Lucky White Girl

How Precious reinforces white racism

I didn't get around to seeing Precious. 

I read the book and thought it was interesting and complicated and painful.  But the movie, simply by fact of being intended for a mass audience, I knew was going to be complicated in a different way. 

I knew it would require a lot of work on my part, lots of thought and analysis and a long blog post in response, and to be honest for the past couple of months I've been in "play" mode (meaning I've been devoting a lot of time to personal issues) and haven't felt like undertaking such a huge task.  (FYI: to the extent that I've blogged much at all lately, it's been for posts I could write in under half an hour, quick responses to current events and I don't know for how much longer this trend will continue but it will for the foreseeable future with the exception of occasional longer posts like this).

So to put the following essay in context, know that I still haven't seen the movie but I did read this Op-ed piece in the New York Times and thought it was not only worth passing along but also worth a response from my own standpoint (that of a white middle-class female) because I feel it's important that we not leave it up to people of color to do all the difficult work of talking about racism.  It's important that white people talk about racism too and that's what I've tried to do all these years with this blog.  I speak about the issue from a specific position within the dominant class of a society that still is still extremely polarized around issues of race and class.  Racism is our problem; not just theirs and it's our responsibility to talk about it too.

Proponents of the film argue that the movie is trying to shed light on important social problems which society should not ignore and it just so happens that in this case the story centers around a black family.  We should be able to see this as just another film about a dysfunctional family. 

I agree.  We should be able to see it that way, theoretically, but we can't.  At least white people can't.  Our society still primarily categorizes people according to social constructs such "race" and "gender".  (if you're not sure what I mean by "social constructs", click here to read a student's paper on this subject).  Precious is not just a girl, she's a black girl.  White people can't NOT see her non-whiteness.

Am I saying that how you see this film depends on what color your skin is?

Yes, pretty much.

Why?  There is a phenomena known as "social isolation" in which any given majority group in a society doesn't really have to have much interaction with members of a minority group if they don't want to.  Members of the minority group don't get this option.  Most of them have to interact with the dominant society at some level every day, if not in person then in representations on TV, in movies, on the news: white characters interacting primarily with other white characters in white society.  White leaders, white politicians, white teachers, white actors.  White is the default such that when non-white appears it's noticeable.

I don't normally walk into a room and think "hey! everyone in here is white!" (well, I do actually now, because I've thought about this) but if I walk into a room filled with non-white people I am inevitably going to think "hey! not everyone here is white!"

Ok to a certain extent this is just human.  We notice difference.  We don't notice sameness.  But when you combine the dominant group's lack of knowledge or familiarity with the culture(s) of a minority group with past negative stereotypes of that group, then you get a problematic situation.

That's what happens with white people watching the movie Precious.

We already have a zillion negative stereotypes about black people, black culture, black families.  When you combine that with the reality that most white people have such limited interactions with black people, you reinforce white stereotypes and do nothing to improve race relations in this country.

Reed says that the film also caters to a popular white belief (see Feagin's, Vera's and Batur's discussion of "sincere fictions" in their classic book White Racism) of the "merciful slave master".  In this narrative, white characters are kind, compassionate, wanting to help the poor, disadvantaged black characters.  Rarely acknowledged is the white person's historical role in creating a harmful, oppressive white-supremacist society and the legacy we still carry with us from that shameful past.

If there's one over-arching theme to this blog it's this: white people have still not yet come to terms with our own racism and personal prejudice, with the racist culture and society we have constructed and with the legacy that our past actions have given us today. 

We still live in a segregated society (though it's getting better) and this social isolation allows race-based stereotypes to continue even though we should be "past all that".  We have not been pro-active about righting these historical injustices and making sincere, honest efforts at reconciling ourselves with our fellow human beings (indeed we're still perpetuating racism against other segments of the human population in other areas of the world now).

What that means is that it's almost impossible for white society to see a film like Precious as simply a story of a tragically dysfunctional family.  For us, it is so much more complicated.

What rule by industries may look like

I want to point out a little news story that you might not have noticed and connect it to the recent Supreme Court decision affirming that corporations are effectively "people" and therefore have the same first amendment rights.

There's a story in today's New York Times about the relatively uncontroversial plan to overall the student loan business in which the government subsidizes private lenders who then make loans to students.  The new plan would give the money directly to the students themselves, cutting out the private student loan companies and effectively shutting them down.

Guess who doesn't like this idea?  The student loan industry of course!  And so they've put forth an aggressive lobbying effort against this effort. 

"Political action committees for the lenders and company employees made $2.1 million in political contributions last year with the money evenly split among Democrats and Republicans"  Sallie Mae alone spent $194,000.

They're effectively buying votes on this issue.  There's not even a semblance of democracy there.

The Supreme Court decision allows corporations to buy political ads and engage in the democratic process (if you can still call it that) directly.  My understanding of what that means is that there will be less need for PACs (political action committees) because the corporations can just be up front about it now.  These comments from a University of Alabama professor seem to confirm that impression.

Lobbying is one thing.  Being able to directly influence the election of a particular candidate who is more favorable to the industry's bottom line is quite another.  Weeks after the decision and I am still marveling at it all and the impact it will have on the very foundation of our political system.  There has just been a historic shift here for us as a country and I for the most part only wonks like me have noticed.  The general public certainly hasn't (as people are wont to do, they won't notice something until it affects them personally) and this is why I feel more pessimistic than ever about the future of our country.

A certain beauty & more thoughts on corporate influenced elections

* *Warning* Serious cynicism ahead!

I'm still thinking about Thursday's Supreme Court ruling.  Those thoughts can be summed up in two points:

• Awe. Wow, so this is how the great democracy experiment that was the United States of America ends, is it?  Not with a bang but a whimper. I wonder what Jefferson would've thought if he knew this is what it would come to.  Probably the myth, the illusion that people are still in power will linger for awhile but eventually even that will die away and we will teach our children that allowing corporations to govern us is indeed the best, most efficient way of organizing society.  Perhaps we'll even have mock elections in which we symbolically vote in Coca-Cola one year or Wal-Mart the next. 

• Given the apathy of the current U.S. population, maybe we don't deserve democracy anyway.  It's only the best political system on the planet.  Save it for the bright-eyed passionate citizens of other countries who know what it is to live under dictatorships and will agitate and sacrifice for it because yes, it's that important.  But this will probably eventually happen to them too in a few generations.  So maybe democracies must be short-lived and we'll have to go through periodic episodes of rule by dictator, oligarchs or big business in order to really appreciate how beautiful rule by the people actually is.

And, putting on my Marxist hat, I'll add a final thought: there is a certain beauty to all this. The U.S.A., the poster-child of capitalism, has taken one more significant step towards what was always inevitable: rule by corporations. It's that old joke about the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.  What sort of rules will corporations make for us? I imagine at the very least they'll want more subsidies (read: your tax dollars) and less regulation. What a brave, new world this is!

Rule of the people by corporations, for corporations

Yesterday I posted some reflections on Obama's first year in office and how disappointed but not surprised I am that this wealthy industrialized nation can't provide all its citizens with decent health insurance (but every other wealthy industrialized country on the planet can).

