How “us” and “them” will become “us”
by: Dave Belden on September 11th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
On Tuesday in this post I was a little critical of an op-ed by John Kenneth White that argued that the real reason it’s proving so hard to get universal healthcare is that even fairly conservative white middle class people in the 1970s actually did think the New Deal and Medicare were for “us”, but now think universal health care will be for “them” (the undeserving poor, the nonwhite etc.). So they don’t support it.
I felt that White presented this as an inevitability–that people will naturally follow their narrow “interests”–rather than a result of the way universal healthcare is being presented to them. (See Michael Lerner’s well argued take on what Obama could have done to present universal healthcare in the frame of “we’re all in this together.”)
Turns out he doesn’t think it inevitable, or at least not an insuperable problem in the long run. I sent John White the post and he responded:
In my latest book, Barack Obama’s America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era just published by the University of Michigan Press, I wrote that our present politics was one of discomfort–meaning that the demographic changes underway in the U.S. had made Americans uncomfortable about each other (thinking in broad racial and ethnic terms).
My own view over the long-term is more optimistic. You’re right to note that the grandparents and parents who benefitted from the New Deal and Medicare were themselves despised by others who thought them to be undeserving. That was tempered over time. Put another way, the politics of discomfort a century ago gave way over time.
I do not agree with Sam Huntington who thinks that the introduction of Hispanics (and others) into our culture leads to a fragmentation of the country. Rather, the process of becoming American has much to do with acceptance of certain values, especially freedom, individual rights, and equality of opportunity.
We are at a moment in history when the exercise of political power is being passed to a very different majority. This undoubtedly is contributing to our politics of discomfort. But in the long run, I’m still optimistic that a society with many different races, family backgrounds, and expressions of religious belief will place a premium on tolerance.
So my question for John White is what leadership could Obama be giving now to hurry this process along. Is Michael Lerner right that Obama could have done a great deal more? But is he also right that that would have required Obama to challenge the stranglehold of big business (as FDR did in the New Deal, for example in legalizing collective bargaining by trade unions, which lost him most of his big business supporters), a task that Obama clearly doesn’t think he can do (if he even wants to, which is not clear at this point)? What kind of leadership does White think would help a great majority of us to see and feel that we are in fact all in this together?
Dave Belden writes: I am posting John White’s comment on this post, sent to me by email:
“I do think there had been a paucity of leadership from Obama on health care and the larger moral issue (e.g., we’re all in this together) until his speech Wednesday night. The last portion of his speech when he spoke of the American character and how we diminish both our country and ourselves when we engage in a politics of fear and destruction is just what the country needed to hear. And it’s a message that needs continued reiteration.
“Health care is one way to elicit the sense that we are in this together and that we have responsibilities and obligations toward one another. Another important step will be immigration reform. Like health care, this issue will also generate lots of heat and passion. But, as with health care, the status quo cannot continue and a president must show real leadership to engender reforms to bring illegal immigrants out of the shadows.
“Ultimately, my optimism is not placed in a particular president but in the American people. It’s the individual decisions we are making in our personal lives–be it marrying someone of a different race, or an increased acceptance of homosexuals as friends and neighbors, and a thousand other such decisions–that will ultimately alter our politics.
“This is not to say that we don’t have a politics of discomfort. We do. And the greatest threat to Obama comes from a heightened sense of populism built on grievance. But the decisions Obama makes and we make will ultimately change our politics.”