The Unintentional Effects of Seemingly Mundane Public Policy

Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, and Ryan Avent recently engaged in a fascinating back and forth discussion regarding the role of highways in the development of contemporary American suburbs.

The precise causality—did highway construction cause suburbanization?—is, of course, debatable. But the discussion points to a larger connection between metropolitan development, inequality, and seemingly mundane, unrelated public policy.

Interstate highway construction owes its development to Cold War paranoia and military mobilization. With the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the federal government devised a transportation plan that would facilitate easy travel for military equipment and soldiers. An extensive highway system, coupled with the affordable production of automobiles and within the context of a consumer-driven economic culture, precipitated suburban housing development.

Of course, that doesn’t exactly explain the racialization of suburban residential patterns. Indeed, it was purposive, intentional, deliberate policies—particularly red-lining and other discriminatory lending policies facilitated by the Federal Housing Authority and officially sanctioned by the federal government—that laid the groundwork for a metropolitan environment initially typified by “chocolate cities, vanilla suburbs.” Within the context of deindustrialization, decentralization, and other impersonal (read: non-deliberately racial) changes in the urban economy, the basis for metropolitan inequality is clear.

That’s not to discount the role of overt racism—you know, like block-busting, racial steering by real estate agents, violent defense of urban and suburban neighborhoods against black “invasion,” and so on—in the creation of racially homogenous suburban neighborhoods. These processes have been well documented by many talented historians. Not to mention racially-charged, failed political struggles over issues like busing and policing that precipitated white flight. And labor market struggles, played out in employment practices and labor union policies. But racism alone can’t explain metropolitan development and residential patterns. No, racism and racial animus shape, and are in turn shaped by, public policy.

Highways made residential development both feasible and desirable in the outer metropolitan fringes, as a suburban populace could easily commute to employment opportunities located within the urban core. It doesn’t exactly explain why individuals and business eventually fled from the inner city (we can thank zoning and tax subsidies for that), but it does illuminate the structure that made such residential patterns possible. It created social and physical distance from which many suburban homeowners could leverage political power, acquire economic resources, and cement inequality.

A policy as simple as highway construction—intended to make military mobility across the nation easier—can nevertheless have dramatic, unintended consequences. Mundane policy may not directly cause, by itself, resulting patterns of disparity; most social phenomena are, after all, multi-causal. Still, it can lay the groundwork—the structure—from which metropolitan inequality materializes.

Direct cause, in this context, matters less than unintentional effect.

Racial Inequality and the Rhetoric of Responsibility

Last Spring, Brown University economist Glenn Loury presented at Harvard sociology’s Workshop on Race and Black Youth Culture. He titled his talk “Culture, Causation and Confusion: Why Bill Cosby is Wasting His Time,” engaging with the pervasive “rhetoric of responsibility” frequently applied to blacks in the United States. As Loury argued, our public discourse is saturated with demands on the so-called black community to police its own ranks. This rhetoric of “black communal responsibility” suggests that the solutions to racial inequality are cultural, and the ill-defined “black community” should therefore bear the burden of “fixing” its collective deficiencies.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility is a common response to discussions of racial inequality, and black folks seem to be hearing it from both sides. From within, you have Bill Cosby, John McWhorter and even President Obama stressing the role of black parents in the cultivation and education of black children. From the outside, you have a slew of white conservatives, wide-eyed and incredulous, wondering why the black community just can’t lift itself out of disadvantage.

The problem, as Loury astutely pointed out, is that categories such as “black community,” “black culture,” and “black leaders” are political constructs void of intellectual definitions. So-called “culture talk” imputes a sense of groupness where no such political collectivity exists. African-Americans, as a race, have no institutional structures to police themselves and bring about the kind of solutions culture critics (like Cosby) demand. They don’t hold conferences or summits—at least, none that all blacks are required to attend by virtue of their racial identity. There aren’t any meeting minutes we can rifle through to make sure they are working to “fix” their collective culture. This notion of an aggregate “black community” was invented ex post facto with a distinctly political motive: impute agency on a racial category where none exists, and wipe our hands clean of any societal responsibility for inequality.

