Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With"

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, declaring that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional.

As the New York Times notes, the case came about in 1951 when the NAACP “recruited families from Topeka, Kan., to take part in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of school segregation. The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had a daughter who was forced to take a bus to an all-black school rather than attend the all-white school blocks from her house. The case was combined with similar cases from other parts of the country and argued before the Supreme Court by a team of NAACP lawyers headed by the future justice Thurgood Marshall.”

Writing for the unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren explained the Court’s reasoning:

In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868, when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

In Sweatt v. Painter, supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school.” In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: “. . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.” Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Read the whole opinion here, and then read Martin Luther King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which he wrote nine years after the Court’s decision in Brown:

[...] Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and members of the 101st Airborne before D-Day

As we noted in April, WSPWH co-editor Diana Schaub will be speaking this Friday, May 18, on the importance of public memorials dedicated to our country’s great statesmen and heroes. She will be joining Bruce Cole (Hudson Institute), Michael J. Lewis (Williams College), and Roger Scruton (AEI) for a panel discussion at AEI entitled “Monumental Fights: The Role of Memorials in Civic Life.” Sponsored by AEI’s Program on American Citizenship and the National Civic Art Society, and moderated by the Society’s Eric Wind, the panel will use the recent controversies over the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Memorial and the planned Eisenhower Memorial to explore the important role that public memorials play in reflecting our national identity and ideals. The event will take place on the 12th floor of AEI (1150 17th Street, NW, Washington, D.C.) from 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM. All are welcome. Register here.

He writes:

It’s an ancient question: Does fiction build the morality of individuals and societies, or does it break it down?

This controversy has been flaring up– sometimes literally, in the form of book burnings–ever since Plato tried to ban fiction from his ideal republic. In 1961, FCC chairman Newton Minow famously said that television was not working in “the public interest” because its “formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons” amounted to a “vast wasteland.” And what he said of TV programming has also been said, over the centuries, of novels, theater, comic books, and films: They are not in the public interest.

[New] research consistently shows that fiction does mold us. The more deeply we are cast under a story’s spell, the more potent its influence. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.

But perhaps the most impressive finding is just how fiction shapes us: mainly for the better, not for the worse. Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds. More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality. They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is. But believing that lie has important effects for society–and it may even help explain why humans tell stories in the first place.

[...]

Follow-up studies have reached similar conclusions. For example, one study showed that small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people. Similarly, Washington & Lee psychologist Dan Johnson recently had people read a short story that was specifically written to induce compassion in the reader. He wanted to see not only if fiction increased empathy, but whether it would lead to actual helping behavior. Johnson found that the more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens–highly absorbed readers were twice as likely to help out. “In conclusion,” Johnson writes, “it appears that ‘curling up with a good book’ may do more than provide relaxation and entertainment. Reading narrative fiction allows one to learn about our social world and as a result fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior.”

Gottschall goes on to discuss research he and three colleagues conducted looking at the possibility that fiction acts “as a kind of social glue among humans, binding fractious individuals together around common values.” The results, published in the book Graphing Jane Austen, found that survey respondents “reacted to the characters [in Jane Austen novels] as though they were real people: They admired the protagonists, disliked the antagonists, felt happy when the good guys succeeded, and felt sad or angry when they were threatened. By simulating a world where antisocial behavior is strongly condemned and punished, these novels were promoting ancient human values.”

Kass thinks we can make space for talk of the transcendent in secular public discourse–and, indeed, that we must do so if we are to acknowledge the full human import of activities like philanthropy in American political society.

According to Kass, philanthropy–in its various forms, including volunteer work, care for neighbors, and formal public service–lifts us out of our absorption with our private concerns to an ever-wider community, from neighborhood to nation:

concrete and meaningful expressions of interest and concern . . . lead neighbor actively to care and work for neighbor, Chicagoan for Chicagoan, Texan for Texan, and American for American.

In this ever-wider community, we find ourselves situated so that our single self is elevated into a network of meaningful relationships, thus attaining a significance that transcends that of our own individual life.

And yet, the wider community in which we find meaning cannot be extended indefinitely without losing our parochial sense that is “our community” and that we have a particular, rather than abstract, connection to it:

life as actually lived is lived parochially and locally, embedded in a web of human relations, institutions, cultures, and mores that define us and . . . give shape, character, and meaning to our lives. One’s feeling for global humanity, however sincere, is based on an abstraction.

For Kass, “parochial” does not imply a narrow-minded insularity but a boundedness that, given our limited capacities as individuals, makes it possible to be fully engaged only with a limited, bounded community.

Our engagement with our American community attaches us to it as patriots. Just as we love more deeply our children the more we care for them, we become greater patriots the more we actively care for our neighbors and fellow Americans.