While it's a complicated issue and there are multiple reasons for why the health insurance reform initiative is not working (they're gonna pass a bill, but it won't be reform), what it pretty much boils down to is this: health insurance corporations are very, very powerful corporations. and health insurance corporations don't want reform. Therefore, we won't get health insurance reform.  Doesn't matter if it's good for the country as a whole; doesn't matter that most people support it; doesn't even matter that we elect a brilliant statesman like Obama to the Oval Office with the primary purpose to do stuff like this (rebuild and finish building our country's social safety net and get us back on track towards becoming the great country we could be). If the corporations don't want it, you ain't gettin' it.

Now guess what? The Supreme Court has granted corporations even more power to influence elections and buy the political process:

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, ruling that companies can dip into their treasuries to spend as much as they want to support or oppose individual candidates.  Read more

It's a sudden drop on what has been a relatively slow, subtle erosion of democracy in this country. Let's hope it wakes people up.

LWG’s State of the Union Address: Reflections on the 1st year of Obama’s presidency

Even before yesterday’s loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican, the last few months have made the likely outcome of health insurance reform pretty clear:  in the best case scenario, they’ll pass lukewarm “reform” that keeps the current system pretty much in place but places a few bandaids on it to keep the boat from sinking; in the worst case, they do nothing at all. 

Some have argued (myself included) that the 60 seat majority that the Dems had in the Senate is an illusion (thanks to the Blue Dogs) and therefore the 41^st Republican doesn’t much matter.  The scenario above was just as likely before yesterday’s special election in Massachusetts as it was after.  But the loss is symbolic and coming on the anniversary of Obama’s presidency I thought I’d put down in writing my thoughts on what it all means.  Call it a personal State of the Union address.

We are one year into the election of a man who brought hope to millions and things are not looking good, on health care and on many other pressing social issues as well.  On health care, I’ll be interested to see if the Dems can somehow turn the ship around but I’m not very optimistic.  Why?  Because the reality of the situation is this: multinational corporations as a whole are extremely powerful in this country.  Corporate interests always come first.  To the extent that the people can get what scraps of reform they can depends on more or less well-organized campaigns (social movements) but they will always win only scraps.  Symbolic victories.  Minor reforms.  Corporations won’t allow anything that would in any way threaten their bottom-line much less their very existence.  We can petition Coca-Cola, for example, to stop selling unhealthy sodas in our public schools, but the most we can ask for is that they sell some of their other products instead (Dansani water for example).  We cannot ask that our public schools be one of the few places where kids are spared the relentless barrage of advertisements and the pressure to consume.  After all, that’s what our economic system is based on and we want them to grow up to be good capitalists.

So it is with health care reform (which really was more accurately called “health insurance reform”).  From the start, the insurance companies (arguably the most powerful of powerful corporations) waged a steady, well-organized and well-financed campaign against it.  They fought the battle on a variety of fronts, employed the heavy use of astro-turf groups, took advantage of some of the uglier aspects of U.S. culture (racism and classism) and made smart use of hyperbole and propaganda to lure in what actual citizens they could to become a small but vocal minority on the issue, sunk millions of dollars into organizing rallies, disrupting town hall meetings and putting pressure on Congress and through all this they won.  We won’t get access to decent health care for every American.  Not because we can’t afford it (most other wealthy industrial nations manage to provide this basic human right for their citizens) but because in the end, we the people were not able to slay the Goliaths of powerful insurance corporations.

I think what’s most important now is that we take this time to reflect and ask ourselves some questions.  Why did this happen?  How did these Goliaths get to be so huge?  (hint: google “corporations and legal personhood”) What does it mean for democracy when corporate interests outweigh those of society as a whole?  Can we still call such a system a democracy?

This is the context in which we must examine President Obama’s first year. 

If there’s one overwhelming lesson to learn here it’s this: who rules this country depends less on who occupies the Oval Office and more on who sits in the board rooms of the most powerful corporations on the planet.  Obama was the best candidate we could ever have hoped for.  He’s a good, smart man, a brilliant politician and he had an idealist belief in the democratic values this country was [partly] founded on and most of us found that idealism refreshing and irresistible.  But it still wasn’t enough.

It will take more than electing the best and brightest to the highest office of the country to bring real democracy back to the United States, to create the “great society” that all our people deserve.  In the United States, the system itself is rotten at the core.  Going back to the early days, when our founding fathers were sitting around thinking of what their new country would look like, we can see it was based partly on admirable Enlightenment age values such as democracy, freedom, equality and justice for all (not just for the rich) that the cynics among us call hyperbole but the idealists among us take to heart.  But, being crafted by those founding fathers (also known as the wealthy elite, exclusively white men) it was also based on the notion that some people deserve to have more democracy, freedom, equality and justice than others (their definition of “all” was rather limited) and that capitalism is not only the best but the ONLY way to organize an economic system.   From this start, things have only gotten worse.  Hyper-capitalism is what we have today.  A globalized capitalism that devours the world’s poor and grows stronger every day.

As Dorothy Day said, “our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system”.  It’s a system that prizes corporations over citizens, profits over people and money over basic human rights.  It will take more than electing a good guy to the presidency to change this system. People like Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi showed us that it is possible to create a better, more humane system through non-violence.  I truly believe the human race is capable of it.  We’ll get there eventually, and we won't get there unless we dismantle the current system. I don't believe this will happen in my lifetime.  But it will happen.  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.

 

Rich countries to poor countries: Don't try to become wealthy like us, stay where you are & we'll pay you to deal with the effects

I was reading the paper this morning, saw something stupid on the back page of the Opinion section, assumed it was some US-centric conservative talking and didn't think anything of it until I saw it was wasn't written by some US-centric conservative but Bono! Yes, that Bono of U2 fame.  Generally, a good guy, right?  Well, he sure dropped the ball on this one:

In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, it was no surprise that developing countries objected to taking their feet off the pedal of their own carbon-paced growth; after all, they played little part in building the congested eight-lane highway of a problem that the world faces now.

One smart suggestion I’ve heard, sort of a riff on cap-and-trade, is that each person has an equal right to pollute and that there might somehow be a way to monetize this. By this accounting, your average Ethiopian can sell her underpolluting ways (people in Ethiopia emit about 0.1 ton of carbon a year) to the average American (about 20 tons a year) and use the proceeds to deal with the effects of climate change (like drought), educate her kids and send them to university. (Trust in capitalism — we’ll find a way.)

So the "developed" (i.e. rich) world says to the poorer countries, don't try to become wealthy like us, instead stay poor, let us keep consuming more than our fair share of the world's resources and we'll pay you to deal with the effects of that imbalance.

Um, yeah, see, this is a perfect example of two things:

1. This is why, as a general rule, we shouldn't trust people from the top to make good decisions for the people on the bottom.  Even with the best of intentions, they don't understand the system as well.  

and

2.  Whenever the solution to the problem looks like an easy way out, not challenging the status quo or requiring us to rethink our standard way of operating in the world, that's a signal that we should look again and see if this is really a good solution to the problem.  Bono's idea doesn't require Westerners to change the way we (20% of the world) consume a disporportionate share (80%) of the world's resources and that's a problem.  The point is not to find ways to prop up an unfair system.  The point is to change the unfair system that is harming most of the world's people and the planet itself in order to benefit a tiny minority.

