Playing the Victim Card

The recent controversies at Kennesaw State University revealed a great deal about the mindset of liberals and progressives.  These neo-Marxists are prone to considering themselves victims—even when they are the aggressors.  They complain about being bullied when they do the bullying.

This latest round of false posturing began when president Sam Olens of KSU refused to allow the cheerleaders to engage in a protest at the start of our football games.  He decreed that they stay in the locker room rather then permit them to emulate the disrespect of the flag shown in the NFL.

Then, to compound matters, Olens refused to permit the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education to run an ad that specified the university was looking for a math professor who valued “social justice.”  It was only this term to which the president objected, but its withdrawal was enough to set off a firestorm of indignation.

Let me begin with this latter issue.  When we discussed it at a sociology department meeting, I pointed out that this had become a code word.  “Social justice” is not the equivalent of “justice.”  It is a left wing variant that denotes complete social equality.

The point is that, in making this a qualification for employment, conservatives were being warned they need not apply.  They would not be judged on their mathematical expertise or pedagogical skills, but their political correctness.

My liberal colleagues objected to this characterization by insisting they simply meant to exclude faculty members who were not respectful of minorities.  This was disingenuous in two respects.  First, very few academics are neo-Nazis.  Second, our school, as well as most others, has a long track record of excluding conservatives.

As for the cheerleaders, as was noted in the NFL case, when they are in uniform and on the playing field they are the agents of an organization.  They are not merely representing themselves, but it.

The analogy I used to explain why this is inappropriate derives from the classroom.  If I, as a sociology professor, attempted to convert my students to Judaism—or Islam—I would be out of line.  I was hired to teach sociology, not spark in a religious revival.

If my religion is so important to me that I feel compelled to proselytize, I ought to do this on my own time.  Just as I publish opinion columns as a private citizen, so might the cheerleaders.  They were not being “muzzled,” but told there is a time and place for political activity.

This, however, is not how many of my colleagues saw it.  They demanded that the students be allowed to express their dissent.  To fail to tolerate opposition when the anthem played was a violation of their rights.  They were merely communicating their horror at the persistence of racial discrimination.

Given this progressive interpretation of events, my coworkers perceived Olens as a bully.  He was accused of abusing his position to advance his own political agenda.  How dare he tell professional mathematicians that they could not write the employment ad they wanted.  How dare he suppress the moral initiatives of well meaning students.

But Olens is president of the university.  He has the responsibility to preserve its academic integrity.  He thus not only has the right, but the duty, to prevent those who work for, or attend, the school from overstepping their bounds. 

And make no mistake; it was the education faculty and cheerleaders who went too far.   They, not he, began this affair.  They pushed their outrage onto center stage.  In playing the race card—which is what they did—they challenged others to prohibit this effort at intimidation.

The attitude of the “protesters” was epitomized by how one on my colleagues defended them.  Our departmental discussion of these matters began with the chair asking for civility.  It ended with him asserting that civilization and civility were racist plots.

Asking people to exercise self-control and follow the rules were essentially castigated for preventing minorities from obtaining for their rights.  These were depicted as tactics for keeping people down so they could never achieve full equality. 

If so, our society will end in self-immolation.  We will undoubtedly burn in a paroxysm of misplaced self-righteousness.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Bureaucratic Mentality

When I went to high school during the 1950’s, my very liberal teachers encouraged students to go into government service.  They were aware of the failures of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and blamed this on the absence of talented administrators.  If these managers had been smarter and more creative, workable solutions would have been found.

I took these admonitions to heart.  As a good student, it was my duty to make socialism succeed.  This, of course, had to begin by making the government more responsive.  Unless this occurred, it might be unwise to place the entire economy in state hands.

For the next several decades I sought, and obtained, government employment.  I was not going to be one of those greedy capitalists who put self-interest before communal interests.  Only after many years of trying did I realize that a deeply ingrained bureaucratic mentality prevented accomplishing my dream.

To illustrate, when I went to work for a state vocational agency, the first thing a new colleague told me was CYA.  At the time, I was so naïve I did not know what this meant.  For the uninitiated, it stands for “cover you’re a—.”  That is, don’t make waves and you won’t get in trouble.

In other words, a great many government bureaucrats intend to follow the rules—and only the rules.  They are not looking to be creative.  They are not geared to taking risks.  As a bus driver uncle advised me, if you keep your head down, the pay is good and the security can’t be beat.

The degree to which this attitude discourages originality also became plain at the vocational bureau.  Having obtained a Ph.D. in sociology, I sought to apply it to helping my clients.  Over the course of several years, I therefore developed a program I described as  “Resocialization.”

