The Social Contract, an idea first created by 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, basically postulates a system in which people participate in a democracy following the basic rule that no one person will use his or her power in order to disenfranchise another member of the society. This was an idea that heavily influenced our Founding Fathers.
In the Foucault-Chomsky Debate, Michel Foucault expresses his belief that the Social Contract is a sham.
As we continue to experience the increasing cascade of official actions against minority groups--rampant police homicide in Baltimore and Ferguson, laws passed and rhetoric spoken by our presidential candidates against homosexuals, women, and illegal immigrants, and with so few victories won on behalf of these populations, one begins to wonder if Foucault was right.
America was ostensibly a democracy on paper, but limited the voting population to white, land-owning males. Thomas Jefferson held slaves, and the population of slaves was established in the Three-Fifths Compromise, wherein a state's slave population was officially counted for only 60% of the actual slave population. If you were black, you were only 60% of a person. Women gained the right to vote only in 1920. Following the Civil War, while African-Americans were mostly liberated from slavery, they still found themselves everywhere oppressed by a white power structure determined to--despite what was stated in the law--maintain its dominance. This continues to the present day, where African-Americans are still not afforded equal opportunity for economic success, and are still disproportionately targeted by an oppressive law enforcement regime built by a paranoid society in the aftermath of white crime.
The police were placed in public schools in order to defend against mass shootings, such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, and many others. As the public school system became a regular police beat, infractions that would normally be punished by administrative action (at the discretion of teachers, principals, etc), became the jurisdiction of police. As a result, minority children are unfairly dragged and locked into a legal system that immediately alienates them and destroys whatever chances they have of contributing productively to society. It is worth noting, also, that all mass shootings at schools with one exception have been perpetrated by white kids. Only the Virginia Tech shooting was perpetrated by a non-white student, and he was Korean (America loves Koreans!).
It is worth noting that in one case in Florida, a white 8th grade student was charged with felony cybercrime because he changed the desktop background of his teacher's computer using a password that was a secret to everyone. The school administration asserted that the test files on the teacher's computer had not been compromised, but Sheriff Chris Nocco pressed on: "Who knows what he has done?" If you don't know what he did, then what the hell are you charging him with? However, this student is still in the minority, and his case is just as absurd as any other. PBS reports that over 70% of in-school arrests and children reported to law enforcement by school administrations are of black or Latino descent.
In April 2015, an autistic 11 year-old child--who is black--was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct for kicking a trash can. I knew a kid in high school who had Asperger's. He once threw a trash can across the cafeteria because someone blocked his favorite Magic: The Gathering card during a game. We were all very amused. No, he wasn't arrested. The school psychologist called him over to calm down and take a breather. As far as I know, the kid has no criminal record, at least not consisting of anything at school. Why should the 11 year old black kid be treated any differently?
The point is that we need to recognize that our society doesn't do what it says it does. We don't treat people fairly, and everyone is constantly abusing their power in order to disenfranchise other people that they don't like.
"Let's write RFRA laws so we don't have to respect gay people." "Let's disenfranchise teenagers by not telling them how to have safe sex, and punish them for making natural choices without taking the necessary precautions." "Let's ruin some black lives today."
Power, especially in our ostensibly democratic society, in which--we claim--that everyone has personal autonomy, is still all about one-upping and destroying each other. We now find ourselves playing this game where any vote for the "wrong" candidate is a vote for complete annihilation. We don't expect that, if, say, a Republican candidate wins the presidency, that they won't go out of their way to marginalize and oppress certain groups. On the other hand, they see a Hillary or Bernie Sanders victory as opposing an immoral Liberal Reconstruction on the entire South. [You know what I think, but the point is clear.] This is what our democracy has become. This is why the Social Contract may be dead. And this is even before I bring up the omnipresent security/counter-terrorism apparatus.
Foucault said that all of us are potential delinquents, and this is pretty much true. It only takes one antagonistic brush with the law to alienate one completely from society, and isn't as though the police aren't looking for people to put in prison. For some--because of the color of their skin, for their socioeconomic background--it is possible to be reintegrated with society, but for others who aren't so lucky, for those who may be members of the minority, law enforcement exists for them.
