tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88564068741292452902024-03-24T19:32:30.925-04:00Mahalo.ne.TrashUpdates on astronomy and parenting in paradise...er, Pasadena. Wait, make that Cambridge, MA.erinjohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12836341362965670520noreply@blogger.comBlogger1139125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-46475263724732210822019-06-25T10:01:00.000-04:002019-06-26T10:05:14.419-04:00Banneker 5 Report 2: Advising<div style="text-align: justify;">
One of the refrains of the summer is that the Banneker Institute is not an REU program. It's not that REU programs are bad. It's just that we've just always had different goals in mind—and we are not seeking to reinvent the wheel. While REU programs are designed to provide undergraduate students an entrée into the world of research, we aim to prepare students of color for graduate school in myriad ways including a summer research project.</div>
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Since the beginning, the Banneker summer program has rested upon three pillars: research, classroom learning, and social justice education. This summer, we have articulated a set of high-level goals associated with these three pillars:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Students will learn the process of research in astrophysics.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Students will develop tools to describe the world as it is rather than as it has been narrated to them.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Students will build and maintain a community that can sustain them through the trials of graduate school and their STEM careers beyond.</li>
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The first goal includes things like learning to read papers, preparing a talk to communicate findings, and learning how to read, write, debug, and maintain computer code. The second is a reminder of the connection between social justice education and the practice of physical science: both seek to describe the world as it is—no less, no more. The third goal comes with recognition that our program is ultimately insufficient, that changing the culture of academia and our society is a generational project, and that sustainable community will be an essential support to our students after the summer ends. </div>
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Running through our design of the summer is the idea of "informed consent". This idea deserves its own post, but essentially we want to give students sufficient information that they can make informed decisions about entering graduate school and choosing to take the next step towards a career in academia. To that end, we often try to structure the summer as simulation of graduate school, but a simulation with the information density and intensity turned up to the max.</div>
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Selecting an advisor is something all first-year astronomy graduate students must do, but it is something they are rarely taught. In years past, we simply assigned research advisors and projects to students before they even arrived (just as in REU programs). While this worked without a hitch most of the time, there were occasional mismatches in style or topic. But more importantly, by making the choice for them, we missed an opportunity to prepare students for their future experience of seeking out an advisor/group/project. Having practice selecting an advisor in a low(er)-stakes environment would provide our students with a major advantage in graduate school—they would be starting out their research careers with less stress around one of grad school's most stressful and defining decisions. With the aim of preparing students to navigate that decision, we decided to try something different.</div>
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Instead of being assigned an advisor on the first day, the students of B5 took two weeks to explore major subfields of astrophysical research, meet with potential research advisors, and got to know the projects those advisors were pitching. At the end of the two weeks, students provided us with a ranked listing of their top three research projects and top three advisors. Because of the emphasis we placed on the advising relationship, preferred projects and preferred advisors were not always the same. We wanted to gather as much information as possible so that we could best match students to advisors in accordance with their desires and our aim of maximizing student capacity for success (see goals above).</div>
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As for the subfields—exoplanets/solar systems, stars, galaxies, and cosmology—each topic was covered in just two days! The first was devoted to an overview lecture with plenty of time for reflection and asking questions (big ups to Jason Eastman, Sownak Bose, John Forbes and Josh Speagle for designing and teaching these lectures!). That night—in concert with a workshop on how to read a journal article, taught by Ashley Villar and Seth Gossage—students poured over an important or defining paper in the field. The second day started with questions about the paper, a more informed discussion about the subfield, and culminated with prospective research advisors pitching projects related to the topic. These mini-courses formed the backbone of the first two weeks and provided time for students to meet and talk with their potential advisors</div>
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Last week was the first week students worked on their research projects, and we are seeing the happy results of advisors chosen rather than assigned. Students appreciated the extended orientation to the Center for Astrophysics and to the field more broadly. And, especially for students coming from institutions with few astronomy research options, the process has had the benefit of exposing them to research that they might not have even known interested them.</div>
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We're also noting areas for improvement next year. Personal conversations between students and potential advisors are important for sussing the viability of a working relationship, but seeking out post-docs, professional scientists, and faculty can be intimidating for undergraduates! Next time around, we'll want to think about constructing more opportunities for informal contact beyond the two welcome mixers we had this summer. Advisor matching provided the first non-trivial test of our community agreements (see <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2019/06/banneker-5-report-1-building-community.html">last post</a>) because of the creeping feelings of competition students felt with each other. Old habits die hard, and zero-sum, individual success at the expense of others is a deeply ingrained feature of academia. </div>
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Next summer, we will want to have earlier conversations explicitly naming this competition and providing more space to discuss it. We can also remind students that mentoring is a network phenomenon—just because you don't work with someone doesn't mean you can't (or shouldn't!) talk with them. It is also worth noting that this process cuts the time devoted to a specific research project from ten weeks to only eight. We are keeping close tabs on how this is playing out and will carefully consider adjustments to the length of the selection process in future summers. </div>
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Throughout the summer, students will be learning to engage the process of research with their advisors: the daily working-through of ideas, the climbing-over of coding woes, and building up tolerance for being "stuck," with an eye toward future breakthroughs. Our hope is that these advising relationships will be places our students can grow themselves and their science!</div>
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<i>Written by John Johnson and Vale Cofer-Shabica</i></div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-25910990248626617682019-06-11T09:39:00.000-04:002019-06-25T10:01:25.491-04:00Banneker 5 Report 1: Building Community<div style="text-align: justify;">
From its inception, one of the primary aims of the Banneker Institute has been to build community within astronomy that can can be supportive and even nourishing for students of color. To be sure, this is a radical proposition. The field of astronomy and the social structures upon which it is built are extensions of the structures of US society at large. And building off of those structures, solidarity is not a natural outcome.</div>
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During previous summer programs, John et al. told the students that they'd like them to be in community with one another, and we even had a pledge that attempted to bring mindfulness to the values that we hoped would help us get there. Things like being greater than the sum of our parts, recognizing that things can get difficult, and standing up for each other when things get tough. This wasn't much to go on, to be honest, and the fact that so many cohorts did form a supportive community is a testament to the strength and good will of the students. Banneker students are great!</div>
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While things worked extremely well in the main, there were occasional breakdowns in communal bonds that could be traced back to the people involved not dealing with conflict in a generative, growth-oriented manner. This should come as little surprise because our society offers few opportunities to learn to deal with conflict in good faith. Conflict is a natural and normal outcome when people from different backgrounds and lived experiences gather together in close proximity. There will inevitably be butting of heads, disagreements about the best way of doing things, or unintentional yet hurtful words and actions. Conflict is not the problem. Instead, issues arise when people in conflict rely on the default tools handed to them by society: refusing to talk, whispering behind each other's back, ostracizing, or generally ceasing dialogue in favor of punitive measures.</div>
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To reiterate, these negative actions have been rare during the first four summer programs. The larger Banneker community avoids such actions and leans toward open, honest communication as a primary mode, which is admirable and uncommon especially compared to society at large! However, when breakdowns occur, they leave outsize wounds. Saying that conflict is normative and can be addressed differently is easy, <i>doing </i>it is hard. Indeed, it is The Work.</div>
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This summer we (Stacey, Duney, John and Vale) are trying something new. Instead of declaring that there will be community, providing a minimal set of rules, and crossing our fingers, we instead endeavor to be much more intentional. During the first week we had a daily, two-hour community building workshop. Vale and John ran the workshop, and we started on the first day with some basic questions: "What do you need from the instructors, mentors, advisors and your fellow students in order to learn most effectively?" and "What has worked for you in the past, and what was sub-optimal when you were learning and working with others?"</div>
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After reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly of past (mis)adventures in academia, the students shared richly what they had learned. The group collaboratively developed a set of agreements that articulated what they knew about themselves and responded to their needs. Rather than receiving a pledge from above, the students gave us and each other a purpose-drawn blueprint for how to be in community.</div>
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Norms like <i>"listen[ing] to each other to understand, not just to respond"</i> and agreeing to <i>"foster a collaborative learning environment by offering information rather than imposing direction"</i> (a.k.a. the <i>abuelita</i> rule) are testaments to their desire for mutual connection. Students also laid the foundation for encouraging self-care with the "free to pee" rule (the freedom to take care of biological needs) and setting the intention to practice a "gentle inclusion" where staying in for a night doesn't mean missing out on invitations for the rest of the summer. Of particular interest to us as educators and scientists is the declaration for collaboration: "<i>We are teammates not competitors; we have learned something once we all understand it</i>". These are radical notions in our individualistic society and even more so in let-me-demonstrate-how-I-am-better-than-you halls of academic science. </div>
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Since creating the group norms, the students have introduced them to each new instructor before the start of each topic, thus setting the tone for the classes that follow. Preparing the agreements together was an important way to center the students' knowledge and discover what this cohort means by "community." But, what about some time in the future when sticking to them gets hard, or it seems like one of our fellows has failed to uphold them? Surely these would be the moments for conflict to arise.</div>
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We spent the next two days talking about conflict and how to handle it. Cultural norms around punctuality provided a relatively low-stakes difference where it could be easy to have a hurtful misunderstanding. Are we on "American-time" or is it just "time" with the expectation that we will be punctual? How disrespectful is it to arrive late? Does my existential discomfort about our proposed scheduling parameters warrant discussion? even mention? The discussion was as practical as it was revelatory: we agreed on timeliness (with flexibility for self care) and saw how normative difference could be worked through collectively. Raising the stakes meant that we (John and Vale) had to dip into our personal history. In describing moments of tension and discomfort in our friendship and working relationship, we sent a postcard from conflicts future; its message was: come bearing questions rather than accusations and you can make it through.</div>
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The lasting efficacy of our strategy will be seen over the course of the summer. However, the space of normalized conflict and demonstrated vulnerability provided by the workshop has already seen this summer's students knit themselves together in beautiful ways. They've already been able to share uncomfortable truths, hold one another when wounded, and push back, gently, but firmly, against each other and us in moments of disagreement. Certainly, difficulty will come, but we are extremely proud of the groundwork the students have laid to face it.</div>
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We are the Banneker Institute!<br />
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<i>Written by John Johnson and Vale Cofer-Shabica</i></div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-62595835134323307412019-04-08T12:38:00.001-04:002019-04-08T12:39:00.245-04:00"Why do you care about war?"<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OC1Ru2p8OfU" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports2013/Martinlutherkingspeech1967.html">Full transcript</a><br />
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<b>The Triple Prong Sickness of America</b></h3>
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Excerpts From King’s Speech Delivered at the National Conference on New Politics<br />
August 31, 1967 </div>
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Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live…<br />
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...I wish that I could say that this is just a passing phase in the cycles of our nation’s life; certainly times of war, times of reaction throughout the society but I suspect that we are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning. That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. Not only is this our nation’s dilemma it is the plague of western civilization...<br />
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...for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists. Racism can well be, that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization. Arnold Toynbee has said that some twenty-six civilization have risen upon the face of the Earth, almost all of them have descended into the junk heap of destruction. The decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynbee, was not caused by external invasion but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impinging upon them. If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all [people]...<br />
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...The second aspect of our afflicted society is extreme materialism, an Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous,dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”...our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men…<br />
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...It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth. Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice, the fact is that Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return. The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation’s resources.
The final phase of our national sickness is the disease of militarism...<br />
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…[W]ar has played havoc with the destiny of the entire world. It has torn up the Geneva Agreement, it has seriously impaired the United Nations, it has exacerbated the hatred between continents and worst still between races. It has frustrated our development at home, telling our own underprivileged citizens that we place insatiable military demands above their critical needs. It has greatly contributed to the forces of reaction in America and strengthened the military industrial complex. And it has practically destroyed Vietnam and left thousands of American and Vietnamese youth maimed and mutilated and exposed the whole world to the risk of nuclear warfare....<br />
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We are arrogant in professing to be concerned about the freedom of foreign nations while not setting our own house in order. Many of our Senators and Congressmen vote joyously to appropriate billions of dollars for the War in Vietnam and many of these same Senators and Congressmen vote loudly against a Fair Housing Bill to make it possible for a Negro veteran of Vietnam to purchase a decent home. We arm Negro soldiers to kill on foreign battlefields but offer little protection for their relatives from beatings and killings in our own South. We are willing to make a Negro 100% of a citizen in Warfare but reduce him to 50% of a citizen on American soil.
