Social Democracy and Multiculturalism

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42 Responses

  1. Will Truman says:

    I am one of those “Scandanavian success can’t easily be transferred to the US” people. Ethnic multiculturalism is a part of it, but only a part. We’re also geographically huge nation with a large and dispersed population. We have a degree of regional diversity that seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. For those reasons, as well as our national temperament, we get stuck a lot on who owes who. In a way that I don’t believe is as easily resolved as would be in a Republic of Oregonia or even a Republic of California.Report

    • SaulDegraw in reply to Will Truman says:

      Canada is a pretty large place and their socialized medicine is organized on the Provincial LevelReport

      • Will Truman in reply to SaulDegraw says:

        Canada has the size, but not the people or the diversity (not just racial) on our scale. Their health care system came at a time when things were even less so. And we could, at that time, have probably developed the same health care system. (Would have been segregated as hell, and lumpy and unequal, but it would be in a different if still imperfect place now.)

        I also think we could have made more progress on health care here if it had been less of a national issue. But that takes us back to point one, where we don’t trust each other to do it right.Report

        • nevermoor in reply to Will Truman says:

          Just imagine how much bargaining power we would have if we allowed a public option for insurance and allowed it to bargain. Or, even better, just lowered the medicare age to zero.Report

        • Dand in reply to Will Truman says:

          Canada’s immigration system also is also heavily skill based and immigration is the main source of diversity in Canada.Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    Here at OT, our emerging conservatives support the Presidential Runs of Jewish, self-described Social Democrats who prove that you can take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can’t take the Brooklyn out of the boy. Seriously listen to his accent, I wonder how his accent plays to much of America. Among other things that damned Al Smith was his New Yawk accent (and I say this as a New Yorker). Kennedy is possibly the only person to ever reach the Presidency with a noted urban accent (in his case a mix of Havard Yard and Southie).

    More seriously:

    What did Jay Gould allegedly say? “I can pit one half of the working class against the other half”.

    Social Justice and the Welfare State and Worker’s rights also have long and complicated histories with race in the United States. The Irish and the Chinese were pitted against each other to build the transcontinental railroad. The Irish working-class of San Francisco was also known for taking their ire out on the Chinese population. Samuel Gomper’s kept his union all-white for a reason. The only Union that was willing to take minority-members early on was the far-radical I.W.W. Even Euguen Victor Debs who was no ally of racism famously said he had “nothing special to offer the negro”.

    I love the New Deal and everything it did to help get Americans out of the Great Depression and back to work but many New Deal programs were created in ways to exclude African-Americans and other minorities from their ranks. See Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action was White and Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Making of Our Time.

    Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers were among the first modern unions to fully support civil rights. Walter Reuther marched alongside A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington. I think it is important to note that the full name for the event was the March on Washington for Freedom AND JOBS. There was an economic equality angle to the Civil Rights Movement way back in 1963. We can also note that towards the end of his life, Martin Luther King became more and more involved with Union and Economic issues. So the current problems in Baltimore are not the products of jobs disappearing 30-40 years ago. They are the products of 50-100 years (and maybe more) of bad economic opportunity for African-Americans.

    There is probably something to the idea that some Social Democracy programs seem more likely to be created in very homogeneous countries like Sweden, 1945 UK, post-WWII Canada, Norway, Israel, etc. Many of these countries have grown much more diverse but by the time they became more heterogeneous, the social democracy aspects were loved by nearly all and firmly within the fabric of life.Report

    • Will H. in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Nit #1: I believe you’re misreading Debs there.

      Nit #2: King was in Memphis to organize the sanitation workers at the time he was shot.Report

      • Chris in reply to Will H. says:

        He’s definitely taking Debs out of context. The piece from which that quote is taken is an impassioned indictment of white America, and a full-throated call for social equality that ends by saying socialism is color-blind.Report

  3. Will H. says:

    First of all, I have nothing against social democracy. I happen to think it’s a good thing, and I wish we had a social democratic party in the US.
    That said, . . .

    This piece strikes me as a bunch of clueless bullsh!t from the American Left.

    I believe that just about covers it.

    But I’ll go on (go figure) . . .