So far as I could tell, it worked well.  Then the boss of my boss came to ask what I was doing.  To my surprise, after I explained my innovations, I was ordered to stop.  There was no follow up to determine if I was aiding people.  I was simply told to desist.

Naturally I asked why and was startled by the response.  The answer was that this superior did not understand what I was doing and therefore I must not continue.  There was no assertion that I was hurting clients; only that he could not comprehend my methods.

Sadly my Ph.D. was not respected.  If anything, it made my colleagues wary.  The fear was that I would use it against them.  As a result, no one asked how my expertise might assist them.  Their goal was to get along by going along.

Earlier in my bureaucratic adventures I discovered how detailed paperwork prevented disruptive novelties.  This time I was working for the New York City Department of Welfare.  More particularly, national social workers had recently succeeded in getting the federal government to sponsor social interventions for our clients.

The benefits of this change were to be twofold.  First the department would be allocated more money and second the caseworkers would be professionalized.  As a consequence, clients would we better served, while those assisting them received greater respect.

The surprise was in how these modifications were implemented.  All that happened was that caseworkers were required to fill out forms that documented the services they provided.  What they did, did not change.  Only the way they reported it.

For example, caseworkers had always been required to check that clients paid their rent.  This was intended to make sure they did not squander their resources.  Now caseworkers were to describe this activity as providing clients with financial advice.

Today I am a professor at Kennesaw State University, but I am still required to pretend to do what I don’t.  Thus, the state of Georgia recently decided it wants to encourage faculty members to be more involved with the community.  So how are we implementing this?  I bet you can guess.

We are filling out a form that documents community involvement.  We are not changing what we are doing.  We are merely changing how we report it.  No doubt this will look good in legislative hands.

Some things never change.  The bureaucratic mentality is always about professing to do more, while doing less.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Oppression Is No Longer the Issue

Several weeks ago, I presented a paper on the evolution of modern morality at a sociological conference in Cleveland.  The reception, for the most part, was positive.  An exception arose toward the end, when a listener cautioned me that I must not neglect the persistence of racial oppression.

Nowadays, we keep hearing this mantra in sports stadiums where professional athletes claim to be protesting the same phenomenon.  These football players may be earning millions of dollars a year, but they portray themselves as little more than modern-day slaves.

At the conference, I tried to explain that “oppression” is not what it used to be.  I must confess, however, that I did not do a good job.  In retrospect, I sounded condescending.  Precisely because I was attempting to avoid giving insult, my words lacked sincerity.

I should have been more direct.  Had I done so, I would have asserted that oppression is no longer the issue.  Neither blacks, nor women, nor gays are experiencing the kind of subjugation that was once prevalent.  They are not being subjected to cruel punishments nor categorically denied an opportunity to follow their dreams.

Don’t get me wrong.  Prejudice and discrimination still exist.  Individuals continue to be insulted because of their skin color.  Furthermore, some jobs are closed because of gender.  Nonetheless, the current level of bigotry does not approach what was normative a hundred years ago.

Slavery was genuinely oppressive.  People were beaten and killed for offending their masters.  Jim Crow was also oppressive.  Uppity ex-slaves were literally lynched for looking at white women too lasciviously.  The pre-civil rights era was also oppressive in that voting was made difficult, while inter-racial marriage was illegal.

To hark back to those times as if they typify the present is nonetheless misleading.  Accusations that oppression of this sort persists are hyperbole.  They are gross exaggerations.  The goal of this tactic is actually to assert a moral imbalance that is no longer ubiquitous.  Although injustices remain, they are not nearly as virulent.

Thus, comparing American police officers to the Gestapo is absurd.  The notion that thousands of white cops are intentionally targeting blacks for assassination is a bad joke.  The evidence to support this thesis simply does not exist.  Indeed, according to FBI statistics, black officers shoot more black criminals—usually with cause.

How ironic is it that, as police brutality declines, charges it is universal have ramped up?  The activists do not seem to care about facts.  As long as they can make a reputed incident appear to be horrendous, they have accomplished their mission.

And what is that?  It is nothing less than making whites feel guilty.  If this emotion can be aroused, it is used to manipulate political events.  Benefits can then be extracted from fearful politicians, whereas black wrongdoers are excused their transgressions.

This helps no one.  First of all, it shuts down honest dialogue.  Whites are so terrified that they will be labeled racists they keep their true opinions to themselves.  They do not want to have their careers ruined by a misrepresentation of their beliefs.

