If James Q. Wilson is right, and memory runneth not to when he was not, the problem is that males are not naturally suited to civilization. So society must evolve institutional restraints and correctives to make men more civilized than they tend to be. Liberals must rethink plans for social perfection through social reforms. But conservatives, too, are discomfited: Social policy does not promise perfection but it is tremendously important in staving off trouble, so government’s role is inescapably ambitious.
In an American Enterprise Institute lecture on “Human Nature and Social Progress,” UCLA’s Wilson, president of the American Political Science Association, says that much of “the underclass problem arises from the incomplete and increasingly difficult task of socializing some males.” Humans are social animals requiring much formative support and guidance from society. But male and female humans differ substantially in the extent to which they need, and are inclined to contribute to, child care, fidelity to a single mate and peaceful relations with others. In all societies, says Wilson, men are more likely than women to play roughly, drive recklessly, fight and assault. Those behavioral differences, which appear early in life, have a biological basis in neurochemical stuff like testosterone. Socialization must contend against biology.
Many male traits, such as aggressiveness and hyperactivity, were useful many millennia ago when there were woolly mammoths to be hunted, or during the Thirty Years’ War. But those traits are ruinous in today’s cities. Aggression is no longer an adaptive trait in bureaucratized societies that require conformity to many norms, and technical competence more than boldness and physical prowess. Life in large cities has weakened, to the point of disappearance, civilizing ties of kinship and such institutions as churches, political parties, trade unions and fraternal organizations. Cities bring young males into close contact with strangers, multiplying opportunities for aggression.
The 19th century coped with the consequences of industrialism and urbanization by what is now derided as “Victorian morality,” including the idea of the “gentleman.” The aspiration was in the word–gentling. The idea involved such seemingly, but not really, minor matters as table manners and sportsmanship. Alas, the modern age is concerned with “personality” rather than character.
Character is rigid, elitist, moralistic. Personality is spontaneous, democratic. Elites abandoned the ethic of character, an ethic that encouraged and even enforced right conduct. The abandonment coincided with two epochal events, the great migration of Southern rural blacks to Northern cities and creation of a welfare state that made survival not dependent on work or charity. Today, many entry-level jobs have left cities but prosperity has enabled young men to deal in drugs and guns. We have reproduced the historic conditions for a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; male status determined by combat and sexual conquest.
The problems of the underclass, particularly male joblessness and illegitimate births, have been unresponsive to social policies. The policies have mistakenly presumed that the problems arise from perverse incentives government can adjust or obstacles government can abolish. But, says Wilson, if mere incentives were the problem, low-income blacks would not be displaced from day labor by low-income Latinos; black-owned businesses would not be replaced by Korean-owned businesses in the same neighborhoods; low-income white women would become welfare recipients at the same rate as low-income black women; the average young black male would not be 10 times more likely to commit murder than a young white male.
Our society clings to its belief in the healing powers of better incentives and fewer barriers to individual striving. The alternative belief, that the problem is cultural (habits, mores, customs), is dismaying: It is harder to change culture than to change incentives and barriers. And faith in incentives is linked to an assumption central to our politics–that people are good at pursuing their own interests. Today’s underclass is mostly black but includes only a tiny minority of blacks. Most blacks are middle class. The underclass is a group that has not benefited from our society’s generally successful strategies for habituation of human beings through the do’s and don’ts of daily life.
Wilson suggests two concrete measures–better security, and boarding schools for fatherless children. Take back the streets. Begin by reinstitutionalizing the mentally ill, who communicate an infectious, demoralizing ambience of disorder. “Neighborhood standards may be set by mothers,” Wilson says, “but they are enforced by fathers.” Not by absent fathers. Wilson advocates public and private policing to give the poor something like the protection the rich give themselves in gated suburban communities and guarded high-rises. He suggests the military tactic of “perimeter control”–blockade some streets, put checkpoints at some intersections and all public housing to disarm the armed. The boarding schools should aim to send students to colleges or apprenticeship programs. Critics will say: The schools will engage in moral, political, religious or ethnocentric indoctrination. Wilson says: “I certainly hope so.” Do it, but do it wisely.
Government now toils under a crushing weight of rules, set-asides, quotas, citizens’ councils, impact statements and general rights-mongering. It can do almost nothing, and probably nothing as decisive as Wilson wants done. (You conservatives who hate government should be happy. Are you?) Still, the best hope is for policies that will help produce more orderly and employable males. As Wilson says, “We do know how to wage war on idleness, idleness that is the breeding ground of selfishness and the arena for pointless masculine display.”
