Urbankanda: Lewis Gordon and the Erosion of Social Capital
By Hady Ba
Lewis Gordon's latest opus, Fear of Black Consciousness, is written for audiences beyond philosophers and academics. Certainly, Gordon is no exception to the rule and uses impeccable academic sources, be it Greek philosophy, linguistics, or history. It is however with pedagogy and humor that Gordon uses popular culture and even his own biography to dissect the racist matrix that informs our world. He also proposes innovative concepts to subvert this racist order. Such a book clearly belongs in everyone’s hands, but what strikes me is the fruitfulness of the proposed paradigm. Reading it, one sees how what is proposed by Gordon shed new light on data and phenomena that previously were not satisfactorily explained. To illustrate this fruitfulness, I would like to reread Putnam’s theory of the decline of social capital in the United States using Gordon’s chapter, “Black consciousness is political.”
In his 1995 article that was later expanded into the book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert A. Putnam notes with dismay a decline in democratic participation by American citizens and an increase in distrust of institutions, as well as among citizens. Mutual trust, however, is a sine qua non condition of both functional societies and democratic life. If people trust each other, they can interact and contract without too much friction. On the other hand, reciprocal mistrust obliges us to take coercive measures and insurance to avoid being exploited. Trust therefore determines inclusion in a personally and collectively beneficial relational network that Putnam calls “social capital.” According to him:
Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called ‘civic virtue.’ The difference is that ‘social capital’ calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital (16).
Interpersonal relationships therefore make it possible to develop social capital. Their strength, of course, depends on the density of these networks. Social capital is a wealth that not only helps produce other types of capital by promoting civic virtues but also promotes the pooling of complementary resources available for exchange in social networks. It is therefore understandable that Putnam condemns the erosion of social capital. His consternation is all the greater when he discovers that, unfortunately, this erosion is an almost inevitable consequence of the diversity inherent in modern life. While many scientists recognize that diversity is valuable because it promotes creativity and resilience in organizations, Putnam asserts that alongside these undeniable benefits, we need to face the reality that diversification is - at least temporarily- accompanied by a decrease in interpersonal trust and therefore in social capital. Whether for sports clubs, women's associations, parent-teacher associations, etc., we observe that as they open to previously excluded audiences, especially blacks, there is a decrease in popular participation in these associations and therefore a decrease in social capital.
[Hady Ba, Collage of Fear of Black Consciousness and Lewis Gordon, 2022]
If the initial article and book do not focus on diversification as an explanation, his 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” makes the link explicit by stating, with supporting figures, that: “immigration and diversity foster social isolation” (141). It is important to note here that Putnam is not hostile to diversity, but quite the contrary. Even when institutions and the people themselves seem to accept or even favor it, Putnam finds that the very existence of diversity will promote social isolation and anomie. This is what he specifies when he writes that: "Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation. In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' – that is, to pull in like a turtle" (149).
One could therefore conclude that it would be irresponsible to promote the diversification of societies without preparation, but that is not what Putnam is saying. He thinks that diversification is an inalienable characteristic of our contemporary societies. He therefore believes that it is urgent to support the diversification of our societies with a policy that promotes cross-cutting identities and that fosters social capital.
Of course, many criticisms have been leveled at Putnam's work, with some claiming that the link he makes between ethnic diversity and social capital simply does not exist. [1] Others find social isolation to be an almost universal effect. [2] Still others consider this effect to be an American localism that does not apply, for example, to Europe. [3]
Beyond these refutations and factual confirmations, it seems to me that reading Fear of Black Consciousness allows a deeper and more fruitful return to this debate. There is undeniably a racial subtext to these theories. For example, to make himself understood, Putnam must point out (in Putnam 2006) that a Dutch immigrant in Sweden does not really add to the diversity, whereas a black-white neighborhood in the United States would. By directly attacking the racial matrix of Euromodernity, Gordon's book demonstrates the futility of factual criticism by showing that even if one can find occasional refutations or confirmations here and there, Putnam's thesis deals with a generalized phenomenon which is difficult to identify because it remains superficial.
