October 26, 2006 (1): White Trash Comes to Europe

SPIEGEL ONLINE is continuing to run English-language excerpts from Gabor Steingart's Weltkrieg um Wohlstand ("war for wealth") book. The title of today's essay is "White Trash, Fast Food: How Globalization Is Creating a New European Underclass." This is a must-read for all zealots who see globalization as the instrument of spreading the American value system around the world. If ever there were a be-careful-what-you-wish-for story, this is it!

As others have pointed out, there is not questioning the ways in which things have gotten better. Where the questions arise concerns the consequences of those improvements and whether or not things are getting worse at the same time they are getting better (and we simply choose not to look in the places where they are getting worse). Here is an excerpt from the argument of this particular essay:

We know, for example, that today's proletariat is richer than the worker of generations past. Indeed, with a little skill, he can tap into the coffers of the state's social safety net, which provides him with access to an income comparable to those of police officers, warehouse workers and taxi drivers. Thus, it is not material poverty that separates him from others.

Rather, what stand out are the symptoms of intellectual neglect. The poor of today watch television for half the day. These days, television producers even refer to what they call "Underclass TV." The new proletariat eats a lot of fatty foods and he enjoys smoking and drinking -- a lot. About 8 percent of Germans consume 40 percent of all the alcohol sold in the country. While he may be a family man, his families are often broken. And on Election Day, he casts a protest vote for the extreme left or right wing party, sometimes switching quickly from one to the other.

But the main thing that sets the modern poor apart from the industrial age pauper is a sheer lack of interest in education. Today's proletariat has little education and no interest in obtaining more. Back in the early days of industrialization, the poor joined worker associations that often doubled as educational associations. The modern member of the underclass, by contrast, has completely shunned personal betterment.

He likewise makes little effort to open the door to the future for his own children. Their language skills are as bad as their ability to concentrate. The rising rate of illiteracy is matched by the shrinking opportunities to integrate the underclass. The Americans, not ones to mince words, call them "white trash."

So, once again, the story comes down to education, this time in the setting of that condition of anomie that so occupied Émile Durkheim. Now the debate has to move beyond the question of whether or not we are teaching things of lasting value. Now we have to address whether we are succeeding in teaching anything at all. Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair!