Conservatives and Systems

This popped up on my Facebook page last Thursday (note from the future: link broken!). It's a clip from Bill O'Reilly talking about the recent events in Baltimore where he says, "This is not a country that promotes white supremacy… There’s no systemic effort to keep black people down in America. To perpetuate this kind of vicious propaganda is atrocious."

While not assuming that O'Reilly speaks for all conservatives, his remarks do seem to hit upon a theme that I've been thinking about for awhile. Conservatives in general seem unable or unwilling to understand the role of institutional forces in our daily lives (I'm speaking in broad generalities, and I'm sure that there are plenty of well thought-out conservatives who do wrestle with these issues, some of my friends among them). O'Reilly thinks that when liberals refer to the lingering racism in America, we somehow are accusing people of a "systemic effort to keep black people down in America." While this might be true in some places still, this is not at all what we mean.

Racism is systematic, but not in the sense that there is some coordinated will among whites to oppress blacks. We mean that life is different for black men and women. We mean that black men and women are referred to by the rest of the country as black men and women, instead of just "men and women." We mean that the aggregate of language, history, culture, economic opportunity, education, and media perception in this country creates an environment in which being black defines people's lives. Being white does not define my life, which is exactly why being white is a "privilege." We mean that history has weight.

Some brief examples might elucidate what I am getting at.

On August 14th, Jon Stewart did a great segment on the differences in black lives and white lives in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Stewart plays a clip of Hannity explaining how he conducts himself during a traffic stop while he is carrying his gun. Hannity says that sometimes he steps out of the car, lifting his shirt to display the firearm. It's incredible that he can say this without imagining, just for a second, what would happen if a black man stepped out of his car as an officer approaches and reached down to belt line.

I have a friend who earned his doctorate in sociology from Notre Dame. We were talking once about this classes he had to teach there. He said he was amazed at how his generally well-off, generally conservative students had a very hard time in sociology because they just didn't comprehend that social circumstances and structures could have such an influence on people's lives. They had been taught their whole life to work and study hard, that their effort makes a difference, that this country offers you opportunity if only you would try. So the idea is foreign to them that some people, no matter how hard they work, just can't get ahead in this life, that which county you are from can affect your adult income to the tune of thousands of dollars, that they are not unique and beautiful snowflakes studying at a prestigious university because they are among the most deserving in the nation, but rather a product of the same system which produces riots in Baltimore; they just happen to be on the other side of the seesaw.

Last, my own journey to the Left really began in graduate school. I read and studied how social structures give advantages to some over others and how the ensuing differences are enshrined using categories like religion, the sacred, intrinsic, natural, and freedom. I realized for the first time in my life that I was truly a social being, that so much of who I was stemmed from the time period and circumstances in which I was brought up. I felt that weight of history.

But when I read the words of conservatives or listen to their speeches, this awareness of the power of social structures seems largely absent. In its place is the rhetoric of the American Dream, of rugged individualism, and of personal responsibility. Now, I understand that personal effort makes a difference in life, but I am convinced that it matters much less than we are taught in grade school or on Fox News. The market doesn't simply reward hard work; this country is not a meritocracy. Where you live, what school you go to, who your teacher is, how much money your parents make, what language you speak, how tall you are, if you're a man or woman, all these factors contribute to how successful you are, how much money you make, and how you are treated by others.

So why these differences between liberals and conservatives? Is it the type or level of education? Is it the divide between urban and rural? Perhaps city-dwellers are faced with effects of institutional power in a more visceral way than folks in small towns. Perhaps it's a lingering individualism left over from the Protestant Reformation and the Puritans that helped found the country? Only individual souls get saved based on the individual choice to accept Jesus as your savior. Maybe it stems from a faith in the market: individual choices to buy and sell, choices by which we are judged to be worthy or not, economic Darwinists struggling to survive.

From Ted Cruz's 2016 primary campaign website:

Listen for it during this next election cycle: no conservatives will talk about the differences between the middle class and the wealthy (at least they won't mean what liberals mean when they say "middle class"); they won't mention systemic racism or how to address the issue; they won't talk about the need for swift action on climate change (how could the little actions of humans add up to change the entire planet?), they won't talk about the generational nature of poverty or the failure of the public school systems with their property-tax funding regime. Instead, they'll talk about making America great again, restoring freedom, reducing the size of the government, individual rights to own guns, and religious freedom. But no real solutions will be given because they don't know what the problems are or on what level of society they exist. The problems we face are not the problems of individuals making poor choices: they are the problems of an entire civilization built on cheap labor, endless waste, depleted resources, and profits above all else. Our system itself is sick and dying, and it's the system itself that needs redemption.