    Freddie Gray wasn’t killed because he was black. He wasn’t killed because he was poor.
    It’s a matter of poverty and racism showing up more in police killings, disproportionately common in minority neighborhoods.
    Yet “disproportionately common” is a very long way from “unique to;” i.e., correlation does not equal causation.
    To pin everything on economics is essentially clueless.
    To pin everything on racism is closer to the mark, but still falls far short.
    Because to say it’s a police issue overlooks the obvious.

    I think that covers the main points.Report

    • Roland Dodds in reply to Will H. says:

      Other than the “clueless bullshit from the American left,” I would challenge your reading of this piece. Nowhere do I argue that black men are being killed in Baltimore because they are poor. Race has everything to do with it. One of the ways race continues to inform this discussion is that multicultural communities, as noted in the piece above, have difficulty building true community, and the economic sharing that comes with that.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Roland Dodds says:

        How much of the difficulty building true community is some sort of inherent hard-wired tribalism and how much is unique to American society and our racialized past?Report

        • Richard Hershberger in reply to Kazzy says:

          It’s a matter of how the tribal boundaries are drawn. A hundred and fifty years ago the Irish were excluded. The imagery used was strikingly similar to that used for blacks. Since then, they Irish have been let into the tribe, and therefore are considered fully human. We see a similar process happening with Hispanics. Blacks could in principle be let into the tribe as well. In some places, on a small scale, this has been done. But on the large scale, the combination of our history and the easy visual identification of the individual’s outsider status has prevented this.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

          How much is because we tend to imprison large swaths of the community for petty shit?Report

      • Will H. in reply to Roland Dodds says:

        I sincerely appreciate the “clueless bullsh!t from the American Left” part going unchallenged.
        Made my day.Report

    • North in reply to Will H. says:

      Well I don’t agree with most of Will’s point here but I will second one sentiment in that I’ve always felt that the liberal economic complaints fit poorly onto the police misbehavior narrative.Report

      • Will H. in reply to North says:

        @north :
        the liberal economic complaints fit poorly onto the police misbehavior narrative.

        It’s a lot more than police misbehavior.

        It is the “cover charges” brought by prosecutors to silence police misconduct.
        It is the tampering with public records by employees of the court clerks office (but rarely, if ever, the clerks themselves– they know how to keep it clean).
        It is the campaigning of elected judges on the number of maximum sentences handed down.
        It is the numerous departures from established law to enable dismissal of civil rights complaints.
        It is the failure of law enforcement to take seriously felony crimes committed by public servants, except when politically motivated, e.g., Patrick Fitzgerald.
        It is the kinsmanship of alumni that permeates the bar, separating the in-group from the out-group.
        It is the continual underhanded pitching to prosecutors to enable the state to win convictions, when such former prosecutors often show how inept and incompetent they truly are after entering into private practice.
        It is the completely unfounded expectation by the general public, apart from all reality, that their law enforcement personnel are “the good guys” and that courts generally follow the law, fed by countless TV dramas absorbed into the mindless masses, unable to differentiate fact from fiction, accepting NYPD Blue and yet rejecting Serpico.
        It is the tut-tutting over the riots in Baltimore and St. Louis County in defiance of natural law– which in fact, were acknowledged as demanded over 400 years ago from the fountainhead of our common law– specifically, “in instances of effective denial of access to the courts, justice will be rendered by any means whatever with the exception of a court,” words written from the pen of Lord Edward Coke, the very judicial reasoning which established that rights under the Magna Carta extend beyond the nobility— and yet we persist in denying access to the courts, even knowing what that entails.

        It is demanded that rioting occur.
        It is demanded that twenty-eight shootings should occur in Chicago in one weekend.
        It is demanded that America shall burn.

        We will have it no other way.
        We knew quite well what the price to pay would be, as that price tag was marked over four hundred years ago.
        And as a collective, we chose that price rather than to extend rule of law to those we deemed lesser.
        As a collective, we prefer to be plowed under rather than to permit another to arise.

        We will have that which we have wished for.
        Our desire will be answered accordingly.

