Jenny Anderson’s article from Friday’s ‘s NYT will doubtless discourage many readers who will be reminded, once again, as Cornel West has aptly put it, that race matters; but who may also be left wondering why race matters. The pastor at my church on Chicago’s south side, which I attended while going to graduate school at the University of Chicago, was fond of telling us: poverty, by definition, can be solved by throwing money at it. Now, however, I’m not so sure.
The students and families in Jenny Anderson’s article have seemingly done all of the right things. But, then, I am reminded of Jesus’ response to the rich man who had also done all of the right things. “One thing do you lack. Sell all that you have and give all your money to the poor. Then come follow me.”
I am reminded of this response because in all of the schools to which Anderson refers in her article, there is something rotten about the culture into which these students are seeking to gain entrance. This is a culture of privilege, a culture literally of “private law,” of laws (social, cultural, economic) that are different and operate differently from the laws that operate elsewhere. Nor is the privilege under which these schools operate at all a matter of chance or luck.
Parents who want the best for their children know that private wealth has actively sought to deprive the public square of any and all means to improve upon and perfect “the wealth we hold in common.” Only in enclaves where private and public wealth coincide, in neighborhoods and school districts where the wealthy are able to maintain control over the public uses of their private wealth; only there does private wealth actively promote the wealth we hold in common. Here parents are confident that their sons and daughters will gain the tools, skills, knowledge, and aptitudes they will need to maintain and perpetuate their privilege.
But what happens then when a student who is not similarly privileged enters into such enclaves? Sociologically speaking, what happens is that both the entering student and the privileged community into which she or he has gained entrance immediately recognize the differences that distinguish them from one another. Such differences extend far beyond money, drawing into play the full range of private social, political, economic, and cultural “laws” — the private laws or privileges — that have governed the actions and mediated the social relations for each student.
At bottom, however, the deepest and most fundamental distinction, I believe, is the distinction between public and private wealth itself. If I am from private wealth — and not merely its possessor — it really matters very little whether I vote for Obama or “support” public programs. Private wealth has waged a largely successful battle against public institutions. I want my child to have the best education, which means either that I will home-school, or that I will send him or her to a private school, or that I will seek to locate in a school district where private and public wealth happen to coincide. And, when I make these decisions, I am practically reinforcing a set of distinctions that, whatever I might say or believe, have the effect of supporting private wealth and private law over public wealth and public law.
But — and this is the critical matter — when I support private wealth and private law over public wealth and public law, I am lending my support for the very system of invidious distinctions and prejudices that will in turn isolate and exclude either my son or daughter or the sons and daughters of others. I am perpetuating a culture of private wealth and privilege.
Which is why we need to redouble our efforts to support public institutions at every turn; as though these institutions were the only institutions to which we and our families had access. Put differently, if you would not enroll your child in a public school, then you and your neighbors are not doing enough, not paying enough, not contributing enough to the public weal. If you would not want to be cared for at San Francisco General, then you and your neighbors are not doing enough, not paying enough, not contributing enough to the wealth we hold in common.
Nor are the reasons too difficult to discern. If we want to live in a world that reproduces excellence, the actual construction of that world cannot be excluded from the set of attributes that make up that excellence. One does not create a secure world by living in a gated community. One does not eliminate privilege by becoming privileged. Nor do we solve the problem of world hunger by feasting at Chez Panisse.
But that means that we also cannot solve the problem of privilege in education by enrolling our children in privileged programs, expecting that, once they have gained entrance, these programs will somehow cease to make the invidious distinctions or cease offering the privileges that made them attractive in the first place. We should not be surprised then when our children, assuming they do not come from privilege, or assuming they do not come from wealth, become the objects of exclusion when we have placed them in a community whose very perpetuation and success depends upon this principle of exclusion. That is why we selected it in the first place.
As I have argued elsewhere (see Commonwealth), restoring our vision for public life is not a matter of money alone; rather is it a matter of the wealth we hold in common, of our common wealth. But we cannot simultaneously support the wealth we hold in common while practically supporting institutions that undermine that wealth.