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essaer · 1 year

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Debattbok av socialdemokratiska paret Alva och Gunnar Myrdal från 1934.

Boken behandlar de demografiska problem som följer på att barnafödandet i Sverige vid tiden minskade. Den sänkta befolkningskvaliteten behövde hanteras för att förbättra folkmaterialet.

Två samhällsproblem och osäkerhetsfaktorer som inverkade på befolkningens benägenhet att skaffa barn ansåg Myrdal var arbetslösheten (som vid tiden låg på 20 %) och bostadsbristen (som delas upp i dels trångboddhet och dels undermåliga bostäder). Individens medel för att uppnå förbättrad levnadsstandard var att tillgå den liberalekonomisk lösningen att skaffa färre barn. Myrdal förespråkar genomgripande fördelningspolitiska, socialpolitiska och produktionspolitiska reformer som det offentligas sätt att höja fruktsamheten (s 112).

En samhällsordning, som […] icke har råd att ge barnen tillräcklig och sund föda, fuktfria och rymliga bostäder, betryggande hälsovård och en god uppfostran, och som samtidigt saknar bruk för en stor del av sin arbetskraft, vilket får gå arbetslös – den samhällsordningen är orimlig, oförnuftig och omoralisk, och den är genom ett sådant medgivande redan dömd (s. 285).

Eftersom samhället drar nytta av att barnafödandet höjs till det optimala reproduktionsgränsen om 3 barn/familj bör samhället bära en del av den ekonomiska bördan för barn, bl.a. genom barnpenning i någon slags offentlig regi (?) och ersättning när kvinnan missar arbete efter födsel.

Arbetslösheten kan enl författarna delvis lösas genom ökat bostadsbyggande, vars materialbehov landet dessutom skulle kunna tillgodose själv i form av svenskt järn och trä. (Klassiska kritiken att arbetsimmigration leder till lönedumpning och försämrade arbetsvillkor (s 106).) En ökning av produktion-konsumtion bidrar också till minskad arbetslöshet (det finns överflöd av naturtillgångar att utnyttja). Socialpolitiken ska dessutom bidra till en bättre konsumtion; hushållen är ineffektiva och faller för reklamens påtryckningar (s 203). Mycken statistik framläggs för att bevisa att fattiga inte får både för lite och för näringsfattig mat; samtidigt exporteras överflöd av mat och säljs till underpris, istället för att komma den undernärda delen av befolkningen till del. Mha statistik utreds bostadsbristen ur både geografiskt perspektiv (stad-landsbygd) och klassperspektiv. Lägenheter för hela familjer är inte ovanligtvis så små som 50 kubikmeter (dålig luft, dessutom ofta delvis under mark = mögel). Bedrägligt uppfattas bostadssituationen förbättras, men detta beror enbart på aktiva beslut att inte skaffa fler barn som relativt sett blivit mer kostsamma.

Denna nya familj måste bland annat vara så uppbyggd, att den icke för sin ekonomiska välfärds skull och för hustruns frihet drives fram emot fullständigare barnlöshet. […]

För många av sina viktigaste funktioner skall familjen då bero av samhället, det större folkhushållet (s 319).

Större social och yrkesrörlighet för framtida generationer. Hittills har familjerna haft en “rätt” att hålla sig i undermåliga hem, missköta näringen och hindra barnen fr vad som beskrivs som rationella yrkesval. Om samhället ska ha något att säga till om “barnens frigörelse” måste samhället betala genom att ikläda sig merparten av både kostnaden och ansvaret (s 299). Familjelivet beskrivs som en “passiv traditionsform utan social egenrörelse”, en stel social form, medan det ekonomiska livers drivande kraft är tekniken (s 295).

