There were (and still are) just as many non-white families as white families that had these goals in life. There is nothing wrong with these goals (then and now). Not sure why people are reading more into these than what is written (however I disagree with some other parts of the article). It doesn’t mean that everyone succeeded in living up to these values, but they were and are good values to have:
“Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime”
One other thing forgotten was that in the 1950’s, serving was mandatory as there was a peacetime draft after the Korean War during this period. If you were a male who was 18-26 and your number was called, you had to serve 2 years unless you were attending a Service Academy(Including the USAF’s Aviation Cadet program before it was discontinued due to the expectations that all USAF officers should have college degrees which meant USAFA, AFROTC, and OTS ended up supplanting it), physically declared unfit, or fit one of the few hardship exceptions.
Also, if one attended many universities in the '50s, ROTC was not optional, but mandatory for male students for at least 2 years according to some older neighbors who attended university during that era.
In short, while there may have been some patriotism, a large part of the “serve the country”…especially the military aspect wasn’t voluntary…but mandated by law.
This was one of the factors which lead to a massive backlash against the mandatory draft* and ROTC when the Vietnam War became unpopular. Sometimes to the point of ROTC being literally chased off-campus as it was at several colleges including Oberlin.
That also leaves out the national conflict the US as a society has had towards the whole idea of a mandatory draft which wasn't instituted at the national level until the Civil War(Confederacy was the first by instituting a national draft in 1862....the Union followed a year later). And even then, it was a deeply contentious issue which sparked massive resistance(i.e. Refusals to comply with the draft by hiding/heading West, massive desertions on both sides, an 1863 draft riot in NYC which required armed troops and naval warships 3 days to put down, etc)....especially in the Confederacy where many conscripted southerners and even some Confederate governors/military officers found serious problematic inconsistencies in the national Confederate government mandating a national draft to fight for "states rights" and "individual freedoms".
I lived in NYC in the 1980s it’s certainly cleaner and safer now. The young people I know are working their butts off. Well most of them, I know some contractors who had some younger guys working for them who were either addicted to their phones or who had various young family issues that made them rather annoying employees. (BTW these were not immigrant workers who in my experience have a great work ethic.)
I do remember saying something to a young Greek kid when I was taking a summer course at a Goethe Institute in Germany in the late 70’s to which he said, “How bourgeouis!” I laughed and said, “But I am bourgeois!” He acted all shocked, but I am pretty sure he was brought up just as bourgeois as me.
As for those values. I’m a knee jerk liberal most days. My language as deteriorated a bit, but mostly I adhere to them. I do think we are fooling ourselves to think the 50s were so great. My mom got married at 18 because she thought she was pregnant. She wasn’t, but they got married anyway and my parents were happily (mostly) for over 50 years, but let’s not fool ourselves that there was no sex before marriage.
Criticism of something as “bourgeois” doesn’t necessarily only come from the radical left…especially in Europe.
There have also been cases of conservatives…especially those of a monarchist/aristocratic bent who use that term to pejoratively label someone in a manner similar to how older established wealthy families here in the US regard those they considered “noveau riche”.
Just wondering as your Greek friend could have been a radical lefty…or possibly someone who is a member of or strongly identifies himself with the values of the old monarchist/aristocratic social order where one’s social standing isn’t necessarily solely based on one’s financial means or conspicuous consumption.
I don’t see how this is an academic freedom of speech issue. Academic freedom of speech does not prevent you from censure from your peers or others who disagree with your work or find it substandard in quality.
I fundamentally reject Zimmerman’s arguments. I personally am greatly opposed to the notion that all ideas are equal and worthy of debate: they’re patently not, and some ideas are dumb and do not deserve debate. I am not saying that Wax’s ideas are not, specifically; I’m just saying that the general argument that people should be always be open to rational debate rather than denunciation is a silly one. Denunciation is totally okay, especially for ahistorical and poorly thought-out ideas and arguments like Wax’s.
