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The University of Chicago was thrust into the media spotlight this month when leaked internal emails between members of its Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) fraternity revealed a series of lurid messages denigrating Muslims, Palestinians, Arabs, black people, and women.
Exposed by an anonymous whistleblower and published by Buzzfeed, the emails were sent on a listserv of the AEPi fraternity between 2011 and 2015. The communications contained racist rants trashing Martin Luther King Jr., referred to an abandoned lot as “Palestine,” and maligned a Muslim student activist as a “terrorist.”
As the country's most aggressively pro-Israel fraternity, AEPi "works in concert with a highly organized cadre of anti-Palestinian groups to combat divestment resolutions on college campuses across the country," according to journalists Rania Khalek and Nora Barrows Friedman. In 2011, a UC-Davis graduate named Ryan Clifford filed suit against the fraternity, alleging a culture of hazing that targeted non-Jewish pledges like himself with particularly abusive rituals. Members of other AEPi chapters have coordinated with right-wing pro-Israel groups to levy false charges of anti-Semitism, implicated supporters of Palestine on campus as terror sympathizers and worse.
In response to the racism scandal at U of Chicago, university administrators Karen Warren Coleman and Michele Rasmussen distributed an open letter to the student body last week stating that the attitudes and views the emails express “are unacceptable, violate the University’s core values, and conflict with our strong commitment to ensuring that people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives can thrive on our campus.”
Yet nearly 50 campus groups, the student government, and a legal advocacy organization charged that the administration has not gone far enough to confront a longstanding culture of racism and harassment on campus. This failure, they say, is due in part to the administration's seeming inability to name—let alone confront—a key component of the problem: The pattern of anti-Palestinian attacks that extend far beyond any single fraternity.
“We are trying to get the university to uphold their own values,” Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Hoda Katebi told AlterNet. “It’s emotionally taxing.”
A Wave of Homophobic and Racist Harassment by Pro-Israel Forces
It has been three months since attorney Rahul Saksena of the legal advocacy group Palestine Legal delivered a letter to the University of Chicago administration expressing concern over a “documented pattern of suppression to silence Palestinian human rights advocacy” at the premiere school.
Addressing President Robert Zimmer, the letter from Saksena highlights a number of troubling incidents. A fake Facebook account under the name “Rachel Corrie” — an American solidarity activist killed by the Israeli military in Gaza in 2003 — harassed and threatened students who spoke out in support of Palestinian human rights. The anonymously maintained profile threatened to publish nude photographs of one SJP member, as well as harassment in the form of transphobic messages to a queer and transgender member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
A separate false account was reportedly created around the same time using the profile image of a Palestinian student and member of SJP. The person or people behind that account then left “a series of harassing, threatening, sexual, and misogynistic comments on SJP’s Facebook page,” wrote Saksena.
In another example, public materials memorializing Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were torn down and vandalized with epithets, including the word “terrorist.”
In each case, students reported the violation to the administration. And in a press statement dated last November, SJP called on the university to protect their right to organize and condemn “the campaign of harassment.”
Administrators say they responded by launching an investigation, in which they were unable to determine who was responsible.
According to Saksena, university officials “have not, however, taken any meaningful steps to ensure that Palestinian and Arab students and Palestine solidarity activists on campus enjoy the right to speak out without fear of harassment and intimidation, despite our reminder of their legal obligations, and despite students' repeated demands.”
It was during that period of inaction that the far more public AEPi scandal broke.
"Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes"
According to a large swath of the University of Chicago’s organized student body, the school’s racist culture runs deeper than last fall’s string of attack on Palestinian rights activists.
In a joint statement released last week in response to the AEPi revelations, the Muslim Students Association, Organization of Black Students and SJP condemned the university’s failure to “respond adequately to anti-Palestinian and anti-black racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny in AEPi and fraternity culture on campus.”
Endorsed by nearly 50 student organizations, including the student government, the statement highlights a number of disturbing incidents. In one example, the Delta Upsilon (DU) fraternity reportedly “placed a Confederate flag near what was then the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs.” Just days later, that same fraternity hosted a party titled “DU Presents: Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes.” The invitation, which called on those attending to bring “an unlimited need to conquer, spread disease, and enslave natives,” attracted some negative press at the time.
“Evidence of a toxic campus climate is highly prevalent,” the students argued. In the spring of 2014, a “Palestinian was repeatedly attacked with false allegations of anti-Semitism in an attempt to prevent her from being elected to a seat in Student Government due to her political activism,” the statement notes. And in May 2015, a Palestinian organizer with SJP received “a threatening message addressed to her personal Facebook account warning her against her continued activism.”
The university’s response to the AEPi scandal, students charge, has failed to fully account for this history. In their letter sent last week to the student body, Rasmussen and Coleman called the AEPi emails disrespectful and harmful to “members of our Muslim and African-American communities and to women.” But the word “Palestinian” appears nowhere in their statement. Katebi said the omission comes despite the fact that "we've been meeting with the administration since the huge stream of harassment toward members of SJP last quarter, trying to get them to release statement condemning what happened.”
“We have noticed the administration will only act if there is press,” Katebi continued. “All they care about is their ranking and how they look in the press.”
Hundreds of Incidents of Pro-Israel Suppression
A report released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal in September of 2015 found that U.S. campuses are ground-zero for the suppression of advocacy for Palestinian human rights. Between January 2014 and June 2015 alone, Palestine Legal says it “responded to nearly 300 incidents of suppression; 85% of those incidents targeted students and professors, on a total of more than 65 US college campuses.”
According to the investigation, the most commonly used tactics include: "false and inflammatory accusations of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism," official denunciations, bureaucratic barriers, legislation, threats to academic freedom, and criminal investigations.
In a separate report also released in September 2015, Jewish Voice for Peace corroborated the findings.
"Far-right political organizations, like StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America, as well as many prominent Jewish organizations with much broader communal mandates, such as Hillel International, Jewish Federations (specifically their Israel on Campus Coalition), and the Anti-Defamation League, intervene on campuses in efforts to muzzle political criticisms of Israeli policies," the report stated.
AEPi is a central catalyst of the larger trend of pro-Israel intimidation on campus. With over 180 chapters, the fraternity partners with the Jewish National Fund, a powerful Israeli organization actively involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel.