Ett par gånger görs hänvisningar till Tyskland som varnande exempel, samtidigt som det görs referenser till rashygien och om möjligheten att hindra att asociala skaffar barn (oklart i vilken mån det anses ärftligt, författarna erkänner att många psykiska diagnoser påverkas av miljö). Utöver en snart minskande befolkning driver boken idén att den svenska befolkningskvalitén måste höjas, och som lösning presenteras social ingenjörskonst. Många av de förslag som förespråkas kan vi idag se realiserade: bostadsbidrag, allmänt bekostad förskola, grundskola (inkl fri skolmat) och universitet samt sjukvård (med fokus på förebyggande vård) m.m.. Åtgärder som idag grundas på konventionsåtaganden och MR-perspektiv - idéer om ett värdigt liv - motiveras häri snarare som effektiviseringsåtgärder; det är t.ex. resursslöseri att mödrar bara sköter sina egna barn, det kan finnas barnlösa som gör det mycket bättre och dessutom bör ha hand om minst 8 barn samtidigt. Utbildning på högre nivå ska vara öppen för de som är mest intresserade och kan dra mest nytta av det = som ger mest till samhället. Ökad konkurrens mellan studenterna är dessutom bra eftersom lärare som redan klagar på för studiearbetet olämpliga individer då kan hänvisa dessa annorstädes och höja “intelligent- och karaktärskraven” (s 283).

Ett återkommande, och för boken avslutande, budskap är att den äldre generationen redan är förlorad - det är genom propaganda riktad mot barnen som framtiden kan se ljus ut. T.ex. ska barnen lära sig om nutrition och således uppfostra föräldrarna om vad som behövs för att växa till starka och till samhället bidragande människor.

Förhoppningen står till de unga. Den redan uppvuxna generationen är oftast hopplös: den är och blir i stort sett som den redan är (s 325).

Barnen skola bygga upp det framtida samhället medan åldringarna enligt naturens ordning skola dö (s 236).

Skolans fokus är inte längre bara boklig kunskap, utan att uppfostra en ny värld; “individens sociala anpassning är skolans främsta mål”. Den dåvarande skolan kritiseras för att uppmuntra reaktiv intelligens, men inte aktiv (s 268). Myrdal förespråkar en vidgning “från individualpedagogik [individuell och frihetsuppfostran] till socialpedagogik” (s 264-265).Liberala individualistiska ideal har blomstrat som följd av industrialiseringen, i en övergångsperiod, men författarna förespråkar kollektivistiskt tänkande som bör inpräntas i skolan, bl.a. genom grupparbeten och klassammanhållning.

Myrdal beskriver det liberala idealet som ironiskt konservativt; "att kvinnans plats var i hemmet” var enbart relevant under den period som männen tog sig in i fabrikerna och kvinnorna pga barnafödande och -skötsel var bundna till hemmet. Innan dess var hemmet hela (produktions- och konsumtionsenheten) familjens plats. Att kvinnan skulle fortsätta förpassas till hemmet i den myrdalska visionen där uppfostrans- och utbildningsväsendet expanderar, är slöseri på produktionskraft. Men den konservativa liberalismens svar på halvfabrikat och att allt mer av hemarbetandet har flyttats till fabrikerna och staden blir den “kvinnliga uppfinningsförmågans instängda triumf”, som innefattar ett överlastat umgängesliv med middagsplanering, shopping och intensiv förströelseläsning eller virkning (s 312).

En intressant passage berör trångboddhetens psykologiska och själsliga konsekvenser, bla sk könsumgänget. Införandet av sk barnkammarskolor och gratis skolgång handlar inte bara om att mödrarna/föräldrarna ska ut i arbetslivet, utan också om att barnen ska få socialisera. I det post-industriella, moderniserade samhället rör sig inte familjen och bygemenskapen in och ut ur produktionsenheten hemmet (jmf “de växte upp i den arbets- och livsmiljö de för framtiden skulle tillhöra” s 292), eftersom det numera förminskats till enbart konsumtionsenhet i vilket hemmavarande leder till isolering. Mödrarna och barnen behöver komma ut för social och intellektuell stimulans. Att ta sig till jobb och skola/dyl är ett sätt att få andrum från den kvävande ostimulerande hemmiljön. Pga bostadsproblemet är idén om hemmet som en plats för uppfostran en borgerlig idé (s 234).

Själva detta faktum, att släkttillhörigheten måste spela en allt mindre roll nu än under gamla, mer stabila förhållanden, ställer på den moderna familjen det kravet, att den måste göra det psykologiskt lättare för barnen att lösa släkt. och familjeband. Detta är ett kanske paradoxalt krav i en tidsenlig uppfostran: vi måste frigöra barnen mera från oss själva. Det duger inte att låta dem fixeras alltför start till oss. Den faran är emellertid överhängande nu, äsrskilt då barnens antal blivit mindre och varje individ därför utsätter för en allmer intensiv föräldrapåverkan och tillgivenhet (s 301).

