I have just started in listening to the 2011 Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered by Charles Murray. A video has been posted online here, and that’s where I’m watching it.
You have to see this. Murray is not merely a datanaut, he’s one of the wise men of our day.
Some samples from the first few minutes of the lecture. Murray is talking about his forthcoming new book.
The thesis of this book is simple. Over the last half-century the United States has developed a new lower class and a new upper class that are different in kind from anything America has ever known. The second contention of the book is that the divergence of America into these separate classes, if it continues, will end what has made America America …
It’s not the existence of classes that is new, but the emergence of classes that diverge on core behaviors and values …
The American project consists of the continuing effort, begun with the founding, to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit. They can come together voluntarily to solve their joint problems. The polity based on that idea led to a civic culture that was seen as exceptional by all the world. That culture was so widely shared among Americans that it amounted to a civil religion: “the American way of life” — a phrase that we actually don’t hear much any more, but used to be taken for granted. That culture is unraveling …
America is coming apart at the seams: not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class. And that leads to the title of tonight’s lecture: “The State of White America, 1960-2010.” …
Derb, living on Long Island, you know as well as anyone else that the foremost reason we are rapidly moving into two utterly separate societies is the effete political class' stubborn (vengeful?) refusal to enforce the law on low-skilled illegal immigrants. Of course, the chattering classes love to talk about "growing inequality," but they avoid like the plague any honest discussion of the brutally obvious source of it -- maybe run that by Charles and see if he's willing to be the one who finally makes this point?
We now have a small country's worth (15 million and their children) of illegal immigrants, about half of whom have less than an 8th-grade education, and who show no desire to become part of American society, or even learn the language.
That sounds like a pretty clearly defined separate group -- a cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic Lesotho within America. We have developed a clear lower class, and we have imported it, as we continue to do. Now, given that we (like any society) already have a native-born base of low-to-medium-skilled workers, those guys are getting placed on the dole while their jobs get Hoovered by illegal immigrant workers. Being low-skilled and permanently or semi-permanently on the "unemployment insurance" rosters saps morale and hinders social mobility.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>America is coming apart at the seams: not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class.
OK, class, not race. I get it.
>And that leads to the title of tonight’s lecture: “The State of White America, 1960-2010.”
And instantly we are back into race, not class. I don't get it.
I confess to being increasingly frustrated with Mr. Murray (on other matters) and this does not help. If someone wants to slam me at this point that my lack of understanding obviously results from me being a "stupid white boy," I won't contest it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNo, I don't think the problem is specifically illegal immigrants, but immigration in general, preceded by the post-WWII baby boom. It is simply the ready availability of labor, in relation to the skill set demanded.
Now, before some of you whine about how hard it is to find a particular skill set, it is because your criteria are too narrow. That is my point. And before others whine that when you try to hire someone to sell yuppie coffee at your shop, the applicants are so poor, that is also my point: You repel those who are better.
When labor is scarce, management must make an effort to recruit well, and to retain those hired. Generally, this requires management skills and the willingness to accommodate. But when labor is surplus, management need not have much skill, need not recruit well, and need not accommodate the labor it has. This has been the tendency ever since the time when baby boomers first entered the labor market, being in surplus even at a time when immigration was just starting to ramp up. Thus, there was a difference between the opportunities available to the earliest baby boomers, those who came later in the baby boom, and post-boomers.
I have seen this in education as well as private industry. It is not related to the discipline or political affiliations of those concerned.
For example, I recall that when I first entered California tech industry in the early 1980s (having done something else prior to that) I was immediately struck by the organization: Management exclusively WASP types from the Korean War era, sitting in their offices chain smoking and (in some cases) handling their real estate and other investments on company time; workers largely immigrant. A year or two later, I delivered a presentation at a well-known Canadian firm, and noted that the two bosses in the room were WASP as described above, yet every single non-boss was an Asian. Every one.
What was remarkable, in all such cases, was the disregard of management for the workers. That's because the workers were not precious. The management, of an older generation were precious (in their own minds). Why should they put out much effort? The workers were not in a position to complain. They were happy to be working.
This is not limited to tech industry. In the lower levels of higher education (community colleges, where teaching rather than research is supposed to matter, circa 1990s), the following could happen: A faculty committee largely consisting of near-retirees who were hired at a time when faculty were scarce, and who no longer would meet minimum standards if they had to apply for their own jobs, sit together with persons of a later generation who were preferentially hired by gender or race. They cancel recruitment for open positions if there are not a large enough number of fully qualified applicants. Got opening? Two fully qualified, most excellent applicants? Position canceled! That never happened in the older generation.
The surplus of labor, and excessive credentialism, has meant that persons must rely on networking to get in and get ahead. Networking is whom you know, not what you know. The only reliable way to network is to agree with those in the network. Thus, we see cadres of act-alikes and think-alikes. This is not due to factors such as cultural Marxism or libertarianism; it is due to labor surplus.
And before some of you praise the wonders of capitalism that has provided so much employment for so many people, I ask, what are they doing? Making cell phones so that anywhere I go, I can hear someone next to me cussing at his (or her!) friends? Made high-definition TVs so we can watch reality shows? What?
I blame Ronald Reagan, among others. Yes, Ronald Reagan. He "broke the back of inflation" by inducing a job-loss recession. This relies on a model that blames all economic problems on labor. No mention of his amnesty or his war funding. No mention of the increased costs of housing due to population glut, unknown in his generation.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy can't they post a transcript? I can read a transcript a lot faster than I can watch a stupid video!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusenobookcontract -- hear hear. Perhaps this was meant to be ironic or clever in some way??
"America is coming apart at the seams: not seams of race or ethnicity, but of class. And that leads to the title of tonight’s lecture: “The State of White America, 1960-2010.” "
huh?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseComing apart at the seams? Actually, being unraveled by those who benefit from the unraveling. First, the George Bush/Pinch Sulzberger boomers; then, even worse, the Obama generation. Squandering the past, plundering the future.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseds & nobookcontract --
I presume, without yet having watched the lecture, that Murray is addressing himself to "The State of White America" precisely *because* he doesn't want to make an issue of race. He took this same tack in "The Bell Curve".
If you look at America w/o regard to race, that is as a whole with all the races mixed up in your datasets, whatever findings you come up with, this or that person will immediately (& quite possibly rightly) quibble w/ you and say "Well, yes, but you've ignored the fact that black people face enormous difficulty! Your findings are worthless!" or "well, that may be true among the white overpopulation who make up most of the country, but the more interesting facts about our hard working mexican immigration population have been completely elided." and the like.
The way to engage in meaningful sociology w/o regard to the complicating factors of race is to confine your study to only one race. For the United States, looking only at the long term trends among the largest racial group is a way to compile information that is not tainted by the fact of a differing composition of races or differing treatment of those races or any other confounding factors.
But, on the other hand, what I take to be your assumed larger point is completely correct: any time any study or talk or passing comment is focused on "white america" -- unless, of course, it is a pejorative comment made in solidarity with the hatefully oppressed minorities suffering each and every day in this benighted land -- it is automatically racist & evil and should be subject to unthinking hatred. There could never be perfectly valid, rational reasons to study white americans or think logically about them or even notice them except to condemn them for their inherent vileness.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse