Admittedly, much recent federal intervention in education has been disastrous. In most places, busing increased racial tensions and segregation, drove whites away from public schools, and increased per-pupil costs. But the individualism of the Bush-league is not right.
Teach for America sucks active, socially aware students away from larger agitation and puts them into schools where they become cheap labor for addressing school problems one student at a time. Vouchers mean that those parents who have energy will get their children into better schools. More power to them! But for the majority of children whose parents can't or won't make the effort, school choice means that the bad schools will get even worse, as their best students and parents and teachers are drawn away to the private system.
THE STRUCTURING of race issues is equally deceptive. There is a constant drumbeat, especially from Republicans, that personal racism is dead. Long live self-help! Even the bilious Strom Thurmond, former segregationist, wrapped himself in the Thomas flag. Public outcry against racism today amounts to scare headlines about incidents like Crown Heights or Bensonhurst, blown up larger than life, and declaimed: "This is terrible. We must eliminate it."
But overt racism of the Bensonhurst kind is an aberration. Racism--News Flash--is not gone. Institutional racisms--racisms which are nobody's fault in particular, but which are more pernicious for going unseen-haunt our society.
The endless (and generally mindless) debate over affirmative action has been about as productive as the PGA drive to make sure that every country club has its token Black.
The abandonment of cities by the federal government, the news media's obsession with Black drug crime and white suburbanites tolerance of drug violence in Black areas, and the creation of code-words for segregationism that allow David Duke to sound like George Bush with populist bite--all these amount to social codifications of ignorance of and unconcern for the Black underclass.
OUR RACIAL ENVIRONMENT, though, can be faring no worse than our natural environment. Personal environmentalism is where it's at these days. Recycling is chic. We are admonished to "Think Globally," (that comma reads "and." It should read "but") "Act Locally." We are told about 50 simple things we can do to save the earth. Ever the cheerleaders, the Ad Council trumpets "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," and "Make Every Day Earth Day."
But everyone is so busy buying string bags and bundling newspapers that we couldn't find time or energy to object to the ongoing degradation of our environment sponsored by the government. The Environment President wants to lease out vast tracts of the Alaska National Wildlife Preserve to oil and timber companies.
The Environment President proposed an energy policy that didn't call for alternative fuels, or mandatory conservation or anything so sensible, but for more exploration to fuel our consumption. Our environment president who promised that there would be zero loss of wetlands decided to redefine what a wetland was so he could open 33 percent of them to developers.
California's Big Green, a tome-like-referendum, would have given that state the toughest, most progressive environmental policy in the world. Its architects hoped that California's economic power would force corporations to adopt such stringent regulations everywhere. But Big Green was tough, radical and 800 pages long. Some places it probably went too far. But that was not what killed it.
A coalition of big corporations and conservative groups bankrolled a huge publicity campaign to convince suburbanites that Big Green was unnecessary, that as individuals they should do their part, but that radical restructuring would drive jobs from the state, not change the world outside California. The big businesses also implemented in-house recycling programs to show how much they cared.
Big Green lost, and companies continue to pollute, cars continue to pollute, streams are fouled, the water table is drawn down, pesticides are air-sprayed over migrant workers. And the recycling truck comes once a week to pick up everyone's six glass jars, five pounds of newspapers and three tin cans.
The noblesse oblige society needs a new calculus. Our social interests are not merely the sum of our individual interests. They are our social interests, our political interests, and they are riddled with conflict between individuals and governments and corporations and classes.
Each of us gives what we can to help others, as soon as the plea is made. But as long as we are individually responsive to and not socially responsible for our problems, our national neurosis will continue, and things will only get worse.
Our failure to translate individual anger into social action is destroying our political culture......Just put a brick in your toilet and forget about protesting Bush's wetlands policy.