Schooling ≠ Education

Interesting video I plan to comment on later:

 

A.K.

Shakespeare & The Civil Wars

Okay, so I said before that I would do a series of posts combining music and literature. I recently rediscovered the song “Poison and Wine” by the Civil Wars and realized that the lyrics put me very much in the mind of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 145.

The song’s refrain, in which presumably hurt/angry lovers declare to one another

I don’t love you, but I always will,

is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s

Those lips that love’s own hand did make breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’ to me that languished for her sake…

Throughout the song, the lovers in turn list such contradictions as

Your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine

and

Your hands can heal; your hands can bruise

But ultimately conclude that

I don’t have a choice but I still choose you!

Likewise, Shakespeare finds mercy, for

when she saw my woeful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,

That follow’d it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away;

‘I hate’ from hate away she threw,

And saved my life, saying ‘not you.’

Here are both video and poem in full:

Sonnet 145

By William Shakespeare

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’

To me that languish’d for her sake;

But when she saw my woeful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,

That follow’d it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away;

‘I hate’ from hate away she threw,

And saved my life, saying ‘not you.’

A.K.

Broke?

Is America Broke? I saw a graph recently that showed the trend in bankruptcy like this:

I was amazed until I realized that the graph showed data since 2006. The U.S. was still in a housing bubble in which many Americans could bridge gaps in consumption by drawing out equity from homes that had grown rapidly in value. It turns out slightly longer term trends look more like this:

So, it looks as though 2006 was a low point for bankruptcy in the last couple of decades. To some public policy scholars, however, this rate is still a cause for concern. In the post, I critically evaluate a recent book by such scholars.

Broke (2011) is an edited volume from Stanford’s Studies in Social Inequality series. It consists of twelve essays each exploring a different aspect of debt, bankruptcy, and the American middle class. After an opening chapter by Katherine Porter, the volume proceeds as follows. Elizabeth Warren and Deborah Thorne use statistical data to demonstrate that bankruptcy is fundamentally a middle-class phenomenon, followed by Brian K. Bucks in the third chapter, who argues that bankrupts represent a small fraction of financially distressed households and policy measures focused solely on this easy-to-measure category might prove counterproductive. In the fifth, Jerry Anthony explores the nuances of measuring housing cost burdens and the need for a tailored approach to assessing sustainable debt. Next, Katherine Porter shows that although college is uniformly considered a welfare-enhancing investment, it can prove a major source of financial distress and increased risk of bankruptcy when it does not end in a four-year degree. Robert Lawless demonstrates the risk of starting a business and argues that some reforms can make entrepreneurship less personally risky. Marianne Culhane argues in the seventh chapter that bankruptcy is not as effective at helping families keep their homes as one might hope, and Deborah Thorne follows with a discussion of the disproportionate emotional impact of financial distress on women, the typical household budget managers. In the ninth chapter, Angela Littwin highlights the cost of pro se bankruptcy filing, while Dov Cohen and Robert Lawless follow, highlighting the unexplained higher tendency of blacks to choose Chapter 13 bankruptcy and end up “less forgiven.” The last two chapters round out the discussion, explaining America’s debt problem as a function of a virtuous American Dream constrained by stagnating wages, rising inequality, and a diminishing social safety net since the 1970’s.

Though approached from different angles, each essay contained in this volume offers the same general prognosis. The ability of middle class Americans to enjoy the American Dream is threatened by unsustainable debt burdens. This burden, they argue, arises from stagnating wages among the middle class, inadequate social support, and a broken credit system that makes credit too easy to obtain and at too great a cost. Most chapters recommend reforms of some type to address the American debt crisis.

In addition to stressing structural causes of bankruptcy, each author is also careful to counter popular notions of overconsumption or poor individual decision-making as contributors to the problem of American indebtedness. They stress that the typical bankrupt is the typical middle-class American, an assertion meant to support the proposition that structural, rather than individual failures must drive the observed phenomenon. In what follows, I offer two criticisms. First, the American Dream is a vacuous concept. Second, the characterization of bankrupt families as unquestionably virtuous victims is not only unsupported by the evidence presented, but seems to arise from ideological predispositions rather than data.

