Category Archives: American Society

Ammo 2.

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Back in 2007, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American soldiers were firing a billion rounds a year. That’s a lot of bullets, even by my standards. About 1,500 Iraqis were killed by US and coalition forces in 2007.[1] About 4,500 enemy fighters were killed in Afghanistan in 2007.[2] So, that would end up totaling about 6,000 enemy combatants killed in 2007 in the two wars taken together. In theory, that means that American soldiers fired a billion rounds to kill 6,000 enemies. That makes it sound like they’re just spraying around on full-auto at the first sign of trouble. Except that it isn’t true. American soldiers and Marines fire a lot, probably most, of their rounds in training. Still, that leaves us with the question of how many rounds American soldiers did fire in combat. I haven’t figured out how to track that yet. It is worth doing because it is one way of measuring what may have been the experience of Afghans and Iraqis with American soldiers. Do they just shoot up any place that gives them guff or are they obviously discriminating in their use of force? This has implications for our relationships with these people going forward.

Then, bullets are a commodity just like, say, eggs. At any given moment, production is limited to some level. When demand goes up, prices rise until production expands. The federal government can always run a deficit and just print the money it needs. In contrast, state and local governments are required to live within their means. What this meant was that the federal government came to dominate the bullet market at the expense of both hunters and police departments. I don’t know what hunters did. Maybe there are a lot more deer and bear wandering around as a result of our wars. However, faced with a shortage of bullets, police departments responded by reducing the amount of live-fire target practice and training.[3] Apparently, this began back in 2007 at the latest. How long did the training reduction continue? For that matter, is it still in effect? Administrative systems develop a certain momentum that can be difficult to change. The point here is to ask if that training reduction is in any way connected to the recent high-profile cases of police officers shooting unarmed people? Or perhaps this is just an example of “apophenia” (seeing patterns where none actually exist).[4]

Over-lapping this ammunition shortage was another associated with events of the first Obama administration. Many gun-owners were deeply suspicious of the new president on the matter of the Second Amendment.[5] This led to the buying of guns and ammunition, just as my father-in-law’s own father bought several casks of brandy as Prohibition approached. In December 2012, the massacre at Sandy Hook school led to calls[6] for much tighter regulations of guns. Lots of people bought ammunition (and probably receivers). For example, the FBI reported 2.8 million background checks in December 2012, most coming after the Sandy Hook shootings. The price of .22-cal. Long Rifle went from 5 cents a round to 12 cents a round.[7]

Little things can be made to tell you a lot. Or, at least, raise questions.

[1] See: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2011/

[2]See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29#Civilian_and_overall_casualties_.282006.29

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 7 September 2007, p. 20.

[4] See: William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (2003). Amazing book. My students hate it.

[5] His derisive comments about people “holding on to their God and their guns” didn’t win him any friends among gun-owners. See: “Stuff My President Says.”

[6] Including my own e-mailed appeal to one of my two idiot Senators.

[7] This is the ammunition fired by the very popular Ruger 22-10 semi-automatic rifle. Really sweet piece of work.

TGIF.

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In mid-July 2013, 56 percent of Americans favored the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA), which limited marriage to a man and a woman. Still, a large minority (41 percent) opposed the Court’s decision.[1]

In summer 2015, with gay marriage equality close to a done deal, transgenderism emerged as a hot topic. In June 2015, 45 percent of Americans regarded transgenderism as a moral issue, 39 percent regarded it as not a moral issue, and 16 percent didn’t know if it was a moral issue. However, of the 45 percent who regarded it as a moral issue, 14 percent regarded it as morally acceptable and 31 percent regarded it as morally wrong.[2]

Do people understand the difference between transgenderism and transvestitism? Are they assuming (incorrectly) that all or most transvestites are homosexual? Are they using this as a proxy for their feelings about homosexuality?

According to one recent poll, 54 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 think that transgender people should be allowed to use the public restroom that corresponds to their gender identification. In contrast, only 31 percent of Americans aged 45 and older think that transgender people should be allowed to use the public restroom that corresponds to their gender identification.[3]

In one sense, this is the standard story of progress across the generations. The older generation is less comfortable acknowledging change that seems more normal to younger generations. As it was with race and gender, so now it is with both sexual orientation and gender identification.

