3 hours ago
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Juxtaposition
So oddly enough -- odd, because I don't usually get enough space in my day to watch this much media -- I watched two documentaries yesterday, back to back.
First I watched 13th, the documentary by Ava DuVernay about the loophole in the 13th Amendment that made it possible to continue slavery by another name, by turning black Americans, and specifically black males, into a criminal underclass.
It's very well done and worth watching, though I'd also recommend reading Slavery by Another Name, which adds a lot of the deep background this documentary presents in summary.
I knew most of the information in 13th, but not all of it -- I didn't know the information toward the end, for example, about ALEC and its connections to the prison industry. And I'd heard some bits of the information about what's happening with immigrants and private prisons, but I learned more here.
Well worth watching.
Then -- right after watching this film, which made me angry and depressed and furious about how fucked up our country was -- I watched the PBS documentary Hamilton's America.
Well!
I don't know if you saw it. (You can stream it for a limited time through the link above.) But it's lovely, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is just lovely in it. This documentary made me feel so hopeful and happy about this country. Brilliant, talented people working hard and well, creating something amazing, and having amazing success: that's the America we all love.
Both of those are the real country, hard as that is to wrap our heads around sometimes.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Why Can't 'They' Learn to Talk Right?
Right being white, of course.
I didn't make it to the PCA this year after all, having busted my foot and my finances simultaneously (my insurance being the sad item that it is); I had intended to present my paper on RaceFail09 there, talking about why Characters of Color are under-represented in SF/F world and why Writers of Color are under-represented on the SF/F bookshelves and in the SF/F magazines.
I was to be on a panel with other papers on similar topics, including one being given by my buddy Zelda, who has been working for several years now on the effects of ignorance of or prejudice toward Black English among school teachers and administrators on the continued low literacy levels of black children in the Delta region of Arkansas.
Anyway, this paper (correct me if I'm wrong, Zelda!) was about how, rather than hyper-correcting and failing students out of the standard classroom, teachers could use knowledge of Black English to increase literacy in black students (who make a majority of students in the public schools in the Delta).
Sadly, since I wasn't there, Zelda was on her own when she was attacked by an elderly professor who was of the Black English isn't a language school of thought, who accused her of being a liberal professor filled with the bigotry of low expectations. (Not in those words.) She held her own, citing him linguists who know otherwise-- Zelda takes no shit off of no one -- but I feel bad anyway. If I had been there, at least we could have both argued with him.
All of by way of saying: Here, cool, look at this! (Hat tip Heebie at Unfogged)
The "up" as in "all up in my place" is one I have heard not only among my black students, but among my white students too. "Don't come getting all up in my Kool-Aid, now," being my personal favorite. But, as Zelda likes to remind my students when she comes to give the lecture on Black English to my HEL class each semester, most of them, whether they know it or not, actual speak a version of Black English too.
I didn't make it to the PCA this year after all, having busted my foot and my finances simultaneously (my insurance being the sad item that it is); I had intended to present my paper on RaceFail09 there, talking about why Characters of Color are under-represented in SF/F world and why Writers of Color are under-represented on the SF/F bookshelves and in the SF/F magazines.
I was to be on a panel with other papers on similar topics, including one being given by my buddy Zelda, who has been working for several years now on the effects of ignorance of or prejudice toward Black English among school teachers and administrators on the continued low literacy levels of black children in the Delta region of Arkansas.
Anyway, this paper (correct me if I'm wrong, Zelda!) was about how, rather than hyper-correcting and failing students out of the standard classroom, teachers could use knowledge of Black English to increase literacy in black students (who make a majority of students in the public schools in the Delta).
Sadly, since I wasn't there, Zelda was on her own when she was attacked by an elderly professor who was of the Black English isn't a language school of thought, who accused her of being a liberal professor filled with the bigotry of low expectations. (Not in those words.) She held her own, citing him linguists who know otherwise-- Zelda takes no shit off of no one -- but I feel bad anyway. If I had been there, at least we could have both argued with him.
All of by way of saying: Here, cool, look at this! (Hat tip Heebie at Unfogged)
The "up" as in "all up in my place" is one I have heard not only among my black students, but among my white students too. "Don't come getting all up in my Kool-Aid, now," being my personal favorite. But, as Zelda likes to remind my students when she comes to give the lecture on Black English to my HEL class each semester, most of them, whether they know it or not, actual speak a version of Black English too.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Yeah, We Just Thought This Was The Future
You've probably heard about this charming incident, where two adolescent women at a McDonalds in Baltimore beat another young woman -- a transgendered woman -- until she had a seizure, because she had dared to use their bathroom; while meanwhile an entire store full of employees and customers stood about, most of them doing nothing at all, some of them laughing, several of them filming the incident?
(A few of them did something: at least one of them called the police; and a manager, ineffectually, attempted to stop them.)
Many people are upset and outraged. As am I.
But I'm disturbed for yet another reason. Long-time readers know my kid does not perform her gender especially well. She has short hair; she does not wear or want to wear make-up; she doesn't wear or want to wear girly clothing. She looks, on first glance, to the ignorant, somewhat boyish. (When we took her to be tested with the homeschoolers, for instance, all the boys thought she was a boy all through the testing, and she never informed them otherwise.)