In 2014, AEPi became the first student organization to fully join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, with the explicit goal of advancing pro-Israel advocacy. That same year, the fraternity condemned pro-Israel group J-Street for criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to undermine the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran. AEPi’s rebuke played a role in preventing J-Street from joining the Conference of Presidents, thereby aligning the fraternity with Israel’s far right.
Palestine Legal noted in its report that AEPi "frequently signs on to Israel advocacy coalition letters calling for restricting criticism of Israel." This includes a letter in March 2015 urging the University of California at Irvine to label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
Within this climate, students across the country “are demanding that their Universities take a stand against institutional racism and discrimination, as well as specific incidents like the AEPi emails,” said Saksena. “This includes anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim targeting.”
Meanwhile, University of Chicago student groups say they will continue to demand accountability and redress. “When students cannot simply exist in a space without continuous harassment, hate speech, and threats of violence,” the groups declared in their joint statement, “it is apparent that the University of Chicago—our university—is failing us.”
The richest Americans increasingly are taking over the levers of power and shaping the political debate, despite opposing views held by a majority of Americans, a new and unprecedented academic study of the top 1 percent has confirmed.
The super-rich are more politically active than average Americans, financing and contacting elected officials and knowing many on a first-name basis. Their agenda, which is often cited by public officials across the country, emphasizes private profit-making and is skeptical of almost every public program to address economic inequality, the study by Chicago-based university researchers found. The top 1 percent's social agenda, while “more liberal than others on religious and moral issues, including abortion, gay rights, and prayer in school,” is still “much more conservative than the non-affluent on issues of taxes, economic regulation, and social welfare,” the researchers found.
Put another way, today’s top 1 percent generally do not believe the longtime conservative line that a rising economic tide will lift all Americans, but have a darker view in which one’s fate is tied to the survival of the fittest. They consider climate change a non-issue and most would cut federal and state safety nets and anti-poverty programs, shift taxpayer dollars into privatized education and do little to ensure access to higher education.
“We speculate that the striking contrast concerning core social welfare programs between our wealthy respondents and the general public may reveal something important about the current state of American politics,” the report says. “If wealthy Americans wield an extra measure of influence over policy making, and if they strongly favor deficit reductions through spending cuts—including cuts in Social Security and Medicare—this may help explain why a number of public officials have advocated deep cuts in the very social welfare programs that are most popular among ordinary Americans.”
The report’s authors take a neutral tone and protect the confidentiality of those interviewed. As they note in their opening, “there have been no scientific, representative surveys of the broader social and political attitudes and behavior of top U.S. income earners or wealth holders.” However, their data comparing the views of more than 100 super-wealthy Chicagoans and the general public leads to unmistakable conclusions about the presence of an American soft fascism placating today’s wealthy.
This is not to say that the super-rich get everything they want. There are many federal programs and activities they dislike that have been around for decades and cannot easily be dismantled. But if those interviewed by Northwestern University and University of Chicago typify the wealthiest Americans—and the researchers say they do—it is clear that today’s elite are somewhat aware of the plight of ordinary Americans, yet reluctant to personally sacrifice to improve society’s fortunes.
“Most of our respondents fell into or near the top 1 percent of US wealth-holders,” the survey says. “Their average (mean) wealth was $14,006,338; the median was $7,500,000... To give a further idea of their economic standing: respondents’ average income was $1,040,140. About one third of them (32.4 percent) reported incomes of $1,000,000 or more.”
What follows are eight takeaways from the report, "Democracy and The Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans," starting with the fact that the top 1 percent are very politically active, which accounts for their outsized influence on what the federal government’s role should be and the resulting rhetoric by many elected officials in Congress and Republican-controlled state governments.
1. The wealthy are more politically active than typical citizens. Ninety-nine percent vote in presidential elections and “a large majority (84 percent) said they pay attention to politics ‘most of the time.’ Asked how many days of the week they talk politics, the median response was five days.” Moreover, they give money to political campaigns and organize fundraising events in ways that dwarf average Americans and yield access and influence.
From the report:
“Fully two-thirds contributed money to politics, giving an average of $4,633 to political campaigns or organizations over the previous twelve months. (By comparison, in the American National Election Study survey conducted shortly after the 2008 presidential election, just 14 percent of the general-population respondents reported having contributed money to a candidate, party, or Political Action Committee.) A remarkable 21 percent of our wealthy respondents solicited or 'bundled' other peoples’ political contributions—not an activity that is common among ordinary citizens.”
2. The wealthy want government to act on their behalf. It would be wrong to suggest that the top 1 percent hate all government. Instead, as the report shows, they want it to do their bidding and adopt policies and laws that benefit their bottom line.
“The wealthy were particularly likely to initiate contacts with members of Congress,” the report said, adding that many know their elected officials. “Most of our respondents supplied the title or position of the federal government official with whom they had their most important recent contact. Several offered the officials’ names. We see no particular reason why their high frequency of contacts with congressional representatives should be atypical of wealthy Americans elsewhere in the country.”
Probing deeper, the report said that economic self-interest was the primary reason for being involved in the political process:
“They want to know how government policy will affect their businesses and investments. One key finding is that, for contacts that could be coded, just under half (44 percent) acknowledged a focus on fairly narrow economic self interest: ‘to try to get the Treasury to honor their commitment to extend TARP funds to a particular bank in Chicago;’ ‘to better understand the new regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act and how it will affect my business [banking/finance];’ ‘Fish and Wildlife...permitting on development land;’ ‘on behalf of clients, seeking regulatory approvals;’ ‘I own stock in several banks. I was concerned about legislation he was drafting that I think could be harmful for the banks.’"
3. Their agenda reflects wealth creation. When asked to prioritize their concerns, the list of issues reflects the factors they perceive affecting wealth creation, not the general welfare of most Americans. When asked what issues were “very important,” 87 percent said the federal budget deficit; 84 percent said unemployment; 79 percent said education; 74 percent said international terrorism; 70 percent said energy supply; 57 percent said health care; 56 percent said child poverty; 52 percent said loss of traditional values; 36 percent said trade deficits; 26 percent said inflation; and 16 percent said climate change.
Mostly, the top 1 percent are obsessed with federal spending. “One-third (32 percent) of all open-ended responses mentioned budget deficits or excessive government spending, far more than mentioned any other issue. Furthermore, at various points in their interviews many respondents spontaneously mentioned ‘government over-spending.’”
