CaIiJovnia Sludies and CaIiJovnia FoIilics BeJIeclions on lIe SesquicenlenniaI

AulIov|s) JeJJ Luslig

Souvce CaIiJovnia Hislov, VoI. 77, No. 3 |FaII, 1998), pp. 130-139
FuIIisIed I CaIiJovnia HislovicaI Sociel
SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/25462488
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History.
http://www.jstor.org
Carey
McWilliams,
ca. 1945. Born in Colorado in
1905,
McWilliams was a
graduate
of the
University
of
Southern California. He
enjoyed
a
lengthy
career as a Los
Angeles attorney
and
writer,
as well as state
commissioner of
housing
and
immigration
in the late 1930s. He left California in the 1940s to write for
The
Nation;
he served as its editor from 1955 to 1975. His
major
works include Factories in the Field
(1939),
/// Fares the Land
(1942),
North
from
Mexico
(1949),
Southern
California Country (1946),
and
California:
The
Great
Exception (1949).
He died in 1980.
Courtesy
collection
of Carey
McWilliams, Jr.
CALIFORNIA HISTORY
California
Studies
and
California
Politics:
Reflections
on
the
Sesquicentennial
by Jeff Lustig
California Studies
Conference,
Los
Angeles, February
6,1998
I want to thank the California Studies Association
for this award.* It
belongs
of course to the whole
group
of
people
who have worked over the last
ten
years
to
organize
California-oriented courses and
research,
to create this
association,
and to
organize
the conferences. It has been a
lively
and
engaged
group
of scholars and
writers,
professors
and
poets,
people
from within and outside the
university,
with
whom it has been a real
pleasure
to work.
I am somewhat daunted to receive this award.
Carey
McWilliams
epitomized
the kind of
scholar,
social
activist,
and thinker to which those of us who
developed
California studies courses and
organized
this association ten
years ago aspired.
In fact we ded
icated our
very
first California Studies Conference in
1989 to the
memory
and
legacy
of
Carey
McWilliams.
His work was
distinguished by
a number of
things:
its remarkable
breadth,
the
depth
of his
insights,
the
sheer
quantity
of his
work,
and its
accessible-decep
tively accessible?prose.
Phrases of his
linger
in read
ers'
imaginations. Throw-away
lines
spark
entire
dissertions:
"In California the soil is
really
mined,
not farmed."
"To understand California we need a
sociology
of
good
luck."
"California
skipped
the frontier
phase
of land
settlement;...
she
sprang
at once to full stature."
And this
being
the
anniversary
of the Gold Rush:
"California was settled
by
losers
looking
for a second
chance."
*Jeff Lustig,
who received the first
Carey
McWilliams Award of the
California Studies
Association,
gave
this address at the 1998 Califor
nia Studies Association
Conference,
February
1998,
at the
University
of Southern
California,
in Los
Angeles.
I want to
say
a few words at the
beginning
about
McWilliams's work because I want to
try
to
explain
why
we have held it in such
high regard
and
why
it
has
proven
so durable in its
importance.
That
work,
of
course,
was not limited to those
profound
and
justly
acclaimed studies of Factories in the
Field,
of
Mexican
migration (North
from Mexico),
of internment
(Prejudice,
a book finished while the
Japanese
were
still in the
camps),
and intolerance
(as
treated in A
Mask
for Privilege).
It also extended to
quite
extensive
public
action. McWilliams's name is a
ubiquitous
presence
in the accounts of the time. It
crops up
recording
the Owens
Valley story
for future
scholars,
discovering
and
exposing
labor
racketeering
in Hol
lywood
back-lot
unions,
preserving
the record of the
Zoot Suit
Riots,
defending
the
unjustly
accused in the
Sleepy Lagoon
Case,
serving
as State Commissioner
of
Flousing
and
Immigration.
McWilliams could
also be counted on to
graciously bring
in new voices
from the
sidelines,
like that of the
Filipino
farm
worker/poet
Carlos
Bulosan,
author of the beautiful
America Is in the Heart. And he did all
this,
remem
ber,
outside the
academy.
One
thing
that has
always
struck me, both about the
formal studies and the
practical
activities,
was his
unerring eye
for the
significant
fact or issue. It wasn't
just any topic
he chose to research and
address,
or
any
topic
that would sell. He
consistently
identified
top
ics of central
and,
it turned
out,
lasting importance.
The issues he tackled
prove
to be the
very
ones we still
wrestle with
today?migrant
work,
water
conflict,
minorities,
the connections between social structure
and social intolerance.
There was an
obvious
politics
to all
this,
though
it
is
usually glossed
over. The titles and
topics
I noted
reveal a
particular
slant on the world?a commitment
FALL 1998 131
Jos?