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We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.<br />
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Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.<br />
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-19282722457881141112019-02-25T11:52:00.001-05:002019-02-25T11:52:51.950-05:00Hands Off Venezuela!The US is gearing up for another attempt at regime change, this time in Venezuela. The first attempt in that country was on April 11, 2002. That coup lasted only a few days before millions of mostly poor, mostly brown and black Venezuelans took to the streets to demand the return of their democratically-elected president, Hugo Chávez. The power of the people prevailed, and the US-backed usurpers retreated with their tails between their legs.<br />
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Most people I've talked to about Venezuela say the same thing, that the situation seems overly complicated to fully comprehend. However, I assure you that this isn't complicated, nor is it unfamiliar. Do you remember Iraq, and how that went down, and how it turned out? Okay, then you understand what's going on in Venezuela: a nation of mostly brown people sits atop one of the world's largest oil reserves, and has refused to allow Western business interests to have full access to the nation's markets and resources. The corporate media pops onto the scene to report on a human rights crisis in the country that urgently requires the US and its allies to intervene to restore justice. All that's required is either a coup or military action, followed by a puppet government that violently suppresses the population while instituting neoliberal policies (privatization of previously nationalized institutions, giant contracts for the likes of Halliburton, dissolution of social welfare programs in order to repay giant IMF loans, etc.)<br />
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The US and its allies claim that the current leader of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro, is a bad dude who does bad things to his country and his people. Namely, they claim that he is a dictator who came to power in a rigged election, and since in office he has irresponsibly bungled the nation's economy, plunging a once prosperous country into poverty. Further, he has stubbornly ignored the demands of the opposition party that he hold truly democratic elections, and he is refusing foreign aid that would provide the Venezuelan people with much-needed basics such as food and medicine. As a result, there is no other option but to have the World's Superman come to the rescue to restore peace, justice and, well, the American Way.<br />
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Did any of that description of Maduro and his "regime" sound familiar? Can we think of any other country with an authoritarian leader who came to power via dubious means, and who has ignored the concerns of the opposition party who are demanding justice and a restoration of their democracy? Oh! Right! That's a fairly apt description of the political situation in the United States, is it not?<br />
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Of course, the only difference is that no one in this country would be okay with the Chinese army bringing aid across the Mexican boarder, while the Chinese government not-so-secretly supplied millions of dollars to various anti-Trump opposition movements, all while a state representative that very few people have heard of---say, Connor Lamb---suddenly one day swears himself in as the president. That last part is exactly what happened with Juan Guaidó, the previous nobody who recently swore himself in as president of Venezuela. He just so happens to have studied at Georgetown University, where he became well versed in the neoliberal philosophy/religion of the Chicago School, and he just so happens to be backed by the US, its allies, and the western corporate media.<br />
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Look, if you think it would be okay for China to install Connor Lamb as president, rather than us in this country handling our own political affairs, then I totally understand how you'd be supportive of the US agenda in Venezuela. You see, your worldview would at least be consistent. But if you think that the US, as a sovereign nation, should be left to handle its own affairs, without the intervention of another country, then your support of a Venezuelan coup, under the auspices of US aid to the country, etc, would be rather inconsistent. While there's no requirement for consistency in one's beliefs, it is helpful in making the actions of the US around the world seem less confusing.<br />
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Further, if you are interested in social justice at home, then you should certainly care about social justice abroad. One of the things I've learned over the past few years is that the features of racism are largely scale-invariant. A double standard along racial lines as applied by one person to another is racism. For example, a white person might report to the police a suspicious-looking person in their neighborhood on the basis of them being Black. This should be easily recognizable as interpersonal racism. If that Black person is subsequently shot by police officers arriving on the scene, one might be able to see how this is racism scaled up to the institutional level; as racism embedded in the police, with its historical roots in citizen militias battling Native Americans, or as slave patrols. And if the majority of that Black person's family lives in poverty despite making every effort to work or find jobs, then we can see how that is racism systemically woven into the fabric of society.<br />
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In each step of scaling racism from interpersonal to the national level, white supremacy and the attendant, often implicit belief in race, provides the narratives and ready-made explanations for the double standard at play. "Well, what was that person doing in that neighborhood? That hoodie did make them look like a potential burglar. The police say he was resisting arrest. Black people do tend to be violent. Why don't they just work hard like everyone else, instead of taking advantage of welfare?"<br />
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Well, in my view the scaling continues up to the international level. As white supremacy is to racism, american exceptionalism is to us imperialism and neocolonialism. "The US needs to intervene until those people can take care of themselves. Their leader does bad things to their people!" Does another country need to intervene here until we can get the DNC to stop rigging their primaries, or until trump stops ripping off poor people through his regressive tax policies? Venezuela is a country mostly populated by the descendants of colonized and enslaved people, that so happens to sit atop one of the richest supplies of oil in the world. Their current leader may not be perfect, but he was elected via a democratic process widely regarded as far more fair and free from corruption than the elections in the US. If the Venezuelan people have a problem with him, they have a constitution in place that provides means of fixing the situation without the need for intervention by a country founded upon colonization and slavery, or any other country for that matter. The key word here is sovereignty.<br />
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Want to learn more about Venezuela? Well, the corporate media are consistently presenting a single, unified narrative, so feel free to pick up the latest edition of the Times or whatever your favorite source of State Department stenography (the same folks who brought you yellow cake uranium!). But if you'd like a few non-corporate sources of information, here are some excellent resources that I've cross-checked against other non-corporate sources, and also done some background reading on. Should you believe them on this basis? Of course not! As always, you should do your own cross-checking while developing your own basis of trusting various sources of information.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/16724719?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe>
<a href="https://vimeo.com/16724719">The War On Democracy (English subtitles)</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user5080139">John Pilger</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-2956885521679678562018-04-18T14:55:00.001-04:002018-04-18T18:58:48.933-04:00Iraq War 2: Electric Boogaloo<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sequels to Hollywood hits are rarely good. It's just too easy to succeed by being fundamentally lazy. Note the success of the original, sign the stars to new contracts, rehash the same basic story and jokes in a new setting, start advertising a year out, and finally: rake in the profits. It's great for the studios, but rarely good for the viewers. The Karate Kid was a masterpiece. The Karate Kid 2? Total bummer.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gsJnhfXRVHAfqlfXTMzcygwOWAnfY0Uk_tg_iBK7-GPQWfwFguIoBxORZ7hYo_LJLm_Oj8Yr6xspRgE8a4hAdVrMHxaDDeU5x0TfvWwFy5HxxgD6wy5bnKc3TToApX6NuiQWL2sX4wA/s1600/karate+kid+2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="452" data-original-width="812" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1gsJnhfXRVHAfqlfXTMzcygwOWAnfY0Uk_tg_iBK7-GPQWfwFguIoBxORZ7hYo_LJLm_Oj8Yr6xspRgE8a4hAdVrMHxaDDeU5x0TfvWwFy5HxxgD6wy5bnKc3TToApX6NuiQWL2sX4wA/s320/karate+kid+2.PNG" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Just do the crane kick, Daniel!</i></td></tr>
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Remember the Iraq invasion? Not the prequel, when America barely dipped it's toes into Iraq. I'm talking about the good one when the military got all up into that sovereign nation, wrecked it, tried to install a government and set up shop in a gigantic fortified compound right in the middle of Baghdad (those madcap Americans!). Then, in a plot twist right out of M. Night Shaymalan, the Iraqi people fought back, pressured their government to kick the Americans out, and...something, something Surge! It turned out the Iraqi people were actually the bad guys all along. I know you're gonna say you saw it coming, because they were brown and Muslim and terroristy. But I was all: What. Tha. Hell?! Totes surprised. More than a decade and a million Iraqi deaths later America rides off into the sunset leaving a failed state behind. </div>
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That. Was. AWESOME! Oh, man. I still have the collectors' soda cup and the Mission Accomplished shirt. </div>
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A key part of the movie that most people don't remember as well as the explosions and car chases was the high drama of the protagonists having to convince the American people that the invasion was not only the right thing to do, but absolutely imperative for their safety. So there was George Bush warning of mushroom clouds, Colin Powell holding up vials of white powder, and constant messaging linking Saddam and 9/11. Oh, and don't forget the rape rooms, torture chambers, and stories of Saddam doing other, assorted bad things to his citizens. America movies always have a bad guy doing bad stuff to their citizens! How else are we supposed to get behind American death and destruction except by being reminded that only America can stop the bad-guy death and destruction? One must always add a bigger wrong to a smaller wrong to get to the right answer! It's just good story telling.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGB_NdGrnukrCJ9luleeBfA75I0rKwDCEvIdkf0h-AYHDJtjPTy-LHOQXpRjJkBEnPO-J86Cd7P3cEG1H0QRStCQOO37-9imqrrV_uVUjcSy1PrPJK9tH3t_vjhFg-kMO1SNlWnFEZ54/s1600/CNN+Facts+first.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="619" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGB_NdGrnukrCJ9luleeBfA75I0rKwDCEvIdkf0h-AYHDJtjPTy-LHOQXpRjJkBEnPO-J86Cd7P3cEG1H0QRStCQOO37-9imqrrV_uVUjcSy1PrPJK9tH3t_vjhFg-kMO1SNlWnFEZ54/s320/CNN+Facts+first.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"We'll tell you the facts. The same facts that were told to us by government officials."</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Of course, the protagonists get what they want by teaming up with the mass media (Wolf Blitzer appearing somberly on screen following kick-ass graphics, music and all but a countdown timer for the start of the war), intelligence agencies, and a hastily assembled international coalition (Of The Willing<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">™</span>). I mean, that's a given. The American government doesn't give hundreds of billions of tax dollars to the military-industrial complex to <i>not </i>fight wars. That'd be a total waste of military hardware*.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I can't afford one myself, but a government official once told me that drone-launched Hellfire missiles go bad after like three months. You gotta kill people with them when they're<i> </i>ripe or they stink up the house.</span></div>
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Well, in case you weren't paying attention: Here we go again! This time the bad guy is Bashar Assad, the president of Syria. Assad, just like Saddam, is a total madman. I mean, he's the perfect evil-scientist bad guy. He just can't stop dropping chemical weapons on his citizens. A few weeks ago the President of America said that the military would <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/trump-withdraw-syria-pentagon/index.html">withdraw from Syria</a> (wait, the US military was <i>in </i>Syria? As in, at some point it <i>invaded </i>Syria. <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-the-us-occupied-the-30-of-syria-containing-most-of-its-oil-water-and-gas/240601/">When did that happ</a>---shhh! The new Geico commercial is on!). Additionally, the anti-Assad rebels had been on the retreat for months, Syrian refugees were returning home, and Syria was about to enter into a period of relative peace. But crazy Assad gets together with his advisers and is all, "Y'all know what time it is? Citizen-gassin' time!" </div>
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If you're like me, you probably don't think that this story sounds very realistic. No half-way rational person would ever do this, especially when America has been warning Assad that they'd kick his ass if he does anymore bad things to his people. But that's Assad for ya! And I don't mean to sound racist, but he is kinda Middle Eastern, and you know how <i>those </i>leaders are (it's a cultural thing). Right as he's about to win his civil war and have a nuclear-armed superpower finally leave him alone, he's just gotta gas some people one last time. He's like Hingle McCringleberry doing the <a href="https://youtu.be/RGJb2iLvOKE?t=1m42s">third pump</a>. It's so damn predictable that American experts know exactly what happened within hours of the first appearance of smoke over Douma. <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/a-timeline-of-events-leading-to-the-us-uk-france-strikes-in-syria/240694/">No investigation or credible evidence</a> needed*. </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*The State Dept. said, “These reports, if confirmed, are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community.” But you know how it is: it depends on what the definition of "if" is. </span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkp4imyNTU57kSFKlyEsPU_Ya6YtKemRZs6LDbANJsPW4oJi-ZwRKNtyzz9enRpjSpFXylywyqlDzCgXGGHnhiXhmG0aq47Srved2_8A8EWOxOwwZnm5lJ2ac6PBZOaGD3HDqsNDeMTnc/s1600/Douma+third+pump.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="662" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkp4imyNTU57kSFKlyEsPU_Ya6YtKemRZs6LDbANJsPW4oJi-ZwRKNtyzz9enRpjSpFXylywyqlDzCgXGGHnhiXhmG0aq47Srved2_8A8EWOxOwwZnm5lJ2ac6PBZOaGD3HDqsNDeMTnc/s320/Douma+third+pump.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Uh oh, that was the third pump!</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So now America has no choice but to invade (<a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-largely-unrecognized-us-occupation-of-syria-nearly-one-third-of-its-territory/5631775">re-invade</a>? post-invade?) yet another Middle Eastern country. Look, if there were another hero in shining Kevlar armor out there, America would be all, "We're staying home. It's your turn to right the wrongs in this world." But there is only one Neo in this here Matrix. Right when America was gonna retire, they keep pulling it right back in!</div>
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I think the sequel is going to be predictably bad when it's all said and done. But there's always a chance it'll be as good or better than the first one, right? Right? Well, I'll be there on opening night dressed up as an Abu Ghraib prisoner*. Because what am I gonna do, <i>not </i>watch the next American war?</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* I was gonna dress up as National Security Advisor and O.G. neocon John Bolton, but decided that'd be in bad taste.</span></div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-78357976681696718332018-04-02T13:39:00.001-04:002018-04-04T13:10:09.601-04:00Public Service Announcement About Corporate News<div style="text-align: justify;">
Five major corporations own almost all of the media Americans consume on a daily basis, and corporations have an <a href="https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf">outsize impact</a> on national policy. This is just a friendly reminder that in a country run by a corporate elite, corporate propaganda is state propaganda:</div>
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fJbGCZuB0rM" width="560"></iframe>
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If the corporate oligarchs don't want you to hear about something, they can make sure you have very little exposure to it, and bias you against that message when you manage to hear it. If they want/need you to know and internalize something, they can keep sending you that message until you do. The video above is a desperate attempt to keep you away from independent news sources. All while trying to convince you that we live in a democracy, and that that democracy is challenged by unapproved voices, open discourse of topics that have actual bearing on our lives, and independent thinking. It's amazing that those newscasters warn against one-sided news sources and not checking facts without a shred of irony (hello run-up to every war).<br />
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This time the propaganda was at the hands of a notoriously right-wing corporation (Sinclair). However, I think the important and scary aspect is the mechanism/effect, more so than the motivation or partisan affiliation. This time it's biased in support of the GOP. Next time it can be biased in favor of the DNC against an independent, left-leaning political candidate or party. The time after that it can be in support of yet another bipartisan war of aggression.<br />
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<a href="http://truthinmedia.com/media-propaganda-doesnt-start-end-with-sinclair/">Update</a></div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-60386574741776890962018-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:002018-01-15T10:28:09.511-05:00Questions for Those Seeking Freedom<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I recently gave a "diversity talk" at a large public university, and I reiterated a point that I've been making whenever I get an opportunity. Namely, I believe there are two primary ways one can enact social justice activism. One is to recognize that injustices occur along various axes such as gender, race and physical ability, and then stake out a position on a perceived high ground from which you identify the Bad People who are responsible for those injustices. People taking this approach are the ones who seem to always have a story to share about a racist uncle on Facebook, or a sexist dude at work, or the person who made an insensitive remark in a meeting. While it is important to identify these types of actions and those who are prone to do them, if your activism ends at naming these actions and people, then I don't see how you can accomplish much. This is because the problematic actions of individuals are not inherent to those people. Rather they are symptomatic of a culture that gives sanctions to detrimental actions. I don't believe that the serial sexual harasser is born with a proclivity to abuse their power. Instead, their behavior is learned through trial and error, where "errors" are permitted rather than discouraged. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second approach involves honest introspection motivated by recognition that culture is created and recreated by those who make up a social group. Those people include you, and as such, your actions matter just as much as anyone else's. Further, your actions, habits, mindsets and proclivities are informed by the same societal influences as the person next to you. That ableist offhand remark made during a seminar talk was informed by the same forces that you are susceptible to. So while there is value in pointing out the wrongs of others---yes, we should speak up and speak out---there is equal, if not greater value in inquiring whether you implicitly hold similar misinformed viewpoints. Have you recently made similar problematic comments, perhaps along other axes of privilege/oppression? If so, what have you done to ensure that you don't do so again in the future? I strongly believe this is the sort of radical introspection that ultimately leads to sustainable changes and a more just society. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm very fortunate to have a number of people in my life who regularly ask me challenging questions that lead me into a process of introspection. I'm not saying that this process is easy, pleasant or immediately welcomed. Indeed, when my deeply-held beliefs are called into question, I'm just as resistant as any other human to honestly confront them. But I eventually yield, at least often enough, and the resulting process of finding answers is vital as I evolve into a more self-motivated, autodidactic learner and critical thinker. Note that I am not claiming that I have arrived anywhere. But I am saying that in the time since I made an intentional decision to take the second approach, have evolved away from my default, American settings at a more rapid and sustained rate than at any other period in my life. So while having my beliefs challenged regularly isn't always comfortable, I am extremely grateful for it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With that, allow me to share some key questions with which I have recently wrestled:</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Does the value of Black lives decrease at the US border?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The statement that Black lives matter is based on the radical notion that human life is equally valuable, regardless of race. Indeed, lives are equally valuable regardless of whether a person is following the instructions of a police officer or not, armed or unarmed, or in violation of the law. There should be no double standard here. It is always wrong when a mother is killed in front of her children in her home by a police officer. A 14-year-old has every right to live, no matter his height or skin tone or others' notions of his criminality. A society that cannot figure out how to preserve life while enforcing the law is a society in need of reform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">#BlackLivesMatter is a radical statement about the sanctity of life, and the right to live rather than to die, especially at the hands of the state.