Why integration doesn't (quite) make sense

First, how far do we integrate? To reflect the demographics of the community? If so, how do we define the community? As the neighborhood? The city limits? The county? The crowd of people whom a child is likely to encounter? Each one of these often yields a very different figure. And then, why is the white suburban child of Mississippi better off with integration while the white rural child of Wyoming is left in his uniracial isolation, hundreds of miles from the nearest sizable minority population?

Second, how does one combat white flight? If school board policies force a child into a school that his parents dislike, many parents yank their children from the school. White flight is, in one iteration, more forgivable: you cannot expect parents to be willing to sacrifice something as crucial as their child's entire early-life training for an obscure societal - goal - especially a seemingly statistical one - like integration. This is the "education quality" iteration. It can be solved by exogenous means. However, in another iteration, white flight seems quite reactionary: when a child is thrown from a situation of racial majority to one of racial minority, many parents turn tail and run. Indeed, it can be very uncomfortable to be amongst a race that one is not used to. But this iteration is much harder to solve.

What is fascinating about integration in education is just how pivotal it is for many children's lives. The recent court decision essentially - though not deliberately - denied an equal education to many minority students. The reasoning is that it is better to tolerate systematic disadvantages of many students (though students of a single race - this is important), so long as they may be legally escaped, than to inescapably disadvantage individual students. What makes the disadvantage inescapable is its basis in race, a factor that is no fault of the individual. But so long as school districts may consider race as one of many factors, or proxy in some other (still arbitrary) factor like residential location, individuals will still be inescapably disadvantaged arbitrarily (i.e., by no fault of their own) - though not directly by labeling them by race. Therefore the ruling may effectively eliminate the effective opportunity of children of a minority race to achieve an equal education, in order to reduce the likelihood that a white child will too - but explicitly because of race.

So it seems like there is something naggingly wrong with holding little white poor children responsible for the racist attitudes of their community. However, is there a better way? How do we hold a community responsible for segregation, if it is indirect and through public opinion? We must correct the inferior opportunities that are caused by undue, de facto racial segregation. And schools are the front on which the segregation in others areas of public life does the most damage - by entrenching, in an era when education minimums for employment are rising, disadvantages in other areas.

Can we simply dismiss and leave for dead integration, when the natural trend seems obviously toward resegregation? It seems to take government integration to start the dominoes toward a result that everyone, in theory, seems to favor. Very few parents in 2008 actively want to exclude black children from their schools. But they just don't want to undergo the costs of experimentation and transition.

I can't say I know the answer to any of these questions, but I do know that mandatory, individualized categorization by race does seem to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many. Perhaps Justice Kennedy's opinion is less incoherent than I originally thought.

Culmination of Detainee Thoughts IV: BW's Tone

I think the one thing that really needles liberals about Ben is that he is conservative, but one more educated in civil discourse. In other words, he has an agenda to defend the administration and reduce the threat of terrorism, not necessarily with maximal concern for individual rights, but he does recognize a need to accommodate the views of others who reasonably do value individual rights foremost and distrust the executive. Nonetheless, the tone makes all the difference.

Ben is, without doubt, a superb rhetoric-breaker. He masterfully calls out hypocrisy and shrillness, partisanship and chumminess. Yet he addresses his rhetoric-breaking to the scholarly crowd. And, at the end of the day, the scholars just blink and say, "Yes, we agree. We're not the ones spewing the rhetoric." Sure, they may use the slogans, but that's not actually what they think. And the only concrete reason (all aesthetics aside) to break rhetoric is to halt belief in it.

Labeling our own politics

When we identify ourselves as "liberal" or "conservative" to others before they have a chance to observe it in us ourselves, what is our purpose? When the others are of like politics, do we want to associate ourselves with a community? When the others are of opposite politics, do we want to gloss over differences without getting into the gritty details? Either way, I was struck by the way that Ben Wittes, a pragmatic thinker, tends to look down his nose at such self-identification, apparently seeing it as simplification of our views.

Yet I've realized that the reason I self-identify is in order to qualify some of the more pragmatic statements that I make, in order to fend off snap judgments by the more reactive of liberals. This alert gives them a heads-up that, in total, I have reached a different conclusion than my immediate judgment might suggest. Yet even this seems to be an attempt to evade dirty details-debates or not to lose their camaraderie...

Does anyone really know what these labels mean, beyond vague association with certain noted persons and policies? Is there any real consistency implied by "I am liberal"? (At least according to Bryan Garner, the Republicans are winning the popular battle because they are able to describe their values in two-word catch-phrases that are just concrete enough to attract constituents but not concrete enough to alienate them once they are drawn in.) I often find that the liberal or conservative position simply boils down to some basic rhetoric and to the convenience of the moment. It is liberal to oppose gun rights against state force, but to support defendant rights against state prosecutors? It is conservative to vehemently oppose abortions - any sacrifice of opportunity for life - but to support schemes that might deny certain poor kids opportunities in life? "Liberalism" and "conservatism" seems, in its haste to cut men into two groups alone, to set up rigid positions on everything from individual rights against the collective to tradition in general to economics - in ways that are not necessarily logically consistent (as civil libertarians, especially, have found).

