CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN
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communication.
It
is a society with great extremes of wealth and
poverty, and a huge range of gradations between the extremes; grada–
tions closely monitored and used by those w ith goods to sell, and, con–
sequently, by the media. It's not obvious that equality is the distinguish–
ing characteristic of such a society.
Yet, of course, one knows what is meant by the point. What is
meant is equality of opportunity., not that it exists or can exist, here or
elsewhere, in a pure condition. But there is more of it in this country
th an in most other countries, and it does produce a pleasant social
breeziness lacking in other cultures. The breeze is produced by the
circulation of elites, not only up and down, but sideways as well. What I
mean by "sideways" is that people can move out of their neighborhoods,
and the culture of their neighborhoods, and go elsewhere. And this is
not the least precious aspect of American freedom.
At the same discussion I have just mentioned, there was considerable
talk of ethnic cultural identities, amid a general assumption that these are
invariably a good thing. One of those present happened to be a citizen
of former Yugoslavia , a Bosnian , and a resident until recently in
Sarajevo . She intervened
to
suggest that ethnic solidarity can be a trap.
This thought was dismissed, rather summarily. She was given to under–
stand that ethnicity might perhaps take an ugly turn in backward places
like former Yugoslavia, but that it had no such potential in the United
States.
I think there are quite a lot of young American students, those living
in various ghettos and anxious to get on with studies related to a wider
culture, who wou ld not agree. There are some in the ghettos, and
among their toughest denizens, who resent such students, quite under–
standably, precisely because of the upward mobility these students are ac–
quiring. And when the national elite is expanded
to
include more mem–
bers of racial minorites, those re cruits wi ll indeed be products of the
ghetto culture, but mainly in the sense that they have managed to escape
from it, generally both sideways and upward.
Two questions arise here, concerning the possible effects on policy of
the kind of expanded elite I have been discussing. Will it be more capa–
ble of handling America's domestic problems than the current still fairly
narrow elite has shown itself to be? And will it be better able to handle
America 's international relations in the post-Cold-War arena than that
older elite has been?
On both scores, I am inclined to return relatively optimistic answers.
This is more obvious in the first case than in the second. It is true that
white rac ism has done an enormous amount, historically, to create the