Antonio Carrillo
(1796-1862),
one-time alcalde of Los
Angeles,
was one of
eight
native-born Californios to attend
the first California Constitutional Convention in
Monterey
in
September
1849. The constitution the
forty-eight delegates
hammered out
adopted Spanish
as an official second lan
guage,
outlawed
slavery,
and
guaranteed
freedom of
speech,
freedom of
religion,
and the
right
to a trial
by jury,
but denied
suffrage
to African
Americans,
Native
Americans,
and
women. It served as California's state constitution until
replaced
in 1879.
Courtesy California
Historical
Society/Title
Insurance and Trust Photo
Collection,
Department of Special
Col
lections,
use.
to tell the hidden
histories,
to
speak
for the Other Cal
ifornia,
to talk about what his friend Louis Adamic
titled Shadow America. This was not his exclusive
focus. McWilliams was also a
discerning analyst
of
mainstream
developments?one
of the first to discuss
the weakness of California
political parties,
and the
first to see the
impact
of the media on
politics, among
other
things.
But he was committed to
including
minority
views,
and
dissenting
views,
into the
story
of
California,
to
pulling
down
pretensions
and
unmasking
the "masks for
privilege"
indicated
by
his
title. That took
courage,
intellectual
courage.
We
should not
forget
that. There was also a notable
freshness and
originality
to his
politics.
His was an
independent politics.
The
independence
was
rooted,
I
believe,
in a
commitment,
a
fidelity,
to the truths of
his own keen observations.
Consider an
example
central to his work.
During
the strife-torn thirties and
forties,
he and his friend
Louis
Adamic,
a San Pedro
harbormaster,
gave
sus
tained and insistent attention to the class character
of California conflict and social life. This was a state
where labor and
capital
clashed in a
particularly
stark fashion.
("The
Rise of Farm Fascism" is one
chapter
in Factories in the
Field).
But McWilliams also
saw that the social consciousness
emerging
in the
state did not conform to
expected
class
patterns.
There was a
peculiar quality
to
it,
an anomie about
which Nathanael
West, Joan Didion,
and Thomas
Pynchon
would also write.
McWilliams's words were best.
My
favorite
pas
sage
is the one on L.A. cafeteria life from a
chapter
in Southern
California Country, wonderfully
entitled,
"I'm A
Stranger
Here
Myself."
In Los
Angeles
[he
wrote in
1946]
cafeterias are
quasi
public
institutions around which a
flourishing
social
life has
always
revolved. A cafeteria in LA is a
place
where
you go
to have a
meeting
and,
perhaps,
to eat.
. . .
The
state-society meetings
in the cafeteria liter
ally
reek of
friendliness,... [but]
it's the falsetto friend
liness of
people pretending they
are not
lonely.
. . .
Actually
I
suppose
that 40% of the Iowans aren't
really
Iowans at all. In this sense to be Iowan in California
is
merely
another
way
of
confessing
one's loneliness.
That is social observation of a
high
order. Mc
Williams was
helped
and sustained in this
indepen
dence
by
a
larger,
diverse circle he had
brought
together:
Bulosan, John Fante, Adamic, Jake
Zeitlin?
a
group
I like to think of as the first "California Stud
ies Association."
Why California
Studies?
We have followed their lead now for ten
years.
Cal
ifornia studies courses and centers have been
created,
and conferences
called,
that
bring together
academics
and
longshoremen,
writers and fire
captains,
bankers
and
city
councilwomen. At the California Studies
Conferences we have tried to create an annual
pub
lic
space
in which all the voices of the state could be
heard. On the tenth
anniversary
of the first confer
ence,
it is
fitting,
and
maybe
even
edifying,
to
go
back
and recall
why
we started it
all,
what we were after.
Looking
back from ten
years' vantage,
I think that
by
and
large
our vision was
right.
What we are
doing
is
important,
and in
ways
we did not even see at the
time.
But in one
way
I have also come to
think,
after
attending
these conferences and
reading many
of
your
books and
articles,
that we were
wrong. Explain
ing
this will lead me to some
larger
reflections about
132 CALIFORNIA HISTORY
California Studies and the California State
University
A
prime
architect of California's innovative and much-emulated "Master Plan
_
for
Higher
Education,"
put
into effect
by
the state
legislature
in
1960,
was the
Hfl^^^HHf^HHJHHH
late Dr Arthur G. Coons
(shown left), economist,
then
president
of Occiden
^^^^|Ki^^^^^^^^H
tal
College
in Los
Angeles,
chairman of the California Master Plan
Survey
^^^IBRI^^' v^^^B
(1959-1960),
and later
president
of the
Coordinating
Council for
Higher
Edu
I
^IHk !;ai?'?^?^ ^fS^H
cation in California
(1965-68). Strongly
within the tradition of education in the
HBPwF
;;
?M?b ^^WB
liberal arts and
sciences,
Coons
presided
over the
surveying
of the state's edu
P Je^^^??J^Hm?^
:^H
cational resources and interests and the
designing
of the master
plan
to create
?I
^^^B^^H^^HH|
an
unprecedented,
three-tiered structure of
public higher
educational institu
llp^^
tions
(University
of
California,
State
University System,
and
Community
Col
fc-^MBBl^^BP
leges)
with the
charge
of
providing
excellent, free,
collegiate
education for all
Vp^^a^^^^L^
qualified
Calif ornians. The "Master Plan"
deliberately gave
a
special charge
fe
"j?^^?^^^m^^^^^
to the State
University System,
as its
"primary
function,"
to
provide
"instruc
B||jafl||^H|^^^HE^^^H
tion in the liberal arts and
sciences,"
which was a decided
change
from
past
^^^^^^ ^^^^l^^^^B
priorities
for the
already-existing
state
colleges,
which had
emphasized
occu
^^^^^^H ^^ J^^^^H
pational preparation, particularly
teacher
training.
