OK here's the deal. I think social mobility in America is fairly good but that people don't necessarily respect the mobility they have. But I also believe that there is a certain arrogant humility that most Americans don't have and don't strive for that restricts their social mobility.
'Arrogant humility' sounds oxymoronic don't it? Well, it is something of an ineffable quality, but that's the best handle I can put on something real that I've noticed in people in my line of work. But let's get racial for a moment in order to undermine some political correctness that I suspect might be lurking in everyone's thinking as I 'go there'.
A long time ago, not long after I made friends with an impressive, but rather ordinary looking white guy named John, I wondered how I would cope with America if I were an ordinary looking white guy named John. It occured to me that if that were the case, I would have nowhere to go, and nothing to distinguish me except my skills. Just like Hilary Swank in 'Million Dollar Baby', just like Richard Gere in 'An Officer and a Gentleman'; nowhere else to go. You're nobody until somebody loves you.
Since I am something of a social climber in a society whose rules and expectations I often challenge just by showing up, I pay close attention to my peers. It has been a long time since I was in that prep school where the last names actually did connect. When they said O'Melveny it was *that* O'Melveny. When they said Crosby it was *that* Crosby. And now I find myself often in the company of guys who went to Kentucky U. rather than Yale. And yet they are successful by any measure of Americans. What you do when you are in the middle is that you simply assume the position.
How arrogant humility works is that you submit yourself to the process. If there is a career path, you follow it. If there is a manual, RTFM. Call yourself a square, play fair and try your hand, always assuming what? May the best man win. That's keeping it real middle America style.
Now there's a great deal of sentiment out there that this formula only works for ordinary white guys named John. In fact, the sentiment is almost hegemonic. But it's so plainly false that I have to keep pointing out the other thing that everybody knows to. It's easy to sell out. It's easy to be a Tom, a brown-noser, a toady, a kiss ass, a bootlicker, a stooge, a flunky and a pawn. In fact it's so easy that millions of not particularly intelligent Americans get mortgages. If they were anywhere else on the planet, there's no way that they could get a loan for $200,000 just for driving a truck.
There's the second key. You have to work the system. You have to understand what you get out of it and you have to bend your life around that. Just remember this: You're just an ordinary white guy named John. You've got nowhere else to go. You are forced to be humble, you're just an American citizen and that's all you got going for you. Your parents can't help you, you can't marry into success, you've got no title. All you've got is your honest face and elbow grease. And if the bastards in your little hick two horse town won't give you a break, you move to the city. Get in where you fit in.
I don't see what Americans under the influence of the hegemony don't understand about these facts.
Ahh but there's the arrogance. There's a very definite crabby mentality in the humility of John. See, since he can't get away with anything, he doesn't want you to get away with anything either. See, he's bitten the bullet and put his big red neck on the line and he doesn't see why you should take a different path. After all, you're none of the things he wants to be when he grows up. And so John will do what he can to insure that the system that worked for him only works that same way, it's only fair right?
Posted by mbowen at April 3, 2005 06:57 PM | TrackBackI have to reread this, but I don't see a great deal of MOBILITY in this narrative. If you're talking about folks literally moving from say Detroit to Los Angeles, then MAYBE. But when i think about social mobility I think of someone moving on up like George and Weezie. Your ordinary Joe most likely has ordinary Joe parents, and probably ordinary Joe grandparents. He's doing what everything was set up for him to do, and the reason he is ok with it is because he has the potential to win the lottery...and he knows there are people below him. This isn't mobility. This is...I think the word is stasis?
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 5, 2005 08:55 PMIf you read today's US News and World Report and it says that job growth is going to come from biotechnology, what's to stop you from seeking biotechnology as a career?
If the presumption is that there are insurmoutable barriers to those who are not white males, then what does the white male have that gives him an advantage in biotech? Nobody's ever done biotech before, so why should white males be better in it than anyone else?
