In a Word

Part 1 of 4. Draft begun August 9, 2011. [Originally posted on November 29, 2011, in order of composition. Reposted on January 10, 2012, in reading order.]

The explanations people give of incidents like what happened at the Wisconsin State Fair last summer are varied, but it seems they all have one thing in common.

The Journal-Sentinel’s community columnists, if not well worth reading, certainly meet the criterion for being selected: they represent a variety of viewpoints. The newspaper’s paid columnists add to that variety, yet all of them together never quite get to, much less beyond, the common ground I perceive.

One community columnist blames the whole thing on the want of sexual mores (my term, not his) among the rioters. I think the connection is indirect at best, but both tendencies do occur together in certain, let’s say for now, cultures.

Another emphasizes that young white folks are perfectly capable of behaving as badly as the young black folks behaved on this occasion, just as black adults can be as good parents and citizens as white adults. It all depends, I guess, on what culture they were raised up in, and not on their color.

And some people would not like to go so far, and say instead that it’s the family, not the culture, that’s responsible when a young person participates in a wilding. But then I’d like to ask them, what sort of culture creates families like that?

A third community columnist wanted to get to the “root cause” of the matter, without being able to specify what it is – apparently thinking our political and community leaders would be able to identify it forthwith if they would just act upon his simple advice.

The paper paid Mr. Kane for his view of the matter. He took two or three kicks at the can.

One try was aimed at a couple South Side aldermen who blamed the incident, like the others (Mayfair Mall, Riverwest), on an impliedly defective culture, without being able to what they mean by using the word “culture” in a context like that.

In another post, Kane asks the question whether it’s a hate crime. Hate, like malice is a state of mind. As an element of a crime, it must be inferred from circumstances that can be directly observed and put into evidence. According to Chief Flynn, I think wisely, if all the perpetrators are one color and all the victims another, that’s evidence of race antipathy. Whether it’s a motive, whether it’s hate: that’s one for the jury.

Then a black mother was murdered with her child watching by a number of “deviants” who were also black. Kane blamed the juvenile justice system and dysfunctional parenting.

So, as much as he would like to claim black culture for himself, or at least deny it to the aldermen, he can’t help but use it as an (unthematic) premise in his (inconclusive) arguments: a culture of hate, a dysfunctional culture.

The official editorial position was that Mr. Barrett ought to use his well-earned moral authority to – to do what? – address the matter? remedy the defect? First you’d have to decide whom to make an impression on, and then figure out how to make it. I suppose if you’re a member of a certain culture, the only impression mayoral posturing would make, if any at all, would be negative.

Mr. Stingel’s notion is, not to blame society, but rather hold the thugs responsible. Well, responsibility is a moral and legal concept. We lay the blame once we have been able to make a moral judgment. This is altogether possible and suitable to do, and none of the columnists, paid or unpaid, have failed to reach the correct result.

On the other hand, the question why opens up several avenues of explanation. And normally, explanations are expected to be objective. That’s true of cultural explanations too. Sociologists and anthropologists describe cultures; they don’t judge them. That’s unfortunate sometimes – if you are dealing with a defective culture.

Yet, it’s a whole lot easier to fix something if you can explain it first.

The Question of Culture

Part 2 of 4. [Originally posted on November 30, 2011, in order of composition. Reposted on January 10, 2012, in reading order.]

So far, nobody seems to be able to begin to explain phenomena like the State Fair mob without reference to cultural phenomena; then not really understanding the latter, they finally can’t explain them at all. The difficulty doesn’t stop there. Since we are trying to explain criminal phenomena in terms of cultural phenomena, we are pretty much forced to make a judgment about the culture. Even though ordinary people do this all the time, it’s not considered politically correct, especially for politicians, and in certain circles it is considered definitely unscientific.

So the threshold question is: under what circumstances is it possible and proper to decide that a particular culture is defective? And even this question has to be clarified before it can be profitably answered.

First, one would have to be willing to admit that a culture could be defective. Is that true of the German culture that grew up under the Nazi ideology, politics, and foreign “policy”?

If so, it’s arguably true of that whole German culture. No-one is trying to say any such thing about the whole black culture. No, if you want to say it, say it about a black sub-culture (we owe the notion to academe, but if it helps, so be it) – perhaps even say it about a subculture that is not exclusively black, but is otherwise possible to identify, isolate, and judge defective.

The biggest problem about culture is that, as a concept, it’s flexible and expansive. It’s like the National Geographic. Anything you find in it – geology, paleontology, anthropology, archeology, urban planning, green ecology, outdoor adventure – it’s all geography. All that and more – artifacts, ephemera, subtext – is culture.