This new
emphasis
on the
^ ^F^^^^^^^?
basic liberal arts and sciences was central to the mission of the State Univer
^^^^^^^^
sity System
because,
in Coons's
words,
"the
problems
of modern
society
are
not
solely
technical;
they
are
basically
human"
(from
Arthur G.
Coons,
Crises
in
California Higher
Education
[Los
Angeles:
Ward Ritchie
Press, 1968]).
For the State
University,
in fulfillment of its
responsibility
to the
people
of the
state,
an
important
dimension
of that instruction would involve
research,
individual
courses, and
programs concentrating
on
local, California,
and
regional
matters.
By
the
1980s,
according
to the
important study
"California Studies and the California State
University" (1988),
done
by
Dr.
Jeffrey Lustig
at the direction of the chancellor of the State
University System,
the
nearly twenty campuses
of the State
University possessed
immense
teaching
and research resources,
in
many
aca
demic
departments
in the
humanities,
social
sciences, arts,
and
sciences,
pertaining
to the
study
of California and
its lands and
peoples, though
there was little
campus-wide
or
system-wide
coordination.
I The California Studies
Association,
and its annual California Studies
Conferences,
developed
from the 1988
study
as an
attempt
to
provide
coordination,
a
network,
and a forum for
university
and
non-university people
seeking
to understand California. The
interdisciplinary
field of California Studies was thus a direct
outgrowth
of
I the
special
humanistic mission of the California State
University system. Courtesy Jean
Paule,
former secretary
to
Arthur G. Coons and
secretary of
Occidental
College,
and now
college
archivist,
Occidental
College.
Richard
J. Orsi,
Editor
the character of California
politics
here in the first
weeks of what will be a
three-year
California
Sesqui
centennial celebration. It will lead me to reflect on
what I see as the end of our state's first
political
era.
I wrote a
report
for the California State
University
Chancellor's Office ten
years ago
about the new field
of California studies. The
meetings
I held with
many
of
you preparing
that
report expressed
the reasons
many
of us started to create
interdisciplinary
Cali
fornia studies courses and
programs
in the
colleges
and universities of the state. There were
roughly
three
sets of these reasons.
The first
grew
out of the
simple
desire to
provide
information and
encourage
research. These
impulses
were educational in the basic sense of the word. The
point
was to
provide
information about California
people,
land and
water, law, arts, literature,
politics,
geography, history,
and economics. This was desired
both for students' own lives and future
careers,
and
to
provide
for coherent
policy responses
to serious
problems
then
emerging.
This was the
period
when
we first
contemplated
the rise of a
society
in which
everyone
would
belong
to a
minority,
the
post-Cold
War
restructuring
of the
economy,
and the
necessity
of
developing
sustainable
agriculture, forestry,
and
urban life.
Providing
information like this is
particularly
important
because of another
peculiarity
about us:
most Californians know
very
little about the
state,
particularly
its
history Maybe
it's that cafeteria cul
ture. Californians are
people
who have left a lot of
their
baggage
behind.
They
are a
dis-placed people
and not sure what
they
share. There is
only
a small
body
of commentaries about our traditions.
Only
thin
fables
guide
our
self-understandings.The
state of
California burst full-blown into the nation without a
FALL 1998 133
long
frontier or
any
territorial
experience, just
as Min
erva
sprang
full-blown from the forehead of
Jupiter.
In
fact,
Minerva is the central
figure
on our state seal
(curious
as this
is,
remembering
that she is the
god
dess of
wisdom).
Or
perhaps
the reason we know so little about our
collective life is because
people
came to California to
find their own
wealth,
as we remember on this one
hundred-fiftieth
anniversary
of the start of the Gold
Rush,
to stake
private
claims and work their
private
visions,
without
having
to
worry
about
larger
mat
ters. We have had a
long history
of this not
only
with
miners but with a
bumper crop
of free
spirits, Utopi
ans, cultists, cranks,
clairvoyants,
and
quacks. ("Who
do
you
follow?" asked the woman in Nathanael
West's 1939 novel
Day of
the Locust. "I mean in the
Search for
Health,
along
The Road to
Life.")
Mike
Gold,
the New York
Communist,
came out here in
1927 and saw it even then.
My
dentist used to be a
Secretary
of the IWW.... He
led a
big
strike.
. .