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So if the life of a 14-year-old Black child matters as much as the life of a wealthy white man, then what about the life of an Iraqi woman, or a Syrian man, or a Yemenese baby? Is it correct or just to say that wars waged on these people by the United States should be filed under "foreign policy" while the movement for Black lives be consigned within this country's borders? Is there not a direct link between police militarization here, and militarism abroad? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Is a world led by a Black president truly a step toward justice for all when that Black president authorizes the drone assassination of an Arab-American teenager who happens to be in another country? Did not <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-killed-my-grandson.html">Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki</a> have the same right to life as Trayvon Martin? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pursuing the answer to this question, and questions related to it, has caused me to recognize that there is nothing much in American society worth aspiring to. As such, there is nothing to motivate me to believe in American exceptionalism of any kind, even the exceptionalism of Black bodies within American borders. This is especially true in light of this country's actions in the world. Martin Luther King accurately noted that there is no greater purveyor of violence in the world than the American State (it's military, intelligence agencies, and policy makers). As such, there is no reason to believe that justice, or the pursuit thereof, should stop at our artificially constructed borders. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is not some sort of all-lives-matter nonsequiture distraction. Black lives matter. And if I am willing to unapologetically make such a declaration, I must take a step further and assert that Brown lives in other countries matter just as much as my own. Thus, when a drone strike is authorized by our favorite president, that is an unspeakably evil action that is directly related to the State sanction of police violence at home.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Should your activism be entwined with loyalty to a US political party?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking of our favorite president, does your vision of justice depend on the Democratic party being in control of the government? When said aloud, it sounds ridiculous. However, I've found the wedding of justice and electoral victories for Democrats implicit in far too many of my past conversations. I'll readily admit that I was deeply enmeshed in this sticky trap for a long time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Look, I'm not gonna do some big lead-in to something that should be obvious. The simple fact is that the Democratic party ain't here for me or the general population of this country. The way I've reached this conclusion is that I've shifted my axiom from "the Democrats are the good guys, the Republicans are the bad guys in government, and the government works for me when the Democrats are in power," to "the Democrats work for the same people as the Republicans, and those people don't include me or anyone I know." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We live in a country ruled by wealth, and the vast majority of wealth is owned by a few hundred people who comprise a corporate oligarchy. We live in a corporatocracy where money equals power because money is constitutionally-protected free speech that can be used to persuade politicians to enact policies that the powerful/wealthy want. You and I can call a congressional office and maybe, sometimes speak to an aide. Does anyone doubt that Jeff Bezos has a direct line to any congress person with whom he'd like to speak?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So to rephrase this particular question: Do you think Jeff Bezos is here for your freedom? If not, you need to escape from thinking that Team Blue are the good guys holding the keys to your liberation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><b>What does your just society look like?</b></span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">For a long time I claimed to be an activist for social justice, while not spending much time envisioning what a just world would look like. As such, I was implicitly imagining a country that was structured as this one currently is, but with the gaps between white people and people of color removed. This seemed like a noble goal: turn white-male privilege into a privilege that all people enjoy. After all, isn't that the American ideal?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;">This may sound nice, but it falls apart upon closer inspection. The structure of our society is such that the three (3) wealthiest people have more wealth than the bottom half of the US population. Sit and ponder that just a bit. If the 10-to-1 wealth gap between the median white family and median Black/Latinx family were removed, the historically unprecedented wealth gap I quantified in the previous sentence would remain. That action would not result in justice. In fact, I believe it would be impossible to argue that it would move us anywhere closer to justice. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Since the 2008 economic collapse, there has been a growing willingness in US society to openly criticize our economic system. However, this criticism often comes with conspicuously odd qualifiers. For example, people inveigh against "crony capitalism," "unregulated capitalism," and "runaway capitalism." This language implies that there is a capitalism that exists without wealth concentration, capture of political power, and general corruption. Such a capitalism is just as much a fiction as an ocean without water.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Look, at it's most basic level, capitalism rests upon the existence of a minority group who owns jobs, and a majority who sell their labor to these owners. The profit generated by the workers is split between them and the owner. But what did the owner do to deserve any portion of this product? Well, they had enough wealth to own the business. By virtue of having wealth (or access to wealth) they "earned" the right to pay workers less than their true value by taking a portion of their surplus product for themselves. Not only that, but they get to make the decisions that have the greatest impact on the lives of workers: what to produce, where to produce it (here or in another country?), and what to do with the profits (invest them in collateral debt obligations and crash the economy for short-term profit; or invest in universal healthcare?). This is a great deal of power that a few hold over the many, and it is held in for very arbitrary and undemocratic reasons. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Does justice look like equal representation among the owners, such that all people regardless of race, gender, sexuality and physical ability have an equal representation among the wealthy power establishment? Does justice look like a Black, queer woman making the decision to move manufacturing to Guatemala because the workers there can be paid less, with fewer rights, and fewer regulations, such that her company's profits can be maximized while some town in the US is left destitute? Should she, rather than the standard-issue white man, be trusted to make "fair" decisions about employment, tax rates, and regulations placed on her company by using her vastly superior political influence, while the rest of us cross our fingers that she does so in a way that benefits us?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="background-color: white;">Or should we perhaps investigate alternatives to this irrational, unjust, and inherently undemocratic economic system called capitalism?</span></span><br />
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-67362466612384750862017-09-10T13:00:00.000-04:002017-09-10T13:01:46.675-04:00On Sovereignty<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's a thought exercise. Roughly half of our country is displeased with our current leadership in both the executive branch and the vast majority of people are displeased with the legislative branch of our government. It's also worth noting that the other half was equally displeased with the executive branch leadership from 2008-2016. This fact stands no matter the opinion of the other side; in both cases roughly half the nation pined for a wholesale change in leadership, and a resistance movement was launched. Back then they liked tea, right now they wear pink ears on their heads. </div>
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Let's say that right now another powerful country or alliance of nations (Russia, China, the EU, pick one or several) says that it sympathizes with the resistance movement in our country and makes it a part of their international policy to fund and arm militants from Canada to sneak into our country and join/take over the current resistance movement. This sparks a civil war between these now-armed and well-funded resistance fighters and the US Armed forces. As a result of the fighting, Boston, Chicago, parts of New York and LA are reduced to a burning heap of rubble such that they look something like this:</div>
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This process, of course, also results in a massive loss of lives, with hundreds of thousands of US citizens on both sides of the political spectrum dead. </div>
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Would you be cool with this?</div>
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No?</div>
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Then you shouldn't be cool with, or even ambivalent about what's going on in Syria right now. Because this scenario is what has been happening there for the past five years. Just replace the current executive leadership with President Bashar al-Assad, the "sympathetic" super-power with the US, and the well-funded and armed "rebels" with ISIS. Yes, that last part is factually correct: the US government, under the leadership of Obama and Clinton, provided <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-does-the-us-continue-to-arm-terrorists-in-syria/">funding, arms and training to ISIS fighters</a> to join the previously peaceful Assad-resistance movement and subsequently destroy Syrian cities and lives in a violent civil war. These are the so-called "rebels" fighting the Syrian army.</div>
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It's important to note that the Obama administration (including Hillary Clinton) was not some sort of innovator when it comes to funding terrorist organizations. For example, the Reagan administration funded the Contras to wage guerrilla warfare against the sovereign government of Nicaragua; the Iraqi army under Sadam Hussein to fight Iran; and the Mujahideen (Taliban) led by bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Indeed, <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051">here</a> you can find a depressingly long, well-referenced list of 37 sovereign nation on which the US has waged direct or proxy wars since WWII, resulting in anywhere between 10 and 30 million deaths. Here's another <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-timeline-of-cia-atrocities/5348804">long list</a> containing the assassinations and other acts of "regime change" carried out by the CIA around the world. </div>
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<i>This is America's business, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZzAS53gcDg">this is what they do.</a> </i></div>
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This entity claims that we are intervening in Syria---and in so doing initiating another cold war with Russia, who was invited into Syria by the sovereign Syrian government---because we think President Assad is a bad person who does bad things to his people, and as a result we want a regime change. Who knows if this is true. The truth is probably closer to the fact that Syria wanted to collaborate with other sovereign nations in the region to build their own oil pipeline and thus control their own natural resources, which doesn't fit with the plans of major US/European oil companies.<br />
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But let's say that Assad really is a bad guy. Our leaders tend to do pretty bad things to people, too. Reagan systematically destroyed the New Deal and in so doing helped build one of the largest wealth gaps in our nation's history while destroying the rights of workers (see his busting of the air controller strike for an example). Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in the systematic imprisonment of Black people since the time of slavery. And when it comes to our opinion of foreign leaders, we said the same thing about Sadam and Iraq, too. Do you remember how the case for invading Iraq was based on the story that Sadam did terrible things to his people and had ties to terrorism? Do you remember how the mass media, from CNN to Fox News joined hands and sang the same song over and over until the country believed the stories (70% of Americans believe that Sadam had ties to the 9/11 attack)? I certainly remember how that narrative was absolutely, demonstrably false.<br />
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Well, there's a eerily similar story that has been fed to us over the past five years regarding Syria, and the same outfit are doing the selling: America's propaganda arm embodied by the mass media. They were 100% wrong back then, and they're wrong now. Indeed, to say that they are simply wrong is giving them a lot of credit. Another way to put it is that they knowingly lied to the public.<br />
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Tune them out. Seek other voices. Fortunately it looks like Syria has beaten us and protected its sovereignty, and as a result we may have dodged direct conflict with Russia, the only other nuclear super power (at least for now, but who knows with the Democrats blaming them for everything under the sun). When this happens again---and it will, because apparently North Korea is "begging for war"---don't give them your consent for yet another war on yet another sovereign country, no matter how much you think their leader is bad. That is, unless you think that Americans are inherently superior and exceptional in the world; if you believe in the supremacy of some people compared to others. </div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-68986592561304336612017-08-28T18:30:00.001-04:002017-08-29T08:03:16.932-04:00Finding Blissful Clarity by Tuning Out<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's been a minute since I've posted here. My last post was back in April, so it has actually been something like 193,000 minutes, but I like how the kids say "it's been a minute," so I'll stick with that.</div>
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As I've said before, I use this space to work out the truths in my life. Writing is a valuable way of taking the non-linear jumble of thoughts in my head and <span style="background-color: white;">linearizing th</span>em by putting them down on the page. In short, writing helps me figure things out. However, logical thinking is not the only way of knowing the world. Another way is to recognize, listen to, and trust one's emotions. Yes, emotions are important for figuring things out.</div>
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Back in April, when I last posted here, my emotions were largely characterized by fear, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion and despair. I say largely, because this is what I was feeling on large scales; the world outside of my immediate influence. On smaller scales, where my wife, children and friends reside, I was filled with joy, satisfaction and security. Yes, it is possible for those sets of emotions to exist simultaneously in a single mind.</div>
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My large-scale feelings were driven by the result of the presidential election, and the way it fit into my views about the centrality of white supremacy in our country. I saw the election of Trump as a dramatic, horrifying and sudden turn in the trajectory of our country. This view was driven primarily by the news, and I was spending a ton of time reading the news. The more I followed the "Russiagate scandal," the rise of the alt-right, and a seeming descent into madness (ZOMG, the Nazi's are coming!), the more I felt the urgent need to read more. And the more I read, my large-scale, negative emotions flared up and started to regularly take central stage. Since there was so much to read, I was spending less and less time on small scales, where my wife, children and friends reside. That felt really shitty, so I made a radical move: I stopped reading the news. </div>
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Once I disconnected, I felt so. Much. Better. There I was, suddenly in a world that looked just as it did on November 7, 2016. Now, granted, the world back then was an absolute mess. But I was able to find a real comfort in returning to that mess, because it was a world in which the history I have spent the past five years learning about fully explained. Within that framework, I was able to go back to logical thinking; back to figuring things out; back to seeing solutions and finding hope. </div>
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As I sat in the ear-ringing silence I found myself in after shutting off the news, I was able to critically interrogate my thoughts and beliefs. Guided by key input from and strong challenges by one of my good friends (co-conspirator), along with the fearless writing at the <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/">BAR</a>, <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/">Jacobin</a> and of <a href="https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone">Caitlin Johnstone</a> I discovered several glaring inconsistencies. On the one hand, I believed/knew that:</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">At no point in history has my country undergone a process of <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">truth and reconciliation</a> about it's racist past. As a result, there is no point in history where white supremacy was exorcized from the fabric of our society. It has simply morphed from one form to another: from slavery to Jim Crow, and then from Jim Crow to mass incarceration. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Our country's society is based on a class structure. Viewed broadly (for scientists: viewed at low spatial frequencies), there is a large working class (lower and middle class), and a much smaller and vastly more wealthy ruling class. Most of American history is driven by the conflict between these two classes, and is recognized by some historians as “<a href="http://www.ditext.com/taft/violence.html">the bloodiest</a> and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.”</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Viewed more finely (high spatial frequencies), the lower class is divided along racial lines, with white people advantaged economically and politically over people of color. This division can be found along other axes, including gender, disability, sexuality and religion. The division along racial lines is what I refer to as white supremacy. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b>The end product of white supremacy is not the supremacy of white people. The end product is the preservation and increase of the power of the ruling class by eliminating solidarity among everyone else<span style="background-color: white;">.</span> </b>Whiteness, and privilege along other axes, is a payment made to the vast majority of people in this country to keep them from collective revolt against the elite. Racism is "<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=QlX1AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA196&ots=LfIz1v88uy&dq=battlecry%20freedom%20menial%20class&pg=PA243#v=snippet&q=%22true%20aristocracy%22&f=false">the poor man's best Government.</a>..Among us the poor white laborer...does not belong to the menial class...The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men." Or to put it more crassly, there's the old Southern aphorism: "I might be poor, but at least I ain't a nigger."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The modern form of the ruling class is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy">corporatocracy</a>, comprising the ultra-wealthy owners of large corporations. The interests of these corporations drive domestic politics, through the financing of the campaigns of politicians, as well as the foreign policies of our country. These interests are pursued and maintained by any means necessary, most often through coercion (IMF loans) and violence (war and regime change).</li>
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As of ~June this year, I also believed the following:</div>
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<ul>
<li>The Democratic political party of our country has some flaws, but is mostly on the side of justice at home and reasonable policies abroad. </li>
<li>The mass media (CNN, Washington Post, et al.) has some flaws (racial bias, the pursuit of "balance"), but can mostly be trusted to reflect the current state of affairs both domestically and internationally. </li>
</ul>
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Do you see the conflict and inconsistency in my thinking? Given that our country is a corporatocracy, and given that the mainstream media is controlled by <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/mediaownership.html">six large corporations</a>, how could CNN/WaPo possibly report truthfully on matters that impact me, as someone who is not a member of the ruling elite? And given that we live in a capitalist society in which money = power; given that corporations have the most money/power; given that our Supreme Court has ruled that <a href="https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/money-doesnt-equal-speech-fact-sheet1.pdf">money = speech</a>, and speech is protected, so political financial contributions from and actions by independent entities are unlimited and unregulated; how is it that the Democratic party is not influenced by the corporatocracy? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevm1yuzp_JNdNJYwveTqUf1f7_eCpo48c4RVq-hgnwu_Rj0HlH9rxoPK2ZSQR0f0PX8IPcWiIIvs9W3dEVo0fRZe6DADuEPtgjl3BlY5YHvP2uChFfGOLlXBwc7Fkfga42JoKEjAQMSo/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevm1yuzp_JNdNJYwveTqUf1f7_eCpo48c4RVq-hgnwu_Rj0HlH9rxoPK2ZSQR0f0PX8IPcWiIIvs9W3dEVo0fRZe6DADuEPtgjl3BlY5YHvP2uChFfGOLlXBwc7Fkfga42JoKEjAQMSo/s400/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Regarding these two important questions, I have recently concluded: It can't, and it can't. Well, actually, more like: it won't and it won't. My beliefs in those last two bullet points above have been modified to</div>
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<ul>
<li>The Democratic party is simply one political arm of the corporatocracy. It is one arm attached to the same body as the Republican arm. This can be seen in the simple fact that Obama pursued the same foreign and domestic policies as Bush (we didn't leave Iraq or Afghanistan, did we? Bank bailouts.), who pursued the same policies as Bill Clinton (yup, he was all up in Iraq before Bush was; Welfare "reform"). Namely, the reduction of the welfare state and the increase of wealth inequality at home to the detriment of (primarily but not solely) people of color, and the pursuit of corporate interests abroad using violence in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Venezuela, to the detriment of (primarily but not solely) people of color. These actions are known as <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/">neoliberalism</a> and <a href="https://chomsky.info/20040204/">neoconservatism</a>, respectively (you can also Google the terms yourself if you find those links lacking). </li>
