I’ve previously written a great deal on PNM theory (though nowhere near as much as Dan) including its applicability to domestic issues in general, in relation to the recent French riots and to the British intervention in Egypt. In order to further apply Barnett’s theory, and more importantly to demonstrate the common sense nature of his suggestions on the international level (like intervention all over the world), I’d like to take my home town as an example.
It’s a medium sized whose population is around 130,000. It’s the second largest city in the state and has been developing rapidly over the past decade. Let’s look at some statistics first:
- Demographics:
And according to Wikipedia, the median income is around $29,000 and $36,000 for families. 21.8% of the population (and 17.7% of families) is listed below the poverty line. 31% of those under age 18 live in poverty.
Crime has also been on the rise since 2004 with the city’s crime rate for murders, rapes, robberies, assaults and so forth all worse than the national average. I did some digging and visited my state’s bureau of investigation which had even better statistics. The ones listed are based on a crime index done in 2004 and for the entire state though still representative of my city (statistics for my city weren’t divided by age/race/sex).
So, with that information in mind, let’s look at my city’s core and gap:
Starting in the north, you notice an almost perfect rectangle of Core. This is the old city which starts at the river continuing a few blocks past the large park (under the “c” in core) where it immediately deteriorates. It should be noted that after the park there are still another couple blocks of historic houses, yet they are home to the poor and are almost all in terrible condition. On all sides of the downtown Core are ghetto. However, a few minutes more drives brings one back into the Core which consists of residential area and continues for quite a ways. Between the two Core blocks are the worst areas of town.
In my next post, I’ll look at what makes this area our Gap, the current Core/Gap dynamics, solutions and how this relates to PNM theory on a global scale showing that Barnett’s call for intervention throughout the Gap has nothing to do with any sort of neocon or imperialist conspiracy but rather plain common sense. Stay tuned.
In anticipating your full treatment of this issue, and to provide a little fodder, I would like to suggest the failure of the United States to close the gap within its own borders does not bode well for extrapolation internationally. Probably the best example of this is the North/South divide; 140 years after the war the political, social and economic differences are still pretty huge. “Reconstruction” was actually not that different from what we are doing in Iraq right now (except we don’t plan to annex it) – a remaking of the society in the institutional image of the victor.
One could say the same about the white/black divide. While race relations have gotten a lot better in recent years, the indicators of a gap – the linguistic differences, housing segregation, education gaps, economic gaps, cultural divides (music, etc.) – are not really moving closer now. There was an article in the Washington Post about a week ago regarding the black middle class communities forming in northern Virginia and Maryland. It was about how easily blacks moving into the area fit in, not because they integrated with whites of the same socio-economic status, but because they found middle class black neighborhoods in which to live. The thing that struck me was how normal this was presented as being.
On a related point, it wasn’t until I started studying the dialects of Arabic that I became conscious of the difference in accents and dialects in the U.S. Even for a fully proficient foreigner, I think that the English of many southern whites would be pretty hard, and black English incomprehensible. When I was living in Jordan, a professor asked me if I could understand black speech (I said yes, but in fact I don’t always). She had traveled to DC once and couldn’t understand it at all. She seemed surprised that I could.
I think that the linguistic differences feed into the other gaps as well. If it is simpy a matter of accent that isn’t a problem, but as an anology, one of the reasons that illiteracy is so high in the Arab world is that the standard language is so different from the amiyya, or dialects, of each country. I suspect this fuels the white/black education gap, and that in turn fuels other gaps.
Now takes these gaps together, and look at the way it affects the ability for the country to govern itself. It certainly perverts the democratic process; it is hard to have an effective democracy when there is no demos, no people with a sense of mutual identification and common interest. The explicitly race-based mayoral race in New Orleans is an extreme example of this, but there the issues themselves are secondary and identity has become predominate.
Incidentally, given the recent attention given to the immigration debate, I don’t think this is true of Hispanics per se. The immigration problem, I think, mainly arises from the huge numbers of low-income immigrants who don’t speak English, and indeed are not necessarily even literate in Spanish. Middle class Latinos integrate pretty thoroughly within a generation, economically and in other ways. The same is even more true of Asians.
I don’t mean this as an argument against Barnett’s theory in terms of desireability, I can see why want he wants to do is beneficial, but I don’t think that America’s experience with “closing the gap” at home provides much reason to be optimistic.
Excellent fodder indeed. I’ll make sure to address your points in the next post which should appear Sunday or Monday.
The North-South divide present magnitude is a direct result of the abortion of Europe’s SysAdmin forces in the wake of WWII. Income inequality jumped after that. Before, it was steadily shrinking.
This may prove an interesting topic. What scares me, already, are those statistics. Especially the data for the 16 and under, which surely must mean (at worst) 10-16. I would guess they are not statistically different from 22-29 and 30-39, certainly less than 40-49… and probably not different from 17-21 if we imagine 16 and under really means 13-16… If we imagine that the violent crrime is only 14-16, we should be very worried indeed….
Dan, maybe I’m dense today but I’m not sure I’m getting your point. What exactly does Europe have to do with this?
I do have to say that the analogy isn’t perfect, since it is much easier for Americans to migrate than for foreigners to immigrate, and I think that part of what drives both the North/South and white/black divides is migration – educated Southerners migrate to urban areas where their education is of more use, and successful blacks move out of black neighborhoods, or sometimes out of low-income black neighborhoods, and into higher income black neighborhoods. I’m actually an example of this – I’m from Texas, but having spent most of my adult life outside the state, then having moved back for a time, I’ve now migrated back to the East coast where my skills are more in demand. The high tax regimes of Northeast states (and other factors) have somewhat reversed this, as high-skilled workers in some industries migrate to tech centers like Dallas and Austin. But even there, an educated person from the countryside will likely move to urban areas, which are more alike across the country than rural areas.
Fun fact: if you incarcerated every male in America from the ages of 15-25, you would eradicate 90% of the violent crime in the United States.
And I second Kirk’s first comment.
LOL! I thought you were talking about the Global North and Global South.
nevermind! :-)
Not related to this post, but this is RDK’s new article in WaPo:
Old States, New Threats
And Dan, I laughed for a couple of minutes after reading your “clarification” of your comment. You had me going there; I was beginning to think that you had some new, elaborate theory for why Europe should be blamed for America’s social problems, and I was interested to see if the tables could be turned for once!
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