Mest uppseendeväckande är kanske stycket om sterilisering är, vilken ska grunda sig på frivillighet. Men, om upplysningar till den enskilde inte leder till att samtycke till sterilisering ges kan man behöva ändra lagarna så att tvångssterilisering är möjlig i sådana fall.

Matcentralisering inom fackföreningsrörelsen bygger på representativa demokratins principer = nedslå gruppegoistiska tendenser (s 280).

Tidigare idéutveckling

Malthusianism - det finns ingen gräns för förökning men tillväxten begränsas av en begränsad matproduktion och efterföljande svält som en anpassning efter mattillgång, fattigdom kan inte besegras genom ökad produktion. Lösningen är sena giftermål och sexuell avhållsamhet. Efter Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) = “gammalliberal malthusianismens eländespessimis” (323)

Nymalthusianism - förespråkar förebyggande handlingar i form av preventivmedel och abort = “nyliberala nymalthusianismens ensidiga preventivmedelsoptimism”

2023-04-26

#kris i befolkningsfrågan #gunnar myrdal #alva myrdal #myrdal

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dwellordream · 1 month

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“During the 1960s, events sometimes happened so quickly that they almost seemed to outpace the speed of sound. In the fall of 1961 coeducational colleges still had what were called parietal rules regulating the few short periods of the week when men could be in women's dorms and vice versa. Boys wore ties and button-down shirts and spotted “whiffle” haircuts (so short that if you rubbed your hand over the bristles you could generate static electricity); girls wore skirts, starched blouses, knee socks, and ponytails. No one would think of calling a university president a derogatory name or breaking into official files.

By 1969, in contrast, rules had become synonymous with fascism. Male and female students lived with each other in the same dormitory room; a new sexual revolution had swept the country, accompanied by widespread experimentation with drugs. At the legendary rock festival at Woodstock in 1969, thousands of people gathered in open fields to hear their favorite musicians, celebrating not only a triumphant counterculture but brazenly flaunting conventional, middle-class behavior. Boys and girls wore jeans patched with fragments of the American flag, smoking marijuana was commonplace, and hair reached the lower backs of men and women alike. Policemen were routinely called “pigs” by some of the best and brightest college students, and one university president, whose office was occupied by demonstrators, received a manifesto telling him: “up against the wall, mother-fucker.” It was quite a decade.

…As early as the 1940s, when the Carnegie Foundation issued its clarion call, authored by the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, to end racial discrimination, sociologists and lawyers had commented that women were examples of an “American Dilemma.” Like black people, they were members of a society committed to liberty and personal freedom, yet treated as separate and different because of a shared physical characteristic. The contradiction was profound, striking at the heart of the integrity of the American Creed. Only when all citizens were freed from such categorical discrimination could the American dream be considered workable.

Pauli Murray, a black lawyer who had pioneered the effort to get blacks admitted to Southern law schools in the 1930s, zeroed in on the connection between race and sex in her work for the Kennedy Commission on the Status of Women. Like black civil rights activists, she declared, women should prosecute their case for freedom by going to court and demanding that they be given equal protection under the laws, a right conferred by the 14th Amendment when in 1867 it sought to ensure the legal standing of the newly freed slaves by defining their citizenship rights. At the time Congress had inserted the word “male” in front of “citizen,” temporarily caving in to those who still wanted to exclude women from fundamental rights, such as voting. But the 19th Amendment had altered that pattern when it recognized women’s right to vote, and now, Murray argued, women should insist on carrying their case forward on the basis of the civil rights they enjoyed with all citizens under the clause of the 14th Amendment that declared, “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

…With the formation of the National Organization for Women in the fall of 1966, America’s women’s rights activists had an organization comparable to the NAACP, ready to fight through the media, the courts, and the Congress for the same rights for women that the NAACP sought for blacks. NOW focused on an “equal partnership of the sexes” in job opportunities, education, household responsibilities, and government. Betty Friedan and her allies pressured President Johnson to include women in his affirmative action policies, which were designed to hasten recruitment of minorities to decent jobs, and to appoint feminists to administrative and judicial officers. NOW endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment and made reform of abortion laws a national priority.

Equally important was the connection made by some young women between the treatment they received within the civil rights movement itself and the treatment blacks received from the larger society. Most of the young people in the early civil rights movement were black, but a significant minority were white, many of them women, including Sondra Cason (later Casey Hayden) from the Faith and Life community in Austin, Texas, and Mary King, daughter of a Protestant minister. Many of the younger activists joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which created an atmosphere in which independent thinking and social criticism could flourish.

