Prosperity & Activism

by Brian Caterino
WHAT WOULD A truly cosmopolitan society look like? At the least, it would be a society based on mutual respect toward others and toward different ways of life. While it would accept notions of
equal justice for all, it would also recognize and respect different approaches to a good life. We tend to imagine a cosmopolitan world as an egalitarian one, and while it’s true that some people
can emerge from hard times with their integrity intact, it is the exception that proves the rule. For most, a life of struggling to make ends meet isn’t conducive to a cosmopolitan ideal.
A good deal of the debate going on in universities and the larger culture about diversity focuses only on one side of the equation. Because many questions are concerned primarily with acknowledging the right to speak and be heard as members of distinct group or culture, questions of inequality central to integrity are left aside. Parties to culture wars clash over the question of whether some groups and cultures are subordinated and unable to articulate their voices in the standard curriculum, or on the other hand, whether there are some universal standards that need to be maintained. These are important debates that I have engaged in myself, but they are not sufficient.  We tend to exaggerate how much progress will be made toward the recognition of diversity through the culture wars alone.
Neo-liberal economics has narrowed questions of equality and diversity. While there have always been tensions between issues of social justice and interests of property in America, the balance has shifted in favor of property more than at any time in our history since the Depression. All other social needs have taken a back seat to the “necessities” of the new global economy, which are used to attack workers’ rights, environmental issues, and cultural rights in the name of “economic competitiveness.”
Without a deep commitment to social equality, the terms of neo-liberal social order lead in the direction of another and troubling conception of diversity. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it an elitist conception of equality and diversity. Such a society might have equal access to positions of authority and power; that is, under-represented groups might gain their fair share of positions of authority, but the society as whole remains highly stratified and unequal.
No doubt some will object here: we are, they will say, far from achieving equal access to authority and power. Women and minorities still face discrimination. Such objections are correct but misdirected. Many reformers have assumed that if we were to achieve some equality in positions of authority and power, that this would either by itself create a more equal society, or that, once in power, members of under-represented groups would challenge existing authorities. I don’t think it automatically follows. Once ensconced in positions of power, people tend to accommodate to it, not challenge it. Peter Townsend got it right: the new boss is much the same as the old boss.
A managerial/professional class has become a permanent feature of the new economy. It certainly includes tenured faculty, though hardly adjuncts. Most of these professionals have done well since the 70s. Affluence has, however, led to changes in the identifications of professionals. Barbara Ehrenreich notes that 30 years ago the lifestyle of the young academic was more like that of the department secretary. Today, she argues, they pursue the goods that will identify them with the distinction of the upper classes. Thus professionals often hold liberal or progressive values, but their inner interests have become tied to property and consumption.
Contrast the affluence of professionals with the reality of inequality. Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the American Wealth Gap, by Chuck Collins, Holly Sklar, and Betsy Leondar-Wright, notes there has been an increasing polarization between the top 5 percent and the bottom 40 percent in the American economy. From 1983 to 1995, the net worth of the bottom 40 percent of households declined by 80 percent.
African-American income shows a similar gap. According to William Julius Wilson, Harvard sociologist, the richest 20 percent of African-Americans earn 50 percent of the total income earned by all African-Americans. The black middle class has quadrupled since the 1960s, yet a third of African-Americans are worse off now than in 1968. It does not appear that the rising tide has lifted all boats: quite a few, it seems, are taking in water. As upper-income African-Americans have grown in number, they have lost touch with others who have fallen deeper into poverty.
Barbara Ehrenreich has also pointed out some of the conflicts between the successes of one group of women in gaining entry into professional and managerial positions and the impoverishment and exploitation a larger segment of women in the new economy. Between the 70s and the 90s, the percentage of female students entering business, law, and medical school rose from 10 percent to 40 percent. However, the growing gap between rich and poor hasn’t led to a renewed activism. Ehrenreich believes to that some affluent women have turned their backs on the less successful. There has been no effective outcry among affluent women against welfare reforms or for health care.
Taking diversity seriously means addressing all the social conditions of a truly diverse society. An important step towards diversity is to guarantee access to education. Even for middle-class students and parents, the burdens of education have become too great: imagine how high that hurdle is for the working poor. Higher education needs to be more democratically organized and free (or at the very least it needs a free sector of quality education), open to all who can do the work.
I am only too aware that such proposals, which I consider only minimal, appear in the current climate as unrealistic. It is odd that policies in place in American society though the 60s, (low or free tuition at state universities) are so easily dismissed. It is equally unsettling to hear that we can’t afford a greater commitment to education in a time of extended economic prosperity. What has really changed is our commitment to each other. Changing social conditions require a renewed spirit of activism. Don’t expect it from materially comfortable aging professionals.