• Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, New York: Crown Forum, 416 pages, 2012, $27.00.
“Our nation is coming apart at the seams — not ethnic seams, but the seams of class.” At first glance, a casual reader could mistake that sentence as originating from the pen of a class-warfare liberal. Instead, it reflects the thesis of libertarian scholar Charles Murray’s new treatise on the economic and cultural decline of whites in the United States, titled Coming Apart.
Murray chooses Nov. 21, 1963 — the day before the Kennedy assassination — as the symbolic last day of the old American culture, before the social revolutions of the mid- to late 1960s engulfed the nation. His book is about changes in society that have divided white America into two classes: a rift that, if left unchecked, he predicts will tear the U.S. apart.
Murray’s reasons for America’s decline aren’t based on economic and social repressors that prevent the small guy from getting ahead, a favorite argument of the left. Rather, he points to sociological factors that are within the power of the individual to change — marriage, religiosity, industriousness, and honesty. Murray argues that working-class whites have taken on many of the sociological characteristics of the black family, including low rates of marriage, high rates of unwed motherhood, and declining work ethic among men.
To illustrate his point, he paints a statistical portrait of two fictional neighborhoods: The first, Fishtown, is comprised of working-class whites with no more than a high-school diploma occupying a low-skill job. It’s drawn from an actual blue-collar neighborhood in Philadelphia. The second, Belmont, is comprised of whites with at least a bachelor’s degree working in a managerial or professional role. It’s drawn from an actual wealthy suburb of Boston.
Before the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, both neighborhoods shared many sociological characteristics. Today, the divergence is clear. Two of the foremost examples are marriage and the family.
“Over the last half century marriage has become the fault line dividing American classes,” Murray writes. Statistics bear out that truth. In 1960, the proportion of married couples ages 30 to 49 in working-class and upper-class towns were roughly equal: 84 percent in Fishtown and 94 percent in Belmont. By 2010, marriage rates had dropped precipitously in Fishtown (to 48 percent of whites) while remaining relatively stable in Belmont (83 percent).
Instances of divorce and non-marital births also skyrocketed in Fishtown during the same period, while remaining stable (and low) in Belmont. The result: An increasing divide in economic and relational stability between the blue-collar and white-collar Americans.
Despite the ruckus over economic inequality in the United States, the formula for achieving a middle-class lifestyle is relatively simple. As Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution has written, “If young people do three things — graduate from high school, get a job and get married, and wait until they’re 21 before having a baby — they have an almost 75 percent chance of making it into the middle class.” The problem is, fewer and fewer young people in Fishtown are following that path, while a high percentage of young people in Belmont do.
Two other factors that Murray discusses are declining religiosity and increasing secularization, a development that held true for both Fishtown and Belmont. The result has been a decrease in what he calls “social capital.” Churchgoers are far more likely to be involved in their communities — both in a secular and religious sense — than non-churchgoers. Culture has suffered as religious attendance and adherence have declined.
Murray also shows declines in industriousness and honesty. He traces a significant decline in work ethic among men in Fishtown. In the 1960 census, about 9 percent of working-age Fishtown men were not in the labor force. In the 2000 census, that number had jumped to 30 percent.
While acknowledging that the blue-collar job field is far sparser today than in the 1960s, Murray doesn’t see this as fully explaining the decline in work ethic. Many men are unwilling to take less-than-ideal jobs simply to survive, he writes, instead tending to goof off and watch television.
“[White] males of the 2000s were less industrious than they had been 20, 30, or 50 years ago, and that decay in industriousness occurred overwhelmingly in Fishtown,” Murray writes.
Overall, Coming Apart is a concise statistical summary of the consequences of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Consider that in 1963, there was no culture war. The reason wasn’t because traditional Christians did a better job of minding their own business; it was because Americans — regardless of faith, race, or gender — generally shared the same attitudes on marriage, family, and sex.
If a young couple became pregnant, the man was expected to marry his girlfriend and provide financial support. Adultery was denounced universally, and divorce was rare (a divorced person headed just 3.5 percent of American households in 1963). Young people got married early, had children, and stayed married. Television was clean, and so, for the most part, were films. Americans were overwhelmingly religious. Crime was low. Alcohol and tobacco were common, but illegal drugs were rare.
Culture wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the country shared a cultural core. Today, that core is eroded, with Americans divided down the middle on the most essential matters of life. Coming Apart traces that decline in vivid detail.
Although the book can be “wonkish” and heavy on Census data — so much so that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds — Murray’s latest offering makes a critical point. It’s a must-read for any serious observer of contemporary American culture. CJ