Still, there is something bizarre about this poll. There were almost 320 million Americans in 2014. There were maybe 700,000 people who identify as transgender. Most of them are in the closet. Unless you live in a major city, your chance of encountering a transgender person in a public restroom is virtually nil. Then, the majority of them are male-to-female identifiers.[4] So, they are guys dressed as women who have a reasonable belief that they can “pass.” (Otherwise they wouldn’t run the risk of going out “en femme.”) Women’s restrooms are all stalls with doors. (Why do you think the lines outside women’s restrooms are so long? Are the lines really for the mirrors? Aside from the fact that the idiot architects put the same number of toilets in both restrooms, but then put in a lot of urinals in men’s restrooms.) So how is any woman going to identify the person sitting in the stall next to them in women’s shoes as really a guy?

So, I conjecture that most of the people—older and younger—who object to transgender people using the public restroom of their choice are probably guys who are worried that some good-looking babe will walk in to the men’s room, stand at the next urinal, and lift the hem of her mini-skirt.

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 19 July 2013, p. 15.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 19 June 2015, p. 15.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 13 March 2015, p. 17.

[4] http://www.examiner.com/article/transgender-transsexual-issues-101-are-there-more-trans-women-than-trans-men-part-one

Love and Marriage.

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Twenty years ago, about 21 percent of married men and 7.5 percent of married women would admit to having had an extra-marital relationship.[1] Today, the rate for men has stayed the same, but the percentage of married women admitting to having had an extra-marital relationship has climbed to 14.7 percent.[2] I suppose that counts as some kind of victory of feminism.[3] At the same time, a slightly larger share of Republicans (67 percent) than Democrats (60 percent) report being “very happy” in their marriage.[4]

Scholars have commented on both issues. On the one hand, some suppose that the growing equality of women in the work-place has made married women more financially independent and less likely to fear the consequences of discovery. That is, getting tossed out on their ear, and losing their children, and late-model used car, and Kohl’s charge card. On the other hand, some scholars have suggested that there is more social support for marriage in conservative areas. Religion, family values, and blah-blah-blah. However, a 7 percent difference doesn’t seem that significant.

If we conjecture that the continuing economic inequality between men and women (where women earn two-thirds of what a man earns) means that the same share of women as men are unhappy in their marriage, but only two-thirds of them are able to enter the infidelity market-place, then 21 percent of women are also unhappy in their marriages. If 21 percent of husbands have and 21 percent of wives either have or would like to trespass beyond the bounds of Holy Deadlock, then 21 percent of Americans are in unhappy marriages.[5] If you average Republican and Democratic “very happy in marriage” rates, you end up with 63 percent. If 63 percent of Americans are “very happy” and 21 percent are very unhappy, then 16 percent are in the middle. (Or they “don’t know” if they are very happy or unhappy. Probably in the first couple years of marriage when such disorientation is common, what with discussions of thread-count versus Sawzalls, how to allocate time between families during the holidays, and whether tuna noodle casserole is better with or without crushed potato chips.)

So, broadly speaking, either you get marriage right or you mess it up.[6] There isn’t much of a middle ground. Generally, almost two-thirds of people get it right and one fifth gets it badly wrong. Some of those go on to get it right the second time. How does this match up against law school admission or the stock market or going to the dog track? I dunno. Be worth finding out.

[1] This was long before the whole “Ashley Madison” thing. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Madison You don’t get points for boasting in an anonymous survey, so, either all respondents were being honest in return for a promise of anonymity or a bunch of people still decided that telling your secrets is a dumb idea. If anything, then, the number of unhappy marriages can only have been equal to or higher than the number reported.

[2] “Noted,” The Week, 19 July 2013, p. 14.

[3] Kind of like poor Al Gore’s people going “We would have won Florida if convicted felons had the right to vote,” until somebody told them to shut up.

[4] Noted,” The Week, 28 August 2015, p. 14.

