Can Dems Offer an Inspiring, Unifying Vision for America's Future? Part I
THE AMERICAN LEFT, as embodied by the Democratic Party, finds its fortunes at a low ebb. Having lost the presidency to a known felon, liar, vulgarian and ignoramus with the maturity of a ten-year-old (and that’s probably a slander to most ten-year-olds) and disdain for our democratic norms and traditions (and the Congress to a Republican Party completely in league with this traitor to our democracy), we Democrats cannot in all honesty avoid asking ourselves, what are we doing wrong? There are some, of course, who argue that the Left has made no significant mistakes, that the real problem is the terrible ignorance/moral deficiency/stupidity of many American voters. This group’s recipe for going forward involves pushing the same platform the Party has been pushing, except maybe harder and louder, and with smarter outreach. Others are calling for an in-depth rethink of the Party’s DNA. Some of these want more Bernie Sanders-style populism, others argue for moderating the Party’s stance on divisive culture-war issues, instead focusing on the kinds of bread-and-butter, kitchen-table issues that affect the large majority of working Americans. Some seem to think the Party should just try to occupy some mathematical middle ground between the Far Left and the Far Right.
My views on the matter, as will be seen, share elements with both Sanders’ calls for a fuller social democracy (but not the democratic “socialism” to which he and AOC give homage, a critical distinction) and the “kitchen-table” school of thought; along with, however, several elements not being discussed by anyone on the American Left.
David Brooks recently commented on PBS News Hour that the Democratic Party has since 2016 defined itself largely as “the Party that’s against Donald Trump.” What has been missing, Brooks opined, is that the Party has not managed to create a strong and coherent definition of what it is for. Where is the vision that average Americans can get enthused about, the way former incarnations of Americans got excited about the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society?
I would suggest that there actually are a number of things the Democratic Party is clearly for, such as affordable, universal health care (however achieved), affordable housing, the earned income tax credit, affordable child care, good public schools, unions, Social Security, protection of the environment and many others. The problem that Brooks identified is more a factor, I would argue, of the fact that the Party’s “big tent” coalition includes factions with widely differing priorities. While most Democrats subscribe to the elements of the kind of classic FDR liberalism (or, in other terms, “social democracy”) I just enumerated, others seem motivated primarily by hot-button culture-war issues involving identity, immigration, abortion, sexual orientation or gender identity. The popular press, and especially social media, ever enamored of the new, novel, and especially the bitter and contentious, devotes a great deal more coverage to these emotionally visceral topics than the staid stuff of traditional liberalism. Due to their explosive nature, these topics also easily generate more interest (and clicks, and shares) among voters who haven’t the patience, bandwidth or in some cases capacity to follow arcane policy debates about tariffs, farm subsidies and fiscal policy. As a result, the social democratic program at the core of the post-FDR Democratic Party has been lost in the shuffle, while positions on contentious, divisive culture-war issues have come to define the Party for many Americans. What’s most unfortunate about this is that the positions espoused by many Democrats on these divisive issues are frequently at odds with majority American public opinion. Only about 20 percent of Americans believe, for instance, that abortion, except in extraordinary circumstances, should be legal up until the full term of pregnancy (most women don’t even support this position), yet in a 2020 Democratic presidential debate only Joe Biden, out of seven candidates on the stage, answered affirmatively to the question as to whether they would support any restrictions on abortion. To cite another example, a Gallop 2023 poll found that only 26 percent of Americans believe that trans athletes should be allowed to participate in female sports, yet the Biden administration supported a reading of Title IX (the federal statute requiring schools to provide equal gender access to sports programs in schools) that supported that position. And when Massachusetts congressperson Seth Moulton announced recently that he opposed trans participation in female sports, he was roundly attacked by several fellow Democrats.