The American Dream

The American Dream is stated in many ways, usually associated with home ownership, occupational prestige, and educational attainment. Just as often the American Dream is posited as a narrative of upward social mobility. In either event, two facts are plain. First, the Dream itself is inherently an aspirational vision of material prosperity. Several selections from the text should illustrate:

Their version of the American Dream has been replaced by a desperate hope that things do not get even worse….people who could purchase a home, who could put down roots and secure their financial futures, surely had accomplished the American Dream—even if they had borrowed every dollar needed to get there….Instead of accomplishing the American Dream, these self-employed people have found themselves declaring bankruptcy….the American Dream has been financed with borrowed money.

Second, the American Dream is considered synonymous with attaining and maintaining middle class status. Middle class is often defined more technically as clustering around median income or as income located in the three middle quintiles of income distribution. There are issues with this measure which are cited in a previous post. But middle class status and its trappings is largely coextensive with the notion of the American Dream:

Membership in the middle class is associated with homeownership, educational opportunity, comfortable retirement, access to health care, and last, but not least, an appetite for consumer goods….In the past, we have assumed that these markers of the middle class [such as college attendance and home-ownership] strongly protected Americans from the economic instability that often leads to bankruptcy….[college attendance] signals both aspirations and experiences that are distinctly middle class….forces have put the prosperity of the middle class at grave risk.

Throughout the course of the book, each author implicitly assumes that the American Dream of comfortable middle class living in inherently virtuous. Failures of families to achieve or maintain this lifestyle—unknown to human history just a few decades before—is not only evidence of market failure, but, for the families who must cope with disappointed expectations, is tantamount to “suffering”, “tragedy”, “painful”, and “harm.” Nothing in the descriptive statistics dictates such a conclusion; it is an interpolated normative evaluation based upon an arbitrary benchmark for economic prosperity. The authors do not seriously consider whether the expectation of such a lifestyle, anchored in the post-WWII economic boom, needs to be adjusted to comport with present economic realities. Rather, they assume that political mechanisms can and should cater to those expectations.

The Virtuous Bankrupt?

My second criticism of this volume has to do with the evidence the authors present for the proposition that bankrupts as a class are not to blame for their own financial failings. To be clear, some justification for the proposition might exist but is not to be found in the present volume. In the opening chapter, Porter states that the

book’s purpose is to counter the rhetoric about bankruptcy by providing data on the real families who file for bankruptcy. In analyzing their financial situations, we identify gaps and inconsistencies in the law, policy, and economics of consumer credit. Each chapter examines a different slice of the bankruptcy system, but the chapters together give a useful overview of the severe financial distress that plagues many American families struggling with their debts.

In other words, bankruptcy is to be explained purely by structural or systemic failures, but not individual bankrupts who play “by all the rules”—rules which apparently include borrowing in excess of capacity to repay in “pursuit of the American Dream.” Negative stereotypes about middle class financial distress are dismissed as mere prejudice, but not refuted with evidence.

It is in the fifth chapter of the volume that Porter presents her own evidence for the virtue of the typical bankrupt in the context of education spending. There she identifies attending college without obtaining a four-year degree as a major risk factor for bankruptcy. The explanation has intuitive appeal: persons who finance their college attendance through loans, yet lack the increased earning potential which statistically corresponds to a four-year degree are at greater risk for financial distress.

But the question remains as to the policy relevance of this finding. If college dropouts are, for the most part, individuals who play by all the rules but were failed by the system, the system ought to be fixed. In defense of bankrupt dropouts, Porter declares that “The typical dropout is not someone who simply cannot choose a major or who does not like college.” Instead, “the vast majority of people in bankruptcy do not complete their educational programs because of financial or family circumstances, not because of uninterest in education.” What the critical reader expects next is compelling data in support of such a blanket statement. Porter’s conclusion however is based on the retrospective self-reports of respondents (n=75) who were both bankrupt and previously dropped out of college. Porter informs us that only 8 percent of the sample indicated that they decided not to continue due to disinterest, while 26.7 percent indicated a change in family such as a birth or death. Given what we know about survey response reliability (See Zaller 1992), such retrospective self-reporting is inherently suspect. A reader inclined to a rosy view of bankrupt persons might consider this evidence confirmatory. A reader more inclined to find fault with bankrupt persons could with equal justification dismiss the result as demonstrating the propensity of individual respondents to offer post hoc rationalizations for socially maligned outcomes. The point here is that the evidence is far from conclusive despite the conclusory nature of the statement it is offered to support.

