Cultural history is written by dissenters

"Why does our intellectual culture privilege my kind of experience over hers?"

Because yours carves the experience of discontent against the background of contentment, or dissent against the background of assent, in bas relief, and hers, by definition, does not.

Excellent post, Rod; the theme reminds me of Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard," particularly these lines:

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way."

Why do we prize stories of discontent and restlessness above tales of serenity and peace? Because life is conflict, I think; because even the contented souls know some avenues of discord, whether they choose to travel down them or not. And stories of conflict, anger, pain, resentment, bitterness, and division carry within them the seeds of that hope we all secretly long for: the hope that the spirit will triumph over adversity, however great the scars it will forever after carry.

Rod, I'm older than you are (by at least a decade) and I have fond memories of the late fifties and the early sixties and there's a lot I wish we could restore. But there's also a lot I vividly recall and thank God that is no longer true: being called a "spic" nearly every day of my life; the assumption that, as a Puerto Rican, I should be placed on a vocational track even though, forgive the immodesty, my life since then has proven that this assessment got me wrong.

My point, and I have one, is that we shouldn't regard the unhappy folk as articulate misfits -- many of them had perfectly good reasons for being unhappy with the status quo that transcended the merely personal and, in some cases, were grounded in a valid critique of that status quo.

Roberto, thanks for that. In the passage I posted, I think Ehrenhalt accounted for the fact that the 1950s were indeed a time of racial prejudice and a conformist social thinking that caused people to suffer unjustly. I think, though, that in that passage and in the essay from which it's taken (which constitutes the first chapter of his book), Ehrenhalt is trying to get at the same general point that the writer Clifton Taulbert did in his "Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored." That book, set in the segregated South of the 1940s and 1950s, paints a portrait of black communal life that makes the contemporary reader (or viewer: in the 1990s, Tim Reid made an excellent film version of it) squirm. Taulbert shows that despite the racist oppression -- and, one imagines, partly because of it -- black community life flourished. Because they were living in an unjust and cruel society, Taulbert relates, they pulled together for self-defense, psychological and literal. It makes you squirm (well, it made me squirm) because it forced me to confront that our customary way of seeing that era requires that there be little or no good in black social life, that everything was always oppression and misery. Taulbert forces his reader to confront a more complex reality, one that doesn't jibe perfectly with modern sensibilities. In no way does Taulbert excuse the moral wrongs of the day, but he does say that there were some pretty wonderful things about living in community, even in a context of oppression. And that those things are now gone, alas.

After seeing the film, I was reminded of an astonishing piece I once read in the Washington Post when I was living in DC in the early 1990s. It was written by a black staff writer of columnist, can't remember who. He was recounting a recent taxi ride through the District with an older black cabbie who had grown up there. The cabbie lamented the lost world of segregated Washington. In great detail, he recalled all the institutions black Washingtonians lived with that gave shape, order and meaning to their common life, and how it had all gone to hell after the end of segregation. As I recall, the cabbie was by no means pining for a return to segregation. But he was telling his passenger, who was too young to have lived through segregation, that a whole world had once existed under that oppression, and it was a good place to live compared with the oppression of crime, moral chaos and misery that black Washington lives in today. It was such a striking testimony that the Post journalist felt moved to write it down.

I don't think many of the things I identify as problematic about American life, some of which is based on my childhood experiences, are an incorrect or invalid critique. I do think it's important for people like me who do focus much of our work on being critical to pay attention to the stories of people who have lived in the same kinds of situations as we have, and didn't have such a dissonant experience. It's helpful in discerning whether there really were injustices or flawed institutions and customs that need reforming, or whether the greater part of the problem was ... us.

Daniel: It's one thing for someone who lived though the segregated 1950s as a black man to have fondness for a simpler time because he has his own life as a context, it is quite another for a white man of any age--but especially a white man who didn't "live' during that period--to wax nostalgic and use Taulbert's theory to justify a simpler time.

Good grief, Daniel, you have such a one-track ideological mind. It's simply balderdash to say that someone "owns" historical fact and observation by virtue of their ethnicity. What is this crazy idea that people "own" history? Besides, any slightly nuanced reading of my post -- and Alan Ehrenhalt's -- reveals no "nostalgia" per se, but an attempt to explore the complexities of history, historical memory, and the uses to which we put our historical memories. Yet all you can see is, as usual, crude, racist revisionism. The problem with political correctness is not just that it narrowly constricts thought and outlaws irony, paradox and nuance; the problem is not only that p.c. prevents us from trying to discern the truth of things and events; the problem is also that it is terribly, terribly dull.

