Back in the summer of 2017 there was a dust-up over an op-ed piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer written by two law professors, one at the University of Pennsylvania, one at the University of San Diego. In it they championed traditional virtues like hard work, thrift, honesty, civility, patriotism, delayed gratification, sexual restraint, etc., grouping them under the brand name bourgeois culture. Not all cultures are equal, the professors argued, and it so happens that the culture best suited for a postindustrial, democratic country is the bourgeois culture that prevailed in Western countries up to the Sixties.
Well.
You can, I am sure, imagine the response from the progressive Left. Racism! Sexism! Homophobia! Xenophobia! Ward Cleaver! Yes, in the ideological demonology of the Left the estimable Mr. Cleaver, sitting there in his easy chair after work, wearing a tie, reading the paper while June gets dinner ready, has come to stand for so much that the Left reviles. But I suspect that what really enraged the Wokesters and grievance mongers was the fact that the professors’ point is inarguable. Such virtues do forge the key to a happy, productive life. But since hard work, thrift, honesty, civility, patriotism, delayed gratification and sexual restraint are associated in the collective consciousness of the Left with the Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Racism, Capitalism, Fascism, etc., they simply cannot be virtuous.
Never mind that the professors wrote nothing that could honestly be construed as an attack on minorities. In fact they made a point of noting that the vices of the underclass—traceable, they argue, to an “antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal” originating in the Sixties—afflict whites as well as minorities. And, they added, not just those vices are colorblind; so so are the opposing virtues. The benefits of bourgeois culture are available to all who choose to embrace them, regardless of race or ethnicity.
So what’s wrong with promoting these virtues? After all, white progressive elites themselves practice them—well, maybe not patriotism. But they’re not willing to preach what they practice, which says something about their actual attitude toward the minority groups with whom they claim to empathize. In the name of “tolerance” and “sensitivity” they hold minorities to a lower, insultingly ignoble standard.
But are the progressive elites who make this argument really exhibiting tolerance and sensitivity, however wrongheaded their analysis? Or is it just their way of saying that blacks and other minorities cannot be expected to pattern their behavior along the lines of hard work, thrift, honesty, civility, etc.? Recall the stories that came out of New Orleans during the Katrina disaster: social breakdown, widespread looting and violence, snipers shooting at rescue helicopters—even rumors of cannibalism. Well, of course, the media seemed to intimate. New Orleans is a black majority city, after all, and its inhabitants feel marginalized and abandoned so…what did you expect?
But it turned out that many of these terrible stories out of The Big Easy were either gross exaggerations or outright fiction. By and large, the people of New Orleans behaved no differently than people anywhere would behave in the face of such a catastrophe. But the media—and by extension the progressive Left—rather casually assumed that they were bound to behave very badly indeed. And such bad behavior was pardonable on the grounds that the alternative would be “acting White.”
If you really think about it, this attitude is grossly insulting to black Americans. For while it’s true that the vices of the underclass afflict many black communities, they’re not at all characteristic of American blacks as a whole. Having become familiar with the rude stereotyping of “white people” by such progressive icons as Robin DiAngelo, we tend to overlook the manner in which they stereotype blacks and other minorities. And to the extent that such stereotyping elevates vice over virtue in the name of antiracism, it’s odious.
Now it’s true of course that the virtues of bourgeois culture can’t be imposed by fiat. But on the other hand, what’s the point of actively denigrating them? What’s the point of saying, in effect, that hard work, thrift, honesty, civility, patriotism, delayed gratification, sexual restraint, etc. are “White people’s values”? What’s the point of multiculturalism if it teaches, by implication if not in so many words, that sloth, ignorance, criminality, irresponsibility, selfishness and adolescent self-regard are racially determined traits? One glaring example is the progressive campaign against the police and the “carceral state,” which seems rooted in the notion that crime is a pardonable cultural trait.
The irony is choice: In its obsession with race and multiculturalism, the Left has arrived at conclusions that can only be described as racist.
As the professors noted in their op-ed, many contemporary social problems may be traced to the breakdown of bourgeois culture. True, its precepts had often been violated in practice. But beginning in the Sixties bourgeois culture and the values associated with it were first criticized and then rejected in principle. Today we’re living with the results.
Mr. Cleaver, wherever he is, must be looking on with a rueful smile.