Social and Political Systems: Success and Failure

By Rev. Fred Morton (June, 2020)  Guest Contributor

“For ye are all one in Christ Jesus” Galatians 3:28 (KJV)

We all live within social and cultural systems, some which are healthy and some which are not. The Merriam Webster Dictionary calls a social system “the patterned series of interrelationships existing between individuals, groups, and institutions and forming a coherent whole.”  A cultural system is the social norms, beliefs, laws, and customs (religion and arts) of the people within the social system or society.

Today, we are keenly aware that we have a number of different societies and cultures in the United States. We are all caught up in the caldron of conversations about the differences and discriminations against people who are somehow (culturally, socially, ethnically and racially) different from those in our particular culture and social group. For those of us claiming the title of Christian, we are aware of the contrast between how we live and think and the overarching value of our Christian faith which asserts “We are all the same!” in the eyes of God while we know that in our lives, “It ain’t necessarily so”.

I propose a little tutorial on “Systems—How they work”. Although I am no authority, I’ve taken a fair number of courses on sociology, psychology, history and so on. This knowledge, however, is not as valuable as my own jaded experience. 

Lesson One: How Systems Work

All  living organisms operate within systems. Biologically we are born of parents who raise us in some kind of nurturing network which eventually launches us out on our own—or so we think. But we are still part of a system—more or less. And life becomes a drama of how we dance in that arena as full-fledged members of our tribe. Or as rebels who wander off seeking new and more adventurous connections. 

No matter how far we wander our initial connection is never forgotten but only amended or embellished. Our point of origin is a seminal reference point that ultimately doesn’t define us, but does set the pattern of who we become.. Our group of origin always sets the limits of how far afield we go or how advanced we become.

Let me bore you with my family history, the Morton side. Some 400 years ago the main Morton patriarch came to America with the Pilgrim community in Plymouth Massachusetts. George Morton was a landed laborer born in Scrooby, England. He along with scores of others in the community, experiencing the hardships of a lean economy and a lack luster religion, joined the company of a thriving house church led by very progressive clergy who were challenging the prevailing Church of England. 

Harassed by the authorities they finally quit their own country for the Netherlands and eventually made their way to North America. The community were mostly working class folk, skilled laborers and small entrepreneurs, and a few professionals.  They accurately reflected the ordinary folk of early seventeenth century England. 

George Morton’s family were of working stock. Only in later generations would some rise to higher station, but none to any elite rank within the colonial period or early America. One served as a low ranking officer in the Continental Army. The Morton dynasty appear to have migrated South to North Carolina, then to Mississippi and Arkansas. 

By the time of the Civil War some were modest land holders in Arkansas and Mississippi one even holding more than a dozen slaves. But their overall rank and station in life did not change appreciably over several centuries. Today the Mortons can boast of several who earned college degrees and some measure of social prominence (one was president of a Baptist college in Arkansas). None rose to wealth and prominence or earned PhDs. Mortons were in the middle of the pack. And that is where we have arrived within the past century. There are scattered college degrees, and a very few professionals have emerged. And surely no new world class researchers or grandees of business and industry.

And I would say the same for my neighborhood and schools. Most of us kept in the lanes of our middle class (apologies to Lawrence McMahon) origins. As far as I know Treadwell schools have not produced a Bill Gates, Sam Walton, or Bill Clinton. And we have probably done a good job of maintaining our own in terms of levels of income and social status. We hovered around the medium income and life expectancy.

That is the way systems are supposed to work. They perpetuate themselves and their members. They do allow folks who chose to venture out. But few do. And that is OK. It makes for a good life and social fabric for all concerned.

And it is pretty easy to be all of one kind when you are in the same kind.

But what happens when systems are disrupted?

Lesson Two: Systems Disrupted

It is common knowledge that American natives before European colonization had a robust culture in nearly every way as sophisticated and vibrant as the most forward-looking European societies. Their populations exceeded that of Europe. They had a science which enabled them to navigate the oceans and organize food productions, irrigation, and agricultural production.

 They developed means to settle disputes and conduct wars similarly to European powers. They had sophisticated spiritual and religious traditions which sustained their communal life. Their main deficit was that none had a developed written language (excepting the Cherokee nation by the early nineteenth-century). That along with lack of military technology and vulnerability to disease brought by Europeans led to their undoing.

Within three hundred years (1500-1800) their numbers had been radically decimated. They were pushed out of lands they considered their home onto small enclaves or reservations. In central and South America many were taken into servitude. 

By the late nineteenth century marked by the Trail of Tears (1830s) and the Wounded Knee  Massacre (1890,) the number and vitality of Native American peoples had been dramatically shrunk by disease and oppression, brought by Europeans. Shortly thereafter deliberate policies of re-education at perversely named “mission schools” sought to de-program Native American children of their culture, language and religion—all for the sake of “Americanizing the Indian”.