        Meanwhile, the Left jacks off Krugman, proclaiming they have an answer.Report

  4. Chris says:

    Putnam’s work is already outdated, and it’s clear he failed to account for important factors like economic inequality and unemployment that are often highly correlated with marginalized minority groups. If you can tease these apart a bit, the results get a lot messier (e.g.).Report

    • Dand in reply to Chris says:

      Unfortunately for our test of the diversity hypothesis, those communities that are
      highly diverse in Norway also tend to have higher levels of unemployment and
      lower levels of social trust, all else equal. The truthful, if somewhat unsatisfactory,
      conclusion of our study is therefore that we do not yet know if diversity would
      have a negative effect on social trust in communities independent of unemployment,
      because the Norwegian context offers no empirical examples to help answer a question
      like that.

      Has anyone studied Silicon Valley?Report

      • Chris in reply to Dand says:

        I dunno, but given the way these research questions play out, if it offers a good data set for teasing apart those variables, someone has probably already written the grant request.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:

    America’s size and scope pretty much assures that the American welfare state would be organized in an impersonal and bureaucratic manner. In a diverse and large population, it’s the best way to ensure impartiality.Report

    • Will H. in reply to LeeEsq says:

      @leeesq :
      I’m afraid that isn’t so.
      From the very earliest beginnings of the welfare system, it was all about class.
      In many ways, the focus on race is a mechanism serving to effectively foreclose all dialogue on class.
      Yet the working poor blacks have more in common with the working poor whites than with middle class blacks. It’s fact.

      The differences in class are even more striking when reviewing the literature concerning attitudes of women.
      Women generally exhibit greater class cohesiveness than men.Report

      • Kim in reply to Will H. says:

        Deliberate and intentional setting of white trash against poor blacks is An American (Southern!) Tradition.Report

        • Will H. in reply to Kim says:

          white trash against poor blacks
          This statement is rife with classism.

          The term “white trash” originated as a means of distinguishing white families with mulatto children one from another.
          Some families claimed these mulattoes as part of their families, while others refused to accept them into the family.
          The ones that accepted the mulattoes into their families were “white trash.”

          Re-check that Southern (?!?) tradition.

          Maybe you never knew that the name of the town of Anna, Ill. is an acronym for “Ain’t No N!ggers Allowed,” or have never heard the stories of repeated arson when mixed couples move into small Illinois towns.

          The whole concept that racism was a matter confined to the South is without foundation.Report

          • Kim in reply to Will H. says:

            The classism is intentional, I assure you. The richadillies never needed to be again’ anyone, after all. Most of ’em are against us.

            Prejudice exists everywhere, of course, but the Cavaliers down south had the whole thing down to a science. Propaganda was the only thing they were good at after all.

            Not saying that such ills don’t spread (though up North the bugabear was often Jews or Irish…), or that the South’s been the only place that’s been racist.

            Frankly, the South wasn’t where we’ve had “rape preserves” within living memory.Report

            • Kolohe in reply to Kim says:

              Kim:
              Propaganda was the only thing they were good at after all.

              They were better than the average bear at military tactics and operational planning (but not so much at grand strategy)Report

              • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

                Who is they? Do you mean the Lord of Missouri?
                Thought not.
                When you’re willing to talk about the people that I’m talking about, we can resume the discussion. Old War Horse wasn’t part of the leadership.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Kim says:

                I’m talking about the literal cavalier tradition that inhabited the Piedmont and lowlands of everything from the Potomac to the Pee Dees (and a bit beyond). The one that gave us Washington, both famous Lees, A.P. Hill, J.E.B. Stuart (him more than anyone else), and everyone else educated at The Citadel and VMI (despite being tucked away at the edge of Appalachia, Lexington is on Atlantic side of the eastern Continental divide and is culturally Piedmont)

                ftr, both Albion’s seed and General Lee are way overrated.Report

              • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

                There were cavaliers, and then there were Cavaliers. Lee certainly wasn’t the bloke running Virginia, nor was he anywhere near the top of the leadership.

                General Lee isn’t terribly overrated by professionals, you know. They only bother teaching him at West Point as an example of what Not To Do. (Longstreet, on the other hand, was quite competent and we still use a lot of his tactics and strategy, because they worked and still work just fine).