So when we're out in public and she has to use a public bathroom, she's always terrified that someone -- some girl, she means, but anyone -- will attack her. I've been telling her it's silly, that that will never happen. But now this.
Shit.
(A few of them did something: at least one of them called the police; and a manager, ineffectually, attempted to stop them.)
Many people are upset and outraged. As am I.
But I'm disturbed for yet another reason. Long-time readers know my kid does not perform her gender especially well. She has short hair; she does not wear or want to wear make-up; she doesn't wear or want to wear girly clothing. She looks, on first glance, to the ignorant, somewhat boyish. (When we took her to be tested with the homeschoolers, for instance, all the boys thought she was a boy all through the testing, and she never informed them otherwise.)
So when we're out in public and she has to use a public bathroom, she's always terrified that someone -- some girl, she means, but anyone -- will attack her. I've been telling her it's silly, that that will never happen. But now this.
Shit.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
America -- What Now?
We're reading True Grit in my 1213 class. I just spent 20 minutes trying to explain to my 11:00 class why it's wrong -- no, really -- for an officer of the law to shoot a suspect in the back from ambush. I don't believe I convinced them, either.
May I add that a good % of the class are home-schooled Evangelical Xtians?
Yay America.
May I add that a good % of the class are home-schooled Evangelical Xtians?
Yay America.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Utah "Fixes" Bill
Women are still killers and criminals.
Which is not a shock, I suppose. They're all about controlling the women.
Which is not a shock, I suppose. They're all about controlling the women.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
From over by Ta-Nehisi Coates' Place
This is on the subject I was on about yesterday. It isn't Coates himself, but a commenter, who identifies himself only as Cynic. He's Comment 18 on this post; you'll have to scroll down.
Repercussions rarely prevent recurrence - banks robbers, for example, are almost always caught and face harsh punishments. There's no evidence that retributive justice is an effective deterrent for war crimes.The more effective restraint on morally repugnant behavior is moral repugnance. Even people willing to engage in criminal misconduct often balk at behavior that, while perfectly legal, is universally viewed as immoral.
That's why I find the arid legalism of the Cheneyite defense so dispiriting, and graphic descriptions like Benjamin's, although difficult to read, so important. Law is merely a codification of rules, subject to change and interpretation. Morality runs much deeper.
The real damage that the Cheneyites wrought by sanctioning torture was in breaking a taboo, and then insisting that they had not. Under the cover of secrecy, officers of our government have been doing disgraceful things since before the inception of this nation. But when these things have come out, as they often do, they've generally been shamed and penitent. Or, at the very least, acknowledged the evil of their actions even as they defend their necessity. Cheney and his minions chose another route, commissioning legal memoranda that would sanction torture. They still insist that they did nothing wrong.
And that's why this is likely to happen again. There is now a small and vocal minority that believes that there is nothing wrong with torturing our enemies. And those we suspect of being our enemies. And those we mistake for our enemies. Ten years ago, anyone advancing that view would have instantly compromised his credibility and drawn near-universal condemnation. Now, behind the thin shield of legalism, that view has become commonplace.
But although recurrence is possible, it's not inevitable. We don't need trials and jail-time to prevent a recurrence; in fact, I suspect, such measures would simply reinforce the existing and pernicious debate, encouraging the obdurate to dig in their heels. I think a better model lies in something you recently wrote. The Civil Rights era wasn't built around the demand for systematic prosecutions of those who had committed heinous crimes, though they certainly deserved as much. It relied on a two-pronged approach.
The first was education. Activists courageously laid bare to the world the depth and brutality of the oppression. It wasn't a revelation, of course - it was always there for those who cared to know it. But the activists made that knowledge unavoidable and unignorable, no matter how reluctant others were to confront it.
The second prong was shame. Over and over, the leaders of the Civil Rights movement hammered away on a single theme - that institutionalized racism betrayed the great ideals of this nation. They asked Americans to live up to those ideals, or at least to try.
If we want to make torture a thing of the past, this is the path to follow. First, education. Articles like Benjamin's are a start. But it's not Salon's readership, nor this blog's, who need to be made aware. And then, shame. We defeat the normalization of torture by reminding Americans what they purport to believe, and asking them to live up to that creed. It's no Rosewood, of course, but it just might work.
Repercussions rarely prevent recurrence - banks robbers, for example, are almost always caught and face harsh punishments. There's no evidence that retributive justice is an effective deterrent for war crimes.The more effective restraint on morally repugnant behavior is moral repugnance. Even people willing to engage in criminal misconduct often balk at behavior that, while perfectly legal, is universally viewed as immoral.
That's why I find the arid legalism of the Cheneyite defense so dispiriting, and graphic descriptions like Benjamin's, although difficult to read, so important. Law is merely a codification of rules, subject to change and interpretation. Morality runs much deeper.
