8. Measuring Equality
In Mississippi, where median household income is $39,000, it might seem unimaginable in that people in New Jersey earn over $71,000 a year, and that people in Princeton earn a median of $110,000 a year. Correcting for expenses—it costs 28% less to live in Mississippi—the Southern state’s household income would be about $50,000, but the comparison is hardly fair. For people who live in Trenton, New Jersey earning the household median of $27,000 a year, Princeton is very far away, and Manhattan’s exciting job market might as well be in Hong Kong. Those statistics can be measured. We can count the number of high school dropouts in Trenton (over 50 percent), family poverty rate (31 percent) and crime rate (22 homicides per 100,000 people, higher than Newark or Detroit). It’s far more difficult to calculate the expense associated with a dream deferred; the lack of useful education; inability to attend college; lousy decisions made when options are few and adult supervision is lacking; and employment is informal / inconsistent. When statistics are widely available, it’s easy to draw comparisons to prescribe specific actions, and to measure results. When data is lacking—as it is for shantytowns near large cities—we tend to generalize, to perceive the whole situation as a blurry mess. This shapes our perception of equality as an impossible dream. Responsibility is difficult to assign. Politicians are not motivated to take action: downtrodden people don’t vote, so their voice is neither heard nor measured. (Striking example: the state legislators in New Jersey who work in the capitol building in Trenton, but fail to improve the city’s fortunes.) In order to provide meaningful solutions, we must frame the problem of inequality in terms that can be understood. The World Bank (2006) recommends these starting points: equitable access in economic/financial, social, human and natural resource assets; access to basic services, and fair-handed participation in local and national social life. Step-by-step, we’re improving, but progress is extremely slow.
7. Digital Divide
We have never enjoyed such abundance: 30 million books, free, from Google, and 2 million more, at a discounted price, from Amazon; plus over 100,000 audio recordings read by authors or actors. A million eBooks are available, usually delivered in less than a minute. Although it’s difficult to estimate, there are probably 2 billion web pages, blogs, articles, essays, plus 432,000 new YouTube videos added every day. But they’re not for everyone. They’re for the fortunate humans who are on the productive side of the digital divide. How wide is the gap? Perhaps 1 billion of the 7 billion earthlings enjoy routine access, a rough count—nearly all humans are on the far side of the chasm. They lack not only the devices, they lack the necessary electricity and telephone infrastructure to make digital access possible—and the funds required to purchase and maintain a proper computer, tablet or smart phone. If we build a bridge, make the necessary investments and see them through, we’ll double or triple the number of connected humans. The newly connected benefit from increased literacy, new forms of exchange (including micro-loans, etc.), and the ability to experience a world that was never before available. If we fail, then we continue to drive a deeper wedge between those who enjoy digital access and those who do not—and this will likely result in unrest, high levels of frustration, failure to notify large numbers of people about devastating weather events, ignorance, and abuse. Who will build the bridge? In this case, the marketplace seems to be solving the problem in the form of less expensive mobile devices, innovative pricing models, investment in infrastructure from sources outside developing nations, and increasingly powerful wireless companies around the world. Governments are involved, and so are some local entrepreneurs, but mostly, this seems to be a big company game. What is the goal? One-hundred percent global connectivity? Half the world’s population connected? A quarter? Every school connected? Whatever each national government or every school board determines to be best for its constituents? Or is this truly a global question affecting everyone?
6. Crime & Punishment
The precise definition of crime is hazy: it grows from our shared sense of right and wrong, as modified by those in power. Most communities do not permit murder, theft or rape, but interpretations of just what happened, and who was involved, allow for uneven enforcement and imperfect judgments. Television’s popular crime dramas and motion pictures exploit open questions about crime and punishment, but they’re careful not to draw much attention to questions about fair and reasonable laws, equitable enforcement, imprisonment and its challenging aftermath. When the Prison Policy Initiative counted the number of prisoners in the U.S.’s fragmented system, they found “more than 2.4 million prisoners in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 2,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails, plus military prisons, detention facilities, civil commitment centers, plus prisons in U.S. territories.” Every year, almost 12 million people cycle through local jails—1 in 20 American adults! The New York Times: “Americans are locked up for crimes—from writing bad checks to using drugs—that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations…” For every 1,000 people, 100 Americans are locked up. In Russia, it’s 63; in England, in 15; in Germany, 9; in Japan, 6. From the NAACP: “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites…one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime…African Americans serve as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months).” Perhaps the reason is race, or drugs, or a fundamentally American independent spirit that skirts the rules here more than in other nations, or too much government, or too many guns, or too much crime or videogames on TV. And for those working in law enforcement and the judicial system, there is the nagging question of how many bad guys are still out there, still committing crimes, not yet taken off the streets.
5. Equal Opportunity
Still a somewhat hazy concept caught between sociology, political theory, and psychology. Certainly, the term applies to employment and housing, and lending practices, but extends to college admissions, the right to vote, and a wide range of other economic opportunities. The theory of equality enjoys widespread buy-in, but in practice, the “you cannot” factor overpowers opportunities for many individuals, including, for example, first generation Latinas who attempt to lift themselves out of poverty through a college education—the support systems are not in place, and the most vulnerable people are also the ones facing the greatest real world challenges. From his book The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in 2012: “There is little income mobility——the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth.” A deeper dive into economic theory reveals the complexity of this question. Some countries have made greater strides than the U.S., but many are far behind even America’s spotty success.
