Shawn Maxam separates American fact from fiction.
The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.
-Jackie Robinson
Whenever you critique America you are considered unpatriotic and un-American or whatever. But isn’t the beauty of living in this country the ability to engage in a critical self-analysis of the land we love and call home. There are many positive and wonderful things about our country. But as a Black man in America there also many harsh realities that I have encountered that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. With the input of my good friends Thaddeus Howze and Noah Brand I list my top ten myths about the U.S. below:
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1. Meritocracy -If you work hard then you will be rewarded. We repeatedly see public and private institutions fail the average citizen and that it takes far more than just being really good and having a great work ethic to climb out of poverty or transcend your circumstances. The book Twilight of the Elites by Christopher Hayes explores how the idea of meritocracy has transformed into an oligarchy and further social and economic stratification.
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2. Equality - Gay and lesbian couples still aren’t able to be married in this country. It was just in the middle of the twentieth century when we had to create The Voting Rights Act and The Civil Rights Act. The Americans with Disabilities Act was only established in 1990. These laws had to be created just so historically marginalized groups could have equal rights and opportunities. More recently we can see the recent Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that struck down state laws making it illegal to be gay at all.
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3. The Good Old Days - This generally is a reference to a simpler time in America usually the 1950s. Illustrated by ‘Leave it to Beaver’ etc. Unfortunately there was segregation during the good old days so I’m not sure every American can agree about the goodness there. This idealized image of the 1950s wasn’t true even for white Americans as well. This image was a consciously marketed effort to fit people into a predetermined mold. The “Cult of Domesticity” of the 19th century or “Cult of True Womanhood” was an earlier American ideology that support rigid social constructs and oppressive gender dynamics.
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4. The American Dream: The economic collapse of 2008 and its many causes – sub-prime mortgage lending practices, credit-default swaps, rampant foreclosures, disappearing retirement funds, bank fraud, student loan interest rates all now prevent the American dream of home ownership. Michael Lewis explores the confluence of all of these factors in his book The Big Short.
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5. Founded on Freedom: One word is appropriate here – slavery or more specifically the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Freedom wouldn’t come for many Americans until centuries later. Jim Crow and segregation further illustrates how the promise of freedom would not be fulfilled for African-Americans. Immigrant groups would arrive in America for this promise and realize the idealism was limited in nature. Fortunately Italian and Irish immigrant communities would be allowed to assimilate into America’s idea of whiteness. The ability to assimilate into the mainstream has continued to elude African-Americans, Black Latinos, Caribbean-Americans, Chinese-Americans and other communities of color.
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6. Melting Pot: America is considered a white Anglo-Saxon country with Judeo-Christian values. Most minority groups are still portrayed as the “other” and we have a strong history of xenophobia in this country. An alleged comment from a Romney campaign adviser illustrates this belief -“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Romney, according to the Telegraph.
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7. Upward Mobility: It is incredibly rare for person born into a lower socio-economic class to “climb” into a higher class. Family legacies and nepotism still give considerable advantages to those born into the upper-class and the one percent. According to the Brookings Institution the United States lags behind “Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries, and probably worse off than Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom” when it pertains to economic and even education mobility in some cases.
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8. History: We generally do a good job of ignoring the worst parts of American history. Rarely do we discuss the Japanese internment camps when teaching World War II. The importance of the Chinese-American communities contribution to the building of transcontinental railroad and much more. Our distortion of the most painful aspects of American history allows to avoid dialogues that cause us discomfort.
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9. Justice: Everyone is as good as anyone else but the laws and justice don’t bear this out. We see disproportional sentencing for crack users and cocaine users. There is an over-representation of Black and Latino men in the criminal justice system. As reported by the American Bar Association “Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which differentiated between two forms of cocaine – powder and crack – and singled out low-level crack cocaine offenses for dramatically harsher punishment. In what has come to be known as the 100-to-1 ratio, it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger severe five-and ten-year mandatory minimum sentences”. The Rockefeller Drug Laws enacted in NYC in the 1970s also created racial disparities within the justice system and paved the way for mandatory sentencing for first-time offenders who were usually non-violent. This also contributed to our criminalization of Black and Brown people and the over-representation of minorities in the world’s largest prison population.
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10. Exceptionalism: We are constantly reminded that America is the greatest country in the world. We can’t objectively prove that statement. America ranks behind many countries regarding infant mortality rates or math and science test scores. Those are just examples of how the phrase “greatest country” deserves more nuance. In multiple metrics we are mediocre at best. The Gini Index which measures a nation’s inequality places the US is in the middle of the pack. So we don’t have the worst income/wealth disparity on the planet but we also don’t have much to brag about either. We may have the world best universities but our students are just average in elementary and secondary education rankings. We spend the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare in the world but we are just 37th in the world in healthcare performance according to the World Health Organization.
