Activists, in particular, too often seem to focus narrowly on their specific issue, and promote their perception of its immediate causes, consequences, and necessary solutions; they not only argue strenuously for their issue’s primacy over all other concerns, but often actively create exclusion around their beliefs: anyone not completely aligned with them on their issue and solutions becomes an enemy to be shunned. Such a narrow-minded stance leads to acrimonious partisan bickering that alienates potential supporters, all too often resulting in a failure to jointly pursue what could have been more comprehensive and effective solutions. The situation calls to mind a front-page headline in the New York Times from June 16, 2019, Lost in Abortion Noise: Nuance – which caught my attention not for the particular topic of abortion, but rather for the headline’s applicability to most any fill-in-the-blank topic, especially at this fraught moment.
I was reminded again recently of the importance of recognizing the profound relationship between many issues as I read two works that, although addressing different topics, share fundamental connections: author Shaylyn Romney Garrett and political scientist Robert D. Putnam’s revealing essay Why Did Racial Progress Stall in America?, and economist Thomas Piketty’s monumental work on the causes and evolution of inequality Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
For their part, Garrett and Putnam explore the evolution of racial progress from the late 1800’s to the present day by examining the trends of metrics for Black Americans, such as the life expectancy gap, high school completion, integration in K-12 education, income, homeownership, and voting registration and turnout. Their analysis reveals that a dramatic improvement occurred in these metrics during the middle of the 20th century, well before the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. But, as their data reveals, this momentum was lost beginning in the late 1960’s.
They attribute this slow-down in part to “white backlash” against the aggressiveness of the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And it would have been easy enough, and intuitively accepted as correct by many, if they had simply left it at that: white racism slowed racial progress.
Instead, they dig deeper, going on to describe a second fundamental reason for the slowdown in the improvement of these metrics, based on broader social and economic transformations in the United States since the Reconstruction era. In their analysis, the rate of racial progress becomes an integral part of a larger set of dynamics that occurred in the United States over the past century and a half:
On the heels of Reconstruction came a period that Southerners called “redemption,” a violent project on the part of vanquished Southern elites to restore white hegemony in the wake of the progress Black Americans had made after the Civil War. Redemption coincided with the vast upheaval of industrialization and urbanization, when the United States more broadly plunged into the Gilded Age. Gross extremes of wealth and poverty, a tattered social fabric rife with factionalism and nativism, a gridlocked public square and a culture of narcissism were its hallmarks. The late 1800s was thus, by nearly every measure — including the stark retrenchment of nascent racial equality — the worst of times.
But as the century turned and the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, America experienced a remarkable moment of inflection that set the nation on an entirely new trajectory. A diverse group of reformers grabbed the reins of history and set a course toward greater economic equality, political bipartisanship, social cohesion and cultural communitarianism. This shift and the long-run trends it set in motion are detailed in scores of statistical measures in [our book] “The Upswing.”
Some six decades later all of those upward trends reversed, setting the United States on a downward course that has brought us to the multifaceted national crisis in which we find ourselves today, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Gilded Age. The wide array of statistical evidence compiled in “The Upswing” — ranging from the distribution of income pre- and post-taxes to bipartisanship in Congress and split-ticket voting and from civic engagement, church membership and social trust to parents’ choice of their children’s first names — shows that the Progressive Era represented a fundamental turning point in American history.
These interconnected phenomena can be summarized in a single meta-trend that we have come to call the “I-we-I” curve: An inverted U charting America’s gradual climb from self-centeredness to a sense of shared values, followed by a steep descent back into egoism over the next half century.
The moment America took its foot off the gas in rectifying racial inequalities largely coincides with the moment America’s “we” decades gave way to the era of “I.” At the mid-’60s peak of the I-we-I curve, long-delayed moves toward racial inclusion had raised hopes for further improvements, but those hopes went unrealized as the whole nation shifted toward a less egalitarian ideal.
A central feature of America’s “I” decades has been a shift away from shared responsibilities toward individual rights and a culture of narcissism. Economic inequality has skyrocketed, and along with it have come massive disparities in political influence and a growing concentration of political-economic power in the hands of a few billionaires. Polarization and social isolation have increased. Whatever sense of belonging Americans feel today is largely to factional (and often racially defined) in-groups locked in fierce competition with one another for cultural control and perceived scarce resources. Contemporary identity politics characterizes an era that could well be described as a “War of the ‘We’s’.” This is a reality that predated the election of Donald Trump, though his presidency threw it into sharp relief. And a new presidential administration will not by itself restore American unity.
