In this coming election season we need to challenge ourselves and candidates of whatever party and at whatever level to recall the work of citizenship. And we need to ask candidates to stop pretending they will fix our problems by themselves. These are the questions to pose:

In his book, Knowledge in the Blood, Jonathan Jansen, the first black president of the University of the Free State in South Africa, explores how young Afrikaners can "hold firm views about a past they never lived." He proposes the idea of tacit memory, "knowledge in the blood," ways of thinking and acting that are handed down but usually unspoken. I would say memories can be negative or they can be positive.

I thought of both last week at the conference of the American Democracy Project and The Democracy Commitment. There is the legacy of prejudice just below the surface of rhetoric about America as a "post-racial society." And there is the view of democracy as a way of life with cultural, social, and economic dimensions. This view of democracy has been stolen. We all have played a role.

In New Orleans, the conference of state colleges and universities and community college, bringing together over 600 people, began with a brilliant speech by Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University - Newark. Cantor conjured up what she called the "ghosts" of hibernating bigotry, drawing on a concept of Rupert Nacoste in his recent book Taking on Diversity. Nacoste wrote,

"We stay away from the interpersonal level where bigotry implicates us all. We leave it to our children to carry our baggage on their backs. Baggage they cannot see, but heavy baggage they can feel... Although it is we who have kept it safe and cool..., we are stunned when something happens to awaken that resting, hibernating bigotry."

Cantor described ghosts in the US and around the world, from racist chants in Oklahoma and the noose hanging from a tree at Duke University to xenophobic violence in South Africa and the wall emblazoned with violent images separating Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast.

"We only need to look at images of Belfast, the U.S. border, Selma and Ferguson, and Johannesburg, South Africa, to know that we are not done with the ghosts that haunt our social and political landscapes," she said. Cantor detailed grim statistics of rising inequality and racial as well as economic and educational segregation.

Many scholars describe such challenges. For instance, Robert Putnam in his recent book, Our Kids, did an outstanding job of describing growing inequality. But few critics have many useful suggestions. Putnam simply proposes writing elected officials.

In contrast, Nancy Cantor combined an unflinching look at our troubles with the invocation of the vibrant tradition of democratic education and education for democracy as a resource for action. She recalled the view expressed by the philosopher John Dewey.

"We have taken democracy for granted," wrote Dewey in his 1937 essay, "Democracy in the Schools." Democracy, he argued, "has to be enacted anew in every generation, in every day and year, in the living relations of person to person in all social forms and institutions."

For Dewey education was at the heart of a democratic society, while democracy was the animating spirit of true education. "It is the main business of the family and the school to influence directly the formation and growth of attitudes and dispositions, emotional, intellectual and moral," he wrote. "Whether this educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-democratic way becomes...a question of transcendent importance not only for education itself but for...the democratic way of life."

Cantor located what they are doing at Rutgers University in Newark directly in this tradition. "The very same map of inequality that haunts us can just as well become a map of opportunity - in the context of the power and prevalence of education and innovation in a knowledge economy," she argued. "This is the time for higher education - across both public and private institutions -- to fully embrace its role in effecting that change - its public mission, its public promise." She gave many examples of what she calls "barn-raising public work," collaborations that bring together diverse publics on public challenges. These show what is possible when the older vision of democracy as the work of the people is revitalized.

She quoted the intellectual historian Scott Peters who wrote in his essay in the collection, Democracy's Education: Citizenship, Public Work and the Future of Colleges and Universities, "though it's not widely known or appreciated, engagement in public work is the very heart and soul of the 'democracy's college' tradition."

It is useful to recall that 20 years ago, in his 1995 State of the Union address, President Clinton spoke in a similar vein. He called Americans to a New Covenant around "the work of citizenship":

"If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength of America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground. And in this day, everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We simply cannot want for a tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another."

Clinton added that politicians were partly responsible for eroding the work of citizenship. "Most of us in politics haven't helped very much. For years, we've mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads either promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and frustrations." Clearly lay citizens have also forgotten.

In this coming election season we need to challenge ourselves and candidates of whatever party and at whatever level to recall the work of citizenship. And we need to ask candidates to stop pretending they will fix our problems by themselves. These are the questions to pose:

What are your plans to revitalize democracy as a way of life?

And how would you involve the people?"

Harry Boyte is editor of Democracy's Education.

In 1993, responding to what he saw as misleading treatments of the Watts riots following the acquittal of four police officers a year earlier in Los Angeles after the violent beating of an unarmed black man, Cornel West wrote Race Matters. "Glib attempts to reduce its meaning to the pathologies of the black underclass, the criminal actions of hoodlums or the political revolt of the oppressed urban masses miss the mark," West argued. Rather, in his view,

what we witnessed in Los Angeles was the consequence of a lethal linkage of economic decline, cultural decay and political lethargy in American life. Race was the visible catalyst, not the underlying cause.