Now,
after ten
years
in Calif, he
produces ectoplasm
and tells me he can
project
his
body anywhere
he wants
to_[I
left New
York,]
a
battlefield. But I soon discovered California was a hos
pital.
...
These were all
people
with more
important things
on
their minds than
understanding
where
they
lived.
Or
maybe,
to take a last
possibility,
the reason Cal
ifornians know so little about their state is because
of the
high
value we
put
on
forgetting.
The other side
of our acclaimed taste for innovation and
mobility
is
a
necessary forgetting?a
routinized,
regularized
for
getting?of
the old
country,
the old
ways,
our
origi
nal intentions.
Being
a Californian means never
having
to
say
"I remember."
Whatever the reason,
we wind
up
without much
information about where we live. I
grew up
in San
Diego
but never
began
to understand
aridity
until I
read Wallace
Stegner
's
Beyond
the Hundredth Merid
ian fifteen
years ago.
Most California students
emerge
from California
colleges, paid
for
by
California tax
payers,
with little substantive
knowledge
about or
experience
with California's
land,
peoples,
world of
work,
or artistic visions. Professors do not
get
hired
or
promoted
for
knowing
about California.
My
own
graduate
course in state
politics
was not labeled
"California." The
catalogue
said "Sub-National
Sys
tems." In
sum, the first reason we
sought
to create
California Studies as an
interdisciplinary
field was to
correct this
general ignorance.
The second reason was educational in a
deeper
sense. It
grew
out of
changing
ideas of what
people
needed information
about,
and how
they acquired
a
sensibility capable
of
seeing
that information mean
ingfully
and
seeing
what was
significant
in
it,
as
McWilliams had. Those of us drawn to California
studies had come to
agree
that
people
learn best when
what
they
learn is rooted in their
experience,
and in
what
they
know and love best. We had come to
believe that real
knowledge
is rooted
knowledge.
Clif
ford Geertz
explained
in a book entitled Local Knowl
edge
that "We
may
think in
universals,
but we live in
the
particulars."
The
goal
of California studies in this
sense was to
help people
learn about the
social,
cul
tural,
and environmental
particulars
of their lives.
Richard
Rodriguez captured
the
potential
excite
ment of this
approach
in his account of an
early
encounter with William
Saroyan:
I remember a
story
he
[Saroyan]
wrote about a
boy
who returns to Fresno and
stops
in front of his house
and drinks from a
garden
hose.
Saroyan
creates this
miracle
paragraph
about the taste of
Valley
water. I
remember
reading
that?10 or 11
years
old?and the
liberation it
gave
me:
Valley
water,
the water I con
sumed,
the water that was
me,
was worth
writing
about.
. . .
[Y]ou
didn't have to
grow up
in Missis
sippi
or on the Lower East Side.
"The world is
places,"
is the
way Gary Snyder put
it.
"Our relation to the natural world takes
place
in a
place,
and must be
grounded
in information and
experi
ence." That is the
beginning
of education.
Snyder's
is
not a laid-back
proposal.
It is an
injunction.
The second set of reasons for
taking
California stud
ies
seriously,
then,
had to do with
counteracting
the
effects of our
displacement
and
enabling
us "to see
the universe in a
grain
of sand"
(as
Arthur
Quinn
put
it
concerning
the intent behind his fine
study
of Point
Reyes country,
The Broken
Shore).
The third set of reasons were
political.
"Political"
in the direct sense that California studies was seen
as a
way
of
introducing
new voices and new
per
spectives
into statewide discussions of critical
issues,
as McWilliams did. And
"political"
also in the older
sense that California studies
people
took the
job
of
citizen education
seriously. They
aimed to fulfill the
long-neglected, long-avoided job
in California
higher
education of
preparing
students to
participate
in
political
life and to act in the
larger
world. This actu
ally
marked a return to the
original purpose
of
pub
lic education in
America,
which was to
help prepare
people
for democratic
politics.
The initial
goal
of
pub
lic education was to create a
"public"
in the first
place.
It was not to
provide skills-training
for a
rapidly
changing job
market?the former chancellor of the
California State
University notwithstanding.
Citizen education does not mean
training people
to stick to "business as usual" and
play preassigned
134 CALIFORNIA HISTORY
roles. McWilliams's
agenda,
which we
respect
and
admire,
was not the
legislative agenda
of his
day.
Cit
izen education means
enabling people,
when neces
sary,
to take a critical and
independent perspective.
But this cannot be done and
you
cannot act in the
world if
you
don't first have a
map
of where
you
are
in it. So our
hope
in these
annual,
public
conferences
was,
together,
to create such a
map,
a
fuller,
more
accurate
map
than those
prepared by Hollywood
scriptwriters
or the state's chambers of commerce.
There was also a fourth reason we
began
devel
oping
California studies
work,
unstated and
perhaps
even unconscious at the time. Those of us who
began
doing
California studies wanted to
keep
the work of
people
like McWilliams
alive?people
like Paul
Tay
lor,
Dorothea
Lange,
Wallace
Stegner,
Ernesto
Galarza, Bulosan,
and more
recently, Larry
Crouchett
and
Larry Margolis.