Moreover, Porter glosses over a very important number in her treatment of this particular finding. True, a mere eight percent indicate lack of interest in continued attendance, but despite the availability of several other categories for respondents to indicate financial or family constraints, 36 percent of respondents choose the “Other” category. Surely the fact that 36 percent of respondents could not give a financial or family reason for dropping out of college is relevant to a discussion of a “policy of encouraging postsecondary education” in an environment where such an investment is hugely expensive. Despite the post hoc rationalization bias and the combined 44 percent (8 + 36%) of bankrupt respondents who cannot give a reason for dropping out of college, Porter declares that “the vast majority of people in bankruptcy do not complete their educational programs because of financial or family circumstances” (italics mine).

One final problem applies to the bankruptcy data itself and the ability of the researchers to make valid inferences on the basis thereof. Nearly all of the essays contained in this volume rely on data from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project. The CBP collected data on bankruptcy cases filed in the first few months of 2007. The CBP sent a four-page questionnaire to a randomly drawn sample of 5,000 households which had filed Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy. About half of those households responded and less than half of those were able to be reached for telephone interviews. This degree of self-selection among respondents in any survey is problematic for researchers concerned with generalizability. The concern should be heightened when a possible selection bias is systematically related to the variable we wish to measure. Recall, that a key aim of the volume is to provide descriptive statistics about the typical bankrupt American household in order to “counter the [negative] rhetoric” about the typical bankrupt household. Plausibly, persons who lack a sound justification for bankruptcy will disproportionately self-select out of such a study due to the shame associated with a socially disfavored outcome. But whether or not a bankrupt household engaged in irresponsible consumption or other blame-worthy behavior is the key variable of interest. When there are plausible reasons to suspect such bias in our measure, the generalizability of the findings is greatly limited. Most of the authors proceed as if oblivious to this elementary principle of statistics.

This volume provides a lot of useful information about bankruptcy in America. Yet the authors bombard the reader with an argument that bankruptcy is a sign of a bigger problem of inequality and a failure of government to provide adequately for the middle class, its largest constituency. This argument is not only counterintuitive but ignores the fact that bankruptcy itself is a remedy for individuals and families that, for whatever reason, have spent in excess of their ability to repay. That downgraded expectations are unpleasant is a fact of life and not, in itself, policy relevant. The authors’ attempt to make such a phenomenon policy relevant requires an extension beyond the facts they present and smacks of ideological motivations.

A.K.

A Tale of Two Frames

This year marks the 50th anniversary of desegregation in the south and of the infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” by Alabama’s Governor George Wallace. This seems an appropriate occasion to expound on some remarks I have made previously about the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. In this post, I present the Black Civil Rights Movement in America as a struggle between frames. One frame can be summed up in the words of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech:

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood… I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood… I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character (emphasis added).

The other frame can perhaps be summed in Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s Black Power (1967:34-35), in which they argued that black people in America

. . . must first redefine ourselves. Our basic need is to reclaim our history and our identity. . . . We shall have to struggle for the right to create our own terms through which to define ourselves and our relationship to society, and to have those terms recognized. This is the first right of a free people (emphasis added).

A frame, of course, is a mode of interpretation. It refers to the process by which an individual cognizes an issue and relates that issue to himself. Frame alignment—which I will discuss later—refers to that process by which a social movement organization (SMO) cultivates a constituency around a common frame and orients those constituents toward a common goal. In the first frame, which I shall refer to as the Brotherhood frame, race is viewed as an artificial barrier separating rightful brethren. In this frame, the goal of the civil rights movement is to shame a nation to live up to its highest ideals and embrace the brotherhood of all its citizens.

The second frame, which I shall refer to as the Black Power frame, suggests that blacks can never truly be liberated unless they are free to reserve for themselves a group-specific identity. This frame emphasizes the brotherhood of blacks in contradistinction to their white counterparts and the broader culture. I explore the nature and implications of these rival frames for the black civil rights project. I argue that frames which enable social movements to effectively mobilize may prove to be pathologies which impede some movement goals.

In short, the way an issue is framed by social movement activists and participants is important because

the reasons why some show up and others do not, why some stay in contention longer than others, and why some achieve greater and more enduring success, have to do not only with changes in opportunities and the expansion and appropriation of societal resources, but also with whether frame alignment has been successfully effected and sustained (Snow, et al. 1986, 478).

Both the Brotherhood frame and the Black Power frame reflected disillusionment with established institutions and stressed the need for self-reliance within the black community. Where they differ is the depth of their disillusionment and the conclusion each draws from it. These differing conclusions also led to the utilization of differing repertoires of contention, though both were grounded on the principle of direct action, that is, activities directed at society but not mediated through established formal institutions.