So only a black person can make use of the insights of another black person? Got it. I hope black readers will understand that they are not permitted to analogize from the historical experience of non-black people. Segregated history -- what a delightful and progressive concept.

What is this crazy idea that people "own" history?...So only a black person can make use of the insights of another black person?

This is an interesting subject all by itself. I would enjoy hearing you explore it on another post, Rod.

My off-the-cuff view is that this "crazy idea" exists because objective truth as the foundation of debate was rejected long ago.

Public school is the seedbed for this sort of thinking. I learned this sort of "history" in school. And in addition schools stifle all the important debates of our time: religion, abortion, culture, race. These things cannot even be talked about, and the truth of any sensitive issue takes a back seat to someone's "feelings".

It is from this environment people develop the audacity to say things like ...it is quite another for a white man of any age... - and actually mean it.

If your point is correct, or even if you just have an interesting idea to kick around, is beside the point. What matters is who you are and what your ideological motive might be.

"Why does our intellectual culture privilege my kind of culture over hers?"

The shortest answer to your query is that we are in the postmodernist era culturally. In the traditionalist or Victorian era, her cultural comments would have been more welcomed than yours. When the modernist culture came into play around 1900, challenges to the old community ways began to arise. Science came to be respected over community mores. "You can't stop progress," they used to say.

With the advent of postmodernism, which started with the Marxist critique of our bourgeois communities like Chicago, the "you can't stop progress" motto became an anathema in intellectual circles. Redefining history is a key component to postmodernism, and, to tell the truth, every extant historical perspective has always been horribly biased toward the views of those in control. Somebody has always owned history, and expropriations of it occur daily.

Mechanical Eye,

As someone who's been a personal journey from left to right over the past couple of years, I'm just curious about what it is that has us "crossing paths." What set you on your course toward liberalism? Was it the war? The whole Bush administration nightmare? If so, it's certainly understandable. My move rightward has been predicated, I think, mainly on the left's "PC mentality," which in my experience is NOT a myth, along with the moral relativism, sexual permissiveness, and "victim culture" I believe are perpetuated by liberalism. I live in a college town and work in publishing. Most of my friends are liberals. I'm not making this stuff up or just parroting what I read; I see it firsthand.

Please don't think I'm disparaging you or your journey. (I've gotten enough abuse since I've been on mine. I'd never do it to someone else – not even a stranger on a blog!) I'm just sincerely curious about what makes people "cross over," politically speaking. I am 42 years old, and I think my journey really started about six years ago, after I had my daughter.

Rod, you've probably already explored this (I'm new here) but it might be an interesting topic for discussion – What sends people from right to left, and vice versa?

Rod, while it is true that there is a perspective clash here, which Daniel seems to embody (and I mean that as a neutral observation), he has important and valid points to make. Forgive me for a possibly arrogant attempt to educate you in them.

My early (and middle) adult social life was centered on the international folk dance phenomenon. It started in the post-WWII attempts by the nascent Iron Curtain countries to find ways to reconnect with the "free" west in ways that didn't set off the paranoid Soviet alarm bells. Cultural exchange was the name of that game, and ethnomusicologists in the 50s made many trips to and fro, bringing a bit of ethnic culture back to college campuses.

It evolved into such groups as the Duquesne Tamburitzans (whom you may have heard of and even seen), Aman in California, and most recently with "Les Voix Mysteres des Bulgares", a women's choir from Bulgaria that's toured Europe and the US more than once.

In the meantime, a strengthening and ongoing debate has raged, summarized as follows: what is strictly accurate ethnic, and what is mongrel, hybrid pseudo hyphenated ethnic-American. I belong to an email list that goes round this debate on a regular basis.

So, who owns the ethnic culture? Who owns the traditions and history that went into making that culture? After decades of performance veneer, choreography calling itself "folk" or "village", the replacement of village instruments with accordions, clarinets and electric guitars, what is real and what is stolen?

