October 1, 2005
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Character Observed
Character Observed
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It Takes a Village
The writer Isaac Bashevis Singer liked to call the elegant Italian Renaissance building on the West Side of Manhattan, where he lived for decades, a “shtetl.” His building, comprising 250 apartments and many shops and restaurants, was his village. He knew most of the famous journalists, actors, and opera stars who were his neighbors; he had his hair cut in the building’s barbershop, patronized its bank, and ate in its Chinese restaurant. He could fulfill all his other needs – save meeting with his publisher – without walking more than a few blocks.
While great cities and their outlying regions often look monolithic to outsiders, they are in fact nothing of the kind. Rather, they are nearly always conglomerations of villages, with allegiance owed to the village rather than the city. When asked where they are from, native Bostonians will often give the name of a community – Southie, for example – rather than Boston itself. Native Chicagoans routinely become even more specific, seldom mentioning their neighborhood, such as Beverly, but instead their parish, such as Christ the King.
Those who live in Brooklyn state their borough as their home, not New York itself, which they derisively call “the city,” the distant entity to which they were forcibly joined in 1898. Many Brooklynites do their shopping, entertaining, and socializing on their side of the East River, proudly refusing to leave their borough except to go to the airport.
Such aggressive parochialism is important – and productive for the local economy, which is kept strong and diverse by neighborhood dollars, even as watchfulness (what urban analyst Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street”) keeps the neighborhood safe. Had policy makers understood this urban parochialism better, they surely would not have imposed on cities the costly and disastrous urban renewal and Model Cities programs that demolished whole neighborhoods until they were finally halted in the 1980s.
The seldom-studied phenomenon of neighborhood loyalty has helped bring American cities back from their catastrophic post–World War II state of deteriorating housing, failing schools, violent crime waves, and rising taxes. The cities that are thriving today – New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston – have their neighborhood patriots to thank – those who stayed and fought while others fled, and who worked to attract new residents when things got better.
Harlem is a prime example. The neighborhood was in such bad financial shape in the 1970s that hundreds of buildings were simply abandoned by their owners. The city government ultimately took over more than 70 percent of Harlem real estate in tax foreclosure proceedings. Yet today Harlem is booming, attracting over one-third of all Manhattan residential construction. Part of Harlem’s success is due to the hard-core loyalists who relentlessly lobbied City Hall for more police, better sanitation, and more extensive fire coverage. Choreographer Mercedes Ellington (and granddaughter of the Duke) says that homeowners kept many blocks of Harlem pristine even as other blocks succumbed. “Edgecombe Avenue always stayed fine, even if you had to walk around crack dealers to get home. Hamilton Terrace remained the oasis it had always been. Those home owners weren’t going to leave, even if they had to rent out apartments quietly to make their mortgages. Now they form the core of the current Harlem renaissance.”
Together with the newer residents who moved into the neighborhood in the 1990s, they’ve joined school boards, community boards, and, according to one local real estate agent, “they know the captain of the precinct by name and they have his number on direct dial.” They’ve made Harlem the hottest neighborhood in New York. Beautifully restored brownstones now sell for $2 million – showing pretty conclusively that loyalty pays.
—Julia Vitullo-Martin
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Dog’s Best Friend
A dog might be man’s best friend, but that friendship often depends on man’s loyalty to his furry companion as much as the reverse. In Herbert Brokering’s recent book Dog Psalms: Prayers My Dogs Have Taught Me, one ode entitled “Trust” reads, “I am dog and I am loyal. I need your faith for my faith.”
People’s devotion to dogs has helped fuel everything from pet-centered estate planning to Take Your Dog to Work Day (recognized by roughly 10,000 companies last year, according to Pet Sitters International). “I say dogs are the new children in New York,” estate planner Frances Carlisle told a Dow Jones reporter earlier this year after giving a speech about animals and the law for the New York State Bar Association.
Perhaps nowhere is fidelity to Fido more on display than in Japan, where a legendary dog, Chuken Hachiko, or “loyal Hachiko,” captured the nation’s imagination in the years before World War II. Hachiko was a white-coated Akita who used to greet his master at the Shibuya train station just outside Tokyo when he returned from work each day. But in 1925, Hachiko’s owner had a heart attack and died at work. Hachiko continued his daily routine unaltered for the next nine years, waiting at the same spot outside the station every afternoon. Inevitably, he always returned alone to the home of his master’s relatives.