The system we have now is not working and nothing short of a complete overhaul of it is going to help.  Be suspicious of any solution that seems cheap, quick or easy.

Thanksgiving: Day of Thanks, Day of Mourning

Today, in the U.S., we celebrate what is possibly the most conflicted holiday on our calendar.  Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving has a pretty horrible history.  It was originally the celebration of one massacre that became part of a larger genocide that came with the colonialization of this country.   It's morphed into a day to spend with friends and family and "give thanks for all our blessings".  That's its contemporary more "P.C. version" if you will, but the roots are pretty bloody.

I live in DC and this year, like last, I went to the National Museum of the American Indian on the mall.  I didn't intend this to be a major political statement or anything.  (If I did, I might not choose NMAI; the place is good but I know some believe it's too cautious/conservative; its emphasis is on celebrating contemporary and past Native American cultures and not-so-much on memorializing a tragedy of unspeakable proportions; compare it to the Holocaust Museum also in DC).  I go mostly because the cafe  there (the only museum cafe to be Zagat-rated) is really good and I like their exhibits.  Also on some level, knowing what we did to native peoples here, I suppose I just feel it's an appropriate place to be on a "Day of Mourning".

I was wondering though about this new ritual of mine when a friend who heard about it seemed disturbed by the idea.  She suggested it might not be appropriate to be "celebrating" while being literally surrounded by the historical context.  Maybe I should do my celebrating of Thanksgiving at home and focus on the contemporary meaning of the holiday: "being grateful, "counting our blessings" etc. 

Maybe so.  Does being in the museum bring together things that shouldn't be brought together: celebration with tragic history?  Perhaps, but obviously I'm not celebrating genocide any more than you sitting at home are.  If anything, being at the museum makes that history more present for me. And that counts. A lot.

We could try to distance Thanksgiving from having anything at all to do with Native Americans in order to avoid that tragic history but I think we don't gain anything by forgetting or glossing over the past, even and especially if that past is painful.  Over the past five years I've written tons of stuff on this blog about taking responsibility for our actions, not just as individuals but as groups too.  Owning up to our history in order to create a better future.  Europeans, as a whole, committed terrible crimes against humanity when they colonized the Americas. We brought stolen people from one part of the world over to our stolen lands in another. We set in place economic, social and political systems that benefited ourselves at the expense of non-Europeans who paid dearly with their lives, their freedom and their dignity.  The legacy of those actions are still with us today.  The past matters.

I didn't used to think this excursion to the museum on Thanksgiving was anything more than ever-so-slightly political, but thinking about my friends' reaction to it, made me realize it really is.  Going to the Native American museum on Thanksgiving Day is an act that so clearly connects two dots that we don't have want to connect: genocide and gratitude.  And we realize that the holiday really is historically about something we don't want it to be about: Gratitude for genocide.  Going to the Native American museum on Thanksgiving Day makes the hypocrisy and history of the holiday inescapable, which makes us uncomfortable.  Like lots of things from our ancestors its meaning is deeply offensive and "in poor taste".  But I think it's the holiday that's in poor taste, not my pointing it out by going to the museum.

I could be wrong, but I think there's no getting around the bloody history of the holiday.  Given the scope of the crime against humanity that European Americans committed back then, maybe it's time to bury Thanksgiving at Wounded Knee, along with Dee Brown's heart and have a National Day of Mourning instead.

Democrats strike Faustian deal for health care reform

The health care debate just got (even more) personal for every woman in the country.

To get some critical Blue Dog votes for the House's version of health care reform, H.R. 3962, The Affordable Health Care for America Act, apparently the Democrats agreed to vote on an amendment offered by pro-lifers Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joe Pitts, R-Penn. which would bar any public health care plan from covering abortion and bar people getting subsidies from buying ones that cover abortions (and most currently do).

In other words, your body, their choice or you don't get health care reform!

They need 218 votes to pass the bill.  They think they're gonna get it.

What's happening is that Blue Dog Democrats are using women's health as a bargaining chip for health care reform.  Deny poor women the option of getting abortions if -god forbid- they need one or you don't get health care reform.

I can't tell you how cold that makes me feel.  I want health care reform so much.  But I don't want it at the expense of poor women in this country who would lose the right to make that choice themselves because of some religious zealots who want to impose their ideological beliefs on the rest of the country.  This is bullshit.

Their plan worked.  The bill passed with 220 votes (including 1 Republican)

The new Republican post-modernists

I like watching and studying social movements. Understanding how people organize to take political action is exciting stuff!  It's democracy in action.  I love it!  So lately I have to admit the Tea Party Patriot movement has me at a loss.  I keep trying to figure out this small but very vocal minority.   Why do they think like they do?  Death panels!  A "government take-over of health-care"!  Obama is a socialist! (I wish!)  Their claims are so outrageous, I wouldn't think most people would be gullible enough to fall for them but they do; at least a small number of them (including many members of my birth family) are.

Then I had a revelation today.  It occurred to me today that these people are post-modernists.  They don't see the same facts the rest of us do.  Seriously.  Reality is completely subjective to them.  They get these chain emails that say stuff like "Page 425 of the Health Care Bill says that everyone on Social Security... will go to MANDATORY counseling every 5 years to learn and choose from ways to end your suffering (and your life).  Health care will be denied based on age... etc".  I am not making this up.  This is quoted verbatim from an email my mom sent me.  And it doesn't matter that there is no "Health Care Bill" and no page 425 of any of the current proposals out there says anything like that.  They believe it anyway.  You can tell these people anything!

Part of it is just not being educated.  For one, they don't really know how the legislative process works.  They might've learned in high school but they have forgotten a lot apparently when they talk about "the President's health care bill".  The President doesn't write or introduce bills in Congress.  Legislators do that.  There can't be any President's anything bill. 

They don't follow legislation on any subject enough to know that Congress would never, ever name anything something as plain as "Health Care Bill"!  It's gonna be The Renew America and Create Opportunities for Everyone Act or The Universal Hugs and Kisses for Puppies and Kittens Everywhere Act.  (Somewhere it must've been written into the rule book that all titles of proposed legislation must consist only of any combination of about 200 positive-sounding adjectives.)  So the fact that the email talks about "the Health Care Bill" doesn't make them at all suspicious.

And they certainly don't have any idea what socialism is.  They just remember the Cold War and the evil Soviet Empire.  To be a socialist is a very, very bad thing.  Obama is a very bad man so he must be a socialist!  Of course!

All of this is making me very discouraged and worried.  A democracy depends on having a mostly educated public making decisions (and electing smart people to make other decisions).  What does it mean that so many people either don't care enough or are too lazy to get all the facts about important national debates?  

