If life is a hill, some are on top and some are on the bottom.

This statement and the overall umbrella of social inequality were the main topics of discussion during Tuesday night’s University Lecture, which featured New York Times op-ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat. The columnists spoke in Hendricks Chapel about American issues involving race and cultural relations in “Social Inequality: the How, Why and What to Do?”

The discussion was moderated by Jesse Feitel, a Syracuse University alumnus and current SU College of Law student, who began by asking the two colleagues to define social inequality and its relation to choice.

Inequalities are inevitable whether there is a free country or not because humans are different, said Douthat, the youngest op-ed columnist in the history of the Times.

“You are a culmination of chances made long before you were born that determine if access is inhibited or promoted in your ability to succeed,” said Blow, whose writing focuses on race relations and gay rights.

Blow said if a person is at the bottom of the hill, they have the choice to climb or to stay behind, but added that there are structural forces at play in society.

A large portion of inequalities can be attested to public policies that are put in place, Douthat said, but the trick to policies is to strike a balance between creating policies that simultaneously level the hill and still encourage the desire for a person to grow and put in effort.

“Welfare policy brings these abstract points to view that we have to decide that if we have this money (to promote social equality), but how do we allocate it?” Douthat said.

Blow argued that it is the frame in which these social policies are placed that creates issues of inequality. He said welfare is framed as “giveaways to the lazy,” but Blow encourages people to realize that people on welfare are working people receiving help, and whether they had a job the year before or received a job the next year, the program is there to help them during their rough patch.

In cases such as these, the question of educational opportunities arise because education and city infrastructure affect the kinds of jobs individuals have access to. This leads to a cycle of low-paying jobs and subsequent crimes.

“It is not the ability or desire, but the design of a city and the allocated funds that contribute to the issue,” Blow said.

This discussion about inner-city crimes led to the topics of race and police brutality. Douthat argued that there are deep structural injustices in a polarized America, but technologies such as smart phones are bringing accountability to such events.

Blow believes differently.

“We can’t separate the police force from all of the (wrong),” he said, but added that with extreme budget cuts, the evaluation of police’s ability to minimize crime becomes based on how many individuals they can stop and what they get stopped for. This can cause minor infractions to turn into high-profile cases of police brutality.

Blow said this turn occurs because of the pressure placed on police officers to increase charges. He added that it is not the bias of the officer but the institutional structure of winners and losers with a racial component that requires the government to create a way to combat systemic racism.

The two columnists represent divided views when it comes to ideological ties, but their advice when it comes to confronting those with opposing views is similar.

“Talking to people in the flesh (on hot topics) has more agreement than yelling on the Internet,” Douthat said.

In this world of virtual “theater,” Douthat said he believes that people don’t imagine that there is an actual human being on the other end of the conversation, and that causes issues.

“Intelligent people engage in intelligent communication … even if they don’t agree on the interpretation of facts,” Blow said.

Blow added that he encourages people to understand that every focus on a legitimate problem and the efforts to remedy that problem is morally sound.

“When you stop trying to tell people that they are wrong for fulfilling what they feel, then you can have an intelligent conversation that people feel welcome and open to having,” Blow said.

Published on October 13, 2015 at 11:37 pm

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