These were all
public
intellectuals,
people widely
informed,
deeply
rooted in their
places,
and
engaged
in different
ways
in the
public
world. To realize this
is to also arrive at a
summary
statement of our rea
sons for
doing
California studies work. The
goal
was
to
help replenish
and restock California's
supply
of
public
intellectuals,
to
help
students,
young
and
old,
newly
arrived and
settled,
enrolled and
free-lance,
to
develop
into
grounded,
informed,
and
engaged pub
lic actors.
And
yet,
I
said,
I have also come to think we were
mistaken in one of our
premises,
one of our
hypothe
ses. After a decade more of
reading
and
studying,
I
have come to think that our
problem
in California is
not
exactly
one of
ignorance.
It is not that we don't
know about California. We know
quite
a lot. It is that
we often know the
wrong things.
Ours is a case of
learned
ignorance,
of "trained
incapacity,"
in Thorsten
Veblen's fine
phrase.
We know all kinds of
things
when
you
think about
it.
We know that Nature is
generous,
but a little
inept.
She,
for
example, put
the water in all the
wrong
places.
You
may
remember
Floyd Dominy's
remark
from the offices of the Bureau of Reclamation: "The
unregulated
Colorado was a son of a bitch. It was
either in flood or in trickle. It was no damned
good."
We know that the Yankee
conquest
of California
was an
emancipation.
A leader of the Bear
Flag
Rebel
lion of
February
1846 told us so. In the words of the
great philosopher
and historian
Josiah
Royce,
the moment was
[William]
Ide's and he came forward
speaking plainly.
What were
they
there for? Was it not
for some
truly worthy object?namely indepen
dence?
Nay,
said
he,
we are robbers or we must be
conquerors.
A
pretty
clear
choice,
once
you put
it like that. So we
know ourselves to be
high-minded
and innocent
(undocumented though
we
were),
to be here for
independence,
and also not to be
overly-concerned
with the fate of our
predecessors.
We know the Gold
Rush as our
founding
event,
to
put
it
differently,
not
the
Treaty
of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo,
the
conquest,
not
the
challenge
of inclusion and
cooperation.
We know also that we are free
by
a
gift
of nature
and that
government
is a
misfortune,
though
the West
grew up largely
as a
dependent
on federal
largesse?
from subsidized mail-runs and
public
lands,
to land
title
courts,
railroad
grants,
water
subsidies,
and
defense
expenditures.
We
know,
to take a last
example,
that the recent eco
nomic recession is over and
"Recovery
is At Hand."
We know this because our leaders tell us and the
headlines announce
it,
though
most of the
people
liv
ing, say,
around this
university
do not know it. In
fact,
the
story
of California has
always
included
great
dis
parity.
In
post-gold-rush
times,
it was "the
chivalry
vs. the
shovelry."
Now
again
it is
increasingly
a two
tier
society.
In the mid-nineties the incomes of the rich
est fifth of families with children in California rose
30
percent higher
than
they
had been in the mid-sev
enties,
while the
average
income of the
poorest
fifth
sank
by
27
percent.
Between 1976 and
1994,
family
income for the
poorest
tenth fell
by
36
percent
in Cal
ifornia,
while it fell
by only
13
percent
in the nation.
We know the first term of
Henry George's Progress
and
Poverty
but not the
second,
the
recovery
but not
the
deeper restructuring
and
on-going production
of
poverty.
The Political
System
as Mis-Educator
So,
what is the future for California
studies,
given
the
weight
of this mis-education and the continued
training
of our
incapacity?
To answer
that,
we have
to think about the
larger
sources of that
training
in
the state's
political
culture. The
strongest,
most
per
sistent influence on
any political
culture is its
politi
cal
system.
The
political system
is,
among
other
things,
a
system
of
education,
the
primary public
edu
cation in
any society.
It determines what counts and
what does
not,
which
problems
will come
up
for
pub
lic attention and which will not over the
long
run,
what will be known and what
forgotten.
And our
political system
in California is
currently
malfunctioning,
as we know. Political commentator
Dan Walters
pointed
out one of its
major
defects in
his
concluding
address at last
year's
conference: the
lack of real statewide leaders whom citizens them
selves chose as their own leaders. This is a failure of
FALL 1998 135
the
political system,
and a failure of which the unin
vited candidacies of unknown millionaires is a
per
fect
symbol.
But the list of malfunctions is
longer.
The leaders
do not lead. The voters do not vote. The
legislature
seizes
up, provoking
citizens to turn to initiatives. But
initiatives,
intended to arm the
people against
their
representatives,
have been turned
by private
inter
ests
against
the
people.
Artificial fiscal crises lame
public policy,
while electoral
campaigns
have been
converted
by friendly buy-outs
into branches of
pri
vate
enterprise.