[5] Obviously, gay men and lesbians off-set in this calculation.

[6] Thus, marriage is “protopathic” (all or nothing), rather than “epicritic” (recognizing fine distinctions). See; Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991). No, really, go read it. Easily one of the finest novels of the 20th Century. The movie is not as good, in my judgement.

The Roosevelts versus Ronald Reagan.

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Back at the start of the Twentieth Century, Theodore Roosevelt had posited that big business and a foreseeably big labor would require a big government to balance their power and solve complex new problems. For a long time, it appeared that “the Republican Roosevelt”[1] had been prescient. The New Deal, launched by his cousin Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, greatly expanded the government’s role in the economy. That trajectory continued until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then, Republicans have inveighed against the expansion of state power (unless national security can be invoked). What do Americans think about this issue in the early Twenty-First Century? A January 2014 opinion poll captured a fundamental division of opinion.[2] A majority (57 percent) agreed with the statement that “we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems.” However, a very substantial minority (41 percent) rejected that idea in favor of letting a free market operate without “the government being involved.” To belabor the obvious, 57 + 41 = 98 percent of Americans. There is no uncertainty in the minds of Americans about this issue, no mushy middle ground on which compromise is possible. Two tribes confront each other. In Europe, on the other hand, there is a broad consensus on the role of government in the economy.

This has important implications for the economically-battered ordinary American. In 2010, the median wage was $26,364. After adjusting for inflation, this was the lowest real median wage since 1999.[3] In 2014, American median net worth per adult hit $44,900. Japan, Canada, Australia, and many Western European countries ranked ahead of the United States, which came in at 19th .[4] Apparently, if Americans are offered a choice between earning another $20,000 a year and getting another month of vacation, they would take the pay.[5] One could interpret this as Americans being workaholics. One could also interpret it as a sign of the economic stress under which many Americans are operating.

The question is what to do about this pathetic performance. The opposing positions generally pit redistribution through taxation policies (i.e. “strong government”) against pro-growth and social mobility policies (i.e. “let the market operate”).

If you combine federal, state, and local taxes, Americans are among the lowest taxed people in the developed world. Here the US ranks 31st, trailing most of the countries with higher median net worth.[6] Where does American federal spending go? Almost two thirds of it (65 percent) goes to three categories: Social Security (24 percent); Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP (22 percent); and defense (19 percent).[7]

None of this goes to the question of which group is correct. Perhaps neither one is entirely correct. Europeans are laboring under an “austerity” that would never be tolerated in the US. It does suggest that there is a core dispute that is more powerful—and important—than the “culture wars” that obsess the media and Democratic activists. Hence, Bernie Sanders.

[1] As Yale historian John Morton Blum called one of his books.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 17 January 2014, p. 17.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 4 November 2011, p. 18.

[4] “The bottom line,” The Week, 20 June 2014, p. 34.

[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 24 July 2015, p. 15.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 25 April 2014, p. 16.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 25 April 2014, p. 16. It is worth pointing out that most countries don’t spend anything like the share of the budget on defense as does the US. Instead, they rely on the US in an emergency. That frees up a lot of resources for social programs. Then the federal nature of American government means that much spending is done by state and local authorities. Some European countries, in particular, have a more centralized system.

Annals of the Great Recession XI.

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I saw the Iraq War as an obvious act of stupidity from even before we attacked in Spring 2003. So, in 2008, I voted for the candidate who had opposed it, Barack Obama. I voted for him in spite of his obvious weaknesses: he was as green as grass in politics, he had never run anything, he didn’t know anyone much in Washington, and he had some dopey ideas. My assessment of President Obama’s failings is amply borne out by Ron Suskind’s scathing account of how the President and his advisers made economic policy in the first two years after he reached the White House.[1]

Undoubtedly, Obama inherited an economic disaster from the George W. Bush Administration. However, his background and range of contacts left him ill-positioned to deal with the immense problems on his plate. First, the president believed in the power of rhetoric; he almost seems to have believed that talk and action were identical. Supporters have argued that he’s the first president in a while to speak in full sentences and paragraphs, and that doesn’t mesh well with sound-bites. In reality, the trouble was that much of his discourse seemed to have been picked up in Chicago rec-league basketball. He disses people who disagree with him.[2]