….At a time when a new sexual revolution was just getting underway, the old rules and regulations about whom you slept with and after how long no longer seemed so clear. This was compounded by the realization that the biggest social taboo of all--interracial sex--was one of the most suspect and oppressive of all those rules and regulations. If the goal of the movement was a truly beloved community, why not extend that to sexual interaction? And how better to show that you meant what you said about integration than to sleep with someone of the other race? Especially in the heat of what seemed like combat conditions, reaching out for love, or even just release, appeared to be a logical and perhaps politically inspired thing to do.

In reality, however, too many women (and some men) became sexual objects. Having intercourse could become a rite of passage imposed against one’s will as well as a natural expression of bonding and affection. White and black women in particular became suspicious of each other, black women sometimes torn between anger at “their” men for falling victim to the stereotype of preferring white women as sexual partners, and anger at white women for seducing and taking away black men. The formula could be reversed, depending on which sex and which race you talked about. But the overall result was a new level of awareness that gender, as well as race, was an issue in this movement, and that until the question of treating women of equals became an explicit commitment of the movement, at least some of its ideals would always fall short of realization.

…The final ingredient for the rebirth of feminism took place within the rapidly expanding student movement in America. It would be historically inaccurate to speak of that movement as a unified crusade with a changing shape and definition. It took as many forms as there were issues, its ideological variants sufficient in number to fill a textbook. There were some who believed that a new culture, a “counterculture,” offered the only way to change America, and others who embraced political revolution, even if it had to include violence. Some wore overalls, T-shirts, and love beads and sought to transform the materialism of the middle class by creating a totally alternative life-style; others opted for factory jobs, short hair, and rimless glasses, committed to subverting the system from within.

Nevertheless, some generalizations are valid. Virtually all the participants in the student movement were white. Most came from middle or upper-class backgrounds. Children of privilege, they shared something in common with the critical and reflective posture of the Fetter Family, the group of Protestant students in Boston seeking reform of the church. But they had gone far beyond the moderate optimism of that group, and even the more pointed skepticism of the Students for a Democratic Society’s (SDS) 1962 Point Huron statement, with its desire to humanize capitalism and technocracy. By the mid-1960s, when the student movement started to grow with explosive force, more and more young people began to question the very basis for their society. The Vietnam War radicalized youthful protestors, male and female alike, seeming to symbolize--with its use of napalm to burn down forests and search and destroy missions to annihilate the enemy--the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism and Western-style democracy.

…At one SDS convention, and observer noted, “Women made peanut butter, waited on table, cleaned up, [and] got laid. That was their role.” Todd Gitlin, president of SDS in the mid-1960s, noted that the whole movement was characterized by “arrogance, elitism, competitiveness,... ruthlessness, guilt--replication of patterns of domination… [that] we have been taught since the cradle.” Women might staff inner-city welfare projects and immerse themselves, far more than men, in the life of the particular community being organized, but when it came to respect and recognition, they ceased being visible. Women occupied only 6 percent of SDS’s executive committee seats in 1964.

Nor was SDS alone in its attitudes. Throughout the entire anti-war movement, a similar condescension and disregard prevailed, symbolized by the antiwar slogan, “Girls say yes to guys [not boys] who say no.” Always happy to accept the part of the sexual revolution that allegedly made women more ready to share their affection, male radicals displayed no comparable willingness to share their own authority as part of a larger revolution. Women’s equality was not part of the new politics any more than it had been of the old.”

- William Chafe, “The Rebirth of Feminism.” in The Road to Equality: American Women Since 1962

#william chafe #history #1960s #20th century #gender #race #the road to equality #american

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irulfahman · 2 days

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dulu sempat berpikir, gila sekali pasangan ini. sebab tak banyak yg meraih penghargaan nobel dengan pasangannya, utk ekonomi pula. Gunnar dan Alva Myrdal setau saya adalah pasangan ekonom terakhir yg memenangkan nobel. itupun kondisi Alva sakit dan selang berapa tahun, meninggal. saya jadi khawatir jangan2 Duflo juga sedang menderita sakit.

