Modes of Equality: Martin Luther King: Beck: a Meandering Thread

me:

I don't know exactly whether the below fits with the themes you're mooting concerning Beck and his rally--not having, admittedly, gone through them carefully. But here's, fwiiw, what I posted on the Kilgore thread in TNR:

... I quite despise Beck. But his talent for being superb at the crap he does needs recognition. Bad health aside--he may be going blind--I wouldn't be too quick to write off his future prominence or to predict his relative flame out.

I am stunned by the audacity of the flimsiness of Beck's line of reasoning in his latest tarring of Obama, while he, at the same time, ostensibly walks back his "Obama is a racist" assertion.

...No, Obama isn’t a racist. He, rather, is a devotee of Liberation Theology as manifest in the Church of Reverend Wright...

Therefore, continues Beck:

...1. Obama is a red/pinko Communist/Socialist because that theology has it that salvation is collective, not individual, whereas the truth is that the essence of America's Judeo-Christian ethic is that salvation is individual.

2. There is an ironclad nexus between collective salvation and collective governance via Socialism, which dictatorial governance obliterates the great American ethic of individualism, hence freedom, and obliterates the "Democratic" with which some Socialists malignly soften their Socialism.

3. And, by the way, Obama is a racist because his Black Liberation Theology, via his twenty years with Reverend Wright, commits him to that in its, and his, hatred of white people as the scourge of black people...

It's simply mind blowing to me that this is what Beck says on national (albeit cable) television and that he's so accommodated in doing that and that he can attract (is it?) hundreds of thousands of people to a revival type event and all at the same time make these assertions--often coded--while misappropriating Martin Luther King...

As to the misappropriation, King never detached what he called his "quest for racial justice" from his insistence on equality of conditions. Beck's message is the antithesis of that.

As Ross Perot used to say, as did others, with his peculiar, down home, Yiddish inflection: "Only in America!"...

metamorf:

itzik: Feel free to despise Beck, it's all just part of the show. But, to start at your p.s., where did King ever insist on "equality of conditions"? Where, in particular, did he insist on that in his "I have a dream" speech, which was about the "quest for racial justice"?

Re: Obama's racism or something -- let's stipulate that the Reverend Wright at least is a racist hate-monger. And let's also stipulate that his was the church that Obama chose after some study, chose to be married in, and chose to attend with his family for some 20 years, before "discovering", in the midst of a political campaign in which the nature of the church was exposed, that, oh my goodness, this is not what I myself personally believe at all! That doesn't make Obama himself a racist, it's true, but what does it make him?

And I have to say that if it blows your mind that some prominent political opponents highlight this association, then I think you're being a bit politically naive.

me:

Meta: consider:

...One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition....

and

...In a sense we have come to our nation's capital *to cash a check.* When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness....

and

...It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice...

and

...We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. *Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children.* Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood...

and

...And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "when will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We *cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one*. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream...

and

...I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, and rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...

and King in 1958:

...From my early teens in Atlanta I was deeply concerned about the problem of racial injustice. I grew up abhorring segregation, considering it both rationally inexplicable and morally unjustifiable. I could never accept the fact of having to go to the back of the bus or sit in the segregated section of a train. The first time that I was seated behind the curtain in a dining car I felt as if the curtain had been dropped on my selfhood. I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice is economic injustice. I saw how the systems of segregation ended up in the exploitation of the Negro as well as poor whites. Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society. [A Testament of Hope, 37]...

After the "I have a dream speech" King in countless ways led the fight for "economic justice" for blacks, as he saw it, and was killed in Memphis organizing a protest for underpaid transit workers or some such.

Do you honestly think that for all of Obama's attendance at Wright's church--which I think was essentially politically advantageous for him--it casts the slightest intimation of racism on Obama? Of course not! The question then, qua Beck, is *not* what does that attendance make Obama and is *not,* qua Beck, opponents high- lighting Obama's association with Wright. All's fair in a lot of things and politics.

But the issue qua Beck is Beck explictly assimilating Obama--I heard Beck do this on his show, which I glance at some time, the way I might glance a train wreck--to Wright's Black Liberation Theology and its anti white racism. You could look it up.