Helen Keller, herself an Akita owner, once called her dog an “angel in fur” and apparently that’s how Japan felt about Hachiko, for the nation turned out to be loyal to him. Word spread of the dog’s faithful vigil, and while he kept it up passersby fed him. After his lifeless body was found one afternoon waiting for his master’s train, his obituary was run in the newspaper, his body stuffed and placed on display, and a statue of him planted in his spot, keeping the vigil. During World War II the statue was melted down for the war effort. But in 1947, the public, still loyal to Hachiko’s memory, erected a new bronze statue of him alongside the tracks. It remains there today as a monument to a dog’s loyalty to a man and a nation’s loyalty to a dog.
—Paulette Chu
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Europeans Unite!
What becomes of national loyalty if a nation is subsumed under a larger entity, like, say, the European Union? The recent debate over the European Constitution has brought this question into focus.
While there are many economic and legal arguments against the creation of a European “superstate,” advocates of this project often demonize their opponents as chauvinists. In the Czech Republic, for example, the Europhile politician Jiri Pehe explains that opposing the EU project is a symptom of “political immaturity” and xenophobia. “The Czechs suffer from political puberty,” Pehe told the Prague Post, “that is the result of the strict, Stalinist type of communism this country had from the 1970s.” Pehe simply ignores the possibility that a certain kind of political growth might have occurred in the Czech soul after the ordeals of 1919, 1945, 1968 and 1989, and 1994 – ordeals of extrication from the rule of Austrians, Germans, Russians, and Slovaks, respectively. Meanwhile, in Britain, opponents of European integration, worried about the fate of their common-law rights, and about the right to determine their own foreign and economic policies, are referred to snidely as “Little Englanders.”
Yet it is possible that the denigration of national loyalty springs not from contempt, but from envy. The supporters of European unification need to create a feeling of European patriotism to offset the national patriotism that they believe is the primary obstacle to their project. As Chris Patten, the former EU Commissioner on External Relations recently lamented, “A healthy European democracy will develop only when people begin to feel an emotional attachment to their European identity.” How this feeling of loyalty will come about remains ambiguous. Suggestions range from the silly – a European national soccer team – to the sophisticated. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas suggests that European loyalty must be forged not from ethnic descent, “a shared tradition and a common language,” but “rather from the praxis of citizens who actively exercise their civil rights.” He proposes a “constitutional patriotism” that would take the place of national loyalty. But the 488 articles of the proposed European constitution, recently rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands, do not seem to have inspired this sort of attachment.
Habermas and Patten assume that national loyalties must be dissolved in a superior, less selfish European loyalty. That the European Union project seems to demand this kind of choice among loyalties may one day be regarded as a symptom of an essential weakness in the “European idea,” rather than a strength. After all, human beings are made in such a way that they can feel multiple loyalties, attachments and bonds. Why should loyalty not be as Shelley described love, differing “from gold and clay, that to divide is not to take away”?
—Sam Schulman
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Loyal Dissent
Approach Ground Zero from the north and look closely at the windows high above the site of what used to be the World Trade Center and you will see a sign that reads: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Adopted as a slogan of sorts by opponents of the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the larger war on terrorism, this quotation is routinely attributed, probably incorrectly, to Thomas Jefferson.
There are a number of reasons why the antiwar crowd would like to adopt Jefferson as their intellectual ancestor. His line about the tree of liberty needing to be “refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” is appropriately inflammatory for the politically angry. He was also an isolationist president, unwilling to go to war with England over American sailors being pressed into service in His Majesty’s navy. And then there is this quotation, which would seem to put him in line with those who protest the war today: “If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
It isn’t as concise as the sign on the window (and therefore not as convenient for the placard-wielding class), but a more accurate dictum on loyalty to country comes to us from Edward R. Murrow: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said. “When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” Dwight D. Eisenhower offered both brevity and clarity on the issue when he said, “May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” But in explaining that it is not the act of dissent that makes one a loyal patriot, but rather the principle for the sake of which one dissents, Mark Twain said it best: “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”
—Brendan Miniter
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Scout’s Honor
On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.
—Scout Oath
When I was a young Boy Scout at summer camp, my troop gathered at twilight each day to lower the colors for the night. On the first day, I saw this as just another activity of camp life. By midweek, I began to notice that my stomach was growling for dinner while everyone else was watching silently, and the gnats also seemed to grow especially aggressive whenever I had to salute or stand at attention. By the end of the week, I was sweating throughout the ceremony, and could not see any value in the exercise at all.