The real damage that the Cheneyites wrought by sanctioning torture was in breaking a taboo, and then insisting that they had not. Under the cover of secrecy, officers of our government have been doing disgraceful things since before the inception of this nation. But when these things have come out, as they often do, they've generally been shamed and penitent. Or, at the very least, acknowledged the evil of their actions even as they defend their necessity. Cheney and his minions chose another route, commissioning legal memoranda that would sanction torture. They still insist that they did nothing wrong.
And that's why this is likely to happen again. There is now a small and vocal minority that believes that there is nothing wrong with torturing our enemies. And those we suspect of being our enemies. And those we mistake for our enemies. Ten years ago, anyone advancing that view would have instantly compromised his credibility and drawn near-universal condemnation. Now, behind the thin shield of legalism, that view has become commonplace.
But although recurrence is possible, it's not inevitable. We don't need trials and jail-time to prevent a recurrence; in fact, I suspect, such measures would simply reinforce the existing and pernicious debate, encouraging the obdurate to dig in their heels. I think a better model lies in something you recently wrote. The Civil Rights era wasn't built around the demand for systematic prosecutions of those who had committed heinous crimes, though they certainly deserved as much. It relied on a two-pronged approach.
The first was education. Activists courageously laid bare to the world the depth and brutality of the oppression. It wasn't a revelation, of course - it was always there for those who cared to know it. But the activists made that knowledge unavoidable and unignorable, no matter how reluctant others were to confront it.
The second prong was shame. Over and over, the leaders of the Civil Rights movement hammered away on a single theme - that institutionalized racism betrayed the great ideals of this nation. They asked Americans to live up to those ideals, or at least to try.
If we want to make torture a thing of the past, this is the path to follow. First, education. Articles like Benjamin's are a start. But it's not Salon's readership, nor this blog's, who need to be made aware. And then, shame. We defeat the normalization of torture by reminding Americans what they purport to believe, and asking them to live up to that creed. It's no Rosewood, of course, but it just might work.
Friday, February 05, 2010
He Knocks Another One Out
Another Must-Read from Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I don't write this out so that I can establish blame/guilt. To the contrary, the point is that the system was so far-reaching, that it took a conscious, deliberate and often personally dangerous effort to defy it. Against all odds, against a media that reinforced the assumptions of the system, against segregated social institutions that prescribed the assumptions, against whole familes which had bought into the assumption, one would have to rebel and say, "No." The point isn't that all white people are somehow guilty. The point is that a choice between guilt/innocence wasn't really present. It had to be created and it carried with it significant social costs.
This sort of post is why I keep on going over there. He's good a great deal of the time, though he will talk about music (y'all know I'm musically ignorant) and sports and other matters of which I know utterly nothing.
Now and then, as in today's post, he's amazing.
I don't write this out so that I can establish blame/guilt. To the contrary, the point is that the system was so far-reaching, that it took a conscious, deliberate and often personally dangerous effort to defy it. Against all odds, against a media that reinforced the assumptions of the system, against segregated social institutions that prescribed the assumptions, against whole familes which had bought into the assumption, one would have to rebel and say, "No." The point isn't that all white people are somehow guilty. The point is that a choice between guilt/innocence wasn't really present. It had to be created and it carried with it significant social costs.
This sort of post is why I keep on going over there. He's good a great deal of the time, though he will talk about music (y'all know I'm musically ignorant) and sports and other matters of which I know utterly nothing.
Now and then, as in today's post, he's amazing.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
U.S. Hunger
The Right-Wing narrative is that no one is hungry or poor in America -- "This is the only country in the world where our poor people are fat! Hurr Hurr Hurr!" -- but, in fact, not only are Americans poor, we're getting poorer.
No, it's not Third World Poor. Only a few of us actually crouch under bridges and have no possessions at all.
But once people climb out of their basements and rip themselves away from their laptops, they'll find actual people, trying to live in some actual dire situations, here in this country -- living on twelve to twenty thousand a year, without health insurance, with no dental care (there's a reason my Arkansas students are missing teeth), with no vision care (I wince every year, at the first of the semester, when I write on the board for the first time, and five or six students move to the front row, squinting -- not because my handwriting is small, because it isn't -- they can't see), without enough money to buy food, the last weeks of the month.
Food insecurity, this gets called, and it's increasing these days, like everything else.
...about 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of U.S. households [...] a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity" — not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle. Researchers blamed the increase in hunger on a lack of money and other resources.
Over on the Winger blogs, this gets dismissed -- if they didn't spend their money on plasma TVs, and bling, on malt liquor and smokes, on lottery tickets and cheap hamburgers, they'd have plenty of money for food. If they would just learn to live on rice and peas, like we did when we were poor, it's not that these people are poor, it's that they're wastrels. Let'm starve, it'll teach'm a lesson!
Any time anyone says shit like that, I know right off he's never actually been poor. Here's a clue, for anyone who needs a smack with a clue stick: being low on funds for a few weeks, or even a few months -- that's not poverty.
Friday, September 18, 2009
What's Wrong With Our Press?
It's on a leash, that's what.
Exhibit One: Glenn Beck. Way too many people in this country are starting to think this whackjob makes sense, and articles like the recent loony bit in Times explain why.