One finding that sums up this attitude is that 58 percent favored “cuts in spending on domestic programs like Medicare, education, and highways in order to cut federal budget deficits,” compared to 27 percent of the general public.
4. Biggest schisms on economic issues. Some of the biggest differences between the top 1 percent and average Americans concern economic insecurity. Only 43 percent agreed that “government must see that no one is without food, clothing, or shelter,” compared to 68 percent of the general public. Only 40 percent support a living minimum wage, “so that no family with a full-time worker falls below official poverty line,” compared to 78 percent of the general public. Only 23 percent agree “the government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed,” compared to 50 percent of the general public. Only 19 percent agree that “the government in Washington ought to see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job,” compared to 68 percent of the general public. Only 8 percent agree that “the federal government should provide jobs for everyone able and willing to work who cannot find a job in private employment,” compared to 53 percent of the public.
5. The wealthy support education, but not public schools. The very rich and the general public both support investing in education, but diverge on key specifics. The researchers found that a majority of the 1 percent and the general public would pay more taxes for pre-K and kindergarten; support merit pay for teachers; support charter public schools; support taxpayer-funded vouchers so parents can send their kids to private or religious schools; and support giving high school students the option of vocational training to start work immediately after graduating.
Where they differ, however, is notable.
The top 1 percent have a strong bias against public schools, with only 35 percent agreeing that “the federal government should spend whatever is necessary to ensure that all children have really good public schools they can go to,” compared to 87 percent of the general public. On affirmative action in education, a slight majority of the wealthy, 53 percent, agreed that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure that minorities have schools equal in quality to whites, even if it means you will have to pay more in taxes,” compared to 71 percent of the general public. Only a small slice, 28 percent, agreed “the federal government should make sure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so,” compared to 78 percent of the general public.
6. Social Security and other safety nets. Some agree that the most popular government safety net, Social Security, is needed but there is a reluctance among the super rich to raise benefits for recipients or to pay higher taxes to expand benefits.
Fifty-five percent agreed that “the Social Security system should ensure a minimum standard of living to all contributors, even if some receive benefits exceeding the value of their contribution,” compared to 68 percent of the general public. Yet only 47 percent said that the income tax cap funding Social Security—where people only pay taxes on the first $118,000 of their incomes—should be raised, compared to 60 percent of the general public. When it comes to privatizing some Social Security savings, 55 percent said people under age 55 should be able to invest some of these government-held funds, compared to 47 percent of the public. Notably, 33 percent would cut back on Social Security benefits, while 46 percent of the public would expand them.
There was a similar ambivalance on ensuring access to health care. Forty-one percent of the top 1 percent agreed that “it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage,” compared to 48 percent of all Americans. The same number of the super rich, 41 percent, were “willing to pay more taxes in order to provide health coverage for everyone,” compared to 59 percent of the general public. Yet only 32 percent favored a “national health insurance, which would be financed by tax money, paying for most forms of health care,” compared to 61 percent of the general public. And 19 percent would cut back federal health care spending, while 44 percent of the general public would expand it.
On other anti-poverty safety nets, 28 percent would cut back spending on food stamps and 80 percent would cut farm subsidies. No number was given for general public support of these programs.
7. Government should protect their wealth. On taxation and regulating capitalist excesses, the top 1 percent weren’t uniform anti-government libertarians, with 55 percent agreeing that, “the government has an essential role to play in regulating the market,” compared to 71 percent of the general public. But it seemed they favored regulation where it positively affected their investments.
Only 18 percent said that Wall Street needed “more federal government regulation,” compared to 45 percent of the public. Twenty percent of the super rich said “big corporations” needed “less federal regulation,” compared to 45 percent of the public. In contrast, 70 percent of the super rich that said “small business” needed less regulation, compared to 42 percent of the general public.
The responses also reflect their view that government should leave profitable industries alone. Only 5 percent said the oil industry needs more regulation, compared to 50 percent of the public. Only 4 percent said the health insurance industry needs more regulation, compared to 26 percent of the public. The remaining percentages—reflecting most respondents—replied, “don’t know.”
8. Military interventions overseas not wanted. In general, the wealthy want the federal government to pick up the slack where the private sector does not invest—with the exception of overseas military involvement. The respondents “leaned toward expanding rather than cutting back only three of the 12 federal government programs we asked about: improving public infrastructure such as highways, bridges and airports; scientific research; and aid to education. Implicitly, at least, our wealthy respondents appear to appreciate governmental production of certain public goods. At a time when the U.S. was engaged in two costly wars and faced a relatively quiescent terror threat, however, they were much less enthusiastic about military or anti-terror spending. And they tilted toward cutting all the income-redistributive or social insurance programs we asked about.”
Money, Power and Influence
The findings of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University researchers underscore that not only do the wealthiest Americans have a different and more self-interested agenda than the general public, but they have been able to push the national political discussion—especially from Republicans and pro-corporate Democrats—toward the political right.
The result is what can be called a soft fascism. For the most part, the wealthiest people and industries in America have been able to go about their business unimpeded by government, even as they complain about over-regulation and federal constraints. While there are some super-wealthy individuals who told the researchers that they support social safety nets, as a group they are unwilling to divert some of their personal wealth into social programs that benefit less fortunate Americans.
Instead, they are active participants in a political culture whose rhetoric and policy agenda largely reflects their wealth-generating and pro-corporate concerns. Most Americans, in contrast, seem to be treading water wherever they are on the economic ladder and have diminished political influence.
Senators who voted last week to Fast Track ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) call it a free trade deal, but really, it’s forced trade imposed on protesting American workers who have endured its damaging effects for decades.
Under the free trade regime, rich and powerful corporate interests have hauled in ever-higher profits as they shipped manufacturing overseas to low-wage, no-environmental-regulation countries. Meanwhile, American workers lost jobs, health benefits, income and all sense of stability.
For the past 50 years, the government provided compensation to some American workers who suffered because of trade deals. They got Trade Adjustment Assistance, a little bit of money to help them subsist and retrain after losing their jobs. Now, the wealthy beneficiaries of free trade, and the Republicans they fund, contend that senior citizens should pay the cost of Trade Adjustment Assistance. That Republicans feel it’s appropriate to cut Medicare to cover the cost of Trade Adjustment Assistance illustrates how deeply flawed American trade policy is. It is based on the philosophy that workers and the retired should suffer to facilitate the rich getting richer.