Two years later, I returned to camp as a patrol leader, having passed the requirements for demonstrating proper flag care and protocol. I was still hungry, the bugs still bit, and the sweat still beaded, but I no longer seemed to mind. This small activity began to make sense in the context of the larger scouting experience. These seemingly minor rituals, endured by everyone in my troop, began to form the basis for our loyalty to each other.
The natural boyish inclination to competitiveness – whether in building fires, climbing mountains, or saluting the flag – inspires the scout to make his home unit succeed. And life-long friendships are a common result of this intense experience. But loyalty to other people is not sufficient. The points of the Scout Oath emphasize the scout’s duty to God and Country. Friendship is only the means and the happy by-product of this duty. ?
—David Friel
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Groupies
Describing why he produced the ABC miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family, loyal fan John Stamos explained, “For me their music bypasses your brain and goes straight to your heart.” Whether we are moved by Mozart or Madonna – by high culture or low – music’s power is visceral, creating extremely loyal listeners. Just think about the phrase “music fan.” The word music comes from the Greek, meaning “presided over by the muses.” And fan, of course, is short for fanatic.
It seems a tad fanatical for aging baby boomers to camp out all night to get Rolling Stones tickets. But it may be perfectly reasonable when compared with some of their fellow former-hippies who followed the Grateful Dead around this country for months or years at a time. Even the more settled expressions of music loyalty can seem a little outrageous. What but the muse of sound can explain Jane and Irwin Jacobs’s record-breaking 120 million-dollar gift to the San Diego Symphony?
Perhaps no musician has capitalized on his fans’ loyalty better than Bono. He has used his popularity as the lead singer of the band U2 to become a spokesman for alleviating world poverty and fighting AIDS in Africa. Many of Bono’s fans have followed him past music and into politics. Now that’s loyalty for you.
—Ann Henderson Hart
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Gang Loyalty
I didn’t come face to face with many gang members during my childhood in suburban Levittown, New York. But there was one – Nicky Cruz. Once the ruthless leader of the violent MauMau gang in New York City, Cruz experienced a dramatic religious conversion in the late 60s and became a household name in evangelical families across America. Cruz’s story was so captivating that it was turned into a movie, The Cross and the Switchblade, starring Pat Boone as David Wilkerson, the young preacher who stood up to Cruz, and later converted him.
But what propelled Nicky Cruz into gang life? The sociological and economic conditions that drew Cruz toward loyal gang membership are the same ones that encourage gang membership today. Whether you’re scanning academic monographs or journalists’ interviews, two ingredients are common to almost any gang member’s story: a dysfunctional family and a belief that the future holds limited possibilities.
Cruz’ mother, a witchcraft practitioner, dubbed him “Son of Satan.” He recalled having seen his parents perform a ritual sacrifice of a goat and then drink its blood. Young Nicky explained that he longed for a family that could eclipse his birth family. And he found it in the MauMaus.
They offered him a kind of protection as well. As Cruz recently told a reporter: “New York City was a jungle …. In the jungle you behave like an animal. An animal has to kill other animals for survival because that’s the name of the game.”
In the last forty years, the gang problem in America has only gotten worse. Violent gangs are active in 94 percent of medium and large American cities today, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Crips, an African-American street gang that originated in Los Angeles in the 60s, requires its initiates either to commit armed robbery, beat up another initiate, or perform a drive-by shooting before they are allowed to join. The process, referred to as “courting,” is designed to bolster courage and build loyalty.
Crips further show commitment to their “family” by wearing a blue rag. They refer to one another as “Cuzz,” and even their dialect – using the letter “C” to replace the letter “B” in conversation – is meant to set them apart. The Crips mark their turf with graffiti, often spraying the letters “BK” for blood killers.
And while many gangs like the MauMaus and the Crips attract young men, the number of “gangsta girls” is on the rise, according to a Boston Phoenix article. Billy Stewart, a juvenile probation officer in the Dorchester District Courthouse, told the reporter, “Economic background is not the only common denominator …. Like the guys, girls join for a sense of family they don’t have in their real lives.”
Might a gangsta rapper shed any light on the loyalty of gangs? I select judiciously from Fat Joe’s lyrics on his album called “Loyalty”:
“Now I’m in too deep
Only sixteen already hold a name on the street…
I’m a gangsta by destiny, OG’s selected me
I earned my spot, my whole team elected me
Gangsta, gangsta
I wanna be a gangsta
My daddy was a gangsta …”
—Ann Henderson Hart
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Frequent Buyers
Widespread lamentation about the decline of loyalty has caused one area of modern life in which loyalty is flourishing to be overlooked – business. Devoting resources to retaining existing customers – rather than trying to gain new ones – has become a widely acceptable practice.