Exhibit One: Glenn Beck. Way too many people in this country are starting to think this whackjob makes sense, and articles like the recent loony bit in Times explain why.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Over Here
Ta-Nehisi Coates meditates on the Police -- specifically, the woman who called the police when she saw what she believed was two men breaking into Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s house.
He notes he would not have called the police under those circumstances, and goes on to muse on the circumstances under which he might call the police -- very few; over on Unfogged, they have a similar thread.
See, because for many of us in America, the police are not protectors, they are oppressors. It's what I was saying in the previous thread: they do not, in fact, protect "us." They protect them, those rich (white) folk up on the hill. (Yeah, I'm white, and I'm at least tentatively middle-class, but I'm on the edge of poverty, and I drive a crappy car and come from the trailer class, and frequently get pulled over for Driving While Poor.) You don't call for the police, in this class, and you aren't pleased to see them when they show up.
This became clear to me a year or so ago, when TOLP, who comes from a very different class, had her wallet stolen. When my wallet was stolen, about nine years ago, I shrugged it off -- well, okay, I cursed and muttered, and said bad words. But that's all I did. Then I went and got a new driver's license and shit. When the folks at the state asked why I said I had lost my wallet.
TOLP called the police. Then she pressed for an investigation. Then she followed up on the fucker, dogging the police and shit, going down to the cop shop of her own free will, and -- shit, she made me go to the cop shop, one of the scarier moments of our relationship. Who goes to visit the police when they ain't have to? Bint's obviously crazy.*
I cannot think of a single circumstance under which I would call the police -- well, maybe if I guy was breaking into my house with a chainsaw. Maybe. Probably even then I would just run out the front door.
What about you?
*Kidding, TOLP!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
More on Maddow & Torture
Here's another link to a segment last night on Rachel Maddow, with Col. Wilkerson, the fella who has been investigating torture over the past years. He's put together an impressive case (which the Right, predictably, dismisses as "fantasy," since, after all, facts or the use of evidence to create an argument have never interested them) that he explains succinctly in this segment, showing that Cheney and his crew tortured prisoners into giving the answers they wanted, to justify the war they were determined to have.
It's a vile story of a vile regime, and no post hoc claims of how they have kept America safe (which they did not -- they've very nearly destroyed this nation, in case no one has looked around lately) can change that truth.
Further, even if they had, which they did not, if you destroy what America is in some attempt to protect it -- which I deny utterly is what any of these men were doing -- what have you gained?
Saturday, April 04, 2009
High-Fructose Corn Syrup
Finally!
You've probably seem that commercial from the HFCS folk where the two mommies discuss corn-syrup and the stupid liberal one, who doesn't give her kids HFCS, has obviously done no research, and so gets stumped by the sensible one, who has educated herself, and knows that "in moderation" it's a safe, natural treat, yap yap yap?
Like anyone in America actually consumes HFCS in moderation these days, dude. (24% of most people's diets, that's what this guy says.)
Anyway, here's a science blog, Neurototopia looking at the question in detail. News is both good and bad.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Mmmm...tasty
I just like to look at this.
So much better than in 2004.
Sure, it's sad about Arkansas and Louisiana (my states), but I have resigned myself to living in Fucktown, USA, having lived there all my life, after all (driving around Pork Smith, we still see yard after yard with McCain*Palin signs, and big ole pickups with McCain/Palin signs, I kid you not, in their windshield -- yes, taking up half the front windshield --and letters to the editor still excoriate Obama as lie-bral): but how splendid to see the rest of the country coming to its feet.
Yay us!
Monday, September 15, 2008
Racist? Palin Racist?
How can Palin be racist, her supporters are claiming, when she married a guy who is half-Innuit?
I'm reminded of Sheriff Harry Lee, our guy in Jefferson Parish, who ordered his officers to arrest any black men who were seen on the streets of Kenner, Louisiana, on the obvious (to him) cause that no black man has any legitimate business walking the streets of that (mainly white) neighborhood. When he was called on the racism of this order, he said, "How can I be racist? I'm Chinese!"
There's one source, which you might have heard already, which says that Palin, having heard that Obama won the nomination, remarked, "So Sambo beat the bitch!" I've held off blogging about that one; but here's this one: Palin only has white folks on her staff (white folks she went to high school with, btw): when confronted with this?
While meeting with Black leaders concerning the absence of any African Americans on her staff, Gov. Palin responded that she doesn’t have to hire any Blacks and was not intending to hire any.
This makes me even more cranky than it might because I've been reading this book, Slavery By Another Name, which is utterly horrifying --Douglas Blackmon writes about what happened to the freed slaves and then black men in America after the Civil War, up to 1930s/1940s, which is, essentially, they were stolen from their communities, their jobs, their towns, convicted on invented charges (changing jobs without permissing, vagrancy, "loud talking") and then "leased" to mines, public works projects, U.S. Steel, along with various large landowners -- leased as in sold them as contract labor.