And while citizens anywhere may be more attached to their country the more they serve it, this is especially so of America, which welcomes as citizens those of all races, ethnicities, and religions:

We [Americans] are a parochial nation with a universal calling and a most remarkable history in answering it. . . . [Our] history is replete with efforts to bring our practices more fully in line with our ideals . . . to belong to such a nation is not only a special blessing but a special calling: to preserve freedom, dignity, and self-government at home and to encourage their share abroad . . . [and so] American patriotism and national service can and do provide a life of transcendent meaning.

Kass’s lecture is filled with hope–not certainty, but hope–that many Americans continue to pursue lives of transcendent meaning, including lives enriched by philanthropic activities; in this period when so many have found their material lot diminished, let us share his hope for continued spiritual enrichment.

Read the Merrill’s whole article here.

On May 11, 1888, the composer and lyricist Irving Berlin was born in Belarus, as Israel Isidore Baline, one of eight children. When he was five, he and his family immigrated to the United States to escape the pogroms against the Jews, settling in New York City. As a child, he sold newspapers in the city and would hear the day’s popular music emanating from saloons and restaurants. He was taken by the music, and as a teenager he survived by singing popular songs to customers in bars. He started playing the piano and writing songs, and in 1911 his song “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” made him an instant celebrity.

In 1918, while serving in the Army, Berlin wrote “God Bless America,” taking its title from the phrase his mother often used to indicate that “without America, her family would have had no place to go.” In 1938, around the twentieth anniversary of the end of World War I, the popular singer Kate Smith asked Berlin for a song. Concerned about the war clouds gathering in Europe, he tried writing a few songs about the United States, but then remembered this one, which had sat in a drawer for twenty years. Berlin revised the song and Smith introduced it on her Armistice Day 1938 radio broadcast.

On September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, this was the song that members of the House of Representatives solemnly sang on the steps of the Capitol.

To celebrate Berlin’s birthday, listen to Kate Smith sing “God Bless America,” and consider the words of the song. The introduction speaks of allegiance, gratitude, and prayer: what exactly is their connection, one to another? The song is said to be a prayer: for what exactly do we pray? Is this a song only for times of crisis? How does singing this song make you feel?

(Spoken Introduction)
While the storm clouds gather
Far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance
To a land that’s free;
Let us all be grateful
For a land so fair,
As we raise our voices
In a solemn prayer.

(Song)
God bless America,
Land that I love,
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam.
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
God bless America,
My home sweet home.

“O.K.,” said the Martians. “What should we read first? Can we have marshmallows?”

“Let’s start with two stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne,” I said. “‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’ and ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ Here are your marshmallows.”

Their pink antennae waved excitedly. They stored away the marshmallows as rare American artifacts. Then they read the stories, very quickly, as Martians do. “What do these mean to contemporary America?” they asked.

“In ‘The Maypole of Merry Mount,’ ” I said, “some people having a fun party in the woods are disrupted by the Puritans, who consider them immoral. Both groups have come to America in search of ‘freedom.’ The Merry Mounters interpret ‘freedom’ as sexual and individual freedom, the Puritans as freedom to practice their own religion while outlawing the behavior of others. This fight is still going on in America: the same issues come up in every election. In my novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ” I added modestly, “I’ve included them as ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from.’ ”

“We took that in high school,” said the Martians. “What about ‘Young Goodman Brown?’”

“So, in ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” I said, “this Puritan goes for a walk at night and discovers that all his neighbors and relations–including his young wife, Faith–are members of a satanic witchcraft group. He wakes up in the morning wondering if he’s had a bad dream. But ever afterward he distrusts the neighbors; and so do all Americans, because how do you know whether the neighbors are who they claim to be?”

After discussing American TV and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the Martians proclaim: “When we get back to Mars, we will start an American book club. We wish to read David Foster Wallace, not to mention Edith Wharton and Raymond Carver and tons of others. It is the writers who convey the inner truth about a nation, despite themselves, yes?”

Indeed. Join the Martians in reading Hawthorne’s “The May-Pole of Merry Mount.” Do you agree with Atwood’s interpretation of the story? Is that all there is to it? How does the newly-wedded couple of Edgar and Edith fit into the story? If the Merry-Mounters celebrate the body without regard to the soul, and the Puritans celebrate the (disembodied) soul without regard to earthly life, is there something in marriage and family that can correct each of these partial and utopian visions?

Students are inducted into the Society based on their academic achievement and civic engagement, and the chapters of the Society at individual schools will provide students encouragement and more opportunities to study social studies and become better citizens.

Schools interested in starting a chapter of Rho Kappa can find more information at the organization’s website, here.

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can’t be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds.

[...]

