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.

A Modest Proposal

Part 4 of 4

Now one question is, how did the matter come to be so desperate? The ground has already and pretty deeply to be laid before the distortions of the subculture can display such – malevolence. But it’s just a symptom. It’s not the disease.

That part is cultural history. It’s too much to undertake: another argument into which everyone can insert their own propositions for the missing premises.

Go back to the question of remedies. What can be done?

You can’t arrest the whole subculture. It’s not practical. In fact you can’t hold the subculture as such legally responsible, or even morally to blame, except in an extended sense. Even if you could arrest all the actual perpetrators, it wouldn’t do any good. The subculture would just grow more. (By the way, the list of actual perpetrators in an incident like to the one at State Fair probably includes people who aren’t physically or socially members of the subculture in question. It’s enough that the incident gets its impetus, or example, from members of a culture so predisposed.)

You can’t buy it out either. It’s not just a matter of the price or the source of funds. It’s that there can be no reasonable assurance the public will get what they’re paying for.

Maybe trying to deal with the subculture as a whole is a false path. Maybe all society (society as a whole and not just the dominant culture) can do is change the subculture just enough so it doesn’t grow so many malefactors.

But changes in cultures don’t take place in the short- or mid-term. It could be that public policy doesn’t have enough consistent focus to bring about a change that might have to be generational. This suggests that change would have to come from somewhere else. Leaders of many stripes have said it has to come from within the community (as opposed to the “subculture”) itself; many community leaders are making their best efforts with the resources they have in hand.

I have a suggestion – two suggestions. Two of the most ubiquitous kinds of organizations in the community are day care centers and churches. Suppose the aides in the centers were not just sitters, but were trained and certified to socialize their charges. Or suppose they had the support of highly trained professionals on the public or a non-profit payroll. Either way, if they were more professional, they’d have to be better paid.

Then the churches. They have influence; what could they do with resources? Suppose, just for example, a church received a modest payment – a referral fee, if you will – for directing persons at risk to public or private social services organizations acknowledged to be effective at what they do. A fee for enrollment in a program and another fee for successful completion.

If the day care centers were effective, in twenty years, you might see some results.

It’s just a suggestion.

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.]

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.]

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.]

Occupy this! or, What the Chief Said

When the newscast about the Occupy [fill in the blank] movement blocking the North Avenue bridge came on the other night, I observed that the only people they were inconveniencing were those coming home from work – a gesture more likely to make enemies than friends among the 99%. A few minutes later Chief Flynn made essentially the same point: there weren’t any bankers trying to cross the bridge, and those who were live in a district with 35% unemployment.

I guess that puts me in sympathy with Chief Flynn then, doesn’t it? Not really: my sympathies are with the working poor. I just happen to agree with the Chief that the working poor were among the ones inconvenienced by this unlawful action.

I agree with a couple other points he made as well. But one point he didn’t make and couldn’t be expected to make is this: the Tea Party has a much sounder political strategy.

Some people say the Tea Party and the Occupy movement have a few things in common. They’re both angry; the anger is initially expressed in a specific direction, but without a specific program; and – at least to all appearances and at the start – they possess grassroots credentials.

Go further. Both were (or came to be, or seem to have been) appropriated by political professionals behind the scenes. Both were…diverted?...into programs that aligned better with the original anger than with valid public purposes. And the one got “their” candidates elected, while the other – got themselves arrested.

Hey! This isn’t Egypt. The police are our friends and they have been at least since 911. Efforts to make them seem like enemies for political purposes are not only wasted but also destructive of those purposes. Here too I agree with the Chief. He did the Occupy movement a favor by not arresting them, just because that was a dumb and self-destructive tactical objective for the movement and what I would like to hope are its real purposes.

And yes, I do have a better strategy in mind, but I’m not done criticizing the present one yet.

The tactics of winning the masses by defying those symbols of state authority that happen to be immediately present was more than 100 years old in the ‘60’s. Then all it did was align the Silent Majority behind the reelection of Richard Nixon. That anyone would expect a different result today, particularly when the Tea Party is already well organized and successful, surpasses belief. Lawless actions and police-baiting can only gain net adherents for…the Tea Party.

I could expect a few college students to deceive themselves on that point. But if there’s really union money behind this, even if it’s just for “infrastructure” (food, shelter, signage), it’s good money badly spent. Go back to the people on the No. 21 bus trying to get home that night after work: did this action make them more likely to vote for a democrat next time around? to vote at all?

Because that’s the real problem. How the 99% could ever elect a republican also surpasses belief. I submit – I urge – the proposition that whenever a republican wins a majority in an election, a majority of the 99% have voted against their real economic interests. The question is how to make the people understand this the way the Tea Party made the people “understand” that the government is picking their pockets.

But just exactly those people who can be deceived to vote against their real interests, are the people who will not be persuaded otherwise by lawless behavior. A strategy to win elections is called for…

…and just when you think the movement has enough energy to execute one, they show up in New Hampshire and heckle the President – as if Wall Street were his constituency.

No: this movement is non-partisan. It’s also no help. And it’s not going to become a political counterweight to the Tea Party.