<li>The mass media is run by the corporatocracy, and as a result it promotes their interests. It therefore serves as the propaganda arm of the ruling class, and is used to garner consent of the lower class for their actions. In a corporate society, corporate media is the same as state media. Indeed, a state-run media outlet is not necessary or even practical in our society!</li>
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This modification was only possible after I turned off the noise machine that is CNN/WaPo/NYTimes. This key action stemmed the flow of propaganda that was screwing up my thought processes. </div>
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Are you, like I was, someone who is fighting for social justice, but are currently experiencing confusion, fear, anger, sadness and helplessness? It might be due to the cognitive dissonance that thoughtful people feel when they've been propagandized. The first step to recovery is recognizing you have a problem. My recognition came after carefully interrogating my beliefs, which uncovered some massive, embarrassing contradictions. Step two is taking action to address the problem. I turned off the f*cking news. I deleted all of the bookmarks in my News folder. I now look underneath the hood of any news I do receive and see who owns the source. I've found new trusted sources of information. And I started processing that information for myself again. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgydeKv6fdIYpqiouOb0l_Gj-h4mxCTmUHi-cJGTjtI3NGiBAOb7IZgjjNalcS6ZEwBxnZGoQiWDc9pXjAycN3KObdXZT_JCAPdstA-pIjap4zYhglN9ElGFf0tSgaSkXVKI6gXBin_9iYz/s1600/child-covering-ears1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgydeKv6fdIYpqiouOb0l_Gj-h4mxCTmUHi-cJGTjtI3NGiBAOb7IZgjjNalcS6ZEwBxnZGoQiWDc9pXjAycN3KObdXZT_JCAPdstA-pIjap4zYhglN9ElGFf0tSgaSkXVKI6gXBin_9iYz/s1600/child-covering-ears1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image credit: kidsatthought.com</td></tr>
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Now, I'm trying to reach out to my friends and family who are suffering from the same problem. I'll conclude this post with some simple suggestions/requests: Turn off the news, bask in the silence, spend some quality time with your loved ones, interrogate your thinking, fix inconsistencies, and join the new media war. </div>
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Oh, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself with that last suggestion. I'll write about that more later. But since I said it, I'll add this: the way to <strike>get our democracy back</strike> create an actual democracy, and to end our country's otherwise ceaseless project of violence at home and abroad, we must push back against the propaganda arm of the ruling elite. Does this make me sound a bit like a socialist? If cogently examining the structure of our society and explicitly calling out the actions of those in charge makes me sound as such, then so be it. Does it make me sound like a conspiracy theorist? Look, the power that the wealthiest people in this country have is real, documented and demonstrated on a regular basis. When it's out in the open and displayed regularly, it cannot be a conspiracy. It's just how things work. But things only work this way when the citizenry give their tacit consent. </div>
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But I digress. If you do nothing else, turn off the news. You'll be happier for it. </div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-9482756020876120252017-04-16T11:23:00.000-04:002017-04-16T11:24:13.273-04:00Affirmative Action is Bad, But Wealth is Good<div style="text-align: justify;">
I wonder if anyone asked Jared Kushner if he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-fathers-scandal-the-genesis-of-jared-kushners-unflinching-loyalty/2016/11/27/1e9497ba-b378-11e6-840f-e3ebab6bcdd3_story.html?utm_term=.7e80e255551d">got into Harvard only because he is white</a>. It would've been a valid question. Even so, the question wouldn't have drawn upon centuries of stereotypes about the inferior intelligence and work ethic of white men. Who cares how he got into Harvard? He could always convince himself that he is hard working, just like, or even better than, all of the mediocre white men that preceded him in leading this country of ours. His grades were better than George W's C-average at Yale. If forced to answer how he got into Harvard, young master Jared could've shrugged it off and comforted himself by thinking ahead about how much wealth he would inherit. Hell, if his parents played their money right, he might even have a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/jared_kushner_has_never_failed_to_choose_blood_over_ideals.html">job waiting for him</a> in a future presidential administration.<br />
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Isn't it great to live in a meritocracy?</div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-2481098524545221862017-04-13T11:05:00.002-04:002017-04-16T12:53:21.200-04:00No Human is Illegal, But Some Are Not White<div style="text-align: justify;">
Our white nationalist presidential administration is cracking down hard on non-white immigrants, particularly those from Mexico. In fact, it's the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/don_t_forget_donald_trump_is_still_winning_his_war_on_immigrants.html">only successful policy</a> that the child-king has managed to implement in his short presidency. While we should celebrate the failure of the attempt to destroy the ACA, the resistance that federal judges are applying to the racist Muslim travel bans, and the fact that he still hasn't built his big beautiful wall, we should not forget that hundreds of people who are working, paying taxes and attempting to establish stable lives in the US are now being rounded up, separated from their children, and dying because they have been successfully scapegoated for our country's economic woes.</div>
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It's a common question for Americans to ask, "why didn't those people come here legally?" The short answer is that they can't, because they aren't white. Does that sound a bit hyperbolic or simplistic? If so, then I'd recommend a quick review of history. Fortunately, Slate offers <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/12/trump_sessions_ice_crackdown_on_illegals_goes_back_to_strom_thurmond_other.html">such a view</a> by reviewing how previous white supremacists in congress changed the country's immigration policy to exclude people from the Western Hemisphere (which was right around the time that the US started overthrowing democratically-elected governments and installing pro-business dictators in South and Central America, leading to a huge influx of immigrants/refugees). An excerpt:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
To placate these white nationalist senators, the number of legal entry slots available to Mexico (and other Latin American countries) was slashed drastically. But the economic demand and geographic proximity that already pulled so many Mexicans into the U.S. did not abate. And voilà: Hundreds of thousands of people who had been entering the U.S. legally for years (and whose ancestral roots to North American land went a lot further back than those of many white Americans) were suddenly “illegal” if they crossed an imaginary line on a map in order to work. And now, here we are!</blockquote>
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The notion of "legal humans" is a social construct, just like race. And just like race, it was constructed for a reason: social control. This particular form of social control was harnessed by a failed businessman turned reality TV star to get into the white house. And now, here we are!</div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13639090412826787107noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-35648786649028048392017-03-22T13:47:00.003-04:002017-03-23T15:10:37.666-04:00Hidden Explicit Messaging<div style="text-align: justify;">
A common refrain these days about racism in our society—to the extent that it's discussed at all—is that racist language is far less explicit today than it was in the past. There may be racism (way over there, and by those people) but let's be glad that people don't casually throw around the N-word anymore. Or so say people—good liberal people—like to frequently say.<br />
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But is racism less explicit today, really?</div>
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In my <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2017/03/an-annual-note-to-all-nsf-haters.html">last post</a> I gave an example of some extremely common, casual, yet racist messaging in the example of a white person claiming that a person of color only got a prestigious academic fellowship "because they're Black/Brown/Indigenous." Is this racist comment not explicit? The message here is that the only way a person of color could possibly get, say, an NSF Fellowship is because of affirmative action, whereby more qualified white people are pushed aside so a less qualified person can get the fellowship based on their race (or so the fictional, cartoon version of affirmative action goes). It couldn't have been because the person of color had a superior application package, with well-written broader impact and research statements, along with three strong letters of recommendation. No, it had to be due to an unfair advantage given to them, which was to the detriment of smarter, more qualified white people. </div>
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Is that not messed up? Is that not the very definition of white supremacy? Sure, the person didn't explicitly say that white people are necessarily more qualified than any person of color. But what else could "You only won that fellowship because you are hispanic," possibly mean?</div>
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A half century ago when people called for a "separate but equal" society based on "states rights" and a desire to preserve "a Southern way of life," they didn't always explicitly say, "I don't want Black people to enjoy life as I do, live where I do, or be seen in my presence in anything other than a submissive, inferior role." But what else could their call for segregation mean, especially when the results of it were manifest in daily life, and in the life opportunities and outcomes of Black people at the time? That said, I'm sure there were liberal academics in 1950 who patted themselves and other white people on their collective backs for living in a world in which racism wasn't as explicit as it was in 1880, or 1830.</div>
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But what was the difference between 1830 and 1880, or 1880 and 1950? I can think of two things: the <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-bright-line-is-not-monotonic.html">passage of time</a>, and the <i>form</i> of racial control employed by greater society. What were the commonalities? That there existed a form of racial control that placed a higher value on the lives and contributions of white people over people of color, then as today (also known as the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/democracy_in_black_a_conversation_about_race_in_america_with_eddie_glaude_jr/">value gap</a>). Another commonality is the need for ideological language to simultaneously justify and preserve that racial ordering, for <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2017/01/culture-made-fresh-daily.html">culture can only exist</a> through the words and actions of the people in it.<br />
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In 1880, people could look to science to provide evidence of white superiority based on biology. In 1950, people pointed to the inferior cultures of non-white people, which led to crime and poverty. Today, we use similar justifications, wrapped up in narratives that both justify and preserve the status quo. The difference in today's narratives and those of the past is not their explicitness, <i>per se</i>. It's just their form. But their purpose and outcomes are the same. </div>
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All of that to set up the most racist comment I've seen by an average person in a public forum...in the past 24 hours. Behold this comment left after a friend of mine on Facebook cross-posted my recent post about NSF haters:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
There are strong arguments in favor of affirmative action but this article makes one of the weakest arguments possible. The author points out that previously the scientific system excluded non-white people which he equates to pro-white affirmative action. This argument only makes any sense if you think racial discrimination is wrong but the whole point of the article is that it is in fact a great thing and that we should continue doing it. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
The article does make the much better argument that the old pro-white system effectively pumped low performing white people into STEM fields which hurts everyone. This isn't a moral argument like the one above, it's just a pragmatic argument and I think it's a much better way to frame the discussion.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Granted, this isn't as explicit as the racism overheard at, say, a Trump rally or David Duke speech. But let's be clear, the difference between the two is only a matter of degree, not a true difference in their nature.<br />
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First of all, It might not need saying, but the commentor is a white man. Then again, all people swim through the murky waters of white supremacy, so he could plausibly have been of any race. It's well worth noting that the maintenance of white supremacy is the only equal-opportunity employer in our country (see Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, etc).<br />
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Okay, back to the comment. Note how my "article" was about the experiences of students of color, and contrast that with the commentor's need to center white people throughout his missive. He offers not a single word about the experiences of the students whose experiences directly inspired and informed my essay. White supremacy culture needs white people front and center at all times, and the author does his part to maintain this. This process of centering white people not only reinforces the dominant paradigm, but it reflects it as well: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/08/25/three-quarters-of-whites-dont-have-any-non-white-friends/?utm_term=.66defae52118">statistically speaking</a>, the white commentor very likely has very few meaningful relationships or little regular contact with people of color (As Chris Rock put it: "All my black friends have a bunch of white friends. And all my white friends have <i>one</i> black friend."). That's because segregation is as <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-the-resegregation-of-americas-schools/#intro">real today</a> as it was in 1950, which makes it hard to hear about experiences so foreign from your own, and much harder to empathize and reflect.<br />
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Next, check out the deft use of language to equate affirmative action and racial discrimination. That's an old trick, first used by the likes of Antonin Scalia back in the late 1970's, along with other white supremacists in the Republican party who were pushing back against the gains of the Civil Rights era in order to secure the white vote (they still have that vote today as a result). But logically, how can actively affirming a place for people who have been historically and presently discriminated against itself be discrimination? How else can the people who's lives need to be actively valued be identified except by the same means that they were identified for devaluing in the first place? The only ends the commentor's messaging serves is the maintenance of the status quo, in which white people are valued more and as a result advantaged. Simply put, it says: "Don't do anything to affirm a place for non-white people in society, because that's discrimination against white people."</div>
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Granted, the commenter didn't just come out say these words, and perhaps he was only reiterating the arguments of others. But what other message could such faulty logic convey? Why repeat it?</div>
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Finally, check out how dismissive he is about the use of any type of "moral argument," as opposed to a "pragmatic argument," to defend affirmative action. Note how that preferred pragmatism is in service of white people, not my students. The sentiment is: Keep morals out of the issue of devaluing non-white people! Convince white people to do the right thing on the basis that it helps them, but please don't mention the experiences of impacts on others. Further, by staying away from moral arguments, he can stay away from the immorality of societal exclusion, thereby preserving white innocence. How better to preserve an amoral system of racial control than to exclude morality from the argument against it!<br />
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Of course, I'm not accusing this person of being <i>A Racist</i>. I shouldn't have to explain this, but the fact is that I don't know how he lives his life. But what he said, and the message it conveys is unquestionably racist. Indeed, racist sentiment doesn't get much more explicit than this, for it serves no other end but preserving the status quo in which white people are valued more. And the only way white people can combat it is to learn how to hear it for what it is. That takes practice, but once you do it, every day starts sounding an awful lot like 1950. And I can find no reason to believe that 50 years from now "good liberal" people won't look back at this sort of thing and say, "Jeez, they were so racist back then. At least it's not as explicit now!"<br />
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I'll conclude here by addressing a predictable concern: John, why are you picking on some random Facebook commentor? Isn't this punching down? Isn't this setting up a straw-person argument?<br />
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Sure, this may be some random dude on Facebook, but doesn't that just make him an average American? I did check out his profile and I can confirm that he's educated, employed and in all respects looks like a middle-class white American. He's just like that person next to you on the subway, or that guy in the BMW 3-series idling next to you in traffic, or that dude down the hall or in the next cube over.<br />
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As for his line of argumentation being straw-like, have you heard how white dudes talk about diversity programs? It's as predictable as it is ahistorical, amoral and down right stupid. Yet it's absolutely necessary for maintaining the whiteness of every aspect of power in our society.<br />
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Finally, how exactly can one punch on equal terms with something as logically bankrupt as the supremacy of whiteness? But since it's so pervasive, and since I don't see many white people calling this sort of stuff out for what it is, I'll go ahead and step in; to preserve my own sanity if nothing else.</div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-38977127397580783672017-03-19T14:22:00.000-04:002017-03-22T13:57:17.713-04:00An annual note to all the (NSF) haters<div style="text-align: justify;">
It's that time of year again: students have recently been notified about whether they received the prestigious NSF Graduate Student Research Fellowship. Known in the STEM community as "The NSF," the fellowship provides a student with three years of graduate school tuition and stipend, with the latter typically 5-10% above the standard institutional support for first- and second-year students. It's a sweet deal, and a real accellerant for young students to get their research career humming along smoothly because they don't need to restrict themselves to only advisors who have funding: the students fund themselves!</div>
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This is also the time of year that many a white dude executes what I call the "academic soccer flop." It looks kinda like this:</div>
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It typically sounds like this: "Congrats! Of course it's easier for you to win the NSF because you're, you know, the right demographic." Or worse: "She only won because she's Hispanic." </div>
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This is the time of year for me to reiterate the following point: These comments are as stupid as they are cruel. I mean, what sort of person would even think such thoughts, much less say them out loud to a person of color? Oh! Right. An American. Because American's don't care much for history.</div>
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For those who care to make even a cursory glance at recent history, for more than 150 years,scientific funding was strictly tied to demographics. If you wanted funding and subsequent success in science, the singular best thing you could do is start out as a white man. That long-standing and highly effective affirmative action program actively forced everyone else to the curb, artificially reduced competition, and established huge advantages that continue to pay off today (the word of mouth of a white man is gold). Of course, the reduced talent pool means that the low-performing tail of the distribution of white male talent has been mined pretty deeply over the decades, to the detriment of STEM as a whole.<br />
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In an attempt to correct for this major inefficiency in utilizing our national talent pool, the NSF fellowship was established. Is there a desire to award these fellowships to women and men of color, white women, and other underrepresented (minoritized) groups? Yup, it's right there in the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/od/odi/reports/StrategicPlan.pdf">NSF Diversity and Inclusion Plan</a>. It is documents like these that are the only thing standing between people of color and (even higher levels of) active discrimination. Does this mean that women and men of color, and white women get the fellowship only because of who they are? Well, anyone who as ever served on an NSF panel can attest that, nope, that's just silly. As if the NSF convenes large selection committees for them to sort piles of paper based on reported skin color or X-chromosome count. F'real? GTFOH. </div>
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In the real world, there still exists an extremely high bar to cross. Applicants much supply a thoughtful and compelling research statement, broader impacts statement, and strong letters of recommendation. Weak packages simply do not win. So how is it that it seems that such a large fraction of women and men of color, and white women win these awards? Well, it's because they aren't being actively excluded (as much), and as such their talent is being drawn from previously untapped pools (they're really damn good). And here's the amazing thing: white guys still win. Frequently! </div>