They are not--and perhaps never will be, as a class--part of society. The rift, the struggle to contain and restrain them, is older than the nation itself, and the white, wealthy power structure will perpetually do all in its power to maintain its position, without a care for who or what gets caught in its grasp. The 8 year old who is being charged with cybercrime is merely an accident; its real target is the 11 year old who kicked a trash can. Both of these actions--changing a teacher's desktop wallpaper as a prank, and taking one's anger out on a garbage bin--are harmless. But one is white, and the other black. One got caught in the machine, the other was targeted.
There is a system of economic disparity that works in tandem with an oppressive law enforcement regime designed, much like a fishing net in a bathtub, to keep minorities under stricter behavioral norms than members of the majority. Literally any minor infraction--kicking a garbage can, even waging a water balloon fight--can trigger a hostile law enforcement response depending on one's minority status in society. If you are white and not wearing a hooded sweatshirt, you probably won't be treated as harshly than if you were of African-American descent.
There is one other phenomenon it is worth looking at: The Baltimore and Ferguson demonstrations. Here is a list of "11 Stupid Reasons White People Rioted". Over half of these are sports-related, and others are even more absurd. What do we say about white people rioting? Do we say "White people should shut up, learn their place, and obey the law"? Nope. But black people and young adults need to be on their best behavior (see Occupy Wall Street) in order to even be considered worth listening to. They are on unstable ground simply because they are black. It doesn't matter that their grievances are historically the most justified, and deserving of more attention and respect than the power structure and public at large has given them.
At least three issues in the 2016 Presidential Campaign Season are related to the disenfranchisement of minorities in the United States: 1) Same sex marriage and religious freedom restoration laws (the entire GOP caucus has supported RFRA laws) 2) Immigration, which I have not touched upon here, but Marco Rubio is quick to sell out his own group in order to conform with the Republican party line, and 3) Income inequality.
Income inequality is the other important example for the failure of the Social Contract: As political candidates construct SuperPACs, SuperMegaUltraPAC Alpha Edition DX (sorry for the Street Fighter Word Salad, though it isn't so far-fetched), and vast networks of financial pipelines, the ability for the uberwealthy, like Sheldon Adelson, to buy politicians for their own private use, enables them to manipulate the law to their private benefit, against the public at large. In the near future, business owners will have bought the law outright. Currently, there are private organizations like ALEC and the Heritage Foundation that draft laws on behalf of businesses, but these still have to go through Congress to be passed. Currently, Sheldon Adelson is on the verge of being in trouble with the law because he fired his executive because the executive refused to work with a Chinese crime syndicate. The reason why he tried to buy Mitt Romney and pretty much the entire GOP is because he wanted them to intervene in his case on his behalf. He attempted (and is still attempting) to buy the law.
In the aftermath of the 2008 crash, the executives and board members became extremely wealthy when the rest of the population was being laid off. The GOP, owned by the wealthy business owners who gained what everyone else had lost, called for "austerity" and massive cuts to the programs and services that people needed, and cried foul when the government wanted to do what it could in order to stimulate the economy again--the $800 billion stimulus package that Paul Krugman, to name one, felt should have been much more substantial.
One other interesting point is that people are constantly complaining that the tax law is FUBAR (I'll let you Google that). Let me just ask: Who do you think has the resources to write the tax law? The tax law is the result of a constant war between corporations constantly trying to buy the law in order to protect themselves. Who has the most lobbyists? Which company hires the most competent attorneys? Which company can most afford to buy the law?
Again, people are using their political power in a society that ostensibly believes in the principle of the Social Contract in order to attack other members of the society. The idea that the law can be bought--that it is not unassailable, that its nature can be deciphered for what it is (not even the terrifying, nebulous, nameless, thing that Kafka said it was), but a material artifact that can be wielded--like an ion particle beam cannon, like the Death Star, against one's enemies--is the most damaging fact. This truth, that the law has a price, above and taken into account with all else, is truly the death knell for the sanctity of the Social Contract.