...

ada sebuah cerita lucu yg sekaligus menjadi pembuka buku ini. seorang dokter menyuruh wanita yg tengah sakit keras dan usianya tinggal 6 bulan lagi untuk menikahi seorang ekonom. sang wanita bertanya heran "apakah itu akan menyembuhkan penyakitku?". dokter menjawab "tidak. namun menikahi seorang ekonom akan membuat 6 bulan terasa begitu lama".

di luar itu saya doakan Duflo panjang umur, sehingga semakin banyak kebaikan yg ia tebarkan bersama sang suami.. aamiin

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rennesairanenlove · 3 months

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Gunnar Myrdal Ongelmien Yhdysvallat: "Työ ei ole pelkästään, eikä edes pääasiallisesti, vastenmielinen asia, "negatiivinen hyöty", kuten kansantaloustieteen edustajat ajattelevat. Se ei todellakaan aina ole pelkkää huvia, mutta se on itsekunnioituksen ja tarkoituksenmukaisen elämän perusta. Työttömyyteen ei ole muuta parannuskeinoa kuin työ. Tällä en tietenkään halua sanoa, etteikö olisi tärkeätä antaa työttömäksi joutuneille mahdollisuutta tulla toimeen."

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cuddlewithpurpose · 1 year

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Black History: Ralph Bunche Died on December 9, 1971, in New York City. Ralph Bunche was the Peace Negotiator in the Middle East Ralph Bunche was the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He received it for having arranged a cease-fire between Israelis and Arabs during the war which followed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Ralph Bunche was a social science graduate and before World War II studied colonial policy in West Africa. He joined the staff of the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, who was studying racial segregation in the USA. In World War II, Bunche became the first Afro-American to hold a top job in the State Department. #affirmativetalkshow (at Black History EVERY DAY) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl9RbQPuLjm/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#affirmativetalkshow

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arabicphilosopher · 1 year

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Friedrich August von Hayek CH FBA (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. His account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his prize. Wikipedia #Classical_liberalism #Economic_liberalism #london_school #The_Road_to_Serfdom #johann_wolfgang_von_goethe #Socialism #Max_Forrester_Eastman #Individualism #pope_john_paul_ii #The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society #pure_theory_of_capital #general_equilibrium #choice_theory (at Newcastle upon Tyne) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clrmp0rqOSL/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#classical_liberalism #economic_liberalism #london_school #the_road_to_serfdom #johann_wolfgang_von_goethe #socialism #max_forrester_eastman #individualism #pope_john_paul_ii #the_use_of_knowledge_in_society #pure_theory_of_capital #general_equilibrium #choice_theory

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essayly · 1 year

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Read and answer the following questions:

Please answer the following questions in complete sentences. The assignment is due Saturday before noon. CHAPTER 9 Who is Gunnar Myrdal. What did he call US associations? What becomes society’s “central organizing principle” after slavery ended? What was the one organization that gained membership after the Civil War? Why was it necessary for nonwhite groups to form their own…

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poxumahafuka · 2 years

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William julius wilson the truly disadvantaged pdf

WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED PDF >>Download (Herunterladen) vk.cc/c7jKeU

WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED PDF >> Online Lesen bit.do/fSmfG

In this punchy book, Loïc Wacquant retraces the invention and metamorphoses of this racialized folk devil, from the structural conception of Swedish economist3 Entzivilisieren und Dämonisieren. Die soziale - De Gruyterdegruyter.com › document › doi › pdfdegruyter.com › document › doi › pdffechter der „Diskongruenz“-Hypothese, etwa William Julius Wilson und wissenschaftliche Bücher wie The Truly Disadvantaged von William. Julius Wilson von M Merten · 2017 · Zitiert von: 1 — William Julius Wilson: The Truly Disadvantaged. Moritz Merten. Chapter; First Online: 13 August 2016. München: Academic, S. 227-236 VV Städtebauförderung 2010 (pdf-download): Zugriff am 05.05.2009 Wilson, William Julius (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged. 05.07.2022 — William Julius Wilson: The Truly Disadvantaged To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author. 15.10.2019 — William Julius Wilson 2009: More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner William Julius Wilson: The Truly Disadvantaged. Gunnar Myrdal to the behavioral notion of Washington think-tank experts to the neo-ecological formulation of sociologist William Julius Wilson. von M Merten · 2017 · Zitiert von: 1 — Öffnen. MertenWilliamJuliusWilsonManuskript.pdf (740.3Kb) (William Julius Wilson: Die räumliche und soziale Isolation der Unterklasse)

