Social justice?

A major complaint that many people have had concerning the past eight years of the Bush administration is that it has had no interest in addressing issues of social justice in the United States. What are these issues? And what steps would a genuinely responsible government take to address them?

Here are a few core social justice issues that have become increasingly visible in the past eight years. Can we hope they will do better under the Obama administration?

Income inequality that has risen steeply since 1980
Disregard of the most basic human needs of poor people — e.g. the indifferent Katrina relief response
Serious race gaps in quality of life and economic opportunity that have held steady or worsened
A worsening healthcare crisis affecting 47 million uninsured people
A financial and economic meltdown that differentially hurts low and middle income people
Poor quality schools in high poverty areas
Deteriorating conditions in many American cities
Homelessness and hunger rising
Environmental harms that are disproportionately found in urban poor populations
Tax reforms that greatly privilege the most affluent
Mistreatment of immigrant communities

What these issues have in common is the fact of inequality across large social groups, and a profound lack of a fair level of priority offered by government to address the issue. The inequality part of the picture has to do with gross inequalities in resources, opportunities, dignity, and outcomes for different groups. And the priority issue has to do with “voice” — the degree to which claims by disadvantaged groups are taken seriously by policy makers. The rich and powerful have not had difficulty in gaining the ear of the Bush administration. But poor and middle-class people have knocked in vain.

Most generally, what might an Obama administration do to improve the situation of social justice in the United States? A first step — and it is an important one — is to give the signal to all parts of government that social justice is an important priority for this administration. This priority needs to affirm the centrality of equality, fairness, and a concern for improving the condition of the least-well-off in society. It is understood that every problem cannot be addressed at the same time, and that there are other important priorities as well. But social justice is generally compatible with other priorities, and it will be an important step forward to simply know that the government is concerned with these issues.

A related step that will further the cause of social justice will be to give voice to the disadvantaged within the process of policy formation. If poverty alleviation is to be back on the agenda, then make sure that the voices of poor people are heard as policies are formulated and discussed. And make sure that leaders are selected who have a genuine and innovative commitment to change. (A conference on poverty being sponsored in Michigan by the Department of Human Services (link) is a good example of a process that involves the voices of affected people in a meaningful way. One can hope that committed experts such as Rebecca Blank or Douglas Massey will be involved in the policy leadership group of the next administration.)

Beyond these general steps — laying the groundwork for meaningful social justice reform — one would hope the administration will take on a few key issues to be addressed first. And perhaps these should be —

Healthcare reform to assure that all Americans have access to adequate healthcare through insurance and government programs
a focused urban strategy for addressing the issues of poverty and limited opportunities in our nation’s cities
implementation of a tax system that removes provisions favoring the most affluent individuals and corporations

This isn’t the whole of a social justice agenda, but it would be a very good start. And progress on these issues would also result in progress on other issues as well, including the gaps in opportunity and quality of life experienced by disadvantaged groups today.

It seems almost self evident that a more just society is a stronger and more unified society. So a government that consistently works towards improving social justice will build a much stronger foundation for America’s future in the coming half century.

Changing urban high schools

Almost everyone interested in improving social justice and opportunity in America’s cities agrees that schooling is crucial. Urban high schools have high dropout rates and low levels of academic achievement, and the likelihood of an urban student’s continuing to college is much lower than his or her suburban counterpart. Is it possible for cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles to take steps that successfully change these outcomes on a measurable scale? Or are these results determined by the larger context of urban poverty and culture within which these schools exist? Can local institutional change in the schools and their administrative settings sucessfully improve outcomes, or are the social factors of poverty and race overwhelming?

One thing we know to be true is this: there are high-performing high-poverty schools in virtually every urban community. Consider for example the University Preparatory Academy in Detroit. The school opened only a few years ago as a result of major gifts by a Michigan donor. It draws from a cross section of Detroit children. And it has achieved graduation rates and college attendance rates that exceed 80%. This shows that it can be done.

Further, there appear to be some characteristics that these schools often have in common: they tend to be smaller than traditional high schools (around 500 students); they manage to achieve a fair amount of adult presence for each student; they have high academic expectations; they often involve a system of teacher assignment that involves mutual choice; they often have counselors who stay with the student at every grade; and they involve a fair amount of autonomy for the principal.

So what are the obstacles? Why isn’t every urban school system working as hard and as fast as it can manage to create these new school environments and institutions?