At Harvard, at least, all undergraduate political-science majors will receive perfunctory exposure to a few Federalist essays in a mandatory course their sophomore year. But at Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley, political-science majors can receive their degrees without encountering the single surest analysis of the problems that the Constitution was intended to solve and the manner in which it was intended to operate.

Did you miss out on the Federalist Papers while in college? If so, take a look at the WSPWH editors’ introduction to Federalist No. 10, the most cited of the essays. Here Publius (in this case, James Madison) sketches a highly original solution to the problem of majority faction (when ruling majorities ignore the legitimate rights of the minority). He argues that representative government (as opposed to direct democracy) helps avert majority faction by refining and tempering majority opinion. But beyond mere representation he recommends, paradoxically, more factions. Thus he argues for a large republic rather than a small one, for the larger the republic, the greater the number and types of interests and factions, and the more they will be able to balance and counteract one another. Political struggle will be moderated not by moral and religious instruction aimed at making citizens more moderate and virtuous, but instead by the moderating effects of multiplicity and the requirements of effective commercial activity. By design, America’s greatest bulwark against the danger of majority faction is the large commercial republic and competition of rival interests in pursuit of gain and personal advancement.

What assumptions about human nature inform this ingenious solution? Why is heterogeneity preferable to homogeneity, and what, if any, might be its defects or costs? What sort of human character—with what sorts of passions, virtues, and vices—is produced by a large commercial republic? The Anti-Federalists, who opposed the large federal union, held that freedom can be experienced and preserved only in small communities, in which citizens know one another, are like-minded, and actively participate in public life. Might they have been right? Does our federal system, through its division of authority among national, state, and local powers, manage to secure the advantages of both bigness and smallness? What should we think today about the relation among commerce, freedom, and stability?

Greenberg notes:

The word “occupy” itself recurs with startling frequency throughout Melville’s story to describe Bartleby’s inactive action of staying put without working. At first the narrator is pleased with the steadiness of Bartleby’s occupation of his office, since the scrivener works productively, but when the narrator stops by on a Sunday, he is unsettled to find that his own clerk (who is making his home there) refuses to admit him to the office: “Not yet,” says Bartleby, “I am occupied.” When Bartleby stops working, the lawyer wonders, like a weak-hearted Bloomberg, whether he should evict the stubborn copyist. He is gripped by a queasy vision in which the occupier of Wall Street becomes its possessor: “The idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority.” Bartleby, he fears, will eventually “claim possession of [his] office by right of his perpetual occupancy.” Even after the scrivener is evicted from the office, Bartleby continues to cause “great tribulation” by “persisting in occupying the entry.”

When, the narrator wonders, does occupation become possession? Who has a right to occupy what space? Who must work for whom? What happens in our society to those who can’t–or simply won’t–work? What obligations do we have to those who prefer not to fit into the system, or run on the hamster’s wheel? The narrator would like simple answers to such questions. He tries to view his conflict with Bartleby as a matter of property rights, and when he urges Bartleby to vacate, he sounds a lot like a wealthy suburban homeowner: “What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?”

Yet against this language of property rights, the story introduces a subtle counter-discourse of hazy motives, wishes and feelings. Bartleby’s “queer word” of choice, to prefer, injects into the story a defiant note of desire, shifting our analysis of his occupancy from economic rights to preferences and wishes. (Bartleby appears never to touch the money that he is paid, removing himself from the money economy altogether.) As a wealthy but good-intentioned liberal, the narrator struggles to understand Bartleby’s motives–to determine, ultimately, the extent to which his ethical obligations to Bartleby exceed his legal ones.

Like many of Melville’s stories, “Bartleby” at once demands and frustrates interpretation. The unclarity of Bartleby’s aims–What does he actually want? What are his demands?–invites our attention but defeats our reading. By refusing to articulate specific demands, Bartleby defies the very terms on which Wall Street does business.

[...]

Bartleby is among the first modern bureaucrats to serve as a literary hero. Working before the invention of the mimeograph, he copies legal documents with perfect accuracy. This is soul-killing work. “To some sanguine temperaments,” muses Melville’s narrator, “it would be altogether intolerable…. I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand.” The invocation of Byron is crucial; Bartleby’s writing is as far from poetry as you can get. It is bureaucratic scrivening, in which there is no room for originality, authorship, style, ornament, or pleasure. Is it any wonder that Bartleby “decide[s] upon doing no more writing”?

As you read the story, consider the questions that Greenberg and the WSPWH editors raise: What does the story tell us about the value of soul-enriching work? What does it say  say about the human significance of the world of business? What happens to a people who focus mainly on economic matters? Is Melville’s story a cautionary tale? If so, about what is he cautioning us? Commerce? Lawyerly prudence, accommodation and balance? The utilitarian and problem-solving attitude many Americans adopt toward life and toward other human beings? Something else?

Read Kass’s full remarks here and watch a video of his address here.