The black DC taxi driver knows the answer to that instinctively. It's not who can and cannot appreciate the history; nor is it about a possibly unjustified claim of sympathy or sympatico. It's about living and breathing, about the living memory that is lost even to the children of those who suffered the events behind the memory. It's about knowing something from the inside, a distinction that can be at once so subtle as to escape notice, and so profound as to escape the capacity of words to express.

I can, in some small ways, understand the feelings of blacks, being the son of a Holocaust survivor. I can, also, understand their perspective, because no non-Jew can really claim sympathy with my heritage without having had something similar in it in their heritage (Native Americans, the Rom and the Armenians come to mind, as examples).

You do not have to accept claims that you don't understand or can't sympathize. Any rational, feeling human being is capable of that, and some (like you) more than most makes an effort at it. I urge you to ignore the accusational aspects. But don't discount the energy and importance of living memory, and the superficial "borrowings" that enter into pop culture like shavings from a great sculpture, claiming to be just like the original.

Ya know, if we'd have just mentioned two words here -- MOYNIHAN REPORT -- a lot of the misunderstandings could have been avoided, IMHO. While it was criticized at the time, the Moynihan Report illustrated well that while civil rights were an essential part of the American commitment to African-Americans, there were simultaneously negative social trends that needed to be combatted (but sadly, weren't).

As for the other question of how one goes from right to left ... I think my childhood admiration for Reagan, besides being somewhat fashionable at the time (not in my town, though, which was Democratic), was seeing someone strong and standing up for America after an era of seeing Nixon, Ford and Carter -- corrupt or at least weak men all -- on my early childhood TV sets.

But I came to realize that "standing up for America" does not have to be ideological (i.e., conservative) in nature; and indeed that many of America's most cherished values, despite the slur the name is today, are liberal. Civil liberties; opportunity (not guarantees, but opportunity) for all; the diversity and integration of the cities as opposed to the sameness and segregation of the 'burbs (in the '80s; no longer true today for the most part).

A big part of my "education" was just that -- going to a Jesuit university (this will horrify Rod, I know) and learning first hand from both compassionate priests to the political and theological left, and angry, crotchety ones from the political and theological right. (One of the latter tried but failed to throw me out of school on a trumped-up plagiarism charge, once he realized I did not agree with him politically.) And if priests themselves could doubt Catholic doctrine, particularly on sexual matters, why couldn't I? (BTW, there were "PCers" on campus, both students and professors, no question; but most of this, IMHO, was the genuine intellectual exploration for which colleges are supposed to provide a forum.)

It didn't mean that I ran out after graduation and became a libertine. I was tired of my own binge drinking in college and became a teetotaler. Many of my friends joke with me today how square I am. Heck, I got married to a Republican. (The Alex P. Keaton part of me never entirely left.) That could be why I still considered myself a political moderate through most of the '90s.

The impeachment hysteria; a nasty divorce from said Republican; a serious (and chronic) personal illness; Bush v. Gore; the twisted response of Bush and Rove from the possibility of a unified nation after 9/11 to striving for a "51% nation" instead; the Iraq War; some extended periods of unemployment in a brutal job market (including now; "tax cuts" as the solution to all economic ills are useless to someone whose income is zero) -- all THAT, as you correctly guess, is what finally made me proud to call myself a liberal.

To be honest, one of the reasons that there was a dynamic community mentality in Black America of the 50s is BECAUSE there was racial prejudice and violence happening. This is a natural human response to adversity. Look back at the early Christian church. There was a wonderful amount of support provided for each of the members of that church. Widows and orphans were taken care of, as were the sick and handicapped. Food, clothing, housing, and all of the necessities of life were shared in these communities. People loved each other, prayed for each other, and supported each other...even when one of the community members was imprisoned.

Again, look at the church under Communist rule in the USSR. The same kind of community developed. Likewise in China, as well as many African nations that are suffering drought, war and famine (and now floods).

These were strong and vibrant communities where real support was offered. Why? Because the members of the community knew that they could not receive it elsewhere, and certainly not from the majority of the people on the "outside."

Longing for community is natural. We are communal people, Rod, and even in our modern time we build communities through our church, schools, place of employment, and now online.

It's not surprising that people who experienced this sense of community look back upon that time with some sadness at the loss of that loving support. But, ask any of them if they would willingly go back to that time and accept the reason for the existence of that community, and I'm willing to bet you will find few, if any, who would take the bad with the good.