America’s Cultural Divides
American culture has experienced profound changes since the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. Not all Americans have participated equally, however, in these changes. Conforming somewhat to a rural-urban divide (and also to a college degree, no college degree divide) Americans living in rural, hinterland areas of the country are more likely than their urban counterparts to remain attached to many elements of a pre-1960s American culture, including traditional religious beliefs; reverence for a nuclear family centered on a married-for-life heterosexual couple; glorification of pioneer-style self-reliance; respect for those who succeed in business; respect for law and order; and a general conception of American culture as being that of the previously overwhelmingly majority Euro-descendant population. It almost doesn’t need pointing out that many of the more salient elements of the current “progressive” agenda, shared by most Democrats, run contrary to these “old-fashioned” American values: an antagonistic attitude toward Christianity and in many cases religion in general; a commitment to normalizing non-heterosexual and non-monogamous relationships, amending the traditional definition of “marriage,” and even redefining the very concepts of “man” and “woman”; a greater propensity than their traditionalist counterparts to consider the State, rather than the individual, responsible for one’s well-being; among some quarters on the Left (read Bernie Sanders, AOC) an apparent disdain for “capitalism,” and business in general; a greater willingness to see laws ignored or broken when a progressive cause is at issue (Occupy Wall Street; legitimization of illegal border crossers; relativizing Black Lives Matter rioters), and a greater tolerance of, or relativizing of law-breaking in general, particularly when done by members of groups the progressive Left believes don’t receive equal treatment; and a view of American society without any dominant or even common culture, instead seeing the United States as a sort of international neutral zone, where various cultures occupy their own, separate spaces, vying for influence in and control over shared cultural arenas like movies, television, music, art galleries, education, holidays and so on.
There is another divide in America that often, but not always, parallels the urban-rural divide and the college-no college divide: this one involves feelings about race-based discrimination and claims for racial redress and special treatment: an area broadly covered by the term “identity politics.” Speaking generally, most Americans in the “progressive” camp feel that race-based discrimination remains a major problem in U.S. society, and also that the government should address special and differing measures toward American citizens based upon their perceived membership in various racially or racial-ethnically defined groups. Others, by contrast, feel that race-based discrimination is no longer a significant factor in American life and object to special considerations and privileges given to American citizens based upon their perceived membership in various racially or racial-ethnically based groups.
Building a Social Democratic Super-Majority
I do not, at this point, wish to take sides with either the traditionalist or “progressive” view on any of the issues just enumerated, but simply to establish that such divides exist. I also want, at this point, to stipulate a few other things. First, that my purpose in this article, stated in the title, is to explore whether the American Left can present a vision to potential voters that is both inspiring and unifying. I would also like to stipulate that when I speak of a vision that is unifying, I am not talking about just unifying the Democratic “base,” or even about unifying just enough voters to win the next election by one or two percentage points. If the American Left wants to effectuate real change in this country, it will need to generate substantial majorities in the House of Representatives, as well as filibuster-proof majorities in the United States Senate (60 or more seats)—and it must do this, as well as occupy the presidency, for a period measured in decades, not four-year terms. In cases of divided government (the presidency, House and Senate not all held by the same party) very little substantive legislation can be enacted, with the same problem adhering if the controlling party does not hold at least 61 Senate seats (to override filibuster rules). And if the Left cannot maintain unified control for longer than one or two terms, any good work it does will be reversed when the Right regains control. (If the kind of political dominance I’m after sounds like a pipe dream, consider that the Social Democratic Party of Sweden controlled that nation’s government continually from 1932 until 1976: no wonder they are the global model for successful social democracy!) I should point out, further, that since so much of political importance in the United States is left to state governments, and because hostile state governments can do much to stymie federal initiatives they don’t like, if the Left wishes to become the predominant governing force in America, it should also aim to dominate a majority of state governments: three-quarters of them, preferably, which would enable necessary constitutional amendments—such as abolishing the Electoral College—to be promulgated (constitutional amendments requiring approval by three-quarters of state legislatures).
So, keeping in mind that we are aiming at a decades-long political dominance at both the federal and state levels, and that we aim to do this by offering a political program that is both inspiring to, and capable of unifying, something over 60 percent of the electorate, what do we do? How do the two divides I just wrote about (urban-rural and identity politics) affect this project, and if they are preventing us from inspiring and unifying the critical mass of voters we need for long-term political dominance, how might we neutralize those effects?
First let me say that I believe that yes, the political divides I have described are preventing the Democratic Party from inspiring and unifying a super-majority of Americans. In general terms, I would say that the Democratic brand has, to some extent, come to consist of a clearing house for grievances from discreet sets of American citizens (or the special interests groups who claim to represent them), chiefly based upon race or ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation and gender identity. This is all of course part of the Party’s long and proud tradition of standing up for citizens who are persecuted for being different, in one way or another, from the majority. A proud tradition, yes. But we must bear in mind also that if we seem to be primarily focused on various groups who are not the majority, we should not be surprised if the majority feels that we aren’t concerned about them—and gravitates to a political flavor that can make a credible claim of focusing on the average voter. Put differently, we must recognize something that is axiomatic: you cannot gain a super-majority of the electorate by telling the majority you’re not very interested in them or their concerns. I will deal with specific instances later in this article, but for now I simply want to establish the truism that to attract a majority, we must speak, at least most of the time, to the majority.