I don't mean to slight postmodernists or post-modernism with this somewhat tongue-in-cheek lamentation.  Anyone who's read enough of this blog knows that I love post-modern epistemologies and I don't believe in absolutes, but I'm also a materialist.  Postmodernism is fine for abstract concepts but for the material world (the tangible world)... well, maybe I'm an Empiricist after all because I do believe there are certain things that either exist or they don't and "page 425 of the Health Care Bill" as quoted above doesn't exist. 

But I sure as hell don't know how to convince my post-modern mother of that!

The world welcomes back its prodigal son

The Prodigal Son

In awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, the world, represented through the Nobel Committee, made a strong statement today, not about Obama or his accomplishments, but about the nature of international relations in the 21st century.

Last November the people of this country made an historic statement themselves, about what they believe this country is about and what it can do.  It was a complicated message having many different themes, some of which bubbled below the surface, lest they hit the raw nerve of racism, but what people didn’t speak about, everyone knew was there.  We felt it that night as total strangers hugged each other in the street.  We saw it in each other’s eyes as we witnessed the birth of a new nation, one that would be very different from the racist, dominating, bullying country of the past.

To the rest of the world, I think the message they heard last November was this: "We're sorry for the last eight years of ruthless terror we’ve rained down. The attacks of 9/11 scared us and we didn't know what to do; we lashed out.  But America is more than George Bush and Dick Cheney. It's more than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.  We are a good people and we really do believe in peace and international cooperation.  We're ready to get back to that now."

I was really and truly proud of my country that night last fall.  I didn't think I would ever feel anything like that again.  I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Today I found I was wrong.

The world responded.

They said YES! and embraced us again as that idealistic country where everyone has a dream. We are the prodigal son returning home, once again part of the global community, welcomed back with open arms.
 
I know we're not there yet.  I know we’ve still got huge messes to clean up. But it’s not about what we or Obama has done; it’s about where we’re going.

One day we'll look back on this time and see it as a significant turning point.  There was a world of difference between the way late 19th century diplomats saw the world and the way the people who created first the flawed League of Nations and then the (still flawed but much better and improving) United Nations.  The former saw competing nation-states, little self-contained empires that struggled ruthlessly and self-interestedly for dominance over each other.  The latter saw, for the first time in history, the possibility (even the necessity of) "global community" and international law.  That was the first step that marked the 20th century.  This (the election and now the world's response to it) is the next step and it will mark the 21st.  Neither step is perfect (e.g. the League of Nations, e.g. Afghanistan) and neither step is complete.  But they are monumental shifts in international relations.

America is America again.  We’ve come home.

You can't support a just cause through an unjust war: Why the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan

I was surprised by NPR's Scott Simon's morning commentary on Weekend Edition today.  [link coming soon] 

I normally love these commentaries of his.  They tend to be about some relevant issue of the day or some ponderings on life or what it means to be human.  Generally, I think they're very thoughtful and nuanced and when they're related to political issues, they usually present the issue in a way I haven't heard before. 

But this one was different.  In this one he was saying something like (and Mr Simon excuse my paraphrasing, I'm just going off memory here) how he thought it would be a mistake if we just focused on going after Al-Quaeda and didn't continue our "nation-building" mission in Afghanistan because the Taliban is really bad and the Afghan people deserve better.

This is the line the spin doctors used to sell the public on the war there.  No offense to you Mr Simon, but it's bullshit.

1.) There are lots of shitty governments in the world and long before the U.S. noticed the shitty one in Afghanistan, the people there had their own resistance movements. 

Take RAWA --the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan-- whose link has been on the sidebar of this blog since 2005, for example.  They've been around since the 70s, fighting and resisting the Taliban and we in the West, didn't lift a finger to help them.  We couldn't have cared less about the Taliban until our own interests in that country were at stake and then we realized we could use them as a convenient excuse to invade & occupy a foreign country. 

There's a simple explanation for this:

Nation-states rarely do anything out of anything other than their own self-interest.  There is no evidence to support the belief that good countries do sometimes act out of "the goodness of their hearts" for the sake of the people of some other country.  That's what people do.  Nation-states act to preserve their own geo-political interests.  In democracies, they might sell their actions to their public with such feel-good arguments but that's all it is: a sales pitch.

I've no doubt that Mr Simon does care about Afghanistan.  I think he cares deeply about the people he met there.  Though I don't have the personal connection to the country that he does, I also care in the same way that I care about all people trying to survive in this crazy world.  But I don't want to pretend that my government, whether under Bush or Obama, is in Afghanistan for anything other than geo-political interests. 

2.) Because the U.S. and its allies are not in Afghanistan to protect the interests of the Afghan people, doesn't mean that we-the-concerned-citizens-of-the-world should abandon the Afghan people or that the Taliban should be left alone to retake power in the country.  If we really want to support the people of Afghanistan, we should do it in a different way.  Not by sending in NATO and bombing it into submission but supporting a non-violent indigenous resistance movement there in as multi-lateral fashion as possible.

The non-violent resistance movement part is there in the form of RAWA (and possibly others, I don't know).  

The multi-lateral part means UN General Assembly, not the Security Council, which should be abolished really, and definitely not NATO.  The reason for this is that only the General Assembly is truly democratic.  The Security Council and NATO are powerful countries with a history of colonialism; they shouldn't be the ones making the decisions because the decisions they will make will inevitably be to preserve their own power (regardless of how they sell it to the rest of the world --see #1 above).

I believe in international institutions and collective action and I do think that the world as a whole has an interest in preventing violations of human rights wherever they happen.  The problem is how do we do that in a world of great inequalities of power, where you have some countries who are powerful and who have colonialized large chunks of the planet and other countries who have been the victims of these colonizers.  Collective action is great and uncomplicated in an imaginary world where all the players are equal but in a world of great power differences, how do you keep the powerful from using "collective action" as a guise for its own self-interest?

The answer to that is to give greater power to the General Assembly.  I admit it's a weak institution so far but hey, we've only been at this whole international organizations/ international law thing for less than a century.  The idea that the world could be run in a democratic fashion, that the we could have such a thing as international law instead of rule by force-of-whoever's strongest is really, really new.  Considering that we've never done anything like this in the history of the world, I'd say give it some time.  The UN is better than the League of Nations and whatever we come up with for some future form of an international organization like the UN will be better still.  

This is our greatest hope responding to injustice, in Afghanistan, in Darfur, in Myanmar, in an honest, effective way.

3.) All of this is completely separate from the issue of going after Al-Quaeda, which I've always thought should be more the target of an international police force and a law enforcement action rather than a war, but that's another post for another day.

Make the world beautiful

For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about the American dream and sharing.  The obvious connection between those two things is immigration.  If the basic script of the American dream is to be able to live a simple, good life where all your basic needs are met and you and your family are taken care of, that's a beautiful dream.  But I'm only interested in the American dream if I can share it.  Otherwise it's not a very pretty dream is it?  What would kind of dream would it be if the script went like this: only some people are able to live a simple, good life where all their basic needs are met and they and their families are taken care of while others sit out in the cold suffering and staring in at us?  That's not a dream.  That's a nightmare.