The incumbent
governor
summons
up
nativist
prejudice against immigrants
from the col
lective
unconscious,
while his
opposition
seeks
only
to
strength
the border
patrol.
In the state's
underclass,
a stealth
citizenship
has
developed,
and in the
upper,
the absentee ballot becomes the main form of citizen
activity.
The forms of discourse are
debased,
the
terms of debate narrowed. And under the
auspices
of media talk
shows,
public
deliberation is
replaced
by
a
random,
drive-by democracy.
This all affects our education as Californians. Not
that this educational dimension of
politics
is one
Americans have
normally
addressed,
traditional as
the
topic
is. But think about it like this: if our
politi
cal
process
has trouble
identifying
the state's real
issues,
then we have trouble
recognizing
them. If the
legislature's agenda
is not the
society's
real
political
agenda
and set of
problems,
we have no
way
of learn
ing
what the real
agenda
is. And if the
political
process
has a demonstrable
tendency
to fix on small
or artificial
issues,
then we find ourselves
focusing
on
small or artificial
issues,
as a
regular
and
systematic
occurrence.
So we have no
way
of
learning,
for
example,
about
the need to build a thousand classrooms
a
day
now
in California or the
consequences
of
failing
to do so,
no
way, except usually
under court
order,
of
respond
ing
to the
degradation
of the
environment,
no
way
of
knowing
about the effects of the
growing
under
class.
But we have
plenty
of
ways
of
learning,
for exam
ple,
that
prison-building
is of the
highest priority,
that
the
flight
of a few businesses out of state in the
early
nineties was a
major tragedy,
and that taxes are bad
(though
California was a
high profit/high
wage
state
in the
fifties,
when taxes were
high).
We have
many
ways
of
learning
about the
budget
deficit,
but none
about the democratic deficit.
Am I
being
too hard on the
political system? Many
commentators have
begun
to
say
that California soci
ety
itself is
ungovernable. They
describe our
grow
ing fragmentation
and balkanization.
They compare
us to
Sarajevo
and
Babylon.
Mike Davis has written
powerfully
of the
spatial segregation
of races in Cal
ifornia
cities,
of
gated
cities and
punitive
homeowner
associations,
and of architectural "introversions of
public
services,
the rise of
single-issue
initiative
pol
itics,
the drift toward a
rights-oriented jurisprudence,
and the
corporate preemption
of
public
functions."
What we've
got
is a
/zyperpluralism, according
to
Richard
DeLeon,
a situation that makes
Sisyphus's
job
look
easy. Sisyphus only
had to
push
a boulder
up
the hill. We have to
struggle
somehow with
gravel.
Still,
when
you
think about
it,
this
hyperpluralism
is not an elemental fact. It is not a
primary
datum.
The
design
of the state's
political system,
which we
took over from the nation and
perfected
with our own
novelties,
such as the initiative
process
and a
plural
executive
(multiple, directly
elected heads of execu
tive
departments), specializes
in
producing private
interests,
helping
construct
private
interests com
plete
with
necessary
adversaries. You need a
private
interest to
get standing
in this
system.
When I
study
California
closely,
even
"identity,"
that
presumably
bedrock essence that we think
defines most
truly
what we
are,
strikes me as more
flexible and
responsive
to
political
context than we
often think. Our
political system currently guides
eth
nic and
lifestyle groups
in the creation of
private
identities?either as a means of
getting
into the
sys
tem or as a reaction to
being
excluded from it. I think
of Asian Americans as an
example
of the first alter
native. For it is
two-party politics
that is
fashioning
distinct cultural
groups
of Vietnamese and
Chinese,
Hmong
and
Koreans,
into "Asian Americans." And
I think of the "Chicano" as an
example
of the second.
The Chicano did not come to California. He is a cre
ation of California.
(So,
in
fact,
is the
Okie).
The
words of a
tenth-grade immigrant quoted
in a Cali
fornia
Tomorrow
report
a few
years ago
are instructive.
"I know how to act here
now,"
he
explained.
"When
I came
they
would
fight
and call us
wetbacks,
here
at school and in the street. Now with our
anger
we
fight
back.
They
call us wetbacks and we call them
niggers. Everyone
hates." Those are the words of
someone
learning
an
identity.
The reason blacks and Koreans do not
get along
in
South Central L.A. is not because of their
DNA,
or
some essential blackness and Korean-ness. It is
because
they
are closed out of the structures of
priv
ilege
now
being
recreated,
and define their
options
in terms of their
opportunities?options
and
oppor
tunities
shaped by political
choices.
Now,
a
large
literature in
political
science
promises
that institutions exist that will
regather
what inter
ests and
background
have rent asunder. The
parties
are
supposed
to do this.
They
are called
"aggregative"
136 CALIFORNIA HISTORY
In the
1870s,
strong protest
movements
against
cor
porations
culminated in an
outcry
for a new state
constitution in order to create a more
equitable
dis
tribution of
power
and to
regulate large corporate
powers
such as the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Rep
resentatives of farm
groups
and the
Workingmen's
Party
of California
(started by
firebrand
organizer
Denis
Kearny
in
1877)
dominated the
convention,
which met in Sacramento in 1878 and 1879.
