Strengthening democracy enough to deal successfully with our biggest problems and needs necessarily involves overcoming the entrenched resistance of economic and cultural elites. Reducing economic inequality and creating the political unity to solve climate and environmental problems, as two examples, will be impossible unless we can also overcome the many other divisions that prevent us from making common cause. Unity is necessary to advance our common interests, but our uncommon interests often keep us divided, preventing us from uniting to prevail.

Elsewhere I have addressed the vital need to reduce the prejudices and biases that prevent our red state and blue state tribes from recognizing and acting on their common interests. But that, even if successful, will not be enough.

US society is incredibly diverse, and its many populations often feel, with considerable justification, that their distinctive problems are not understood by the other segments of society, or by the whole of society, and thus they feel that they are on their own to deal with the critical issues of greatest immediate concern to them.

Promoting cooperation to increase economic opportunity and advancement for the entire society thus requires overcoming a wide array of intergroup barriers related to race, religion, class, age, and sexual prejudice and discrimination.

Dealing with the police violence felt by young black men can seem only distantly related to fighting antisemitism, or combating the prejudice against gays or transgender individuals, or fighting for the rights of indigenous tribes on tribal lands. The problems of poor black single parent mothers can seem disconnected from the problems of middle-class mothers in conventional families who find themselves radically overworked and stressed to the breaking point by demanding jobs combined with the continuing expectation that they will cover way more than their fair share of parenting and household chores.

Elsewhere I have suggested that equality requires more than equal economic opportunity. It requires equal wealth and income opportunity for sure, but it also requires equal opportunity related to power, pride, and dignity. Much as been written on these subjects, and much more will be written in the future. It will take centuries to entirely free ourselves from many ancient prejudices, and this is a subject too vast to engage in these pages. The discussion below will deal with the most pressing divisions currently preventing us from making common cause, but much more will eventually have to be engaged to achieve a society in which full equality for all prevails.

The discussion below will pick out some near-term priorities for what must be done to make progress on these issues, with most of the focus on the economic and other direct harms most directly blocking making common cause.

Before delving into a few specifics, it must be noted that discrimination compounds. The future of a poor black child of a single mother is blighted by race, class, sex, and age prejudices. Race, class, sex, and age combine to create a perfect storm of prejudice, and the victims in this example are the most innocent among us.

But the fate of a white elderly working-class gay man with HIV is blighted by multiple prejudices as well.

Imagine if compassion extended across such lines. What if the political power, such as it is, of single black moms and elderly working-class whites were applied to the problems of both groups. Hard to imagine? Of course. But a solidarity of compassion across such divisions would improve the prospects of both groups, and this kind of solidarity should be our goal.

Racial Inequality & Discrimination

A short list of priorities to address racial inequality and discrimination would include:

• Restoration of the protections of the Civil Rights Act, and a vigorous fight to counter the effects of voter suppression and gerrymandering and to equalize the political power of racial minorities.

• Increased funding for prenatal care, child nutrition, preschool programs, and public schools in poor black neighborhoods.

• An intensified effort to stop the police violence visited disproportionately on young black men. Such violence is a fact, not an opinion, and so long as it is tolerated by the majority, common cause will be thwarted. Establish civilian control of the police.

• Equality of employment opportunity is and will remain a top priority. As expressed elsewhere, our goals should include a good job for everyone who wants one. Special efforts will be required to make sure racial minorities share fully in such opportunities. The False Promise of Meritocracy in The Atlantic reports that "Managers who believe themselves to be fair and objective judges of ability often overlook women and minorities who are deserving of job offers and pay increases."

Women's Rights & Sexual Prejudice

Priorities to address sexual inequality, sexual prejudice, and discrimination include:

• Abandon the explicitly sexist attitude that the man is in charge, that he makes the "big" decisions. This is still the explicit view in perhaps half of all American households.

• Many men of a more liberal persuasion may think of themselves as not sexist, but when they and their working wives get home from jobs, somehow it is the woman who ends up doing more of the work on the home end of things, often much more.

• Women's work. So long as women are expected to do more than their share of household and child raising work for free, there will never be economic equality for women. This is the elephant in the room, and it is a pervasive problem cutting across all political, racial, and income divides. It is everywhere.

• Equal pay. Too often it is still the case that a woman will be paid less for the same job.

• Reproductive freedom and abortion rights. Women should get to make these decisions. If they don't want to have a baby, that should be their right. No woman should be forced, or pressured, to have an unwanted child.

