| Noblesse sans oblige
What really sets us apart from the community here are not simply material possessions (the deed to waterfront property, the 508-area code, the acquired taste for salt-water taffy, perhaps), but the sense of entitlement that under-girds it. It is unlike the one that welfare recipients or minorities passed over for promotion are said to harbor; this sense of entitlement is rooted in the complacency of a people who already own what they feel entitled to, and securely so. "I am an heir to 12 acres on Martha's Vineyard in the southern woodlands," reads a letter to the editor in a recent edition of the 153-year-old Vineyard Gazette. "The owner of this property was my great great great grandfather." And on it goes about why that parcel of land ought not be developed: "We hope our legacy will be one that extends and protects this land." The luxury of worrying about one's tombstone musings presupposes, of course, that one's belongings are both deserved and unchallenged. And it is this premise of fulfilled entitlement and security that gives wealth and status on Martha's Vineyard its muted--even benevolent--tone. A local store clerk here told me that celebrities like Mike Wallace and Chelsea Clinton are often seen strolling down the street and into the local arts and crafts store, but that nobody really cares. "That's the nice thing about this place," she said with magnanimity. We feel like outsiders, but not because the population on Martha's Vineyard is hostile. In fact, most are overwhelmingly nice. The boys at the bike rental point out the routes that pass by the rare bird breeding grounds, and couples offer to snap our photographs. Folks here aren't necessarily even careless the way F. Scott Fitzgerald rendered Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby: "They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." No, I think in the evening, as I board the ferry to leave this Mecca of the leisure class. They certainly aren't careless. But I wonder whether this affluence on a subtle scale found on Martha's Vineyard and places like it--a modesty by choice, not want--with all its posturing about wealth "not being a big deal" is a type of doublethink. It is true that nobody here really flaunts privilege, but it is equally true that nobody wants to give it up either. Martha's Vineyard is impressive for what it does not have: panhandlers on the street, package stores in a quarter separated by a highway, racial diversity even among blue-collar workers, and countless other features and factors of poverty and inequality. And it is this wealth, concentrated and isolated, that I fear will dull and ultimately destroy the passion of its owners to fight for fair policies on the mainland (minimum wage increases, progressive tax structure, job creation, racial equality). Wealth in isolation makes issues such as poverty less urgent because it is far removed from the day-to-day life--such issues over time become in the words of John Stuart Mill, “dead dogma, not living truth.” It's easy to see racism in segregated water fountains one encounters daily. It's hard to see when entire cities such as Boston or Washington, D.C. are segregated by race and income. How will one fight poverty if one never sees it in the flesh? Folks on Martha's Vineyard certainly weren't careless. But they were isolated. And that isolation allows residents here to savor their wealth in a manner that is, if not careless, at least carefree.
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Noblesse sans oblige |