Second, the president turned out to be a poor judge of people and had few close advisers to keep him from going into the ditch at the first opportunity. Rahm Emanuel, who served as his first chief of staff (and who recently squeaked through to re-elections as mayor of Chicago), and Lawrence Summers, who headed his National Economic Council (before going off to become President of Harvard until he vexed the faculty, were imperious), abrasive men who rubbed people the wrong way as a first order of business in any meeting. Tim Geithner, his first Secretary of the Treasury, was consistently suspected of mouthing the Wall Street view.

Third, unlike his immediate predecessor, President Obama could not pull the trigger on any issue. Instead of deciding, he sought consensus. Endless debates went on, but the President refused to choose one option and then to say “it’s my way or the highway.” Who ever crossed Richard Nixon without landing on the sidewalk with his suit in tatters? It’s a short list.

Many of his own subordinates saw through him from the start. Famously, Lawrence Summers, the head of Obama’s National Economic Council, told another official: “We’re home alone. There’s no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.” Geithner has been accused of out-right insubordination, but stayed at Treasury as long as he chose.

The “friendly opposition” within the Democratic Party would argue that, after the rough ride of his first two years, Obama began to understand how things should operate. He got rid of his early hires and started to make decisions. So they say. With a year and change to run on his second term, it isn’t clear that much has changed.

Still, what was the bigger disaster for America: Obama’s mismanagement of the economy or the Iraq War? Somebody in Washington needed to get drilled for the Iraq War, not just the men and women who fought there. John McCain and Hillary Clinton had to pay a price at the voting booth. What are we supposed to do? Let bygones be bygones after each new train-wreck engineered by the usual suspects who populate American politics?

Finally, has Obama learned anything? The answer to that question goes to the credibility of the Iran deal.

[1] Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).

[2] See: Stuff my president says.”

Annals of the Great Recession X.

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Jeff Madrick, once a New York Times economics columnist, argues that America’s economic decline can be traced to the 1970s.[1] Beginning with the Great Depression, governments had imposed tight controls on American financial markets. These controls had made banking boring. That was a good thing for anyone who had ever lived through a financial panic (or watched that scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” where Jimmy Stewart abandons his honey-moon to save the savings-and-loan when the town bank collapses. However, it also restricted the opportunities for profit in one sector of the economy. Economists at the University of Chicago, inspired by the writings of Milton Friedman, pushed an “extreme free-market ideology.” Embraced by greedy financial industry leaders, then by the Republican Party in the era of Ronald Reagan and later by Democrats as well, these ideas led to the de-regulation of the American financial industry. “And Hell followed with him.”[2]

Reckless lending became progressively ever more deeply entrenched among bankers. Successive crises of ever greater severity sprang from these practices: wild real estate speculation in the 1980s; the Latin American lending binge; the “dot.com” bubble; and then the nightmarishly complicated real estate investments that ended in the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The government repeatedly had to step in to bail-out reckless bankers in order to avert an even worse disaster for the whole economy. Thus, profits were privatized while losses were socialized. Not exactly what Milton Friedman had in mind.

To a historian, some of Madrick’s argument appears kind of rickety. He, among others, appears to believe that the American prosperity and global economic domination of the period from 1945 to 1975 was somehow “normal.” However, it is at least equally possible to regard this situation as “abnormal” and bound to end. The financial industry (or just “greed”) can hardly be blamed alone for the complex changes that have undermined America’s position.

Then, for purposes of analysis and argument, he separates out free-market thinkers and financial industry leaders. However, in real life they existed within and responded to an evolving context of beliefs and influences. Thus, the inflation of the Vietnam years intersected with government regulations on the interest banks could pay depositors. People wouldn’t keep money in banks unless they could get a higher rate of interest. So, the interest rate regulations had to be relaxed.

