Chapter 4: Equality for All

Overview

In America [the common man] sets the tone. This is the first country where the common man could stand erect.
” I.F.Stone, quoted in Clive James, Postcard from Washington, Flying Visits

It s usually quite easy to identify the deepest, most fundamental values in a particular society: just look for what really upsets people in that culture. Lurking behind that strong reaction is the value that has just been violated. By this standard, egalitarianism, the belief that everyone is inherently equal to everyone else, is a mighty force in American culture. There is no quicker or more foolproof way to upset an American than to act superior , to act, that is, as if you are somehow special and should be treated differently from the way most other people are treated. This value runs so deep it even extends to people who clearly are special, presidents and the like, who therefore must be particularly careful to act like everyone else.

Why else did Jimmy Carter (not James), returning from his first presidential vacation in Plains, Georgia, insist on carrying his garment bag into the White House on national TV? Was it not to make a statement to the effect that I might be president of the United States and leader of the Free World, but I can carry my bags into my house when I come back from vacation just like the rest of you? A statement ” and this is the point ” that would go over well with the American masses? Carter, it should be noted, ran for president as a populist, one of us, an ordinary guy from a sleepy town out near the back of beyond. He was a peanut farmer, for heaven s sake! With those credentials, how could he lose?

What other people but equality-obsessed Americans would have agonized quite so long and deeply over whether or not the First Lady (Nancy Reagan in this case) would curtsy when she was introduced to the Queen of England? Since the Queen was not expected to curtsy back, this would mean that Nancy was somehow lesser than, inferior to, or otherwise in another category than the Queen. This deeply upsets Americans. In the end, Nancy compromised and did a kind of half-curtsy that didn t really satisfy either side.

The same quality, treating everyone equally, was on display in another Queen-of-England story, the one where a startled Elizabeth II, visiting a poor neighborhood in Washington, DC, got a big hug from an excited African American lady who apparently didn t realize that one doesn t even touch ” much less hug ” the queen! The lady later explained that she always hugs her friends like that.

Notice, incidentally, how the president s wife is merely called the first lady, not the best, the greatest, or the highest lady. She s only first, ahead of others, perhaps, but conspicuously not above anyone else.

Simply stated, Americans are not very comfortable with distinctions of rank, status, or position. Nothing ” not money, not fame, not a particular talent or personal quality, not even success ” makes one better than anyone else. These things just make a person different, and every American is indeed very proud of how different he or she is from every other American (that other great value, individualism ). But make no mistake: even as Americans insist on their individual differences, they insist even more that they should never be treated differently.

Americans bristle at any system of arbitrary social ranking independent of achievement, Edward T. Hall has written.

They are uncomfortable with class systems such as those in France or England. The American belief in equality makes Americans dislike those who act superior or condescending. Even influential people usually make an effort to appear approachable. For example, the manager who puts his feet on the desk, works in his shirt-sleeves, and invites everyone to call him by his first name is trying to show that he too is a member of the team. (1990, 150)

Not surprisingly, the vernacular is riddled with expressions, none of them very kind, to describe people who violate this most American of American values. Such people are too big for their britches, have a big head, or a person s position has gone to her head. They put on airs, have forgotten where they came from (i.e., down here with the rest of us), put their trousers on one leg at a time (like everyone else), and occasionally have to be cut down to size (i.e., the size of the rest of us). Who does he think he is? Americans sometimes ask of such people (and, tellingly, they used to add, the king of England? ).

This is not to say Americans don t look up to or respect certain people or look down on and disparage others. They do, but they still try to treat people in both categories the same. And if someone an American looks up to starts acting superior, that person will quickly lose respect. Note, for example, the furor that was ignited not so long ago at a Washington, DC, movie theater when it appeared that the management had reserved seats to an evening showing of The Quiet American for Ted Koppel, a well-known American news personality, and members of his family. Why should anyone have special privileges and be able to have reserved seats, one reader wrote to The Washington Post. I thought Koppel tried to represent equality in this country, [but] evidently not when it comes to himself or his family (February 12, 2003, C3). This sentiment is shared by another annoyed reader who explained that the whole point of America is that there is no class system. The final word must go to the woman who wrote in to explain that

for the record, I am a quiet American who mows my own lawn, mops my own floor, and knows I have to get to a popular movie early in order to get good seats . . . I wish all these self-entitled celebrities and their sycophantic toadies would move to France. ( The Washington Post, February 12, 2003, C3)

Koppel, naturally, responded by saying he had never asked for reserved seats but that they had been offered to him by the management (which, presumably, has since moved to France).

It should not come as a surprise that egalitarianism runs so deep in the American psyche. Many of the earliest immigrants to America were escaping European cultures where people were judged and treated according to their social class, their position in a rigid social hierarchy. You were born into your place in that social order, which could not be changed and which effectively determined your future. And your wellbeing was largely a matter of knowing your place, your location in the hierarchy, and never acting above it (or below it, for that matter). It is not surprising that people yearning to escape systematic in equality would place equality at the center of the new ethos they were creating. As noted elsewhere, You didn t leave the safety and security of home and sail across the North Atlantic to utterly alien shores merely to recreate there a way of life you found unbearable in Europe (Storti 2001, 15).