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This is a review of the book "Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896" by Charles Postel. The 'Gilded Age' of America mentioned in the submission title is thi
by Cogito 7y ago
This is a review of the book "Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896" by Charles Postel.
The 'Gilded Age' of America mentioned in the submission title is this period of 1886-1896.
The whole review is a bit belaboured, or perhaps bogged down in detail, but tries to show how an analysis of this period can be used to understand the concept of equality today. The book apparently examines a number of different organisations that were founded in this time, such as the Grange, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Knights of Labor. The claim is that these organisations were, at least in part, founded to try remove inequality but ended up leading to greater inequality.
> the national orientation of [these groups] led them to embrace a “white nationalist framework of sectional reconciliation.” The struggle against slavery cast a long shadow over the Gilded Age. The era’s radicals often viewed it as a model for their own activism. Yet because of their desire to organize nationally and to recruit members regardless of their Civil War loyalties, these groups played an important role in disseminating a view of that conflict in which slavery played only a minor part and Reconstruction was considered a disastrous mistake. This had dire consequences for black Americans and for an ideal of equality that transcended racial difference.
Their summary probably gets their point across most succinctly:
> Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, the presidential campaigns of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the work of the French economist Thomas Piketty, and more generally the dysfunctionality of contemporary capitalism, equality—or the widespread lack thereof—again occupies a prominent place in political debate. Beyond the fate of the individual organizations it covers, Equality reminds us of a homegrown radical heritage that critics of today’s deeply unequal America can be inspired by and must improve upon. The ideal of equality remains as radical as it was in Jefferson’s day. But equality limited to some is not equality.
- _iyig 7y agoI'm perplexed by writers who prioritize the social equality of a minority over economic equality among the majority. Don't get me wrong - I think both are important, but if we're honest, doesn't the general peace and well-being of society (from which better conditions for the minority tend to spring) depend more on the latter? You can't solve these problems easily in reverse order; the disgruntled majority will get tired of hearing about minority issues while they struggle to put food on the table. This is a bit of a false dichotomy, but as a continuous balance of focus between the two issues, I think the point stands.
- sanderjd 7y ago> general peace and well-being of society (from which better conditions for the minority tend to spring) This parenthetical is doing a lot of the work in your argument, and alas, it is not always (or even usually) how things work.
- _iyig 7y agoIt’s harder to scapegoat minorities when nobody’s all that mad about anything. Conversely, it’s easier to be charitable when you have more to give. Finally, there’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: self and family survival comes before everything else. If you have counterexamples to this theorizing of mine, I’d love to see them!
- sanderjd 7y agoWell, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't think much more needs to be said about that... Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment, enormous wealth, no war on our land in over a century and a half, we're probably the most prosperous and least attacked people in history, and yet we see quite a lot of majority-minority strife. You could also look at the article or the book it's talking about, which is also talking about a period where your theorizing didn't hold up. Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being societies where people who were different from most people in the society were equivalent participants in that well being?
- _iyig 7y ago>Well, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't think much more needs to be said about that... The abolitionist movement was huge in the North, where economic equality was better [0]. The antebellum South was a great example of a deeply unequal society, where poor whites were easily pitted against blacks. (Still haven't solved this problem) >Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment, enormous wealth, no war on our land Huge wealth inequality. Student debt crisis. Opioid crisis. Healthcare. Good jobs gone, replaced with bad jobs. Labor participation rate hasn’t recovered since the Great Recession. >Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being societies where people who were different from most people in the society were equivalent participants in that well being? Sure, though I did only say better, not "equivalent": we can look at Jews who prospered in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [1][2], or Jews in England during the Victorian Era [3]. As contrasted with Jews in Western Europe during the Dark Ages -- _lots_ of pogroms and expulsions -- or Jews in Weimar Germany, or Jews in Tsarist Russia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_before_the_18th_century#Prosperity_in_a_reunited_Poland:_1320–1385 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#The_Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth:_1572–1795 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England#Emancipation_and_prosperity,_1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England...