The misery that corporate-pandering free trade deals inflict on workers is both acute and lingering. It is the reason so many Democrats in the U.S. Senate last week voted against Fast Tracking the TPP. It is the reason so many Democrats in the House will oppose Fast Track.
Chad Broughton, a lecturer in public policy at the University of Chicago, chronicled the struggles of 1,600 workers thrown out of jobs by free trade a decade ago. They made Maytag refrigerators in Galesburg, Ill., until Maytag closed the plant in 2004 and moved it to Mexico. Broughton’s book, “Boom, Bust, Exodus” describes the aftermath.
In an interview with the New York Times, he refuted the contention that the low price of imported refrigerators and televisions and coffee makers offsets the costs to workers of lost jobs, benefits, pensions and futures.
“The decline in the quality of life for working-class families has not been nearly matched by the low, low prices,” he said.
The Times also quotes George Carney, who lost his job as a forklift driver when Maytag closed its massive refrigerator factory in Galesburg. Carney told of his bitterness that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) encouraged Maytag to abandon made-in-America for foreign manufacturing.
“I don’t believe in laying someone off, in taking away someone’s livelihood just so other people can make more money,” Carney told the Times, “Why would I want to destroy that person? Why would I want to destroy lives?”
Carney worked for a time as a bartender, a position hardly comparable to the well-paying, union job Maytag took from him. A few furloughed workers in Galesburg managed to get better jobs, but many, Broughton found, did not.
That’s what economists have found as well, among them, Josh Bivens, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute. He determined that while free trade raised the national income, it reduced the income of most workers. What that means is a small number of people benefits while the majority suffers.
When Maytag moves a refrigerator plant from Illinois to Mexico, it damages far more workers than just the ones it hands pink slips.
In Galesburg, for example, the ill-effect of 1,600 Maytag workers suddenly without paychecks surged across the community of 32,000. Businesses closed. Those workers lost their jobs. The community’s tax base shrank. The city’s median household income fell 27 percent between 1999 and 2013.
Everybody suffered. Except Maytag, of course.
This continues to occur across the country. Since NAFTA, 60,000 manufacturers closed and 5 million jobs disappeared. Communities crumbled. Corporations profited.
Bivens calculated the cost of free trade to a median wage worker without a college degree is $1,800 a year.
Despite the magnitude of the pain from free trade, the administration is pushing the TPP, a proposed agreement with 11 Pacific Rim countries that would be the biggest free trade deal ever. President Obama says he needs it so that the United States and these 11 partners establish the rules for trade instead of China.
That’s essentially the same thing that President John F. Kennedy said in 1962 when he sought expanded trade. He contended America had to secure trading partners before those countries made deals with the Soviet bloc.
Kennedy acknowledged this plan would cause setbacks to some workers and proposed Trade Adjustment Assistance to help them:
“I am also recommending as an essential part of the new trade program that companies, farmers and workers who suffer damage from increased foreign import competition be assisted in their efforts to adjust to that competition. When considerations of national policy make it desirable to avoid higher tariffs, those injured by that competition should not be required to bear the full brunt of the impact. Rather, the burden of economic adjustment should be borne in part by the federal government.”
That’s not how Republican leaders and conservative groups see it now, however. They oppose Trade Adjustment Assistance. This includes powerful right wing organizations like Club for Growth and The Heritage Foundation and GOP lawmakers like U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, sponsor of the House bill to Fast Track the TPP through Congress without deliberation or amendment.
The Heritage Foundation’s Terry Miller used the disdainful and pejorative word “welfare” to describe aid for workers unemployed because of free trade. Miller takes the Marie Antoinette approach. He’d say of workers thrown out of jobs because of trade, “Let ’em eat dust.”
Despite that, Ryan included Trade Adjustment Assistance in his Fast Track bill. That’s only because, he conceded, it’s “necessary to get it passed.” In other words, he needs some votes from Democrats.
He and Senate Republicans paid for part of Trade Adjustment Assistance, though, by cutting $700 million out of Medicare.
They believe none of the corporations that profit from offshoring U.S. factories should bear any of the costs to workers, families and communities. Instead, they think if a worker loses his job because of free trade, then both he and his retired, Medicare-dependent parents should suffer.
Although Medicare didn’t begin until after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, JFK never would have cut it to pay for Trade Adjustment Assistance. He believed Trade Adjustment Assistance was amends owed to workers by the nation as a whole, not the elderly as a subgroup.
He explained: “Just as the federal government has assisted in personal readjustments made necessary by military service, just as the federal government met its obligation to assist industry in adjusting to war production and again to return to peacetime production, so there is an obligation to render assistance to those who suffer as a result of national trade policy.”
This is deeply personal to my union, the United Steelworkers (USW). Right now, more than 5,000 Steelworkers across the country are laid off because of illegally subsidized steel dumped into the United States by China. Again and again, the USW has pressed for enforcement of trade laws after USW members lost jobs because foreign countries violated trade rules and dumped tires, paper, auto parts and other manufactured products into the U.S. market.
Since Kennedy’s time, trade policy has increasingly served the 1 percent, not the nation as a whole. It is a tax forced on workers to provide revenue for the rich.
***
One of the most unnoticed labor trends in the past few decades has been the rise of "just-in-time scheduling," the practice of scheduling workers' shifts with little advance notice that are subject to cancelation hours before they are due to begin. Such scheduling practices mean that already low-wage workers often have fluctuating pay checks, leading them to rely on shady lenders or credit cards to make ends meet. Such consequences especially affect women and workers of color, who disproportionately fill these jobs.
New research from three University of Chicago professors, Susan J. Lambert, Peter J. Fugiel, and Julia R. Henly, examines scheduling practices for young adults (26 to 32 years old). Many outlets have reported their finding that part-time workers face greater scheduling uncertainty than full-time workers: 39 percent of full-time workers report receiving hours one week or less before work, compared to 47 percent of part-time workers. But less attention has been paid to the race gap: 49 percent of blacks and 47 percent of Hispanics receive their hours with a week or less of notice, compared with 39 percent of white workers.
Non-white workers also report far less control over their hours. Lambert and her co-authors find that 47 percent of white workers have their hours set by their employer. By contrast, 55 percent of blacks and 58 percent of Latinos say their employer sets their hours. Only 10 percent of Latinos and 12 percent of blacks report being able to set their hours "freely" or "within limits," while 18 percent of white workers do.