If one adopts Gordon's paradigm, it is hardly surprising that a certain type of diversity causes a disruption of social capital. The current world is the result of a Euromodern paradigm fundamentally structured by white supremacy and anti-black racism. And Gordon is careful to distinguish between these two phenomena. White supremacy asserts that people considered white, and only they, are entitled to the full expression of their humanity and primacy over and possession of all that exists, including other human beings considered non-white.
Anti-black racism, meanwhile, ranks humans according to their distance from blackness. At the base of this racial pyramid, blacks are not entitled to any consideration or resources and barely belong to humanity. Note with Gordon that these two phenomena are congruent but independent. A society can be anti-black without being white supremacist, and vice versa. We should also note, in passing, that the differential treatment of refugees currently leaving Ukraine offers a glaring example of anti-black racism. The European justification for not welcoming refugees has always been, in the words of Michel Rocard, former Prime minister of France, that Europe “cannot accommodate all the misery of the world.” If it is a purely economic question, why not give priority to a transit route for African students fleeing a European war zone to return to their peaceful country? Europeans tried to block African students at the border not out of any fear of immigration but out of sheer hostility and disdain. Anti-black racism has rarely been so purely exhibited as in this war period, on the border between Ukraine and Poland.
The extent and structuring character of anti-black racism rarely appears in its crystalline purity. Yet, Gordon's book allows us to dissect the mechanisms underlying what Putnam describes. Gordon shows us that to think of our current urbanities in terms of diversity and social capital without considering the mechanisms by which Fear structures political and economic relations is to condemn ourselves to proposing ineffective solutions.
The solution advocated by Putnam to eradicate the erosion of social capital consists in promoting effective participation in transversal organizations that bring together people from different social backgrounds. These incentives, however, cannot be effective until we understand why these organizations have been deserted. If organizations are deserted at the very moment when their racial and ethnic diversity increases, then it follows that confidence in these institutions would diminish and anomie would increase. What Putnam fails to see, and Gordon makes explicit, is that these institutions, even when they seem to promote diversity, do so by maintaining a paradigm and a power system that is fundamentally anti-democratic because they are ultimately anti-black.
Here Gordon's reading of the evolution of cities in Euromodern societies is particularly enlightening. Some phenomena seem natural. The function of the philosophical gaze is precisely to reveal to us the artificial and constructed character of these phenomena. Consider, for instance, the “naturalness” of City life. Whether in New York, London, or Paris, why do young people live in the city center for years before moving to the suburbs to start a family? The answer is obvious: city centers are too expensive for the middle class to live in. Behind this obvious fact, however, Gordon shows that there is a profound change in the very nature of cities. They have ceased to be places of life and have instead become “urban centers of entertainment for suburban whites” (151).
[Hady Ba, One Liberty Plaza, 2022]
Euromodern cities are totalitarian mini-states that organize and monitor the movements of all their residents and workers. There are generally three types of inhabitants in these cities: a wealthy elite, young middle-class whites, and a predominantly racialized proletariat. The latter is at the service of all others who either reside permanently or temporarily in these “Cities.” For this subalternation to be possible, racialized people, even when the majority, must be defanged. Systematic mechanisms to prevent political participation by these racialized populations keep them at the service of the rest of the population. For example, it is the role of the American prison complex to prevent the political participation of blacks in the US. Elsewhere, the ban on voting for sub-Saharan immigrants performs the same exact function. More generally, Gordon points out: “Euromodern cities are divided into places of citizenship (white) and of crime (black, brown and colonized Indigenous), setting the stage for the former’s use of citizenship against citizenship” (151).
If social capital is eroding, it is because Euromodern societies work actively to exclude part of their citizens from any political participation. Isolation and anomie intensify with diversification because racist societies abhor contact. The City is traditionally at the origin of politics because it is the very place where problems are discussed by inhabitants of various backgrounds seeking to achieve a balance of power. In Euromodern cities, the function of the police and state institutions is to maintain an order that is not endogenous but is imposed from above by those in power. Politics, Gordon tells us, is not possible without power. Trying to foster, as Putnam proposes, the emergence of cross-linkages will only restore social capital if power itself is distributed.
Whereas Putnam believes that diversity and social capital diverge. The problem Gordon shows us deals not with diversity, but impotent presence. When people make their own policies, when the institutions are at their service rather than at the service of protecting a predefined order, then the inhabitants of the cities create social capital. The problem, Gordon shows us, is that: “In racist societies, the state aims to disempower. Restricting the power of certain groups to the physical body requires neutralizing their capacity for expression, particularly speech. These people cease to affect the social world; they are unheard sounds” (154).
