of the twentieth century. But it would be utterly misleading to argue that Jewish authors played an important role in American literature before then.

One interesting wrinkle here – how to handle the likelihood that any number of overlooked works by submerged American groups fully measure up in artistic terms to the acknowledged classics. These works need to be found because, by definition, they would contain major insights into all the crucial issues addressed by great literature. Scholars should be searching for them and describing their virtues, and their discovery should be deeply appreciated by everyone who appreciates the value of great literature.

But because prologue cannot be past, even in these cases (and if readers have any examples or candidates, feel free to let me know about them), it would be essential — and intellectually honest — to specify that their effect on the nation’s literary and broader cultural life would need to be potential and prospective. Claiming a marked effect on the American story to date would amount to speculation or wishful thinking at best, and cheerleading at worst – none of which should have any place in genuine scholarship.

Im-Politic: A Chinese Cure-All for America’s Schools?

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college, education, foreign students, high schools, Im-Politic. China, Leonora Chu, parents, schools, students, teachers, The Wall Street Journal, universities

Nothing would be easier to look at the headline of Leonora Chu’s Wall Street Journal column on lessons that American schools could learn from their Chinese counterparts and conclude that it’s a naive whitewashing – at best – of education in totalitarian countries. And nothing would be more off-base. For the headline is utterly misleading, and the author acknowledges that propagandizing even very young children with communist dogma is only one of the numerous major failures and shortcomings of Chinese schools.

Still, Chu comes off as an unmistakable admirer of many crucial features of the Chinese system, and especially its insistence that parents as well as students respect the authority of teachers, along with the academic results that this attitude produces.

I agree with Chu that too often, “Western teachers spend lots of time managing classroom behavior and crushing mini-revolts by students and parents alike”; that “Americans have arguably gone too far in the other direction, elevating the needs of individual students to the detriment of the group”; and that, “Educational progress in the U.S. is hobbled by parental entitlement and by attitudes that detract from learning: We demand privileges for our children that have little to do with education and ask for report-card mercy when they can’t make the grade.”

Not that even these reasonable propositions are bullet-proof. Principally, how many American teachers today truly deserve this absolute respect? How many are flat-out incompetent? How many are determined to push their own political beliefs on students, at all levels of education, and in public and private schools alike? It’s true that the nation collectively has caused much of this problem by underpaying teachers and thus preventing many individuals of real talent (and integrity) from choosing this profession. But we don’t solve the problem by indiscriminately entrusting our children’s future to the present teacher cohort.

Yet oddly, Chu seems to overlook what seems like potentially the most damning indictment of the Chinese educational system of all. And so have her Wall Street Journal editors: Chinese parents appear to abandon Chinese schools whenever they can. How do I know this? In part because I read The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed, the very same day that Chu’s article ran, the Journal ran a report titled “U.S. High Schools Picking Up More International Flavor.” In this case, the headline was completely accurate. And guess where the plurality of the foreign students streaming into American high schools are coming from? Pat yourself on the back if you answered “China.”

Indeed, correspondent Tawnell D. Hobbs cites a federally funded study finding that the foreign student population in American high schools more than doubled between 2004 and 2016, to just under 82,000. And fully 42 percent are Chinese. Just as intriguing: Three of the other top student-sending countries are known for hewing to Chinese-style, Confucianism-based educational values, too – Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Moreover, why are so many students from these countries with China-like schools coming to America for secondary education? According to one of the study’s researchers, “For most of these students, the goal is to graduate with a high-school diploma. They’re really looking at seeing themselves as being more competitive to get into a U.S. university.”

On the one hand, the decision to try gaining entry into the (still world-class) U.S. higher education system may have nothing to do with any supposed advantage of American high schools. After all, foreign parents may assume that their children will benefit in terms of college admission simply from getting exposed to U.S. schools and their approaches, and to the broader society (including English speakers).

On the other hand, it’s surely no secret to foreign parents that American colleges and universities are turning cartwheels to attract foreign students – mainly for financial reasons. For both public or private institutions have taken to relieving cash crunches by welcoming students from overseas – who pay full freight. So especially if the family has the bucks, there’s no reason to think that junior can’t sail into an American institute of higher education without attending a U.S. high school. And still American secondary education is considered appealing.  