https://www.tumblr.com/poxumahafuka/698181218667216896/leipzig-karte-pdf-files, https://www.tumblr.com/poxumahafuka/698184660789936129/analogia-fidei-hermeneutics-pdf, https://www.tumblr.com/poxumahafuka/698184817848795136/1999-bass-tracker-pro-team-175-owners-handbuch, https://www.tumblr.com/poxumahafuka/698184660789936129/analogia-fidei-hermeneutics-pdf, https://www.tumblr.com/poxumahafuka/698184817848795136/1999-bass-tracker-pro-team-175-owners-handbuch.

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carolines-concrete-jungle · 2 years

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A Decades-Long American Dilemma

The past two classes on diversity and segregation have left me with a lot of lingering thoughts. One concept I have specifically dwelled on is Gunnar Myrdal’s idea of the “American Dilemma.” The American Dilemma conveys the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and freedom, and the struggle of social inequality and the inhumane treatment of African Americans. At the core of America’s founding is the philosophy of equality and freedom, and yet, these ideals are not seen in practice. Although America has made strides against inequality since Myrdal’s publishing in 1944, interpreting the Black-White Dissimilarity Index in Douglas Massey’s 2020 article Still the Linchpin: Segregation and Stratification in the USA made it clear how much of an issue segregation remains today, and how much work still needs to be done. I am left upset and confused; how, centuries later, can we still be so segregated? After all of the work that has been done through the Civil Rights Movement and the decades since, how does is it that the dilemma which existed in 1944 is still relevant today? Furthermore, what can I, as a white girl at a prestigious university in the Northeast, add to this conversation that would be more effective than the work of leaders before my time? I don’t think Americans should accept segregation, simply because that is the way things “have been” and there’s “nothing we can do about it.” But, at the same time, I am unsure of how I, as an individual, can possibly make an impact in combatting the larger nation-wide issue. This is a dynamic that needs reconciliation, both in the context of segregation and many other social issues: how to contribute to a solution when you as an individual do not feel as though your small voice can lead to change.

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weil-weil-lautre · 2 years

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And when we consider the great ideological struggle raging since the Depression, between the Left and the Right, we see an even further problem for the author: a problem of style, which fades over into a problem of interpretation. It also points to the real motivation for the work: An American Dilemma is the blueprint for a more effective exploitation of the South’s natural, industrial and human resources. We use the term “exploitation” in both the positive and negative sense. In the positive sense it is the key to a more democratic and fruitful usage of the South’s natural and human resources; in the negative, it is the plan for a more efficient and subtle manipulation of black and white relations, especially in the South.

In interpreting the results of this five-year study, Myrdal found that it confirmed many of the social and economic assumptions of the Left, and throughout the book he has felt it necessary to carry on a running battle with Marxism. Especially irritating to him has been the concept of class struggle and the economic motivation of anti-Negro prejudice which to. an increasing number of Negro intellectuals correctly analyzes their situation:

As we look upon the problem of dynamic social causation, this approach is unrealistic and narrow. We do not, of course, deny that the conditions under which Negroes are allowed to earn a living are tremendously important for their welfare. But these conditions are closely interrelated to all other conditions of Negro life. When studying the variegated causes of discrimination in the labor market, it is, indeed, difficult to perceive what precisely is meant by “the economic factor….” In an interdependent system of dynamic causation there is no “primary cause” but everything is cause to everything else.

To which one might answer, “Only if you throw out the class struggle.” All this, of course, avoids the question of power and the question of who manipulates that power. Which to us seems more of a stylistic maneuver than a scientific judgment. For those concepts Myrdal substitutes what he terms a “cumulative principle” or “vicious circle.” And like Ezekiel’s wheels in the Negro spiritual, one of which ran “by faith” and the other “by the grace of God,” this vicious circle has no earthly prime mover. It “just turns.”

