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Tommie Shelby

Excerpted from:  Tommie Shelby, Justice, Work, and the Ghetto Poor, 6 Law & Ethics of Human Rights 70 (2012)(49 Footnotes)

      In the United States, a ghetto is a predominantly black, metropolitan neighborhood with a high concentration of poverty (40 percent or more below the federal poverty Joblessness is an influential and compelling explanation for why ghettos persist: it is the fact that so many among the ghetto poor do not work regularly that best explains why those in these communities often remain poor. Some advocates of this view maintain moreover that concentrated joblessness not only keeps the ghetto poor in poverty but has negative ramifications far beyond mere income disadvantage. For instance, joblessness is said to increase violent crime and juvenile delinquency, to encourage welfare dependency and single-parent households, to undermine personal dignity and self-respect, to foster a pathological ghetto subculture, and to weaken crucial institutions of civil society (e.g., religious institutions, political organizations, and neighborhood social networks).

      In view of the significance of joblessness, some social scientists, policymakers, and commentators have advocated strong measures to ensure that the ghetto poor work, including mandating work as a condition of receiving welfare benefits. Indeed, among both conservatives and liberals, work is often seen as a moral or civic duty and as a necessary basis for personal dignity. And this normative stance is now instantiated in federal and state law, from the tax scheme to welfare benefits.


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      Despite these reservations and unanswered questions, I think the idea of a civic obligation to work deserves to be taken seriously. From the standpoint of fairness, there is something undeniably compelling about the moral principle “all who eat should work,” even if the precise content of this idea is difficult to articulate and defend. (Notice that the principle “all who eat should work” does not imply “those who do not work shall not eat.”The former states a duty while the latter states a penalty for non-performance. As suggested earlier, one might believe there is a non-enforceable duty to work.) Thus, for the sake of argument, I assume that there is a pro tanto or presumptive civic duty to work, rooted in the idea of reciprocity. My aim in what remains is to show that the ghetto poor may nevertheless be justified in refusing to work.

      Some of the legitimate reasons the ghetto poor have for refusing to work could perhaps be accommodated without altering the basic structure of U.S. society. That is, these objections could be answered by instituting relatively minor reforms, some of which have recently been initiated. To enact all the necessary reforms, however, the tax scheme would probably have to be made considerably more progressive, and perhaps almost everyone's taxes would have to increase, which many U.S. citizens would resist, some vehemently. Still, no fundamental rethinking of distributive justice would have to occur, just garnering the necessary political will--no small task, to be sure.

      For example, the ghetto poor may reasonably refuse to work if the jobs available pay too little. In such an affluent society, those who work full-time should not have to live in poverty, a principle widely endorsed even in the United States. One approach to this problem is to raise the minimum wage so that a full-time worker at that wage could support a family. Another, perhaps complementary, approach would be to offer income supplements (e.g., through tax credits, employer subsidies, or cost of living In effect, the government could “top up” full-time workers' wages so that they are above the poverty line (here assuming, for the sake of argument, that the federal poverty line is an adequate measure of impoverishment). The Earned Income Tax Credit, though not entirely adequate to the task, is a step in this direction. Given the wide geographic variance in cost of living (a fact to which the federal poverty standard does not give sufficient weight), a complementary strategy would be for public sector employers to pay their workers a decent wage by local standards and for government to require private firms that receive public funds to do the same, which will usually mean paying some low-skilled workers above the federal minimum wage. Such measures would be especially important to the ghetto poor, since they live in large metropolitan areas where the cost of living is high. And, indeed, a number of cities have passed living-wage ordinances in response to grassroots activism by, and on behalf of, low-income workers.

      Given their difficulty securing jobs that pay a living wage, some of the ghetto poor might reject work requirements on the grounds that low-skilled workers in the new economy lack an effective right to organize and to join and maintain labor unions. Many employers of low-skilled workers have erected barriers to unionization, sought to intimidate or mislead workers who express an interest in forming unions, and exploited racial and ethnic antagonism to weaken worker solidarity. This means that workers have little leverage to bargain for fair compensation, benefits, and working hours. The government could respond to this concern by cracking down on union busting tactics and making it easier for workers within and across firms to form and maintain unions.