So it seems like the real takeaway here is that although there’s ample room and urgent need for improvement in American schools, and that although some foreign practices and attitudes no doubt can be imported, there’s no reason to think that some magic formula for success lies overseas. The main solutions for what ails U.S. education, as Shakespeare might have said, are “in ourselves.”

Im-Politic: America Keeps Importing Corruption from China

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admissions process, China, colleges, corruption, education, higher education, Im-Politic, meritocracy, Reuters, universities

Sorry for the recent hiatus! Those darned computer problems!

Luckily, although today’s subject is based on a news story more than a week old, it will be incredibly timely for as long as the problem it describes is with us. Simply put, Reuters has reported – complete with devastating evidence – that China is corrupting the U.S. college admissions process. And the findings should prompt Americans and especially their leaders to start asking much more searching questions about the People’s Republic’s growing role in the nation’s economy and society than they’ve been posing so far.

As is no doubt known by anyone who’s sent a kid to college lately (or who keeps up with China-related developments), the population of students from the PRC on American college and university campuses has been surging for years. China’s nouveaux riches and Communist Party leaders (two classes with lots of overlap) increasingly want to give their kids the benefit of an American education. And since they’re able to pay full freight, American higher education has been only to happy to welcome them.

This practice has disturbing enough overtones – especially when you find it in taxpayer-supported public institutions. But assuming that the Chinese students involved meet a school’s academic standards, or come close, it’s not outright corrupt – at least no more so than the longstanding admission of children of wealthy actual or prospective American donors or influential alumni even when they’d otherwise be uncompelling candidates.

As the Reuters investigation shows, however, at least one Chinese “education company” has paid thousands of dollars in perks or cash to admissions officers at top U.S. universities “to help students apply to American schools.” The perks consisted of travel expenses for “workshops” held in China to advise students whose families are clients of Shanghai-based Dipont Education Management Group “on how to successfully apply to U.S. colleges.”

In theory, that can be excused. (Although one Boston University researcher quoted in the article claimed that such behavior, too, raises major ethical problems.) But not the payments – which consisted of “honoraria” for attendance that went right into the pockets of U.S. admissions officers, which amounted to $4,500 per head in the last two years, and typically in the form of hundred-dollar bills.

Moreover, the seven schools that have confirmed that their employees have been on the take from China aren’t only or even mostly smaller private institutions that, especially since the Great Recession, have been struggling financially. They’re Carleton College, Hamilton College, Lafayette College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tulane University, the University of Vermont, and the University of Rochester.

In addition, the following schools declined to comment or did not respond at all about the travel expenses or the honoria when contacted by Reuters about the article’s allegations: Davidson College, Wesleyan University, Claremont McKenna College, Colorado College, Harvey Mudd College, Syracuse University, and Texas Christian University.

Nothing reported by Reuters about the Chinese practices should surprise any knowledgeable readers. After all, a perfect storm of skyrocketing national wealth, the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power, and the millennia-old absence of rule of law has produced in China a society that arguably is the most corrupt in contemporary history. Nor should it be news that the United States is full of individuals, organizations, and institutions that are happy to play along.

Here’s what Americans should be asking, though: Given the undeniable reality of systemic Chinese corruption, why are any Chinese organizations permitted any contact with the admissions offices of any American institutions of higher learning? Indeed, given Chinese corruption and the importance of fund-raising in U.S. higher education, why are any Chinese organizations permitted any contact with any American colleges or universities that may have an impact on admissions.

And, as suggested, the main reason for barring the Chinese has nothing to do with the supposed purity of American morals. Instead, it’s a matter of recognizing how extensively home-grown pollution has already stained this supposedly meritocratic system, and wondering why a well-known foreign source of corruption needs to be invited in.

In fact, the same question should be raised about China’s growing economic footprint in the United States (on top of crucial national security and economic concerns). For any Chinese actor large enough to consider buying into America has surely succeeded at least in part due to its mastery of the country’s kleptocratic politics. Does business in the United States really need immense new injections of graft and cronyism from abroad?