It is self-evident what happened to the social and cultural systems of Native American peoples. They went from being a thriving people to a dependent population living on government reservation with subsistence support. There was little left of their original heritage in the way of hunting, migrating across large spaces, negotiating trade and war and peace matters with other tribes. Americans tried mightily to strip them of their native culture and languages.

For the youth growing up in this era it was a Jim Thorp world. Thorp was a Native American multi-sport athlete who won a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. The only way forward was to find a field of endeavor in the white world where you could succeed (athletics, professional schools, medicine or the military). But to do so meant to abandon home and family communities on reservations or tribal communities. It became a matter of living in two worlds—neither seemed compatible with the other.

So that is what happens to a social-cultural system when it is disrupted by outside influences, which reduce the overall vibrancy of life. Among all the categories of people in the USA today Native American have the highest incidence  of health, chemical dependency, and poverty. Yet as a people most remain fiercely resilient and loyal to their heritage no matter the personal cost.

But here is one group which has fared poorly because of major disruptions. Yet the group persists. And members adhere to it and work to make it even more vibrant. Nevertheless, it is notable that the White Mortons of Lesson One were sustained at about the same level over this four-century period. The Native Americans took a steep and irreversible dive.

Lesson three: An Even Worse Case

Most now are familiar with how this tragedy unfolded over two and half centuries in North America. The first slaves were off loaded at Jamestown Colony 1619 almost by happenstance. But that quirk of circumstances rapidly turned industrial providing cheap labor for the dawning farm industries of the Colonial South. 

The circumstances by which the captures occurred were simple. Slavery had been a legal system in the British Empire and in the original 13 American Colonies. Black enslaved persons were considered property and subject to sometimes unspeakable cruelty. The system emerged from the long-standing practice of slavery throughout Africa. 

What made the system especially cruel was their removal from the home in Africa to be transported to the Americas to a world, culture and languages completely unknown to them. The transport itself on sailing ships was inherently dangerous. Countless thousands 

died of disease or drowned. And once in America chances many families were split up when sold. Most were dispatched to farms or plantations where they worked as field hands. A few were house servants. 

In the main they were cut off from their culture and tribal connections and languages. Their lives became drudgery work bereft of nearly all the enrichments of culture and family. Their system, in contrast to Native Americans, was absolutely minimal. What meagre enjoyments were borrowed from their master’s culture. They had nothing to cling to as theirs alone.

These were a people dragged to a hostile shore who had to re-invent who they were. They did this in remarkable fashion over nearly three centuries. In contrast to Native Americans, they were cut off from their native culture, language and religion but were remarkably able to salvage and reconstruct some elements. 

Perhaps their most remarkable achievement was carving out a distinctly new version of Christianity—a people still in bondage under a new pharaoh but with a winsome outlook more transcendent and peaceful than their Haitian brothers and sisters who rose up in violence against white masters.

American blacks remained until their emancipation a servile people deliberately kept illiterate and almost totally impoverished in a rigid caste system which allowed rare opportunities to escape. But when legal emancipation came with the Civil War their legal slavery was replaced by a form of virtual serfdom in spite of Constitutional amendments that guaranteed their rights to vote and freedom under law. Progress to higher levels of education and greater acquisition to wealth were slow and often met with overt and frequently violent resistance from the white culture.

That was our national narrative in the post Reconstruction era—Jim Crow and all manner of measures to push back and thwart the strivings of African Americans to access the actual rights of full emancipation and citizenship. Slowly there was progress as a group blacks made progress despite opposition. Not steadily but haltingly there was progress in terms of income, political participation, access to quality education and the full spectrum of social index of power and wealth. 

But the harsh reality remains that this historic bridling has deprived African Americans of the option to acquire wealth comparable to the mainstream. The handicap of being black in America historically puts you well behind the average white person, no matter what your intellect or effort.

Arresting Conclusions

All lessons done, now what? Systems matter. Your whence highly determines your where in the world—and what you have and the power, influence, and pleasures you have. Groups and  peoples interacting in the same spaces navigate highly complicated dances and sometimes

 The counter dependencies are the stuff of political and cultural drama and the stuff of real human tragedies and transformations. But practically what do we do with it here and now with minority peoples long standing and recent who have experienced the down side, the disadvantaged side, the under privileged side?  

Here in Memphis with well over half a century of extraordinary charity from the haves to the have nots, it is apparent that charity doesn’t solve the problem. It does alleviate or mitigate much suffering but does not significantly alter the metrics of  privilege and inequity. That is why major overhaul is required—a big ,big do over if you will. The kind of thing that Dr. King addressed 50 years ago in the war on poverty and Dr.  William Barber and Dr. Liz TheoHarris call for today in the updated Poor People’s Campaign.

We will not be one until the pernicious toxins of racism, the war economy, environmental devastation, and white nationalism are dealt with. These are the forces that perpetuation the alienation and handicapping of minorities and the poor. Dealing forthright with these will set us on the road to become truly One People. It will allow these systems that have nurtured us to allow us to thrive but never at the expense of our neighbor.