In kindergarten most of us were taught that sharing our toys is fun and that being stingy is not the way to happiness. But some of us rejected that idea and grew up to embrace conservative ideology.  They don't want to share their things not because they're inherently bad people but because they fear that if they share they won't have anything left for themselves.  Conservativism is a philosophy fundamentally based in fear and lack of faith.  They don't believe the concepts of "to whom much is given, much will be required" or that what you give to others will be returned a thousand times over.  They don't trust that if they take care of others they also will be taken care of.  It's a faithless view that sees a cold, cruel dog-eat-dog world out there.  In this view, human nature is fundamentally flawed and evil.  They think that those who think otherwise are naive.

I believe we create our own realities.  If you see good and beauty in the world, then the world is indeed, good and beautiful.   If you see evil and ugliness, then the world is indeed evil and ugly, and the way we see the world will invariably creep over into our own way of being.  If you see good, you will act in a good and generous manner towards those around you, thereby increasing the goodness and beauty in the world.  If you see the world as bad, you will act in an ugly, selfish manner thereby increasing the ugliness and cruelty in the world.  This is called reification: our perceptions influence our reality and vice versa.

So to those who have bought into the conservative ideology, I'd say stop. Do not be afraid.  It's going to be okay.  The world is a beautiful, terrible place and human beings are fundamentally good.  Love them.  Love the world because the world is your creation.  Have faith in that.  Have faith in humanity.  I promise that if you trust in this, you will see the world differently because it will, in fact, be different.  Reality is what you make of it.  Make it beautiful.

No tomatoes in January, no oranges in July: Some thoughts on U.S. agriculture

Like lots of my friends, I've fallen victim to this little game on Facebook called "Farmville".  It's one of those virtual worlds, in this, a farm.  You plant seeds and in a certain period of time you get to harvest the crop.  You can building a whole farm with cows and chickens and barns and houses.  There's no point to it other than to keep you coming back to play the game (if you don't harvest your crops in a certain time frame, they wilt and you lose the "investment") but lots of us find these sorts of things addictive and I'm apparently one of them!

I was thinking about something though today as I planted pumpkin seeds on my little virtual farm.  When you buy the seeds, it will tell you how many coins you need to buy them, how much you'll get from the harvest and when they'll be ready.  Some take only a few hours, others take days.  You also have to earn a certain amount of experience in order to buy certain kinds of seeds.  Today I finally earned enough experience to buy pumpkin seeds and I noticed the time frame for harvest is 8 hours.  Having grown pumpkins before in real life, I know that they're a slow crop.  I think they take at least 3 months to mature. 

I thought the Farmville game would be cooler if the harvest times were based on real life, which made me think that the game has all sorts of possibilities to make actual political statements on food policy.  It could make wheat, soybeans and corn really cheap for example and inflate the profit margins on them because the US government gives subsidies for growing those things (if you're a big enough operation) while other fruits and vegetables like eggplant and squash --things that aren't turned into processed "foodstuffs"-- languish. 

What would be even cooler is if it took your geographical location and put that into the equation too, making the orange trees grow well in Florida but whither and die up north.  You could try to plant a cherry tree in south Florida for example but it wouldn't grow as well and you'd make less profit from it (probably would lose coins overall).

Think how useful this would be for teaching people about their local food-sheds!  I'm amazed at how many people will buy tomatoes in January in the U.S. because they don't know that tomatoes are a summer fruit and what they're buying at that time of year comes from the southern hemisphere, having traveled thousands of miles, and burned up who knows how much fossil fuel to get halfway across the world to their dinner table in Michigan where they'll bite into it and think 'this thing is tasteless".

Thinking of it that way, I realize the Farmville game already is political.  It reinforces the notion that our food comes mostly from happy cows on small family farms that grow a variety of crops like the ones we're building in our virtual worlds.  In reality U.S. agriculture is nothing like that.  It's mostly giant agri-businesses who plant thousands of acres in a single mono-crop (usually corn, soybeans or wheat) and grow cows on feedlots that never eat a blade of grass much less romp happily through green pastures.  The farms like the ones on Farmville are a tiny minority these days and most are struggling to survive.

Eating is one of the most basic things of life and it's interesting when you think about it, to realize how far we've gotten from something so basic as knowing where our food comes from (or even what "food" is for that matter: is food something like cheese or is it a Cheeszit?).  Most of these ideas of course are more developed in Michael Pollan's great book The Omnivore's Dilemma.  I think it's one of the most influential books I've ever read.  If you haven't read it, you should.  Or take a short-cut and see the film Food Inc.

I'm still playing Farmville on Facebook but more and more it makes me think about the differences between the game and the reality we've created for ourselves in real life.  Definitely something to think about.

The anger of the right

The teabaggers were here on Saturday.  They marched, they rallied and they were really, really angry. 

My roommate and I walked over to the Capitol to check them out.  Our estimate was that there were between ten and twenty thousand people there.  They had signs with Obama as Hitler, calling him a "Muslim - Marxist" (I wish!) and bemoaning our government's descent into --horror of horrors-- socialism!  Besides their wild exaggerated misinformed claims, what stuck out to me was their anger and their homogenity.  They were really angry and they were almost entirely older and white.  

What sort of sociological phenomena are we witnessing here?  What could be motivating these people to come out and apparently without shame hold up signs with wild and outrageous claims about bogeymen in Washington out to kill their grandmas?  The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Department of Homeland Security are documenting a rise hate group activity since Obama's election.  Angry protestors are waving Any Rand books and shouting about the government taking away their guns. The philosophy behind this movement is utterly revolting.  Why in the world would any grown up in this day and age embrace it? 

Bernie Sanders was on MSNBC last night offering one explanation.  He said simply, people are angry.  They have a right to be angry.  The economy is in shambles and they're hurting financially.  I think Sanders is on to something.   I think they're lashing out at thing they've been conditioned to hate: the government and black people.

After eight years of the Bush Administration's costly and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are in debt as never before.  As a result of many more years of deregulations of the financial markets and unbrindled capitalism, the economy has nearly collapased.  Obama has turned out to not own a magic wand and has not been able to clean everything up in 8 months and our country is still a mess.  Unemployment is still high (though no longer increasing) and many, many families are suffering.  Of course people are angry.

The problem is not that people are angry; the problem is that their justifiable anger about the state of the country is being exploited by powerful special interest groups, namely the insurance industry and right-wing elitists.  Most of the people at Saturday's rally haven't actually read Ayn Rand and I think they would be revolted by Objectivism if they knew anything at all about it. They don't know much about the health care debate either beyond a couple soundbites from Glen Beck.  They just know they're angry.

The thing is right now that anger has coalesced around two things that this particular audience is prone to distrust.  But for the most part, this is not the USA of George Wallace and despite this vocal minority Ayn Rand has never had a very large following here.  As a whole, we're better than that.  This is a country that yes, is flawed and has been hugely, tragically, immensely wrong in the past but, in the end I believe, we're a good people and we're getting better and right now we're blessed with a wise leader.  Despite the rally of hate on Saturday, this is still the country that united as never before on January 20th to celebrate the inauguration not only of our first black president but of a great statesman, plain and simple.  