Openness to foreign individuals, organizations, capital, goods, technology, cultures, and other influences unquestionably has been a tremendous boon to the United States throughout its history (and a decisive one when it comes to immigration). But not all foreign countries are created equal, and the example of China strongly suggests that some systems are at best incompatible with and at worst dangerous to America’s well being. China’s undermining of U.S. higher education’s integrity signals loud and clear that the actual downside of permitting Chinese participation is already outweighing any conceivable benefits – and that more wide-ranging official U.S. discrimination is needed in order to choke off similar Chinese threats in other spheres of American life.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: An Empty Obama UN Farewell

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assimilation, education, geopolitics, global integration, globalization, international law, international norms, Islam, labor standards, Middle East, Muslims, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, radical Islam, reeducation, refugees, skills, sovereignty, TPP, Trade, trade enforcement, training, Trans-Pacific Partnership, UN, United Nations

National leaders’ speeches to each year’ UN General Assembly – even those by American presidents – are rarely more than meaningless boilerplate or cynical bloviating. But President Obama’s address to the organization yesterday – as with some of its predecessors – is worth examining in detail both because it was his last, and because Mr. Obama clearly views such occasions as opportunities to push U.S. and international public opinion in fundamentally new directions where they urgently need to head.

In yesterday’s case, the president saw his mission as justifying his belief that Americans in particular need to reject temptations to turn inward from the world’s troubles, and more completely embrace forces that inexorably are tightening international integration economically and even in term of national security.

To be fair to Mr. Obama, he sought to offer “broad strokes those areas where I believe we must do better together” rather than “a detailed policy blueprint.” But even given this caveat, what’s most striking is how many of the big, tough questions he (eloquently) dodges.

Here’s the president’s main premise and conclusion:

“…I believe that at this moment we all face a choice. We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.

“I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward. I believe that as imperfect as they are, the principles of open markets and accountable governance, of democracy and human rights and international law that we have forged remain the firmest foundation for human progress in this century.”

This passage makes clear that Mr. Obama doesn’t buy my thesis that the United States is geopolitically secure and economically self-sufficient enough in reality and potential to thrive however chaotic the rest of the world. Nor does he believe the converse – that the security and prosperity the nation has enjoyed throughout its history has first and foremost stemmed from its own location, and from its ability to capitalize on its inherent advantages and strengths, not from cooperating or integrating with the rest of the world.

The president’s contention that “the world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent it from affecting our own societies” rings true for most countries – even assuming that he doesn’t really think that this stark choice is the only alternative to complete openness to global developments and commerce and populations and authority, however promising or threatening. But he seems oblivious to America’s “exceptionalism” geopolitically and economically.

Even if I’m wrong, however, and even accepting Mr. Obama’s “broad strokes” objectives, this lengthy presidential address gives national leaders and their citizens almost no useful insights on how countries can achieve his goals. Here are just two examples:

The president recognizes the need to make the global economy “work better for all people and not just for those at the top.” But given the trade deals he himself has sought, how can worker rights be strengthened “so they can organize into independent unions and earn a living wage”? The president insisted again that his Pacific Rim trade deal points the way. But as I’ve noted, the immense scale of factory complexes even in smallish third world countries like Vietnam makes the necessary outside monitoring and enforcement impossible.

Similarly, no one can argue with Mr. Obama’s recommendation to invest “in our people — their skills, their education, their capacity to take an idea and turn it into a business.” But as I documented more than a decade ago in my The Race to the Bottom, governments the world over, including in the very low-wage developing world, recognize the importance of improving their populations’ skill and education levels. In addition, multinational corporations can make workers productive even in these very low-income countries – and continue paying them peanuts compared with wages in more developed countries. Why should anyone expect his recommendation to give workers in America a leg up?

It’s easy to sympathize with the president’s call “to open our hearts and do more to help refugees who are desperate for a home.” Who in principle is opposed to aiding “men and women and children who, through no fault of their own, have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love,…”?

But as Mr. Obama indirectly admitted, many of these refugees come from a part of the world where “religion leads us to persecute those of another faith…[to] jail or beat people who are gay…[and to] prevent girls from going to school….” He also described the Middle East as a place where too often the “public space” is narrowed “to the mosque.”

It was encouraging to see him recognize the legitimacy – though perhaps not the necessity – of insisting “that refugees who come to our countries have to do more to adapt to the customs and conventions of the communities that are now providing them a home.” But is he blithely assuming success? And it was less encouraging to see him ignore the excruciatingly difficult challenge of adequately vetting migrants from war-torn and chaotic countries.

