Renewing America Part 2: Subcultural Solidarity

When visiting the poorest neighborhood in New York, you will see a misery that goes beyond economic aspects. Its inhabitants are plagued with crime, sexual exploitation, fatherlessness, divorce, and violence. The sheer brutality and ugliness of the lives of so many Americans is shocking.

In my previous article, “Renewing America: A Paradigm Proposal,” I proposed that the U.S. needs to adopt a decentralization paradigm, which would empower local institutions to address the complex array of welfare problems, economic mobility, and educational opportunity. However, this proposal only covers an economic solution to combating the poverty and stagnation in lower and middle-class America, and now we must turn to culture.

One cause of the desperate state of working class America is the collapse of family culture. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 1955, 4.5 percent of children born were to single mothers. That number had grown to 41 percent in 2015. This drastic increase has contributed to increasing childhood poverty as single parents are unable to provide for their children as well as a married couple. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, nearly half of children raised by single mothers live in poverty, compared to only a tenth of children raised in a two-parent household. Simply put, the family unit is the fundamental unit of order, support, and guidance that children need.

Another cause of collapsing family culture is expressive individualism. Expressive individualism is an ethic that tells people to live out their deepest desires and most authentic selves. Consequently, cultural norms and obligations that constrain self-fulfillment or limit people’s ability to define themselves are declared anathema. One may call the age we are living in an age of authenticity, in which traditional standards and norms that inhibit a person from being true to himself or herself are done away with.

This loosening of standards has primarily been seen in the sexual sphere with the acceptance of no-fault divorce, single parenthood, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Sociologist Charles Murray, in his book Coming Apart, notes that the elite in society have absorbed this moral change while they themselves maintain traditional family structures. Their nonjudgmental attitude toward nontraditional marriages, meanwhile, has caused the poor to suffer greatly. For example, Murray notes that the majority of out-of wedlock births have come from the poor. Moreover, there is a sharp increase in drug use, suicide, and sexual exploitation in these neighborhoods due to a lack of strict norms. Thus, expressive individualism, while freeing moral norms, hurts the poorest of our society who rely on moral norms to maintain their economically struggling family.

Moreover, this expressive individualism fuels identity politics, in which individuals emphasize their differences and distinctiveness from everyone else, dividing Americans into categories based on race, class, and gender. Take, for example, a white working class man who focuses on his distinct white identity and tends to group himself primarily with whites. The result is a group characterized by a difference, leaving it unable to relate to the rest of society. Such a situation is present at Stuyvesant: many tend to identify with those who share a similar race or religion, creating cliques and clubs that are separated from the rest of the school.

Emphasizing differences and overturning cultural norms leads to a loss of cohesion within communities. People are less inclined to identify with their neighbors and rally around them in times of crisis. In his book, “Bowling Alone,” sociologist Robert Putnam documents this loss of social cohesion by noting the loss of membership in civic organizations such as religious groups, labor unions, Parent Teacher Associations, Red Cross, and Boy Scouts.

The paradigm of decentralization would tackle these problems by promoting local solidarity and cohesion. This model mitigates the effects of social decay and division not by federal consolidation, but by inviting individuals to be active members of their local communities. In other words, this model does not ask what government should do to create social cohesion, but rather asks what you should do. You should join Red Cross. You should join your community board. You should get more involved in church or synagogue. You should spend more time with your family and neighbors.

To be sure, these mediating institutions exist. There are healthy families in the U.S., particularly within immigrant and religious groups. There are civic organizations committed to making neighborhoods safe, raising the poor, defending the weak, and fighting addictions. There are religious groups that, from faith, do good works to improve the lives of those around. There are schools that build character and teachers committed to fostering passion in their students. Organization like Food Bank NYC or Big Brothers and Sisters of NY do excellent work renewing our community.

Today, most political activists want to use the federal government to address our fracturing society. Many social conservatives, alarmed at the astounding rate of moral decay, are determined to institute their views at the federal level by primarily overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case which legalized abortions until three months, and Obergefell, the case that declared same-sex marriage a civil right.

A paradigm of decentralization would recommend that instead of abstracting their moral vision to the federal level, social conservatives would do best by living out their morals of strong families, faith, hope, love, and charity locally. For example, a pastor and a group of parents can commit to building a church together, devoting themselves to healing their hurting neighborhoods by encouraging stable marriages, supporting struggling families, and healing drug addiction. By adopting this paradigm, social conservatives can foster subcultures that invite those broken and hurting due to poverty, crime, and exploitation to a richer view of humanity, improving our society.

In this way, a decentralization model resists the temptation to create a mainstream conservative culture from a fracturing culture, similar to what happened in the ‘50s, by focusing on specific communities. It also resists expressive individualism by fostering social groups that involve dependence on those around you and are orientated toward human flourishing.

Moreover, this paradigm offers an insightful alternative to identity politics. Identity politics tends to highlight what makes members of a group different, fighting for special recognition, benefits, and standing. The decentralization model seeks to create communities that embody universal human truths and virtues that are best for everyone. Truths like the importance of family and virtues like selflessness, prudence, hope, faith, and love. Cultivating these virtues within us, our friends, and family creates communities that are diverse and united.

My immigrant culture, for example, immersed in American values, has resulted in me embodying the universal virtues of fortitude and perseverance. Consequently, I am able to unite myself with my neighbors since they also share those virtues. I retain my identity as an immigrant, but also use it as a point of embrace rather than exclusion. This approach works by finding points of commonality between people and using them as starting points for genuine relationships and groups. These groups would involve people who share different backgrounds, but also be unified in that they are driven by something that transcends their differences. A good example is the very Red Cross in our school. Its members are of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, but all are united in their commitment to community renewal.

As espoused in this and the previous article, the decentralization paradigm seeks to fix the social and economic architecture of the country through empowering mediating institutions. As government funnels its resources to the local level instead of the federal and removes bottlenecks to economic mobility, individuals create new communities that embody universal virtues benefiting the entire community.

I have proposed a formal solution to our problems. However, I have not offered a material solution. That is, I have given a structure, but I have yet to fill that structure with the right beliefs and presumptions about reality. What exactly are these universal truths and virtues? What is good? What is justice? Now, it is to these larger questions of morality, good, justice, and virtue that I turn.