In Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he details the way in which societies make choices that can lead to their survival in very unlikely circumstances, or failure when confronted by problems of their own creation. Whether the society in question numbers in the tens of thousands, or is limited to no more than a handful of people clinging to life on an isolated island, the lessons that are learned from the fate of these societies is easily applied to the larger world. There are always limits on resources, even if they're not immediately visible, and any society that becomes too fixed in its beliefs -- even when holding to those beliefs brings demonstrable harm -- is doomed to fail.
Those images came to my mind again as I read Eugene Robinson's new book, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America.
At first glance, the two works may seem to have nothing in common. Robinson's book details the way in which the Civil Rights movement and resulting legislation lifted the cap on income and opportunities for some in the black community. Where previously even the most gifted and educated African-Americans ran into stiff restrictions on where they could live, how much they could earn, and what they could accomplish, breaking down both the formal and informal limits on their achievement opened up (almost literally) new worlds. But as these high achievers flew, they flew away from their communities, and those left on the ground paid a price in a loss of cohesive, whole neighborhoods. Black communities that had previously been composed of a cross-section of society increasingly held only those unable to escape. Perversely, even as the number of blacks in the middle and upper classes increased sharply, those increases represented only a small part of the overall population. As the "stars" left the community, the opportunities for those left behind -- Robinson's "abandoned class" -- may have actually diminished. As a result, black America is increasingly divided between those whose future looks ever brighter, and those who believe they have no future.
This is not a book that pines for the "good old days" under Jim Crow, or tries to conjure up a pre-Civil Rights utopia of black harmony. Robinson is frank about the grim truth of life in black America before Civil Rights, including the tensions within the community. However, he recognizes that the passage of Civil Rights legislation was a step, not the completion of a journey, and that no matter how necessary and bright this effort, there were still dark and unintended consequences.
Robinson's book will certainly not be to everyone's liking, but the picture he presents shows how difficult it is to find the right solution, and how even the best motives rarely result in unalloyed benefits for all.
And his book also shows where we're all heading, regardless of race.
With no intention at all of diminishing the story that Robinson tells, the problems he illustrates in the black community are reflected throughout our culture -- a growing disparity in both income and opportunity. The limitations imposed on African Americans previous to the Civil Rights movement were so sharp that their range of potential income was artificially flattened -- doctors and lawyers didn't just share a neighborhood with laborers and teachers, they had incomes that were not that much greater, as well as the daily frustrations of living in a highly restrictive segregated environment. The removal of many of those limits in a historically brief period tore the black community apart at hyper-speed. Thriving neighborhoods were reduced to ragged war zones in a couple of decades.
The increasingly polar communities Robinson describes are just what all of America climbed aboard in 1980, and we've had our foot on the accelerator ever since. For the previous fifty years, tax rates had helped cap the disparity in the nation, limiting the opportunities at the top and pressing money back into the working class. The result was not an America without the wealthy, but one in which the very wealthy were very rare and the middle class dominated. As those limitations were removed, the ranks of billionaires exploded -- increasing by two orders of magnitude over only three decades. While that may sound great, and a validation of raising the limits, the total number of billionaires in the US has from fewer than a dozen in 1980, to around 400 in 2010. The price for that tiny number of people to gain stratospheric wealth, was a decline in the median income over that same period, and a continual erosion of benefits and retirement income that had been hard won over the previous decades.
While Civil Rights legislation may have increased disparity in the black community as an unavoidable consequence of bringing intrinsic, undeniable rights, conservative tax policy has torn the nation have from have-not to no benefit whatsoever. Conservative policy has not just sacrificed the many to raise up the very few, it's left us a much less stable, less resilient society. The same forces of income and educational inequality don't just threaten to shatter -- they are shattering -- the nation as a whole.
If we don't learn to address the problems Robinson discusses, we may all soon find out what it's like to be part of the abandoned class. Just as black America has illustrated what can happen when rapid social change drives communities apart, let's hope that solutions can be found there that can heal us all.