The question then arises, what or who is that majority? How do we define them?
My answer to that question is straightforward: I will define our majority, those whom the Democratic Party should be constantly addressing—and this is especially pertinent to the social democratic policies I will propose—as “working Americans.” You will note that I do not use the phrase “working-class Americans,” with that term’s connotation of manual laborers and factory workers (the “proletariat” of Marxist philosophy, and fascination of the “old Left”)—but it’s not that I want to exclude manual laborers and factory workers. Far from it. It is rather that I wish to suggest a much broader group, a group involving anyone who depends chiefly upon their income from work to get by, as opposed to those living on inheritances, collecting rents, or already-accumulated wealth. I believe this group of people share many of the most basic experiences of living, as well as common expectations of their governments. And in regard to building our super majority, this group—especially if we include, as we should, older, former working Americans relying chiefly on Social Security income—contains the great majority of American voters. Unfortunately, this super-majority of working Americans is currently riven by the culture and identity-politics divides I have referred to, and I will make suggestions about dealing with those divides later. First, though, I’d like to address those areas where our majority (“working Americans”) share common interests, and suggest the core programs that might both inspire and unify them. In general, the program I will propose can be defined as a fulsome “social democracy”: that is, a system based chiefly upon a private-enterprise economy (“capitalism,” if you will) but with a robust state making sure that the civilization we build is both just and humane.
All working Americans want decent jobs with decent pay, and our Left program should make this so through a program of guaranteed work or training at a living wage. Centered around regional employment hubs, and closely coordinated with two-year colleges, unemployed individuals who cannot find jobs will be connected with employment matching their competencies; if such jobs are not available, the claimant will be placed in a training program geared toward gaining competencies needed in regional industries. All jobs, as well as training programs—and these latter will require 35 hours per week of in-person attendance—will pay a living wage tailored to zip codes, thereby taking into account vast regional differences in the cost of living. I have described such a program in my book, America’s Social Democratic Future, and also on The Social Democrat website (thesocialdemocrat.us). Skilled workers who lose jobs due to outsourcing and other such disruptions will additionally benefit from a type of wage insurance, to maintain their incomes while seeking new employment and engaging in re-skilling.
All working Americans want opportunities for their children, and our Left program should make this so by providing quality education from pre-K through secondary, and college for those who demonstrate an interest in and aptitude for advanced education. Non-college-bound students must be served through intensive vocational training, beginning in secondary school, combined with apprenticeships in real-world environments, so they are ready to begin satisfying careers when they graduate. The new Left program will do everything possible to close educational achievement gaps with robust, universally available after-school programs featuring not only tutoring and counseling, but also supervised play and recreation. Our children are our future, and we will know when we have achieved a truly just and humane society when we can look any six-year-old child in the eyes and tell them that they have as great an opportunity to participate in the social, cultural, economic and political life of their community, state and nation as any other child.
All Americans need decent housing, and our new Left program will not throw up its hands in impotent befuddlement, ignoring the fact the United States is now in the grip of an affordable housing crisis for working people. A mandatory living wage tied to regional housing costs should make rents affordable, but the root problem of insufficient supply will not be solved without adding additional units to the nation’s housing stock. Government should tailor zoning, regulations and tax incentives to encourage private developers to build more affordable housing and, if necessary, step in and supervise the building of such units itself. Allowing the shortage of housing for working Americans to continue cannot be an option for the American Left.
All working Americans want and need affordable health care. This can be achieved either through our currently existing combination of ACA plans, with adequate subsidies tied to income level, and Medicaid, or through a single-payer system such as “Medicare for All.” I believe that the latter would be the best and most efficient choice, but the main point is that every American should be insured and at a cost that is affordable. In the current environment, with so many citizens already committed to the ACA or company-provided plans, the best immediate sell is likely to be better support through the ACA and Medicaid expansion.