Finally, on the political side of integration, the president seems to lack the courage of his convictions. For despite his high regard for international law, and support for America “giving up some freedom of action” and “binding ourselves to international rules,” he also specified that these were long-term objectives – presumably with little relevance in the here and now. Indeed, Mr. Obama also argued that, even way down the road, the United States wouldn’t be “giving up our ability to protect ourselves or pursue our core interests….”

So it sounds like he’d relegate even future international law-obeying to situations that really don’t matter. Which is fine. But how that gets us to a more secure world is anyone’s guess.

It’s true that Mr. Obama will be leaving office soon, and that his thoughts no longer matter critically. But at the same time, American leaders have been speaking in these lofty globalist terms for decades. If the president is indeed right about global integration and the future, what a shame that he didn’t make more progress in bringing these ideas down to earth.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why a Bullish-Sounding Jobs Study Really Isn’t

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college, Current Employment Statistics, Current Population Survey, education, Georgetown University, Jobs, Labor Department, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

When I first read about a new report claiming that the overwhelming majority of new American jobs created during this feeble U.S. recovery have gone to workers with at least some college in their background, I was awfully suspicious. And when I looked into the matter further, I was reminded once again how careful you need to be when reading news about the economy.

The study, put out by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, found that of the 11.6 million jobs created once the current expansion took hold, 8.4 million (72.41 percent) went to holders of at least a bachelor’s degree. Another 3.1 million jobs (26.72 percent) went to members of the workforce holding either an associate’s degree or boasting “some college” education.

The implications look pretty clear: There’s nothing wrong with the American jobs market,that better educated workers can’t cure, and there’s nothing more important that Americans can do to improve their economic prospects than to take this hint.

The only problem: These results track only if (a) everything else we know about the labor market is wrong; or (b) higher education has just about lost its power to guarantee hard-working Americans comfortably middle class lives at the least.

Given all the uncertainties surrounding so much economic data, the first possibility certainly could be true. But as I’ve written, that would mean throwing out reams of statistics – like those showing that the wages, salaries, and benefits earned by Americans are growing at historically sluggish rates for a recovery. Moreover, a deeper (but not incredibly deep) dive into figures from the same source used by the Georgetown researchers provides strong evidence for the second proposition – which is of course much less bullish for the labor market’s fundamentals.

The Georgetown findings are based on the government’s Current Population Survey (CPS) – one of two main data series yielding information about American workers and about the unemployed. I decided to compare them with what I knew from its companion, the Current Employment Statistics (CES). Whereas the CPS is based on interviews with the nation’s households, the CES gets its information from employers – including government agencies. The Labor Department believes that the two series track well over time, but periodically they diverge over the short term.

I wanted to review the CES numbers because they tell us what kinds of jobs, in what sectors of the economy, workers in America are holding – and because I knew from previous work that they’ve consistently revealed that a disturbingly high share of the jobs created during the recovery have come in low-wage industries. Here’s what I learned:

According to the CES, since the job market bottomed in February, 2010, the economy has added 14.16 million full-time workers. (I also found that the CPS increase since then was 11.33 million.) Then I looked at employment increases in sectors known for low pay, like the retail, and leisure and hospitality businesses. And to make sure that I was zeroing in on their low-pay workforce, I examined developments among their non-supervisory workers, thereby stripping out executives and other managerial types.

In retail and leisure and hospitality combined, the non-supervisory headcount has risen by 3.3 million – representing 23.43 percent of total job creation by this measure since the employment recovery began. So that already raises questions about the Georgetown findings and their seemingly most obvious implications.

But those two sectors hardly exhaust the list of low-paying parts of the U.S. economy. As I’ve written, within the high-paying professional and business services sector, there’s a big low-paying sub-sector that includes janitors, security guards, call-center workers, employment office staffers, and the like. If you add their non-supervisory job holders to the above totals, you come to 34.18 percent of recovery-era job creation coming in low-paying positions in low-paying sectors.

Assuming that the Georgetown results as as basically accurate as mine (which are taken straight from Labor Department data tables), a depressing conclusion emerges: Lots of workers with impressive educational credentials are working at dead-end jobs. And this observation is reinforced by all the challenges raised lately to the idea that a college education is a good value for just about everyone.

According to the Georgetown report’s lead author, his study makes clear that “College level skills determines access to decent jobs now. The modern economy continues to leave Americans without a college education behind.” A more comprehensive view of the data actually indicates that the modern economy is leaving record numbers of the college-educated behind, too.