White-owned corporations, white landowners, white America, abetted by the white justice system, right up through the 1940s, profitted enormously off the stolen labor of black America: not black American criminals: black Americans that white Americans thieved into forced labor and then worked to death in a system as evil as anything the Nazis dreamed up (in the mines and camps of U.S. Steel and Tennessee Coal and Oil, as many as half the contract laborers died, according the meticulous records kept -- records, by the way, that record whippings given and feet and legs amputated due to the blood poisoning from the leg irons and various chain "punishments" inflicted on obdurated contract laborers.)
When I read this sort of thing, and this, where Brad Hicks talks about the real purpose of lynching (not to kill "uppity" black folks, but to terrorize blacks into selling their land to whites -- and yes, historical evidence exists to support this theory), and then I hear Palin and McSame and their crew, I don't have to hire any of them and I don't intend to, and when I look at this election, again? Again we're going to put these evil people in power?
Again, America?
I'm reminded of Sheriff Harry Lee, our guy in Jefferson Parish, who ordered his officers to arrest any black men who were seen on the streets of Kenner, Louisiana, on the obvious (to him) cause that no black man has any legitimate business walking the streets of that (mainly white) neighborhood. When he was called on the racism of this order, he said, "How can I be racist? I'm Chinese!"
There's one source, which you might have heard already, which says that Palin, having heard that Obama won the nomination, remarked, "So Sambo beat the bitch!" I've held off blogging about that one; but here's this one: Palin only has white folks on her staff (white folks she went to high school with, btw): when confronted with this?
While meeting with Black leaders concerning the absence of any African Americans on her staff, Gov. Palin responded that she doesn’t have to hire any Blacks and was not intending to hire any.
This makes me even more cranky than it might because I've been reading this book, Slavery By Another Name, which is utterly horrifying --Douglas Blackmon writes about what happened to the freed slaves and then black men in America after the Civil War, up to 1930s/1940s, which is, essentially, they were stolen from their communities, their jobs, their towns, convicted on invented charges (changing jobs without permissing, vagrancy, "loud talking") and then "leased" to mines, public works projects, U.S. Steel, along with various large landowners -- leased as in sold them as contract labor.
White-owned corporations, white landowners, white America, abetted by the white justice system, right up through the 1940s, profitted enormously off the stolen labor of black America: not black American criminals: black Americans that white Americans thieved into forced labor and then worked to death in a system as evil as anything the Nazis dreamed up (in the mines and camps of U.S. Steel and Tennessee Coal and Oil, as many as half the contract laborers died, according the meticulous records kept -- records, by the way, that record whippings given and feet and legs amputated due to the blood poisoning from the leg irons and various chain "punishments" inflicted on obdurated contract laborers.)
When I read this sort of thing, and this, where Brad Hicks talks about the real purpose of lynching (not to kill "uppity" black folks, but to terrorize blacks into selling their land to whites -- and yes, historical evidence exists to support this theory), and then I hear Palin and McSame and their crew, I don't have to hire any of them and I don't intend to, and when I look at this election, again? Again we're going to put these evil people in power?
Again, America?
Friday, August 15, 2008
Ha
Rottin' in Denmark links to this post, which is nifty, and wonders "how many anecdotes [like this] it will take to capsize the USS Complacency."
More than any blog/s can post, would be my guess.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Righteous American
Now here's my kinda guy!
Told he had to lower the flag to half-mast to honor Jesse Helms? He refused.
Do it, or get out, says his boss.
He got out.
"Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.
When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff."
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/helms/story/1135443.html
Told he had to lower the flag to half-mast to honor Jesse Helms? He refused.
Do it, or get out, says his boss.
He got out.
"Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.
When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff."
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/helms/story/1135443.html
Friday, June 27, 2008
Unequal America
This essay, "Unequal America," by Elizabeth Gudrais, published in the July-August 2008 Harvard Magazine, is -- yikes.
Well, you haven't been living in a cave over the past ten years, so you know about the growing income and standard-of-living disparity, which is where she starts; you know that despite this Americans seem to keep voting for representatives who pass laws that increase, rather than mend, that disparity; you know that most Americans, despite all evidence around them, still believe with all their wistful hearts, that we have the best system in the world, and are the best country in the world; you know some reason must exist why all this continues, when, good shit, why, why, why?
Gudrais's essay addresses all these questions. I can't start quoting, or I'd never stop -- oh, all right: here's one or two paragraphs:
An argument commonly made in inequality’s defense is that it serves to motivate. Here, Kawachi cites evidence from the sports world. A 1990 study of golfers found that they performed best in professional tournaments, where the spread in the size of the prize money is widest. Similarly, a study of professional auto racers found that performance improved as the spread in the size of the various prizes widened.
So inequality may act on the human psyche to elicit hard work and high achievement—but it also may make us more individualistic. In a study of baseball players, teams with wider pay dispersion performed more poorly—and so did individual players within those teams. “In a world in which each individual is looking out for themselves, players will tend to concentrate on improving their own performance to the exclusion of team goals, since their own performance is what matters for moving up the pay scale,” Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy (a former HSPH professor who passed away this year) wrote in The Health of Nations: Why Inequality Is Harmful to Your Health. “Concentrating on trying to hit more home runs or improving one’s own hitting average are not necessarily the tactics that lift team performance—as opposed to, say, practicing great defense.”