All Americans want a secure retirement, and for working Americans this chiefly means a dependable Social Security and Medicare. Both of these programs, which serve upwards of 80 million elderly Americans, are rapidly heading towards insolvency, with Social Security predicted to be unable to pay full benefits sometime over the next decade. We have been aware of these programs’ financial problems for decades. We have also been aware of some very straight-forward solutions, but Congress has chosen to continually punt the issue down the road, as Republicans stonewall any effort to shore up the programs through adjustments to payroll taxes affecting the wealthy. Our Left program must contain very specific proposals for shoring up Social Security and Medicare, through such measures as eliminating the earnings cap for FICA contributions.
All American want themselves and their children to be safe on our streets and in their homes, and the Democratic Party has a credibility issue with a majority of Americans when it comes to violent crime. As the party who cares about the safety and well-being of each of our fellow citizens, we should have a zero tolerance policy toward both physical and sexual violence of any kind. Those who perpetrate serious violence against their fellow-citizens should be kept apart in a rehabilitation regime, and should not be released into the general public until we can be certain that they will not hurt anyone else.
Americans also want the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat to be free of poisons that will damage their health and that of their children. Polls consistently show that large majorities of Americans are also concerned about the affects of climate change and want government to address global warming. Our Left program must support strong protections for the natural environment, and a commitment to transitioning away from our fossil-fuel-based energy system.
To stay competitive in a rapidly changing world, working Americans will benefit from the development of industries of the future and the infrastructure that will support them. Programs such as President Biden’s Infrastructure and Investment Act, or his administration’s CHIPS Act are examples of this kind of proactive industrial policy. Our Left program should support such efforts.
The issues I have just enumerated should be the core of Democrats’ appeals to voters over the next several years: good jobs at good wages; quality education for all children, including robust vocational education for the non-college-bound, and highly resourced after-school centers to help close achievement gaps; an unqualified dedication to making sure there is a decent, affordable dwelling for every working American and working family; affordable health insurance coverage for every American; a solvent Social Security system paying living-wage benefits; zero tolerance for acts of violence; protection of the environment, including the transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy; and government encouragement and support to develop industries of the future, along with the infrastructure to support them. Where new revenues are needed to support these programs, they will come from higher marginal income tax rates on individuals making more than $150,000 per year and couples making more than $250,000 per year, taxes on wealth, inheritance taxes orders of magnitude beyond what they are today, and making the most of leases for the extraction of resources from government lands. Our new Left program for “working Americans” will encourage and reward work, and will not be shy about increasing taxes on money passively earned through rents, ownership and ever-inflating asset values.
Returning to my initial question: can such a social democratic project both inspire and unify a majority of Americans sizable enough to establish a multi-decade political dominance for the Left? I believe that the answer to that question is—or at least should be—yes. Picture an America in which every child is given the resources they need to thrive, regardless of the status or condition of their family, and where young people coming through secondary school, if not preparing for college, are empowered to identify a career path they find appealing and gain the training and experience needed to begin a satisfying worklife after graduation; an America where workers who lose jobs through no fault of their own—whether it be from foreign competition and outsourcing or home-grown economic dislocations—will be aided in either finding another job at suitable wages or placed in training programs paying a living wage. Imagine an America where every working American, and every working American family, has access to affordable housing that meets their needs; one where all retired workers live in dignity and financial security; and where every one of our fellow citizens can see a medical practitioner when they encounter health difficulties. Imagine an America where all of our streets are safe at every hour of the day and night; where we protect our air, water and green spaces; where we wean ourselves from polluting, fossil-based energy sources; and where government encourages and supports the development of the kinds of 21st century industries that will improve our standard of living and provide good and good-paying jobs for all. I find this message incredibly inspiring, and I believe it is one that a powerful majority of Americans could be persuaded to get behind.
Except.
Except the culture wars—those divides I described at the beginning of this article. The problem is that working Americans are split somewhat equally between those subscribing to a post-60s cultural mindset, and those subscribing to a more traditional value system; and in alienating tens of millions of traditionally minded voters we have foreclosed the possibility of attracting the super-majority we need to effectuate real change in America. We Democrats constantly bemoan the fact that Republican-voting working Americans are “voting against their own (economic) interests.” But this just proves that people aren’t driven solely—or not even chiefly—by material considerations. If someone feels that aborting a healthy six-month fetus is the heinous murder of a human being, they’re not necessarily going to vote for politicians espousing a no-restrictions abortion policy, just in exchange for lower healthcare costs. If they believe that breaking the law is wrong and fear violent crime, they’re not going to support politicians who refuse to take adequate measures to protect law-abiding citizens from the criminally minded, in exchange for a child tax credit. To think we can buy voters’ loyalty with material goods, while demeaning their moral judgments and commitments, is to sell people short. If we wish to inspire people, it is precisely to their moral core that we must address ourselves. The challenge, for us Democrats, will be to learn to fashion a message that touches the fundamental moral bases of our super-majority, alienating the smallest possible number of voters, yet staying true to our core values.