Then, he appears to believe that “greed” drives the elite, but that the same behaviors by people lower on the income pyramid are unexceptionable. In 1970, 381 major strikes hit American companies as workers drove for higher pay and benefits at a time when foreign competition had begun to exert heavy pressure.[3] Why is one act greed, the other not?

Then, a lot of the American economy was deregulated from the 1970s on. Takes airlines as an example. Between 1980 and 2009, inflation-adjusted air fares fell by fifty percent.[4] Air travel increased, but crashes did not increase. (I’ll grant you that the air travel experience now reminds of a trip I once took on a Mexican bus.)

So, the part is not the whole. Blanket statements about regulation don’t get us very far.

[1] Jeff Madrick, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).

[2] Revelation, 6:8.

[3] See: “American union, stay away from me uh.” March 2015.

[4] See: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline-ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/

American Opinion and the Confederate Battle Flag.

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In the 1950s and 1960s the Civil Rights movement reached one of its peaks. American public opinion turned against segregation, overt racism, and the violent defense of white dominance. This peak also coincided with the centennial of the Civil War. I haven’t seen (but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough) much scholarly work on how white Southerners sought to commemorate the “American Iliad.”[1] Were little Confederate flags placed on the graves of veterans in cemeteries? Were there speeches on the “Confederate Memorial Day”? Were more streets and highways named for Confederate generals? In any event, I conjecture that a Civil War Movement arose to counter the Civil Rights Movement. One aspect of that appeared in laws incorporating the Confederate battle flag into the state flags of some Southern states or to the displaying of the flag on government buildings.

Fifty years later, much had changed. In late June and early July 2015, the vast majority of Americans (64 percent) opposed having the Confederate flag fly over public buildings, while 21 percent thought that the flag should be allowed to fly over public buildings; and 21 percent weren’t sure.[2] However, most of the 21 percent who favored flying the Confederate flag over public buildings live in Southern states. Two weeks later, a majority (57 percent) of Americans accepted that the Confederate battle flag is a symbolic expression of “Southern pride,” rather than a racist affirmation. However, a majority of Americans still supported hauling down the flag on public property. Among that majority viewing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride were 75 percent of Southern whites. However, 75 percent of Southern blacks saw it as chiefly a racist statement. Deep divisions exist in the South over the Confederate flag.[3] However, lots of Southern whites appear to recognize that what is a symbol of pride to them is also deeply offensive to African-Americans. (See the statement by South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.) This might suggest an important, but hard to define, psychological shift among Southern whites. Still, opinion polls don’t always dig too deep. What did the other 25 percent of Southern whites believe about the flag, that it was a racist affirmation? If so, did they like that or did they hate it?

Why does “Southern” appear to mean “Southern and white”? Is there a regional culture shared by whites and blacks? Looking at Farm Security Administration photographs from the Thirties and Forties might lead you to think so. See the remarkable on-line exhibition at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bound-for-glory/ So might the history of Zydeco.[4] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa8vyTfugcI Shooting people in church might fall outside the pale in such a shared culture. Or perhaps it awakens memories of a fire-bombed church in Birmingham, Alabama many years ago.

There is no question of the Confederate flag flying over federal buildings, but each state has the right to choose what flags fly on state government grounds. Another problem left to later generations by the Founding Fathers. What did they expect us to do, figure it out for ourselves?

[1] Charles Roland, An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, 2nd edition (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004).

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 3 July 2015, p. 17.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 17 July 2015, p. 17.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zydeco

Inequality 6.

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Does economic inequality matter? Citing Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Neil Irwin argues that there is a “deepening consensus…that rising inequality of income and wealth is an important trend over the last two or three decades.”[1] Eduardo Porter regards these social ills as “an existential threat to the nation’s future.”[2] NB: Is he correct? However, a “trend” isn’t either a problem or a solution. It is just an observed movement. People assign meaning to trends. The meaning assigned reflects the ambitions, fears, and beliefs of the people doing the assignment.