The plain truth is that there is a great deal of unavoidable inertia in a large urban school system. Take the buildings and physical plant themselves: school buildings are often in a bad state of repair; but more importantly, they’ve been build according to a very different model of high school education. They are substantially larger than the size now recommended, and there is a very substantial capital cost associated with retrofitting or replacing them. Second is the existing core of teachers and principals. There is a “culture” associated with a school system — a set of attitudes about what is involved in teaching, what the expectations are for students, teachers, and administrators, and what the level of trust is between the various parties. Changing culture is difficult for any institution, and this has proven to be true for school systems no less than other major organizations. Third is the set of bureaucratic and management practices that are built into most large urban school systems. Innovation is difficult to introduce at the school level because of the need for approval extending all the way up to the superintendant’s office. Fourth, in many communities the work rules and personnel processes that are embodied in union contracts have proven to be an obstacle to fundamental reform of the public schools. For example, the model of mutual choice in which teachers and principals must agree about the placement of a teacher in a classroom runs into the seniority procedures that most contracts stipulate. And, finally, there is the question of money. Many city school systems have suffered enrollment decline, leading to a continually shrinking financial base when public funds are tied to headcount. So public school systems in large cities are often in a perpetual financial crisis, without the ability to undertake the costs that a substantial reorganization of high schools would require.

So the obstacles to innovative reform of high schools are high, even when there is a relatively promising suite of changes that could make a difference. How can an urban community break through this quagmire? Several strategies have been used: experimental or pilot schools within the existing structure; the creation of new publicly financed charter schools that are independent from the strictures of the existing school bureaucracy; and charter schools that are created through private-public partnerships between foundations and philanthropists, on the one hand, and public educational authorities, on the other.

A particularly important philanthropic player in this arena is the Gates Foundation, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the effort to improve schooling in poor neighborhoods. Similarly, foundations such as the Skillman Foundation and the Spencer Foundation have placed high priority on finding ways of having measurable impact on improving public schools, often with a tight neighborhood focus. And, finally, there is the mechanism of community “brokers” such as the United Way, that have come forward to help to bring schools, donors, and other interested parties together to help to create the schools that will really work for the students that they serve.

Progressive politics

There are many ways of distinguishing different kinds of political values: liberal-conservative, environment-growth, radical-reactionary, left-right, Democrat-Republican, social democrat-christian democrat, libertarian-statist. But consider this fundamental divide: between those political programs dedicated to progress for the poor and powerless, versus those focused on conserving the power and privilege of existing elites. One is a party of progress and change; the other is one focused primarily on conserving the status quo.

To locate this distinction in political space we need first to identify the dimensions of inequality over which the privileged and the non-privileged are separated. These obviously include ownership of wealth, income, ability to influence or determine major social institutions; access to important social opportunities (education, healthcare, mobility), quality of life, and degree of independence and self-determination. And these can be further simplified as wealth, power, and distributive outcomes. Most societies provide very different levels of these goods to various groups in society — and almost always there is a high degree of overlap across the membership of the various disadvantaged groups.

It is plain that many societies create substantial inequalities along these lines, and that these inequalities arise as a consequence of systems of power and distribution. Powerful institutions — corporations, governments, insurance companies, political parties, the military — make private decisions that affect outcomes and quality of life for the non-privileged — and these decisions are almost always beyond democratic control. These institutional arrangements give rise to a systematic flow of basic goods that is highly unequal across society. Moreover, the institutions and their directors have substantial power to protect and preserve their positions of privilege.

So these are the central social cleavages that exist in many societies. Corporations, powerful officials, landlords, party functionaries, and owners of large wealth stand on one side — and wage-earners, tenant farmers, the urban poor, the uninsured, some racial or ethnic minorities, and the disabled stand on the other side. And they are separated by powerful and entrenched distributive institutions that reproduce these inequalities generation after generation.

So now we are face to face with the most fundamental dichotomy among political parties and programs: between those that attempt to modify some of these distributive institutions in favor of the poor, and those that are committed to preserving this whole system of inequality creation. There is a “party of progress” and a party of the status quo, conserving of a system of power and privilege.

Are there any political movements in the US today that stand for meaningful change in our system of inequality? And do these movements offer any significant challenge to the most fundamental interests of this system? Yes and no. Examples of programs that would significantly improve outcomes for the disadvantaged in our society include efforts to invent a system of universal health insurance, efforts to secure greater environmental justice for urban people, efforts to turn back the regressive tax policies of the recent past, and efforts to reinvigorate the union movement in this country.

But do any of these political goals present a serious challenge to the basic structures of a divided society? Most likely not. The American economy can absorb a huge amount of redistribution of benefits from rich to poor without fundamentally changing the mechanism of inequality of power and privilege that has endured throughout our history. The New Deal created a meaningful change in American distributive structures — but it did not significantly reduce the wealth and privilege of the elites. There is ample room for a “New Deal for the twenty-first century” that would significantly shift our inequalities in the direction of greater justice — but such an effort is likely to leave unchanged the system of power and privilege that exists.

A progressive politics is possible. But unfortunately our national political parties have rarely addressed these core issues. Where are the national leaders who look honestly at the facts of poverty, powerlessness, racism, and lack of health care, and work for the changes that will structurally address these issues?