That’s not to say that racial groups don’t share certain histories, privileges, or disadvantages by virtue of their socially constructed racial identity. Moreover, many racial and ethnic groups often share certain traditions, rituals, and affinities. As a Jew, I frequently refer to myself as a “member of the tribe,” implying both a shared allegiance and shared history with my fellow Tribesmen. Such is the general case for other races and ethnicities in the U.S., African-Americans included.

But that doesn’t mean they can be expected to act like a civic collectivity or a civic organization and, by extension, engage in civic action. Who elected Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson to be the spokesmen for the so-called black community? I don’t seem to recall a campaign or election for these self-appointed leaders. Yet the “black culture” rhetoric, purported so frequently in public discourse, assumes their civic appointment. The ability of blacks to act as a distinct group is taken for granted—an assumption of their collective agency. But a racial category is not a group with civic powers. Nor is it a collective body with a unified political or cultural agenda. As University of Chicago sociologist Mario Small has argued on countless occasions, there are multiple black communities and multiple black cultures.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility imputes collective agency where none exists, assuming group-level cultural deficiencies while ignoring the society-level creation and maintenance of racial inequality. The logic is problematic and condescending at best, dangerous and incendiary at worst. It at once obscures the tremendous diversity among African-Americans and distracts our attention away from the actual causes of inequality. Whatever “the black community” is, we can’t exactly depend on “it” to solve, or do, anything without the institutional means to solve, or do, anything. Assuming communal responsibility is dead-end rhetoric, promoting a self-fulfilling prophecy of disadvantage. It serves a political purpose, but does little to advance our intellectual understanding of inequality.

Individual communities can certainly make important contributions toward greater social equality. But you just can’t expect an artificially constructed group, based on an arbitrarily constructed racial category, to solve inequality at the national level by itself. You can’t expect action where no institutional ability to act exists.

Sporadic Anger is Not Political Insurgency

The most recent spats over healthcare (or “Obamacare,” depending on your political persuasion) have centered on the “American-ness” of the angered, predominantly middle-aged white folks throwing fits at town hall meetings across the country. Republican commentators are lauding their civic engagement, while Democratic leaders are deriding their uncivil outbursts. The public debate has recently reached the absurd, with each side jockeying for sole control of the ever-effective “Nazi” insult. Apparently, somebody is Hitler incarnate—we just don’t know if it’s President Obama or Rush Limbaugh.

The ensuing public discussion underscores the point I made last Friday: that the GOP’s “anti-community organizing” rhetoric is antithetical to actual political mobilization. I’ve watched the Youtube videos, and it’s almost pathetic to see potential political activists relegated to mere rabble-rousers. With just a skeleton of an organizational structure, these folks could really make a substantial difference in American political culture, shifting us away from the dead-end debate over their patriotism and instead focusing the national discussion on their concerns and misgivings.

Of course, if that were the focus of the debate, their worries might be assuaged with the logic of Obama’s healthcare plan. Or maybe not. Either way, the current state of affairs is producing roadblocks from all angles: from the outside, the visible anger at these town halls is framing the national discussion on emotions rather than substance, while lack of organization is impeding the “protestors” efforts from the inside.

Sean Hannity has called their actions “as American as apple pie." Michelle Malkin has lauded their “counter insurgency.” Other conservative commentators graciously refer to them as “demonstrators.” Real Americans realizing their democratic duty and standing up for what they believe in. A group of modern-day Paul Reveres, they claim.

As persuasive as these pundits are, I can’t say I’m convinced. Without organization, these outbursts are ephemeral. Organization aids sustainability, and there really isn’t a centralized effort to harness their collective anger. Our failure to discuss political organization is in large part due to our faulty understanding of past political action and protest. Many Americans still hold the historically inaccurate, romanticized vision of Rosa Parks as a courageous individual that was just too tired to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus—a single, individualized event that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. But Parks worked as a secretary at the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter for years before her famous act of civil disobedience. In fact, that single, courageous act actually took months of planning—and Parks wasn’t even the NAACP’s first choice to be their poster child for the bus boycotts. The original woman chosen by the NAACP—fifteen year-old Claudette Colvin—became pregnant a few months after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, and the organization feared her pregnancy might delegitimize their cause as a result.

