The Joad Family in the masterful 1940 cinema adaptation. Rose of Sharon, Ma Joad, and Tom Joad.
A few weeks ago I pulled my old copy of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath off the shelf and reread it for perhaps the 5th time. If you haven’t read it, I cannot recommend it more highly. The normally acidic Dorothy Parker described it as “the greatest American novel” she had ever read. I don’t disagree. And if it doesn’t move you, especially the exquisitely painful pieta at the end, you have no heart whatsoever.
Pieta, by Michelangelo. Steinbeck’s hits harder.
The book reminded me that Steinbeck (and Bruce Springsteen, whose album The Ghost of Tom Joad, referring to one of The Grapes of Wrath’s heroes, makes his affinity with Steinbeck explicit), played a formative role in my own political education and is a major reason why I’ve always identified as “Left.” Steinbeck possessed deep empathy for the working classes and their plight, and he observed that America often was cruel to the poor; the system was rigged against them. Steinbeck famously flirted with Communism in the 1930s, but his politics were always more about love of one’s fellow man than doctrine. He was a humanist, not a Marxist. Unsurprisingly, he became more moderate with age, and it is fair to associate him not with Marxist-Leninists but rather with traditional American progressivism.
I’ve never lost this basic leftist orientation; rereading Steinbeck moved me as much as it did in the 80s, when I liberally marked the pages of my copy with now fading highlighter. I believe in social welfare, and in placing checks on capitalism. I believe America shits on the poor. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and often are above the law. They don’t pay taxes. They commit crimes and get away with it. I could go on…
What concerns me is that somehow being Leftist in 21st century America has come to mean something very different. The Left became entangled in identity-politics, and in concepts such as intersectionality, that despite having commendable origins has emerged as an insidious and totalitarian doctrine. I see this in my own kids’ education in the public schools of the District of Columbia: They don’t read books; they certainly don’t encounter Steinbeck, about whom I wrote a long paper in high school. They are instead offered an “anti-racist curriculum” that amounts to an extended polemic against America, and a celebration of communitarian ethnic identities in the place of any common denominators. The central thesis is that America—white America—is intrinsically and irredeemably racist.
See, for example, the website of the National Education Association, which promotes “anti-racist” education. There we find this nugget:
Is that what my kids’ teachers are trying to achieve? Disrupting white supremacy? One tangible result is that my kids’ schools do not teach literature as I knew it in school, for, as one teacher explained, the whole idea of a literary “canon” is racist. I responded that I’d be happy if they taught African-American literature or straight-up African literature, both of which I hold in high regard. Faced with these choices, they have opted to teach them nothing. One teacher volunteered that they were going to do Shakespeare next year. “Let me guess,” I replied. “Othello.” I was right. The teacher told me they’d focus on the racism and misogyny. Shakespeare reduced to racism and misogyny. It is a small mercy they weren’t touching The Merchant of Venice. I don’t trust these teachers to do anything sensible with that.
Indeed, invariably, some ethnic identities are celebrated while others are denigrated, thanks to a Manichean view that divides groups into persecutors and persecuted, or assigns them places on a hierarchy of privilege. Whites are persecutors. Somehow, so are Jews. My son, while attending a Middle School, was given a “privilege test” by a teacher that gave points to people who are white and extra points to Jews. My son said the teacher got the test from Reddit.
Perhaps the problem is the decline of classic Marxism, which focused on class. Americans are profoundly uncomfortable talking about class. This is a pity given how relevant it often is. Instead, Marxism transmuted into various flavors of cultural Marxism now hold sway. Race and inter-racial power relationships have replaced class conflict in the classic Marxist notion of “base and superstructure” as the underlying driver of everything.
I find this alarming for a number of reasons, among them that the rejection of anything that smacks of “white supremacy”, i.e. conventional narratives of American history and a shared heritage of ideas and literature, in favor of celebrations of some (but definitely not all) ethnic identities undermines a core and essential function of public education. Public schools are perhaps the single most effective tools of nation building, of providing diverse peoples with a common culture. I fear that absent such common culture, the whole fabric of society in so diverse a country as American might unravel. Education also has served to enable young people to transcend their own cultures without effacing them. That, to me, is part of the point of being a hyphenated American, i.e. an “Italian-American” or an “Mexican-American.” No one should seek to remove the Italian or the Mexican components, but one does either the kids or America as a whole any favors by denigrating and suppressing the American part. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, the ideal is to provide children with roots and wings. Parents are responsible for the roots, if that means teaching Hispanic kids Spanish or Irish dance. It’s all good. The school’s mission should be the wings.
My son’s teacher told me that one reason they don’t teach “English” (read white) literature is because they can’t teach material that is not directly relevant to a “diverse” student body. My first thought was, “well, maybe you can’t…” Then I thought of my own high school teacher, Marilyn Hemminger, who, among other things, taught us Milton. There is absolutely nothing about Paradise Lost that was or is relevant to me and my life. But Dr. Hemminger was able to open at least my eyes to the intense beauty and majesty of Milton’s masterpiece. What if, instead, she had catered to my particular ethnic identity in pursuit of relevance? That would have been an opportunity wasted. Of course, these days my own particular ethnic identity is increasingly becoming taboo, since my people now rate as “privileged.”
Meanwhile, I don’t hear anyone talking about poverty anymore. The “war on poverty” has given way to culture wars. I suppose the Joads, finding today’s Left more interested in ideological purity tests than the price of milk, today would be MAGA. As for Steinbeck, my guess is that he’d be ill at ease with all of it.
Do read Steinbeck. Buy it through this link and help support my work.
That develops your earlier point about the lack of compassion and empathy in modern political discourse. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird were forcibly removed from the curriculum by a Tory Minister of Education in England (Michael Gove) because they were "irrelevant" to the lives of English youth. I guess compassion for the poor has no place in the social narrative of a Conservative government that considers the poor to be feckless scroungers. Similarly, the struggles of single-parenthood, overcoming racism, and fighting for justice have little attraction for a government that labels human rights lawyers as obstructive lefties.
Re: the rich - "They don't pay taxes." Please explain.