Globalization and Mass Immigration Add Up to Racism

I urge you to read Noah Smith’s discussion of the television series Atlanta at Bloomberg View. In it he touches on points I’ve been making for some time. Here’s his peroration:

In other words, “Atlanta” is a microcosm of all the problems of poverty and instability in America that writers like Barbara Ehrenreich, economists like Sendhil Mullainathan, and sociologists like Sudhir Venkatesh have been sounding the alarm about for many years. A toxic combination of deindustrialization, poor urban planning, racial segregation, discrimination and the insanity of the war on drugs wastes the talent and potential of much of the country’s working class — especially the black working class. Even as cities like Atlanta grab headlines for their wealth, exciting nightlife and ample job opportunities for educated workers, millions of Americans are being left behind. They’re trying hard, and doing the best they can, but the system is failing them.

Take a look at the graph illustrating the decline of manufacturing jobs in the U. S. There’s an obvious relationship between that collapse and China’s admission to the WTO. If you combine that toxic kind of globalization with considerably more competition for jobs at the low end of the income ladder, the burden falls very heavily on black folk. That’s not going to be made up by increased education.

3 comments… add one
  • mike shupp Link

    Unfortunately, “go to college” or “get some retraining” are about the only responses Democrats have for the jobless anymore. Plus of course, “relocate.”

    Notice that after I’ve given you this wonderful advice — “If the mines are shutting down, go to welding school and then move to Texas” — my job is done. The heavy lifting is up to you, and if you can’t follow it, it ain’t my fault.

    Well, up to 1990 or so, this probably was good advice. It worked in the 1790’s after all, and in the 1890’s. It’s just too bad that in the modern world Democrats never came up with other answers after the jobs went off to Mexico and Taiwan and China and nothing took their place. But “other answers” would have other ideas and other practices, changing the country in some fashion inconceivable to Clinton-Obama style Democrats, fighting major battles with stand-pat Free Enterprise-loving Republicans,

    And of course, Democrats can’t do that. No one can imagine Democrats fighting tooth and nail against Republicans to change the way the country is organized. What kind of Democrat would even want to do that sort of thing, no matter how great the need?

  • Gray Shambler Link

    Another Jeremiad about American stratification is pretty well useless. Society self-enforces this, you can’t give the down and out a hand up without going down there with them. But you can make a pretty penny pitching a T V show commiserating about their lot.

  • mike shupp Link

    “… you can’t give the down and out a hand up without going down there with them”

    Oh, I dunno. There are a small number of people who really count in this world, and a much larger number of people who don’t. Is that what seems so obvious? It’s what we’re build to do, we just can’t change it, and there’s no reason to do so.

    Hmmm. I don’t think is the essential part of Christianity, not as the early Christians seem to have seen things. Or Islam for that matter. Maybe it fits Buddhism or Shinto or Taoism. I’m not enough of a religious scholar to be sure.

    I also don’t think this notion of high and low states of social status really fits well with democracy as most of us would like to see it practiced. Think of two moments in modern Presidential politics : in 2012, Mitt Romney told some of his backers “47 %” of American voters were fastened like leeches to tax-payer paid benefits and never would vote for candidates that spoke up for hard work and individual thrift. In 2016, Hillary Clinton told some of her supporters that discussing issues with lower class white voters — “a basket of deplorables” — wa essentially wasted time. Voters right and left looked askance at those remarks, and odds are they will make it into history books or at least ever-so-respectable NY Times obituaries when the time comes.

    I don’t want to stand up and start a jeremiad about Black/Green /Olive- Toned/Red-Necked Lives Matters. But maybe we ought to reach a little bit beyond our Winners-vs-Losers attitudes and try to make things better for each other, as individuals who help one another or bureaucrats crafting regulations or voters contemplating highway bond issues and school board candidates.

    Sainthood’s hard, but this could be a better country if we tried to be better citizens and if those who reach for leadership had better ambitions than power and glory and riches. I think those apply to modern America.

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