The Opportunity Costs of Identity Politics: Addressing the Root Causes of the Black Underclass
Eric Parker
Politics in the United States centres on many polarized and controversial topics that diminish healthy political debate about real existential threats to human flourishing. Spending a disproportionate amount of time on hot-button issues draws attention away from these threats and represents a real opportunity cost. For instance, the future of work is being challenged by the deployment of generative AI and massive automation. For much of our parents’ and grandparents’ lives, it was common to occupy positions within the same organization for the entirety of one’s working life. For this generation, we will not only be changing jobs multiple times, but careers. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that upwards of 30% of work activities will be automated by 2030 and as much as 48% by 2035.[1] Job displacement could be historic in scope. This issue represents a real threat to our future prosperity as individuals and as nations, but it is hardly addressed in current political discourse.
The Black Underclass and Human Flourishing
I have spent the last several years thinking about the ongoing opportunity cost of identity politics and the black underclass. Over 20% of all those considered to be impoverished in 2022 in the US are black, despite the fact that only 13.5% of the total population is black.[2] Why are so many struggling to flourish? Debate rages on concerning the causes behind the stagnation of the black underclass. If you are of the political left, you may be more inclined to explain this by appealing to systemic barriers – or even systemically racist barriers – oppressing African Americans. If you are of the political right, you may be more inclined to think that the problem lies within the culture of the black underclass. You might also be inclined to think that it’s their responsibility to change their ways if they want to get ahead in the world.
In America today, political discourse around the role of racism in our structures has heated up to the degree that I believe it to be a distraction from factors that may be more important in enabling the black underclass to flourish.
Racial Politics
I am a black American. I spent the first decade of my life growing up in the inner city of Montgomery, Alabama, with a single mother. While Alabama’s racial atmosphere had improved since the 60s, in the 90s, racism was still palpable. “Race mixing” was socially forbidden, the N-word was used frequently, and dismissive attitudes from whites were not uncommon. These experiences are ingrained in my memory. Despite living in a society still harbouring overtly racist attitudes, I was able to climb the social and economic ladder beyond what my parents could have ever dreamed.
Racist attitudes have continued to improve, but black poverty rates remain disproportionately high. It is clear that a multitude of factors are to blame for the stagnation of the black underclass, and I have spent much of my academic life trying to understand what enables flourishing even within hostile environments such as the one I grew up in.
Spending so much of our time determining which attitudes, institutional policies and social structures are or are not racist seems to me to draw our attention away from more obvious paths to flourishing for suffering racial minorities. Racism and injustice are threats to society that we should weed out wherever they are found. But most of what holds African Americans back in the bottom quintile of the income distribution are factors other than oppression or racial injustice, and these urgently need our attention too.
I believe it to be more likely that so many fail to flourish for two reasons – one that could be called cultural and one that could be called systemic.
Cultural Factors
Those living in cultures suffering the extremes of poverty have adopted cultural practices that help them survive in these environments. However, some of these practices hinder their assimilation into the systems and structures of the broader society. In this way, the problems faced in the black underclass are not because of systemic racism per se. It is largely a cultural divide that separates groups. This is essentially the conclusion of the great Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, in much of his work studying inner-city blacks.
Culture is an undeniable factor in determining life outcomes. Wilson points out that some cultural traits are instrumental in perpetuating the alienation of the black underclass from the larger society.[3] For example, inner-city culture defines and directs the nature and extent of trust, the concept and importance of “street smarts” to everyday survival, and what it means to “act black” or “act white.” In some inner-city contexts, it may be wise to avoid eye contact with those you meet. But step outside of this context into the wider society, say for a job interview, and this same act can be perceived as antisocial, leading the interviewer to classify them as an undesirable applicant.[4]
Negative perceptions such as these are formed independently of the race group of the applicant, and (in this example) improving the applicant’s chance of success would most likely require coaching them in how to present well and to understand corporate culture and expectations.
Systemic Factors
The legacy of the Jim Crow era of American history is that despite racial barriers to political and economic prosperity being formally removed in the 1960s, a whole group of African Americans were nevertheless left behind. Their progress was blocked by the class barriers that are naturally embedded in an only partially meritocratic system. This is what happens when a country segregates, fails to adequately educate and discriminates against an entire community for generations. Merely opening legal doors to advancement does nothing when social and educational ones have been closed off for so long. In the modern era, those in the black underclass have not the social capital to connect themselves to otherwise available opportunities, nor the human capital to perform the necessary tasks in an increasingly technology-based job market.[5]
Whatever racial prejudices may still be at play in American society, the bigger injustice may be that we have failed so many inner-city kids and families in the American social contract, which strives to offer equal opportunities to all. Conservatives tend to oppose the idea that society should produce equal outcomes for all, and rightly so, but they fail to appreciate that we have not even begun to approximate a social landscape in which it can be said of the citizenry that they have equal opportunities. So many in the black underclass are floundering because we have not resourced them with the necessary tools with which to succeed within our systems and structures. Policies that would make the largest generational shift would target the family, education, social networking and the power of personal agency. Policies, systems and structures that undermine these should be dismantled.
Towards Equal Opportunity
Social structures promote or restrict advancement of individuals based upon their conformity to the implicit values and goals of the broader society that are embedded in the structures themselves. For instance, markets generally reward some combination of ingenuity, hard work, fortitude, competition, honesty and interpersonal connection. They typically discourage some combination of laziness, fragility, dishonesty and antisocial and uncooperative behaviour. Similarly, the Western elementary education system was built, in part, to help foster skills and behaviours we value as a society. Academic and personal success within this system is determined by one’s ability to internalize and consistently reproduce these traits. Traits like diligence, perseverance, self-discipline, and pro-social behaviors which facilitate cooperation are all expectations within the system’s structural makeup. There are incentives and sanctions within this structure designed to induce these traits.
As Christians, we should be seeking to create systems and structures within society that align with God’s design for human flourishing. This is where it is important to have some sense of what constitutes biblical human flourishing so that we can examine both structure and culture in hopes of pointing the way forward in these communities. For individuals to flourish, both structures and cultures must be brought into closer alignment with God’s intended design for them. We would do well to think more deeply as God’s people about how he has intended both of these spheres to function so that we can lead the way in our personal ministries, involvement in mediating institutions, and our roles in civil society. We know that when God’s shalom is present then there is prosperity, health, reconciliation and contentment. It is when we seek to live in ways that are contrary to God’s design in our social structures, our individual lives, or both that we see God’s shalom hindered in both our lives and society.
Racism is an evil that all Christians should oppose wherever it is found. However, in a deeply polarized post-Civil-Rights political landscape, it is easy to get distracted from factors that may go further in explaining our social inequalities. This is an opportunity cost that the poor can ill afford. Let’s not get distracted from building better families, creating educational opportunities, and providing better job training so that we can break the cycle of poverty in this generation.
Eric Parker is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Highlands College. He holds a Master of Divinity from Beeson Divinity School and is currently completing a Master of Theology in Public Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
[1] Eric Hazan et al., A New Future of Work: The Race to Deploy AI and Raise Skills in Europe and Beyond (McKinsey Global Institute, May 2024), 15–17.
[2] Emily Shrider and John Creamer, “Poverty in the United States: 2022” (U.S. Census Bureau) https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.pdf.
[3] William Julius Wilson, More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009), 14–15.
[4] Wilson, More than Just Race, 17–18.
[5] Wilson, More than Just Race, 9.