These are tough times.  There's going to be ugliness.  There's going to be anger.  There's going to be racism.  It's part of our baggage as a country.  But it's not what defines us.  And for all their noise on Saturday, the angry tea-baggers waving racist signs and threatening armed revolution are not representative where this country is at today.  They're just not.

EDIT: for more of a sense of the march on Saturday, watch this video:

Is sensationalism the last gasp of a dying party?

Catastrophe.  Liberty and Tyranny.  Saving Freedom. Deliver us from evil. 

These are book titles from a book search on the Barnes and Noble website for "conservativism - united states". 

I'm not an expert on conservativism by any means; I haven't studied the right at all.  But there's been a trend going on there that's so large that even I've noticed it.  It's shift away from conservative meaning not wanting things to change towards conservative meaning fearful and angry enough to bring guns to town hall meetings.  It's the shrill hysteria of FOX News channel.  It's the red-in-the-face anger of Rush Limbaugh.  It's the incoherent ramblings of Sarah Palin.

What's going on here?

What happened to the the old school William F. Buckley type of conservatives?  It seems poor old George Will has been shoved to the back of the room while the crazies take over as spokes people for the Republican party.

I think a lot of it has to do with FOX News.  On FOX News, every day is 9/11.  Every news story is a national crisis.  Imagine how you'd feel if you watched that all the time.  Like you're under siege?  Like it's Armageddon?  Exactly!  That's the point.  The more scared and angry you are, the more you'll believe ideas that used to be on the fringe.  Obama wasn't born in the U.S.; it's all a big conspiracy because there's no way a black person could become President of the United States.  Obama is Hitler.  Obama wants to socialize medicine and make your grandma stand before government sponsored death panels who will determine if she has the right to live or not. 

It used to be that the only people who would believe those things were your crazy uncle Freddy.  Most people, even most conservatives, would be able to have a rational debate about a subject without arming themselves and going off the deep end.  Not anymore.  Now the fringe is becoming the center of the Republican party.

If you scroll back far enough in those search results though I think you get the answer. You eventually start seeing books with less sensationalist titles and those books are about "reclaiming conservativism" (that's the actual title of one of them).  Christine Todd Whitman's "It's my party too:the battle for the heart of the GOP and the future of America" "Grand New Party:How Republicans can win the working class and save the American dream" "Comeback: Conservativism that can win again".

I think what we're seeing is the last throes of a dying school of thought.  Conservative theories don't hold the explanatory power they once did.  They made a certain amount of sense in a Cold War world (I didn't agree with their interpretations and the conclusions they came to but the theories held water at least) but they don't in the post-modern muli-cultural decentralized globalized world we live in today.  All they have left is Obama-is-a-Nazi and say-no-to-socialism.

The U.S. population as a whole is becoming more progressive according to one political demographer (but see also 538's analysis of this trend), not only because of demographical changes but also in reaction to catastrophe that was the Bush Administration. 

I can't speculate about all the factors that might have played in role in how the conservative movement got to this point.  All I know is the crazier the right becomes, the more attractive and reasonable the progressive left looks to the rest of the country and all the sensationalism that we're seeing now coming from the right these days is the last gasp of a dying party.

Sotomayor's standpoint: A view from outside the dominant paradigm

Finally someone hits the nail on the head on the so-called controversy about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's comments in a speech she made once to students/academic types.  (The one in which she talks about how her experiences as a Latina have given her a unique and valuable way of understanding the world and has helped her be a better judge.)  Eugene Robinson's column today asks why it's acceptable for white men to recognize their heritage/socio-economic position but anyone else who does so is accused of being racist/subjective/biased. 

"The whole point of Sotomayor's much-maligned "wise Latina" speech was that everyone has a unique personal history -- and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident...

Being white and male is seen ... as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" -- black, brown, female, gay, whatever -- has to be judged against this supposedly "objective" standard."

Knowledge that comes from the dominant position (white/male/straight/able-bodied etc.) is assumed to be universal and objective (i.e. "factual").  Knowledge that comes from anywhere else is assumed to be particular and subjective (i.e. "opinion").  We've been duped into thinking that the dominant knowledge is the more correct, more "objective" and therefore more valuable knowledge.  This is not only a fallacious inaccurate picture of reality, it simultaneously reinforces the dominant paradigm.

This is why feminist epistemology is so important.  It turns this fallacy (that there exists universal Absolute truth) on its head. ALL knowledge is located within a particular time and place.  Our view and understanding of the world depends on where we're looking at it from.  As a Latina woman, Sotomayor has a different understanding the world than does say, Samuel Alito.  Is it a better understanding?  Yes, actually, it is when it comes to understanding certain aspects of this world, such as male-dominance or white supremacy.  In those cases, a Latina standpoint (or any other non-dominant standpoint) is an advantage because someone with such a standpoint is better positioned to understand the system of dominance of which one has direct personal, lived experience.

This is what standpoint feminism is all about and it's yet another example of how Marx's philosophy still shapes the way we understand the world around us.  It may not always be presented in such detail, but this idea generally is not at all uncommon in any grad-school level theory class.  It's controversial only to very old-school academics who have stubbornly resisted post-18th century philosophies and want to remain in the comfortable, secure illusion that an objective view of the world is possible and that there is One Absolute Truth out there floating around somewhere in space removed from any messy human complicatedness such as social and class relationships and if we only ignore such things we can achieve such god-like knowledge.

There is no One Absolute Truth.  Such knowledge is not possible.  Samuel Alito is as influenced by his experiences as a white male as Sonia Sotomayor is influenced by her experiences as a Latina.  Pretending that the former is more accurate and universally applicable than the latter is just plain dumb.

Don't be a tool! Why we should think twice before jumping on the Iranian "revolution" bandwagon

I have mixed feelings about all the hoopla in the West over the Iranian elections.  Let me say this first and foremost, as a non-Iranian, it’s not really any of my business who they elect.  Citizens of the United States, being residents of a superpower, are so used to having the political world revolve around them that we get arrogant.  We think of course we should have a say in who rules other countries and whose political process is or is not legitimate, as if our position as Ultimate Arbiter of Fairness and Democracy were undisputed!  Ha! Look at our own history of electoral fraud and –worse—our own complacency in the face of a stolen presidential election (circa 2000).

However, to the extent that I can separate myself from the interests of my own country (and I don’t think it’s so cut-and-dried as that implies) I can say I’m interested from a humanistic point of view.  I’m not an isolationist and believe this is the basis for all international solidarity (e.g. workers of the world, unite!)

Residents of the U.S. have to balance those two realities very, very carefully.  No, we don’t have a right to pass judgment on other countries or other people’s political processes simply because we live in the world’s superpower but yes, as members of the human family, we do have as much of a right –and an obligation— to stand against oppression and for justice and equality as anyone else.  We also have to remember that it’s extremely difficult for us to get all sides of a story in this country so we’re often lacking vital information.