Effective political action occurs after lengthy planning sessions, prolonged mobilizing efforts, and strong leadership. Unfortunately for the Republicans, it doesn’t come through dispersed, decentralized angry outbursts.

Of course, political organizing may be the necessary action to enact change, whereas sporadic yelling and screaming at the town halls may be effective at thwarting change. And at the end of the day that’s what these folks want, after all. But let’s not confuse this for something it’s not. Civic engagement, sure. Political protests? Demonstrations? The seeds of a new social movement? Not by a long shot.

The Reverse of Discrimination is "Not Discrimination"

I recently went on a road trip with my uncle, traveling from Boston to New York for my brother’s high school graduation. As we drove through western Massachusetts, our conversation eventually drifted to employment and the economy. In what would prove to be a fascinating discussion, my uncle began to recount his first job interview after college. He graduated from Northeastern University in the ‘70s—right around the time President Nixon institutionalized affirmative action and quotas served as the nation’s predominant employment policy. He had worked in Northeastern’s admissions office for a few years, so when a full-time position opened up at the University of Michigan’s admissions office, he made the 14 hour drive halfway across the country to interview for the job.

A funny thing happened during his interview, however. According to my uncle, his interviewer immediately apologized as he entered the room. ‘Look, I hate to say this,’ the interviewer said. ‘But there’s no way we’re going to be able to hire you. If you were a woman or black, I’d hire you on the spot. You are totally qualified, but we’ve got to fill our quotas.’ Naturally, my uncle was none too pleased, commenting plainly (but forcefully) that acts of “reverse discrimination” are unfair. I did my best to defend affirmative action policies, discussing their historical necessity, noting their negligible affect on white male employment, and even waxing philosophical about the entitlement associated with staking claim and ownership over falsely constructed “spots” in colleges or the workforce. It was all to no avail, though. Cliché as the phrase is, my uncle was “passed up” for the job, and there wasn’t much I could say.

We’d be naïve to trivialize my uncle’s experience or write it off as just another “reverse discrimination” fairytale. It happened. It’s a reality. The problem was not that this was an exaggeration; instead, it was that my uncle forgot about his lifetime of advantage as he harped on that one, single experience.

See, claiming reverse discrimination is a lot like recounting your golf score. It’s always the one or two bad rounds that leave the deepest, most painful impressions. You always remember the bogey on the 9th hole, but never the birdie on the 10th. Somehow, the abundance of good holes are taken for granted, while the one or two missteps are amplified and taken as indicative of the entire round. Sure, my uncle remembers getting passed up for the job with the University of Michigan—an event that (probably) happened the way he said it did. But, in the process of recounting this single experience, he forgot about a lifetime of job interviews in which he directly benefited from his whiteness or his gender. In all the jobs my uncle interviewed for, how many times were applicants immediately rejected for having “black” sounding names? How many women were turned away because employers didn’t think they could handle the stress of the job? How many times did my uncle’s employment prospects benefit from acts of statistical discrimination that weeded out potentially qualified minority applicants?

Still, many others that hide behind the “reverse discrimination” mantra often have few, if any, personal experiences to justify their outrage. But the golf analogy still fits. These folks are the ones that throw a fit over their buddy’s 10-stroke handicap. That’s not fair, they complain. But in their moral grandstanding, they forget all of their privileges that negate—and even surpass—their buddy’s handicap. These privileges may include the country club membership that afforded them hours of practice on the course, the childhood golf lessons their parents paid for, or the hand-me-down Callaways their father didn’t need anymore after he got his new set of clubs. Their buddy with the 10-stroke handicap was just allowed to join the country club recently, had parents that couldn’t afford to invest in clubs or other activities, and never inherited any valuable assets. In short, the two golfers didn’t begin the round on equal footing.