Hours vary widely from week to week for many of the young adults Lambert and her colleagues studied. They find that "among the 74 percent of hourly workers who report at least some fluctuation in weekly work hours ... their weekly work hours varied from their usual hours by, on average, almost 50 percent during the course of the prior month." Such large fluctuations in hours also indicate large fluctuations in wages, which make life difficult for an increasingly debt-burdened overall population.
In a previous study Lambert and Julia Henly also found that unpredictable schedules increase stress and often disrupt a worker's family life. Using data from 21 stores across the U.S. they found that workers with unpredictable schedules reported more stress and conflict between work and family life. "Precarious scheduling practices are not isolated within a few organizations but rather reflect growing national and international trends," they concluded. As the world becomes increasingly globalized and labor commodified, employees will be treated more like "factors of production" and less like people. Rather than a few egregious corporations, such practices are increasingly the norm in low-wage and middle-wage industries.
Rising toll
Just-in-time scheduling is an increasingly prevalent practice in two of the fastest-growing and deeply unequal sectors of the economy: retail and service. Both sectors disproportionally employ women and people of color. It's not a stretch to connect just-in-time scheduling to a broader war on women and workers which has been waged by the modern conservative movement.
Because most worker protections were passed before the influx of women into the workforce and were designed to exclude people of color, these groups are perfect targets for the anti-worker agenda. Because women and people of color are highly concentrated in low-wage service sector jobs (home health care, retail, fast food) that only recently started unionizing, they are even more vulnerable. Congressional Republicans have opposed pay parity for women, early childhood education and paid parental leave. Recent decisions by the conservative Supreme Court havedecimated unions in the highly minority- and female-led home health care sector as well as prevented women from getting necessary health care through their employers.
Low wages and erratic work schedules take an obvious toll on working families and workers of color. But they also affect the general economy. Research suggests that lagging demand may be holding back the economy because low-wage workers can barely afford necessities. Few can follow President George W. Bush's famous advice "go shopping more" or "go to Disney world" and thereby stimulate the economy.
Scheduling abuse compounds this problem by making work and wages subject to erratic swings. Sociologist Nancy Cauthen writes that, "Many low-wage workers are expected to work the day shift one day and the night shift the next and/or to be available seven days a week." Although the right likes to portray trickle-down economics as good for long-term growth, the literature suggests the opposite. By depriving workers of stable incomes, conservative policies actually stifle economic growth.
What's more, if the goal of such employers is to increase profits, there's good reason to curb these scheduling practices: Studies show that giving workers more control over their hours and their time actually increases productivity, while JIT scheduling increases turnover and decreases work satisfaction and loyalty. Managers, who are forced to juggle more workers, also work more hours.
The union movement -- once a bulwark against the encroachment of employers -- is still nascent in service and retail whereas it has deep roots in male-dominated sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing. The recent Supreme Court decision in Harris v. Quinn, which struck down the requirement for home healthcare workers to pay "agency fees," will only hold back unionization even further.
Federal protections for workers haven't been expanded since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs and therefore haven't adjusted to the rise of women in the workforce. These protections also effectively excluded people of color; for instance, farm labor (made up of Hispanics) is still exempt from many labor protections. Thus, the U.S. is one of the only countries that fails to mandate paid maternity leave. The result is that all but 5 percent of pregnant women in retail are denied paid maternity leave -- which forces on them a devastating choice between their job and their own health and that of their child. Women who do have paid leave get it through employers, so such policies are concentrated at the top of the income distribution.
The result is that many employees must adjust their family time to meet the demands of customers and employees. While many conservatives, such as Ross Douthat and Ramesh Ponnuru, talk about the importance of family and the working class, few support commonsense worker protections and none supports unionization.
Flexible or stable
The U.S. needs legislation to ensure guaranteed minimum weekly hours that will help regularize workers' pay. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) have introduced the Schedules That Work Act which would give workers the right to request a "flexible, predictable or stable" work schedule without retaliation. The bill stipulates that employers must detail upon employment the number of hours an employee can expect to work each week, and be given two-week notice before any scheduling change. The bill also requires that those who arrive at work only to find out there are no shifts available would be paid for four hours of work. Low-wage workers often travel long distances or pay for fuel only to arrive at work and be told they aren't needed that day. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) have sponsored a Senate version.
Although Republican intransigence will make federal action difficult, there are other options. Some states have taken the initiative and passed "reporting time pay laws," which require payment for workers that report to work, even if they aren't needed. A stronger union movement, especially in the retail and service sectors, can also provide a counterbalance to the power of corporations and stem rising inequality. Service-sector workers receive a $2.00 an hour wage bump when they unionize, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and are more likely to have health insurance and a pension plan.
Corporations should take note of the lower turnover and higher productivity that structured scheduling provides, just as social conservatives should look to the benefits for working families. Workers are taking to the streets, fed up with low pay and bad hours. The economy is hobbled by lack of demand. The push to laissez-faire, orchestrated by ideologues in D.C. is finally under siege by an inchoate mass of workers. As Karl Polanyi notes, the "laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate state action," but "subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not." Without these reforms, employers will continue to exploit low-wage workers, to the detriment of all.
For more than four decades the debate on economic policy has been dominated by an ideologically driven theory originating in economics departments of several major universities, most notably the University of Chicago. This simplistic neoliberal economic philosophy relentlessly taught that there was no problem that could not be solved by a reliance on market forces. All that was needed was for the government to get out of the way. President Reagan summed it up with the mantra: "government is not the solution; government is the problem."
This neoliberal economic philosophy has dominated the debate on economic policy. It has limited the very language in which our political debates have been conducted. The simplistic model of the perfectly competitive market has been the standard against which all public policies have been measured. (Remember the case made for the deregulation of financial markets in the period before 2008.)
In the current highly polarized political world political pundits talk endlessly about "centerist" politics. Centerist virtually always means a position that respects the core values of the free market ideology and is, therefore, not "extreme." This value judgment is so ingrained in our political discourse that it passes unnoticed. Of course there can be an acceptable level of debate around its edges, but deviation from the core values of this ideology puts one in a position outside the main stream of political discourse -- where it is impossible to be taken seriously.