This gets at the ways inequality may affect the fabric of society. Perhaps motivated by inequality and the prospect of getting ahead, Americans work longer hours than their European counterparts—about 200 more hours per year, on average, than the British, and 400 more hours per year than the Swedes. Again, there are counter-examples (the Japanese work almost as much as Americans do, just 50 hours less a year), but in any case, time spent at work is time not spent with friends or family, and this has its own implications for health.
This reminds me of another bit of data I discovered, when I was research kibbutzim for the ethnographic essay I was having my 1203 class write -- I had read, long ago, Bettelheim's book on the kibbutzim, in which he had claimed no jet pilots or artists would ever come out of a kibbutz, because, you know, that way of rearing children, keeping them secure and safe, and letting their mothers as well as their fathers have a life, while it would make excellent committe members, would never create great individuals, blah blah blah. Well. You'll be pleased to learn Bettelheim was wrong, and that, in fact, %75 of the Israeli air force pilots come off the kibbutzim. Oddly, it seems, raising children without making them anxious and miserable creates good kids who can do well in life. Who would have thought?
As to why we keep getting politicians into office who keep voting for the policies that make the rich richer -- why would that be?
Previous research has shown that voter turnout is low, particularly at the low end of the income spectrum, in societies with high inequality. Again, this is counterintuitive: in unequal places, poor people unhappy with government policies might be expected to turn out en masse to vote, but instead they stay home. Campaign contributions may provide the missing link.
Candidates, naturally, target voters with money because they need funds for their campaigns. And since the poor gravitate toward parties that favor redistribution and the wealthy align themselves with parties that do not, campaign contributions end up benefiting primarily parties and candidates whose platforms do not include redistribution. By the time the election comes around, the only candidates left in the race are those who’ve shaped their platforms to maximize fundraising; poor voters, says Campante, have already been left out. In a study of campaign contributions in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he found that higher income inequality at the county level was associated with fewer people contributing to campaigns, but contributing a larger amount on average—so the haves participated, and the have-nots did not.
I'll stop quoting; the essay is long, and by picking out bits of it, I'm doing it a disservice, since she's arguing in more detail than I'm showing here. (Also, graphs!) The data about how our declining life expectancy is being driven by our increasing disparity in wealth is especially good; also the bit about how the descrease in funding for education is helping to increase that disparity -- well, the entire thing! It's all good! Read it! You must!
Well, you haven't been living in a cave over the past ten years, so you know about the growing income and standard-of-living disparity, which is where she starts; you know that despite this Americans seem to keep voting for representatives who pass laws that increase, rather than mend, that disparity; you know that most Americans, despite all evidence around them, still believe with all their wistful hearts, that we have the best system in the world, and are the best country in the world; you know some reason must exist why all this continues, when, good shit, why, why, why?
Gudrais's essay addresses all these questions. I can't start quoting, or I'd never stop -- oh, all right: here's one or two paragraphs:
An argument commonly made in inequality’s defense is that it serves to motivate. Here, Kawachi cites evidence from the sports world. A 1990 study of golfers found that they performed best in professional tournaments, where the spread in the size of the prize money is widest. Similarly, a study of professional auto racers found that performance improved as the spread in the size of the various prizes widened.
So inequality may act on the human psyche to elicit hard work and high achievement—but it also may make us more individualistic. In a study of baseball players, teams with wider pay dispersion performed more poorly—and so did individual players within those teams. “In a world in which each individual is looking out for themselves, players will tend to concentrate on improving their own performance to the exclusion of team goals, since their own performance is what matters for moving up the pay scale,” Kawachi and Bruce P. Kennedy (a former HSPH professor who passed away this year) wrote in The Health of Nations: Why Inequality Is Harmful to Your Health. “Concentrating on trying to hit more home runs or improving one’s own hitting average are not necessarily the tactics that lift team performance—as opposed to, say, practicing great defense.”
This gets at the ways inequality may affect the fabric of society. Perhaps motivated by inequality and the prospect of getting ahead, Americans work longer hours than their European counterparts—about 200 more hours per year, on average, than the British, and 400 more hours per year than the Swedes. Again, there are counter-examples (the Japanese work almost as much as Americans do, just 50 hours less a year), but in any case, time spent at work is time not spent with friends or family, and this has its own implications for health.
This reminds me of another bit of data I discovered, when I was research kibbutzim for the ethnographic essay I was having my 1203 class write -- I had read, long ago, Bettelheim's book on the kibbutzim, in which he had claimed no jet pilots or artists would ever come out of a kibbutz, because, you know, that way of rearing children, keeping them secure and safe, and letting their mothers as well as their fathers have a life, while it would make excellent committe members, would never create great individuals, blah blah blah. Well. You'll be pleased to learn Bettelheim was wrong, and that, in fact, %75 of the Israeli air force pilots come off the kibbutzim. Oddly, it seems, raising children without making them anxious and miserable creates good kids who can do well in life. Who would have thought?
As to why we keep getting politicians into office who keep voting for the policies that make the rich richer -- why would that be?