The trend may have started with the introduction of frequent flyer programs in the 1980s, but much of the credit for “loyalty marketing” principles goes to one man, Fred Reichheld, a partner in the Boston consulting firm Bain & Company. In a series of articles appearing in the Harvard Business Review beginning in 1989, Reichheld laid out the mathematical and commonsense underpinnings of the loyalty movement. He taught businesses to look at the lifetime value and profitability of a retained customer, rather than just each unit of sale. He demonstrated that relatively small improvements in customer retention produced huge swings in cash generation.
Indeed, Reichheld claims that “carefully selecting customers, employees, and investors, and then working hard to retain them” should be understood as one of the “fundamental laws governing business systems.” The key to understanding this law is to see loyalty as a virtue that works, incidentally, as a business device. As he writes in the first of his books, The Loyalty Effect, “Loyalty-based management is a Sunday school teacher’s dream come true – an ethical approach to business that pays so well that it puts unscrupulous approaches to shame.” Reichheld’s laws have enabled companies such as Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Intuit, eBay, the Vanguard Group, Dell Computer, SAS Institute, and Chick-Fil-A to prosper while many of their competitors have failed.
Reichheld acknowledges that the roots of his interest in loyalty come from his own temperament. “Intuitively I believed that loyalty was at the core of good business practices,” he says. “Doing business by golden-rule principles seemed right.” Indeed, building relationships – not only with customers, but with employees and investors – on golden-rule principles has made business, as opposed to government or nonprofits, the most dynamic force in the modern world. Business done right embodies the highest ethical rules, far more than extraneous practices designed to demonstrate “social responsibility.” Building a business that sustains relationships brings about a moral transformation as well for the people involved. As Reichheld puts it, “mutual benefit and mutual accountability can be made flesh in a business institution.”
—Sam Schulman
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Major Dilemma
Despite the remarkable attention given to Major League Baseball’s steroids scandal and the damaging doubts about whether the sport’s modern record-holders should have asterisks placed by their accomplishments, loyal fans are flocking to ballparks in record numbers. The national pastime is thriving, and it’s even returned to the nation’s capital.
The start of every season, however, raises a dilemma for this transplanted New Yorker. My first sports memories are of the 1969 “Miracle Mets,” so my emotional connection to New York’s “other” team is strong. I can remember coming home from school and rushing to turn on the television to follow the Series against the mighty Orioles. (That was back in the days when baseball executives thought it worthwhile to televise the sport’s premiere event before most children on the East Coast went to bed.) The Mets have provided their fans with a few mountaintop experiences (just a number – 1969 or 1986 – or a name – Tom Seaver, Bill Buckner – is enough to bring a smile to a fellow Mets fan), a few near misses (1973, the Subway Series), and a lot of misery in between (Vince Coleman, Mo Vaughn, Who’s on third?).
I own a faded Mets hat, but my local paper, television, and radio station cover the Philadelphia Phillies, who now sport a new stadium, a high payroll, and some completely disappointing players. After eight years in the City of Brotherly Love, and with a household of boys who know no other city, I should be a Phillies fan. But I haven’t quite abandoned my first love. And yet, I must admit to a roving eye, not for the unappealing Phils but for Washington’s newest aspiring power broker, the Nationals. They are a scrappy bunch who have survived and even thrived through two years of baseball’s equivalent of purgatory. Coached by a living baseball legend, the fiery Frank Robinson, the Nats are starting to pull me in.
But if home is where the heart is – and if the Phillies inspire no affection or passion in me – what is a baseball fan to do? Love for the game is a good thing, but no one is a fan of Major League Baseball without rooting for a team. (Who wears a hat with just the MLB logo?) Loyalty, at least in baseball, is local. Which is why I’ve found my new favorite team close to home: my ten-year-old son’s Lower Merion Little League Stingers. (Full disclosure: I am the head coach.) The Stingers are scrappy and spirited, play without pay, and often miss the cutoff man. They still think a ball at eye level is a hittable pitch, want to steal third base with two outs in the inning, and rejoice in every success, great and small. So, while my Major League loyalty is divided, there’s no doubt which team is first in my heart, at least for this season: Go Stingers!
—Kimon Sargeant