Just try asking someone, What does it mean to be liberal?

[Digression warning: I don't quite understand, except for the vague suggestion that conservatives favor the small and localized (including individual initiative and goals) while preferring continuity with the past on a large, structural level. Essentially, these individuals advocate showing respect to society by obeying traditional rules, but stretching those rules in every possible way - and openly - in order to achieve one's self interests. They oppose any attempt for society to define what ends you should work for, or to compare you in substance with others; or of any attempt to craft "ideal" social rules that are unpredictable and based on any "collective" or abstract goals.]

In short, our partisan association seems an easy way to divide ourselves into clean camps, while evading the - sometimes significant - differences between our views and those of the larger camp. We seem to derive great pleasure from ideological company.

Or is there something about these base issues that make them fundamental to the human experience? After all, it seems that conservatives tend to prefer certain types of social services, while liberals prefer others. As a recent article in The Economist explains, Americans now are now dividing geographically along partisan lines. Truth be told, I would prefer to live in a liberal community, and this seems to be based on very real personal discomfort that I feel around conservatives.

But while this may be relevant to our personal feelings, partisan identification is not useful in discussing compromise policy options. I would argue that we should avoid wearing our politics on our sleeves at all - it's unclear when this knowledge will actually aid a conversation or relationship. It's better to just work out the gritty details.

Leaving the Altar

So the churches are modernizing, too. Someone seems to have come to terms with Mill and the realization that dogma cannot survive the harsh light of forced sunshine - and thus it must willingly open the curtains itself. Contemporary congregations are, I imagine, much more comfortable believing creeds that invite competing views and interpretations. Why has the Coos Bay Christian Science Church, with its somber services with eight elderly men sleepnig throughout, still sacrificing genuine communication for the sake of tradition?

The church in the basement of a coffeehouse that I attended today was a far cry from the pews and organ of a traditional church. The pastor embellished his sermon with colloquial terms like "awesome" and "like," and used catchy taglines like "you have a green light" and "be missional." The "hymns" were accompanied by guitar and drums and their lyrics were projected onto overhead computer screens. As Joel informed me, the session was being taped for broadcast in movie theaters on Sunday morning. When the songs resonate with people, they are much more compelling. It made me realize that organ music may at one time have been inspiring - rather than sleep-inducing as it currently is. In fact, even the inclusion of music might have attracted audiences in the mid-twelfth century.

The creed itself was non-denominational, and thus rather generic. The messages were simple motivational ones, and only loosely connected with scripture. For example, the pastor enjoined his congregation to do good wherever they could find it, to be proactive, and to unburden themselves of any material possessions that are unneeded but distracting. All of these are good other-regarding moral principles, whether substantiated by Biblical passages or not. The one - and I mean one - conventional part of the service was communion. But even this was done collectively: each person was given a mini cup of grape juice and cracker so everyone could eat and drink simultaneously, at the direction of the pastor.

The main doctrinal dispute I had was with the idea that God tells us what to do. One of the hymns said "I give you control." I could only think of Alayna and the deterioration of her life and ambitions as soon as she surrendered them to God's ambiguous "will."

Such an open environment made me confront some of the really hard questions of religion. For example, how do we know what is God's will? If God doesn't talk to us directly - and surely few can claim, honestly, to have spoken directly with him - then the author of his opinions must be church personnel. But this sounds like an invitation for abuse.

Culmination of Detainee Thoughts III: The Paradox

The paradox is this: if anyone is guaranteed full judicial process and we cannot adequately differentiate between those who are guaranteed it and those who are not without that judicial process, then we must give full judicial process to everyone. At least, this would be a paradox if we care much more about protecting the rights of those who are due full process than about denying the others process. If we care somewhat about denying process, for retributive or military reasons, we can simply give the maximal due process consistent with that goal. Yet if we claim that even this reduced process is sufficient to differentiate between the lawful and unlawful enemy combatants, then why do POWs need more process? This involves acknowledging that any trial process is necessarily imperfect and allows for some margin of error. The question is how much error we are willing to tolerate.

If we care much more about denying process, then we can easily resolve the paradox by simply ramping up process slightly across the board in order to weed out a few of the most easily differentiable cases. In this case, we are willing to tolerate a wide error margin.

A corollary result is that the Geneva Conventions cannot easily deny their due process protections to violators. Mixed in amongst civilians whose liberties we want to protect - perhaps especially in wartime - they must be given equal judicial process. Of course, once they are adequately determined to be violators, then the Conventions can retributively (or out of military necessity) deny them some rights - but judicial process is part of that determination and thus not subject to such denial.