Let’s now look at some of the specific issues that create these divides, and see if we cannot find a way to neutralize them, so they do not continue to prevent working Americans from coming together around a common program that will answer to the needs, desires and fondest hopes of the vast majority of Americans. And I will start by discussing what may be the most heated of these divides, that involving “race.” Let me stipulate at the outset that, for ease of discussion, and because they represent a distinct and particularly stark case, my discussion on “race” will focus mainly on Americans racialized as “black” (ARBs). I will comment, at the close of this section, on other racialized groups.
Identity Politics and “Race” (And a Sensible Reparations Plan)
First let me state that I, following the view of the vast majority of social and biological scientists, consider “race” to be a social, made-up concept. There is only one “human race,” only one homo sapiens, and people who we tend to classify as “black” people, “white” people, “Asian-Americans,” and etc. are no more different, one from the other, than brown, black, blond and white horses. One of America’s most egregious historic mistakes (one shared, I should add, with most other pre-modern cultures) was to fall into the fallacy of believing that people who exhibit different superficial physical characteristics—determined by the climates in which their distant ancestors lived—were somehow different species of human beings. What’s worse, this fallacious concept was for centuries used to brutalize, enslave and otherwise deny decent treatment to those considered to be of a different “race” than the Euro-descendant majority of the American population—especially those racialized as “black.” Since the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s, efforts have been made, through “affirmative action” programs, to make up for centuries of discrimination against ARBs, giving these citizens special advantages in gaining access to higher education, career opportunities, business loans and more. The raging divide the country now faces regarding the made-up concept of “race” involves the question of whether these “affirmative” action remedies, sixty years on from the passage of 1964’s Civil Rights Act, are still appropriate. The answer one supplies to this question typically hinges on two other questions: are ARBs still being harmed by racial discrimination; and, if they are, are continued affirmative action policies likely to improve things?
The question of whether ARBs are still being harmed by racial discrimination, a hot point issue in itself, is two-fold. First there is the questions of whether ARBs are being harmed by present, ongoing racial discrimination. Second is the question of whether, even if racial discrimination is not a significant factor today, are ARBs still suffering the aftereffects, or sequelae, of prior racial discrimination. At this point I will boldly state my conclusions on both of these questions, without attempting to justify them (a lengthy rhetorical process I have already undertaken in a series of articles—“America’s Tortured Discourse on Race”—on my Social Democrat website). To the first question—whether ARBs are being harmed by present, ongoing racial discrimination—it is my belief that while race-based prejudices about ARBs still exist in some quarters, in the generality of American life there are no significant barriers keeping Americans of any perceived “race” from fully participating in the cultural, social, economic and political life of their communities, states and nations. Yes, there are still Americans racialized as “white” (ARWs) who hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about ARBs (and also about other Americans not racialized as “white”). And there are also, it should be added, copious numbers of Americans racialized as “black,” “Asian,” “Latino,” and etc. who hold prejudicial attitudes towards those racialized into categories other than theirs, including no small degree of prejudicial attitudes about people racialized as “white.” While I believe that such ignorant attitudes must be countered wherever possible, and that we must always maintain laws on the books to deter and penalize actual instances of race-based discrimination, I believe that government policy can only do so much to police peoples’ thoughts. In the case of affirmative action programs, we must begin to consider whether the resentment and backlash they cause are worth the diminishing need for, and diminishing returns provided by, them. The Democratic Party is now experiencing the manifestation of a basic physical law: every action induces an equal and opposite reaction. A constant drum beat of how non-Euro-descendant Americans need special treatment, accompanied by a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) critique of both “whites”—and even “whiteness” itself—was bound to lead to pushback on the part of Americans racialized as “white,” particularly those lower-income and working-class Americans racialized as “white” who do not feel in any sense “privileged.” In the more immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights revolution, when the a majority of decent Americans racialized as “white” were acutely aware of the tremendous injustices they had witnessed, first-hand, being perpetrated against their “racialized as black” fellow citizens, there was a general willingness to support measures aimed to rectify the situation. Today, sixty years on, when ARBs appear to have successfully entered every area of American life—including the presidency (Obama, of course), major corporate CEOs (Marvin Elison of Lowes, Rosalind Brewer of Walgreens, to state just two examples), or billionaires (Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Tyler Perry, Tiger Woods)—and when many ARBs enjoy widespread admiration among large majorities of all Americans (Oprah and Obama, again; actors like Will Smith and Morgan Freeman; musicians like Stevie Wonder and Beyonce; sports figures like Michael Jordan or LeBron James) it is getting harder to convince Americans that people racialized as “black” just can’t “catch a break.”