Although
stalemate and the
necessity
for
compro
mise resulted in
only
mild restrictions on
corpora
tions,
conservatives in California and around the
country
denounced the new constitution as com
munistic and a threat to
private property rights.
This
political
cartoon
by
Thomas
Nast,
from
Harper's
Weekly
in
1880,
articulated this
charge.
Nevertheless,
the constitution was ratified
by
California voters in
1879,
and
though
much
amended,
continues to
serve as the basis of
government today.
From Ed Salz
man, The Cartoon
History
of California Politics
(Sacramento:
The
California Journal,
1978).
Social Science Solved.
devices. But in California it is the
parties
that have
introduced
wedge
issues into the
society
to
split
us
apart,
and other innovations like
targeted campaigns
to address different sectors of the
population sepa
rately.
Our
parties
now work as
dzsaggregative
devices.
The
legislature
is also
supposed
to
unify disparate
interests,
in the course of its deliberations about
pub
lic
policy.
But
according
to most
reports
the State
Assembly
and Senate deliberate less and less and are
increasingly
devoted to insider
trading
between
pow
erful
private
interests. Phil
Isenberg,
a
very capable
assemblyman
who was
recently
termed-out,
explained
at a California studies forum a few
years
ago
that "We are
largely
transactional leaders. What
I do is broker deals.
. . .
Debating right
and
wrong
[does
not come
easily]
to elected officials." Former
Senate
Majority
Leader
Barry
Keene noted
that,
dur
ing
the
twenty years
he
served,
the Senate had
increasingly
become a
place
where
representatives
with
private proposals
came
together,
traded
favors,
and left. It was not a
place
for deliberation and col
laborative
dialogue,
but for
something
more like ser
ial
monologue.
At the state's
one-hundred-fifty-year
mark, then,
we can see that the ethos of one of our
founding
events,
the Gold
Rush,
has left clear marks on our
institutions. Our constitutional
arrangements crys
tallize
many
of the
principles
of that event
(though
there are
exceptions). They privilege private activity
and the
pursuit
of
private
stakes.
They
set the main
job
of
government
as the
untangling
of
private
claims.
They
are not averse to
throwing
barriers in the
way
of outsiders in order to create new
privileges?
though
in more
complicated ways
now than was true
of the
Foreign
Miner's Tax of the 1850s.
They
offer
little
provision
for the commons and the future of
common
opportunity.
FALL 1998 137
In
fact,
we can see that the extractive
approach
inherent in the Gold Rush has even been extended
to the
political process
itself. Our
parties
and
politi
cians now mine?even
strip-mine?the citizenry
with no
thought
to the
tailings,
the residue of frus
tration and
anger,
left behind.
So a
political system,
a means
by
which all voices
could
theoretically
be
brought together along
with the
voices of different historical eras,
a
system
that could
help
us confront the
tragic
dimensions of our
history
and
expand
our
options beyond
William Ide's
pro
posals
for California
identity,
is
working
instead to
accentuate our
differences,
break
up
a sense of the
whole,
and reinforce that thinness of self-under
standing
that leads us to blame others for our
prob
lems.
Now the whole
thing may
be
veering
out of con
trol. The
Proposition
187
campaign against
undocu
mented
immigrants
a few
years ago produced
not
only
a new
scapegoat,
a new
identity
for the Other
(as Illegal
Alien),
but
unexpectedly along
with
it,
a
new self: the citizen as
informer,
a citizen anxious to
take
away
his or her
neighbor's
social
services,
a fear
ful citizen
thinking
no
longer
about beaches and
parks
but about a Fortress California and about
building
a new wall at the
border,
just
when other
nations are
tearing
theirs down.
This is a citizen who
by
the
principles
of the
Treaty
of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo might
have been a member
of a
thriving
binational,
bilingual community,
now
turning
to an exclusivist State to define social mem
bership.
Our
political system,
in
sum,
is
teaching
us
?fe-connection. It does not teach us what we need to
know to be educated about
California,
to be citizens
and actors in our
society.
In its
general aspect
our
political
condition resem
bles
nothing
so much as an Auto-Immune
Deficiency
System.
It functions
analogously
to our most
tragic
and lethal
disease,
AIDS. It converts our natural
powers
of
resistance,
and abilities to recover when
stricken,
into
something
that
saps
our natural resis
tance and
aggravates
our
wounds,
increasing
our sus
ceptibility
to civic infection.
Time For A New Constitution
So here on the one-hundred-fiftieth
anniversary
of
the Gold Rush and the
Treaty
of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo,
and the
beginning
of three
years
of the
Sesquicen
tennial,
I
join
and invite
you
to
join
those who have
called for new constitutional convention for Califor
nia.