4. Rights of Children
“The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is a comprehensive, internationally binding agreement on the rights of children, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989. It is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history: all countries have ratified it with the exception of the United States of America and Somalia.”— The Children’s Rights Alliance of Ireland, which issues an annual report card entitled, “Is government keeping its promises to children?,” and an annual letter grade (in 2014, “c”). The document’s 54 articles assure every child a wide range of rights, all fully integrated with one another. In Article 2, “the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child’s parents, legal guardians, or family members.” In Article 7: “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.” From Article 13: “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.” Article 14 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and Article 15 assures freedom of association. Article 16 protects the child’s privacy. There are articles about adoption and child labor, disability and access to health services, standard of living, education, child labor, drug abuse, torture, juvenile justice, leisure and cultural activities. Why hasn’t the U.S. adopted the treaty? We’re a nation where 1 in 5 children are poor, and 2.9 million cases of child abuse are reported every year (many more are not reported), but political priorities reside elsewhere.
3. Rights of Women
One hundred years ago, American women were fighting for the right to vote; they won in 1920. The right was granted in France in 1944 and in Switzerland in 1971; in 2015, women will be able to vote in Saudi Arabia (but they cannot drive a car). In the Catholic church, women cannot be Cardinals, so they cannot vote for the Pope, who is, in turn, always male. According to the Women’s National Law Center, men in the U.S. earn over 20 percent more than women—a large improvement over the 40 percent gap that defined the 1970s—and Latinas working full time, year round are typically paid only 56 cents for every dollar paid to their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts. Slow, steady progress competes against formidable issues and barriers deeply rooted in cultural beliefs and their associated debates: right to control one’s own body, right to work, right to earn fair wages and equal pay, right to education, own property, enter into legal contracts, hold public office, serve in the military. In the U.S., we’re beginning to forget how the challenges faced by American women in the 19th and 20th century, but these concerns remain paramount in developing nations, and in nations where men dominate. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals have focused attention on medical care, economic opportunity and education for women and girls, and progress on those fronts is steady, if uneven in some cultures. Still, freedom is not without consequence: for example, in the 1960s, U.S. heroin use was mostly a male endeavor; fifty years later, more women use heroin than men.
2. Rights of Native People
Before 1924, Native Americans were not permitted to be citizens of the United States. Since that time, many Native Americans have struggled with a conflicting combination of deep reverence for tradition & severe social issues, and joining mainstream America to, of all things, manage gambling emporiums. The history is astonishing, shameful, and a scary illustration of how humans rationalize evil in order to get what they want. In the current era, principal concerns include the preservation of tribal existence, protection of natural resources owned or controlled by tribes, human rights for indigenous people, government accountability, and public education. Different countries vary in their interest, treatment, respect of and relationship with their indigenous populations. First people in Canada, Australia, Africa, South America, Pacific Island nations, and other places share lives where the definition of progress often includes devastating outcomes. Still, progress marches on, most often directly upon the rights of the people who first settled our lands.
1. Everybody's Equal
Or, if you prefer the antiquated form, “all men are created equal.” It’s antiquated because those who were not equal included more than half of the people of the new United States: unequals included men who did not own property, women, Native Americans, children, and others. From our 21st century vantage point, it’s easy to be critical, but the whole idea of individual rights wasn’t much more than a century old at the time of our Declaration of Independence, and the new U.S. was way ahead of the curve. We’re still shaky on the “everybody” part—about a third of Americans don’t have a voice in significant decisions (almost nobody listens to children; real-world post-imprisonment rights are also limiting). Economic inequality is a problem for more than half the world’s people: 99 percent of global wealth is shared by 50 percent of the people; the remaining 1 percent is share by the other half of the population. Half of the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 per day. More than 1 billion people haven’t enough food to eat. In Africa, you can expect to live 54 years; in North America, you can expect to live to age 79. In many nations, the very young and the very old are considered high risk for survival. Tens of millions of children are forced laborers. As the list goes on, and it’s difficult not to wonder whether some grand design will always overpower the people who aren’t equal, and may never be.
Equality in theory is easy to imagine; equality in practice is a tangled web of tradition, economic desire, social wants and needs, India’s caste system, birth order, entitlements, voting rights, family heritage and many other issues. Inequality is not a new idea—it’s common in tribal structures, and woven throughout mythology. With the Industrial Revolution, the division between those with advantages (homes, money, education, social connections) and those without (the laborers, or those without work or money) became a defining mark of human life on earth. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, these advantages become deeply rooted, and now-common practices were used to build the economy of the American South, the British Empire, and solid structures of a world gone by. In the 20th century, the old structures began to break down: women’s suffrage, civil rights, political correctness. In the 21st century, significant inequality remains, but it is identified as such, and often criticized on the local and world stage. Patterns are slow to change, but acceleration is now the rule, as with the rapid advance of freedom to marry in the U.S. and in eighteen other nations.
2. Equality