Are the Rich more Likely to be Morally Challenged?

How pathetic for Robert Kraft, rich enough to pay for whatever sexual services he desires, to be caught in a shabby massage parlor in a ratty strip mall, not once but twice.

The local paper took advantage of this embarrassment of one super rich owner of a sports team—and not just any sports team-- to list some of the other instances of team owners falling afoul of the law for fraud, for being addicted to pain pills, for being blatantly racist. Other owners participated in major bribery schemes or were overwhelmed by gambling debts. Without quite saying so, the paper seems to suggest that the very rich team owners are often tempted to act very badly and often succumb to the temptations.

Is this just the envy of ordinary folks speaking? We work hard and toward the end of every month we are short of cash. So when the rich are embarrassed publicly we can't help gloating and boasting of our—supposed--moral superiority. You and I are not tempted to pay huge bribes to politicians or to run up $25 million gambling debts. So we can feel morally superior when we do not indulge in such behavior.

But perhaps our suspicions of the moral weakness of the very rich is not completely unreasonable. Let us ask: how did they get to be so rich? I am not asking what it is about Robert Kraft that makes him so much wealthier than I am. I cannot answer that question because I do not know Kraft. Does he work harder than I do, is he smarter, is he more interested in wealth than I am? I have no idea. But the question is not about the character and personality of the rich. It is about the system controlling our lives. What does this system require of us to become very rich or even moderately so?

It seems clear that competition is at the heart of our system; the winners must be prodigiously good competitors. The rich are better competitors. But competitions are of different sorts. Some are completely benign; in others the outcome is brutally destructive of some participants in the competition while others walk away with impressive wealth.

In some competitions, the winner simply worked harder, worked longer hours, was more focused than all others. The winner trained more frequently. Even at rest his or her thoughts were wholly taken up with the upcoming competition. Completely concentrated they win. This is a benign competition that produces exceptional performances. But it is only one kind of competition.

In the early days of the personal computer, anyone could purchase the parts and assemble a machine. I have done so myself. As a consequence a large number of small enterprises produced inexpensive but quite adequate table top computers. Bill Gates participated in this computer business, competing with many other entrepreneurs to found a profitable business producing personal computers. According to one biographer, Gates' style of competition was not benign. He did not try to get ahead of the pack by being more diligent or inventive. His energy was focused on putting his competitors out of business. His project was clearly destructive, to reduce the competition by underselling machines of other producers and ruining the competing business. This kind of competition aims clearly at the injury of the competition. Some athletes in team sports seek to injure members of the opposing team. Here competition is intentionally destructive.

A third form of competition injures third parties. Tobacco companies concealed the damages done by cigarettes. The health of consumers counted for nothing as compared to the company's bottom line. Similar competitions injuring third parties occur when companies pollute streams, dump toxic materials, use fracking techniques and hide their destructive effects.

Enterprises using these destructive forms of competition do not always end in the winners' circle. The owners of the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter FL where Robert Kraft is said to have enjoyed sexual services for $79 an hour are not likely to be billionaires even though they traffic Asian women, keep them locked up, and force them to do sex work. Here third parties are grievously injured. The perpetrators nevertheless do not become as rich as some of their patrons.

Some competitors however succeed to parlay their destruction of opponents or of third parties into obscene wealth. Instances of their techniques are everywhere. While the rich are rapidly getting richer, wages and salaries of common people have barely rise in the last 50 years. Although prices have risen steadily, the minimum wage has remained unchanged until recently. An energetic movement to raise the minimum wage encounters strenuous resistance from employers; they are determined not to pay a living wage. They, often champions of family values, also resist paid maternity and paternity leave. Their main interest is to raise their profits by keeping wages and salaries as low as possible. They compete strenuously and do not mind if their competition injures large groups of their fellow citizens. Nor should we forget how, in the past, the rich derived their wealth from keeping slaves, or exploiting black tenant farmers violently during the era of Jim Crow.

Yes, the rich are more likely to be competing with methods doing serious damage to large numbers of Americans. Are their moral stamina more fragile than that of most of their fellow citizens? I doubt it. The basic truth is that our economic system, placing competition at the center, encourages enterprising men and women to compete by doing serious damage to many others. In so doing successfully they not only earn lots of money and high social status but they do untold damage to citizens who do not earn a living wage, whose drinking wells are polluted or who are forced to work as prostitutes. That is the naked face of capitalism.

I am a well meaning white. How can I fight racism?