• Ensuring that equal rights and opportunities include all elements of sexual orientation. In other words, no descrimination for being gay, lesbian, or transgender.

• If society as a whole is concerned about a failure to reproduce at a replacement rate, then we must stop penalizing childbearing (by treating it as a free service) and start fully rewarding it.

• Steps to combat age discrimination, as discussed below, also benefit women, as many of the related costs and burdens caused by unequal treatment fall disproportionately on women.

Age Discrimination

This includes adopting, strengthening, and expanding programs and policies to assist disadvantaged youth and those impacted by age discrimination, including:

• Passing an enhanced and refundable child tax credit for low- and moderate-income households (the lowest 50 percent by income).

• Passing a child nutrition allowance and childcare subsidies for low- and moderate-income households (the lowest 50 percent by income).

• Passing a refundable tax credit for elderly (and disabled) dependents in-home care.

• Eliminate mandatory retirement age employment provisions.

• Adopt laws prohibiting unequal treatment based on age, including in hiring, promotions, and workforce and professional development programs.

• Support continuous training and educational opportunities for older adults, enabling them to remain competitive in the job market.

Religious Divisions & Conflicts

• Protect religious freedom by enforcing laws and regulations against any form of discrimination based on religion (including against the non-religious).

• Outlaw requirements or mandates based on religion.

• Enforce the constitutional church-state separation, including denying taxpayer support to religious institutions and schools.

• Guarantee reproductive freedom based on religious freedom. Restrictions on abortion represent the imposition of one group's religious views on others who don't share those views.

Class & The "Meritocratic" Bias

The "well-educated" sometimes look down their noses at those using words incorrectly, or who lack formal education, or who lack "middle-class" sensibilities. I've written elsewhere about the psychological harms caused by our meritocratic educational system – its tendency to breed insecurity and thus resentment from a very young age.

The economic inequalities suffered by the working class are covered extensively in Prosperity for All. But the desires for pride, dignity, and the respect of others are universal, and the harms of economic class inequalities are exacerbated by these less tangible but important inequalities.

Here, my comments are focused mostly on the weaknesses in the educated classes' view of their superiority. Essentially this boils down to a greatly narrowed view of intelligence, ability, and performance. Our culture can foster the idea that math and language skills are all important and the only forms of ability deserving of respect. And our views when assigning respect also can overlook the vital element of effort, the reality that a hard-working person of average ability can and often does outperform an unmotivated person of superior ability.

Howard Gardner in his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, identifies several additional mental capabilities worthy of being considered forms of intelligence. Examples include logical thinking, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and musical intelligence. Other cognitive scientists, researchers and thinkers have proposed many other forms of mental ability.

Spatial visualization, for example, is a vital ability underlying many valuable skills, but sometimes it gets little acknowledgement or respect. Likewise, other basic mental abilities underlie a wide range of practical performance skills but may also not be accorded appropriate respect.

To any such list must be added the ability to remember things. Both in span of memory and in duration, people greatly differ. Then they differ in their ability to recall applicable things at the appropriate moments. The capacity to pay attention, or the propensity to pay attention, also differs.

Numeracy, as in the capacity to see things in relative terms, or proportionality, also differs greatly. It is one of the most basic elements of what we often refer to as "common sense."

Abilities like the capacity to learn a second language also vary, or the ability to pick up and apply technical jargon appropriately, often without any formal training. Some people can seem to absorb knowledge from the air around them. As cognitive science progresses, we are likely to conclude that there are many more mental abilities than we normally recognize.

When you consider that these abilities are often independent or partially independent from each other, you then see that the number of combinations and permutations that comprise human variability becomes enormous. And remember, the propensity to utilize abilities will also vary a great deal between individuals.

Individuals who do not test well for math or language skills can nevertheless be extremely capable in applying other forms of intelligence. So much so that it is often observed that almost everyone can be good at something. All this supports a view that accords respect, dignity, and pride much more widely and includes many "working-class skills" as deserving.

Personal experience validates this point of view. I've often been amazed by the person who seems to grasp assembly directions while I'm still struggling through the first step, the person who really can "fix anything," and the person who seems to understand and remember an amazing variety of practical skills that I struggle to master. I can hardly justify seeing these people as not of equal ability. They have different abilities, and in those, they are often clearly my superior.

D.C.
Published:October 2023
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