What the hell do Congressmen want?

This simple question struck me as a conclusion as I was walking across DuPont Circle's park: What the hell do Congressmen want? All my long pondering about congressional motivations and congressional goals culminated in the simple realization that rank-and-file Congressmen are inscrutable. They do not want to play the hero, as the president usually does (or as their presidential-aspiring colleagues may). They do not want to go down in history for changing one issue (though there are some exceptions to this one). They do not (only) want to do what is good and right and true for their constituents.

Congress is insufferably noncommittal. As John Hart Ely raises in his book about war powers, Congress often shrinks from accountability. Therefore in the vast majority of cases, the most important victory is saying a lot while committing oneself to nothing. This, however, belies the theory that Congressmen simply want power. They in fact step back from the wheel quite often.

Oft-cited as it is, surely re-election cannot be their only motivation...

But after Yale-In-Washington met with former Senator Trent Lott a couple weeks ago, I'm beginning to think that Congressmen simply want to succeed in the social hierarchy that is the U.S. Congress. The ceremony is so formal and elaborate, the accommodations so opulent, the traditions and rules so clear - and all topped by an overwhelming sense of importance and purpose. With those conditions at stake, who wouldn't want to get re-elected, or simply to rise in power within Congress?

Sitting across from Lott as he rattled on stories of his exploits with procedure and persuasion, I had to restrain myself several times from asking the incoherent question, Did you often (or ever) step back and remember why you were in the Senate? Of course the people of Mississippi were constantly on the tip of his tongue, ready to be personified in every one of his public comments, but were they ever at the front of his thoughts?

Of course these are gross generalizations. But there is something disturbingly insular about most Congressmen's descriptions of their house and their role. It is almost as though Congress were not a forum, or an instrument of good governance on the ground, but a community, or an end in itself...

Woolf's Realistic Feminism

Today I read Virginia Woolf's speech, "Shakespeare's Sister," in which she first articulated the "Room of One's Own" formula for the success of a female writer. There is one unusual thing about her views on feminism, which is less their content than their combination: she believes both that women have been systematically disadvantaged in a way that precluded their earlier success in writing, and that they have failed to grasp the modern opportunities to remedy that historical repression. She says, in unequivocal terms, that women have done nothing of historic value.

As it turns out, these views are very similar to my own. I have always been angered by the hump that women must climb before they can succeed like men. It is not an insurmountable slope, but one that ensures only the cream of the crop are recognized. Yet at the same time, I have always repudiated the whining of women who sit at a political or literary discussion and clean their nails or otherwise primp, who "trust that there is always an arm to cling to," as Woolf would say.

I felt like I had been hit by a cold iron when the summarizing article from The Guardian (always printed at the end in this speech series) raised the objectivity of Woolf. My blood raged when he noted that men have also suffered from financial hardship in history, but have overcome it. It seemed very clear to me that this was motivated by a misogynist attempt to discredit Woolf. (He disdainfully concludes his article with an assessment that Woolf always, despite errors in logic, "maintains an unfaltering poise.")

However, the reviewer does have a point about the emotion with which she speaks. Indeed, women have not done poorly solely because of the material constraints that they faced: they seem, by their very nature, to have scuttled away from the limelight and retreated at the slightest sign of resistance. Indeed, men in 1928 could proudly say that they had done much to advance the cause of women - including granting them the vote less than a decade earlier (and the worries of minorities who seem to be progressing but still aspire to parity is often dismissed as whining at the expense of more pressing problems).

The reviewer's overlooked point is that this is the female second nature - the one shoved at them by society. It is not in the first nature of a woman to primp during an intellectual discussion. But a man would be scorned for doing so, while a woman would only be discouraged with a condescending smile and sigh; and women have been taught to appreciate the condescending smile of their male guardians.

But even a socially imposed disadvantage can only be stretched so far into martyrdom. For one fearful moment, I worried that even moderate feminists like Woolf, who empowered women to act rather than whining, were on par with the crazed and single-minded head of PETA. Since we cannot hope to think entirely outside our own experience, we may victimize ourselves more than is fair - and, going below the PETA level, we may do so as an excuse not to act. Primping girls may take the condescending smile as a reassurance that they need not struggle to grasp the meaning of the discussion in order to please.

Yet the reviewer conveniently ignored that Woolf herself acknowledges the passivity of women and urges them to action in a stirring peroration.

But, even if more could be said to supplement Woolf's analysis, I do think that civil conventions demand tolerating some exaggeration (though that is not quite the issue here) and some single-minded "framing" of one's subject in a public speech. The author of this article violated that convention.

[Perhaps I should note, I'm listening to Frank Sinatra right now - which just maddens a woman already in a feminist frame of mind.]