Ralph Ellison, An American Dilemma: A Review (1944)

#dang #ralph ellison #ellison #gunnar myrdal #american dilemma #diss #quote #class #racism #class struggle #power

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subharghyadas · 3 years

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On understanding black culture through art, literature, and movement,

The artist documentation of the black struggle in America is captured in the widest varieties and mediums in the arts. The study of this struggle has been the highlight of my last eight weeks at Cornell - my crash course in American culture. I was initially introduced to it in my Writing Seminar and Art seminar through movements and writing. Via a study of the Civil Rights Movement, the seminal documentaries of the black experience through the antebellum stories of Charles Chesnutt, the course of the Harlem Renaissance and by extension the work of Nella Larsen, and most importantly, the Black Arts Movement (which had its roots in both movements above,) I saw the painting of a multilayered picture. Civil Rights Movement writer James Baldwin due to his intersectional identity and ideas regarding art also gave depth to my knowledge. In understanding the role of individualism in play, besides Larsen, the studies on the birth of intersectional identity through the Combahee River Collective and contemporaries such as Kimberle Crenshaw acknowledge the people's struggle these niches made for the foundations of female and queer blacks. Through all these layers and lenses, I realized many similarities of such a culture to my own. I noted the idea of the trained subconscious bias that the imposing race used to see through oppression even past granting autonomy is something I noted in culture beyond just the black, in the work of other colored cultures and artists of the same such as Chitra Ganesh and Nicholas Galanin. Objective readings finally allowed me to put a title to my understandings, especially on reading “An American Dilemma” by Gunnar Myrdal (Nobel Prize for economics), where he quotes the black struggle as "The Negro Problem" (chancefully, the title of a different book by Booker T. Washington.)

I mentioned movements and writing being the most apparent, but the most seminal to my understanding of this struggle was through the black artist. Distinct in style and nature, similar in artistic purpose, I have seen commonalities in both the battle and the views and perspective of these individuals over the last few weeks. I believe my study of the same was even more niche, not through the eyes of the black man, as was usually my case with literature, but through the eyes of the black women and their intersectional identity whose alienation birthed a mindset best captured in their art. My introduction to this struggle of the black female identity, as previously mentioned, was through the works of Harlem Renaissance novelist Nella Larsen and was solidified in my studies of the black female collectives such as the Combahee River collective and the nature of their identities acknowledged in the contemporary world by people such as Kimberle Crenshaw. I saw these values, personalities, and motivations reflected in a series of artists I studied this semester. Although dissimilar in origin, all these artists had an indifferent stance on the black struggle and highlighted the same through their art. Now, this struggle came to fruition through various sorts of approaches. There were works of personal struggle and struggles of black womanhood expressed in the works of Phoebe Boswell in pieces such as "The Space Between Things" and "For Every Real Word Spoken," respectively. The struggle also solidified in other forms, such as depictions of the black female body in media culture, which is seen in the works of Frida Orupabo. In her case, she attempts to return the gaze to question the superiority of the race that once dominated them. A similar such anti-colonial sentiment is one we studied in the case of Nicholas Galanin. In keeping with Nicholas Galanins' work through monuments and critique of the American landscape and experience, we see the works of Nicole Awai. Specific pieces such as "Reclaimed Waters" maintains the same debates on Christopher Columbus that are evoked by Galanin's works and in my posts over the last few weeks. The final form of approach is in exploring the black body and its fitment into society today, whose in-depth photographic studies we see in the works of Sasha Phyars-Burgees and her exploration of the black family unit and canonically black values in Chicago. She maintains a similar narrative as all the artists in terms of how the Black body, in the American context or otherwise (Orupabo being Norwegian), falls prey to the combined political institutions and capitalist agenda. Their work weaves a narrative based on the realities of contemporary black life and highlights the black struggle.

Week 9 Post #1 ART2103

#civil rights movement #harlem renaissance #charles chesnutt #nella larsen #combahee river collective #gunnar myrdal #phoebe boswell #kimberle crenshaw #nicholas galanin #chitra ganesh #nicole awai #frida orupabo #sasha phyars-burgees

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gravitascivics · 3 years

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A TRUER “AMERICAN CREED”

[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings. Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject. It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts. The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments. This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

Recent postings have made a relationship between a sense of identity – how one places oneself in a given group such as a race or an ethnicity or a Yankee fandom – and the polarized politics the nation is experiencing. The journalist Ezra Klein[1] cites the work of various social scientists that make that connection. At the center of this association is race.

There is a long history of such work, but it probably began with the work of Gunnar Myrdal. His ground-breaking effort, An American Dilemma in 1944, while based on extensive data collected in the South, unfortunately seems to have left an inaccurate account of why blacks were being treated as they were in those states.