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The soccer flop is not about white dudes being actively excluded (actual hard contact). It's that they aren't being privileged as much as they have in the past and no longer enjoy as much of an over-representation relative to other talent pools (opposing player ran by them and brushed their shirt). Which makes their flops all the more silly and infuriating.</div>
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So you know what those haters can do? They can go ahead and flop on. We see the truth in the instant replay (history) and they look ridiculous. Let's brush that dirt off our shoulders and move on to the next round: the NSF AAPF, CAREER, and AAS awards announcements!<br />
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<b>[Update] </b>Also, for those students who didn't get The NSF this time around, keep applying! There's enough variance to make it worth your while. Also, ask for examples of successful applications from peers. Most people are willing to share their previous applications and offer advice. </div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-49692474835914294212017-03-05T12:47:00.001-05:002017-03-05T12:47:12.593-05:00This week in the freedom to discriminate <div style="text-align: justify;">
Race has no biological basis. Race is assigned based on biological features (hair, skin, etc), but biological features do not uniquely map to a race. Academics <a href="http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583">know this</a>. Or at least they should. However, if you are an academic who believes in race, and would like to use this belief to promote the notion that white people are superior, you can make a living off of it. </div>
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Enter Charles Murray, the author of the racist and scientifically debunked text, <i>Bell Curve</i>. He was <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/04/middlebury_professor_injured_as_protest_against_racist_author_charles_murray.html">recently invited to speak</a> at Middlebury College, and despite espousing nonsense, his place on the stage at an institution of higher learning was justified under "the freedom of speech." If Murray were there to tell his story of UFO sightings, describe his theory of a flat Earth, or to discuss his attempts to interbreed various types of unicorns, this defense would not be available to him. But because he has staked his career on dabbling in America's age-old <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/the-dark-art-of-racecraft/275783/">dark art of racecraft</a>, and because his ideas add a scientific patina to established beliefs in the superiority of white people, universities nationwide have a seat and a microphone reserved for him. (Just as similar offers are open for Jeff Sessions, Mel Gibson, our president...)</div>
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Now let's turn to the case of Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. Women's Soccer team. Ms. Rapinoe refused to stand during the national anthem in protest against America's racist double standards, in solidarity with Black NFL players who were doing the same. If such double standards did not exist, she would be able to rely on the freedom of speech to express herself and draw attention to injustice in a non-disruptive, yet powerfully symbolic manner. However, the team has decided to institute a new rule that <a href="http://deadspin.com/u-s-soccer-becomes-first-major-american-sports-organiz-1792973155">requires players to stand</a> during the anthem. </div>
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This should not be surprising given our racist societal structure; but it will be unsettling to anyone who believes that racism is but a small, unfortunate blemish on an otherwise pure fabric of freedom for all. Protesting the double standard is not protected under our society's notion of "freedom of speech," thereby highlighting and reinforcing the double standard itself. If it were needed to prove the point, this is yet further evidence that the freedom of speech is actually the freedom to discriminate. Without that freedom, our society's racial order would be far more difficult to maintain. </div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-29078510605116383852017-02-27T10:53:00.000-05:002017-02-27T10:53:04.084-05:00Tiny Post 3: The Impossibility of Biraciality <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was once interviewed by a journalism student for an article about what it means to be biracial in America, a subject she told me that was near to her heart (and experience). Among other things she wanted to learn about my experiences as a successful biracial academic. I imagine the conversation that ensued resulted in no small amount of consternation for her, because I informed her that I not believe I am biracial, because there can be no such thing. One's race is defined by one's position in our societal hierarchy; it is imposed, not inherited. To be Black is to be in the lower caste, to be white is to be in the upper. To claim biraciality, one must believe either that race is a biological reality that can be genetically amalgamated, or that the social hierarchy is justified such that you belong above those who are Black, and by doing so you may lay claim to the benefits of being white. I reject both positions. Further, the woman in the elevator clutching her purse or the police officer with his hand resting on his gun as he approaches me are both clear about my race, even if I were to attempt to explain to them, "Don't worry, I am part white!" This is a fools errand, and I imagine it was to the student's dismay that I informed her that, until the Revolution, we are both Black. </div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-73100739057423443092017-02-25T10:35:00.001-05:002017-02-25T10:35:50.640-05:00Racism Defines Race<br />
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In a discussion about race and racism with a group of Black and Latinx students, the first part of the dialog centered around the things such as the difference between being African American and Black, or Hispanic versus Latinx. We meandered about for a while, and the conversation didn't gain focus until we talked about what it means to be white in America. Most observations about whiteness boiled down to having one's life valued more that those of people of color; the "<a href="http://aas.princeton.edu/blog/publication/americas-racial-value-gap/">value gap</a>" as Prof. Eddie Glaude describes it. At that point it became clearer that our position in society defines our race. The processes that put us there is racism.</div>
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This brings up a subtle yet key point about race that is summarized nicely by Ta-Nehisi Coates: "race is the child of racism, not the father." Racism is a double standard that breaks along the line drawn by our society that places whiteness above, and non-whiteness below (I can never recommend Barbara Field's <a href="http://t.studythepast.com/4333_spring12/materials/fields%20slavery%20race%20and%20ideology.pdf">essay</a> enough). Race is the set of narratives, customs and mental habits that justifies this stratification. Bringing the conversation back to the culture of astronomy, when we see white people overrepresented among the professoriate at the <a href="http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/N/Donna.J.Nelson-1/diversity/Faculty_Tables_FY07/AstroTable2007.pdf">eye-popping rate</a> of >90%, we need to be conscious of our narratives, customs and habits when we ask questions about this unnatural outcome. The tendency will be to ask, "Why aren't people of color advancing through our academic system?" or something similar. But we need to see our monochromatic demographics as what they factually are: we are seeing racism, not something that results from Blackness, Latinx-ness, or Muslim-ness, and our language needs to reflect this.</div>
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<br />It's racism, not race. Race is extrinsically imposed, not intrinsically possessed. As such the answer cannot be diversity (or even racial justice*). It must be <b>anti-racism</b>, the process of learning about what features of our culture---yes, including the words and actions of the people in that culture---enact and maintain racism, and then learn how to subvert and counter those features until they are gone. A good place to start is by reading the book linked above (click on the image). </div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to prove that if race is a narrative used to justify an unjust society, that there can be no such thing, in a truly literal sense, as "racial justice."</span></div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-65953152190808035412017-02-14T10:48:00.000-05:002017-02-14T10:48:10.094-05:00Tiny Post 2: Exceptionalism<div style="text-align: justify;">
The believers of American Exceptionalism see the country as a "city on the hill," morally above other nations and a force for good in the world. However, when one points to the historical record of our nation waging unjust wars of choice, unseating democratically elected leaders, supporting dictatorships, standing idly by as genocide rages, and the like, the response is to point out that other countries have done the same thing, apparently unaware of how this invalidates their original claim of exceptionalism. Thus, how ironic it was for the so-called president to defend the Russian leader as "a killer" by pointing to <i>our country's</i> history of evil. I'm left wondering whether he has some special insight that his electorate lacks, or if he is just woefully inept at applying their arguments by forgetting which country to defend as exceptional. I can't shake the feeling that it's a mixture of both.</div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-71327636292205526742017-02-13T14:30:00.000-05:002017-02-14T23:22:21.428-05:00No Human is Illegal: Not a Tough Concept<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm encouraged to see so many fans of progressive, pluralistic society recently rally together against the presidential administration's recent Muslim ban. The executive order is blatantly unconstitutional, and as such it is reasonable that federal judges have moved quickly to strike it down (It turns out <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/02/why_judge_robart_blocked_trump_s_muslim_ban.html">it is impossible</a> to legally implement an unconstitutional order, but this hasn't stopped the Court from doing so in the past). However, it's important for people who are protesting the ban to realize that we've had bans similar to this in place dating back to the original Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted citizenship only to white Christian men. Citizenship in this country has never been free from discrimination. Having a national policy that discriminates against and abuses non-citizens is <a href="http://www.alternet.org/immigration/barack-obama-has-handed-lethal-deportation-machine-trumps-gang-white-nationalists">nothing new</a>.<br />
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The notion of coming to this country with "proper documentation" or residing here legally was largely an unknown concept until the 1960s. Citizenship and the idea of being a documented, legal resident in our country is a social construct, just like race. Indeed, the two concepts are intricately linked, both in our laws that set quotas differently for Europeans and Canadians versus the countries where brown folks hail, and in the <i>de facto</i> way that discrimination plays out in our law and border enforcement institutions. But just as we must recognize <i>why </i>and <i>for what</i> the concept of race was constructed, so too must we examine the construction of "documentation." Why is it that a human being who, purely by chance, was born within the borders of the US should receive preferential treatment (privileged status) compared to someone who was born a mile on the wrong side of our country's southern border? The reasons for this might seem intuitive at first glance, but so too is the idea that some people are clearly black while some people are clearly white. </div>
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What it comes down to is whether or not we, as Americans, actually believe that all people are created equal. When it comes to the treatment of white people versus people of color, our country's pronouncements of equality do not square with the outcomes in our society, in myriad demonstrable ways. The notion of all people being created equal is restricted to the sphere of Whiteness, and outside of its conceptual borders things get "complicated" and Americans start talking of inferior cultures. As if culture exists beyond the actions of the people who comprise it. As if the culture of non-white Americans is somehow distinct from "American culture" as a whole. Such is the power of Whiteness: it can claim the definition of American for itself. For those who are not white, they must either conform to the strictures of white culture to gain partial, conditional status within white spaces, or be rendered unAmerican (see discussions of "real America" on the political trail, which never includes West Baltimore or Ferguson, MO).</div>
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Once such a lie is internalized by the citizens of a country it is just a short logical hop, skip and a jump to make it "intuitive" that any non-white person from outside of our borders should also be rendered unAmerican, which is to say less than fully human, even as they reside and work here. The large gap in the valuation of white people and people of color that orders our society within our nation's borders unsurprisingly extends on the other side of those invisible map lines. When a white child goes missing within our borders, we see her face staring back at us from the newspaper and television screen. But when the brown child dies of thirst and exposure just inside our border...well, if she had the misfortune of being born too far south of where she lay, we never know her name, nor do we, as a nation, particularly care. </div>
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In the past week we suddenly cared when the people affected by our construction of documentation were college students, medical interns, professors and potential employees of Yahoo. But the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free find only vitriol and hatred here if they originate from the wrong country and especially from the wrong class. Once admitted, they work the "jobs that Americans won't" simply because they <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20101108/injustice-our-plates">lack the human rights that Americans have</a> and thus have no recourse when abused. And herein we find the <i>for what</i> of the construction of documentation. </div>
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Just as race was constructed to justify and perpetuate the exploited labor of people of African descent, documentation has been constructed (and re-constructed) to exploit the labor of people---brown , non-Christian people---who were unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong place and traveled here under the impression that our country is a place based on freedom for all, rather than freedom for a select caste. Only the constructed group known as "Americans" have access to the law to protect them from the worst forms of labor exploitation (as degraded and anemic as those laws have become after four decades of assault from the Republican party). All other humans can be used to drive up profit margins by working long hours for minimal wages in inhumane conditions (plus sexual abuse for migrant women). If they don't like it, the threats of incarceration and deportation hang just above their heads.</div>
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Also, just as the utility of anti-Black racism morphed from free labor via slavery, to free labor via convict leasing, to today's massive corporate profit for the prison-industrial complex via mass incarceration, immigration laws have led to huge corporate profit from border surveillance, the militarization of border patrol agencies, and the construction and maintenance of detention facilities. Discrimination against immigrants doesn't proceed with white supremacy as its end goal, just as slavery didn't aim for the elevation of white America. The end product of slavery was cotton and profit; the end product of constructing "illegal people" is cotton t-shirts, cheap poultry and massive quarterly profits for private prison corporations. In both cases white supremacy simply helped explain why such human exploitation should be so widespread in the "land of the free." The utility of a repressed class also highlights why it's so difficult to change immigration policies to match our nation's professed ideals. There's far too much at stake financially for the people who have access to the levers of power in our country to behave otherwise.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1xbqh9iFRAHjQnHOkCN-l5pnH8-MBQyQ0G7Lj04IGu8TMO2H661darD89GiCr2dTajRfwaphm89-M5sfJTKAUPdmvo16FdWiW-3sDpeJeEr3r6x-sANCzuAecz4OBLDGCNfJkk7pBO2z/s1600/TB-100222-7786.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx1xbqh9iFRAHjQnHOkCN-l5pnH8-MBQyQ0G7Lj04IGu8TMO2H661darD89GiCr2dTajRfwaphm89-M5sfJTKAUPdmvo16FdWiW-3sDpeJeEr3r6x-sANCzuAecz4OBLDGCNfJkk7pBO2z/s320/TB-100222-7786.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Image from Southern Poverty Law Center</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Of course, migrant workers and immigrants also face interpersonal oppression from those born within our border. After all, systemic racism provides sanction for interpersonal racism, as well as a entire toolkit of racial habits, stereotypes and learned prejudices. Just as the destitution of African slaves was twisted around as evidence of their inferiority, the oppression of the undocumented is evidence that they are lesser, and that their presence corrupts Americanism and threatens white workers, a.k.a. "American workers" (I find it ironic that it's the political right who most frequently engage in political correctness by couching their racist messaging in euphemisms and double-speak).<br />
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Suddenly it is not the actions of our country's wealthy elite and their direct line of influence over our governmental policies that has led to ever weaker rights for workers nationwide, and disastrous roller-coaster-ride cycles of bubbles and recessions. Rather, it is the fault of those damn immigrants who "stole our jobs" stateside, and foreigners to which "our jobs" were outsourced (as if foreign workers had any say in where Ford or GM build factories). This is why meaningless discussions of "immigration reform" have taken center stage over talk of corporate and financial regulation. This is why talk of rounding up millions of brown "illegal people" is a surefire way to get a politician elected, while none of the architects of the 2008 Great Depression or any of our myriad disastrous wars of choice have been held accountable for their reckless lawlessness. The undocumented make for convenient scapegoats for the failures of America's corporate leaders, and politicians have long taken advantage of this feature of our racist society to mobilize voters in a way that few other issues can.</div>
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Social constructs like race and documented status are not built on a whim and adopted widely by Americans arbitrarily. Like a bridge they are constructed to get from point A to point B, and people use them because they are effective. They help with the acquisition of power by an elite few while distracting the masses. The privilege bestowed upon "legal people" within our social caste system---our herrenvolk democracy---is the hush money that allows the plundering of the 99% to continue unopposed. The reason the masses buy into the scheme is that, deep down, whether implicitly or explicitly, they believe that race is real, because they've never been taught otherwise in any meaningful way. This is no small thing. This amounts to mass delusion with disastrous consequences on the lives of billions of human beings. </div>
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I'm convinced that once a people believe a lie so immense as the existence and centrality of their whiteness they'll believe most anything. They'll believe that a failed business man who has made a fortune solely on his fame and image can somehow lead a country to prosperity because he is an "outsider." They'll believe that Muslim-ness is directly linked to violence, and that people can be "illegal aliens." They'll believe that refugees fleeing wars in regions of the world in which our nation has long meddled and supported dictatorial regimes somehow pose a threat to our national identity, just by their mere presence. That existential fear, as irrational as it is, is a strong, old and well-practiced dark art that has led to where we are today. </div>
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With the ascent of this newest presidential administration, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2017/02/government_by_white_nationalism_is_upon_us.html">white nationalism</a> has now moved from the margins of society to a new position of central prominence. As you become moved to action to protect those who are being actively discriminated against by the White House, we should not pat ourselves on the back so hard that it becomes difficult to focus on the page of the history books in front of us. An examination of our nation's past clearly reveals that this latest, blatantly racist executive order is nothing new, but rather an extreme manifestation of the long con known as America. Its just that in this case the con man ineptly tipped his hand. It'll be carried out more deftly in the future.</div>
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<b>Recommended reading:</b></div>
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<i><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2017/02/government_by_white_nationalism_is_upon_us.html">A Government of White Nationalism is Upon Us</a> </i>by Jamelle Bouie (Article)</div>
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<i><a href="http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=classracecorporatepower">Global Capitalism, Immigrant Labor, and the Struggle for Justice</a></i> Robinson & Santos (PDF)</div>
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<i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Undocumented-How-Immigration-Became-Illegal-ebook/dp/B00GQA28LM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486477795&sr=8-2&keywords=undocumented">Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal</a></i> by Aviva Chomsky (Book)</div>
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<i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Undocumented-How-Immigration-Became-Illegal-ebook/dp/B00GQA28LM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486477795&sr=8-2&keywords=undocumented">Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America</a></i> Juan Gonzalez (Book)</div>
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<i><a href="http://why%20immigration%20is%20a%20feminist%20issue/">Why Immigration is a Feminist Issue</a> </i>by Patricia Valoy (Essay)</div>
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<b>Recommended Viewing:</b></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6AQ2mOaG7Q">Harvest of Empire</a> (Youtube)</div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-75762238211909361722017-02-07T08:47:00.000-05:002017-02-07T08:47:12.532-05:00Tiny Post 1<div style="text-align: justify;">