Thus, Garrett and Putnam point to a range of mid-twentieth century Progressive Era achievements, including “greater economic equality, political bipartisanship, social cohesion and cultural communitarianism,” as explaining why “positive change [on a variety of social metrics] for Black Americans was actually faster in the decades before the civil rights revolution than in the decades after.” Reversal of these achievements starting in the late 1960’s, however, slowed further progress for Black Americans. Together, these successive events resulted over the course of the twentieth century in what they refer to as “an inverted U charting America’s gradual climb from self-centeredness to a sense of shared values, followed by a steep descent back into egoism.”.
An example of the U-shaped behavior Piketty found in his analysis can be seen in the first figure in his book, included below, charting income inequality in the United States over the past century.
In observations that parallel Garrett and Putnam’s description of the variety of social and political policies that have driven the evolution of shared values in the United States, Piketty notes that “the history of the distribution of wealth has always been deeply political, and it cannot be reduced to purely economic mechanisms,” (27-28) and that “the phenomena underlying the various curves are quite different and involve distinct economic, social, and political processes.” (31) Here, again, the complex interplay of events and effects.
Similarly, Piketty’s charting of the evolution of capital concentration in the US supports Garrett and Putnam’s analysis. He notes that wealth inequality had reached exorbitant highs during the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s, but then dropped “between 1910 and 1950 … above all [as] a consequence of war and of political policies adopted to cope with the shocks of war,” (27) that is, with the destruction of the two World Wars and the institution of progressive taxation to both support the wars and create social programs aimed at reducing extreme inequality. This was then followed in the late 20th century, however, by dramatic changes in the social, political and economic milieu, changes that led to conservative governments lowering tax rates on high incomes, and to falling economic growth rates, returning the US to a regime of rising inequality.
Overall, Piketty’s data reveals an economic basis for Garrett and Putnam’s “I-we-I” pattern of shared values. He argues that the Gilded Age excesses created a climate for change in the US in the early 20th century, a period when tax rates hovered below 10%, including for the highest incomes:
[The] fear of growing to resemble Europe [with its entrenched nobility benefiting from inherited wealth] was part of the reason why the United States in 1910-1920 pioneered a very progressive estate tax on large fortunes, which were deemed to be incompatible with US values, as well as a progressive income tax on incomes thought to be excessive. (440)
This progressive feeling was reinforced when “the Great Depression of the 1930s struck the United States with extreme force, and many people blamed the economic and financial elites for having enriched themselves while leading the country to ruin.” (650) Piketty notes that progressive sentiment – the “we” feeling of Garrett and Putnam – led to support for income tax rates and inheritance tax rates that rose to well over 50% for those in the highest income bracket between 1910 and 1980, in order to create a strong social support network.
The pendulum began to swing back again around 1980 according to Piketty, who notes that “perceptions of inequality, redistribution, and national identity changed a great deal over the course of the twentieth century, to put it mildly,” (440) resulting in a turn against the social state. In wording that recalls Garrett and Putnam’s comments on “white backlash” and “factional (and often racially defined) in-groups locked in fierce competition with one another for cultural control and perceived scarce resources,” Piketty notes that in recent decades “US prejudices in regard to the poor … seem to be more extreme than European prejudices, perhaps because they are reinforced by racial prejudices.” (608n17, emphasis added) and further:
In the United States there is less of a consensus [than in Europe]. Certain substantial minority factions radically challenge the legitimacy of all federal programs or indeed of social programs of any kind. Once again racial prejudice seems to have something to do with this. (612n24, emphasis added)
Piketty charts how these changing perceptions in the US led conservative administrations to lower tax rates on the highest earners as the 20th century ended, shifting from a progressive to a regressive tax structure, with opponents of high taxation among the wealthy often using hypocritical, misleading, or specious arguments against it. The result has been dramatically increasing levels of inequality, a significant strain on the government’s ability to continue investing in social programs in the US, and so a return to the sentiment of each individual for themselves. We thus see the completion of the U-shaped curves of Piketty’s data on inequality, as levels again reach toward those of the Gilded Age.
Considering the two works together, then, we find revealed an intimate connection between the U-shaped curve Garrett and Putnam describe for the “I-we-I” of shared values, and those Piketty charts for inequality. And, with the understanding of this connection comes the broader recognition of the importance of considering the fundamental relationship between social, economic, and political policies in order to properly understand the origins of, and solutions for, the ongoing challenges society faces.
Post-script:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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