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Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion - Deep Culture & The American Dream

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Brian B.
Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion - Deep Culture & The American Dream

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We're currently hosting our discussions at Café Walnut, not too far from our summer meeting spot in Washington Square Park. The cafe is near the corner of 7th & Walnut in Olde City. The cafe's entrance is below street level down some stairs, which can be confusing if it's your first time. Our group meets in the large room upstairs.

Since we're using the cafe's space, they ask that each person attending the meetup at least purchase a drink or snack. Please don't bring any food or drinks from outside. If you're hungry enough to eat a meal, they have more substantial fare such as salads, soups & sandwiches which are pretty good and their prices are reasonable.

The cafe is fairly easy to get to if you're using public transit. With SEPTA, take the Market-Frankford Line & get off at the 5th Street Station (corner of 5th & Market), and walk 2 blocks south on 5th and then turn right on Walnut Street and walk 1 block west. With PATCO, just get off at the 9th-10th & Locust stop and walk 3 blocks east. For those who are driving, parking in the neighborhood can be tough to find. If you can't find a spot on the street, I'd suggest parking in the Washington Square parking deck at 249 S 6th Street which is just a half block away.

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THE DEEP CULTURE OF AMERICA, PART 3 - DEEP CULTURE & THE AMERICAN DREAM

Following up on our previous two discussions of "deep culture", this discussion will address various theories about the way that "deep culture" influences American patterns of socio-economic success & failure, and the argument that the "American Dream" of upward mobility is only available to those who adopt a certain set of values & social norms. I've chosen to focus our discussion on 5 recent debates launched by provocative books or articles:

(1) William Julius Wilson's book More Than Just Race & Mario Luis Small's book Unanticipated Gains, both published in 2009, and the debate provoked by Patricia Cohen's 2010 NYT article "The Culture of Poverty Makes a Comeback";

(2) The debate between Ta-Nehisi Coates & Jonathan Chait on the black "culture of poverty" in a series of articles in 2014;

(3) Charles Murray's 2012 book Coming Apart and J.D. Vance's 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy which both posited a "white culture of poverty";

(4) Amy Chua's 2014 book The Triple Package which posited 3 cultural traits necessary for upward mobility in the modern economy, and the related debate over the "model minority myth";

(5) Amy Wax's provocative article in 2017 on the need for a return to "bourgeois values", and how this relates to social scientists' attempts to measure work ethic and the "marriage premium".

(Note: I'd considered discussing Samuel Huntingdon's 2004 book Who Are We?, but I've decided to save it for the spring when we discuss US-Mexico relations & illegal immigration.)

I came across several difficulties in assessing the validity of arguments about "cultures of poverty" and "cultures of success". First, it's hard to define "culture" in a measurable way. We could look at the prevalence of certain behaviors or poll results that give us insights into group beliefs, but much of the discussion tends to define culture rather vaguely. Second, even if we can define culture in a quantifiable way, it's difficult to determine causation - i.e. do people behave & believe in dysfunctional or adaptive ways because they started poor or wealthy, or do they stay or become poor or wealthy because of how they behave & believe? Third, most of the academic research on poverty I found comes from sociology rather than economics, and the political orientation of academic sociologists appears to be much more heavily skewed to the political left, making it difficult to determine if the tendency of sociologists to minimize innate attributes or deep culture and emphasize structural inequalities is a result of their greater familiarity with the empirical evidence or merely a form of groupthink. Lastly, the debates among political pundits & journalists that we'll look at in section 2-5 tend to rely more on anecdotal evidence, emotional arguments & flawed & narrow perceptions of the social science research, making them of dubious value. We'll do our best to address these problems in our discussion...

The videos you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of the scholarly debates surrounding these issues. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the videos linked first under each topic, which should take about 50 minutes total to get through. I know that's a lot, and if you can't watch all of the videos, just watch as much as you can. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I figure we'll spend about 30 minutes on the first section, 45 minutes discussing the "culture of poverty" arguments in sections 2 & 3 together, and 45 minutes discussing the "culture of success" arguments in sections 4 & 5 together.

  • NOTE: For those of you interested in the subject of poverty, we covered this topic in a discussion back in June, looking at the phenomenon of wage stagnation, the effects of welfare programs, the "cost disease" afflicting healthcare, housing & college tuition, and the relative likelihood of monocausal vs multi-factorial trends:

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/238805096/

Also, since the connection between marriage & income will come up in this discussion, I should mention that we covered the changing trends in teenage pregnancy, marriage rates, divorce rates, and men's & women's college graduation rates back in July:

https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/events/241373059/

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I. WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, MARIO LUIS SMALL & PATRICIA COHEN ON THE REEMERGENCE OF THE "CULTURE OF POVERTY" THESIS:

  1. WNYC w/ Mario Small & William Julius Wilson, "Rethinking The Roots of Poverty" (podcast - 14:39 min.)

http://www.wnyc.org/story/98483-rethinking-roots-black-poverty/

  • Sudhir Venkatesh, "How to Understand the Culture of Poverty. William Julius Wilson once again defies both left and right" (short article)