What has caused the stagnation in most incomes? Since 1973 productivity growth in the American economy has slowed dramatically.[3] That is the principal cause of the stagnation in most incomes. According to the most-recent Economic Report of the President, the failure to maintain the productivity-growth of the pre-1973 period means that the average American family now earns $30,000 a year less than it would have earned. In contrast, the increase in income inequality over the same period accounts for $9,000 a year for the same family.[4]

Regardless of the causes of rising inequality, liberals see a correlation between rising inequality and social problems. The teen-age birth-rate in the United States is about seven times as high as in France. More than one in four children lives with a single parent. More than twenty percent of Americans live in poverty. Seven out of every thousand adults is in prison.[5] A child born to a white, college-educated, married woman has the same chance of survival as does a child born to a similarly-circumstanced woman in Europe. However, children born to non-white, poor, single women have a much greater chance of dying young. Mental illness is more common among poor people than among wealthy people. Between 2009 and 2013, 9 percent of people with incomes below the poverty level reported “serious psychological distress,” while only 1.2 percent of people earning more than $80,000 so reported.[6] NB: Hard to get ahead if you’re mentally ill. On the other hand, 91 percent of people below the poverty level did not report “serious psychological distress.” Why not? Shouldn’t you be all wrought-up over your miserable situation? “People in low-income households don’t live as long [as people in high income households].”[7] By one measure, where there is a great disparity in income, upper income people live almost two days longer for every one-point increase in income disparity. In places with high inequality, you can live eleven days less than in places with low economic inequality. “But what causes the drop in life expectancy is debatable.”

Why this social disaster in the midst of so much other success? The conservative argument offered by Charles Murray and others is that the welfare state itself undermined the character of its beneficiaries. The liberal argument offered by Eduardo Porter is that Americans have been guided by a shared disdain for collective solutions and the privileging of individual responsibility. Therefore, America had relied on continuing prosperity instead of a welfare state. When long-term economic troubles hit, many Americans plunged through the cob-web of a “safety net.”

[1] Neil Irwin, “Things Bernanke Should Blog About,” NYT, 31 March 2015.

[2] Eduardo Porter, “Income Inequality Is Costing The Nation on Social Issues,” NYT, 29 April 2015.

[3] Tyler Cowen, “It’s Not the Inequality; It’s the Immobility,” NYT, 5 April 2015.

[4] This suggests that the policy prescriptions of Bernie Sanders target the smaller source of Americans’ discontent.

[5] That is three times the rate of 1975.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 12 June 2015, p. 16.

[7] Margot Sanger-Katz, “How Income Inequality Can Be Bad for Your Health,” NYT, 31 March 2015.

Waving the Bloody Shirt.

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For many people, the Confederate battle flag is an attempt to distinguish between the heroism of the armies of the Confederacy and the evil cause for which those armies fought.

Fundamentally, the Civil War was about slavery. All you have to do is to a) read the Articles of Secession of the states, OR look at the nature of post-Reconstruction white rule in the states of the defeated Confederacy. (Or you could watch “Birth of a Nation” (dir. D.W. Griffith). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3kmVgQHIEY Really remarkable.)

Slavery was an evil institution that showed no sign of evolving in a positive direction or dying out on its own. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9JaQy6wfbE No, actually, the clip tells you all you need to know about slavery and the people who experienced it.

The armies of the Confederacy fought heroically and well against a stronger opponent. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Xu_Jni4V4 Often (although certainly not always), to be a native white Southerner today is to feel oneself to be an heir to this admirable legacy. There is nothing wrong with this sense of identity—unless there is also something wrong with “Band of Brothers.”

However, the armies of the Confederacy fought heroically for the freedom to maintain the racial supremacy of whites over blacks. (Not just slavery, when perhaps 1 in 4 Southern families owned a slave, but the legal and social superiority of any white person over any black person. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbXTl0WX4RE.)

Curiously, Northerners fairly soon abandoned the myth of the victorious cause. Yes, for decades, Republicans politicians were prone to “wave the bloody shirt.”[1] Yes, “Marching through Georgia” was played at the Republican national convention.[2] (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs43o85zot8.) However, the Spanish-American War (1898) is often seen by historians as a moment of national reconciliation. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAYbLdpghRA Certainly, by the 20th Century, the Civil War had lost its power to inspire a sense of identity among Northerners. Today, one rarely sees a Prius with “Grand Army of Republic” bumper sticker or a Chevy Volt with an American flag license-plate holder.