The Brotherhood Frame

The Brotherhood frame, exemplified in Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, held as its goal the full admission of blacks into every facet of American society and racial harmony as the nation learned to live up to its highest ideals. Groups mobilized under this frame were unified in the belief that there was a core of decency in American society that could be tapped into. One scholar notes that “King seems to localize the problem in ‘the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, or irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.’” (Jones 1983, 231).

This sense that the American conscience required rousing through direct action also indicated the form that action should take. Influenced by non-violent activism of the Indian nationalist movement, SMO’s organized under the Brotherhood frame utilized as their main weapon nonviolent civil disobedience to discriminatory laws. As King reasoned,

The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him….In the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe (King 1964, 85).

In line with Christian principles (and influenced by the Indian Nationalist Movement), members of SMO’s operating under this frame were challenged to shame their oppressor by returning love for hate and responding to violence with nonviolent resistance.

This Brotherhood frame—calling for full social, political, and economic participation, and advanced through nonviolent civil disobedience—shaped the practices of SMO’s such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The success of black nonviolent protest continues to fuel scholarly study and inspire other movements around the globe (Morris 1999).

Through trial-and-error, all kinds of nonviolent tactics were utilized such as sit-ins, freedom rides, mass marches, and mass jailings. Morris notes that “The sit-in tactic was innovative because other tactics spun off of it, including ‘wade ins’ at segregated pools, ‘kneel-ins’ and ‘pray-ins’ at segregated churches, and ‘phone-ins’ at segregated businesses” (Id. at 525). These tactics put American hypocrisy on full display:

The intensity and visibility of demonstrations caused the Kennedy Administration and the Congress to seek measures that would end demonstrations and restore social order. The demonstrations and the repressive measures used against them generated a foreign policy nightmare because they were covered by foreign media in Europe, the Soviet Union and Africa. As a result of national turmoil and international attention, the Jim Crow order was rendered vulnerable (Id. at 526, internal citations omitted).

Some see favorable action by the federal government as the primary spur for movement activity. The record seems to indicate that the black insurgency of the 1950’s and 60’s prompted the federal government to act decisively in favor of civil rights by the time of the Johnson Administration in 1964, not the other way around. Neither does it seem plausible to attribute the mass mobilization beginning in 1955 to court actions. Rather it appears to be the demonstrated inefficacy of the Court that spurred blacks to pursue their own efficacy through extrainstitutional means.

The Black Power Frame

The Black Power frame, though it had manifested itself in inchoate forms throughout the twentieth century, fully emerged in the latter stages of the modern Civil Rights Movement. It also was born of disillusionment, but its disillusionment ran deeper and led to different conclusions about the appropriate means of contention. As Painter recounts:

The justice of the demands for civil rights and white supremacists’ tenacity produced both success and frustration. On the one hand, the federal legislation of the mid-1960’s dismantled the legal basis of segregation and exclusion. On the other hand, federal laws were spottily enforced, and new forms of discrimination were appearing. Continuing antiblack violence led many African-Americans to question the logic of nonviolent protest. And Malcolm X’s steady criticism of nonviolence in the face of racist assault had supplied a counternarrative since the late 1950’s (Painter 2006, 292).

Following the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, the subsequent publication of Message to the Grass Roots (1966) increased the diffusion of his ideas.

Painter tells us that it was also in 1966 when young Stokely Carmichael gained prominence and popularized the term “Black Power” on the occasion of James Meredith’s Mississippi “Walk Against Fear.” An assailant shot Meredith on the first day of his march. Carmichael and fellow SNCC volunteer Willie Ricks hurried to Meredith’s side, addressing a rally in his support. Rather than voice the usual call for “Freedom,” Ricks and Carmichael demanded “Black Power,” to thunderous applause (Id. at 293).

The shift in tactics from nonviolent protest to many of the armed clashes that characterize the late 1960’s and early 70’s reflected a deeper sense of alienation from American society than the Brotherhood frame. Inclusion into mainstream American society was no longer considered a viable or desirable goal. To long for acceptance into such a hostile culture was considered demeaning to the dignity of a free people. Leaders and organizations that emerged under this frame, such as Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton and their California-based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP), stressed not only armed defense but recast the struggle for civil rights as an anti-colonial movement wherein blacks constituted a nation within a nation. As a separate nation, blacks were encouraged to pursue a distinct culture and shun anything that too closely resembled the trappings of American middle class society, a central aspiration of white Americans. Blacks were to show their solidarity with the group by taking distinct names, dress, and cultural traditions. “In Los Angeles Maulana Karenga formed the US Organization (Us as opposed to them) in 1966” says Painter. “Karenga wanted black people to see themselves as Africans in the United States, not second-class Americans” (Id. at 299). It was with this mind that Karenga mandated the study of Swahili and created and first celebrated the Kwanzaa holiday in 1966-67.