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I would like to hear your input. Are there items I left off the list? Are there things that don’t belong or should be replaced? Please share your feedback and thoughts in the comments below.
Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.
Thank you so much for reading, sharing and commenting!
R.I.P. SKH
Flickr image via Jewish Women’s Archive
About S. Maxam
As an Australian currently travelling through the United States, here are the top two myths I encountered:
1.) Cuisine: With ambassadors like KFC and McDonalds, the cuisine of America is generally seen as boring, unhealthy and tasteless, and while there are more than enough fast food options everywhere I look, the depth of options and flavours available in different local and ethnic cuisines are spectacular.
2.) America: The United States of America only occupy roughly half of the North American continent, and it annoys the people of all the other American nations that people of the United States are claiming the term American as their’s and their’s alone to the exclusion of all others.
Karl I have heard other citizens of nations in the Americas says the same as well. It’s an interesting and valid point.
The United States is the first and only country where the word “America” appears in its official name. Other countries are free to change their names if they wish (Chavez recently changed Venezuela’s official name to “Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela”). Until another country in this continent adds the word “America” to its name, citizens of the United States are fully entitled to calling themselves “Americans”, and no one else.
that is not true Mexico’s full name is United states Mexico of America just look at a peso it’s not very well known. they consider them self’s Americans to.
Totally with you Shawn. The thing that goes to the core of this is the lack of upward mobility which comes down to the failure of our education system. That along with our prison policy. I have obviously written about this extensively but it used to be that we as a country had far more class mobility than the rest of the world and that simply is no longer true. You have a better chance as a poor Chinese child to reach the top than a poor American child where the deck is stacked profoundly against you. In the end this is a collective failure and we will all pay unless we do something to change it. Our system and our economy depends on having a skilled and educated workforce.
Tom any thoughts on how we can reverse this trend? I know we would have to ammend many of our policies but is that even a possibility in 2012?
I 100% agree with you Tom, and from the heart. It pains me to realize just how little education is a priority here. Here in Oakland, CA, a local public school just shut down. In the late 80s and early 90s this school was prided by its local community for its efforts to reduce class sizes, focus on individualized learning, and accessability for parents who can’t send their kids on opposite ends of the city. The school closed down this year and parents–rightfully so, as it is their school funded by their tax dollars–went on strike. These are parents who can’t afford to miss work to drive their kids to another town or another side of the town. Many of these parents were arrested for their protest.
Sorry for the tangent but it’s like even the average parent is saying “WTF government, why don’t you our children anymore”–and they’re being arrested for protecting their local school. Such a shame.
Usually Shawn, I feel you’r ‘right on the money’. This time though, I’ve got to disagree with both you and Matlack. Working in construction, I work with quite a few immigrants. For years it was mostly fron Italy and Portagul, although letely, it’s been mostly from Central America (El Salvador, Costra Rica, etc.) While you won’t find these people in your world of High Finanice Matlack, if you stick around long enough, I gaurentee you’ll be working with their children. If they’res one thing these people take advantage of (for their children), it’s our education system.
If the children end up working the same jobs as the parents, what’s the difference if they got a slightly better education?
I think the big stick here is the difference between lower-middle and middle class educational facilities, middle-upper class educational facilities, and upper class educational facilities.
For lower-middle to upper-middle class educational facilities, school system funding is tied directly to property taxes. I don’t know if it’s true for the *entire* United States, but it sure is for the vast majority. The kids with the best teachers and facilities come from the neighborhoods with the most expensive houses. Smaller private schools or local college prep schools are also available to the middle-upper class kids more frequently than lower class kids, and students from these schools generally have much better chances for getting in to and succeeding in state colleges or “middle of the road” Universities.
Bute for the upper class its a different monster entirely. There is a world of elite prep boarding schools that most people have no idea about – the staff is entirely made up of Ivy League PhDs, class sizes are under 10 and structured around the Socratic method rather than lecture format, and the amount of academic work students usually do at these schools is 2-3x more (by hours spent) than at public schools (frequently 70 hours a week or more). The tuition for these schools is more than most people make in a year: the 4-5 schools I studied cost about $40,000 per year. Unsurprisingly, the kids from these schools almost always go to Ivy League schools afterward, and they’re disproportionately represented in the political and financial world after graduating college. Obama went to one of these schools, for instance (one of the rare students there on scholarship – most only take a few scholarship students per year).
This is nothing to say of the social and cultural benefits they receive in terms of ideological formation and social connections they receive from being completely immersed in a community of the “best and brightest” (heavy sarcasm).