To the second question in my analysis—even if racial discrimination is not a significant factor today, are ARBs still suffering the after-effects, or sequelae, of prior racial discrimination—I answer an unqualified “yes.” First, we must consider the many millions of Americans still alive today who lived some portion of their lives prior to the Civil Rights era, when apartheid and unequal treatment were the accepted norms in American life, particularly and moreso in the American South. We can hardly suppose that a man or woman, racialized as “black,” born in 1940 and therefore living the first 30 years of their lives before 1970, were not in myriad ways stymied, thwarted and just outright abused at various junctures of their lives, with almost certain effect on their future success. By way of extrapolation, we must also suppose that the abuse suffered by these pre – Civil Rights era citizens racialized as “black” affected, though to a considerably lesser degree, the lives and life chances of their children and, though to a still less degree, their grandchildren. In the broadest sense, the systematic oppression of people racialized as “black” prior to the landmark Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s (the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968 respectively) is certainly one, though not necessarily the only, factor explaining the generally greater rates of poverty, and lower rates of achievement in academics and other areas, among ARBs today.
Given these conclusions, my suggestion for dealing with working Americans’ divide on the question or “race” contains two major elements. First, Democrats should propose a plan for reparations, highly targeted to those Americans, still alive today, who spent part of their lives in pre – Civil Rights era America. I want to stress here that I find recent calls from some quarters for “reparations for slavery” and the like to be ludicrous. Slavery ended 160 years ago, and I am quite certain that having an enslaved person as an ancestor, in and of itself, has no bearing on whether an American citizen in 2025 can achieve success. It is such proposals—for example, recommendations of a California commission appointed by Gavin Newsome to distribute $1,000,000 to every resident of California racialized as “black”—that contribute to the sentiment among many working Americans that Democrats have lost the plot, if not their minds. Instead, here is how the targeted reparations program I propose would work. Our model case is an American, racialized as “black” and an American citizen at the time, who had reached the age of adulthood (18) by 1968, the year the last of the major protections against racial discrimination had been implemented at the federal level (the Fair Housing Act). We will then assume that any shortfall in such a citizen’s net worth and/or income, compared to the median net worth and income of Americans racialized as “white,” born the same year, is attributable to the discrimination they suffered prior to 1968. Once having made this calculation, any such differences will be made up by the federal government. For those born before 1968 but who had not yet reached 18 in that year, compensation will decrease by one-eighteenth for each year after 1968 that they were still minors, so that a person reaching age 18 in 1969 will receive seventeen-eighteenths of the amount received by a person who had reached 18 by 1968, a person reaching 18 in 1970, sixteen-eighteenths of the full amount, and on down to a claimant born in 1985, who would receive just one-eighteenth of the full amount.
Such a plan, I believe, would go a long way toward bridging the divide among working Americans on the subject of race. It compensates those who, we all must agree, suffered real, concrete discrimination, while allowing that the Civil Right era did happen, and that citizens racialized as “black” have increasingly been mainstreamed into American life. On the broader issue of the more generalized sequelae of apartheid and prejudice (some, for example, speak of the lack of generational wealth, or even of a post-generational trauma which can make it harder for younger ARBs to function), reparations funds disbursed to all ARBs born prior to 1986 (a person born in 1986 is not yet 40 years old today) will filter through and into much younger ARBs, even down to today’s children, thereby greatly reducing the disparities we see in resources available to this racialized cohort. For ARBs who have longed for decades and still long for some recognition of the harm that was done, and some retribution, this plan offers concrete measures to compensate those who suffered most. In doing so, it also makes a powerful symbolic statement, opening the door to a reconciliation movement that by rights should have happened in 1970. Better late than never! In terms of bridging divides among working Americans: by not over-reaching, and by confining reparations to those who suffered, in their lifetimes, actual discrimination, we avoid rubbing against the ingrained traditional-culture attitude of self-reliance: that people shouldn’t get “something for nothing.” We allow that the nation has made mistakes, while also affirming the reality that such errors have been largely recognized and corrected.