"Look, all I'm saying is that the underlying point of Cliff Taulbert's observations -- that despite oppression, a real community flourished among black folks of the 1940s and 1950s, and there were good things about that community that shouldn't be dismissed, especially because those things have largely disappeared in the post-1960s environment -- is consonant with Ehrenhalt's observations."

W.E.B DuBois realized that a similar thing had happened to blacks, and to the South in general, after the Civil War and reconstruction, and he expressed some measure of regret that a fair amount of good seemed to have been lost with the bad.

"But, ask any of them if they would willingly go back to that time and accept the reason for the existence of that community, and I'm willing to bet you will find few, if any, who would take the bad with the good."

And this is, it seems, the flip side of what DuBois was getting at. I think that trad-cons and those of the crunchy sort would argue that those good things, in some instances A) didn't need to be lost with the bad, and B) can be restored somewhat. This is what the critics dismiss as nostalgia, but it really isn't that. It's not so much a matter of pining for "the good old days," but realizing that there were some things about those days that were really and truly good.

'Finally, in my personal journey from right to left, it's my duty to report back to the old base camp that the tired cliche that "the left" has a PC mentality and doesn't believe in objective truth is largely a myth. This has a largely waning hold on a few university campuses, but the era of the Politically Correct in education peaked in the 90s.'

I've seen exactly the opposite, especially in the business world. And PC is all the rage in Europe and the UK. I have friends who live there and I hear the horror stories first hand. However if it is waning in U.S. academia that's a good thing.

People love the idea of small-town shops and personal relationships with merchants, but if you are going to have that, you have to be willing to pay higher prices for your goods.

But why is that the case? Why can't it be possible to have the personal community while at the same time welcoming into that community those of different races, religions, sexual orientations, etc? Is it not possible that a group of people can understand to trust each other, even if they outwardly appear different? The common feeling of community and trust should be able to transcend that, I believe.

I would have no problem living near a conservative family, nor would I have any problem living near a family of a different religion or skin color, so long as that family accepts the differences and understand that we all seek to have that personal community. Is that really too much to ask?

What is it about the RR and their constant waxing nostalgic over the 50's?

Is it correct that many of the people who go on and on about this era weren't even born?
I just happened to have heard about how there is much material coming out about certain "experiments" that were conducted during the 50's. Really, if you care to delve, it really might not have been such the utopia. And your baby boomers who never slept under a bridge, etc., talk to a few Vietnam vets and see what they experienced.

Just curious.
Heifer

Vietnam vets did not sleep under bridges in the 1950s.

The point was about childhood experience and how it shaped attitudes. Not everything that came out of the 60s was bad. No one here longs for a return to Jim Crow.

(And that should have been "sowed" the seeds. Sorry.)

Point granted! The GI Bill and progressive tax policies of the New Deal had a great deal to do with how well things worked out economically for many families. Also the fact that the US came out of the war with one of the few remaining intact industrial bases and held a unique position in the world for a decade. After "Made in Japan" stopped meaning junk that fell apart as soon as it was paid for or opened, things changed.

Having all those babies one after another stimulated the economy too.

Republican tax policies and economic policies do appear to have caused tremendous damage to families.

Isn't Greenspan hawking a new book about that topic today?

That is what is lacking, and it is a result primarily of our economic choices, not necessarily our moral choices (although an argument could be made that these two are indistinguishable).

That's Ehrenhalt's larger point -- that the market is very good at satisfying individual choice, and we've evolved into a society that prizes individual choice above other social goods. He finds it puzzling that conservatives cheer unreservedly for the market, but don't notice how the market undermines the social institutions and customs they wish to conserve.

"That's Ehrenhalt's larger point -- that the market is very good at satisfying individual choice, and we've evolved into a society that prizes individual choice above other social goods. He finds it puzzling that conservatives cheer unreservedly for the market, but don't notice how the market undermines the social institutions and customs they wish to conserve."

As Rod knows, "conservative" critics of the unrestrained market have been saying this for decades, going back even to Southern critiques of the Northern economy in pre-Civil War days, through the Southern Agrarians and English Distributists in the early 20th century, and by more recent writers like Kirk and Roepke. Heck, even Adam Smith's economic thought presupposed a moral foundation to the choices made. The problem is that most contemporary conservatives aren't aware of this line of thought (I wasn't until I read Kirk and the Agrarians a few years back) and it sounds suspicious to them.

SVSteve, I don't disagree with your later statements, but your initial premise is self-contradictory.