In a few words, that view attributed the maltreatment of African Americans to an inability by vast numbers of Americans to live up to the prevailing beliefs of an American Creed. That creed has upheld the traditional views liberty, justice, and equality. The take-away was that Americans were basically a moral people with a moral consciousness but that somehow, what existed was behavior that was contrary to what millions of Americans believed to be moral.

The solution therefore was for those Americans to just stop behaving as they had been doing. This oversimplified conclusion has been the subject of extensive criticism. Center to this criticism are questions about how Americans saw or see themselves. These critics agree that the problem is not how people, mostly Southerners, don’t live up to their values; but rather, it is based on people having counter values to the American Creed when it came to others.

That is, many – and not just Southerners, but Northerners and Westerners as well – just did not or do not hold beliefs extending these democratic rights and benefits to those who belong to other racial identities. In terms of federation theory, what this blogger promotes, Americans in general did ascribe to federated beliefs but only extending them to those who were/are white. They held on to what this writer calls parochial/traditional federalism.

Historically, any improvement in the treatment of nonwhite was not the product of redefining federalist ideals, but due to the strengthening of natural rights ideals. This blog has described how natural rights, in the years after World War II, became the dominant view of governance and politics. One good consequence of that shift has been the betterment of the treatment of African Americans, but as one can readily see, that improvement has fallen way short of the standards the American Creed established especially in the nation’s founding documents.

What still remains is an ample set of ideals and values that prevailed before the natural rights view took hold, i.e., discriminatory beliefs against nonwhites. Those anti or non-democratic views are deep-seated among too many Americans. The remnants of the segregated past still live in the hearts of whites who feel no dissonance in how they view or treat blacks and other nonwhites.

Instead, there exists a whole view of counter-norms that justify discriminatory practices that still uphold segregation in many aspects of social life, including living arrangements, employment practices, and social gatherings. Psychologically, people influenced by these counter-norms are able to compartmentalize or re-interpret the American Creed. Or it is what one might judge to be an extensive rationalization of what is taking place in terms of race relations.

This initial paragraph of an overview article gets at what takes place,

At root, racism is “an ideology of racial domination … in which the presumed biological or cultural superiority of one or more racial groups is used to justify or prescribe the inferior treatment or social position(s) of other racial groups. Through the process of racialization … perceived patterns of physical difference – such as skin color or eye shape – are used to differentiate groups of people, thereby constituting them as “races”; racialization becomes racism when it involves the hierarchical and socially consequently valuation of racial groups.[2]

These observations of what is taking place are supported by the work of various other social scientists such as Maurice Davie, Ernest Campbell, Hubert M. Blalock and it leads one to understand that the challenge of instituting a true American Creed – true in the fashion Myrdal defined the term – is significantly more difficult than what Myrdal judged the challenge to be.

Not living up to a standard is dwarfed by the fact that the standard was not held or not held to be moral as originally thought among too many Americans.

This blog does not see the solution as giving up on the American Creed or its supporting federalist beliefs, but on insisting that those beliefs need to be extended to include fellow citizens whose ancestry goes beyond European origins. That means, not only turning away from restricting inclusion to non-European based groups and individuals but to also reject radical individualism of the natural rights view with its narcissistic baggage.

Instead, Americans should extend what David Brooks calls “relationalism”[3] – or what this writer calls liberated federalism. As this blogger states in his book,

By calling upon civics educators to adopt another perspective, this book asks educators to accept an alternative view of governance and politics. This other view aligns with the nation’s history but provides an updated version to address its earlier shortcomings and to meet current realities. This other view can be called liberated federalism.[4]

This language, standing apart, does not communicate the difficulties associated with such a change. But given how extensive and undeniable the related problems have become, perhaps the nation is disposed to making the necessary changes it needs to make to approach Myrdal’s American Creed.

[1] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY: Avid Reader Press, 2020).

[2] Matthew Clair and Jeffrey S. Denis, “Racism, Sociology of,” Elsevier Ltd., 857, accessed December 15, 2020, https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/deib-explorer/files/sociology_of_racism.pdf .

[3] David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY: Random House). This term relates to a related theory in sociological literature.

[4] Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation: Implementation of National Standards (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020), 16-17 – available through Amazon.

#American Creed #Gunnar Myrdal #racism #Ezra Klein #David Brooks #civics education #social studies

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