 While it is easier than it has been to be openly racist, there are more well-meaning whites who are sincerely trying to oppose racism. Witness the troubles of politicians in  Virginia whose racist blackface pictures from years ago are now the grounds for Democratic Party officials calling for their resignations. Insulting black Americans today disqualifies whites from serving in elective office. Whites who oppose racism are suddenly very numerous. Their voice is loud and clear. It is being heard and it is taken seriously even though it is not always decisive.

Whites are on the march against racism. They belong to reading groups that serve to inform us about the daily life and trials of African Americans. They attend anti-racism trainings. White speakers about white anti-black racism can command sizable fees. White groups listen patiently with contrition to black speakers who, often angrily, rehearse some of the cruelties whites have inflicted on blacks. Many whites are willingly taking responsibility for the inferior economic, social and political condition of blacks.

At the same time many groups of well-meaning whites are bewildered by their condition. They want to do something. Often they want to help, specifically, they want to help black people but they do not really know how to go about that. Often whites want to make friends with black persons but that is difficult for many reasons. Residential segregation makes it difficult for white to meet blacks as neighbors. A minority of blacks have middle class jobs; whites often do not have the opportunity to meet blacks at work. Add to that the long history of whites cruelly taking advantage and oppressing blacks. After more than 400 years of white mistreatment of blacks, many are reluctant to open themselves to friendly relations.

Whites feel guilty about what blacks have suffered and still suffer. That guilt is well justified. We should feel guilty. But the guilt leads us into wanting forgiveness and hence at best friendship with blacks. If that is not possible, at least we want to be able to help in order to receive some acknowledgment from the blacks we help that we mean well, that we are sincerely trying to overcome our racist upbringing. But now our opposition to racism is all about us, the whites who have maintained and still maintain a system of racial oppression, of making sure that blacks have the worst jobs, live in neighborhoods where housing is not well-maintained, most likely by white owners--, attend inferior schools and are treated as outsiders in a country where most of them have lived for many more generations than the whites who are treating them as strangers who do not quite belong in this country.

Whites who want to oppose racism must begin with the basic fact that racism has been maintained by whites because it was and still is, to their advantage. Slaves worked for nothing. The Plantation owner did not have a bill for wages. He only had to pay for food and inferior living accommodations. In the century since the end of the Civil War blacks were maintained in debt to the owners of the land they farmed and the owners profited significantly from the hard labor of their black tenants. Today, held back by frequently inferior schools (unless black communities manage to organize their own) they get to do the worst job and earn the lowest wages. Average annual wages, for instance, for whites are $60,000.00, for blacks $39,000.00. Blacks receive a little more than half of what whites receive in Social Security or pension payments. Somewhere white employers save on their wage bill by employing blacks. Restricted to “black” neighborhoods by real estate firms and banks, black neighborhoods tend to be extremely overcrowded and landlords—mostly white—can charge exorbitant rents. Prisons—more often than not profit making enterprises—have a disproportionate number of black inmates. Operators of the private prisons lobby legislatures to invent more crimes or to increase mandatory punishment for already defined crimes. Schoolchildren of color are expelled more frequently from schools, police are constantly on the lookout for black children breaking the law. The society is organized to maintain the disproportionate number of black prisoners.

I could go on and on relating the many ways in which white society continues to be openly hostile to black Americans. The point of rehearsing these terrible facts is to point to the things that well-meaning white can and must do to ameliorate the condition of blacks. They must put an end to their systematic oppression and exploitation of blacks.

Black poverty is a a problem because pay for the jobs at the bottom of the employment scale is too low. Supporting actively the agitation for a minimum wage of at least $ 15.00 is one way in which whites can “help” blacks. Yes, of course, whites also have minimum wage jobs. They too live in poverty due to starvation wages. But that surely is no reason to oppose pushing for a living wage.

Housing conditions can be ameliorated by sending real estate agents to jail who work to maintain segregated neighborhoods. Landlords that do not maintain their buildings should be sent to prison. City officials who do not enforce housing ordinances in black neighborhoods should be punished.

These changes will not come about without the hard and dedicated work of whites who want to help blacks. All of these changes would serve to improve the lives of some black citizens. The educational opportunities of black children will only be improved if citizens white and black continue to push for equity in the city's schools.

Blacks are subject to many injustices. It is clear that whites need to recognize their role in maintaining these injustices up to now and need to begin to work to rectify them as far as they can.