      Some of the ghetto poor might refuse work because the jobs available are physically arduous, highly unpleasant or “dirty,” or extremely dangerous, where these costs and risks are not adequately compensated. However, if these were the only jobs available, better jobs in the public sector could be created, thus putting pressure on private firms to increase compensation. And the government could ensure that decent and safe working conditions prevail in all businesses, large and small, that operate in the country.

      A person might also refuse to work if the jobs available required an unreasonable amount of time or exertion, leaving workers with little opportunity or energy for non-work-related activities. In an affluent society where work is required of all, it would be unfair for some to have so much more leisure than others and for some to have essentially no leisure time at all. In response to this concern, the government could demand fewer hours per day (or days per week) to remain in good civic standing. And employers could be required to give longer paid vacations to full-time workers.

      One might also refuse to work if working would prevent one from caring for one's children. Since we have a natural duty to not only provide materially for our children but to nurture them--to ensure their proper emotional, physical, and cognitive development--parents may legitimately refuse to work if this would interfere with the fulfillment of these essential parental duties. To deal with this concern, childcare subsidies could be provided or government-financed, non-profit childcare cooperatives could be formed. Alternatively, single parents of young children could be exempted from work requirements altogether. Measures of this sort have already been implemented, though they would have to be expanded to be fully adequate.

      Again, the objections to a reciprocity-based work regime so far mentioned could be met with relatively minor social reforms, which, while not sufficient to establish a just social structure, would constitute meaningful progress. However, some of the reasons a citizen might have for refusing to work cannot be accommodated without changing the structure of U.S. society in fundamental ways. Here I focus on three such reasons that, considering the situation of the ghetto poor, are particularly pertinent.


A. the Injustice Objection

      All three reciprocity arguments are vulnerable to the objection that the basic structure of U.S. society is grossly unjust. (Some defenders of a civic obligation to work acknowledge this point and build in appropriate qualifications.) When a society is manifestly unjust, refusing to work, even if there is a pro tanto civic obligation to work, may be a reasonable response. Indeed, such refusal to cooperate can be a form of political protest. Even if we were to set aside the uncompensated injustices of the past (e.g., slavery and Jim Crow segregation), which continue to affect black life chances in the present, there are current social injustices that heavily burden the ghetto poor. For instance, the structure of economic opportunity that they face is deeply unfair. Public schools are still unequal and racially segregated, and many urban schools are substandard. Consequently, the ghetto poor are severely disadvantaged when it comes to opportunities to develop marketable skills. There are great inequalities in wealth, which shape life chances in numerous ways, and which poor families in the ghetto are also on the losing end of. Even setting aside these general egalitarian concerns, racial discrimination in employment, housing, and lending are still a problem, and there are persistent racial disparities--in income, wealth, employment, infant mortality, health outcomes, and life-expectancy--that go back to the antebellum era, never having come close to parity between blacks and whites. Moreover, the overall work burden is unfairly distributed in the society--that is, others are not doing their fair share of the work--and, to make matters worse, this unfair distribution is racially marked, with blacks (and Latinos) doing a disproportionate share of menial labor, hard work, and dirty jobs.

      If these justice-based criticisms of U.S. society have merit, which I think they do, this weakens if not undermines the force of the reciprocity argument for the new work regime. Taking these criticisms seriously, let's first consider the benefactor/debtor model. It is hard to see why the ghetto poor should be grateful to be citizens of the United States. In light of the burdens of injustice that they are forced to carry, resentment or indignation, not gratitude, is the apt response to their situation. To expect otherwise would be like expecting a child who has been subject to consistent parental abuse and neglect to be grateful to his or her abusive and negligent parent. One response to this objection is to point out that the ghetto poor of America could have been born into much worse circumstances--e.g., into the slums of São Paulo, Bombay, Jakarta, or Lagos. But, again, emphasizing this comparative advantage would be like attempting to exonerate abusive and negligent parents on the grounds that at least they did not let their children starve.