I’m always down for supporting popular movements as democracy-in-action and if Mousavi is a good guy and has the support of the majority of the Iranian people then good for him and good for them and good for democracy if they win.  However, recognizing my own position within a geo-political superpower, I also know that my country has very specific geo-political interests at stake here.  Also, history teaches me that I come from a country with a sordid history of interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and usually not on the side of the good guys (sometimes it happens e.g. Aristide in Haiti, but, unfortunately more often than not we support the neoliberal capitalist candidates and policies that cause a lot of harm and oppression around the world). 

I’m suspicious of supporting a movement against the leader of another country simply because my country’s leaders don’t like him/her or because my countries interests don’t coincide with their election.  That’s not a valid reason for international solidarity.  Do that and you are in danger of becoming a tool of geo-political forces that are cynically bending popular opinion to their will. 

Don't be a tool.  Examine the facts as best you know them within the light of all the geo-political and socio-economic factors that come into play.  Then look at your history.  Look at what you know about the way the world works.  Then decide.  You may, like me, decide that you just don't have enough information to act.  And that's okay because you know what? If you're not Iranian, this is not your game. 

NPR, FYI: Cheney is not in power anymore

The media, even National Public Radio, continues to juxtapose the President's speeches regarding detainees in the "war on terror" with those of former Vice President and war criminal Dick Cheney. 

Cheney, whose speeches resemble the mumblings of a madman, has every right to his opinion but to place the two on equal footing is really offensive.   Cheney can write op-eds, go on the Sunday talk shows like any other pundit but we should not be hearing news stories structured like this: "Today the President said.... and former Vice-President Dick Cheney countered....".  This is not a campaign!  The President is not running against the former Vice-President.  Let's have a little respect, please.  What Cheney thinks might matter to an increasingly small number of right-wing wingnuts in this country but the fact of the matter is his views are irrelevant now and are certainly not equal to those of the President of the United States.

Stop giving this man airtime equal to the President's!

Here's a very thoughtful analysis from Umair Haque.

Giant (1956)

At work I've been doing a series of interviews with people who grew up in families that migrated and did agricultural work for a living, and who then went on to march with great labor leaders like Cesar Chavez  and dedicate their lives to fighting for farmworkers' rights. 

Two of those people --both of whom grew up in Texas and migrated in the Western migrant stream-- mentioned to me a 1956 movie called "Giant".  They said it was a particularly accurate depiction of the kind of racism they encountered when they were young.  I rented it and watched it tonight and thought I'd share some thoughts

Giant is clearly intended to be, at least partly, an anti-racist film.  It's the story of a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who marries a wealthy Texas cattleman (Rock Hudson) and moves from the East out to his sprawling half-million acre ranch.  She soon learns of her husband's unattractive views of the Mexicans who work on his ranch.  Her do-gooder patronizing ways towards the Mexican workers is a foil to his outright hostility.  There's also a young white man working for them (played by James Dean) who falls in love with the lady of the house.  When he strikes it rich (via oil) he becomes the family's arch rival.  Drama ensues when none of the children of the family do what's expected of them by their parents and one even takes up with the arch rival.

Despite the romance and drama of family and rival lovers, the relationship between the white people and the brown people in the story is at least a major theme  It's not just background music.  Multiple scenes depict discrimination and outright hatred towards Mexican Americans.

But it goes beyond being simply an accurate portrayal of a particular kind of racism in a particular time and place.  Without giving away the ending, I'll just say that the message of the film is clearly that this racist reality is ugly/mistaken/wrong.  It sends this message in a somewhat cheezy, crude way but hey, it's the 50s.  The fact that it's an anti-racism film at all goes a long way.  That's not to say that the film couldn't be better if it weren't so contrived in parts, but maybe you can't have it all.

One odd thing about the movie is the god-awful makeup job on the "brown" people.  At first I thought they must be white actors made up to look Mexican (which was common back then but would've led to an interesting question: why would a director making a film about racism, not feel able to use non-white actors?).  But they did apparently use Latino actors.  Sal Mineo was in the cast (he was a sort of 1950s latin heartthrob so I hear, even though he was actually Sicilian).  Sal's character didn't look as bad as the others but the actress who played Juana is an actress named Elsa Cardenas who was born in Tijuana.  Why the need for mud-colored makeup then, you think?  Maybe they didn't look Mexican enough?  Here's a photo of her to the right.

Did they feel they had to uphold white people's stereotypes of what Mexicans should look like by making their skin darker?  Maybe they had only white makeup artists on the set who only knew how to do one shade of makeup ("ivory") and were completly flabbergasted when confronted with a larger palette?  Who knows?  It is interesting though, how a film so clearly conscious of race could still, also be so affected by it.  For a contemporary parallel perhaps consider the 2004 film Crash.

No magic number

It's been awhile, but I'm coming out of hibernation --briefly-- to say this: the celebratory reaction on the left to the announcement of Sen. Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic party is not well thought out.  There is no magic number.  60 seats doesn't necessarily translate into 60 votes and Sen. Specter has once again confirmed that he remains opposed to progressive legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize (the Employee Free Choice Act). 

And if the rumors that he was promised no challenger in the Democratic primary are true (can they do that? and if so, can they be held to that promise?), this is seriously problematic. What were they thinking?

A lot can happen between now and 2010.  Progressive ideas generally, not just the Democratic Party, are gaining sway in the midst of an economic crisis brought on by years of Republican rule.  To cede a valuable Senate seat to someone who's going to be Democrat practically in-name-only seems very short-sighted indeed.  If this is official Democratic strategy, it would indicate that these giddy majority days will be just another flash in the bucket instead of an enduring trend towards a more compassionate civilized country.  The Dems need to forgo the lure of gloating rights over this in the short term and think more long term about how to keep this country moving forward on a progressive agenda.

Obama's budget is smart investing

This past week the president laid out his budget for 2010.  It's based on three pillars: education, health care and energy independence.  Why those three things?  Because he knows that those things make up a solid foundation for a prosperous economy. It's not going to be cheap, it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick but if this president can pass this budget, or one more or less like it, I think we can turn this juggernaut of an economy around.

Our country's stubborn inability to pass meaningful health care reform has driven health care costs to record levels.  Are we getting state-of-the-art care for that price?  The World Health Organization has ranked the U.S. health system as 37th in the world in terms of access, funding, and quality of care.  37th!  What's up with that?  We're paying top dollar for mediocre health care!  47 million of us don't have insurance at all, who knows how much that number's going to grow with everybody and their brother losing their jobs.  What's wrong with this picture?

Our energy policy over the past half century has been just as insane.  Continue to rely on archaic, pollution-spewing fossil fuels?  Stick our heads in the sand and hope that global warming will just go away? Again, I think Obama's perspective on the world is too focused on the long-term to fall for that.  Here's a step in the right direction.

And even Republicans know that the next generation can't hope to compete in the 21st century without significant investments in education.

Does all this mean a huge increase in domestic spending? Hardly. I'm going to do something totally nerdy and link to something on the Office of Management and Budget's blog to explain (yeah, the OMB, has a blog!!).  According to the OMB, this budget is about a 3.2% increase over last year's.

