Oprah, Harvard, and Inequality. By George Packer. The New Yorker, June 4, 2013.
Packer:
Two
weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the strange conjunction of America’s
ever-widening inclusiveness and ever-growing disparity. Oprah at Harvard is a
perfect illustration: her arrival at that summit is improbable and
extraordinary, a parable of individual talent meeting social opportunity. She
took the occasion to remind her audience of her triumph, and of the blessings
that surely come in America today with the right alma mater and the right
connections. Her presence was proof that the meritocracy really works, that
equal opportunity is real—a reassuring thought in a time and place where social
mobility has dwindled and American success stories are more and more likely to
be born rather than made.
I don’t
think there’s a causal relation between these two essential facts from the past
generation: that a poor black girl from the Deep South can grow up to be an
empire-builder, and that the gap in income and life chances between Americans
with Harvard degrees and Americans without is getting bigger every year. They
have happened at the same time, and they pull in opposite directions. One
doesn’t necessitate or further the other. But my last column got a critical
rejoinder from Samuel Goldman, in the American
Conservative. Goldman claims that the two trends are intimately related,
and that they’re somehow the doing of post-sixties educated liberals like me,
and, perhaps, you, who have gone all in for tolerance, diversity, and lax moral
standards while forsaking the troubled working class. It might not even be
possible to have Oprah and fairness:
“It is hard for a society characterized by ethnic and cultural pluralism to
generate the solidarity required for the redistribution of wealth. People are
willing, on the whole, to pay high taxes and forgo luxuries to support those
they see as like themselves. They are often unwilling to do so for those who
look, sound, or act very differently.”
Goldman
is conflating a number of things here—among them, the ideal of equality before
the law and the reality of a loud, consumerist, gadget-dazzled, indifferent
society. Is there something about black enfranchisement, women’s quest for
equal pay, and the right of gays to marry that required Americans to start
overspending, paying their workers less, and neglecting their children? If so,
should we return to segregation, bored housewives, and the closet on the chance
that these might restore unions to health and revive public schools? Goldman’s
argument is that, beyond a certain level of diversity, a democratic
society—that is, one in which equal opportunity means something more than the
chance for each of us to have our own TV network—stops being possible. This
view takes us back to conservatism of a particular sort—not the universalist
creed of the Declaration but the philosophy of the Know Nothings.
On the
other hand, there’s this uncomfortable truth, pointed out by Ross Douthat, of
the Times: the period of greatest
economic equality and social solidarity, the years between the Great Depression
and the nineteen-seventies, which I call the Roosevelt Republic, coincided with
the doors being firmly shut to immigrants. The decades that came before and
after this more secure era—from the Gilded Age to the nineteen-twenties, and
the generation since the late seventies, the period of the unwinding—saw those
doors swing wide open. Douthat suggests that waves of immigration have created
social divisions and competition for jobs at the bottom, both of which have
something to do with the fraying of the social contract. If human beings were
better, it wouldn’t be so—but they aren’t, so it is. Douthat’s is a more
subtle, less partisan argument than Goldman’s, and it poses a problem for
liberals who want more equality and more immigration.
My book
explores some of these questions in the indirect way of narrative. It makes no
explicit arguments supported by statistics, social science, or political
theory. There are plenty of good books on inequality, political polarization,
institutional instability, the decline of the working class, the economic and
social effects of globalization and the Information Age. I didn’t want to write
that kind of book; I couldn’t have if I’d tried. I wanted to do something else:
create a portrait of the country during years when freedom became maximal and
the social contract frayed. I wanted to convey what this condition feels and
looks and sounds like, in individuals’ lives, voices, nervous systems.
I saw
no need to distribute blame in appropriate portions, in keeping with a
political framework. There’s plenty to go around: the characters in “The
Unwinding” aren’t helpless victims. They make big mistakes, they get pregnant
too young, their marriages break up, they let their businesses collapse, they
go broke, they invest their money unwisely, they fill their minds and stomachs
with junk, they trust the wrong people, they get themselves fired from jobs
they can’t afford to lose, they make bad decisions for their children. One
family in particular—the Hartzells, of Tampa, who appear near the end of the
book—have had such a hard time that they are currently homeless, with two
children, in quite desperate circumstances.
Partly,
it’s their own fault. And partly it’s the huge disruptions of recent history:
the disappearance of blue-collar jobs, the Walmartization of the economy, the
decay of public schools, the collapse of institutional structures that used to
support the aspirations of the middle class, the atomization of everyday life
where there is no secure living. Those upheavals, in turn, aren’t simply the
product of blind forces, like hurricanes and earthquakes. They have happened
because Americans have let them happen, sometimes without knowing it, sometimes
with deliberate intent. “The Unwinding” has no ideology, but it does subscribe
to the view that those with the most power and influence, who have benefitted
the most handsomely, bear more responsibility than the Hartzells.
The Unwinding. By George Packer. NJBR, May 20, 2013. With related articles.
Oprah Winfrey Tells Harvard Graduates “Failure is Just Life Trying to Move Us in Another Direction.” By Molly Greenberg. InTheCapital, May 31, 2013.
5 Best Quotes from Oprah Winfrey’s Inspiring Harvard University Commencement Speech. By Vi-An Nguyen. Parade, May 31, 2013.
Oprah Winfrey Harvard Commencement 2013 Speech. Video. Harvard, May 30, 2013. YouTube.
Winfrey:
It
doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point, you are bound to stumble.
If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages, not
to mention The Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And
when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure.
Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you’re
down there in the hole, it looks like failure. When that moment comes, it’s
okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think
you may have lost. But then, here’s the key: Learn from every mistake, because
every experience, particularly your mistakes, are there to teach you and force
you into being more who you are.
. . . .
You
will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal. There really is
only one, and that is this: To fulfill the highest, most truthful expression of
yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your
energy to lift yourself up, your family, and the people around you. Theologian
Howard Thurman said it best. He said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world
needs is people who have come alive.”