I have still not answered, I realize, the other question I raised at the beginning of this discussion of “race,” and that is whether affirmative action programs are still worthwhile. I should perhaps preface these comments by stating that the issue may be largely moot, in a practical sense, in that the Trump Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling striking down race-based preferences in college admissions is likely to lead to a generalized prohibition of such programs not only in education but also in employment, government programs and all other areas of American life. And I will confess that this is a rare instance where I find myself aligned with this awful Court. I believe that not only affirmative action programs, but the very idea of breaking Americans into separate racialized groupings, is both wrong morally and, from the point of view of establishing a fulsome social democracy, a strategic error. Wrong morally because I believe that the human family is one, and because I cannot see for the life of me how it makes sense to place my “Asian-American” first cousins (they simply call themselves “Americans”), who were my closest childhood playmates, into a different, supposedly antagonistic, group than the one I am placed in, nor that my great nephew, whose mother is racialized as “white” and father as “black,” be placed in a separate, antagonistic category not only from his “white” grandfather, my brother, but even from his own mother, my niece! And racializing Americans is a strategic error for the Left because by collaborating in the dividing up of Americans based on the fallacious concept of “race,” we are doing the Right’s dirty work for them: divide and conquer.
I am well aware of the argument against advocating a “color-blind society” (the kind desired by Martin Luther King, where people are judged “not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character”). According to this argument, it is only by placing everyone into a racialized category and continually monitoring, in the aggregate, how the various groups score against one another can we determine whether ARBs (and other racialized groups) are getting their fair share. I thoroughly reject this argument, which is largely based on the idea of “equity” developed by Ibrim Kendi and others in the so-called “anti-racism” school. According to this idea, if one racialized group’s aggregate measures on such metrics as income, college admissions, prison terms or CEO posts are less positive than those of another group, the reason must always be a systemic racism being practiced against the lower-performing group (or preferential treatment for the better-performing group). This crackpot idea, taken to its logical conclusions, would tell us that Americans of South Asian origin, who are America’s wealthiest cohort by far, are getting some kind of superior treatment as against Americans racialized as “white” (ARWs), whose aggregated incomes are far lower; or that Americans racialized as “Asian” are getting special consideration in elite college admissions, an area in which they, when aggregated as a group, far outstrip every other group, including ARWs. We would also have to absurdly conclude that ARWs are facing discrimination in both the NFL and NBA, where their representation on starting lineups is a fraction of that of ARBs, although ARWs make up a far greater proportion of the wider American population. Kendi, and others who push his “equity” concept, wish to remove any individual responsibility for success, placing any shortfall in a person’s achievements on the presumed sins of the wider society. In his parallel universe, there are proportionally more ARBs in prison because of racism, rather than the more obvious explanation: according to FBI statistics, ARBs commit crimes at far higher rates than other racialized groups (in the case of violent crimes—those most likely to lead to long prison sentences—seven to eight times more). In terms of exacerbating divides among working Americans, this view sets on edge the teeth of those who hold the traditional and time-honored American value of self-reliance, where individuals take responsibility for their lives, neither expecting others to make their lives work nor blaming others for their failures. Kendi’s view is repugnant to common sense and true fairness; it sees only groups rather than individuals (and groups based upon the most superficial of characteristics, physical appearance); and in doing so, it is deeply patronizing to all ARBs who believe that their successes in life came about because of their own efforts. I suspect that this kind of patronization plays a large part in the increasing desertion of ARB men, particularly, from the Democratic Party.