I don't like everything this president has done so far.  I'm inclined to trust Nobel prize winning economists like Paul Krugman and others (as well as my own gut) that this whole "cash for trash" idea of the Treasury Department is a load of bunk (more about that later).  But the budget is another matter.  This is a damn good budget and a smart one, too, if you look at the long term benefits and not just the short term costs. 

Has it been awhile since you wrote your representatives?  Now's a great time.  All the rhetoric and legislative victories in the world don't matter if there's not money to advance a real progressive agenda in this country.  This is a progressive budget.  This is a New Deal for the 21st century.  Go.  Right now.  Write that letter. 

White History Year

Love this: Now that Black History Month is over, we now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The problem with humans

If you had to narrow it down, the problem with human beings is this: we are notoriously short-sighted in our thinking.  We just can't think in large enough spans of time.  Ask us to think about any given concept over the span of oh, say, 50 years from now is a stretch.  100 is really asking a lot.  500?  Forget it.  At the same time our technological know-how has sky-rocketed so now we can do things, design things, build things, implement things --BIG things-- that certainly have those sorts of life-spans with the potential to still be affecting the world far off in the future. A friend of mine adds, "we can also break things, move things, change things on a big/long scale. Mountaintops.  Underwater background noise.  The ozone layer. Bazillions of barrels of oil."

And nuclear waste. Know what the half life of uranium 235 (the stuff in spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors) is? 704 million years. Here's a good fact sheet on it from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.  Know how many nuclear reactors the world has?  Over 400 in operation. 

What do we going to do with all this stuff?  According to Environment Canada, “true walkaway disposal methods are unlikely to be possible, given the long time periods (a minimum of 250,000 years) for which the longer-lived radionuclides would have to be isolated from the soil, air, and water." Source: Canada vs. the OECD: An Environmental Comparison.  Lord, have mercy!

All this I've said before. But another aspect of it struck me the other day.  George Lakoff --you know that guy who's so good at explaining the differences in how liberals and conservatives think and wrote that book, Don't think of an Elephant-- recently wrote a guest post on 538.com.  It's a great post, you should go read the whole thing; he's talking about "seven crucial intellectual moves that [he] believe[s] are historically, practically, and cognitively appropriate, as well as politically astute" but for now check out #6: systemic causation and systemic risk.  He says:

Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. The overwhelming moral value of individual, not social, responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences

They don't think about systemic causes (if they did, they'd be called "liberals") but what are the two most pressing problems facing our generation right now?  The global economic meltdown and global warming!   These things are systemic.  You can't think of them as a product of any one process; by their very nature they are systemic problems.  Lakoff says this causes some serious conundrums for conservatives but there's also this: what if --just what if-- having to deal with these two huge, systemic problems gets us humans to finally start thinking about the consequences of our actions in a larger time frame?  What if these two crises fundamentally change the way we think?  Wow!  How cool would that be?  That is, if we survive.

A nation of cowards

I was reading in the paper today that the U.S. is pulling out of the World Summit Against Racism because of the declaration's condemnation of Israel's occupation of Palestine and also some language about reparations that we didn't like.  I mentioned this to a friend of mine and let's just say that the conversation (if you could call it that) didn't really go well.

The issue of reparations hits closer to home for most people in this country than does the Israel-Palestine controversy and the idea that perhaps the enslavement of millions of black people by white people was so horrible, so inhuman, so utterly degrading and insidious that its legacy still remains with us two hundred years later and perhaps it's time to make amends --that idea is just so explosive that even friends --two white friends even-- cannot have a productive dialogue about it without getting angry and defensive. 

Last week, you may have heard, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, issued a call for a national dialogue on race relations:

'To make progress . . . we must feel comfortable enough with one another -- and tolerant enough of each other -- to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.'"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said in a speech marking Black History Month to hundreds of Justice Department employees. "It is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation's history, this is in some ways understandable. And yet if we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another -- and tolerant enough of each other -- to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us."

He did NOT call for reparations.  He just called for a conversation (and by the way, I am so proud that those words came out of the mouth of a U.S. Attorney General! We've had a few cool Attorney Generals before so it's not unprecedented for one to speak so openly and honestly, but I'm not sure how common it is that they do so while still in office). 

I'm interested in the reparations question.   I can see why some (most?) white people don't like the idea, but I'd like to explore it.  I'm open to changing my mind on it, but if I do, it won't be because of the fallacious "slavery is ancient history" argument.  I lean towards reparations because I know that forgiveness is about more than just saying "I'm sorry".  It's about taking action to reverse the damage done to the injured party.

Well then, what about the Jews, you ask? Don't they deserve reparations for the Holocaust?  Yes, I think they do and Germany paid them.  (The controversy back then was that Israel accepting the money was the equivalent of forgiving the Nazis for their crimes). 

The point is not that money --any amount of it-- can make up for anything as horrible as slavery or genocide or the Holocaust.  Obviously it doesn't and it can't.  The point is this: when two communities engage each other in honest dialogue about a painful past, they begin to understand each other perhaps for the first time, and that empathy, that understanding is a powerful thing.  Then and only then can we truly feel sorry.  And then we want to not only say we're sorry, we want to act on it.  Forgiveness is not just saying "I'm sorry"; it always involves making amends, taking some kind of action to heal the relationship.

It took us (the U.S.) more than 200 years just to say we're sorry, we're officially sorry for slavery and even that was controversial.

None of this means I don't believe we haven't made progress in race relations.  That argument is a cop-out.  Nothing I've said denies how far we have come.  But it is true that Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour of the week and I know from personal experience that white people still have a hard time talking openly and honestly about racism and race relations.  We can never go forward, as a country or as individuals, as long as that's the case.

The mobius strip of empirical epistemologies.

I was thinking last night and this morning about those sorts of empirical epistemologies that think that everything in this world can be measured and objectively observed from some neutral god-like standpoint unaffected by time and place and culture.

You already know, probably, that I don't think that's an accurate picture of reality.  I think reality is much more complex than that worldview allows for.  But it is *a* picture of reality.  One way of viewing the world among many.  Certainly some things can be measured and the measurements help us understand them better.  But it's always going to be a limited view (I don't think a complete view would be possible).  It's like if you only had one eye, your brain would never learn depth perception right?  You have two and your brain does learn depth perception and you view of the world is a little more complete.

But what happens if one way of looking at the world (in this case empirical epistemologies) is elevated above all others, and it's seen as the only valid way?  Then that view of reality, the dominant paradigm, gets weighted more than the others and any thing (theories and the people who love and promote them) that operates within that view, is going to be more promoted in such a society than those that don't.

That particular artificial construction of the world becomes the world itself... it gets reified (it becomes real).  And then theories are tested against that world and it becomes self-validating, it only ever gets tested against itself.  The world is the theory and the theory is the world.

This stops knowledge in its tracks.  All of a sudden instead of understanding the world better, we understand only our own paradigm better.  And we take action and build institutions based on those theories, which further reifies it and on and on again in an endless cycle.

But what do I mean "instead of understanding the world better"  --isn't that an empirical statement? assuming that there is a world out there to be understood?  It is, isn't it?  Which can only mean one thing: there is no world.  There is only theory.