Metamorf:

itzik: In all those quotes -- and they're easily enough looked up -- what King was talking about was equality of status between races, not equality of condition. In the 1958 quote, it's true, he speaks of "economic injustice" as something that extends beyond race, but I don't see him saying that that requires "equality of condition". But, even if you could find a quote where MLK himself says that equality of condition is a goal, that would only reduce and cheapen his vision of racial justice, since such a goal would be as much a moral travesty for blacks as for any other group.

Do you honestly think that for all of Obama's attendance at Wright's church--which I think was essentially politically advantageous for him--it casts the slightest intimation of racism on Obama?

Yes.

me:

Two different issues of course as to whether plumping for economic justice cheapened King's vision--I don't think so-- and whether you can read his "I have a dream speech" as asserting a demand for economic justce as well as formal equality. Many commentators have read the economic imagery in that speech as indicating that along with some of the other phraseology I noted. That may be arguable, I don't think so but perhaps, but King's demand for economic justice as part of racial justice seems beyond doubt.

His socialism and associations with Socialists and Communists of all stripes, for example, is well known as his the increasingly economic thrust to his public work such as subsequent march on Detroit, more oevertly economically political.

Metamorf:

It's begging the question to assume that "economic justice" is the same as, or implies, "equality of condition". You may think it does, but it's not good enough just to assert it does -- see the debate here.

As for King's socialist/communist leanings, I don't really know myself, though it's certainly possible -- and J. Edgar certainly thought so at the time. But I'll say that I don't think many people think of or remember Martin Luther King as either a communist or socialist, but rather as a great champion of racial justice -- which of course is an aspect of formal equality. And in that capacity alone I think it's entirely appropriate for Beck or anyone to invoke his name.

me:

When you say "See the debate here", I think you are confusing issues. Apart from my commitment to the palpably undeniable reality of social engineering as woven into the very differential nature of legislating, which makes the argument for formal equality as a sufficient account of justice in democratic governance unsupportable--hows that for a question begging assertion--my assertion of King's adherence to that notion of economic justice here is entirely separate from a brief for whether he was correct in that adherence, although, indubitably, he was. You are imposing on the issue your repugnance with lend a hand equality and rejecting the claim for that in King on the basis of thaht repugnance rather than on objective view of King's beliefs and ideological commitments.

My diagnosis is that your felt need to take a side in one the great ideological wars of our time has you feeling you need to support Beck, even if you don't buy his "shtick" (apt word), and that has you needing to stake out a position for his appropriation of King, rather than his misappropriation, to help the cause.

You find me any kind of a socialist who does not hold to equality of condition and I'll show you a circle that's finally been squared.

metamorf:

Since anyone can play the question-begging game, I'll just say that King's purported socialism or communism seriously undermine his stature as a figure struggling for justice of any kind, and it's little wonder that it's rarely mentioned except possibly by geriatric Marxists, or rabid enemies. It's certainly not just me or Beck who focus on King's support for racial equality (which, to repeat myself, is an aspect of formal or status equality) as his great and lasting moral legacy, and it's certainly no "misappropriation" to distinguish that legacy from whatever other ideological fads King, in his time, might have fallen for.

Speaking of ideological fads, though, I notice that you haven't mentioned "equality of condition" for a while now -- is it the phrase itself that you're avoiding or the concept behind it? Earlier, the question-begging involved trying to substitute "economic justice" for that phrase -- now you're slipping in "lend a hand equality", which is maybe something like question-pleading. Why not just call it "do the right thing equality" and end all debate?

Come to think of it, that should work for anything, right? We could have "don't be evil corporatism", "let's all get along fascism", "be nice racism", ....

me:

You're gving your argument away. You can "focus" on whatever in King you want. But focus necessarily comes at the expense of what isn't focused on: King's insistence on lend a hand equality. And it's not of course misappropriation to say I'm focusing on x or y. (I notice you said "me or Beck": surely you can keep better company. BID.) But Chris Wallace's interview with Beck laid bare Beck's misappropriation: his denial of King's insistence on lend a hand equality as an aspect of racial justice, Abigail Thernstrom to the contrary notwithstanding.