When you spend time talking about racism's central role in our society, they think you must be suffering from depression, which is the only way they can fathom you'd think such a thing. What they fail to consider is that you are, indeed, depressed, but solely because that thing is so manifestly true and yet they refuse to see it. </div>
John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-67610290270060382492017-01-10T15:14:00.000-05:002017-01-10T15:14:01.295-05:00And We Settled for Mediocrity <div style="text-align: justify;">
This, y'all:
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One day we will look back at the lack of equity & inclusion in STEM & see we settled for mediocrity when we could have been better together</div>
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— Lucianne Walkowicz (@shaka_lulu) <a href="https://twitter.com/shaka_lulu/status/803983788497895424">November 30, 2016</a></div>
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This got me thinking again about a revelation I had not long ago, but admittedly not long enough ago. I'm going to explore some tough truths here. So before I get going, let me explicitly state some of my working assumptions. First, I believe that all humans, no matter how one cares to group them, whether by race, religion, physical ability, gender, sexuality, possess the same distribution of intellectual abilities. For example, I believe that a group of 100 undocumented, Lutheran, Latinx transwomen have the same distribution of mental talents as a group of 100 straight, cisgender, white, atheist men. Can I prove this beyond doubt and within 0.1% precision? Nope, probably not. But it's an historical fact that the biological and social sciences in Europe and US America have focused on this question for most of their existence, with the explicit aim of proving the superiority of the latter group. Given that these fields have thus far failed to find evidence to support the superiority of one group over the other, I feel fairly confident in this assumption. </div>
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Anyone disagree with this assumption? If so, please read no further, because A) you won't find much that you like in what follows and B) <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/06/but-this-latter-person-i-am-not-trying-to-convince/488408/">"This...person I am not trying to convince"</a>.</div>
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My assumption of equality naturally leads to the conclusion that the lack of any specific group from academia or any other intellectual pursuit is not a natural outcome, but instead due to actions that keep them out, not because they can't do what is necessary to be there. Our society tends to focus on words that describe the <u>state</u> of being at the exclusion of the <u>actions</u> that lead to that state. This is why we focus on diversity, and the lack thereof, while going out of our way to avoid naming the features of our societal landscape, and the actions of people who traverse that landscape, that exclude specific groups of humans and leads to a reduction of diversity that would otherwise be present. Since groupings of people are meaningless when selecting for things like intellectual acumen, creativity and general talent, a paucity of diversity is an <i>unnatural</i> outcome that must be the result of factors extrinsic to the missing groups.</div>
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I hope that I have lost many of my readers thus far. Okay, now for the hard truths.</div>
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Since the lack of diversity in our field is the direct result of exclusion, our culture of exclusion has resulted in a cohort of scientists that is less talented than what could have been. To be clear, I am not detracting from the accomplishments of those who currently work in the field. Having been admitted into the pursuit of knowledge through scientific inquiry, it was undoubtedly necessary to invest hard work and dedicated practice in order to do the things that scientists have thus far accomplished. In absolute terms, the discovery of, say, the accelerating Universe or putting telescopes into space are amazing triumphs of human inquiry and ingenuity. But in relative terms, they aren't even close to where we would be if we drew talent from the full pool.<br />
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This isn't a multiculturalism-based platitude; this flows naturally and directly from my starting assumption that all people are created equal. Indeed, it pushes back to the sentiment too often found in multiculturalism efforts: that the simple presence of non-white people and their special ways of doing things improves things for white people. Forget that mess! The people you don't see around your institution? Those people are smart human beings who would help our field achieve its (stated) goal of learning more about the Universe.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQAWUh0CZiPSarehRcu20ky6KAarOyLQnUfx-MyR6drhcD97LS7xWCKWwHXfqs8gvSi3CpS6nsU6mWQk1WmlnBBh66xr3hdEwGHSrc5uxoetuzFQCQ1CdWQxs8LdOCllQdWrLG7np2iJY/s1600/aas1942.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkQAWUh0CZiPSarehRcu20ky6KAarOyLQnUfx-MyR6drhcD97LS7xWCKWwHXfqs8gvSi3CpS6nsU6mWQk1WmlnBBh66xr3hdEwGHSrc5uxoetuzFQCQ1CdWQxs8LdOCllQdWrLG7np2iJY/s320/aas1942.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Astronomy's unbearable whiteness of being was, and is, created.</td></tr>
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It is a simple fact that in 1960, white men, and just about only white men comprised the applicant pool for astrophysics graduate programs in the US. It is well documented, if not always remembered, that this was due to the explicit and deliberate exclusion of everyone else. If you haven't read Risa Wechsler's excellent <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/the-brainless-slime-that-can-learn-by-fusing/511295/">article</a> about the late Vera Rubin, you should soon. One part that stood out to me highlighted the processes of exclusion that people like Vera faced when trying to find a way into astronomy:</div>
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Vera faced isolation and exclusion at many turns. Her high school physics teacher told her: “As long as you stay away from science, you should do okay.” Princeton wouldn’t even send her a graduate school brochure because they didn’t admit women at the time. She once had to have a meeting with a famous astronomer in the lobby of his building because women were not allowed upstairs in the offices. In the mid 1960s, she was the first woman allowed to use the telescope at Palomar Observatories, where she later did her most groundbreaking work.</blockquote>
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This is what active exclusion looks like, and Vera's experiences weren't unique or even aberrant. It was accepted and often official policy, and it directly aided white men by reducing their competition.<br />
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At that time, white men made up 42% of the US population, which meant that a 23-year-old white man applying to graduate school was competing against roughly 40% of the pool that would be available without race-, gender- and sexuality-based exclusion working in his favor. The result is that he had a 2.5 higher chance of admission based on the number of applicants alone. If I were to tell you that the next time you apply for a job (or fellowship, or grant), that I could boost your chances by a factor of 2.5, I think you'd be pleased at that prospect. That is, if I didn't tell you it was because I rigged it such that 60% of the other applications/proposals were not even reviewed.</div>
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Again, the people (men) who were hired in 1960 and who are still working in the field today have certainly put in a great deal of work and accomplished amazing things. Indeed, the most successful of them would have been admitted and matriculated from a fuller applicant pool. There is no doubt about this. But as it was, the starting conditions were also rigged in their favor. This means there were more talented women and men around at the time who could have become senior astrophysicists today, but are not around because our society arbitrarily weeded them out before they could put in their hard work and achieve greatness in our field of science.</div>
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This isn't necessarily a polite observation, and it certainly won't flatter many of my white male peers. But when we look around us and see 90% of the field of astrophysics is white, and that the senior members are predominantly white men, we are not seeing a natural nor optimal outcome. It works well for what it is, but this is like saying that a sprinter had a great finish despite wearing ankle weights. The senior Latinx transwomen missing from our leadership are absent not because they lack the potential for excellence and are less talented as their white male peers. They aren't here because people in 1960 convinced themselves that Latinx transwomen were not only inferior intellectually, but that their place within our society was far from the halls of academia. And they didn't do this arbitrarily. They did it, and still do it to actively affirm the place of white men in our society.</div>
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So you know what? Forget discussions about diversity. Let's first talk about what we've lost by settling for mediocrity when we could have had excellence on an absolute scale. Let's explore why we made that decision and how we continue to do so today as we <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2017/01/culture-made-fresh-daily.html">create our culture</a>. Because without this actions-based discussion we're just going to get confused, frustrated and eventually apathetic about our current state. Or worse: we might just accept our demographics as a natural outcome because, you know, people simply aren't created equal.</div>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-12902341048538661922017-01-05T16:12:00.000-05:002017-01-05T16:12:00.924-05:00Culture: Made Fresh Daily<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>There are two inspirations for this essay worth noting. The first is an impromptu talk I gave to the board of trustees at Thatcher School while <a href="https://thacher.myschoolapp.com/podium/default.aspx?t=204&nid=1065497&bl=/podium/push/default.aspx?s=148&i=212674&snd=$$RecipientId$$">I was visiting</a> in October as an Anacapa Fellow. Spending time on this remarkable campus interacting with the students, faculty and staff helped solidify my notions about how culture can be intentionally created. The second source is </i><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674063488&content=reviews">Beam Times and Lifetimes</a><i> by Sharon Tarweek, an in-depth exploration of the culture of particle physics told by an anthropologist embedded at SLAC for two decades. It's a fascinating look at the strange practices and norms that scientists take for granted.</i></div>
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One of the stories that scientists tell themselves, whether implicitly or explicitly, is that science exists outside of and independent of society. A corollary of this notion is that if a scientific subfield has a culture, e.g. the culture of astronomy vs. the culture of chemistry, that culture is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism">essential</a> rather than constructed. That is to say, scientific culture is something that was somehow attached to the practice of inquiry at its inception and remains throughout time in order for that practice to be what it is.</div>
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One can find evidence of this belief in astronomy in heavy reliance on "tradition" within departments for practices including admissions policies; examination formats and course requirements; and daily social interactions such as astro-ph discussions and Q&A during/after seminars. Appeals to tradition are most frequently raised in defense of the status quo against calls for change (see discussions around dropping the Physics GRE requirement for admissions to Astronomy graduate programs). These appeals imply that our scientific discipline functions as a viable scientific field <i>because</i> of the ways in which scientists interact, and as a result science requires those ways of interaction in order to function at all. A change to the way we do science will necessarily lead to a weakening or breakdown of science itself. </div>
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There is some truth to the linking of interaction and the functionality of science, but the truth is more subtle. First of all, in full disclosure: I've never been a fan of traditions. This is probably because I, as a person of color, can (relatively) clearly see the ways in which traditions benefit white (cisgender, ablebodied, straight) men at the expense of others. But before I could name this particular aspect of the culture of science, I did what I often do when my thinking about a subject is unclear: start with the definition of the word in question. There are many definitions, including definitions specific to biology lab work that don't serve this essay particularly well. Also, definitions can be biased given that one demographic is in charge of printing dictionaries. That said, here's a pretty good hybrid that will serve as a working definition:</div>
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<b>Culture</b>: The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, behavior and values that depends upon the capacity for accumulating and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. This includes the processes and methods of deciding and communicating what beliefs, practices and pieces of knowledge are valued, and those that are not. </div>
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What stood out to me in learning about culture is that <b>it does not exist without human action.</b> Culture doesn't just float through the aether like some sort of sticker burr, waiting for some passing object or collection of sentient beings to latch onto. It's not a physical object that can be handed down or passed along. Further, there is no single culture that is intrinsic to and essential for the functioning of scientific inquiry. Finally, culture isn't something that the Universe or a god attached to a collective human practice such as science; the practice of science didn't coalesce out of some potential field when the temperature of the Universe dropped to a certain value, and culture didn't then bind to science to make it chemistry, biology or astronomy. </div>
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At this point it might appear that I'm being facetious. But while the end product of what I wrote might appear humorous, I am merely following the logic of some (many) of my colleagues to its natural conclusion. If the ways in which we practice science—our interactions, how we decide what discoveries are "game-changing," how we evaluate the work of our peers for hiring or tenure—are immutable and therefore necessary to preserve as tradition, then culture must be thought of as the inevitable result of potential fields or elementary particles. God said "Let there be science," and there was science, and the associated "way it is done."</div>
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What if we took a different view that incorporates the fact that culture is created by collections of people, rather than something that was bestowed upon them long ago? I'll delve into this idea deeper in what follows, but spoiler alert: If culture is something that we continually create, then it is something we can choose to recreate, or discard in order to create afresh when we see a need to do so. The corollary: If our culture does not change, it is only because the humans that comprise it choose not to, and instead decide to continue reproducing the old, existing culture. </div>
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<b>Creating and Recreating Culture</b></div>
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Looking beyond the basic definition of what (astronomy) culture is, the clearest evidence that culture is not essential comes from the simple observation that not all astronomy departments do things the same way. In fact, there is huge variance among the cultures of various astronomy departments, despite the fact that they all comprise collections of astronomers practicing astronomy. So even setting simple dictionary definitions aside for the sake of argument, observed variance in the nature of astronomy culture reveals that there is no <i>essential </i>astronomy culture. Different people in different places do different things to construct the particulars of their culture.</div>
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What are some specific, identifiable aspects of a given astronomy (departmental) culture? Let's take a look at how values are communicated, and decisions about what is valuable are made and reinforced. Each morning across the globe astronomers gather to discuss the latest research papers that have been posted to the <a href="https://arxiv.org/archive/astro-ph/Astrophysics">astro-ph</a> "preprint" repository. These discussions are ostensibly focused on the facts, and just the facts. Do the conclusions of the paper hold up in light of the evidence presented therein, and in other papers? Are the methods of target selection, data collection, and analysis statistically sound and free of bias? </div>
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However, the worthiness of a paper is determined and communicated beyond these "objective" measures (I use scare quotes here because bias can creep into the evaluation of data). I've participated in enough of these discussions to know that if a senior, respected individual expresses a doubt about the veracity of the analysis and conclusions, that person's standing is often enough to establish that doubt as a serious knock against the paper. Even the tone of voice or subtle inflections in the tone of the person presenting the paper can set the basis of whether the paper is believable or considered bunk. Alternatively an expert in the area can provide unverifiable background information that casts doubt on the factual, verifiable (or not) information in the paper ("I've observed with _____, and he doesn't even know the proper procedure for taking flats!") On the other hand, a qualitative comment such as, "I know her, she's super sharp. You can trust her work," can set up a very positive review.</div>
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There are many obvious and not-so-obvious ways in which we decide what scientific work is valuable or valueless, and none of these evaluations occur outside of human opinion, biases and weakness (scientific methods can be employed to avoid bias, and indeed are designed to do just that. But employing these methods does not make any human bias-free, despite many people's implicit belief otherwise, myself included). The processes by which we make these decisions and communicate them to others is the process by which we shape our scientific culture. This shaping is manifest in the lessons learned by younger people in the room who are studiously learning how to act as a scientist, what fields are worthy of their attention, what modes of writing are considered credible, and which people they need to impress to move forward in their careers. The shaping also takes place in who gets hired, and therefore goes on to become a member—senior member in particular—of the field* and teaches the next generation how to behave as scientists. Thus, the cycle of creating and re-creating culture goes on.</div>
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*<span style="font-size: x-small;">Young people worrying about bout their futures: astro-ph reviews are just one part of a multifaceted set of evaluations that lead to success as a scientist. Your last paper was awesome and reviewed positively! :)</span></div>
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The sum total of our actions, beliefs, attitudes, words (written and spoken), and interactions work together to shape a local (or global) scientific culture. If a department has a positive, supportive environment, it's not because it was created that way eons ago. It's because people have decided that their coworkers are valuable to them, and they then made the decision to show their colleagues that they are valued by smiling at them in the hallway, stopping by their office to congratulate them on a major milestone, sending a random email complimenting them on their latest paper or talk (using clear specific words and examples of what worked and why), socializing before and after seminars, etc. These are also likely environments where there is <a href="http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/genderdiversity_lgbt0413.pdf">demographic diversity</a>; and not just one-dimensional (we feature white, cisgender, straight, able-bodied men <i>and</i> white, cisgender, straight, able-bodied women!), but along many axes.</div>
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Departments with toxic work environments are those in which people pass each other in the hall without making eye contact; work with their office doors closed; only give negative criticism and feedback (if you can't say something negative, don't say anything at all); people yell at each other (for those lucky enough to not work in such a place: yes, these places exist); senior people harass junior people (sexually, racially, generally) and are not confronted or reprimanded by other members of the department. If people are frequently and visibly happy in your department, then the simple observation of this happiness can be used as evidence for the practices that lead to healthy, positive departmental culture. It's also evident in the diversity of a department, because departments that don't value non-cis-ablebodied men will generally be very monolithic. On the other hand, one should not be surprised about a sexual harassment case springing up in a department in which people infrequently socialize, rarely smile/laugh, avoid eye contact, etc. Behaviors lead to results, and results can provide evidence of common behaviors. Further, these are all mutable because they are simply the sum total of the choices and actions of the people who comprise the social unit (academic class, department, university, scientific society).</div>
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<b>Making the Decision to Create Positive Culture Daily</b></div>
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What is culture? In large part it's the various ways in which we decide what is valuable to us, and how we communicate and pass this (and other) knowledge on to others. We do this simply by going about our lives. The ways in which we walk, talk and otherwise move through the world is determined in large part by culture (rules, customs, norms), and these actions feed back into the day-to-day, moment-to-moment creation of culture. This two-way interaction also allows us to assess likely patters of interactions based on observed outcomes within collections of people, such as astronomy departments. Healthy work environments are evident in the behaviors of people and the behaviors of people shape healthy work environments.</div>
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I'd argue that the culture of astronomy is not entirely healthy at the moment. This is evident in the monoculture therein, which is still majority male at the highest, most influential ranks, and overwhelmingly white (~90% of US astronomers are white). This outcome wasn't handed down to us from on high, and it needn't define our field. Astronomy would be fully functional, nay, more functional if its demographics followed the national population. The fact that the demographics skew so heavily white is a clear indication of how the culture of astronomy is created and maintained.<br />
