Every time you're tempted to say that America is moving forward on race – that prejudice is no longer as important as it used to be – along comes an atrocity to puncture your complacency. Almost everyone realises, I hope, that the Freddie Gray affair wasn't an isolated incident, that it's unique only to the extent that, for once, there seems to be a real possibility that justice may be done.
And the riots in Baltimore, destructive as they are, have served at least one useful purpose: drawing attention to the grotesque inequalities that poison the lives of too many Americans.
Yet I do worry that the centrality of race and racism to this particular story may convey the false impression that debilitating poverty and alienation from society are uniquely black experiences. In fact, much though by no means all of the horror one sees in Baltimore and many other places is really about class, about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality.
Take, for example, issues of health and mortality. Many people have pointed out that there are a number of black neighbourhoods in Baltimore where life expectancy compares unfavourably with impoverished Third World nations. But what’s really striking on a national basis is the way class disparities in death rates have been soaring even among whites.
Most notably, mortality among white women has increased sharply since the 1990s, with the rise surely concentrated among the poor and poorly educated; life expectancy among less educated whites has been falling at rates reminiscent of the collapse of life expectancy in post-communist Russia.
And yes, these excess deaths are the result of inequality and lack of opportunity, even in those cases where their direct cause lies in self-destructive behaviour. Overuse of prescription drugs, smoking, and obesity account for a lot of early deaths, but there’s a reason such behaviours are so widespread, and that reason has to do with an economy that leaves tens of millions behind.
Disheartening
It has been disheartening to see some commentators still writing as if poverty were simply a matter of values, as if the poor just mysteriously make bad choices and all would be well if they adopted middle-class values. Maybe, just maybe, that was a sustainable argument four decades ago, but at this point it should be obvious that middle-class values only flourish in an economy that offers middle-class jobs.
The great sociologist, William Julius Wilson, argued long ago that widely decried social changes among blacks, like the decline of traditional families, were actually caused by the disappearance of well-paid jobs in inner cities.
His argument contained an implicit prediction: if other racial groups were to face a similar loss of job opportunity, their behaviour would change in similar ways.
And so it has proved. Lagging wages – actually declining in real terms for half of working men – and work instability have been followed by sharp declines in marriage, rising births out of wedlock, and more.
As Isabel Sawhill, of the Brookings Institution, writes: "Blacks have faced, and will continue to face, unique challenges. But when we look for the reasons why less skilled blacks are failing to marry and join the middle class, it is largely for the same reasons that marriage and a middle-class lifestyle is eluding a growing number of whites as well."
So it is, as I said, disheartening still to see commentators suggesting that the poor are causing their own poverty, and could easily escape if only they acted like members of the upper middle class.
And it’s also disheartening to see commentators still purveying another debunked myth – that we’ve spent vast sums fighting poverty to no avail (because of values, you see). In reality, federal spending on means-tested programmes other than Medicaid has fluctuated between 1 and 2 per cent of GDP for decades, going up in recessions and down in recoveries. That’s not a lot of money – it’s far less than other advanced countries spend – and not all of it goes to families below the poverty line.
Despite this, measures that correct well-known flaws in the statistics show that we have made some real progress against poverty. And we would make a lot more progress if we were even a fraction as generous towards the needy as we imagine ourselves to be.
The point is that there is no excuse for fatalism as we contemplate the evils of poverty in America. Shrugging your shoulders as you attribute it all to values is an act of malign neglect.
The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources – which we can afford to provide – and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages.
Baltimore, and America, don't have to be as unjust as they are. – Copyright New York Times 2015
