There are still contexts where a congruence of feelings and perspectives among Americans becomes apparent. Imagine that you have spent a few years in a foreign country, learning the language and getting used to it. One day you find yourself in a restaurant, sitting next to a group of loud and talkative American tourists. Suddenly, you feel thrown into a psychological and moral universe that you only vaguely remember. In this universe, everyone is open, even confessional, in their speech. Self-doubt and irony fled the room, chased away by an almost oppressive good nature. The poor waiter was asked his first name and is informed that these new friends from Illinois will keep in touch.
How do you, the American observer, feel once they are gone? The sound of familiar voices could be a welcome respite from the harshness of the French or the humorlessness of the Germans. You might feel the urge to pull up a chair and join them, knowing that you would be welcomed into the conversation. If you’ve had too much to drink, you might even share your email address with them at the end of the night.
But what if you have trouble fitting into this foreign culture and not seeming American? How does it feel to bury your head deeper into your copy of The World and praying that the tourists leave soon? You feel the exact same set of feelings as the other American observer, but with a negative valence. You both recognize yourself in your fellow citizens and feel involved in their behavior. An inner string vibrates at the same frequency as these intruders, whether you want it to or not.
However, despite this example, we cannot deny that feelings of democratic belonging have significantly diminished in our contemporary democracies. A complex cultural gap has opened up, making it much more difficult to bridge this divide.
“A complex cultural divide has opened up in our democracies that we find much more difficult to bridge.”
Tocqueville’s subtle observation on the difference between the inhabitants of the South and those of the North, which he made during his travels, could enlighten us:
“If two men belonging to the same society have the same interests and, to a certain extent, the same opinions, but their characters, their education and their way of life are different, it is very probable that they will not get along not. »
Even when speaking to people of the same social class and similar economic interests, their characters, education, and lifestyles were so different—primarily because of slavery—that mutual recognition and friendship policy were difficult, and would soon become impossible.
Today, the cultural divide in America lies not in geography, but in education. A certain level of education — essentially a bachelor’s degree — is now required to advance significantly in society. We may forget it in our little university and urban cocoons, but a little more than a third of adult Americans have such a diploma. When I checked the percentage of Manhattanites with a college degree, which I assumed to be just under 50%, I found that it had jumped to almost 70%. In the Bronx, that figure is just 23 percent. I had no idea.
The consequences of this gap are not only economic. The university does not just provide training for access to lucrative professions; it also socializes students into new lifestyles, as Tocqueville called them, which are very different from those of the less educated. Graduates come out of college with new ideas about how to behave in public and at work, what to eat, how to entertain, how many children to have and how to raise them, how to manage money and take care of their health. Even the typical bodies of our cultural classes are remarkably different today.
The term of caste is used quite imprecisely, but I honestly can’t think of a better word to describe the magnitude of the current cultural divide. If Tocqueville was right that wildly different lifestyles can separate individuals with common economic and political interests, then we are in big trouble.
A widely shared sense of exclusion, accompanied by all the emotions of shame and resentment, is toxic for democracies. We now live with a new social brutality, which generates facts that trigger new feelings of distrust, contempt, resentment, antipathy and withdrawal. A large portion of white Americans are experiencing, for the first time, a range of emotions that American minorities, particularly African Americans, have always had to endure on a much larger scale.
This is why I began to take very seriously the expressed need to feel included, to “see people who look and talk like me,” especially within our educational institutions. In a book I wrote a few years ago, I addressed such expressions as divisive, arguing that the emphasis on group identities could prevent people from seeing the broader common good. While this may be true, it is even more so for diversity. I think there is a tension between the ideals of diversity and inclusion, since the former has a centrifugal effect while the latter produces a centripetal effect.
However, feelings of exclusion among Americans today are not limited to minority groups. The white working class feels it, the religious population feels it, the South feels it. Our common sense of mutual recognition is crumbling, and we really have no idea how to stop it. The crisis of inclusion extends far beyond our elite squabbles over college admissions and corporate recruiting.
Is there an institution that still helps Americans from different backgrounds feel included? The only example that comes to mind is college sports — and for a somewhat personal reason.
My late father never attended college, but he was an avid sports fan and developed a vicarious attachment to the University of Michigan. The day I was admitted to college was the second happiest day of his life, the happiest being the day he saw the team win the Rose Bowl. After I became a widower, he would come visit me every weekend and we would go to games together — football, basketball, everything. He started buying souvenirs, and soon everything in his house was covered in maize and blue.
But the real meaning of the experience for him wasn’t just watching college sports. It was, when we walked across campus together, the feeling of being at home. He knew the streets, he knew the buildings. In a way, he felt welcomed — even without a degree. And it certainly made him more willing to pay taxes for college.
This story is not meant to say that life is all about football — quite the contrary. I’m just saddened and a little shocked to realize that there are no other institutions in American life that manage to make people from different educational backgrounds all feel included.
And even then, I’m not sure it still works. When I attended a game against Ohio State last year, I once again admired the social diversity of the crowd and the palpable sense of camaraderie among the spectators. But, as I walked past the cars in the parking lot after the game, all I saw were bumper stickers expressing hatred or contempt for those who didn’t share the owner’s political views. What happens in the stadium, it seems, stays in the stadium.
So, yes, we are in a very bad situation.
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