The last several years have witnessed an utter collapse of this fundamentalist free market ideology, or at least its intellectual underpinnings, in the precise place where it all began -- academia. Since at least 2008, it has become impossible to subscribe to the "efficient market hypothesis," which is central to the free market ideology. Those economists who had some credibility left in the aftermath of the Great Recession were in agreement that the economy was not going to get out of its downward spiral on its own. A Keynesian solution was required: an aggressive monetary policy and an expansive fiscal policy. And now they see the slow recovery and persistent unemployment as a matter of too little "aggregate demand." This is a wonkish way of saying that the middle class is not spending enough to keep everyone employed. The obvious reason why they are not spending enough is that they don't have the money to spend.
This problem is not just a matter of middle-class wages not recovering from the Great Recession.
For decades after WWII, wages tracked the growth in worker productivity. Sometime around 1980 this stopped. Productivity continued to grow but wages flatlined. One can get into a grand argument over why wages have stagnated. But one thing that has consistently accompanied the stagnation of wages has been the decline of the labor movement. There is a huge amount of evidence showing that in its heyday labor was, in effect, bargaining for the wages of the whole middle class. As labor unions pushed up their members' wages, there was a positive effect on wages throughout the economy. Correspondingly, as union membership and bargaining power declined, middle class wages in general suffered.
The inescapable conclusion, reached by almost all of the economists left standing after 2008, is that a revival of the union movement is vital to the survival of the middle class and a revival of the economy. If the middle class is to stop losing ground it needs the support of a strong labor movement.
Unfortunately, the middle class is not predisposed to look to the labor movement for help. Indeed, if they think about unions at all, they most likely have a rather unfavorable impression. Words such as "corruption," "bosses," and "extortion" are far more likely to be associated with unions than any benefit to the middle class. The glory days of the '50s and '60s are in a far distant past. The union contribution to the middle class has been forgotten. The incessant drumbeat of anti-labor rhetoric used to promote right-to-work legislation drowned out most middle class sympathy for the labor movement.
To summarize all this in somewhat simplistic terms, the American middle class (especially the lower part of the middle class -- what not long ago we called the "working class") finds itself being joined, at least intellectually, by the most conservative element in the academic world. The fact that a very large, not to mention very influential, part of the economics profession strongly supports the revitalization of the labor movement has largely gone unnoticed (at least outside the upper echelon of the AFL-CIO). The question is whether the labor movement, as well as liberals generally, can use this as effectively as conservatives used the economics of the hard core free market ideologues. The work of Milton Friedman, George Stigler and their minions were very important not only in giving credibility to the conservative economic agenda but in defining the terms of economic policy debates for several decades. Now, will the work of Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer, Paul Krugman, and even (God forgive us) Larry Summers change the current terms of debate?
Much depends on the ability of organized labor to seize this opportunity. At this point it asks much of the labor leadership to put a lot of faith in the world of academic economists. One can hardly blame them for showing little appreciation of the relevance of current economics. Many economics departments have been citadels of conservative thinking. The world dominated by an extreme free-market ideology is not where a labor leader would look for shelter and comfort -- much less help. The notion that events have turned this world upside-down does not seem to yet have had an impact on labor's thinking. The exception to this is the leadership coming from Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. Mr. Trumka clearly understands the role labor must play in the broader economy. His efforts to reach out to other kinds of organizations that share labor's economic values has tremendous potential.
If the middle class is to pull out of its nose dive, it needs to understand the essential role that labor must play. It must provide the political support that labor needs. Equally important, it is essential that the leadership of organized labor step beyond its rear-guard actions and reach out to the broader middle class. None of this will be easy. It requires a lot of people from very different backgrounds to talk to each other. But unless the intellectual opinion-makers of the middle class can join forces with a revitalized labor movement, all of us are in a lot of trouble.
Rather than expanding the money supply, quantitative easing (QE) has actually caused it to shrink by sucking up the collateral needed by the shadow banking system to create credit. The “failure” of QE has prompted the Bank for International Settlements to urge the Fed to shirk its mandate to pursue full employment, but the sort of QE that could fulfill that mandate has not yet been tried.
Ben Bernanke’s May 29th speech signaling the beginning of the end of QE3 provoked a “taper tantrum” that wiped about $3 trillion from global equity markets – this from the mere suggestion that the Fed would moderate its pace of asset purchases, and that if the economy continues to improve, it might stop QE3 altogether by mid-2014. The Fed is currently buying $85 billion in US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities per month.
The Fed Chairman then went into damage control mode, assuring investors that the central bank would “continue to implement highly accommodative monetary policy” (meaning interest rates would not change) and that tapering was contingent on conditions that look unlikely this year. The only thing now likely to be tapered in 2013 is the Fed’s growth forecast.
It is a neoliberal maxim that “the market is always right,” but as former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated, the maxim only holds when the market has perfect information. The market may be misinformed about QE, what it achieves, and what harm it can do. Getting more purchasing power into the economy could work; but QE as currently practiced may be having the opposite effect.
Unintended Consequences
The popular perception is that QE stimulates the economy by increasing bank reserves, which increase the money supply through a multiplier effect. But as shown earlier here, QE is just an asset swap – assets for cash reserves that never leave bank balance sheets. As University of Chicago Professor John Cochrane put it in a May 23rd blog:
QE is just a huge open market operation. The Fed buys Treasury securities and issues bank reserves instead. Why does this do anything? Why isn’t this like trading some red M&Ms for some green M&Ms and expecting it to affect your weight? . . .
[W]e have $3 trillion or so [in] bank reserves. Bank reserves can only be used by banks, so they don’t do much good for the rest of us. While the reserves may not do much for the economy, the Treasuries they remove from it are in high demand.
Cochrane discusses a May 23rd Wall Street Journal article by Andy Kessler titled “The Fed Squeezes the Shadow-Banking System,” in which Kessler argued that QE3 has backfired. Rather than stimulating the economy by expanding the money supply, it has contracted the money supply by removing the collateral needed by the shadow banking system. The shadow system creates about half the credit available to the economy but remains unregulated because it does not involve traditional bank deposits. It includes hedge funds, money market funds, structured investment vehicles, investment banks, and even commercial banks, to the extent that they engage in non-deposit-based credit creation.
Kessler wrote:
[T]he Federal Reserve’s policy—to stimulate lending and the economy by buying Treasurys—is creating a shortage of safe collateral, the very thing needed to create credit in the shadow banking system for the private economy. The quantitative easing policy appears self-defeating, perversely keeping economic growth slower and jobs scarcer.