A constitution is not
just
a set of rules. It establishes
a
way
of
living together,
of
handling
common affairs
and
creating
common abilities. We
appear,
however,
to be in a constitutional moment
now,
when the
established
ways
of
handling
those affairs no
longer
work as
expected,
the
commonality
fails,
and
ques
tions closed off at the
beginning
force themselves on
us
again.
From the
perspective
of California
studies,
among
others,
we need
a new
approach,
a
re-founding.
Cal
ifornia's first constitutional convention was called in
1849,
in
Monterey;
the second amidst
anti-corporate,
anti-Asian
agitations
of 1878-79. It is time for a third
convention and a recurrence to
foundations,
but not
for the classical reasons,
to
put
us in touch with the
sources of our civic virtue and
identity.
We need to
recur to
beginnings
for the more
troubling
reasons
that our foundations were
poorly
laid and it was a
case of mistaken
identity
from the first. That
identity
I have
already
discussed. Neither
conqueror
nor thief
will do.
The foundations of state
government
we took over
from the national model. But a
political design
suited
to thirteen states with a citizen
population
of three
and-a-half million in
1787,
cultural
homogeneity,
and clearer common
purposes
is not a foundation
suited to
contemporary
California.
Many
have seen
this.
Barry
Keene has. Dan
Walters,
a
registered
Republican,
titled his columns a few
years
back,
"Revolt Needed in California" and "Radical
Change,
Only Hope."
And even the conservative London
Economist has observed "the need for radical reform
of
[California's] governmental
structure."
A Constitutional Revision Commission
was
formed in
1994,
it is
true,
largely
in
response
to
Keene's call for a full convention. It submitted its
report
a
year-and-a-half ago.
But that
report
retreated
from the real issues. It
gave passing
attention to
novel ideas like a unicameral
legislature
and
pro
portional representation,
and made the
important
proposal
to
dispense
with our anomalous two-thirds
rule for
passing
state
budgets.
But it stuck
pretty
much to the
straight
and narrow and to the beaten
paths.
It did not
go
far
enough.
It did not even
pro
pose
an
enlargement
of the number of
Assembly
seats
from
eighty,
the number
proposed
150
years ago,
when the entire state had
only
100,000
people,
and
reaffirmed in
1879,
when it had
860,000 (the
current
population
of a
congressional
district).
We need
a
system
that is
inclusive,
that does not
continue to
spawn
new class and exclusivist identi
ties,
that will
provide
better lessons in California stud
ies,
and that will
help
us create the foundations of the
common
understandings
and common
purposes
a
political
order needs to function. Americans
say
that
politics
is the art of the
possible.
That also means it
138 CALIFORNIA HISTORY
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Immigration
Act of
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is the art of
seeing
unrealized
possibilities,
of uncov
ering opportunities
that are latent but not
generally
noted.
Why
not take that
zany, visionary quality,
that
pro
clivity
for wild ideas that characterizes
California,
and
devote it to
something
besides hula
hoops
and
microchips? Why
not devote it to
something really
important,
like the
discovery
of those
political pos
sibilities?
Why
not invent new
ways
of
bringing
our
selves
together
to
deepen
our
understandings
of our
histories and our
place?
(The
place, Gary Snyder
told
us,
will
accept
all who know
her.)
And
why
not become actors and leaders in invent
ing
those new institutions in our own
neighbor
hoods, communities,
and
jobs? My reading
of
California
history
tells me that that is where
impor
tant
changes
have
always
started,
outside the
gov
ernment,
at the
grassroots.
We need a different direction in California
studies,
a new
political
constitution.
Maybe
here,
at the one
hundred-fifty-year
mark,
it's time to look
away
from
that one
founding
event,
the Gold
Rush,
to take seri
ously
the
principles
of the
other,
the
Treaty
of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo?to
look
away
from
conquest,
and toward inclusion and
cooperation
as the
guid
ing principles
of our
society.
It is
Minerva,
I
mentioned,
who holds the central
place
on our state seal. We
may
take her as a
sym
bol?not
really
of
wisdom,
for wisdom does not
emerge
full-blown in the real
world,
as
Josiah Royce
and
Henry George
and Mark Twain tried to tell us.
But we
may
take her as a
sign
at least of our
hope
for
wisdom
(and
delight
in false
advertising),
a
fitting
memento of the first
one-hundred-fifty-year period
of state
history.
Hegel
once remarked that "the owl of Minerva flies
at dusk"?the
understanding
of an era comes at its
close. It was a
far-seeing
remark. What he did not tell
us,
but we have discovered in due
time,
is that that
owl would be a
spotted
one.
S
Jeff Lustig
is
professor of government, California
State Uni
versity,
Sacramento. He was
founding
chair
of
the
California
Studies
Association,
author
of Corporate
Liberalism,
The
Origins
of Modern American Political
Theory,
1890-1920,
and
of
articles on democratic
theory
and
California's political
economy.
He is
currently president of
the Sacramento
chapter
of
the
California
State
University faculty
union.
FALL 1998 139