West made an impassioned, eloquent call for action on issues of racial injustice, poverty and despair, arguing that "our ideals of freedom, democracy and quality must be invoked to invigorate all of us, especially the landless, propertyless and luckless." He also struck an urgent tone. "Either we learn a new language of empathy or compassion or the fire this time will consume us all."

In the book, West proposes large-scale public action, often called for by liberals, to address black poverty and unemployment by ensuring access to social goods such as housing, food, health, education and jobs. He also argues, in the vein of conservative thinking, that liberals ignore dynamics of culture and identity. These are "the murky waters of despair and dread that now flood the streets of black America," which generate a mood of nihilism among many blacks. "The issues of black identity -- both black self-love and self-contempt," he concludes," sit alongside black poverty as realities to confront and transform."

The book merits renewed attention in 2015 following police shootings of unarmed African-Americans in recent months and protests across the nation. These have drawn attention not only to police action but also to African Americans communities as acute examples of diminished life chances, social challenges, and poverty which Robert Putnam describes in Our Kids, which I reviewed last week. In Baltimore, with a median value of $6,446, African-American households were 10 percent poorer in 2011 than in 1984. Whites and blacks with means have moved out of the East Side and West Baltimore. As Eric Singer wrote in "Why Baltimore Burns" in The Nation, "many residents interpret the area... as a physically, socially and economically isolated place of terror."

West's tone has become more pessimistic over the last two decades. In Race Matters West asks, "Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect and will to meet the challenge?" and concludes that "each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so." He also cites community organizing groups like BUILD in Baltimore "that bring power and pressure to bear on specific issues" as hopeful alternatives.

In recent years, West lambasts what he sees as the failure of the Obama administration. "The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King's prophetic legacy," he wrote in the New York Times. After the 2013 Inauguration he told C-Span that Obama's use of King's Bible "makes my blood boil."

West neglects technocratic power and its "cult of the expert" which disrespects the talents of everyday citizens, found in government and elsewhere and far beyond power of presidents to turn around.

As I described in Everyday Politics, a 1999 study by the Minnesota Board of Aging found that most citizens wanted civic opportunities to make a real difference on public problems but were well aware of obstacles. Both baby boomers and older citizens in the Board's focus groups said they wanted to do "more than volunteering," by contributing to rebuilding a sense of community and being involved in decision making. They wanted to learn civic skills such as working across differences of partisan belief, race and culture, and big picture thinking that tied specific tasks to large challenges facing the country.

They also felt that most institutions -- government, and also businesses, schools and nonprofits -- devalued their talents. Volunteer opportunities typically relegated people to "positions of mediocrity with the assumption that they lack to capacity to work on big issues that impact the community." Volunteers were rarely asked "what they are good at, what is important to them, and how they want to be part of shaping their community."

In his 1984 book Outgrowing Democracy, the conservative Catholic intellectual John Lukacs, a refugee from Hungary after the 1956 revolution, was shocked to find such disrespect. He had come to America believing our country overestimated the capacities of "the democratic masses." Whether that had ever been the case, he observed that America had shifted from a democratic order to a bureaucratic state system ruled by experts. Not only government but also the media, businesses, higher education, schools, and foundations had sharply diminished views of the talents of most people.

Barack Obama in 2008 repeatedly challenged such disrespect. In a campaign speech in Independence Missouri on June 30, he declared "the greatness of this country, its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements, all result from the energy and imagination of the American people, their toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor and quiet heroism."

In such a view, wise leaders are important, but not the driving agents of change. Democracy rests on those whom one contemporary Revolutionary leader called "the people without the frosting," unheralded citizens practiced at running their own affairs and building communities. Martin Luther King centuries later made the same point when he describes "the unlettered men and women" as "the real heroes of the movement... bringing the country back to the great wells of democracy."

Who gets in office matters. But we need a citizen movement for deepened democracy that challenges continuing racism, as part of a politics of democratic respect for the talents and potential of citizens of every race and creed.

Harry C. Boyte is editor of Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Vanderbilt University Press, 2015). The contributors give examples of a "politics of democratic respect" reappearing in higher education.

In 1993, responding to what he saw as misleading treatments of the Watts riots following the acquittal of four police officers a year earlier in Los Angeles after the violent beating of an unarmed black man, Cornel West wrote Race Matters.

In 1993, responding to what he saw as misleading treatments of the Watts riots following the acquittal of four police officers a year earlier in Los Angeles after the violent beating of an unarmed black man, Cornel West wrote Race Matters.