                The General Lee Mythos and the Lost Cause (last seen beating a dead horse — oh, my puns) are a deliberate propaganda campaign that’s due to run out in less than fifty years. Because the Cavaliers planned ahead…

                Albion’s Seed was good research, but I’ve seen better from those researchers (the point about the South hoarding food and being too fractitious to actually manage to be a solid Confederacy is a much more interesting argument, but you have to do loads more digging…).Report

          • Slade the Leveller in reply to Will H. says:

            Anna, IL is on the same latitude as Richmond, VA. Southern IL should never be considered as part of the North.

            I will agree that pitting one group of poor people against another is hardly confined to the South. It’s working like a well-oiled machine all over this great land of ours.Report

  6. Notme says:

    The diversity that liberals love so much doesnt seem to be working so well recently in Scandinavia.

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/world/europe/swedens-riots-put-its-identity-in-question.html?_r=0&referrer=Report

  7. Notme says:

    Sadly liberals talk out of both sides of their mouths. One side says community and the other side espouses identity politics and soaking the rich. You cant have it both ways.Report

    • Kim in reply to Notme says:

      Community is the simple idea that the rich folks ought to live in the same community as the rest of us. If you give them too much unearned money, they start thinking things like “veterans benefits are the new welfare” (yes, that is a direct quote), and being very entitled.

      I don’t think conservatives like entitlement very much, but reactionaries like the Kochs are just full of it.Report

  8. LWA says:

    Broadly speaking, I think the idea that multicultural societies have a more difficult time establishing social welfare is a pretty strong point. It IS difficult, wickedly so, since tribalism and ethnic mistrust is pretty deeply woven into human behavior.

    But having said that, I don’t see any alternative other than trying to power through it, and making multicultural integration a top priority.

    What will drive this more than wooly headed liberal piety, is the global marketplace. As I mentioned once before I already live in the multicultural global world. I just left a job where my coworkers were mostly Asian and Middle Eastern, where our client was a woman in Shanghai. I just started a new job working for a family business of Persian Jews, where most of my coworkers are Filipino.

    So I live in a world where white Christian men of European heritage are a shrinking minority, and the whip hand of power is already being transferred to others.

    Right now the debate circles around how much of “Our” tax revenue should be spent on mythical black welfare mothers. But soon the new holders of power- the Chinese, Indian, Russian; the females, gays- will have their own set of budget priorities divergent from the status quo.

    One thing which is being grasped now by the majority white Christian demographic is that we are merely one tribe, out of many. That our culture is not going to be the default setting, the normal background where exotic others decorate the fringes. I think this understanding is what gives rise to so much of the inchoate fear in the “war on Christmas” stuff.

    I remember last Christmas when our client was busy in her Shanghai office on Dec. 25 but was out for a few days during Tet. This year, she was gracious enough not to expect us to work on our religious holiday.

    That may change someday.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to LWA says:

      How do China, India, and Russia treat Females and Gays?Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird says:

        In China, homosexuality was considered a mental illness until the early aughts. The current state of LGBT rights in China is still not great. Part of this is because China is still a very conservative and Confucian place socially but a lot of it has to do with politics. The CCP doesn’t really like social organizations outside its control and supervision whether this be a church or an LGBT social group. Permissible politics in China are too limited to allow for LGBT advocacy.

        The other complication is China’s family planning policy. In order to keep everything in line, strict controls are placed on heterosexual cohabitation in China if the couple isn’t married. It’s illegal. Homosexuals can not get each other pregnant but giving homosexual couples more freedom would piss off heterosexual couples so things are clamped down on.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

          Well, I’m sure that once China is ascendant and the United States is descendant, they’ll catch up to the social justice policies that we’ll need them to catch up to.

          I hope they have a liberal immigration policy!Report

      • LWA in reply to Jaybird says:

        @jaybird
        This raises a point I made once before, that the ascending nations don’t necessarily share the history of the Enlightenment, or our American negotiated history of labor, immigrants, and race.

        The dialogue we are currently having over SSM and race is new for a lot of people outside the secular European/North American world, and they have a different perspective on it that we do. They don’t always view issues with the same Republican/Democrat, liberal/ conservative framing that we do.

        This isn’t necessarily good, bad, or indifferent, but their rise to political and cultural power is something we have to accept and deal with.

        Also as I mentioned, the liberal desire for multicultural acceptance and liberal respect for individual liberty can collide at times.Report