For instance:
I do not understand how Zimmerman jumps from “some Penn students and alumni called on Penn’s leaders to denounce the op-ed” to “they don’t want to honestly discuss; they want to shut down.” Calling on Penn to denounce it IS opening a discussion about it: it’s simply a negative discussion because they don’t like what she said. Second of all, I return to my original point that they don’t have to be ready to “honestly discuss.” Quite frankly, what is there to discuss? Her arguments are demonstrably incorrect and rest on faulty assumptions; even Zimmerman mentions that up front in the article.
I also fundamentally reject that our goal should be to allow everyone to hear what Wax has to say. Zimmerman fully admits that she got her history wrong and that she willfully ignored fundamental aspects that render her arguments incorrect. Why should we want everyone to hear that? Why should we want to teach people things that are wrong? That’s like me opining about advanced calculus and some math professor teaching it tomorrow in class simply because I have a PhD and an opinion (even though it’s not in the right area) Not everyone’s opinion is worth listening to, even if they did go to school for a really long time.
That’s not even dealing with the fact that not everyone has the capacity to read this piece and reflect on the ahistoricity and logical and social science fallacies and assumptions in it. Some people are going to take it at face value and that is bad because it is wrong.
I mean, nobody would suggest teaching an incorrect arithmetic book to fifth graders and then having them debate whether 5+5 = 11 or something. Why is this different?
No, it’s not. One of the fundamental issues with this is that it assumes a nonexistent dichotomy between certain types of hateful deeds: imagining that burning crosses or running people over are the only ways to perpetuate racial division. But systemic marginalization isn’t only built on that; in fact, it isn’t even primarily built on that. It’s built on ideas and words and speech: the idea that certain cultures (cough cultures that are primarily adopted by upper-middle-class white Americans cough) are better than others (“rap culture” by inner-city blacks; poor white culture; Hispanic immigrant culture), and thus maybe the people who adopt those cultures are better than the people who don’t? So maybe we should give them more stuff…and you know, prevent the other people from living near them so they don’t “infect” the good folks with their bad culture.
The decidedly not color-blind Martin Luther King, Jr.* alluded to this in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which is in the public domain and which anyone can read in full by simply searching the Internet.
*Martin Luther King, Jr. never, ever, ever had “color-blind aspirations.” Anyone who believes so at best knows nothing about MLK and at worst is willfully misinterpreting King’s words and actions.
Math is a unique field. In math, the answer can be proven true and there is only one right answer. I like Karl Popper’s definition of science as having falsifiability, but most social science issues lack that property. To take an apolitical example pertinent to this board, despite decades of research, there’s still no consensus on whether attending an Ivy/elite school increases your lifetime earnings. Outside of STEM, it’s very rare that answers to questions are as black and white as 5+5 doesn’t equal 11. Some issues in history are black and white. Howard Zinn lied about facts about specific events and people, but when you try to draw broad judgments and interpretations about those facts and interpret complex chains of causality, you’re back to more shades of gray.
I would never say that we should return to the 50s, but I also totally don’t get how the parapraph expressing an opinion (whether you agree or disagree with the opinion) that certain values are good, is racist or “white supremacist.” I was just blown away completely after reading the OP’s first quote, when I read the second one. I mean, I am not particularly patriotic, I wouldn’t support staying in a bad marriage just for the kids, I don’t believe in kowtowing to authority that is being exercised in an unjust or malicious way, etc., but I just don’t think any of these things have anything to do with one’s race, or opinions regarding “supremacy” of any race.
How is one’s opinion on whether to eschew substance abuse “racist”? I know folks of all races who do drugs, and folks of all races who eschew it. Ditto on opinions about marriage, education, etc.
I admit I didn’t read the whole article that was being blasted, but why would a return to those values (or if not a return, just an all-new striving for them) be inconsistent with some of the other values we didn’t necessarily recognize back then, such as taking care of the environment, and less discrimination against races, LGBTQ folks, sexes, different nationalities and religions?
Whlie I’m not sure I agree with the authors, I am completely perplexed at the nature of the attack against them.
OK, now I read the whole article. I still don’t get the vehemence of the criticism. Agree or disagree, fine, but simply saying, there are certain aspects of a culture that we think are great, and it would help the world if more people ascribed to them, is a far cry from saying “whites are inherently better because they are white” or whites should get certain privileges or it’s ok to treat people badly because they aren’t white (i.e., white supremacy).