That explains what he calls the great economic paradox of our time:
Despite the Federal Reserve’s vast, 4½-year program of quantitative easing, the economy is still weak, with unemployment still high and labor-force participation down. And with all the money pumped into the economy, why is there no runaway inflation? . . .
The explanation lies in the distortion that Federal Reserve policy has inflicted on something most Americans have never heard of: “repos,” or repurchase agreements, which are part of the equally mysterious but vital “shadow banking system.”
The way money and credit are created in the economy has changed over the past 30 years. Throw away your textbook.
Fractional Reserve Lending Without the Reserves
The post-textbook form of money creation to which Kessler refers was explained in a July 2012 article by IMF researcher Manmohan Singh titled “The (Other) Deleveraging: What Economists Need to Know About the Modern Money Creation Process.” He wrote:
In the simple textbook view, savers deposit their money with banks and banks make loans to investors . . . . The textbook view, however, is no longer a sufficient description of the credit creation process. A great deal of credit is created through so-called “collateral chains.”
We start from two principles: credit creation is money creation, and short-term credit is generally extended by private agents against collateral. Money creation and collateral are thus joined at the hip, so to speak. In the traditional money creation process, collateral consists of central bank reserves; in the modern private money creation process, collateral is in the eye of the beholder.
Like the reserves in conventional fractional reserve lending, collateral can be re-used (or rehypothecated) several times over. Singh gives the example of a US Treasury bond used by a hedge fund to get financing from Goldman Sachs. The same collateral is used by Goldman to pay Credit Suisse on a derivative position. Then Credit Suisse passes the US Treasury bond to a money market fund that will hold it for a short time or until maturity.
Singh states that at the end of 2007, about $3.4 trillion in “primary source” collateral was turned into about $10 trillion in pledged collateral – a multiplier of about three. By comparison, the US M2 money supply (the credit-money created by banks via fractional reserve lending) was only about $7 trillion in 2007. Thus credit-creation-via-collateral-chains is a major source of credit in today’s financial system.
Exiting Without Panicking the Markets
The shadow banking system is controversial. It funds derivatives and other speculative ventures that may harm the real, producing economy or put it at greater risk. But the shadow system is also a source of credit for many businesses that would otherwise be priced out of the credit market, and for such things as credit cards that we have come to rely on. And whether we approve of the shadow system or not, depriving it of collateral could create mayhem in the markets. According to the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of the Securities and Financial Markets Association, the shadow system could be short as much as $11.2 trillion in collateral under stressed market conditions. That means that if every collateral claimant tried to grab its collateral in a Lehman-like run, the whole fragile Ponzi scheme could collapse.
That alone is reason for the Fed to prevent “taper tantrums” and keep the market pacified. But the Fed is under pressure from the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements, which has been admonishing central banks to back off from their asset-buying ventures.
An Excuse to the Fed's Mandate of Full Employment
The BIS said in its annual report in June:
Six years have passed since the eruption of the global financial crisis, yet robust, self-sustaining, well balanced growth still eludes the global economy. . . .
Central banks cannot do more without compounding the risks they have already created. . . . [They must] encourage needed adjustments rather than retard them with near-zero interest rates and purchases of ever-larger quantities of government securities. . . .
Delivering further extraordinary monetary stimulus is becoming increasingly perilous, as the balance between its benefits and costs is shifting.
Monetary stimulus alone cannot provide the answer because the roots of the problem are not monetary. Hence, central banks must manage a return to their stabilization role, allowing others to do the hard but essential work of adjustment.
For “adjustment,” read “structural adjustment” – imposing austerity measures on the people in order to balance federal budgets and pay off national debts. The Fed has a dual mandate to achieve full employment and price stability. QE was supposed to encourage employment by getting money into the economy, stimulating demand and productivity. But that approach is now to be abandoned, because “the roots of the problem are not monetary.”
So concludes the BIS, but the failure may not be in the theory but the execution of QE. Businesses still need demand before they can hire, which means they need customers with money to spend. QE has not gotten new money into the real economy but has trapped it on bank balance sheets. A true Bernanke-style helicopter drop, raining money down on the people, has not yet been tried.
How Monetary Policy Could Stimulate Employment
The Fed could avoid collateral damage to the shadow banking system without curtailing its quantitative easing program by taking the novel approach of directing its QE fire hose into the real market.
One possibility would be to buy up $1 trillion in student debt and refinance it at 0.75%, the interest rate the Fed gives to banks. A proposal along those lines is Elizabeth Warren’s student loan bill, which has received a groundswell of support including from many colleges and universities.
Another alternative might be to make loans to state and local governments at 0.75%, something that might have prevented the recent bankruptcy of Detroit, once the nation’s fourth-largest city. Yet another alternative might be to pour QE money into an infrastructure bank that funds New Deal-style rebuilding.
The Federal Reserve Act might have to be modified, but what Congress has wrought it can change. The possibilities are limited only by the imaginations and courage of our congressional representatives.
A U.S. Post carrier got caught in the middle of a racist, homophobic prank, and a fraternity of jackasses at the University of Chicago let it play out, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
About a week after Memorial Day, Iran Becton received an order to deliver 79 boxes to the Phi Delta Theta house on the university’s campus. He “needlessly” carried every single package from his post office truck to the door of the frat house, before a member informed him that his hard labor was all part of an infantile joke.
“I went back to the truck for the boxes about six or seven times,” Becton told the Sun-Times. “After the last trip, one of the frat guys came out and said it was a practical joke. Another guy said that I should read the name backwards and I’ll get the joke.”
Inscribed on all 79 boxes: the name “Reggin Toggaf.” Put that up to a mirror to reveal the sophisticated humor of these fine, fraternal gentleman. Spelled backwards, the intended recipient of each box is the name “F*ggot N*gger.”
Chicago Division Postal Inspection Services, as well as Victory Packaging—the company that shipped the boxes—are both investigating the incident. The university issued a statement calling it “deplorable.” The Chicago Postal Inspection Service spoke with university police, as well as the fraternity vice president, and halted mail delivery to the house until members write a formal apology. However, a spokesperson noted to the Sun-Times that Phi Delta Theta was the “intended target” of the prank, not Becton.
For the mail carrier, an apology isn’t enough. Becton, who is African American, told the Sun-Times he felt “humiliated,” and wants the post officer inspector to “go after the person who ordered all this stuff.”
“This is ridiculous that all you can tell me is that you are sorry it happened,” Becton said. “These are U.S. Postal inspectors. You can’t tell me they can’t do anything.”