The Black Power frame, like the Brotherhood frame, helped to mobilize large groups of black activists, especially following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. SMO’s organized under this frame were responsible for many self-help initiatives of the latter part of the movement—from the Deacons for Defense and Justice providing armed security for nonviolent protesters in the South (Wendt 2006), to BPP’s monitoring police for abuse and establishing a successful community school and lunch program in Oakland (Painter 2006). This realignment of movement goals and practices no doubt saved lives and provided benefits to black communities, but it has also proven to be a two-edged sword.

While it motivated demoralized participants after a long and brutal struggle and in the wake of the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, it also deviated from the original goal of the Civil Rights Movement just when it was beginning to bear fruit. Indeed, the alienation experienced by many black Americans today may be traceable not to direct discrimination within an inhospitable mainstream culture but to the adoption of countercultural practices as a means of achieving group solidarity at the expense of the now-despised goal of assimilation. Disheartening social statistics regarding black Americans are often cited as evidence of the effects of ongoing discrimination. While discrimination certainly still exists, it may not tell the complete story. Persistent identification with a counterculture may also be a significant impediment to the full realization of the Dream.[1]

Self-alienation from mainstream American culture is an understandable reaction to repeated rejection by that culture. However, the effects of internalizing that alienation may prove as pernicious as it is understandable. Americans—black, white, or otherwise—who long for full realization of the Dream where “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood” must reject the notion that black empowerment can only be achieved through reifying a constructed otherness. Eliminating black otherness in American society was the original goal of the movement. Unfortunately, many Americans have since come to embrace that otherness.

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[1] In 2008, a Houston Chronicle article reported Yao Ming’s apprehension about the addition of Ron Artest to the Houston Rockets basketball team because of Artest’s history of violence on the court. It also recorded Artest’s response to Yao’s comments:

“This is Tracy (McGrady) and Yao’s team, you know,” Artest said. “I’m not going to take it personal. I understand what Yao said, but I’m still ghetto. That’s not going to change. I’m never going to change my culture. Yao has played with a lot of black players, but I don’t think he’s ever played with a black player that really represents his culture as much as I represent my culture.”

Apparently, for Artest (who now goes by Metta World Peace), his history of violence was consistent with his conception of authentic black culture. Identifying a lack of self-restraint and anti-social behavior with essential “blackness” has had serious consequences for Artest, diminishing the market value of this highly talented player.

A.K.

Law, Politics, and Economics

“Before I built a wall,” declares Frost, “I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offense.”

I feel the same way about the study of law, politics, and economics. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down!”

Here are some great quotations on the topic:

Thousands of habits of behavior and of enforced laws had to be developed over millennia to establish the nature and the minutiae of property rights before we could have buying and selling, instead of each man just taking what he wanted if only he was strong enough. … Each set of rights begins as a conflict about what somebody is doing or wants to do which affects others… An economic transaction is a solved political problem. Economics has gained the title of queen of the social sciences by choosing solved political problems as its domain. -Abba Lerner, “The Economics and Politics of Consumer Sovereignty” (1972)

Every lawyer ought to seek an understanding of economics. The present divorce between the schools of political economy and law seem to me an evidence of how much progress in philosophical study still remains to be made. In the present state of political economy, indeed, we come again upon history on a wider scale, but there we are called on to consider and weigh the ends of the legislation, the means of attaining them, and the cost. We learn that for everything we have to give up something else, and we are taught to set the advantage we gain against the other advantage we lose, and to know what we are doing when we elect… –O.W. Holmes, “The Path of the Law” (1897)

A.K.

And every winter change to spring…

I have shared this lovely excerpt from Tennyson before but it has been on my mind lately and thought maybe it should be on yours too. I think this may become an annual spring tradition here on Incusblack (much as Frost’s “My November Guest” has become for that time of year). Enjoy:

O, yet we trust that somehow good

Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

 

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroy’d,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

 

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another’s gain.

 

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last–far off–at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

 

So runs my dream; but what am I?

An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light,

And with no language but a cry.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson “In Memoriam A.H.H.” (LIV)

A.K.

Virtue

St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

 

A.K.