Would there be an outcry if someone said, we should all adopt some of the * cultural goals? (No, they’d probaby be blasted for cultural appropriation, unless they were in the group, then would it be ok? I just can’t figure this suff out any more.)
*fill in any group that has defined precepts or well-recognized cultural values (religion, nationality, etc.)
I have yet to see one shred of evidence that the majority of minorities in the US did not historically support these values. Millions of minority men proudly served in the military. Millions married, and remained married, raised families and lived honorable lives true to these values of decency and hard work. Still do. I find it patronizing at best to think only middle class whites adhered to these values, so we can toss them aside
These values would also accurately be described as mainstream Judeo-Christian/Muslim values in the US ( cue for the usual objections to faith-based entities and values and actions thereof).
I’ve lived all over the world, but happen to currently reside in a town in which residents overwhelming share these values. I don’t think it would necessarily be described as white or middle class-my kid’s small school has students from 52 countries this year. Many non-white. Administrators are diverse. And there is some economic diversity in both ends. But the parents ascribe to these values, pass them down to their children, and expect the school to reinforce them and standards of behavior that go along with those values.
You should have specified that in your OP, then. When you quote an article in a first post, it really helps people if you include clarification as to why you’re posting it.
I don’t see too much wrong with this list of “bourgeois values.” True, the article it came from is rather suspect in its discussion of history - and probably deliberately inflammatory in its style - and thus comes across worse than the basic idea at its center, which seems pretty sound to me: stable bourgeois values related to marriage, children, work ethic, and other areas of social conduct are good for people individually and for society overall. (Obviously, more is required than these values. Those in power must adhere to rules of fairness and decency as well, and we have major breakdown in that area as well; the ratio of CEO to worker pay has increased 1000% since 1950). However, none of these values seem racist or sexist or any other -ist to me, and I’m pretty far to the left on almost everything. But then, I’m a proud bourgeois who also believes in education, the arts (including works by dead white males), and public institutions.
When the opinion piece wraps it up in the glorification of an idealized version of 1950s US, when the social consensus in many places was to treat non-white people as those with inferior civil rights and as undesirables in the neighborhood, it is not surprising that it got the (over?)reaction that it got. Indeed, it may have been the intent to bait such a(n over?)reaction.
Not so much when you just look at the isolated quotation in post #0. But the rest of the opinion, glorifying an idealized version of the 1950s, is much less attractive to someone who would not want to bring back the more racist, sexist, anti-LGBT social consensuses of the time.
I can image a very different reaction, from very different directions, if an opinion piece using the same quote in post #0 made the argument that the US should allow increased immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and predominantly Christian countries including those in Latin America in order to increase the percentage of the population holding and aspiring to those values.
Why, ucbalumnus? Why would you presume that? Seems rather narrow minded of you. Perhaps you shouldn’t make such assumptions. Plenty of devout Christians/Jews/Muslims support refugees in this country and do charity work to assist them. No reason to assume your moral superiority on that issue.
What I find extraordinary about this thread, and somewhat depressing, is the rush to judgment and assumptions. Had the article’s author been Rev. ML King ( and it would not have been inconsistent with his beliefs ), much of this fuss would not have happened.
Can someone please explain to me how this editorial is racist or white supremacist? I don’t get that from the article. In fact the authors write: “Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism.”
Additionally I do not think that that fact that there were shotgun marriages means that people did not hold the value of getting married before you have children. I do not think the fact that divorce laws were stricter (in a bad way) means that striving to stay married for the sake of children is a dysfunctional value. I do not think that the fact that there were worse educational opportunities for some people negates the idea the getting the the education you need for gainful employment is something we should abandon as a goal. Working hard and avoiding idleness are fantastic goals even if everyone doesn’t attain them. I do not think that prior discrimination is a reason to eschew patriotism, service to others and civility in public.
These are things that should be discussed. Instead we are getting a thread that has disintegrated into “what about isims.”