To affect the social world, to express oneself, to bring about something different from the order predefined by the establishment, is to take power. About power, Putnam asserts in Bowling Alone that: “Generally speaking, the haves engage in much more civic activity than the have-nots. Thus, strengthening the social and political power of voluntary associations may well widen class differences” (358). Yet, he fails to see two things.
The first is that structurally, society is organized to empower haves rather than have-nots. The second is that have-nots are daily engaged in activities that would qualify as political if they were formalized as all have-not activities are. Whether through the informal solidarity networks of immigrants or block parties, if the government were really at the service of the people organizing them, it would use them to raise social capital. Instead, many activities carried out by racialized populations are criminalized and demonized. In doing so, the modes of expression of these populations are stifled. To understand this silencing, says Gordon, we must see that: “Antiblack racism...is antipathetic to the meeting of blacks and power. To prevent their meeting, the racist society must rally forces against speech, power, imagination, and politics” (154-155).
It is for this reason that as soon as Euromodern societies become racially diverse, social capital collapses: anti-black racism being the matrix of these societies. They will thus prevent at all costs Black consciousness from unfolding, and the only way to do so is to drown out all voices that do not conform to the white supremacist paradigm. Diversification is incompatible with maintaining this old world. The cost of maintaining such a world, despite ethnic and racial diversification, is as Fanon would say sclerosis and mummification; these being the necessary consequence of the rejection of novelty. [4] Therefore, Gordon tells us that:
all racist societies eventually become anti-political, anti-intellectual, and unimaginative. [...] Since it involves communication and other kinds of interaction, political life reaches outward. Anti-political societies seek the breakdown of relations in an effort to force at least certain groups into the prison of non-relations or disconnectedness, which forces them inward (155).
How then to restore social capital in Euromodern societies? Gordon sees the solution in restoring politics and distributing power to all players. For that, we must get rid not only of white supremacy but also of anti-black racism. The restoration of social capital cannot, according to Gordon, be based on morality. It is based concretely on the implementation of mechanisms that ensure everyone “equal access to the conditions on which to live meaningful lives of dignity, freedom, and respect” (165).
Make no mistake about it, says Gordon, Black consciousness is nothing else than that: “Black consciousness is organically linked to what black and all people want: the transformation of the society that produces antiblack racism and other kinds of dehumanization into something better” (162). As a result, if Euromodern societies do not assume this Black consciousness, if they do not welcome Black power, they will continue to ossify and move further and further away from their self-proclaimed democratic ideal. The erosion of social capital that Putnam perceives is therefore better explained by the fear of Black consciousness, the refusal of the emergence of a Black power even where people are actually black.
Notes
[1] See Patrick Sturgis, Ian Brunton-Smith, Sanna Read, and Nick Allum. “Does Ethnic Diversity Erode Trust? Putnam’s ‘Hunkering Down’ Thesis Reconsidered,” British Journal of Political Science 41, no. 1 (2011): 57-82.
[2] See Peter Thisted Dinesen, Merlin Schaeffer, and Kim Mannemar Sønderskov. “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-Analytical Review,” Annual Review of Political Science 23 (2020): 441-465.
[3] See Maurice Gesthuizen, Tom Van Der Meer, Peer Scheepers. “Ethnic Diversity and Social Capital in Europe: Tests of Putnam's Thesis in European Countries,” Scandinavian Political Studies 32, no. 2 (2009): 121–142.
[4] See Frantz Fanon. “Racism and Culture,” Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. Translated by Haakon Chevalier. New York: Monthly Review, 1967: 31-44.
References
Gordon, Lewis R. Fear of Black Consciousness. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.
Putnam, Robert A. “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century: The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30, no. 2 (2007): 137–174.
Putnam, Robert A. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.
Dr. Hady Ba is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University. Trained, in Dakar as a philosopher M. Ba holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from The Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. He is one of the officers of the Senegalese Philosophical Association and has helped organize The Caribbean Philosophical Association conference in Dakar in 2018. He is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Connecticut writing a book about the Epistemology of the Global South.