Race Matters.]]>

"One downside to a society with a meritocratic gloss is that it encourages the winners to think that life is fairer than it is," writes Jason DeParle in his New York Times review of Robert Putnam's new book, Our Kids. Putnam marshals an enormous amount of research, which shows the effects of growing economic and educational inequality on social segregation -- increasingly poor and rich live in worlds apart -- as well on life chances.

In the course of the book project, Putnam says he learned a great deal. "Before I began this research...I thought...if I and my classmates could climb the ladder...so could kids from modest backgrounds." Now, he says, "I know better" (230).

He also forgot.

The 1993 book that made him famous, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, analyzed different levels of function in regional Italian governments. Civic cultures turned out to make the difference. "Findings strikingly corroborate the political theory of civic humanism," wrote John Gray in a Times review. "Strong and free government depends on a virtuous and public-spirited citizenry."

Two decades later in Our Kids, Putnam's view of democracy has shrunk. "The essence of democracy is equal influence on public decisions" (234), Putnam argues, citing the political theorist Robert Dahl, who saw democracy as centered on government. Putnam calls for citizens to lobby for federal policies such as expanded tax credits for the poor, more day care and growth in community colleges -- much the legislative agenda of President Obama, who was denounced for "class warfare" when he proposed it.

Gone are ideas of a public-spirited citizenry who solve problems and create civic goods across the sweep of society.

Putnam is not alone. Public commentators regularly see democracy as something we elect people to do for us. Writing after the 2008 election, The New Yorker's George Packer argued that Barack Obama's "messianic and vaporous" citizenship language was disingenuous.

"Throughout the campaign, Obama spoke of change coming from the bottom up," he said. "But every time I heard him tell a crowd, 'This has never been about me, it's about you,' he seemed to be saying just the opposite."

Packer believed that voters chose "the ground on which the majority of Americans -- looking to government for solutions -- now stand."

Government is also the center of the democratic universe in official publications. The definition of the U.S. government, disseminated around the world on the site of the U.S. Agency for International Development, proposes that "Democracy refers to a civilian political system in which the legislative and chief executive offices are filled through regular competitive elections with universal suffrage."

But originating American understandings of democracy were far different. For people who settled a continent and struggled to create "a more perfect union," government was an instrument, not an end in itself. In Democracy in America, French observer Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s argued that what distinguished America was self-organizing citizen initiative and self-education. He was amazed to find log cabins on the prairies filled with Shakespeare and books like Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In the 20th century, civic action and education animated land grant colleges, farmers' movements like the Grange, Jane Addams's immigrant settlement houses, and adult education. Vice President Hubert Humphrey traced his political career to the democratic skills and values he learned in his father's drugstore in Doland, S.D. "In his store there was eager talk about politics, town affairs, and religion," Humphrey wrote in his autobiography, Education of a Public Man. "I've listened to some of the great parliamentary debates of our time, but have seldom heard better discussions of basic issues than I did as a boy standing on a wooden platform behind the soda fountain." The store functioned as a cultural center, public space, and lending library.

Similarly, the civil rights struggle built on a vibrant culture of civic learning and self-organizing in black churches, schools, beauty parlors and other settings. I saw this first-hand as a college student in the movement. Septima Clark, an architect and philosopher of the movement's citizen schools for which I worked described their aim as "To broaden the scope of democracy to include everyone and deepen the concept to include every relationship."

Clark was full of the democratic spirit, an expansive sense of democracy as a way of life. The poet Walt Whitman sought to describe its vastness.

We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps...a great word whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.

We've largely lost it. In the language of Marshall Ganz's "public narrative," which includes a "story of self," "story of us" and "story of now, the problem with our story, "us" as a society, is not simply that we have bitter divisions. Behind the divisions are feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness.

Today's mainline story erases the agency of the democratic people.

We can learn some lessons here from the movements which toppled communism. Milan Kundera begins his masterful novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by describing February 21, 1948, when Vladimir Clementis, long-time activist, stood next to Klement Gottwald, chair of the communist party, on a balcony looking over a vast crowd at the moment when Gottwald ushered in the socialist government in Czechoslovakia. Two years later Clementis was charged with treason and killed because he opposed Stalinist demands. State officials airbrushed his image from school text books. Kundera observes, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Today there are many forces which erode memory beyond government propagandists in our technocratic, frenetic, efficiency-minded and consumerist society.

Like Czechoslovakia, we also need a struggle of memory against forgetting.

Harry C. Boyte is editor of Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Vanderbilt University Press, 2015). Many contributors convey a large history and practice of democracy and education.

Putnam calls for citizens to lobby for federal policies such as expanded tax credits for the poor, more day care and growth in community colleges -- much the legislative agenda of President Obama, who was denounced for "class warfare" when he proposed it.

Putnam calls for citizens to lobby for federal policies such as expanded tax credits for the poor, more day care and growth in community colleges -- much the legislative agenda of President Obama, who was denounced for "class warfare" when he proposed it.