Society, Culture, and Integration

All of us, including scholars and geniuses, including sociologists, have, at best, a partial understanding of society and culture.  All of us see through a glass darkly.  Our partial understanding, our half-truths, mislead as often as they enlighten.  Humility is better than pontificating.  The cross-currents permeating our society are complex and confusing.  This essay will try to make this point.

Society-culture is complex and multifaceted.  A society as large and multifaceted as the U.S. can never be adequately analyzed and described by one scholarly study.  One scholar can study only one segment of society; so it will take several studies to even begin to capture the cross-currents, even counter-currents, that exist at the same time in a society.  Even the following four books only begin the process:  All That We Can Be:  Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way by sociologists Charles Moskos and John Butler (1996); The Ordeal of Integration:  Progress and Resentment in America's Racial Crisis by historical sociologist Orlando Paterson (1997); The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality by sociologist Thomas Shapiro (2004); The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by lawyer Michelle Alexander (2010).

In some circles, integration is a bad word.  Some say that integration has been tried and it has failed to bring about harmonious racial or ethnic relations.  Two books suggest that the funeral for integration may have been premature.  All That We Can Be argues that the U.S. Army has been astoundingly successful in promoting integration within its ranks.  The Army is so highly integrated that Moskos and Butler talk of an Afro-Anglo culture permeating all aspects of Army life.  They describe Afro-Anglo culture as a multiracial uniculture that blends the British heritage with the Afro "moral vision, rhetoric, literature, music, and a distinctive Protestant Christianity."

In the 1970s, the Army was plagued by racial strife and conflict, so much so that its viability as a functioning fighting unit was threatened,  In this time of crisis, Army leadership made some bold decisions, and over a period of about 20 years these decisions and actions led to a sociological miracle.  The Army made improved ethnic relations a high priority.  The hired the best experts to design their program, and they did not skimp on the resources devoted to implement the program.  It was a serious and extensive effort, not just high-sounding rhetoric.  What was the result?  Moskos and Butler describe the Army this way:

It is an organization unmatched in its level of racial integration . . . . unmatched in its broad record of black achievement.  It is a world in which the Afro-American heritage is part and parcel of the institutional culture.  It is the only place in American life where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks.

After an extensive discussion of the many ramifications of such an effort at integration, the authors turn to this important question:  Can the successful Army experience be duplicated in civilian society?  The authors answer a resounding, YES!!  The basic principles are transferable (if there is the will to do so); they list and discuss 12 principles on how to do it.  In a major appendix, they urge that the nation commit itself to replicating the Army success in a National Service program for its young men and women.

The Christian church should humbly sit at the feet of the U.S. Army and learn how to operationalize love and respect for fellow ethnic human beings.  Strangely, a military unit that trains people to kill has also trained potential killers how to treat others as equal human beings.  The church which supposedly trains people how to love, not kill, has, for the most part, a record of failure in the area of ethnic harmony and reconciliation.  Tragically, apart from token integration, most of the Christian American church remains highly segregated.

Orlando Patterson, in his book The Ordeal of Integration, also argues that, in spite of an enormous rhetoric to the contrary, integration has been reasonably successful in civilian society.  Not as successful as the Army, of course, but still successful enough to be called a sociological miracle if seen from both a historical and a crosscultural perspective.

For example, the 1940 poverty rate among Afro-Americans was probably around 80 percent, but in the mid-nineties it was 29 percent.  This means that 70 percent of Afro-Americans live above the poverty line.  We hear much about the underclass---the poorest of the poor and a very serious problem.  Yet, according to Paterson, they make up only 3 percent of the total Afro-American population---900,000 out of 34,000,000.  Patterson describes the 70 percent of the population as follows:

hard-working, disproportionately God-fearing, law-abiding group of people who share the same dreams as their fellow citizens, love and cherish the land of their birth with equal fervor, contribute to its cultural, military, and political glory and global triumph out of all proportion to their numbers, and, to every dispassionate observer, are, in their values, habits, ideals, and ways of living, among the most 'American' of Americans.

Patterson also argues that Afro-Americans have moved "from a condition of mass illiteracy fifty years ago" to "median years of schooling and college completion rates higher than those of most European nations."  He also cites data to the effect that Euro-American ethnic attitudes have improved markedly.

If progress has been so significant, why so much negative rhetoric?  Many people do not have a 50 year perspective and therefore do not know how much progress has been made.  And many serious problems do remain.  Patterson describes the present situation as the best of times and the worst of times.  During this time the rate of interracial marriage is increasing; 12 percent of all new marriages by Afro-Americans in 1993 were to Euro-Americans.  A generation ago the rate was about 1 percent.

To be continued. . . .