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Y'all. Just look how many ppl turned up 4 the Town Hall on Racism. We thought there'd b 100 max. This is just the beginning <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/astroRH?src=hash">#astroRH</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/aas229?src=hash">#aas229</a> <a href="https://t.co/ttyKvhKbLp">pic.twitter.com/ttyKvhKbLp</a></div>
— Nicole C. (@jazztronomy) <a href="https://twitter.com/jazztronomy/status/816849288747696130">January 5, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Thankfully and encouragingly, I see strong and growing support/desire for change as evidenced in the <i>hundreds</i>(!) of astronomers who attended the <a href="http://astronomyincolor.blogspot.com/2016/12/aas-town-hall-on-racism.html">AAS anti-racism town hall</a> yesterday. Because of the nature of systemic racism, we needn't identify one evil person who makes it the way it is, nor do we need to imagine a cabal that engineers a white field of science. Systemic racism is thoroughly woven into the fabric of the larger US American culture. All that is needed to make (and keep) astronomy white is people on a daily basis making the decision not to make it otherwise. The same goes for the ingrained sexism, heterosexism, transphobia and ablism that is ingrained in our larger culture, and that is therefore a part of the culture of astronomy. </div>
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Another thing about the systemic nature of our demographic problems (astronomy's exclusivity) is that it seems too big, too daunting to solve. If culture were created at the beginning of time and was essential to the existence of astronomy as a scientific enterprise, then I'd have to agree: there's no point in trying to change it (make no mistake, people make arguments like this all the time!). But what I hope I've conveyed with this essay is the fact that we, all of us, make daily decisions about what we want the culture of astronomy to be. Here's what I see as a way forward:</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Identify the key aspects of our culture that work to maintain the status quo and work against marginalized groups. I'll be exploring these aspects point by point in future posts, so stay tuned!</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Figure out ways to subvert, circumvent and change the norms that shape the undesirable aspects of culture. An example of this is the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03709">evidence</a>-<a href="https://www.wm.edu/as/physics/resources/climate/annotated_bibliography/a-test-that-fails.pdf">based</a> push to eliminate PGRE scores<span style="color: magenta;"> </span>from grad admissions. Less daunting things include making a point to interact positively and regularly with your colleagues, think carefully about your interactions with minority (minoritized) groups (if you're a dude, be self-critical about the way you interact with female colleagues in, say, astro-ph discussions. Learn the ways that you reinforce a male-dominated space so you don't do those things without thinking)</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Following point #2, start out by doing things on small scales and nearby. By keeping things manageable and localized, you'll be able to concentrate your efforts, see more immediate payoffs, all while practicing and experimenting with tactics you might use in the future on larger scales.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Be explicit and intentional in creating your new culture. Sticking with the astro-ph discussion example (and I'm mostly speaking to senior people here), propose new norms of discussion (share the air, keep comments constructive, no ad hominem attacks), and list/discuss them during the first five minutes of each session. Trust me, this really works if you do it unapologetically and make it habitual. I've done this in other academic spaces, and I look forward to implementing it in my group meetings when I return from sabbatical. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">When you visit other departments, keep your eyes and ears open for practices that work against the status quo, or just plain work well for the people in the department. Make note of them and figure out how you can take them back to your institution. Also pass on advice while you're there. This "cross-pollination" process is exactly how culture is created, reinforced and spread.</li>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-16671956442060225962016-12-15T15:04:00.000-05:002016-12-16T12:45:14.351-05:00The Bright Line is not Monotonic<div style="text-align: justify;">
The anthology of myths commonly known as America rests upon the notion that history is linear. In the past people in this country ignorantly did bad things to other people. But thanks to the passage of time, we can now "let the past to be the past," because today we live in a time when things have gotten much better. Furthermore, any problem that our society faces in the present will inevitably be solved as "the old guard" dies off and a new generation of better people takes their place. </div>
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Of course this story isn't told so simply or explicitly. But the assumption lurks beneath the other stories we, as Americans, tell ourselves and each other. The myth certainly undergirds the notion that racism is a thing of the past, and that today we inhabit a "post-racial" world in which all people, regardless of race have equal access to betterment, dignity and happiness. We are lulled into beliving that at some point in the mid to late 1960's, a wise reverend implored the nation to judge others by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, and America heeded his call, dropped racism from our social fabric, and we all moved forward into the light. </div>
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Time heals all wounds, or so the story goes.</div>
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The problem is that this linear historical framework shows cracks and strains when well-documented facts are pieced together along the bright line that links the present to the past. In this space, I have previously explored the <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2016/11/chickens-and-eggs-oppression-and-race.html">historical origins</a> of race, as well as the <a href="http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-construction-of-black-criminality.html">construction of Black criminality</a> which was used to justify convict leasing for half a century following the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Without knowledge of the new slavery that followed old slavery, it can certainly look as if things improved for Black Americans after the Civil War. But knowing that most Black people entered into new forms of captivity and racial control shows that the bright line of history had at least one justice-related kink in it. </div>
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Indeed, this is not the only kink. After all, all Americans know about the form of racial apartheid commonly referred to as Jim Crow that was practiced in the South until the middle of the 20th century. Less well known, but just as well documented was the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">housing discrimination in the North</a> that locked generations of Black Americans <span style="background-color: white;">out of building wealth at the same time that white Americans were granted government-backed home loans; subsidized roads leading out of the cities and into the new suburbs; and government assistance in higher education, </span>as well as a socialized safety net to help them protect the wealth they built and pass it along to their children—<a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Affirmative-Action-White-Twentieth-Century/dp/0393328511">back when </a>affirmative action was roundly endorsed by white Americans. Meanwhile, and since then, red-lining, contract-selling, blockbusting, white flight, and tales of "oh, that house is no longer on the market," have greeted generations of hard-working Black Americans as they attempted to claw their way out of the poverty they were relegated to following the end of antebellum slavery. </div>
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Time heals all wounds, or so the story goes.</div>
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History shows that the line does not monotonically increases from injustice to justice. The path that Michelle Alexander follows in her best selling book <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_9?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=the+new+jim+crow&sprefix=the+new+j%2Cdigital-text%2C149&crid=1YGU0RMICIFBA">The New Jim Crow</a></i>, shows twists and bends, and no discernible net increase in justice. Instead, it shows a pattern of oppression, resistance, incremental gains, and a morphing of racial control from one form to another, ultimately leading to a return to oppression. </div>
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Millions of slaves resisted their bondage, stealing their bodies along the Underground Railroad; serving in America's endless string of wars under the promise of freedom rarely granted; and denying the Confederacy their labor (mass striking) and defecting to fight with the Union. The resistance of slaves eventually led to the end of of their bondage and a decade of Reconstruction, during which Black folks made major political and economic gains, despite starting from scratch (no, there was no forty acres, nor a mule).</div>
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However, America, with its abiding faith in the existence of race, and their insistence on the supremacy of whiteness, could no longer be bothered to protect its non-white citizens, and new forms of racial control took over: debt peonage, share cropping, and convict leasing. These systems later morphed into Jim Crow segregation, enforced by local police forces in collaboration with citizen brigades such as the Ku Klux Klan. Fine, upstanding (white) citizens posing in front of Black bodies hanging as strange fruit. Terrorism visited upon Black communities as local, state and federal governments looked the other way, or participated. During this brutal period of racial control, six million Black Americans fled north following railroad lines. Ever wonder why there are so many Black folk in Milwaukee, Newark, Oakland? They came from the South as part of one of the largest domestic <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003EY7JGM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">migrations</a> the world has ever known.</div>
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But what of the Good Reverend? America learned its lesson after the children had firehoses and dogs turned on them, right? Sadly, the King specified no radius of curvature when he said the moral arc of the Universe bends toward justice. After all, a segment of a circle (or sine wave) is an arc. </div>
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You see, white America was never comfortable with the Civil Rights movement. MLK and other Black leaders were the targets of intensive monitoring by the FBI, local police forces, and political leaders. The man we lionize today was a villain back then to the the vast majority of Americans. Your father or uncle or cousin may have marched with the man (really?), but the rest of America was transfixed by a message of "Law and Order" preached by a new leader named Nixon. They were transfixed by the notion that their truest civil right was "freedom from domestic violence." </div>
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Of course, there is a bitter irony in this call for law and order, given that white America had consistently visited lawlessness and disorder upon Black communities, particularly when those communities strove for something better (see the coup of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898">Wilmington</a>, NC, or the <a href="http://tulsahistory.org/learn/online-exhibits/the-tulsa-race-riot/">Tulsa Pogrom</a>). No American community understands the fear of domestic violence better than the ghetto, where the domestic actor is too often the local police force. But, no. To Nixon's supporters, the protests in Harlem, Watts, Detroit, and DC were not the result of people crying out for freedom from state-sanctioned violence. Rather, those protests <i>were</i> the violent crime that Nixon was referring to. Those Black people sitting at segregated lunch counters, standing unarmed in the way of riot police, and otherwise highlighting the injustice of racial control—<i>they</i> were the ones breaking the law of the land. And all good Americans know that those who break the law are criminals. </div>
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This would not be the first, nor last time that the fight for civil rights was perverted by people's deep-seated belief in race. This was just the latest time that Black criminality was leveraged for political gain. The fear of Blackness moved America as no other force, then as now. The freedom to discriminate will not suffer infringement. Nixon, followed by Reagan, Bush and Clinton made good on the promise of law and order. It might appear that it was the police—and political leaders, and Wall Street executives—who broke the law. But this reading of events ignores the racial double standard upon which our country rests. Crime, you see, is Black.</div>
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As a result, Black leaders across the nation were arrested, exiled or executed. Hampton, Shakur, Davis, King, Acoli, Marshall, Malcom, Carmichael (Ture). Today, people inveigh against the lack of leadership in the Black community, without any regard to the documented history of America removing that leadership forcefully as a <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/topics/cointelpro">matter of policy</a>. And lest anyone look too closely, the allure of the myth of Black criminality provides all the justification needed to change the subject and move on. What rights does a criminal have?</div>
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Time heals all wounds, or so the story goes.</div>
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From slavery to convict leasing. From the selling of bodies for corporate profit, to "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." From the Jim (and Jane) Crow to...freedom? Is that where we find ourselves today? From the Civil Rights Act to a post-racial America? Well, if the election of a racist as our president—and here I use only the flaccid, dictionary definition of racist—along with his white nationalist cabinet hasn't disabused you of this post-racial dream, allow me to give you some facts and figures:</div>
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US Americans represent 5% of the world's human population, yet is home to 25% of the world's prisoners. </div>
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Black men make up 6.5% of the US population, yet 40% of the US prison population.</div>
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At the height of white America's anxiety about crime, back when Nixon promised to protect them from domestic violence, there were about 260 thousand people in prisons and jail. Today, that number has increased nearly 10-fold.</div>
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A white child has a 1-in-13 chance of eventually ending up in the prison system (prison, jail, parole). The chance is 1-in-3 for Black child.<br />
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There are more Black Americans in jails and prisons today than there were slaves just before the Civil War.</div>
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In recent years many historians—at least those willing to look with seeing eyes—were wondering if we were in the latest nadir in the Black experience in this country. The good news is that we were not. The bad news is that we're <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/north_carolina_s_gop_is_suppressing_votes_and_appealing_to_white_tribalism.html">on our way there</a>. For you see, we are now living in the era of Mass Incarceration, an epoch now in its fifth decade. The descent will be hastened because our newest leader attained office on an old promise: Law and order.<br />
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He told the electorate that the police in Chicago, who were once found guilty of running a interrogation and torture chamber, were too restrained and needed the freedom to impose force properly. He told an audience of millions on national television that he would reinstate <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/is-stop-and-frisk-worth-it/358644/">stop-and-frisk</a>, which was found to be in violation of our Constitution because it unfairly targeted people of color. He promised to rid our country of the Mexican menace by building a wall along a border where people already die routinely trying to enter our country. He also promised secure our borders against Muslims, despite the myriad acts of domestic terrorism committed by white men; despite our meddling in the Middle East that has led to the present refugee crisis there. Anti-blackness has, predictably, been leveraged into anti-brown-ness, because the supremacy of whiteness will not be challenged without consequences.</div>
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A linear historical framework is a funny thing. It makes change look like progress. But once this mythological framework is rejected, a new world comes into view. A world in which the fundamental civil right of our country is the right to discriminate, to dominate, to control, all in the name of the primacy of whiteness, with the end result of ever more wealth concentrated with the few. </div>
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This view of history is painful, both because of the lies it reveals, but (perhaps?) because it reveals the violence and theft that is so regularly visited upon people of color in order to maintain the American Dream. The ignorance carved out by American mythology truly leads to bliss, especially when coupled with the soothing sensation of consumerism. It makes historical facts pieced together in a cogent manner look and sound like "fatalism." But the thing is, the truth is the truth, no matter how we feel about it. And its only by seeing it clearly that we can work toward a better future.<br />
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I once lost hope for this future, which led to despair. I have no desire to return to despair, but at the same time I cannot go back to believing the Lie. Instead, I'll find agency in learning about my country's history, and continue the long legacy of resistance found woven throughout that history. As I do, I will snatch happiness where I can find it along the way. </div>
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I've learned that it's not the passage of time that heals wounds. Instead, it's what you choose to do with that time.</div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-78833731488557338432016-11-22T16:22:00.000-05:002017-02-14T11:43:44.507-05:00More on the Construction of Black Criminality<div style="text-align: justify;">
I forgot to include this video animation of Ta-Nehisi Coates' take on the myth of Black criminality. His narration picks up after I said, "However, while antebellum slaves were generally considered loyal, religious, morally upstanding, and only threatening when they suffered from drapetomania (the so-called mental illness that caused slaves to escape captivity)." Never forget that slaves who escaped their masters <i>stole their bodies</i> in violation of US American law. </div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.theatlantic.com/video/iframe/404674/?auto=1&player=default" width="640"></iframe>John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-26226103609014508992016-11-21T17:10:00.000-05:002016-11-22T15:14:25.637-05:00The Construction of Black Criminality<div style="text-align: justify;">
On September 19 this year a man named Terence Crutcher was driving home after attending a music class at a community college in Tulsa, OK. His car broke down and he was forced to stop on the road and seek assistance. The police showed up with their guns drawn responding to a 911 call from another motorist worried about a threatening man by a car stopped in the middle of the road. Video footage from a police helicopter hovering overhead shows Cutcher with his hands up. In the audio one of the pilots remarks, "<a href="http://heavy.com/news/2016/09/terence-terrence-terance-crutcher-officer-betty-shelby-tulsa-oklahoma-black-man-shot-unarmed-video-family-photos-car/">looks like a bad dude</a>…might be on something." Moments later, officer Betty Shelby shoots and kills him.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfzNPg4xos5UDQUaYPKPf1yfZNq9e6Oyewhw6EjvJDRA3nBer5nk4xJt1hZ2iaP0wVZhSBLoG3Eli5l5xost_H24iXWLeFR4McD2mZsoh-kNWcM2DoQpSFdzbOoLg3ut2Qi4nemkTyrov/s1600/HT_tulsa_shooting2_hb_160920_4x3_992.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfzNPg4xos5UDQUaYPKPf1yfZNq9e6Oyewhw6EjvJDRA3nBer5nk4xJt1hZ2iaP0wVZhSBLoG3Eli5l5xost_H24iXWLeFR4McD2mZsoh-kNWcM2DoQpSFdzbOoLg3ut2Qi4nemkTyrov/s320/HT_tulsa_shooting2_hb_160920_4x3_992.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
There are many curious and horrible aspects of this tale. First and foremost, it is horrible that a human being was killed by people sworn to protect him. What was curious was the diagnosis of drug use and the determination of evil intent, made from hundreds of feet above Crutcher and the scene unfolding below. Without the benefit of hearing the man, seeing his facial expressions, or reading the fine details of his body language, the police helicopter pilot somehow determined that Crutcher was villainous. One piece of information that was available and visible from ~100 feet: Crutcher was Black. And in America, Blackness is tragically, yet purposefully linked to criminality. </div>
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It's commonplace for people to wonder whether the Tulsa police officers, or other officers involved in extrajudicial killings of Black and Brown women and men, are racists. Implicit in this question is the misconception that racism must involve malicious intent coupled with a conscious belief that someone of another race is lesser. But in our country, and many places in the world, racism need not be intentional. Humans are social creatures, and much of what we think and do is a result of the lessons we learn as we interact with our society. Our actions then feed back into society, showing others what is normative and acceptable, and we thereby create and recreate culture. Thus, the question should not be whether officer Shelby is <i>a racist</i>, but rather why is it that our society allows <i>racist actions</i> like this to play out predictably over and over again.</div>
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A simple example of the lessons we, as social creatures living in the US learn, is the way we head to the end of a line when enter a bank or approach a fast food restaurant counter. When we do so it signals to others that this is the correct behavior, and subtle yet clear social cues are sent to those who do otherwise. I cannot remember the origin of my "lineist" behavior, and I'm rarely conscious of it. Indeed, I can do other tasks such as reading an article on my cell phone at the pharmacy and simultaneously find my way to the correct position in a line. </div>