You assert that the M&P has or had the "ability" to charge more (reason is irrelevant). You then qualify the saving of money being from "more efficient suppliers". Either M&P were gouging, or their wholesale and other overhead costs were higher. You can't have it both ways. Economies of scale are exact and unforgiving. That is why M&Ps lose to big box stores.

The problem for them is that it isn't a matter of intellectual debate. They don't have minds strong enough to comprehend change, or to understand the relevant analyses of why certain things should change. They should grow up and rather than shivering at things they don't understand, invest some mental energy in learning about them. Don't pity the simpletons.

www.draggedfromthebottom.blogspot.com

"The problem for them is that it isn't a matter of intellectual debate. They don't have minds strong enough to comprehend change, or to understand the relevant analyses of why certain things should change. They should grow up and rather than shivering at things they don't understand, invest some mental energy in learning about them. Don't pity the simpletons."

Not quite sure who the "them" is in your first sentence here, Bill C. Care to specify?

Rod, you seem to be a bit self-contradictory here. You started off suggesting that maybe intellectual culture excessively values dissent over conformity. Now, if I'm reading you correctly, you seem to be reflecting that this life of quiet conformity seems inadequate and lifeless to some, compared with times of violent change and intensity. Maybe you're just examining both sides of the question. : )

Maybe what matters is not the appearance of conformity vs. non-conformity to social norms, but rather keeping one's own integrity and vision of what life should be. (I know--that is at heart a dissenter's position, because it values internal coherence over social approval.) Some people can do that within a context of social conformity, and others can't. Society actually needs both kinds. As my husband the statistical researcher says, "Every bell curve has ends as well as a middle. It is perfectly normal to be abnormal."

I was struck by this: An old friend's father was a bombardier in World War II, and spent the rest of his long life living off those memories. He came home from saving the world from Nazism and became a housepainter. You see the connection.

I do see a connection, but maybe not the one you meant. Something is wrong when breaking things and killing people gives a man's live more validity than helping to build a community through productive work. Rather than thinking "Boy, those were the good days when I was bombing people/they were bombing us," shouldn't we be thinking "How can I invest as much of myself in my community as I did then?" Life doesn't acquire more meaning in a crisis. Life already has meaning. It is there all around us. We just need to learn to see it.

I hope a personal reflection won't be too far off topic. In the family of my childhood, there was a lot of drama and crisis. I tried to help in various ways--trivial repeated efforts, mostly rejected, mostly just causing more people to get mad at me, I thought. I often felt my life was pointless and insignificant. As children do, I daydreamed about some big, dramatic gesture that would force everyone to see how wrong they were! Many years later, I was talking to one of my sisters about raising our kids and coping with the teenage years. Suddenly she turned to me and said, "It's your voice I remember. Your constant, patient voice, always so kind and gentle."

You see the connection, I hope. (Because I don't mean this to be about me!) Moment by apparently insignificant moment, you can build community or destroy it, build lives or destroy them. I feel really sad for your friend's father if he was never able to see the worth of what he was doing. There's something terribly wrong with a society where dropping fire from the sky on people and burning them alive is considered more meaningful than lovingly painting a house to keep their family safe and warm. Crisis, violence, destruction--all the features of the warrior ethic are more valued than the patience and perseverance over time that is required to create anything worth having. One brushstroke at a time, we could be working on a home big enough for everyone. To me it seems that's meaning enough for any life.

". Something is wrong when breaking things and killing people gives a man's live more validity than helping to build a community through productive work."

"Sig, this just may be the atavistic difference between testosterone and estrogen."

Not sure about this. Sometimes I think of the "best years of my life" as the '60s and '70s when I was active, and sometimes instrumental, in the antiwar, antidraft, and proGI movements. Nobody was shooting at me, but I did amass a surprisingly large Red Squad file, and got kind of a kick out of that, estrogen notwithstanding. (Women, of course, do secrete testosterone, just not very much of it.)

But of course, back then it was possible to support a family on a single part-time income and do politics with the rest of one's life. Now, until recently anyway, I have been the sole support of a family that includes a disabled person, and couldn't afford to put much time into politics. And among the major sources of satisfaction in my life were just being able to get the kitchen cleaned up before I go to bed, and then pray, and watch the History channel. Maybe economics and age explain more than estrogen and testosterone.