I don’t think that the educational differences the author and Mr. Matlack are referring to describes the US’s difference in education with Central American countries. I think that they’re saying within our own borders, the educational system is one central one that prepares you for your eventual place on the food chain, and more often than not the level of education you received is the same as what your children will receive.
Excellent article man, I’m with you 100%. As an aside, it might be worth mentioning under “melting pot” the idea of cultural capital: white culture is the expected norm in the country and good luck getting a job answering phones, much less getting college professors or LEO to take you seriously, if you “axe” someone a question.
bbot I was moreso referring to our fellow American citizens ability to move upward. I agree that immigrants often do take advantage of many of the American opportunities. My parents are Jamaican. But I am not sure if that is skewed by the immigrant population that comes to America. Maybe they are the more ambitious for lack of a better word.
Thanks Andrew for your very comprehensive reply. I would actually like to extend the opportunity for you to expand your comment into an actual guest post. You raise points that I am not fully aware of.
Lastly I totally understand what you mean by “axe” and the impact of cultural capital.
Oh wow, thanks! I’d love to but I’m not really sure how to go about doing it. I haven’t submitted anything to this site yet.
I don’t have all the links to my research on hand, but I should be able to scrounge back up the data pretty easily – the education system was a major part of my “Sociology of Stratification” final exam and I kept all of the resources I used to write it. The trick’s going to be narrowing it down (it was something like a 40 page paper)… would you prefer if I talked specifically about class or should I just wing it and include race and social and cultural capital as well?
Well I can shoot you an email and we can discuss specifics. But it doesn’t have to be just one post. It can be a series etc. Based on your time and convenience. I think the information is important and needs to be shared.
FYI my email is shawnmaxam @ gmail dot com. Look forward to many collaborations Andrew.
Myth #11. People who support same sex marriage are for marriage freedom and aren’t also prejudiced.
Myth #12: The economic collapse of 2008 was not largely due to greedy, materialistic home buyers.
Eric I agree that you can be for marriage equality and still be prejudiced or homophobic. I would cite some rappers as example.
It is true that average citizens and materialism, ignorance and arrogance played a role in the 2008 collapse. Do you think financial institutions used these traits to further manipulate the market etc.?
I would cite as examples of those who claim to be for marriage freedom (but aren’t) those who wish to dictate marriage’s definition as being to one person only, not only for themselves but for everyone else too.
” Do you think financial institutions used these traits to further manipulate the market etc.?”
Of course they did. It was a greedfest. Greed doesn’t necessarily produce the desired results, however.
@Eric M.
I definitely chuckled out loud to Myth #12. Crazy people buying homes they can’t afford, smh.
As to Myth #11: Uh, yeah. There are PLENTY of people who support gay marriage who are prejudice. As someone who benefits from same-sex marriage personally, I have cringed at how unwilling some of the members in my LBGT community are to fight for (or at least learn about) issues surrounding race and transpolitics.
Hey Kaleb you definitely should a write a piece about myth number 11 and sorta of the tension that exists between the intersection of race and transpolitics.
Also if you want to turn the Oakland school strike story into an article that would be awesome too. Whenever you’re ready.
@Kaleb – Many of those same indivudals also oppose marital equality/freedom for polys.
You have an odd notion of equality. Shouldn’t equality mean that all INDIVIDUALS are equal? But you seem to think that every group in America should be equal to every other group. What do you base that on?
can you clarify this question? I not only think every individual should be equal but when we institutional discrimination then we need to address inequality between groups as well.
Hence why we instituted say the Disability rights act. Not ever person with a disability uses a wheelchair so although we put ramps at all government buildings that only addressed a certain part of the population that has a physical disability.
Did I confuse your question?
@AnonymousDog
I’m not sure how you you get that Shawn’s concept of equality is “odd”–maybe I’m misinterpretting your statement also. But in #2, he clearly exemplified (through the same-sex marriage issue) how certain groups of people are given rights over others, and how America has a history of passing laws and regulations to create more equality groups that have been marginalized by the law.
I think this article hits the nail on its head for an extremely key issue–we still haven’t acheived equality (political, social, and economic, for example) across the board. Marriage inequality in America is just one example of this, as #2 illustrates.
I had to re-read this to make sure I didn’t miss something. As a history lover I think that everything you wrote is basically correct. However, I am dissapointed to see that you completely forgot to mention that this land was founded on the genocide of 25 to 50 million indigenous people. Between disease, swindle, and outright theft the United States was built up entirely on other people’s land. How could you possibly miss that?
Native Americans now make up 1% of the United States population, but for some, Native People are “invisible.” If even the people seeking to “revise” the bull$*** story that is “American History” still treat American Indians as invisible that is really sad.
JP you are a totally correct and I have been slowly updating the piece which more information. I am definitely going to add the Native American genocide especially because they are treated as the invisible in our country.