The Sun-Times notes that the “joke involved the abuse and possibly the destruction of postal property,” a federal offense.
This isn’t the only example of entrenched prejudice at the prestigious University of Chicago. The Black Youth Project revealed a Facebook page called Politically Incorrect Maroon Confessions, where more than 950 “confessions” from U of C students range from insensitive to flat out hate speech. One entry laments the “onslaught of black people invading UChicago.” Another simply states, “Let’s start a male movement fuck feminists.” And The Huffington Post notes a 2012 incident in which the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity threw a “Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes” party, fraught with racist depictions of Latinos.
As for the U of C members of Phi Delta Theta, no one has yet faced any disciplinary action. Mack Julion, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 11, told the Sun-Times that he visited the house and spoke with the fraternity’s former president.
“I gave him my card and told him he may put something in writing,” Julion said. “I told him I would talk to the letter carrier and see how he feels. That was on Saturday and I haven’t heard back.”
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06/17/2013: An earlier version of this story suggested that Phi Delta Theta orchestrated the prank themselves, when fraternity members merely failed to intervene as an African American mail carrier hauled 75 boxes labelled "N*gger F*ggot" backwards to their house. The U.S. Post Office has yet to determine who mailed the boxes. The story has been amended, and we regret the error.
For the first time, both the RNC and the DNC had black women as primetime speakers during their respective conventions—former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the RNC and First Lady Michelle Obama at the DNC. When I saw Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 DNC, I was almost moved to tears because I felt as though she was speaking to me. This year, being able to see both women was a historic moment that I felt privileged to witness.
As a black woman, I admire both Rice and Obama for very different reasons. In Michelle Obama, I see myself—the kind of black woman I hope to be one day. She has navigated her roles as wife, mother and career woman in a way that is admirable. Prior to meeting President Obama, Michelle Obama was already an attorney at Sidley Austin, a prominent law firm in Chicago. She also held down executive positions at the University of Chicago and many times she was holding down her job and taking care of her two daughters while her husband was doing work as a senator in Springfield. I can relate to her background, growing up in a working-class family and receiving her degree from some of the best schools in the nation.
In Rice I see a trailblazer, the first black woman to serve as Secretary of State, a black woman working and living in a good ol' boy’s world. That said, it is hard to think about Rice’s accomplishments in life without thinking about the compromises she has had to make. I often wonder about what she had to sacrifice politically in order to become a primary member of the Bush cabinet. I’ve never agreed with Rice's politics; her foreign policy record and the war on Iraq are points of contention for me. Regardless of that, I have always respected Rice and her journey.
Condoleezza Rice and Michelle Obama are prime examples of the fact that the experience of the black woman in America is not a monolithic one. More importantly, these two women represent what is possible for black women and girls in this country.
In many ways, black women see a “homegirl” in Michelle Obama—a successful, educated, black woman who grew up on the south side of Chicago in a family with limited means, a narrative many of us can identify with. In thinking about evolving images of black women, I spoke with my mother, my grandmother and my sister about their perceptions of both Michelle Obama and Condoleezza Rice. The one thing that was consistent was the idea that Michelle Obama is accessible; she is “real” to the matriarchs in my family. “Michelle Obama is touchable,” my mother said to me. “I feel like I know her.”
Michelle Obama’s commitment to health in her “Let’s Move” campaign was started to address childhood obesity, but it also resonates with health and body image issues that real black women face, such as diabetes and obesity. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that four out of five black women are obese, and just a few months ago, Alice Randall wrote a now-infamous essay suggesting that many black women will risk obesity to appeal to black men. But the truth is that black women really do care about health and exercise, and Obama’s commitment to it is proof of that. Black women can look at Michelle Obama as a model we can really aspire to.
Michelle Obama’s celebration of her role as “Mom-In-Chief” also resonates with black women. Some white feminists criticize her for emphasizing motherhood, but in a world where black women are constantly portrayed as pathologically bad mothers and welfare queens, Michelle Obama as Mom-In-Chief is an important image for us. “Black women have always worked outside of the home…even when society forbade ‘good’ white women from leaving their pedestals,” writes Tami Winfrey Harris in her piece, "A Black Mom-in-Chief is Revolutionary: What White Feminists Get Wrong About Michelle Obama." “We have plowed the fields and raised other folk’s babies, as well as our own.” Even though not every black woman wishes to start a family, motherhood is still something that many of us deeply value, and the First Lady’s decision to share that part of her story indicates that we don’t have to choose between being good mothers and having successful careers.
While many black women admire Condoleezza Rice for her accomplishments, we don’t always identify with her story. During Secretary Rice’s speech, we got a glimpse of her experience as a black woman—she told us about how she grew up in Jim Crow Birmingham—but we still don’t feel like we “know” her the way we know Michelle Obama. When I was watching her speech I saw a woman who had overcome many obstacles to get to where she is, but she still didn’t tell us why Republican values speak to her as a woman in general and as a black woman in particular. Rice’s “up from the bootstraps” narrative is a familiar one, though in a lot of ways it is not relatable to many black women’s experiences in climbing up the career or social ladder. When we hear Rice, we hear a story about a black woman who has “made it” but there is no mention of the ways in which she had to overcome racism and sexism, and break the glass ceiling to get to where she is today. It is as if those factors don’t even exist in her world, perhaps because the Republican party does not embrace identity politics in its party platform or its overall narrative. Rejecting—and perhaps denying—that race and gender play key roles in an individual’s success is in fact a Republican value, so it is not surprising that Rice would choose to de-emphasize the ways in which race and gender intersect in her own life.
But Rice’s position as a single black woman who has never married is just as meaningful as Michelle Obama’s position as a wife and mother. By now we are aware of the “single, lonely, black woman” meme that is so talked about in the media, from essays written by single black women to articles pondering why black women are supposedly not getting married. The stereotype implies that black women who choose not to get married are somehow flawed, as if our relationship status is what defines us. One of the things we love about Rice is that she is a single woman with a full life, and is not defined by her singlehood. In her "60 Minutes" interview from 2006, Rice gave us a window into her personal life, introducing herself as a black woman who is not consumed with being single; she is a concert pianist, a football aficionado, a college professor, and an avid golfer—all facts that come before her relationship status.
Condoleezza Rice and Michelle Obama are very different black women, though room exists for both of them. Through them, we see that there are plenty of ways to be a black woman in America.