      Even if the ghetto poor do have things to be grateful for (say, the rule of law or national defense) and should express this gratitude in some concrete way, it is not obvious that full-time employment is the best or only way for them to show their appreciation. They could, for instance, choose to show their gratitude and fidelity to the nation by fighting to make their society more just. And if they believe that, under current circumstances, work requirements for the poor are themselves unjust, they may carry out this fight by refusing to cooperate with the new work regime, engaging in a form of passive resistance. However, instead of objecting to a particular unjust law, as with traditional civil disobedience, they would be objecting to the social scheme as a whole.

      What about the market exchange model? As is well known, attempting to derive political duties from the idea of a commercial contract has numerous difficulties. The biggest problem is that contracts must be freely entered into if they are to be binding, and most citizens of existing polities cannot be said to have made a voluntary agreement to live under the political regime into which they were born. The vast majority of the ghetto poor, having been born in the United States and possessing meager, if any, means of support, certainly cannot be said to have chosen or consented to live under the dominion of the U.S. government. Tacit consent arguments are sometimes thought to be better than explicit consent arguments. But these arguments depend on there being a suitable alternative to living under the political regime in question, and the ghetto poor, like most citizens of the United States, cannot just leave for another country. Hypothetical consent arguments, to the extent they are able to do any justificatory work, turn on it being rational to have agreed to the terms to which one finds oneself being held. But in a hypothetical agreement among equals, what rational person would consent to a social structure in which he or she could turn out to be a poor black denizen of a ghetto who is required to work to maintain full civic standing?

      Even if we allow that a civic duty to work can be grounded in the idea of a market exchange, the injustice objection stands. The ghetto poor have not received many of the benefits they have been “promised”--e.g., equality of opportunity and the equal protection of the law. We can, therefore, view their refusal to work in an unjust social scheme as the moral equivalent of a rent strike against a slumlord: they refuse to pay their civic debt until the government makes good on its promise to treat all citizens fairly. There has not been a breach of civic contract but a governmental failure to perform so fundamental that the aggrieved citizens, the ghetto poor, can rightfully refuse to comply with their “agreement” to work. At a minimum, the government's failures constitute a material breach, and thus the ghetto poor have a just claim to damages.

      The fair-play argument suffers from similar difficulties to the market exchange argument. Most fair-play arguments depend on the idea that the benefits of social cooperation are freely accepted, not imposed. But as Jeremy Moss rightly points out, since welfare recipients, who are typically poor women with young children, are among the most vulnerable in society, they cannot correctly be said to have freely accepted welfare benefits. What real choice do they have? But even setting aside these concerns about the voluntariness of the choice, the benefits of a cooperative scheme are unfairly accepted only if the scheme itself is fair. Or, to put it differently, the moral requirement that all play by the rules is valid only if the rules are fair to everyone who plays the game. No fair-minded person would seriously suggest that, because a slave receives the benefits of food and shelter, the slave thereby owes a labor debt to the slave regime that makes these benefits possible. The situation of ghetto denizens is analogous, if less dire. They undoubtedly receive some benefits as citizens of the United States (e.g., food stamps, some basic social services, and defense against external threats), but because they are so burdened by the structural injustices of the social system, they should not be considered free-riders if they refuse to comply with a civic work requirement.


B. The Exploitation Objection

      A different though related reason the ghetto poor might have for refusing to work is that, under current circumstances, work requirements, or the specific terms of work, are exploitative. (Piven and Cloward go even further, arguing that not only is the work regime exploitative, but it has the often intended effect of imposing discipline on and instilling fear in the rest of the workforce, making them more docile and easily exploitable. In response to the dehumanizing effects of the work regime, workers will often accept lower compensation, fewer benefits, and less job security to avoid sharing the degraded status of the ghetto poor.) One way of developing this objection relies on the injustice objection as a premise. Though one may rightly be regarded as an exploiter (or parasite) if one does not work when background conditions are just, one may be among the exploited if one is forced to work under unjust conditions. To garner benefits by extracting labor from persons who are powerless to resist because unjust circumstances have been imposed on them is a paradigm case of economic exploitation. The systems of slavery, serfdom, colonial subjugation, and apartheid are examples of such an arrangement. Insofar as the ghetto poor are forced to work because of correctable, unjust background conditions, they too are rightly regarded as among the economically exploited. The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, along with continuing employment discrimination and unequal educational opportunity, have created (or helped to create) a large class of blacks who are poor and unskilled. The result is that the black urban poor have been fashioned into a source of cheap, expendable, and exploitable labor, from which the affluent benefit.