With “myth” pieces: First, people have to believe them for them to by “myths”. If the writer made them up, they don’t count. Second, they have to be effectively untrue. That usually takes some stretching.
Couple of issues. As usual, anybody who says something nice about the Fifties is accused of jonesing for some segregation. Give that one up, It died a long time ago.
We had slavery. So did a lot of other countries. We don’t now and it cost a lot of dead guys to fix it.
Infant mortality. It’s possible people who claim this don’t know better. But not likely. In the US, any kid, no matter how hideously challenged, who draws a breath is considered a “live birth” and when the kid dies, it’s “infant mortality”. In most other countries, a kid born alive but below a certain weight, or too premature, is considered a stillbirth and thus, when the kid dies, is not considered “infant mortality.” Hence the difference in infant mortality stats. Most people know this.
We spend more per pupil K-12 than any nation but Switzerland.
There was no “genocide” of Native Americans. See Mann, “1491″ Something like 90-95% of the population from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego died of disease, almost all of them prior to the actual arrival of the whte man in their area. Genocide has a particular meaning. It’s so specific that, during the Rwanda massacres, Clinton told his staff not to use it because US law would require him to do something. What happened to the Native Americans was a tragedy, but not genocide.
Social mobility depends on lots of factors. A couple of decades ago, the wealthy on the west coast had “Japanese gardeners”. Seen any Japanese gardeners lately?
Gay marriage. It’s the best you can come up with. So I suppose there’s not much actually going on.
The racial disparity in prison pretty much parallels the racial disparity in reported perps in the National Crime Victims Survey.
Not worth addressing the others.
“Violent crime against whites and blacks was committed primarily by members of the victims’ own race: Sixty-six percent of white victims and 76 percent of black victims stated the offender was of the same race as the victim.” via http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/press/vvr98pr.cfm
The National Crime Victims Survey http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv10.pdf doesn’t have any staggering stats to explain the disparity either.
Lastly, anecdotally even if we to look at the high incidence of “Black on Black” male shootings/murders and the amount that go unsolved (including the murder of my brother) still wouldn’t explain the over-representation of Black men in prisons. Especially since we know most inmates are there for non-violent drug offenses.
Shawn
The same-race stats differ by about a sixth. Not insignificant. Secondly, the problem is mixing % with numbers. African Americans suffer murder disproportionately. Since most of their murderers are African Americans, you’d be likely to have substantially higher incarceration rates for murder.
A blog called “griffe du lion” does the math, if you have a PhD in stat. Interesting way to even up the incarcerated. Not what you’d think.
I will have to research the “non-violent drug offense” thing. Seems unlikely, but possible. I did hear one guy saying that many of the folks in prison used drugs and the implication was that was the reason they were there, but the fact is they were there for more serious crimes and used drugs, too.
But, anyway, African Americans suffer horrid crime rates and, as you say, their perps are usually African American. Not sure what to do about that.
Thanks Richard for sharing the blog “griffe du lion”. I look forward to reading their stuff.
I know in New York The Rockefeller Drug Laws had a tremendous impact on shaping the incarceration rates. The mandatory sentencing for first-time non-violent offenders.
I think our approach to non-violent offenders should be different than violent offenders and people who commit felonies etc. It would probably solve our prison over-population problem and save states a ton of money.
Thanks for the engaging conversation and your insightful and understanding response Richard.
Shawn. Between some humorous interplay with Griffe’s nephew, “prodigy” and the stats, it’s sometimes heavy going.
Generally speaking, non-violent offenders get sympathy from the sympathetic, unless they’re, you know, rich. Like Bernie Madoff, say. Or Martha Stewart. Then there was that woman some years ago, hotel magnate in NYC, who was on trial for tax issues. Can’t remember her name. She was so vilified that people would show up at lunch hour to watch her go in and out of the courtroom. During a TAX TRIAL. Not sure the watchers and yellers were up on the IRC, but they had a good mad on anyway. So I guess it depends. Sometimes non-violence can still rob people of their livelihoods, and without sufficient punishment to deter them, and sufficient control to keep them from doing it again, the innocent will have a problem.
I remember a bit by Richard Pryor. He was going to do a prison show in Arizona.
Paraphrasing: “Brothers in Arizona? They’s no brothers in Arizona. Must have to bus them in. I thought I’d see some men strong for the race……. All I can say is….THANK GOD FOR PRISONS. I said to one guy, why’d you kill them people?” “”They home.”" Point is, there are black victims and mostly they aren’t being victimized by white murderers, robbers, rapists. Their views ought to be considered. But, like that little girl, Heaven, shot in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, they’re invisible. They contradict the narrative.