Environnment

 

You Don't Have To Follow the Other Fish

My wise cousin Steve and I don’t disagree often, but there’s one subject we do disagree on, so maybe I should talk about it a little.  He says that changes in society should be gradual. That gives people time to get used to a new way of thinking. It gives time for a new culture to develop, and it reduces the chance of violent conflict. For my part, I think if a change is good, then the quicker you make it, the better.

Steve and I were both raised to be prejudiced against blacks. Neither of us are now, at least we try not to be. I changed my thinking when I got a job as a nursing assistant at the state University Hospital. Most of the nurses and the nurses’ aides, the people I worked with, were black. I liked them. They weren’t dirty, or immoral, or stupid. In fact they knew more than I did about caring for patients. There were cultural differences, but mostly they were just like everyone else I knew. 

All the arguments, all the rationalizations for segregation I had heard during my life just fell away when I was put into an environment that was mainly black. When I actually got to know some black people, I could no longer feel superior. My change of thinking was pretty much instantaneous. 

It’s environment that shapes opinions. If you stay in the same environment that fostered your opinions, they won’t change, so if you grew up in a segregated environment, you’re probably going to stay a racist. 

Back when I was a child, black people were demonstrating for their rights. Whites, mainly in the south, were violently opposed giving blacks the right to vote, the right to an equal education. They tried to block black children from getting into public schools, but since schools have been integrated, it’s no big deal. The environment has changed. I think that we justify whatever situation we’re in, even if we are forced into it.  

Unfortunately, a “bad” environment can also change your thinking. When I was in Vietnam, I was shocked to discover that almost everyone thought of the Vietnamese as inferior. They were dishonest, cowardly, cruel, ungrateful for our “help.” It was okay to kill them, because their lives weren’t worth anything anyway. So young, mainly Christian Americans, incidentally both black and white, brought up to respect human life and to believe in equality and freedom of thought, almost instantly became prejudiced and contemptuous of the Vietnamese. It was because of they were living in a prejudiced environment, and the change in thinking was almost instantaneous, just like my experience working in the hospital with blacks.

If you grow up in a Christian society you’re going to be a Christian. Same with Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, etc. If you’re born in a capitalist society, you’re going to believe that competition makes things better, that the wealthy should have more power, all the ideas that go along with capitalism. By and large, we don’t question our culture. I think that many people assume that these ideas are ingrained in us, and that they can’t be changed. I agree that it’s hard to change a person’s opinion by arguing. People automatically defend their opinions in an argument, and the human mind is good at rationalization. If they have an idea that’s part of their culture, then everyone and every institution reinforces their opinions. 

But it’s not the rationalizations, the evidence, that forms our opinions, it’s the environment, the culture. I’m not saying that you can’t buck your culture. I knew a few Americans in Vietnam who respected and admired the Vietnamese. There are people who leave cults, Christians who become atheists, capitalists who become socialists, but it’s always the minority.  The effect of environment is strong. I think it’s important to question our culture, not to take for granted that we’re right and everyone else is wrong, or that other cultures can’t work just as well as ours. 

I think this environmental effect is what has created the polarized society we live in now. With the internet, people are able to just listen to those who agree with them. Just listening to one slant on the news, or even “fake news” causes us to become even more convinced of our own prejudices. Wealthy people influence news reporting more than the poor or middle class, so social programs that benefit the poor and would eventually lead to a more egalitarian society are voted out. 

I think the MAGA Republicans understand the effect of environment. That’s why they are buying up the local TV stations, and recently CNN and CBS. They already own FOX. If they can control what we hear, our environment, then they can convince us they are right. I think we are in grave danger now. The MAGA’s have already won most of the state legislatures and the presidency twice. But they have also changed the real environment: prices, social programs, and foreign policy, so hopefully this will convince people they’re wrong. 

We don’t have time for gradual change. We still have a democracy, even though the MAGAs are trying to take it away, by making it harder for immigrants, women, poor people to vote, and by controlling those who run for office, and by gerrymandering districts. We need to fight to be heard by the media, we need to vote, to demonstrate, to run for office, before it’s too late.  

 

Immigration

 

Statue of Liberty

Tonight I saw a video of an Episcopal bishop telling a group of priests that they should get their affairs in order. He said that if the immigration crisis continues to get worse, some of them might become martyrs for defending immigrants. Trump is really bearing down on Minnesota. He’s preparing to move an army battalion into Minneapolis to reinforce the 3000 ICE agents already there. His Department of Justice has initiated investigations to find excuses to bring charges against the Minnesota governor, Tim Waltz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who have spoken out against Trump’s invasion.   

Trump is rounding up immigrants, even those here legitimately, deporting them, putting them in prison camps, both in the US and in other countries without warrants, splitting up families, creating fear in the immigrant community. 

It’s the same plan Trump has followed before: address a problem that doesn’t exist, or do something to cause a problem, and then rush in to “solve” it. He did the same thing by declaring immigration as a problem during his first term, and by invading Venezuela, and threatening to invade Greenland more recently. 

In their book Good Economics for Hard Times, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo address the subject of immigration citing the scientific literature concerning its causes and results. They point out that most people assume that immigrants are poor, criminals, the dregs of society, who leave their country to escape poverty, or to indulge in criminal activity. They think that immigrants will take their jobs, and cause their wages to drop.

It has been the same during previous waves of immigration. People feared the Irish after the potato famine forced immigration from Ireland in the 1860’s, the Italians after failure of farming in southern Italy during the 1880’s, and the Chinese during the California gold rush. In each case the government took measures to limit immigration, just as Trump is doing now.  

Most migrants have a valuable skill. Doctors, scientists, and engineers who have studied in the US often decide to stay. Even unskilled laborers usually know someone who has previously migrated to the destination country and found work. People migrate, not because they’re poor, but because they have to. They leave  Mexico because drug wars make life unsafe. They  leave Guatemala and Haiti because of gang violence. Some come to the US to have more opportunities. The poor don’t migrate because they can’t afford it.

Several studies show that migration doesn’t affect salaries or jobs of native workers. Migrants only get jobs natives don’t want, or in places natives don’t want to go. Employing migrant skilled workers actually helps low income natives because they provide services for them. For instance, immigrant doctors often practice in rural areas where there is a shortage. Immigration boosts the economy by improving production, and immigrants have a lower crime rate than the indigenous population. And there is definitely an advantage for immigrants. They earn more money, improve their standard of living, and usually send money home, evening out wealth between countries.  So Immigration is good for both immigrants and for the destination country.

Still, people are reluctant to migrate, even within the same country, because they fear the risks of failure, of living in another environment, of losing family support.  Financial incentives have been tried, but are not very effective because immigrants still fear change. What’s more effective is to remove obstacles: making costs and rewards of migration clearer, making it easier to send money home, providing some insurance in case of failure, easing integration with housing assistance, premigration matching of jobs, help with child care. What Trump is doing is the opposite.