In contrast, during the 1950s and 1960s, visible assertions of identification with the Confederacy in the form of the Confederate battle flag began to proliferate in parallel with the advance of the Civil Rights movement. For example, the Georgia state flag adopted in 1956—two years after “Brown versus Board of Education”–included the Stars and Bars for the first time. For example, the Confederate battle flag became a fixture at the South Carolina statehouse in 1962 in opposition to the civil rights movement.[3]

It is not possible to disentangle the two strands of the Civil War in the South.   It is not possible to claim only one part of the heritage of the South without claiming the other part. They were intertwined.[4] There is no easy way out of this dilemma. All chortling aside, it is a dilemma which Northerners have never faced. So, it is a sense of triumph won without cost.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waving_the_bloody_shirt

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_Through_Georgia

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America#Display_at_South_Carolina.27s_state_capitol

[4] In the same fashion, it is not possible to celebrate the triumph of the Westward Movement without acknowledging the chicanery, violence, and racism that robbed and butchered the Indians. My ancestors played a part in that and I am heir to its legacy.

Race and Policing.

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In August 2014, a police officer shot to death Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In August 2014, 44 percent of Americans described race relations as bad.[1] Among African-Americans, 80 percent believed that the shooting “raises important issues about race that need to be discussed,” and 37 percent of whites agreed. In contrast, 47 percent of whites believed that “race is getting more attention [in the media] than it deserves.”[2] In December 2014, after the failure of a grand jury to indict police officers in the death of Eric Garner, 44 percent of Americans described race relations as bad, and 36 percent thought race relations were getting worse. In January 2015, 40 percent of Americans thought race relations were “fairly good” or “very good.”[3] In March 2015, 38 percent of Americans described race relations as bad.[4] Then, in April 2015 came the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, and the death of Freddie Gray, and the Baltimore riots. Soon afterward, 61 percent of Americans said race relations were bad; 44 percent thought that race relations were getting worse.[5]   In sum, less than a year ago, a large minority of Americans, but a huge majority of African-Americans, thought that race relations were bad. Broadly, this pattern continued until Spring 2015. Then the deaths of Walter Clark and Freddie Gray triggered a lurch toward seeing race relations as bad.

Clearly, this growing sense that race relations are bad is related to police use of force. In December 2014, after a grand jury declined to indict the police officer who shot Michael Brown, 48 percent approved the decision, and 45 percent disapproved it, including 85 percent of African-Americans.[6] When, on 3 December 2014, a grand-jury refused to indict New York police officers in the death of Eric Garner, 57 percent of Americans saw this as an error, 22 percent saw it as the correct decision, and 21 percent weren’t sure or didn’t know. Within the majority believing the decision to be an error were 90 percent of African-Americans polled, but only 47 percent of whites.[7] Again, there is a consistent majority of African-American opinion holding one opinion. White opinion seems to have shifted as case after case of grand juries refusing to indict police officers came to their attention.

In December 2014, 40 percent of Americans believed that deadly force was more likely to be used against an African-American.[8] In April 2015, 44 percent of Americans believed that the police are more likely to use deadly force against an African-American.[9] At the same time, 37 percent of whites and 79 percent of African-Americans believe that the police are more likely to use deadly force against African-Americans. A hair over 50 percent of Americans didn’t believe that race is a factor in police officers’ decision to use force.

There are at least two possible explanations for the divergence of views between African-Americans and Caucasian Americans. One explanation is that intense media attention to an unusual series of controversial cases has allowed African-American activists to foment anger. In this interpretation, the passage of time will heal wounds. Another explanation is that American society remains deeply segregated, so Caucasian Americans have no sense of the range of real experiences of African-Americans. In this interpretation, African-Americans are broadly correct in their perception and Caucasian Americans are living in a dream world.

