How Community Disparities Affect Inequality.
Plus, American Guns, American Rage.
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CHARLIE SYKES: Can We Please Use the Word āWomenā?
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LAWRENCE EPPARD AND ERIK NELSON: Race and Place: How Community Disparities Affect Inequality.
Racial inequality in the United States cannot be understoodālet alone meaningfully addressedāwithout grappling with this fact: Decades after the end of Jim Crow, American neighborhoods remain highly segregated and the disparities among communities are perpetuated across generations. The characteristics of a childās communityāespecially during his or her earliest yearsāhave a major role in shaping that childās life chances. The fact that black and white children are raised in such different neighborhoods is both a cause and an effect of racial inequality.
In recent years, journalists, historians, and commentators have slowly begun to pay more attention to the ways in which āthe concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin,ā as Ta-Nehisi Coates put it in his 2014 Atlantic article that brought national attention to neighborhood āredliningā practices. And social scientists have offered a significant amount of data to make this complicated issue more comprehensible.
Everything would be different if Mike Pence had not counted the votes. He showed courage and faced real potential physical danger. Plus, Biden on Kimmel, Jared & Ivankaās reputation laundering, and Abbottās flip-flop on guns. Karen Tumulty joins Charlie Sykes on todayās podcast.
On this weekās episode of The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, Sonny talks to the CEO of Creative Future, Ruth Vitale, about the costs of piracy.
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ABIGAIL R. ESMAN: American Guns, American Rage.
In the 1990s, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen determined that a large swath of the United Statesāand particularly the Southāmaintains an honor culture that shapes the behaviors and ideologies of most of those who live there. Shame, dishonor, orāabove allāhumiliation in such cultures are not merely painful: They are not to be tolerated. They are to be avenged. The basic pattern is consistent across global and historical contexts where honor cultures predominate; and always, as Nisbett and Cohen noted, violence is understood as a legitimate response to lost honor.
This dynamic is apparent in the return of unconcealed white supremacy in the United States. As minority communities grow and white Americans lose their demographic dominance, their perceived loss of power borders on profound humiliation. For some, the election of a black president was a signal insult; for others, having to be supervised by a black man, or a Latino man, or even a woman, wounds their pride; for still others, itās the decline of economic prospects that feels like an insult, an affront.
But now honor culture in America is no longer just a Southern phenomenon. Social media has created a world where oneās very valueāto oneself as well as othersāis measured out in likes and followers. Betrayals of confidence are cruel and widespread. As David Brooks noted in 2016, āThe world of Facebook, Instagram and the rest is a world of constant display and observation. The desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread being exiled and condemned. Moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong; itās built on the continuum of inclusion and exclusion.ā The need for flattery and acceptance is deep and boundless and aching.
So, too, is the shame.
šØOVERTIME šØ
How sanctions are changing the Russian car marketā¦ No airbags?!
How to watch tonight. I was asked this on a podcast yesterday, and I elaborated a bit on my worry about "makingā it for TV. That has a huge risk of backfiring, but alas, weāre not readers anymore.
Keep in mind: You may not be the intended audience. It may ring flat to you. If youāre reading this right now, I guarantee you are probably more read-in on all of the 1/6 stuff than most viewers. But what Iām watching for is how Thompson and Cheney coordinate, or donāt. Will it flow? Will it be awkward?
Given the constraints of reality, Iāve long been worried about how how this important work might be misrepresented, or perhaps underexplained, if rushed. After these prime time hearings, there are only a few months before the elections this fall. And this committee has acted more like a Supreme Court than it has a Pelosi-controlled political hit squad, which is what some on the right would have you believe it is. But people can get easily confused if you throw too much stuff at them. I just hope they donāt do that.
Iāve long believed that the audience for the 1/6 committee is mostly the never-Trump right and independents. Some, whom Iād call Biden-Youngkin voters, are still on the fence. Really, the best thing the 1/6 committee can do is remind voters:
what happened
who did what / who excused what
who promised what / what they delivered.
I do also worry there is some Trump fatigue among news consumers. We could learn that the Trump NSC was actually run by graduates of the Men Who Stare at Goats school and conclude, oh, well, those were just wild times.
The obvious plea to the media is: donāt blow this. The next 72 hours are going to be a digital D-Day of new clips, texts, emails, etc. This is not impeachment 3.0. Take some time before concocting a semi-plausible theory that will disappear into the ether in 15 hours.
How Buffalonian are you? An obvious missed opportunity for local media outlets to let their readers compare themselves to local gadfly Carl Paladino.
Calling an editor hereā¦ We need an editor.
Mona Charen reflectsā¦ On guns, Jan. 6, at Connors Forum.
Uvalde is getting worseā¦ And weāre gonna hear more.
Thatās it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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