It's of course not question begging to say that the racial equality of equal treatment is an aspect of formal equality. It's a truism and you don't need to repeat yourself. It's simply not near the whole equality story, necessary but easily not sufficient. For that sime point I'll use two words that come to mind (there are infinite combinations of words): "student loans": they are an exact example of "lend a hand equality" in action. Now if you can disaggregate their instancing of what I'm arguing for that's one thing. And all that will be a strong as the argument you make. But if you simply say we shouldn't have them, I'll have to leave you to that and simply say, to put it mildly, we disagree.

I believe in linguistic diversity and so to be a bit spritely in my prose I, on the spot, as I wrote you, invented the neologism "lend a hand equality" which came to me because of the rhyme between "lend" and "mend" as I was thinking of Clinton's slogan "mend it don't end it" with respect to affirmative action. But even as I used that phrase I had the intuition that, the vibe, if you will,, that it undertells the socialist King's commitment to equality of condition, a phrase I don't at all shy away from and am happy to use.

As to that note this:

"The term "affirmative action" did not come into currency until after King's death "but it was King himself, as chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who initiated the first successful national affirmative action campaign: "Operation Breadbasket."

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities, King staffers gathered data on the hiring patterns of corporations doing business in black communities, and called on companies to rectify disparities. "At present, SCLC has Operation Breadbasket functioning in some 12 cities, and the results have been remarkable," King wrote (quoted in Testament of Hope, James Washington, ed.), boasting of "800 new and upgraded jobs [and] several covenants with major industries."

King was well aware of the arguments used against affirmative action policies. As far back as 1964, he was writing in Why We Can't Wait: "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."

King supported affirmative action";type programs because he never confused the dream with American reality. As he put it, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro" to compete on a just and equal basis (quoted in Let the Trumpet Sound, by Stephen Oates).

In a 1965 Playboy interview, King compared affirmative action";style policies to the GI Bill: "Within common law we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs.... And you will remember that America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans after the war."

In King's teachings, affirmative action approaches were not "reverse discrimination" or "racial preference." King promoted affirmative action not as preference for race over race (or gender over gender), but as a preference for inclusion, for equal oportunity, for real democracy. Nor was King's integration punitive: For him, integration benefited all Americans, male and female, white and non";white alike. And contrary to Gingrich, King insisted that, along with individual efforts, collective problems require collective solutions.

Like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, King viewed affirmative action as a means to achieving a truly egalitarian and color";blind society. To destroy the means, the gradual process by which equality is achieved, destroys the dream itself. And the use of King's name in this enterprise only adds derision to destruction."

No questions being begged at all.

Metamorf:

In this case, for example, I note that you simply repeat the phrase "lend a hand equality", as though continuing to think that merely juxtaposing unrelated concepts will make the case that they're related. But it doesn't. I can only hope that if someone were to talk about "lend a hand fascism" to you that wouldn't be enough to convince you that fascism is just about "lending a hand" (even if they could come up with instances where it does). In case you still don't understand why this is question-begging, I'll refer again to the previous debate where I think you missed the point of the distinction between "lending a hand" and "equality of condition" as well -- so I'll repeat the explanation here, for the third time:

"amelioration [i.e., "lend a hand"] 'aims to help or improve people without regard to how they compare with others. [Equality] in its substantive form [i.e., "equality of condition"], on the other hand, aims merely at making people's conditions more alike, without any necessary regard to how it helps or hurts them in the process.' Amelioration may incidentally result in some degree of greater substantive equality, but a) it doesn't have to, and b) that would be just a side effect anyway. This might help make clear the distinction."

As to King and his supposed socialism, I'll also repeat my reply to J above: "you needn't buy into everything a person believes simply because you admire some things he stands for, and it isn't 'misappropriating' that person to invoke his name in praise of those things you do admire." In fact, you can go further and say that King's primary and greatest legacy is as a champion of formal equality, and so to try to tie his name now to one's own socialist or "equality of condition" doctrine is to obscure and tarnish that legacy, and hence is the real misappropriation.

me:

I think your immediately above makes no sense regardless of the quantum of repetition. Let’s get down to a case.