      But the exploitation objection would still have force even if the basic structure of U.S. society had not exceeded the threshold for tolerable injustice. Many Americans maintain that the ghetto poor remain poor because of bad option luck for which they are responsible. Had they worked harder, avoided risky behavior, delayed childbearing until marriage, developed useful skills, and so on, they would not be in such a dire situation. Because of this irresponsible conduct, it is argued, their vulnerable economic position is deserved--or at least they should bear the economic costs of their unwise behavior--and it is therefore not exploitative for their fellow citizens to require them to work as a condition of material support. However, even if we allow that such charges are rightly applied to adults whose bad choices have left them confined to the ghetto, what of those persons who grow up under ghetto conditions? After all, a shockingly high percentage of the black poor were born into ghetto conditions. Their disadvantage is the result of bad brute luck, not bad option luck. In view of their undeserved economic disadvantage and insecurity, even if economic reciprocity is, in general, a requirement of justice and the basic structure of U.S. society is reasonably just, forcing the indigenous black urban poor to work is exploitative. It is a case of profiting from the labor of people who are compelled to work because of weaknesses and vulnerabilities that are not of their making.

      In fact, the situation is worse than this. Under the new work regime, the indigenous ghetto poor are in a self-reproducing exploitative relationship with affluent citizens. The structure of a self-reproducing exploitative relationship is as follows:

       X and Y are in a self-reproducing exploitative social relationship if: (i) Y is regularly forced to make sacrifices that result in benefits for X; (ii) X obtains these benefits by means of a power advantage that X has over Y; and (iii) as a result of conditions (i) and (ii) X's power advantage over Y is maintained (or is increased) and Y remains in the condition of being forced to make sacrifices for X's benefit.

      Thus, in a self-reproducing exploitative social relationship, a social relation that has the basic structure outlined in conditions (i) and (ii) has as one of its causal consequences that the conditions for the continuation of a relationship that preserves that structure are thereby reproduced. What this account does, then, is help us to see why some exploitative relationships tend to persist: the very structure of these relationships tends to secure their continuance.

      Because of the new work regime, this self-reproducing exploitative relationship exists between the indigenous ghetto poor and their more affluent fellow citizens. The basic problem is this: many of the ghetto poor who have submitted to the requirements of the new work regime nevertheless remain poor. They simply become part of the working poor, often serving the private needs of the well off--e.g., performing the roles of maids, nannies, dishwashers, maintenance workers, and so on. Others fall back into poverty because of recessions, periods of economic restructuring, or mass layoffs. The schools available to the ghetto poor are often so substandard that they do not enable upward mobility. Thus, when work requirements do not allow for skills enhancement or promotion to better-paid positions, these requirements are reasonably interpreted as attempts to profit by extracting burdensome and unrewarding labor from the weak and vulnerable. Work enforcement, under these circumstances, is disempowering--it ensures that the ghetto poor are a permanently exploitable class.


C. The Expressive Harm Objection

      In addition to the injustice and exploitation objections, the ghetto poor may refuse to cooperate with the new work regime because they believe that work mandates demean and stigmatize them. There are three versions of this objection that I want to briefly outline.

      The social identity of most black Americans is defined, in part, by being the descendants of slaves. As Tocqueville argued, once the status of ““slave” was something only a member of the black race could have, the stigma of forced servitude became attached to “blackness” itself. This stigma is so powerful that it stains blacks that were never slaves and has persisted for generations after slavery ended. To be black has come to mean, in the minds of many, being a member of a people who, because of cowardice and servility, and to its everlasting shame, submitted to slavery. And this stigma is one of the reasons African Americans have insisted that black slaves actively resisted slavery, from armed rebellion to shirking work. The ghetto poor may thus justifiably fear that were they to accommodate themselves to the new regime of work, with its state sanctioned work mandates, this would reinforce or resurrect this stigma.