This flexibility makes culture an academic playground. Sociologists and anthropologists at least gather data, even if they can’t conduct experiments. Maybe they can be considered scientists. But cultural historians base their free-floating interpretation on a mere selection of facts made according to a mere prejudice – philosophers call it begging the question. This is the very worst manifestation of academic political correctness, and the cause of what they used to call the “culture wars.” Are they over yet? Did anybody win?

This is of little importance and possibly no interest to our columnists, but it clearly shows how vexed the problem of cultural interpretation really is.

The last point is to remember that a culture is that in which something grows, which is favorable to the growth of that thing, like a culture for bacteria. So we are looking for a culture that grows deviants, thugs, dysfunctional families, and the like.

The Culture in Question

Part 3 of 4. [Originally posted on December 12, 2011, in order of composition. Reposted on January 10, 2012, in reading order.] 

My theory is this: a culture seeking a place within an established, dominant culture must either come to terms with that culture or else itself be distorted. In the present case, the dominant culture is white and the newer culture is black, or better, urban Midwestern black.

This newer culture, the theory continues, falls into two parts, a majority, who have “come to terns” with white culture, and a rather small but disproportionately active minority, who haven’t.

Obviously a lot depends on whether a culture, or a subculture, manages to “come to terms.” We’re not talking about assimilation here. So how do you do it? Do you have to join the dominant culture? like it? appreciate it? respect it? Merely tolerate, understand, or attempt to understand it? I Think the last condition alone is sufficient. And the condition is reciprocal: it applies both to the dominant and to the newer culture.

Just for instance, what happens if you do come to terms? Lots of white immigrants have come into, say, Milwaukee, as a new culture: Germans, Irish; then Poles, Italians; Jews; more besides. Though always identifiably different, they had the advantage of being white, which must have made it somewhat easier to come to terms. But make no mistake, the Yankee worker was no less afraid of the Germans in the middle of the 19^th century, than both were afraid of the Italians and Poles at its end. And then they all became afraid of the black worker in the next century; and finally everyone together, regardless of race, of the Latino. In other words, real economic interests may be, and usually are, behind ethnic and race antipathies between dominant and newcomer cultures.

Think of this phenomenon as coming to terms in a negative sense: versus a perceived common enemy. In a positive sense, the coming to terms is a natural and normal process by which the dominant culture first becomes more inclusive, and finally becomes more diverse, as understanding passes into appreciation and respect.

What happens if you don’t come to terms? What sort of people don’t? and why not? Where does that leave them? Do they ever form a genuine, permanent culture of their own? Hard questions, the answers to which could be parsed nearly infinitely over a nearly infinite series of examples.

There’s another series of questions.

We know whom we would like to hold responsible. Though we can’t hold a demographic responsible, we can ask what the demographic of the malefactors is. But aren’t they already pretty well known? Anyone can easily make a top ten list on their own. And then we could ask, which of the items on the list are causes, and which are effects?

It’s the same with remedies. The demographics are also lists of problems, social problems, economic problems – real human suffering, deprivation, mental and physical disease – that public policy has from time to time, more or less, tried to remedy. Anyone can make their own list of such attempts; the longer your memory, the longer your list. Most anyone can see that first the public patience, and next the public money, are running out.

That’s one of the reasons why some would like to deal individually and legally with the malefactor, and not socially and politically with his or her culture. Maybe that might seem easier and cheaper. My theory says, try to understand the culture first as a defective culture, one that hasn’t come to terms and has thus become distorted, then formulate your remedies.

So accept for a moment the theory that a defective culture is not a valid culture. Assume it’s a culture that produces almost complete alienation from the dominant culture, indeed, turns everything on its head. With respect to the subculture in question, I’ll mention a couple things I have direct knowledge of, and a couple of things I have inferential knowledge of.

“Kill cops.” They spray painted it on my garage. But if you even try, you get arrested. Thirty years later, if you’re still alive, you can’t live it down.

On a traffic sign: Stop “snitching.” I suppose the snitch police will be your judge, jury, and executioner if you do. And then they’ll be judged.

These are among the most tactically improvident ways imaginable of establishing a viable culture within a dominant culture that employs, and deploys, the cops.

In no particular order: The law is meaningless. The family is meaningless. Education is meaningless. All lies of the dominant culture or illusions of the majority black culture.

No contradictions. Adolescent judgments. Then you get caught. You can hope it’s not too bad a deed. I suppose the worst thing is light treatment for the first offense. They should be put to shame before all the socially responsible elements instead. They must feel shame. Somehow they manage to shame each other.

The dominant culture is rejected as a measure of what it is right or wrong to do – and not just in a moral or legal sense, but in a practical sense, in the sense of what it is possible and advisable to do today. With feeble understanding, they try to set up the opposite as their standard. If the dominant culture is evil, so are all its manifestations. Truly the world turned upside down, but worse, because if you act on these premises, you come into direct conflict with the dominant culture and those who are able to coexist with it – a world that now becomes terribly and finally real.