With some folks, claims of reverse discrimination are proxies for implicit assumptions of black or brown intellectual inferiority. The operative word here, however, is some. Other folks have had very real experiences with so-called “reverse discrimination”—it’s just that these isolated instances fill a disproportionate share of their memory. The real problem with the “reverse discrimination” debate (besides the logically incoherent label “reverse discrimination”—what is the reverse of discrimination anyway? Not discrimination?) is our inability to honestly discuss the issue. The question shouldn’t be whether or not this incident—or others like it—actually occurred. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, how often does this happen, and to what effect? Such acts rarely occur anymore, and the effect is almost always minor or marginal. And, of course, the folks that decry “reverse discrimination” have almost always benefited from other instances of privilege. They just tend to forget about them.

Mobilizing Under an "Anti-Community Organizing" Banner

Reeling after a disappointing November, the Republican Party has suffered a case of organizational schizophrenia as they try to retool the Party’s message. Republicans just aren’t on the same page when it comes to the GOP’s future organizing agenda. On the one hand, you have the election of Michael Steele to the head of the RNC—a wise move politically, if you took it as a sign that the GOP was trying to court favor from our nation’s rapidly expanding minority electorate. If that were the case, Steele isn’t doing a very good job. When asked last month how he plans to attract more diversity to the Republican Party, he replied, “My plan is to say, ‘Ya’ll come.’” A member of the audience then shouted, “I’ll bring the collard greens,” to which Steele added, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad.” Stay classy, GOP.

Then you have the self-proclaimed, awkwardly labeled “birthers.” Admittedly, these folks aren’t a major part of the GOP’s formal organizational apparatus; in fact, quite a few conservatives have distanced themselves from the group as of late. Still, their sentiments represent a very real and influential part of the GOP’s electorate—one that the GOP can’t afford to alienate, politically speaking. However their battle-cry—“Obama’s a citizen of Kenya!”—is a little too specific (among other things) to remain an energizing Party message.

Then there’s the “RINOs”—Republicans in Name Only. RINOs tend to be moderate or even liberal Republicans. Meghan McCain is arguably the most visible RINO, speaking for a generation of young Republicans that tend to believe in traditionally conservative ideals like small government, but also tend to favor socially liberal positions such as gay marriage. While they represent a sizable portion of young Republicans, the RINOs seem too ideologically nuanced in our current two-party system to become the main voice of the Republican Party.

Of course, there’s also a core group of overt racists, typified by folks like Pat Buchanan. In the wake of Sonia Sotomayor’s congressional hearings, Buchanan wrote an article for HumanEvents.com in which he suggested that John McCain would be President if only he had done a little more race-baiting during the campaign. Seriously. Buchanan concluded that the key to future GOP success is simple: court white males disenchanted with affirmative action, using modern day Willie Horton-style images. Seriously. This election certainly brought out vicious racial animus from the Republican side of the aisle, but I don’t foresee the RNC using this as an actual organizational strategy anytime soon.

But no rhetoric has caught as much steam amongst Party loyalists as the Michelle Malkin-inspired “corruption of community organizers” mantra. Indeed, the dominant message of the Republican Party currently centers on a fundamental disdain for community organizing—a sentiment that runs much deeper than simple contempt for the “community-organizer in chief.” While often racially tinged, the rhetoric is certainly pervasive, and every sector of the Party seems to be latching on. But is this really the best Republicans can do?

The problem with anti-community organizing rhetoric is simple: How do you mobilize potential constituents and supporters when your main organizing strategy is to mock organizers? It makes no sense. It’s like trying to sell a product by making fun of your competitor’s marketing division. It reeks of arrogance, assuming your product is so good that it sells itself. The thing is, the GOP’s product just isn’t that good. Forget my snark for just a minute and really think about it: How effective can deriding community organizers be as an organizing philosophy? It’s a logical contradiction. You can’t organize without organizers; you can’t mobilize without mobilizers. Without a centralized organizing structure, you just aren’t going to win many elections. Good luck recruiting constituents when you mock, ridicule, and racialize the act of recruiting.