      It may be objected that this account, however applicable in the past, no longer applies to the black condition. Many would argue that the stigma of slavery has faded and will never return. Nevertheless, this historical stigma tells us something important about what forced work means to a people descended from black slaves. As members of a historically oppressed, yet proud social group, most blacks feel a duty to remember the horrendous moral crimes perpetrated against their ancestors. Some demand reparations even now. Almost all embrace the legacy to resist race-based oppression, particularly those forms that are similar or related to past racial injustices. Blacks are therefore suspicious of and often bristle at any social arrangement that has the look or feel of race-based servitude. And, quite apart from the conscious intent of those who support the new work regime, the symbolic meaning of such a regime when targeted at the most vulnerable and powerless segment of the black population is, I think, a sufficient reason to be defiant in the face of its demands.

      The second version of the expressive harm objection focuses, not just on race and class, but on space. Recall that ghettos are defined as poor black metropolitan neighborhoods. “The hood,” as ghettos are sometimes called, is a place most people do not want to pass through, let alone reside in. It is that dangerous place where the “underclass” dwells, a place that elicits fear, contempt, and pity. It is a segregated space, a place of dishonor set apart to contain the undeserving dark masses. (Or maybe it is a “neighborhood in transition” if it is undergoing the process of gentrification and the poor are being priced out. But I will set this case aside.) The stigma attached to the ghetto is not just a racial stigma or a poverty stigma but a stigma that marks residential neighborhoods. Thus, unless the new work regime enables people to exit the ghetto or transforms poor segregated neighborhoods into mixed-income and integrated ones, ghetto denizens may reasonably refuse to comply. For in the absence of realistic exits or concerted efforts to abolish ghetto conditions, forcing the ghetto poor to work would be the functional equivalent of state-sponsored labor camps or workhouses for the black poor, as the workers would still be effectively confined to the dark ghetto. The black urban poor may legitimately refuse to accept jobs under these circumstances on the grounds that to willingly comply would be humiliating and demeaning.

      Third and finally, manyAmericans have racial animus toward or unconscious biases against black Americans. In particular, there is considerable evidence that some Americans oppose welfare entitlement programs because they are hostile to or prejudiced against blacks, with whom such programs are associated. A longstanding and deeply offensive stereotype about blacks is that they are congenitally lazy. The ghetto poor would have grounds to refuse work if they have a justified belief that their fellow citizens have erected a work regime out of racist motives. A work regime, despite its ostensible race-neutrality, would then be justly considered a veiled expression of contempt for black citizens and a sign of the society's lack of equal respect for blacks.

      All three of these expressive harm objections are that much more forceful if the injustice and exploitation objections are sound. Submitting to an unjust and exploitative regime is anathema to anyone with a healthy sense of self-respect. But for blacks to accommodate themselves to an unjust and exploitative regime that stigmatizes and conveys contempt for poor black people is, for some at least, a fate worse than poverty. The ghetto poor, apprehending the symbolic meaning of a work regime, may therefore reject it as insulting and choose non-work to preserve their dignity. (Though I do not develop it further here, there is a fourth reason some among the ghetto poor may refuse to work. They may reasonably complain that they have been denied a fair opportunity to secure meaningful work--e.g., work that they find intrinsically satisfying or interesting, that exercises and allows them to develop their most basic human capacities, or that suits them given their abilities and fundamental aims.)

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VII. CONCLUSION

      I have shown that even if joblessness is a crucial causal factor in the persistence of ghetto poverty, it does not follow that the new work regime is the most appropriate, or even a morally permissible, solution. There are important questions about what activities should count as work and about how much work should be expected, and some plausible answers to these questions suggest that a less demanding work scheme than generally favored would be morally preferable. There are also compelling reasons to doubt that the new work regime, in its current form, could be justified to the ghetto poor. At a minimum, there are policies (e.g., income subsidies, labor laws, and childcare subsidies and exemptions) that would have to be instituted or expanded before work mandates could be legitimately enforced. More controversially, I have argued that, in the absence of fundamental changes in the basic structure of U.S. society, work mandates are unjust, exploitative, insulting, and stigmatizing. Moreover, there are alternative social arrangements--such as an all-volunteer workforce and basic income support--worth serious consideration. Throughout, I have emphasized how considerations of social justice should inform government's and citizens' responses to joblessness in the ghetto. And I have urged that those of us who sincerely want to improve the life prospects of the ghetto poor should give greater weight to the moral reasons that they may have for choosing not to work.


 

 

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