How're We Doing?: Reflections on Moral Progress in America
Joshua Cohen2008, The Good Society
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Abstract
We were born in 1951/1952, grew up in the suburban northeast during the great postwar boom, and entered Yale College in 1969/1970. This was the Yale of Kingman Brewster and Inky Clark, '57, who moved admissions past the prep schools, opened the university to women in 1969, and found a larger place for African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics. This more democratic Yale was part of a more confidently democratic country. We were born into a WASPdominated America, with open racial apartheid, vast differences in the status of men and women, rigid sexual expectations, and unembarrassed class differences. Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemma (1944) underscored the tension between American democratic ideals and violent, legally-imposed racial subordination. But the stark conflicts between fact and norm were hardly confined to race. By the time we came of age, the country was no longer the world of our fathers. The civil rights movement had ended legally-imposed racial apartheid, the women's movement had placed the system of gender inequality under sharp and sustained attack, Stonewall (1969) had just announced the opening of a long-term struggle against a dominant heterosexism, and the country's much greater prosperity was more widely shared. We count this as remarkable moral progress, and that is how it felt as we lived through it. It was as if a powerful moral sensibility had been unlocked, and moved with commanding power against a whole range of longstanding hierarchies and exclusions. As Martin Luther King had often warned, progress did not "roll in on wheels of inevitably." It came through intense political struggle, animated by moral-political conviction, and even claiming ultimate sacrifice-from Medgar Evers; Carol Denise
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CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Carolina Digital Repository with changing political-cultural contexts, reshaping strategies for seeking inclusion. These identity shifts reflect a process of racialization of collective identity in which post-9/11 policies and discourses stigmatize Muslims, shaping contexts in which Muslims generate perceptions of social location analogous to African Americans. What results is a new strategic focus on coalition-building with people of color through strategies aimed at establishing common oppression. Through this volume, by examining how a single cultural structure is taken up by a landscape of social movements, I develop a new approach to understanding cultural processes in contentious politics. As groups strategically deploy collective memory in different ways, the proliferation of meanings of memory, over time, changes the collective memory itself and the way we collectively recall our shared history. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to countless friends, family, colleagues, and mentors for their encouragement along this journey. I am indebted to my chair, Charlie Kurzman, who is an exemplar of outstanding mentorship, pushing, prodding, challenging me to strive for a higher standard of scholarship in lessons that will not soon be forgotten. Through his toughest critiques, Charlie reminds me that good research is always worth fighting for. I am also incredibly grateful to Andy Perrin for much time spent engaging my theoretical extrapolations, constructively debating me toward solid ground. Andy reminds me that enthusiasm (and kindness) are powerful intellectual stimulants. I am grateful to Chris Bail for all his very good advice and helpful critiques, grounded in necessarily pragmatic evaluations of context and audience. I will be reminded of the time Chris took to work with me when I am a time-starved junior faculty member, and I will pay it forward. Many thanks to Andy Andrews and Neal Caren for their invaluable feedback and guidance as well. Their methodical, thoughtful research continues to inspire this aspiring social movement scholar. I am thankful to all the faculty in the UNC Sociology Department for comments, advice, and encouragement, in all their forms. Of course, dissertations are made of much more than blood, sweat, tears, and faculty members. To my colleagues, the kind, brilliant, and inspiring folks who make up so many fond memories of Chapel Hill and Hamilton Hall: thank you, thank you, thank you. I will eagerly await our annual reunions at ASA. Particular thanks to my colleagues in Camp Charlie, the UNC Race Workshop, and the 2011 Cohort (the best one yet, with inter-rater reliability). Beyond vi North Carolina, I am grateful for the continued mentorship of Tamara Mose and Carolina Bank-Muñoz, as well as my former Brooklyn College community (particularly Kim and Jennifer). The academic journey is, perhaps, uniquely challenging in its continuity, without clear parameters on time, with ongoing projects that are never quite "done." These challenges can be felt most acutely by friends and family who must share their loved one with a demanding document, and I am so grateful to mine for the depths of their support and understanding. To my partner, Josh: your steadfast confidence in me and your wholehearted acceptance of whatever possible outcome have carried me through. I could not have asked for a better partner. To my son, JJ: you have turned our world upside-down (one of your favorite ways to look at the world, coincidentally). Seeing the world through your beautiful eyes reminds me of the power of sociology, exposing the lenses through which we understand and relate to one another. And your lens is so bright, so hopeful! To my sister: always a cheerleader, an encouraging text away, inspiring me with your grit and determination. I could not have done this without your positive energy. I am also grateful to my pseudo-brother Brad, my incredible family of in-laws (Ferrells, Marins, Groggs, et al.), and dear friends (Po4+, N9) for their grounding love. Finally, to my parents who taught me to open my eyes a little wider, to listen a little closer, to dig a little deeper: I keep asking questions because of you. You have taught me that there is power in struggle, power in humanity. 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Robert Greenwald, an activist and film maker protesting the rally, generated a website and video titled "Glenn Beck is Not Martin Luther King Jr." with a petition receiving over 30,000 signatures. In the video, Greenwald juxtaposed "shock jock"-style sound bites from Beck with King's spiritual oratory in his "Dream" speech to discredit Beck's Civil Rights Memory Strategy. At video's end, a message read, "Don't let Beck distort Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. Sign your name to virtually stand with Dr. King's vision on August 28 th " (Greenwald 2010). Al Sharpton called Beck's event an "outright attempt to flip the imagery of Dr. King," (Sisk 2010). The day before the rally, Chris Matthews said on his show, Hardball With Chris Matthews: Can we imagine if King were physically here tomorrow…were he to reappear tomorrow on the very steps of the Lincoln Memorial? 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