Unintended Consequences (Part Two)

(Note: This is the second segment in a two part series. The first segment noted how sometimes our best intentions merely produce unintended consequences. A national law in the 1850s regarding slavery and another in the 1960s concerning immigration did not play out as their proponents had wished. Do current events contain the seeds of future unintended consequences?...)

While ending the immigration-limiting European (i.e. - white) quota system, the Immigration Act of 1965, in reality, had the opposite, unintended effect, opening the floodgates of immigration to other countries, many from the so called “third world” arena which embodied people of color. Today, 1 in 5 immigrants is Mexican, fulfilling a critical need to perform a whole host of new occupations in the proliferating service industries, while 1 in 4 immigrants is Asian. This places today’s era at the apex in terms of immigrants as a percentage of the total US population. The law is consequently understood to be one of the high water marks of late 20th-century American liberalism, although perhaps not what the Great Society liberals had quite intended.

Latin Americans, or Latinos as they are sometimes called, are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US today. Some look to be white, others black. And they are also all shades of color in between. Defying simple generalization, they are mainly identified as, first, Spanish-speaking and, second, Roman Catholic. Today, Latinos make up about 13% of the US population. It is estimated to be fully 50% by the year 2050. Would Congress still have passed the law had it been aware of the consequences?

In the second decade of the 21st century, it is apparent that the intent of the governing class may be far removed from the reality on the ground in at least a couple of instances.

In 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited. The Court reasoned that to limit that spending would violate the 1st amendment of corporations, which it viewed the same way as people under the law. The ruling was a jolt to those who have been battling to curtail the corrupting influence of money in the political system.

Some say the high court’s decision has created an unwelcome new path for wealthy interests to exert corruptive influence on the democratic election process. But as the 2012 presidential election cycle unfolds, the grassroots political small dollar contributions to the candidacy of the populist President Barack Obama continue to pour in. The Obama re-election campaign seems to be having little difficulty in keeping up with the one percenters who would bankroll its defeat. Is this a case of unintended consequences, for reasons which are not yet altogether clear?

Finally, the US Supreme Court will soon decide on the legality of the new 2010 national health care law (more commonly known as Obamacare), whose passage had escaped every American leader tackling the issue dating back more than 100 years. The plain fact is that a significant number of what estimates project to be the 30 million Americans who will be able to obtain health insurance coverage for the first time under the new law are ordinary citizens of color.

Already, seismic tremors can be felt from a potentially adverse ruling from the conservative US Supreme Court, which some say is itching for an excuse to strike down the new healthcare law. An actual adverse decision, however, has the potential to expand the tremors to the magnitude of a political earthquake. Would it be one with unintended consequences?

-Michael D’Angelo

Unintended Consequences (Part One)

(Note: This is the first segment in a two part series.)

Facebook’s initial public offering this week may serve as a useful reminder that sometimes our best intentions are disregarded. The devil fools with the best laid plans. Hell is paved both with sorrow and good intentions. But why do these old adages attribute responsibility entirely to the dark side? Might the rich getting richer be a simple matter of unintended consequences? Here are some thoughts to ponder:

Recently, a spectacularly wealthy American capitalist named Edward Conard has written a book with the catchphrase title of Unintended Consequences. The book makes a case for income inequality, bringing to light a litany of benefits bestowed upon public society by the venerable “one percent” class. The message is obviously self-serving. But in so doing, might the book’s message serve instead to have an opposite effect? Might its message unite the other ninety-nine percent, in a way the author had not intended?

US History serves some interesting examples of unintended consequences. There was a time when the US Supreme Court actually decided that black people had no right to sue in federal court, because they were considered to be a class of property, not people. The rationale was that the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights were not intended to apply to African Americans. Moreover, since blacks were not considered to be people, Congress did not have the power to exclude the institution of slavery from the US territories which were not yet states. The will of the people who lived in those territories, which may have been to the contrary, was disregarded.

The Supreme Court ruled that what needed protection was the slaveholder’s property rights, under the 5th amendment. To rule otherwise would violate the prohibition against the seizure of their property without just compensation. The human welfare of black people was said to be secondary.

Designed to solve the controversy over slavery once and for all in the years prior to the Civil War, the decision proved to be a major political miscalculation. In reality, the opinion represented a judicial defense of the most extreme slavery position. Instead of solving the crisis, the decision intensified sectional strife, undercut potential compromise solutions and weakened the moral authority of the judiciary. It was a case of unintended consequences.

Almost a hundred years later, the US Congress passed the last and most recent immigration law of substance in this country. The law ended the immigration-limiting European quota system of the 1920s. Some say it was designed to bring in more whites to the country.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965 at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, he stressed the law's overall symbolic importance:

This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power. Yet it is still one of the most important acts of this Congress and of this administration (as it) corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation.

The president from Texas was not being uncharacteristically modest, saying only what his advisors and “experts” had told him. But, the myriad potential consequences of the new law, little noted at the time and ignored by most historians for decades, were appreciably misjudged by the president's experts.

(Next week's second segment charts the opposite, unintended effect of the law, some interesting immigration statistics and future projections, and projects a couple of present instances where the intent of the governing class may be far removed from the reality on the ground.)

-Michael D'Angelo