What does this mean to say: “amelioration [i.e., "lend a hand"] 'aims to help or improve people without regard to how they compare with others.” Student loans, for example, are available to students only who fit certain financial criteria. Some grants and loan free assistance are handed out on the some basis. So of course, in that legislative hand lending, the financially disadvantaged are being compared to the financially advantaged. Can you give me an instance of amelioration which does not involve such a comparison? The intent in the subject hand lending is to make those financially disadvantaged more similarly situated to their wealthier otherwise similarly situated peers.

And what it does it mean to say, “…aims merely at making people's conditions more alike, without any necessary regard to how it helps or hurts them in the process” as the basis on which to distinguish between amelioration and equality of condition or substantive equality, call it what you will? Please be concrete. Any time society confers a benefit to a disadvantaged class, that class is always singled out as such, is of necessity being compared to others similarly situated save for the criterion going to the disadvantage. The legislative presumption is that the conferring of the benefit will help the conferees.

And as I understand these terms, the conferring of such benefits to a singled out class is an instance of an attempt at substantive justice or equality of conditions, call it what you will, in the interest of trying to get some purchase on leveling playing fields or equality of opportunity, call it what youy will.

Legislation will never flatten the differences amongst people and groups, but social policy tries pragmatically to buffer some of those differences in important areas of people’s lives in the public good. Some of those attempts, social experiments, if you will, will be wise and succeed and some wil not.

So what I’m saying is that any social amelioration in the way I’ve described it is an instance of substantive or systemic equality of equality of condition in the way I understand those interchangeable, to me, terms.

I trust that it’s not mere nomenclature concerning modes of equality that’s tripping anybody up.

So what am I missing?

Metamorf:

...So what am I missing?...

You're missing the point of the link. This link here. I've posted it twice before in an effort to help make clear the distinction between helping people and making them more equal. So please just click on it, and give it just a minute's thought.

Metamorf:

I should add that, in addition to the link I mentioned, there are certainly other ways of helping people than by making them more equal -- one important way is by giving them a job, which may end up both helping them and increasing INequality. Similarly, policies that generally improve economic conditions (e.g., free trade, lower taxes) will certainly ameliorate the conditions of large numbers of people even as it increases inequality generally.

I can't resist wanting to clarify a comment I made above, when I said there are "other ways of helping people than by making them more equal". My whole point is that trying to make people more equal is NOT trying to help them in any way but an incidental one. So, e.g., people providing student loans are NOT doing it in order to make the financially disadvantaged more equal to the financially advantaged -- they're doing it so the financially disadvantaged can actually attend school. The objective is not to even students out financially, in other words, but to address a concrete need, which only incidentally, in this case, results in some slight evening out. In other cases, and I've given some, help is provided unaccompanied by even incidental evening out.

me:

I think you’re splitting hairs to avoid the brunt of my example. No one on my side of this issue, a la Vonnegut, whose small story I just read quickly and didn’t enjoy, is aiming at the kind of equalizing he absurdly parodies. In fact the parody is so extreme and heavy handed that I wonder whether he’s subverting his parody and laughing at those who take his satire seriously. That I’d have to think more about and might be the basis for me liking it. Bid.

I argue that you cannot distinguish between the financial assistance being accorded to poor kids from the objective of helping getting them educated. The financial assistance isn’t incidental. It’s the only means, or, rather, an essential means of meeting the objective. You want to elide its essentiality to water the example down as being one of substantive justice. But I can’t see it being anything but (assuming we’re not just arguing about nomenclature.) The poor kids can’t go to school without the help. The richer kids can. The poor kids therefore get help not available to the richer kids. That help, in relation to paying for school, approaches equalizing means relative to school attendance as a means of trying to approach equalizing opportunity. The example is meaningless without recognition of the centrality of the *relative* financial equalizing. What K.V. has to do this I do not know save perhaps as a parody of those arguments that would object to such helping hands on the basis that they portend some type of flattened out dystopic universe. When a policy comes down the pike that, say, wants to redistribute income to achieve income parity for all, you let me know and I’ll join you in opposing it. We can, then, disseminate copies of Harrison Bergeron.

Metamorf:

As to "the financial assistance isn’t incidental":

No, and that's my point, not yours. What IS incidental is evening out the finances of students -- i.e., "evening out" is not the objective, and the relative financial equalizing is anything but central. You could, for example, pay everyone an equal amount, which would preserve the relative inequality but would allow everyone to go to school -- that would still be serving the goal of amelioration. Or, if your goal is simply equality, you could just refuse to let as many rich kids go to school as poor ones unable to, or you could force the rich kids to pay as big a proportion of their income as the poor kids have to of theirs.