My final proposal here then is radical: that we Democrats stop categorizing people on the basis of the made-up concept of “race.” I cannot see any good reason why we should continue to pay forward a fallacy that has caused so much misery, and now renders any unity within our society virtually impossible. We should propose a law such as exists in France—where has prevailed since the 1789 revolution a strong attachment to the universality of French citizenship—prohibiting the government from categorizing citizens by the made-up concept of “race.” We will of course violate this principle one time—in establishing our system of reparations. But only one time. All recipients of these reparations awards will be required, in exchange, to sign a type of indemnification, stating that the award is a full and final payment for any wrongs committed, and that the signer will make no further claims on any United States government—federal, state or local—for harm caused by past racial discrimination. We will begin on a new footing, with all working Americans coming together, without silly references to where their ancestors lived 500 years ago, to build a social democratic paradise for all working Americans.
My views on this matter, I should add, rest on a conception about American citizens that others may not share. That is, I believe that the vast majority of Americans, regardless of the racialized categories into which some wish to place them, are fundamentally decent, wish their fellow human beings well, and are committed to fairness—when such fairness is placed in terms that make good common sense. You might say that I believe in Lincoln’s “better angels of our natures.” I believe that the fallacy of racial essentialism (that having different superficial physical characteristics marks a person as a fundamentally and ineradicably different type of human being) has been rejected by America, and that most Americans take each of their fellow human beings at face value, judging them, as MLK would have wished, on the “content of their character”—and seeing in them, in many cases, a potential friend. Now, if one believes, to the contrary, that most Americans are basically mean and selfish, and prefer to practice bigotry and unfairness, one may wish to cling to a zero-sum, all-against-all racialized tribalism. Perhaps such people were brought up on House of Cards and Game of Thrones, while I, an older American, was brought up on Bonanza, Leave It to Beaver and the original Star Trek. Or perhaps their lives have not brought them into fairly close contact with hundreds and even thousands of their fellow Americans. Mine has, and I can think of a very few who weren’t committed to decency and fairness, and who didn’t care about the welfare of all of their fellow human beings.
Finally, there is one last, but not unimportant, reason I advocate the end of affirmative action and other programs that rely upon the racialization of Americans. It is my view that unreasonable and illogical claims for racial redress—such as demanding $1,000,000 payments to descendants of slaves; the view expressed by “Project 1619” that race-based slavery is the defining element of American history, and that America remains a deeply and darkly racist dystopia; the more general message of Ibrim Kendi and his school that any failure of a person racialized as “black” is always attributable to the misbehavior of people racialized as “white”; the endorsement of violent and criminal behavior of rioters and looters when claims of racial redress are being made, or a special tolerance of criminal behavior on the part of ARBs, on the theory that racial prejudice justifies it—actually increase racial animosity and prejudicial attitudes. Whereas, in the past, race prejudice may have taken the form of believing that ARBs were less intelligent or less moral that ARWs, much of today’s remaining animus against ARBs is along the lines that ARBs (or people claiming to speak for ARBs) are spreading false and defamatory ideas about a nation that many Americans love and revere; that they justify crime and violence; and that they wish to blame ARWs for every problem encountered by an ARB, even if it is of the ARB’s own making.
I wrote that I would address, after discussing Americans racialized as “black,” racialized groups other than ARBs. My comments will be brief. First, my conclusions about present discrimination against ARBs apply, but moreso, to other racialized groups. While Americans racialized as “Asian” or “Latino” may be the objects of discriminatory thoughts and actions by some increasingly vanishing cohort of backward Americans, I do not believe that such factors are significant enough to impair the ability of individuals classified in this way to thrive in modern American society. In regard to sequelae from pre – Civil Rights era unequal treatment, not only did these other groups represent very small portions of the United States population prior to 1970, but discrimination against these groups was never nearly as virulent as that against ARBs. Also, distinct from the case of ARBs, members of these other groups voluntarily came to the United States as immigrants (legally or illegally); their ancestors were not dragged here against their will. For all of these reasons, I believe there is not the same justification for a reparations program to such groups; further, the idea would generate overwhelming opposition, thereby damaging the attempt to institute such a clearly justified program as the one I have proposed for ARBs. We cannot fix every historic wrong, and in fixating too much on the past—via a performative and virtual-signaling “who struck John”—I fear we are relinquishing our ability to build a brilliant civilization for our present and future.
Aside from issues surrounding “race,” the specific culture-war issues I believe most divide working Americans are immigration, abortion, women’s rights, attitudes about “capitalism,” and a constellation of topics that all fall under the general heading of non-normative sexual orientation and gender-identity practices.
For remainder of this article, see "Can Dems Offer an Inspiring, Unifying Vision for America's Future? Part II.