Second, blacks are also victimized.  Because they are not held to the same standards as others, many do not strive to be the best they can be.  They instead concentrate on making others feel culpable.  This way they can obtain rewards they did not personally earn.

Third, this diverts attention from embarrassing deficiencies within the African-American community.  For instance, the crime rate in the inner cities is dramatically higher than elsewhere.  The reason there are so many confrontations between blacks and cops is that law breaking is much more pervasive in these neighborhoods.

As importantly, the black family is in tatters.  With almost three out of every four black children born out of wedlock, most grow up without fathers.  This deprives them of the emotional discipline needed to be successful in our market economy.

These latter issues are therefore far more central to explaining the problems today affecting African-Americans.  Yet if we ignore these to obsess on non-existent persecution, who suffers?  Guess what, it is seldom whites.  They merely nod when accused of oppression, then get on with their business.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Backward-Looking Progressives

We, in the United States, are obsessed with the future.  We like to look ahead to imagine the wonders that we can create.  Standing still is not in our nature.  It strikes us as foolish—and perhaps immoral.

Left-leaning politicians know this.  As a result, they have emphasized their reputed monopoly on upcoming events.  For more than a century, they have styled themselves “progressives.”  Once ordinary Americans came to believe in the benefits of “progress,” leftists appropriated this mantle for themselves.

In reality, most progressives are backward looking.  What is more, they always have been.  Although they make a point of not saying so, their mentor was Karl Marx.  He, like they, claimed that science proved the inevitable triumph of socialism and communism.

This then is the liberal conception of progress.  Since they believe that a collectivist society is preordained, movement toward it must be a movement forward.  Those who are dedicated to bring it to fruition are therefore, by definition, forward-looking.

Except that the prophet who hatched this canard did so over a century and a half ago.  Marx was a man of his times.  The industrial revolution had barely gained traction in his native Germany when he concocted his plan for overcoming its evils.

Marx assumed that workers would eventually become paupers.  He likewise had no idea that the middle class would burgeon.  Nor was he aware of the impending horrors of socialist revolutions.  He could not have imagined the brutality of the Stalinist and Maoist regimes.

Nonetheless, contemporary progressives treat his discredited propositions as gospel.  Despite the failure of most of their master’s predictions, they are apologists for a lost cause.  Instead of seeking new ideas, they merely recycle his shop-worn fantasies.

Consider where the progressives who run the Democratic Party want to take us.  Obviously they never have a good word to say about Donald Trump or Republicans.   But have they come up with innovative alternatives?  Do they propose plans that deviate from their historic agenda?

Ponder their suggestions about medical care.  They want to make this universal.  ObamaCare ran into unexpected roadblocks, but they hope to revive—or extend it.  In this, they are digging in the graveyards of earlier progressives.

To wit, Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped to give us government-sponsored medicine.  So did Harry Truman.  Then again, Hillary Clinton did as well.  This is clearly not a new idea.  When Bernie Sanders argues that we need Medicare for all, he too is merely echoing the proposals of deceased predecessors.

In fact, a government controlled medical system can be traced back to Otto von Bismarck.  The Iron Chancellor sought to tighten the Kaiser’s grip on Germany by providing every citizen with medical care.  His program thus became the model progressives follow—it was not invented yesterday.

Neither was the idea that the state should exercise total political control.  Plato believed that a brilliant and well-intentioned Philosopher King should rule his perfect Republic.   Louis XIV of France was similarly convinced that his desires and the state were synonymous.

The progressives have modified this attitude to mean that they should be in charge.  On the assumption that only they have the intelligence and compassion to serve as bureaucratic experts, they routinely allocate totalitarian prerogatives to themselves.  Although they call this social justice, it looks more like demagoguery.

Once upon a time despots dominated the political arena.  Emperors and dictators sought absolute command.  They did not want competitors.  Neither do progressives.  Just like their forerunners, they intend to call all of the shots.

If this is the case, how can progressives be regarded as forward-looking?  If they are more concerned with accumulating power than devising novel ways to deal with emergent problems, aren’t they pretending to be something they are not?

During the Eisenhower administration, it was fashionable to speak of “knee-jerk” liberals.  This alluded to the tendency of leftists to propose new government regulations and programs for every grievance they dug up.  Have times really changed?  Aren’t progressives still trapped in an autocratic past?

As for conservatives, why can’t they be forward-looking?  When they innovate, as they often to, don’t they deserve this appellation?  Progress implies making things better.  If conservatives achieve this, shouldn’t they be regarded as the real progressives?

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University