Previous research has shown that voter turnout is low, particularly at the low end of the income spectrum, in societies with high inequality. Again, this is counterintuitive: in unequal places, poor people unhappy with government policies might be expected to turn out en masse to vote, but instead they stay home. Campaign contributions may provide the missing link.
Candidates, naturally, target voters with money because they need funds for their campaigns. And since the poor gravitate toward parties that favor redistribution and the wealthy align themselves with parties that do not, campaign contributions end up benefiting primarily parties and candidates whose platforms do not include redistribution. By the time the election comes around, the only candidates left in the race are those who’ve shaped their platforms to maximize fundraising; poor voters, says Campante, have already been left out. In a study of campaign contributions in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he found that higher income inequality at the county level was associated with fewer people contributing to campaigns, but contributing a larger amount on average—so the haves participated, and the have-nots did not.
I'll stop quoting; the essay is long, and by picking out bits of it, I'm doing it a disservice, since she's arguing in more detail than I'm showing here. (Also, graphs!) The data about how our declining life expectancy is being driven by our increasing disparity in wealth is especially good; also the bit about how the descrease in funding for education is helping to increase that disparity -- well, the entire thing! It's all good! Read it! You must!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Miseducating American Drivers
This is not (exactly) more ranting on how the Fort Smith police force has been persecuting me lately; but it is in the same area.
John Staddon writes here about our bizarre method of policing traffic in America, and its inevitable bad outcomes.
Speed limits in the U.S. are perhaps a more severe safety hazard than stop signs. In many places, they change too frequently—sometimes every few hundred yards—once again training drivers to look for signs, not at the road. What’s more, many speed limits in the U.S. are set in arbitrary and irrational ways. An eight-lane interstate can have a limit of 50 to 70 mph or more. What makes the difference? A necessarily imperfect guess at probable traffic conditions. The road may sometimes be busy—so the limit is set low. But sometimes the road is not busy, and the safe speed is then much higher than the limit.
A particularly vexing aspect of the U.S. policy is that speed limits seem to be enforced more when speeding is safe. As a colleague once pointed out, “An empty highway on a sunny day? You’re dead meat!” A more systematic effort to train drivers to ignore road conditions can hardly be imagined. By training drivers to drive according to the signs rather than their judgment in great conditions, the American system also subtly encourages them to rely on the signs rather than judgment in poor conditions, when merely following the signs would be dangerous.
Some of what he says seems suspect to me; but other bits seem accurate. And, clearly, the American way of driving, and of regulating drivers, is just whack.
Here in Pork Smith, for instance, we no longer require driver's education for children; nor do we require cars to be inspected.
(This is not the only state I have lived in where this is the case, btw. The feeling seems to be if you want to drive about in a car with no brakes and no brake lights which is leaking antifreeze and has bald tires, why that's your bidness, in't it, and none of the gummits. Also, why shud the gummit be tellin you how to drive, slong as you kin pass the test?)
Anyway: then the arbitrators of driving justice, by which I mean the police, arrest folk for having their tags on wrong, or for having a crack in their windshield, but NOT for driving 95 in their SUVs or for tailgating in a thunderstorm, and what is the effect, I ask you? What does little Johnny learn?
Well, as Staddon points out, Johnny learns that Johnny should always drive as fast as the traffic sign says he can, or, in fact, fifteen miles over that limit, no matter what the weather conditions are at the time -- and, since the police do not ever stop him for tailgating, Johnny should tailgate if anyone in front of him is not going 15 miles over the limit in the driving rain or sleet -- Johnny learns it's okay to pass on a blind curve, since he doesn't get arrested for doing that -- Johnny's only education about driving is getting arrested, or the enforced traffic laws.
Until Johnny dies, of course.
And, as my students who write me essays about this very subject tell me, dying on the highway doesn't mean you got it wrong: it doesn't mean you were wrong to tailgate or drive too fast in the snow or rain: it just means Jesus wanted to call you home. It just means it was your time to go. (I remember the first student who explained this to me -- I remember sitting in the writing conference looking at her. After a moment, I said gently, So you have no control over your destiny? It's all in God's hands? She said, Of course it is! I said, And you don't wear your seatbelt, then, I guess. Or carry auto insurance? Or put kids in car seats? She sat staring back at me. Of course, as I realize now, the answer to all three of these was probably: No, I don't; I wouldn't if the law didn't make me, and I wouldn't if the law didn't make me. But she wasn't going to tell me that, was she?)
Given that this actually matters -- given the number of people who die on our highways, for no really good reason (why are we policing the highways in this particular way? Survival of the idiots?) -- and given how dangerous driving actually is, and given how little control we have over the idiots in the other vehicles, I'm frequently astounded by how little we think about this issue.
John Staddon writes here about our bizarre method of policing traffic in America, and its inevitable bad outcomes.
