I honestly don’t know what to make of Myron Magnet’s post at City Journal. His thesis, as best as I can tell it, is that political correctness is as dead as a doornail, that we’ll never elect a member of the nomenklatura or apparat to the presidency again, and that President Trump is “speaking truth to power”, to use the Quaker phrase. Here’s his conclusion:
What happens next, no one knows. But jeering mockery sometimes explodes dogmatic lies more effectively than sweet reason.
Let me try to contrast this with some family wisdom. I mentioned my mom in a post yesterday. One of the pieces of wisdom she passed on to us, based on her experience teaching black kids, is “they believe the lie”. Let me try to decompress that for you. When black kids are told they are lazy, stupid, and good for nothing, they may believe it. That has a corrosive effect.
If you don’t believe that expectations, both yours and others, may have powerful effects, consider the burakumin in Japan. Japan is remarkably homogeneous. Aside from the Ainu in the north and immigrants, mostly Koreans, they are basically a single ethnic group. Nonetheless they have historically had social classes and one of those, classes, the burakumin, was hereditary. They were outcastes, consigned to low status occupations—gravediggers, sanitation workers, and the like. They were forced to live in ghettoes—little villages of their own on the edge of town (hence the name). Much of the yakuza were historically burakumin.
The burakumin scored lower on standardized tests, were more violent, and had more crime. One explanation for that might be biology but keep in mind how homogeneous Japan is. Another example is that expectations, both those of others and their own, stunted their social development. Experiments that have been conducted seem to confirm that.
Something else my mom used to say: you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.
Go ahead and read Mr. Magnet’s essay yourself. Maybe he’s right but I can’t help but think that there are alternatives other than coddling people and being mean to them.
“When black kids are told they are lazy, stupid, and good for nothing and they may believe it. That has a corrosive effect.”
So my daughter, as part of a school leadership program, tutors two young teenagers. To read. To. Read. It has had quite an impression on her, to the point of writing a note to us last Thankgiving expressing her appreciation for how involved we have been with her. One kid actually has a father as well as mother. But the father has never been seen. The mother may, or may not, be there when my daughter picks up the girl for a session. And she’s not at work. The other kid has a mother, with a boyfriend. I asked my daughter if the parents or kids seemed to appreciate the efforts. She responded that they appear to go along with it because the rich, white college kids help for free. Isn’t that special.
No, we don’t have to have the poles of coddling or demeaning. But we ought to stop dancing around the issue for political gain, or fear of being labeled racists. Call it like it is. The Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago is pretty much a shithole. The hollers of eastern Kentucky are shitholes. One black, one white. It’s family, values, character and so on. Not race. As they say, the first step is to admit you have a problem. And the problem can be seen in the mirror.
One of the issues is that there is no agreement on the goals. So, for example, there is no consensus that completing high school, delaying childbearing until after marriage, and getting married is either effective or to be desired. Some go so far as to consider the very suggestion of such a program as abusive and racist.
I could air my own views here but suffice it to say that I think we need to forge a national consensus. If you don’t know where you’re going, even so far as its direction, it’s darned hard to figure out how to get there. You can’t forge a national consensus by shouting at the people with whom you disagree.
Re: goals. I know. But to deny the sorry state of some people is, well, a state of denial.
But I think my point of departure with your apparent view would be on a national consensus. With such a diversity of goals, I’d advocate freedom of choice and taking responsibility for ones own actions. Subsidizing poor choices is irresponsible. Providing or accepting excuses based upon past wrongs is irresponsible. Asking people to take responsibility for their choices is not shouting.
I’m not sure who said it, but a quote I like is “the tyranny of low expectations.”
To expand on my point about consensus, there used to be a consensus around the founding documents, e.g. the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, plus a few other texts, Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, etc. It included things like the rights to private property and self-defense, an expansive freedom of speech, government of limited powers under the law, etc. plus origin myths like the benignity of the Founding Fathers, that Abe Lincoln was Honest Abe, the Railsplitter, etc. As Chesterton put it the United States is a country founded on a creed. It may be that the consensus was honored more in the breach than the observance but there was a consensus.
Now that consensus is evaporating, a process has been going on for the better part of a century. Recently, under a Marcusist assault the freedoms of speech and religion are no longer considered by many as sacrosanct as they once were.
I don’t think that consensus is optional. I think it’s essential.
Tim Harford, British economist, wrote a book a few years ago that talked about the phenomenon of low expectations. He showed evidence that for some poor people, it makes economic sense to not put too much effort into schooling and self improvement, since it likely won’t produce much of an effect. Giving up is a rational response. Kind of depressing.
Still, bless your daughter for her efforts. The wife has been very active through our church in the effort to get books into the homes of poor people. When she was younger she helped directly with reading. It is just amazing that some homes have basically no books. No wonder the kids don’t read.
Steve