By December 2014, a huge majority of Americans–some 87 percent–wanted body cameras on police so that contested incidents can have some kind of documentary record. (The racial divide on the issue was virtually non-existent: 90 percent of African-Americans and 85 percent of whites favor the cameras.)[10]

Which interpretation is more nearly correct? In early June 2015, a Washington Post effort to quantify police shootings found that US police had shot and killed at least 385 people in the first half of 2015. Two-thirds of the unarmed people killed by the police were African-Americans or Hispanics.[11] So, apparently, the police are more likely to use deadly force against African-Americans, and Hispanics as well.

According to the 2012 census, 63 percent of the population was non-Hispanic white; 17 percent was Hispanic-Latino; 12.4 percent was African-American; 4.4 percent was Asian-American, for a total of 96.8 percent. Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Arab Americans made up the remainder.[12]

About 50 percent of all American homicide victims are African-Americans.[13] If African-Americans make up about one-eighth of the population, then they are massively over-represented among the ranks of those liable to be murdered. Many African-Americans live in a violent place that white Americans cannot or will not bother to imagine. Moreover, use of the death penalty has dropped off sharply since it was re-instituted in 1977, but 77 percent of those executed have been put to death for killing a white victim.[14] Without wanting to argue for a wider use of the death penalty, can this be read as a subtle affirmation that “Black Lives Don’t Matter”?

Are African-Americans more likely to use deadly force against police officers? In January 2015, the Washington Post reported that 511 police officers had been killed between 2004 and 2013. Of the 540 people identified as having been involved in the killings, 43 percent were African-American and 52 percent were white.[15] Thus, it appears that Hispanics and Asians aren’t likely to kill police officers; whites are statistically somewhat under-represented in the killing of police officers; and African-Americans are dramatically over-represented.

These statistics just add another layer of complexity to understanding the violent police-community interactions that have so deeply troubled America in the last year.

The discussion shouldn’t stop there however. Race relations aren’t just about policing. In the aftermath of the riots in Baltimore attending the arresting-to-death of Freddie Gray, 50 percent of African-Americans believed that poverty and a lack of opportunity explained “a great deal” of the rioting.[16] To take just one example, in the wake of the “Great Recession,” white people are dramatically better off than are African-Americans. An average white household possesses 13 times as much “wealth” (assets, not income) as does the average African-American household.[17] In contrast, 39 percent of whites believed that poverty and a lack of opportunity explained “a great deal” of the rioting. That means that 61 percent of whites and 50 percent of African-Americans either did not believe that poverty and a lack of opportunity explained “a great deal” of the rioting or they “didn’t know.” You don’t have to believe that the rioters in Baltimore were driven by poverty and a lack of opportunity to believe that the focus on policing is a way of avoiding taking about other, more troubling and difficult dimensions of race relations.

[1] Dalia Sussman, “Views on Race Relations Worsen, Poll Finds,” NYT, 5 May 2015.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 29 August 2014, p. 17.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 16 January, 2015, p. 17.

[4] Dalia Sussman, “Views on Race Relations Worsen, Poll Finds,” NYT, 5 May 2015.

[5] Dalia Sussman, “Views on Race Relations Worsen, Poll Finds,” NYT, 5 May 2015.

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 12 December 2014, p. 19.

[7] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 19 December 2014, p. 19.

[8] Dalia Sussman, “Views on Race Relations Worsen, Poll Finds,” NYT, 5 May 2015.

[9] Dalia Sussman, “Views on Race Relations Worsen, Poll Finds,” NYT, 5 May 2015.

[10] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 19 December 2014, p. 19. There is something very American and contemporary about believing that the solution to a problem is to be found in technology.

[11] “Noted,” The Week, 12 June 2015, p. 16.   About a quarter of the people killed were subsequently identified as mentally ill. Harder to organize the mentally ill, march on city hall, chant “No sanity, no peace.”

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population

[13] “Noted,” The Week, 16 May 2014, p. 18.

[14] “Noted,” The Week, 16 May 2014, p. 18.

[15] “Noted,” The Week, 23 January 2015, p. 16.

[16] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 15 May 2015, p. 17.

[17] “Noted,” The Week, 26 December 2014, p. 16.