Speed limits in the U.S. are perhaps a more severe safety hazard than stop signs. In many places, they change too frequently—sometimes every few hundred yards—once again training drivers to look for signs, not at the road. What’s more, many speed limits in the U.S. are set in arbitrary and irrational ways. An eight-lane interstate can have a limit of 50 to 70 mph or more. What makes the difference? A necessarily imperfect guess at probable traffic conditions. The road may sometimes be busy—so the limit is set low. But sometimes the road is not busy, and the safe speed is then much higher than the limit.
A particularly vexing aspect of the U.S. policy is that speed limits seem to be enforced more when speeding is safe. As a colleague once pointed out, “An empty highway on a sunny day? You’re dead meat!” A more systematic effort to train drivers to ignore road conditions can hardly be imagined. By training drivers to drive according to the signs rather than their judgment in great conditions, the American system also subtly encourages them to rely on the signs rather than judgment in poor conditions, when merely following the signs would be dangerous.
Some of what he says seems suspect to me; but other bits seem accurate. And, clearly, the American way of driving, and of regulating drivers, is just whack.
Here in Pork Smith, for instance, we no longer require driver's education for children; nor do we require cars to be inspected.
(This is not the only state I have lived in where this is the case, btw. The feeling seems to be if you want to drive about in a car with no brakes and no brake lights which is leaking antifreeze and has bald tires, why that's your bidness, in't it, and none of the gummits. Also, why shud the gummit be tellin you how to drive, slong as you kin pass the test?)
Anyway: then the arbitrators of driving justice, by which I mean the police, arrest folk for having their tags on wrong, or for having a crack in their windshield, but NOT for driving 95 in their SUVs or for tailgating in a thunderstorm, and what is the effect, I ask you? What does little Johnny learn?
Well, as Staddon points out, Johnny learns that Johnny should always drive as fast as the traffic sign says he can, or, in fact, fifteen miles over that limit, no matter what the weather conditions are at the time -- and, since the police do not ever stop him for tailgating, Johnny should tailgate if anyone in front of him is not going 15 miles over the limit in the driving rain or sleet -- Johnny learns it's okay to pass on a blind curve, since he doesn't get arrested for doing that -- Johnny's only education about driving is getting arrested, or the enforced traffic laws.
Until Johnny dies, of course.
And, as my students who write me essays about this very subject tell me, dying on the highway doesn't mean you got it wrong: it doesn't mean you were wrong to tailgate or drive too fast in the snow or rain: it just means Jesus wanted to call you home. It just means it was your time to go. (I remember the first student who explained this to me -- I remember sitting in the writing conference looking at her. After a moment, I said gently, So you have no control over your destiny? It's all in God's hands? She said, Of course it is! I said, And you don't wear your seatbelt, then, I guess. Or carry auto insurance? Or put kids in car seats? She sat staring back at me. Of course, as I realize now, the answer to all three of these was probably: No, I don't; I wouldn't if the law didn't make me, and I wouldn't if the law didn't make me. But she wasn't going to tell me that, was she?)
Given that this actually matters -- given the number of people who die on our highways, for no really good reason (why are we policing the highways in this particular way? Survival of the idiots?) -- and given how dangerous driving actually is, and given how little control we have over the idiots in the other vehicles, I'm frequently astounded by how little we think about this issue.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Prison Planet
Or, Where our Money Goes
You might have seen this already, since it's around the 'sphere: it concerns a late study which shows that one American in a hundred today is in prison.
One in a hundred.
“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”
But of course, this is not actually the case:
"We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” [The State Senator from Texas] said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”
Why does this matter?
[T]the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
And that, of course, ignores the cost of human suffering: not only the human suffering of the prisoners. As the report notes, we imprison in a racist manner: 1 in 9 black men are in prison; 1 in 46 Hispanics are in prison. If nearly 1 in 10 black men are in prison, what happens to their families? What do they suffer? What do they learn, about America, about our culture, about our justice system, about their own chances in this country?
And they are right, of course.
We also imprison in a classicist manner -- that is, people from the lower classes end up in prison more often than rich folk do. What's that teaching Americans? (Nothing, probably. Probably I only wish it were.)
My main point: if we're spending money on prisons, we don't have money to spend on schools, on health care, on scholarships, on public transportation, on libraries, on alternative fuel sources.
On rehab, for fuck's sake.
You might have seen this already, since it's around the 'sphere: it concerns a late study which shows that one American in a hundred today is in prison.
One in a hundred.
“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”
But of course, this is not actually the case:
"We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” [The State Senator from Texas] said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”
Why does this matter?
[T]the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
And that, of course, ignores the cost of human suffering: not only the human suffering of the prisoners. As the report notes, we imprison in a racist manner: 1 in 9 black men are in prison; 1 in 46 Hispanics are in prison. If nearly 1 in 10 black men are in prison, what happens to their families? What do they suffer? What do they learn, about America, about our culture, about our justice system, about their own chances in this country?
And they are right, of course.
We also imprison in a classicist manner -- that is, people from the lower classes end up in prison more often than rich folk do. What's that teaching Americans? (Nothing, probably. Probably I only wish it were.)
My main point: if we're spending money on prisons, we don't have money to spend on schools, on health care, on scholarships, on public transportation, on libraries, on alternative fuel sources.
On rehab, for fuck's sake.
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