The debate isn't about policies, in other words -- it's about the meaning of terms or objectives. The point of the satire, which is certainly heavy-handed (sometimes you need a blunt instrument to get people to focus), was precisely to show how equality per se is not necessarily the same as helping per se -- not, lord help us, to criticize actual policy recommendations.

me:

The issue is: does giving poor kids money to go to school that isn't available to rich kids constitute equalizing opportunity? If it does, and surely it does, the objective of the conferral of that benefit has as its object putting rich and poor kids in a relatively similar situation concerning their means to pay for school. Not only is that relative equalizing central, the whole notion of student aid is incoherent without that being understood.

In your terminology the means and the objective are inseparable, even though there might be different ways of formulating the means. That the kids' overall financial differences stay essentially the same is not to the point. Nor are the different means available to the point, because underlying any such means will be precisely some variation of similarly situating the kids with respect to their ability to pay for their schooling. Unreasonable means will be rejected and the reasonable ones, for example which exist now in Canada though loans and grants, will be utilized. One idea could be to make state school attendance relatively inexpensive and essentially subsidized by tax revenues. That'd enhance equality of opportunity. And that'd be just fine with me in principle.

As for: "Or, if your goal is simply equality, you could just refuse to let as many rich kids go to school as poor ones unable to", where's Harrison Bergeron when you need it. The unreality of this modest proposal, however tongue in cheek, suggests to me, respectfully, the straw men you are tilting at. Because that's the kind of example you are really inveighing against, and that's the kind of example whose only existence is on this thread and maybe in Vonnegut's and others' stories.

Whatever you mean by "equality per se", and whatever you think Harrison Bergeron is relevant to, it's nothing that's on the table here. Helping by legislation is not "equality per se", certainly, but it equally certainly is more, necessarily, than procedural equality-- necessarily because it's conceptually the opposite of procedural equality, which insists, no more and no less, that the law apply equally to all whom it applies. What that more is is precisely, as variously named, equality of conditions, substantive equality, lend a hand equality or equality of opportunity.

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking my sort of counter reading of Vonnegut's story--a parody of those who absurdly turn all social equalizing into the dystopic elimination of difference--and I'm starting to like the story more as a result.

Metamorf:

...The unreality of this modest proposal, however tongue in cheek, suggests to me, respectfully, the straw men you are tilting at...

Of course it's unreal, that was the point! What on earth do you imagine those "straw men" to be? Itzik I think you've gotten lost in your own example and in the process have lost the ability to understand the really quite simple and basic conceptual distinction that once was "on the table" at least. But by all means, read Vonnegut however you like -- I think, respectfully, you've made yourself invulnerable to satire.

me:

Just two more things to clarify what I before said and not to argue further:

1. To what I wrote before, now that I think about it: there actually is a "more" to the "no more and no less" to procedural equality. In "treating like cases" alike, there can be no differentiated class of people comprised by criteria irrelevant to the law's purpose, one question being whether those criteria are strictly restricted to legislatively prohibited categories, usually like race, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

2. And just to be clear, what I was saying is that your concern, as manifest in the outlandishness of your quoted example, which I understand you meant to be absurdly outlandish, is all that your argument comes to--a concern with the absurdly outlandish. Your basis for wanting to dismiss what I am proposing as an example of substantive equality --that substantive equality "aims merely at making people's conditions more alike, without any necessary regard to how it helps or hurts them in the process”--can do no better than point to the kinds of examples Vonnegut purports to parody but really, on my reading of him, says betray absurdly outlandish concerns.

Metamorf said...

I did want to make a kind of meta-point about your #2: the purpose of outlandish examples, whether mine or Vonnegut's, or Swift's for that matter, is to make a conceptual point, by, in this case, emphasizing the distinction between concepts, but not to propose an actual policy. That's why pointing out that such a policy is outlandish is beside the point, in the same way that saying Swift's proposal to eat Irish babies is outlandish would kind of miss the point of "A Modest Proposal".