Little Brown and Company (2024)
Similar to his other books, Gladwell provides a unique perspective to important aspects of our collective lives, aspects both interesting as well as existential. For example, his section on Ivy Leagues and how they instituted practices that ensured White, affluent majority student bodies was fascinating. They did this by preventing minorities from attaining that “magical third,” which is the about the tipping point for effective participation, influence and cultural impact. He delves deeply into Supreme Court deliberations on the issue of affirmative action. I never viewed the affirmative action cases from the perspective Gladwell does. He demonstrates how the justices were begging college officials to explain their goal and to define it quantitatively. Without exception, all the officials refused to answer the question. Gladwell then asks, “who can blame them?” when the Supreme Court decided to simply eliminate affirmative action in college admissions. It is hard to disagree and defend actions that favor tennis players who are known to only be competitive if they are well-trained and supported in that training by rich parents. The colleges wanted it both ways – to protect legacy admissions and White majority admission, while seeking public perception that they were promoting diversity. The college reps refused to answer when they would ever reach “critical mass” regarding minorities, knowing that the critical mass was far in excess of anything they would want to actually attain.
There are many other worthwhile explorations in the book. Overall, however, I found many aspects of the book disappointing. There seemed to be an over-reliance on the theory of an “over-story.” We are led to believe that recognizing this would allow us to avoid problems. At times it seems he was conforming complementary facts to fit his theory, while ignoring simpler explanations.
With regard to the opioid crisis, there is no mention of the role of government lobbyists, legislators’ interest in their own investment portfolios, and other aspects of self-interest that should be part of the assessment, and if they were, instead of an “overstory,” we would be talking about a backstory. If we want a simple and more direct understanding of the opioid crisis, we can look to the preeminence of the profit motive and the current state of regulatory capture as two of the prime causes. In the section on Poplar Grove, where the high school was “ideal,” with prefect students, he attributes the sudden epidemic of suicides to a lack of diversity and the fact that when perfect students could not stand the pressure, others succumbed as well. Why? Because, if the stars of the school could not make it, neither would they. Among many generalizations, he makes the case that if there is no diversity there is no resilience. A nice argument but not entirely convincing. And whereas it is certainly true that monocultures are breeding grounds for pandemics and other epidemics, to apply that to the high school suicides seems a stretch when the more plausible and simple explanation is that the students were under undue pressure to be “ideal’ and “perfect” in every single way. This likely created a situation where one suicide by an admired student suggested, even tempted, others to see this as a preferred route for the release of that pressure.
It was interesting to learn about the Palo Alto experiment, something I was not at all familiar with. This was an experiment in social engineering where the goal was to show that people of different races could live in harmony. The development had strict guidelines to support this proposition, including the requirement that homes be sold, occupied, and resold under strict formulations of 1/3 White, 1/3 Black, and 1/3 Asian. Another requirement was that the different ethnic households could not be clustered, such that neighbors were settled so that Whites, Blacks, Asians would be direct neighbors of a different racial household. This was done to assure that interaction would be diverse.
The dilemma came in when a White family moved out and one of the existing Black families wanted the house to go to one of their relatives who were struggling. In the end, they rejected the application and stuck to their rules to preserve the integration and not produce White flight, which was prevalent during the post-war period. Gladwell explains, “to preserve racial harmony, they had to harm the very people they were trying to help.” This conclusion, however, assumes that people can never co-exist unless each person is part of a group that can exert power (through the “magic third” tipping point formulation). In other words, there can be no power generation across racial lines, only within them! In effect, they were promoting interracial integration while preserving power along racial lines. What would they have done if the family looking to buy the house was mixed? Could they have made provisions to preserve the next family that looks to own a home being sold by a Black household be White? Could they have operated pursuant to another set of standards that went beyond race? Could they have developed a new cultural reality as opposed to assuming that different ethnic cultures were fixed and exclusive, unable to exist with the infusion of foreign cultural values?
Gladwell explains that diversity is strength and fosters resilience. To make this point, he explains how one school had Blacks performing terribly when their number represented little more than tokenism. However, when their numbers increased to 25%, the performance gap disappeared, without having any impact on White academic performance. Again, a nice argument but not convincing. I think about the history of Jim Crow. Yes, separate but equal was a farce, but I would venture to guess that if educational facilities were factually equal, that Black students of that era would have out-performed White students for no reason other than that every aspect of their lives required working harder in order to simply survive. I appreciate more the argument he makes whereby a critical mass, even if still a minority, is necessary for cultural impact on on institution that creates a pathway for acceptance and success.
His evaluation of women in the workforce was intriguing. He provides evidence that once female executives reached proportions of 25%, the impact was transformational and noticeable. Up to that point, most women were dismissed, with the author making the point that if you are only one of your kind, you are not “seen as you.” I would alter that conclusion a bit, to say that being isolated means you are not seen as an acceptable version of everyone else. The disturbing aspect of this is how we often lose ourselves in order to succeed. So, it is not so much that we become “ourselves” in the eyes of others, just that we become an acceptable complement to a rather massified whole.
He explains how women of color who go on to become CEOs resent acclamations of colleagues referring to them as remarkable, or other such exaggerated characterizations. They understand, intellectually or viscerally, that this has ongoing relevance, both with regard to gender and race. Regarding race, Whites, historically, were majority viewed as smart, honest, moral, industrious and trustworthy. That was the established norm. Whites who fell outside these norms were seen as exceptions. Correspondingly, Blacks were viewed by the majority as stupid, shiftless, childlike, untrustworthy, and immoral. So what does one do with a Phyllis Wheatley, or a Frederick Douglas, an Ida B. Wells or W.E.B. DuBois? This dilemma was easily solved by creating the myth of the “exceptional Negro.” This insult is what former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns was likely instinctively reacting to.
Finally, just a few words on Gladwell’s treatment of gentrification. He speaks about it from the perspective of the push behind White flight. In other words his focus seemed to be on racism, which cannot be ignored. However, what about the “pull?” Here I am referring to government policies that were explicit in their preference for Whites, such as the availability of cheap and insured financing for White homebuyers. Another example was redlining, where the federal government created maps and redlined areas that were “overrun” by the “infiltration” of Blacks and other minorities. Even after the Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants – deed restrictions that restricted ownership to Whites, referring in some to Blacks as representing “nuisances” to be avoided – the FHA continue its practice because everyone knew, without facts to back it up, that Blacks moving into an area automatically lowered home values. They were not being racist, just fiscally responsible! All of this preferential treatment represented the pull in White flight.
Still, these criticisms notwithstanding, the book was an interesting read, covering topics that are ready-made for deliberation, discussion, and policy considerations.