Mobility is about trusting the system. As much as I hear Cornel West talking about the difference between hope and optimism, in his backhanded way of justifying cynicism, you would think that he would run with something like this. But again, I think this is yet another example of a political theory that banks on blackfolks responding to a disjointed set of economic stimuli from the rest of America. If so, I say it's all attitude.
When the 'digital divide' was invented, all the excuses for blacks not to get on the 'information superhighway' was also invented. And today we are still dealing with the idea that the blogosphere is dominated by white males. So who told the white males that they could. Did they all get a little email from the White Supremacist Council?
As I mentioned before, there is an acute nursing shortage in the state of California. Who is the hegemon keeping blacks and browns who could use the salary out of the profession? It's the little white man in their heads.
Posted by: Cobb at April 5, 2005 09:27 PMWhat's going to stop ME? I've already got a job. What's going to stop some identifiable person that we can put a name on? Like say Imani Spence? What stops her are things she can have some degree of control over, largely because I am around, and because I teach her right.
But when you move up a level of aggregation, and talk about groups rather than individuals, we're talking about a different set of forces. Biotech firms are not going to hire people from Simmons college or even from the University of Phoenix. No matter what the gap is, they are going to be looking for folks from the top tier schools in biotech.
We know what the barriers of entry are for ordinary joes there, much less ordinary leroys.
The same thing with nursing.
Now if you're saying that savvy entrepeneurs can make moves on an individual level, I'd say of course. But even here, again we're really not talking about mobility. Those entrepeneurs are most likely to be making lateral moves rather than horizontal ones. Nursing doesn't pay enough to do anything more than move you out of poverty. Which is one of the reasons why institutions in need of nurses are going overseas.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 5, 2005 09:59 PMBiotech firms are not going to hire people from Simmons college or even from the University of Phoenix. No matter what the gap is, they are going to be looking for folks from the top tier schools in biotech.
A Simmons or U Phoenix grad may not get the top job at the biotech facility directly out of college but they can and do get jobs at the biotech firms just like the MIT grads. The nursing shortage that Cobb brought up is a nationwide problem. The Government has a special VISA work program for foreign nurses. If you haven't visited a hospital recently, you will soon discover the US-born nurses are the minority.
I'm sure Cobb can also testify that where the college degree is from has little to no bearing to the placement of a worker in the technology sector. Many talented programmers have no college degree (Exhibit A: Bill Gates). If you have the talent and skill, you can make it in computers.
Yes, some high-tech companies are degree-oriented and will not talk to candidates from predigreed institutions. My first job was at such a place in 1980. But during the 1980s, they loosened their educational requirements and began to hire people from 'second-tier' schools. BUt MIT can produce only so many EEs and everyone can't have 4.0 GPA.
Posted by: elg at April 6, 2005 01:08 PMA Simmons or U Phoenix grad may not get the top job at the biotech facility directly out of college but they can and do get jobs at the biotech firms just like the MIT grads.I'm not talking about singular individuals. On average what is the likelihood that a Simmons graduate preparing for a biotech career can actually get a job in that sector? Again, moving from individuals to groups changes the dynamic. Taking the example of Bill Gates gets us nowhere. Not only because the number of self-made millionaires in the tech sector WITHOUT college degrees are small...but because Gates got in on the groundfloor. We may already be at a point where you've got to have a degree to get a job designing computer/video games, much less writing code. Universities serve as filtering systems...and even employers needing workers rely on those filters. Gates was able to found Microsoft without a degree.
I bet the average Simmons graduate can't get a job there WITH ONE.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 6, 2005 01:58 PMWell there's a question for the placement office. Heaven forbid Simmons frosh don't find the place.
Posted by: Cobb at April 6, 2005 02:10 PMI agree that getting most jobs in IT requires a degree. But not all jobs. And video/computer game design has grown from the pac-man days to require several dozen people with specialized training.