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Similarly, the assumption of Crutcher's criminality, and mortal danger he posed to armed police officers who have him outnumbered six-to-one, was not an original nor conscious idea of the pilot hovering far above. His "commonsense" observation, and the actions of the officer-turned-executioner on the ground below were the tragic, yet predictable result of an idea that was created—constructed—over 150 years ago: the concept of Black criminality. </div>
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The idea that race is meaningful enough to cause a human being like Crutcher, an otherwise social creature, to be inclined toward violent and antisocial behavior is absurd, especially since it was long ago determined that race is not a biological reality. No credible biologist, psychologist, anthropologist, or sociologist explicitly believes that the thickness of one's lips, the texture of one's hair, the tone of one's skin have a bearing on mental processes. This despite the incentives to discover otherwise, and despite race being the primary focus of these scientific enterprises for more than a century following Thomas Jefferson's inquiry into why it was that African slaves are inferior to those of European descent (not <i>whether, </i>but <i>why</i>. The faulty framing of this question should disturb any scientist). Yet Crutcher's skin tone was enough of a visual clue to signal his bad-dudeness to people empowered by the state to execute him. </div>
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To understand this and other state-sanctioned police executions of Black and brown women and men, we need to follow that bright line stretching from the present back into the distant past. </div>
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<b>Profit and Ideology in the Land of the Free</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg21Qhj7C7KUzLaYcK7IPHDkvcKrdINSb-97fDakT7jDqpfdBOaxYl8u1OzNXU3pvoo95zHNgHxncFpSg0bLLHiu5MuTor0kpsMGMgpaNCbUs-10b2RAQGoPND9t4hhm2_Uy0T8yryKCA5V/s1600/convict+leasing+prisoner-slaves.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg21Qhj7C7KUzLaYcK7IPHDkvcKrdINSb-97fDakT7jDqpfdBOaxYl8u1OzNXU3pvoo95zHNgHxncFpSg0bLLHiu5MuTor0kpsMGMgpaNCbUs-10b2RAQGoPND9t4hhm2_Uy0T8yryKCA5V/s320/convict+leasing+prisoner-slaves.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The men pictured above lived in Alabama. Their days consisted of waking up before sunrise and working in a coal mine until long after dark. They often worked to fulfill a quota of two to three tons of ore mined <i>per day</i>. For meeting this quota, they received no remuneration other than a meager meal and a short night's sleep before repeating their toil the following day. For not achieving their quota, they could be beaten, whipped, waterboarded, or tortured by numerous other methods. These men were leased to private companies by the state of Alabama, and the income earned provided the state with upwards of 73 percent of its annual revenue, while the owners of coal mines made a fortune off of this source of inexpensive labor. </div>
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If I told you this happened in the years just prior to the Civil War, you might not be too surprised. Slavery is a well known, ugly part of our nation's history. But what if I told you that the photo above was taken in 1907, more than <b>four decades after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment?</b> Said amendment to the Constitution of the US stated, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." So how was it that these men, and thousands upon thousands of others like them were sold, enslaved and most often worked to their deaths?</div>
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In this case, the devil is in the ellipses. In my quote of the Thirteenth Amendment the omitted text reads , "...except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." You see, according to our constitution, slavery is abolished...except for convicted criminals. By exploiting this loophole, Southern states and wealthy industrialists were able to literally recapture the cheap labor they lost following the Civil War. All that was needed were a few more laws worthy of prison time (vagrancy, cursing, spitting) along with law enforcement officials who would round up Black people found in violation of these laws. The result was<i> <a href="http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/pbs-film/">Slavery by Another Name</a>. </i></div>
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This was yet another example of an American institution created to enrich the few at the expense of the many, just as indentured servitude and slavery were used prior to the Civil War . However, while antebellum slaves were generally considered loyal, religious, morally upstanding, and only threatening when they suffered from drapetomania (the so-called mental illness that caused slaves to escape captivity), the new system required a manufactured linkage between Blackness and criminality. Thus the origin of the social construct of Black criminality, together with the creation of regional police forces that were actively hostile toward the Black citizenry. Therein lay the <i>what</i> and <i>how</i> that led directly to Terence Crutcher's extrajudicial execution. But we should never forget that, as there was with antebellum slavery, the <i>why</i> is just as important. </div>
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Convict leasing is another example of the <i>utility</i> of racism. Racism isn't simply a collection of ideas floating about in people's heads. Racism is an ideology that finds its origins in myriad motivating factors such as corporate profit and political power. But critically, it also requires the animating force of people continually creating and recreating it through their words and actions (and inactions). These words and actions need not involve rallies with hoods and burning crosses. It requires liberal academics—the "good" people—to sit idly by, or at most make a fleeting comment, when a political candidate talks about violence in Black ("urban") communities without discussing the violence visited on the people there by the state. It requires liberal academics to have no response when a relative asks "but what about Black-on-Black crime?" despite the ridiculousness of a <i>concept</i>, such as crime, having a <i>race</i>. What of Black-on-Black dining? Such a concept cannot be sanctioned without the tacit acceptance of the myth of Black criminality that has been created and recreated over the past century and a half.<br />
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Without people <i>actively</i> challenging the concept of Black criminality today, then a candidate's message and promise on "law and order" will continue to resonate with a white populace who harbor deep-seated, and historically <i>old</i>, fears of the menace of Black criminals. The leverage provided by that ancient fear can, and will, be extended to other groups to create nonsense such as Mexican (Latinx) illegality and Islamic terrorism. Mounting this challenge requires leadership from white people who are willing to dig deep into their history and follow the bright line that connects the men rounded up into a new slavery to the tragic murder of Terence Crutcher earlier this year.<br />
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8856406874129245290.post-60082498911509871822016-11-15T17:52:00.000-05:002016-11-16T01:16:46.728-05:00Chickens and Eggs, Oppression and Race<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's a riddle: Long ago, did race exist and then people decided to oppress people based on it, specifically in the form of slavery? Or did oppression exist first, followed by the emergence of race at a later time? To many (most) this sounds like a chicken-or-the-egg question. But it's only a riddle because of the society in which we live, and the continuous and pervasive lessons we learn while immersed in it. In fact, the answer is clearly spelled out in our nation's history, and there is a bright line that connects the distant past to our current state of affairs. Following this bright line can help us understand much about our country, from police shootings, to the paucity of people of color on our university faculties, to the emergence of an autocratic racial demagogue as our national leader. </div>
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So let's go back and take a look. What follows is spelled out in greater detail in this <a href="http://www.pdfdrive.net/slavery-race-and-ideology-in-the-united-states-of-america-e270648.html">essay</a>, and this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Slavery-Freedom-Edmund-Morgan/dp/039332494X">book</a> (and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=F-GFUyty3SAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=painter+whiteness&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq2aDJzKPQAhVl34MKHXCZCAkQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=1619&f=false">here</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-ebook/dp/B015XEWZHI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478966731&sr=1-1&keywords=people%27s+history+of+the+usa">here</a>).</div>
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<b>The ~Start of That Bright Line</b></div>
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In 1619, a Dutch ship arrived in Jamestown with roughly twenty people originally from Africa onboard. Not much is known about these African arrivals to North America, but it is likely that they were indentured servants who worked alongside their European counterparts. Around this time, and in the years leading up to it, there were few, if any, records or accounts of "race," particularly as we know it today (the concept of <i>limpieza de sangre</i> perhaps comes as close as one will find, but even that was in reference to the blood lineage of religion). There existed strong distinctions in nationality, and certainly divisions among religions. But the concept of race was still in its infancy, and there were far more European indentured servants in the early American colonies than anyone else. This was due to both convenience, as colonists were coming from Europe; necessity since England had too many poor people and too little land for them to work; and pragmatism since reducing labor costs is and has always been the most effective way of maximizing profits. </div>
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As Fields states:</div>
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Whatever truths may have appeared self-evident in those days, neither an inalienable right to life and liberty nor the founding of government on the consent of the governed was among them. Virginia was a profit-seeking venture, and no one stood to make a profit growing tobacco by democratic methods. Only those who could force large numbers of people to work tobacco for them stood to get rich during the tobacco boom. Neither white skin nor English nationality protected servants from the grossest forms of brutality and exploitation.</blockquote>
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What is clear from an examination of the history of 17th century Virginia is that oppression existed before any recorded notion of race, and race-based slavery specifically. Indeed, by sheer numbers, English people were by far the most oppressed people of that time, considering that the total number of African people in Virginia was no more than 2,000 in 1660. Oppression and slavery did not exist because of race or notions of white superiority. <b>People were in bondage because growing tobacco was only profitable through cheap labor. </b>It's also important to note that long before privilege could be afforded to "white" people, the wealthy elite were busy oppressing and deriving most, if not all of the benefit from it.</div>
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However, this situation was not sustainable as a number of dilemmas presented themselves to the wealthy elite. The first problem was that indentured servants started living long enough to reach the end of their terms. Prior to that, life expectancy in the colonies was much shorter than the seven-year terms of servitude. At the same time that life expectancies started lengthening, the landowners were facing down several other problems. <span style="background-color: white;">The price of tobacco started falling, and the number of poor, exploitable Europeans flowing from the old continent started to slow to a trickle.</span> Faced with rising labor costs, the landowning elite started reneging on the terms of servitude by adding time for petty offenses and refusing to pay out land to freedmen. Predictably, this led to resistance among the indentured servants. One of the most famous incidents was Bacon's Rebellion, which saw working class people rise up in armed revolt against the wealthy landowners, Africans and Europeans side by side. </div>
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While these early rebellions failed to change the status quo in favor of the working class, they did instill a great deal of fear in the landowners. Faced with a growing number of revolts, the elite decided to shift to slave labor imported from the Caribbean as their primary source of cheap labor. As an added benefit, these African slaves had been "seasoned" during their time in the harsh conditions of the sugar cane fields. Further, their dark skin provided a highly visible marker in the colonial society. Unlike their European counterparts, it was far more difficult for them to blend into the general colonial populace should they escape. </div>
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This historical narrative demonstrates that slavery as practiced in colonial America was motivated by the same forces as slavery in other societies such as Rome and Egypt, namely: the building of wealth for a powerful few. That Africans were enslaved had nothing to do with the color of their skin, the texture of their hair, or any of the other markers of race as we know it today. Indeed, our modern conception of race was unknown to the ruling class of the time. What was known, then as it is now, is that cheap labor leads to increased profits.<br />
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From this, we can see the correct "order of operations" in the riddle I offered at the beginning of this post: oppression came first, race came decades after. As always, Prof. Fields puts it better than I can:<br />
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Race as a coherent ideology did not spring into being simultaneously with slavery, but took even more time than slavery did to become systematic. A commonplace that few stop to examine holds that people are more readily oppressed when they are already perceived as inferior by nature. The reverse is more to the point. <b>People are more readily perceived as inferior by nature when they are already seen as oppressed.</b> Africans and their descendants might be, to the eye of the English, heathen in religion, outlandish in nationality, and weird in appearance. But that did not add up to an ideology of racial inferiority until a further historical ingredient got stirred into the mixture: the incorporation of Africans and their descendants into a polity and society in which they lacked rights that others not only took for granted, but claimed as a matter of self-evident natural law.</blockquote>
Its probably tempting for academic types to nod sagely at this point. But this order of operations is a subtle point that many educated individuals (myself included) miss completely. Evidence for this "whiff" usually comes in the form of a comment such as, "Well, it's human nature to classify people, and divide them into groups. Race was what was used at that particular time." The history of slavery in our country gives lie to this notion: African and European people alike were oppressed long before the racial classification, and these people resisted and revolted side by side before the ruling class switched to African slave labor over indentured servitude. <br />
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The legal groundwork for race was laid near the end of the 17th century, motivated primarily by the need of the elite to keep the workers class divided. Divide and conquer is a tried and true tactic employed by the powerful, and given how badly outnumbered they were by free—and armed—Europeans spreading across the nascent country, the tactic was absolutely vital at this point in history. The relative privilege of poor European colonists compared to the bondage of their African counterparts was one of the first, and most visible "wages of whiteness" on this continent.<br />
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Once the colonies asserted their independence from the English royalty based on the radical notion that all men are created equal,<b> race made a key evolutionary step from expedient tactic to national ideology. </b>The claim of freedom and equality for all in a nation in which a sizable portion of the population is in bondage for perpetuity makes no sense on its own. However, by linking the oppression of African slaves to their inferiority, the framework of race provided an out: African (black) slaves were not fully human and exempt from the founding principles of the new nation.<br />
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This is how ideologies work. They provide a set of narratives, customs and a language to help people understand their social landscape. Why was she born enslaved, while he enjoys the freedom to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with the protections of our Constitution? Thanks to the construction of race, that quandary has "simple," common-sense answer: her Blackness is inferior to his whiteness. This conclusion need not even be stated explicitly. All that is needed is a populace willing to see millions of Black people in bondage and accept the situation under the <i>implicit</i> assumption that all is normal and right. The ideology of race allows one to see injustice of a double standard and not name it. As long as this is the case, then the profits of oppression roll in unabated.<br />
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<b>Social Construct? But Why and for What?</b></div>
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Many people in various anti-racism workshops I've run and attended over the past couple years can quickly identify race as a "social construct." The problem is that what follows is a dusting of hands and an eagerness to move on with the discussion. But to do so overlooks a key aspect of a construction, social or otherwise. Generally speaking, one does not construct, say, a bridge without a reason to do so, namely the need to get from one point to another. If someone points to the Golden State Bridge and asks "what is that," replying "a construct" is accurate but grossly inadequate. Stating that race is a construct is similarly inadequate. Race was constructed out of necessity to solve a problem: maximizing profit through cheap labor (and in so doing, building a country), and race is still constructed and reconstructed today because its <i>utility</i> remains undiminished.<br />
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Without the ability to use race to get things done, race is as meaningless as hand size or the shape of people's ears. Indeed, if categorizing is such an innate human tendency, then why do we not categorize people by hand shape? Hands are almost always visible, and we often touch hands when greeting each other. Haven't you noticed that some people have square hands, and other people have round hands? No? Well, neither have I. But if the median round-handed family had 20 times the wealth of a square-handed family, then we'd be keenly aware of the hand sizes of people in any given social setting. We'd probably also talk disparagingly about the culture of poverty embraced round-handed people living in ghettos, and wonder why they can't just obey and respect police officers.<br />
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While one's social class isn't determined by hand size, it is by race. This is the present-day utility of race: it marks the boundaries between the various castes in US American society. It's not just stereotypes and bigotry. It's the power of one group to make those stereotypes stick and the societal sanction of the words and actions of bigots. It's one thing for someone to assume that another person is a criminal based on the color of their skin and texture of their hair. In isolation we'd simply call this person mentally unstable. However, its an entirely different thing to reinforce this stereotype through media images, from <i>The Birth of a Nation</i> in 1915 to modern day news broadcasts.<br />
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Creating and reinforcing stereotypes with the blessing of the larger national culture is the <i>what</i>. But why? Well, we live in a country with a staggeringly large and steadily increasing wealth disparity between the elite few and the rest of everyone else. The wealth gap between the richest and poorest Americans is so large that numbers fail to capture it. Ian Haney-Lopez in his book provides a helpful analogy: "The six heirs to the Wal-mart empire currently hold the same amount of wealth...as the poorest 30 percent of Americans combined." Six of the top have as much wealth as the 73 million people at the bottom!<br />
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I believe that Trump supporters sense the outlines of this problem and suffer from the symptoms—joblessness, poverty, despair leading to drug use—albeit not to the extent that Black and Brown folks do. But rather than becoming angry at those who are hoarding all of the wealth at the top, such as people like Trump, the white working (middle) class have been conditioned to see poor Black and Brown people as the problem, and a wealthy con man as their savior. This reaction is as old as our country, and politicians on both sides of the aisle have found ways to take advantage of the structural racism woven into the fabric of our culture, as well as the historical narratives that, e.g., link Blackness to criminality, Muslim-ness to terrorism, femininity to weakness, in order to mobilize the electorate to vote against their apparent best interests.<br />
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Indeed, as I'll explore in a future post based on Ian Haney-Lopez's <i>Dog Whistle Politics, </i>over the past sixty years, racism has been the most powerful force shaping US American politics, and this election cycle was <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/11/white_won.html">a strong demonstration</a> of this fact on many levels. Today, the lower caste comprising "illegal" Latinx immigrants, "radical Islamic" terrorists, and Black "welfare queens" and "thugs" receive the outrage of of the white middle caste, while the uber-wealthy upper caste get away with looting everyone's pockets. And while ultimately everybody, white and non-white, suffers to some degree, there are actual people—human beings with hopes, dreams, and the full range of human emotions—who suffer most severely under the influence of racism in our country. It is this human suffering that should mobilize those who consider themselves progressive. This is not a theoretical, academic matter. This is very real. Unless people, white Americans in particular, start learning about the history and nature of race, we are doomed to continue the same vicious cycle of racial oppression and general exploitation for another 400 years. </div>
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John Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12297552997821158016noreply@blogger.com0