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/03/how_to_understand_the_culture_of_poverty.html

  • Daniel Lende, "The Culture of Poverty Debate Continued" (medium-length article, good summary of culture of poverty debate)

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2010/10/26/the-culture-of-poverty-debate-continued/

  • Chris Martin, "How Ideology Has Hindered Sociological Insight, summarized" (short article)

https://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/21/how-ideology-has-hindered-sociological-insight-summarized-2/

  • Ben Baxter, "Four reasons the racial wealth gap is a massive hoax"

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/02/four_reasons_the_racial_wealth.html

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II. TA-NEHISI COATES & JONATHAN CHAIT'S DEBATE ON THE "BLACK CULTURE OF POVERTY":

  1. Melissa Harris-Perry w/ Ta-Nehisi Coates, "On Paul Ryan's Comments About the Culture of Poverty & the Coates vs. Chait Debate" (video - 11:21 min.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z-w0plM9Xo

  • Clare Sestanovich, "Black Culture and Progressivism - What started as a discussion of Paul Ryan's comments has turned into a revealing debate on the nature of liberal politics in the United States." (medium-length article, good summary of Coates/Chait debate)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/black-culture-and-progressivism/360362/

  • Ryan Cooper, "The debate over the 'culture of poverty' is at the heart of a liberal divide" (short article)

http://theweek.com/articles/448453/debate-over-culture-poverty-heart-liberal-divide

  • Jonah Goldberg, "To break the cycle of poverty in Baltimore, fix the culture of poverty." (short article)

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0505-goldberg-neighborhoods-matter-20150505-column.html

  • John McWhorter, "No, ‘Acting White’ Has Not Been Debunked. Research confirms that the “acting white” charge is a real problem that intimidates some black students. Our job is to confront it."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-acting-white-has-not-been-debunked

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III. CHARLES MURRAY & J.D. VANCE ON THE "WHITE CULTURE OF POVERTY" THESIS:

3a) J.D. Vance & Charles Murray, "What Is A Hillbilly?" (video - 5:11 min.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJlTIqqeLM4

3b) J.D. Vance, "Family Instability Is A Cultural Problem" (video - 3:13 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpAAQYOIh8M

  • David Frum, "Is the White Working Class Coming Apart? Charles Murray's new book does not provide an adequate explanation for the collapse of the white working class." (long article)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-the-white-working-class-coming-apartdavid-frum

  • Steve Sailer, "The Bell Curve's Toll" (long article)

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-bell-curves-toll/

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IV. THE DEBATE OVER THE "MODEL MINORITY MYTH" & AMY CHUA'S "TRIPLE PACKAGE" THEORY:

4a) Amy Chua & Jed Rubenfeld, "The Triple Package" (video - 1:58 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzqyGLDnmXI

4b) Amy Chua, "The Marshmallow Test and the Triple Package" (video - 2:29 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3LAW4ikbcs

4c) Jonathan Haidt, "Asian 'Spectacular Success' Ruins Affirmative Action" (video - 3:15 min.)
https://youtu.be/bYPbWwOoeSg?t=5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/08/the-problem-with-one-of-the-most-popular-assumptions-about-the-poor/?utm_term=.2b86c818989c

  • Kimberly Yam, "Huge Asian-American Wealth Gap Pretty Much Invalidates ‘Model Minority’ Concept" (short article)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cap-asian-americans-wealth-gap_us_586bd460e4b0d9a5945c91a7

  • Razib Khan, "Asians Are A Model Minority (On Average)" (short article)

https://gnxp.nofe.me/2014/10/18/asians-are-a-model-minority-on-average/

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V. AMY WAX ON "BOURGEOIS VALUES" & THE RESEARCH ON TRENDS IN "WORK ETHIC" & THE "MARRIAGE PREMIUM":

  1. Frank Beckmann w/ Amy Wax, "Amy Wax - UPenn Law School Professor on her op-ed that the decline of “bourgeois values” since the 1950s has contributed to a host of social ills" (podcast - 7:50 min.)
    https://audioboom.com/posts/6318560-amy-wax-university-of-pennsylvania-law-school-professor-on-her-op-ed-that-the-decline-of-bourgeois-values-since-the-1950s-has-contributed-to-a-host-of-social-ills-sept...

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/10/boomers-dont-work-any-harder-than-millennials.html

  • Jean M. Twenge, "Do Millennials Have a Lesser Work Ethic? The actual science from national survey data [says yes]" (short article)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/201602/do-millennials-have-lesser-work-ethic

  • Bryan Caplan, "What Is the Male Marriage Premium?" (short blog post)

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/what_is_the_mar.html

  • Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, "The “marriage premium for children” depends on family resources" (short article)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/03/13/the-marriage-premium-for-children-depends-on-family-resources/

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Cafe Walnut
703 Walnut Street · Philadelphia, PA
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