Writing code: If someone had a portfolio of code that he had written and could answer some language-specific questions, there are employers would hire him. They may pay him less than a degreed programmer but he would have a decent job. Many schools offer such a limited level of software programming that a whiz-bang hacker without a formal degree is preferable than a degreed person who checks in his code without testing its functionality or if it meets the technical requirements.
There are too many foreigners working in IT that don't have a degree (high school or college) from an American institution. Employers don't have the wherewithal to check an employee's educational background from Bangalore and determine the equivalency of grades and degrees from a foreign school to the American system.
Posted by: elg at April 6, 2005 06:49 PMI'm told by a relative who works for Gates that you can't get in the joint to program if you don't have a degree. And lets not forget his father, who was rich, seeded his son's startup.
On the placement office in a "lower tier" college/university. They have trouble recruiting recruiters to visit the school.
On the general topic, Cobb pointed out that he's a climber by choice. Me, I'm an economic climber but not a social climber. By that I mean I'll find spots to go up the ladder when I'm in the right spot, but I won't work to seek out the spots to go up the ladder. Knowwhutimean?
Is that not respecting the mobility or is it thinking that it's not important enough, right now, to worry about?
I think the latter.
Let's also not forget the other side of this equation, which is something progressives never want to hear: "Self-Segregation".
When you look 'in the aggregate' and characterize the results as evidence of suppression, you fail to recognize 'keepin it real' and other opting out of the system. I am neutral about it because I tend to believe that this is really about supply and demand absent a real animus against the expression of civil rights by blacks. (But not quite at the same equilibrium as interracial sex, then again maybe).
So I think black power argues for the case that blacks have enough dignity not to feel the need to be dignified by the system and also enough dignity not to be disrespected by it either. So you can take climbing as evidence of black pride, and you can take sitting still as evidence of black pride too.
I think the dividing line is 'move from Gary to Chicago' mobility. If you want in, move to where the supermarkets are super. If you hang back in the ghetto, you eat what's on the shelf in the liquor store. Pure choice. Understand that I am with Loury on this. Bomb the ghetto.
Posted by: Cobb at April 6, 2005 07:51 PMIsn't this a discussion of 'acting white'? Isn't that the issue we're discussing? Too many of us feel we're 'acting white' if we study and learn how our favorite video game is made rather than just playing it. Isn't that the 'position to assume'?
Microsoft, Goggle, Sun, Oracle are the premiere companies to work at for a programmer. Most college grads aren't going to get there, no matter where they graduate from because these companies have many more resumes than open positions.
I'm sure your relative can tell you about the plant and school Microsoft has in India also. That's another problem for young grads ... they're priced out of the market by outsourcing. So recuiting at college campuses are down not because the caliber of a university but because the costs of a U.S. programmer with no experience is greater than an experienced programmer in India or China.
Posted by: elg at April 6, 2005 09:27 PMIsn't this a discussion of 'acting white'? Isn't that the issue we're discussing?No it isn't. this is a discussion of "social mobility." only there isn't a whole lot of mobility going on. Posted by: Lester Spence at April 11, 2005 05:57 AM
My brutha, what you've described here is so meritocratic that it nearly brought a tear to me jaded eye...., (;
Now - let's add a healthy dose of "relationship" to this utopian flavored brew you've carefully formulated, because, imoho - it is precisely and invariably "relationship" that acts as the single most influential determining factor in the "system" - and relationship has been deeply and decisively gerrymandered for a very long time.
One need only survey the complexion of the churches we attend, neighborhoods in which we reside, and country clubs in which we recreate, etc..., to see that for the overwhelming majority of folks - not white like John - there is a capricious or anti-meritocratic slant inhering to the topological reality of our interpersonal relations. This slant drains all semblance of meritocratic fairness out of your idealistic formulation.
Unless of course, the entirety of what you were saying was, "You're nobody until SOMEBODY loves you". In which case I'm scratching my head and wondering why all the tissue paper and frilly ribbons around this simple fact of commercial life?
Posted by: cnulan at April 4, 2005 10:08 AM