There comes a time in everyone's life when a previously unseen truth smacks you in the face. For me, it was 1963, after I saw the coverage of James Merridith at Ole Miss on the nightly news. Until I saw those scenes, I'd somehow walked through life in utter oblivion. I'd led a privileged life, and like far too many of us, I'd skipped along, completely unconcerned about what had been happening just beyond the tip my nose.
Kentucky was just as segregated as anywhere in the South, but it had no signage to say who could be where in my town. And so, when I was about seven and on a car trip from Kentucky to Florida, we stopped in a service station for gas and a restroom break. I saw a sign directing patrons to the facilities: "Colored."and "White Only." I begged to follow the "Colored" arrow because I thought it would be prettier. Mom yanked me back in the other direction. Spoiled little white girl that I was, I pitched a hiss, asking why I couldn't go to the one with colors. I got no other explanation at the time except for a smart swat on my bottom, but when we got back into the car, Mom said something like, "It's not right, but those are the rules." I accepted that.
After the trip, I returned to a life in a small Kentucky town that had one black couple. I wasn't even aware that they had children at the time. I never saw them. Everyone just went along and got along in our very white world. When I first read J. K. Rowling' s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I was struck with a parallel between muggles and the magic world and whites and blacks. Hagrid tells Harry Potter that the Muggles don't even know magic when they see it. I didn't know inequality and institutional racism when I saw it. The TV world looked like mine.
Time passed. My freshman year in college, I was thrilled to be asked to an "Old South" themed ball with males dressed in Rebel uniforms or white Southern gentleman attire. We girls wore hoop shirts and carried parasols. I was so unaware then, and now, I'm so ashamed. So, when I finally realized what was happening right in front of me, I've been trying to atone ever since. But I can't undo what has been done. Nor can any of us white people. Nevertheless, we have to do everything we can to deal with a problem that the Founding Fathers gave up on. We will never be what we could be unless we do.
What has been blinked and winked at or even ignored must be faced. Slavery was an institution, and that slave labor helped build a great nation. We cannot pretend that it did not happen. There comes a great reckoning to us all, and if it did not happen with the Civil War, when black men fought for us in every war, with the Civil Rights movement, after Charlottesville this past lweekend, you have to take a side now. The head of every branch of the military had to clarify the military's all-are-equal standard after the President of the United States said there were two sides to a protest of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis and those opposed to them. Being anti-KKK or anti-Nazi is an easy step to take. You cannot ho-hum on this. Pick a side.The children of the future will be watching. And judging.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Israel-Palestine Conundrum
On Wednesday, President Trump stood beside Bibi Netanyahu for a brief news conference, and it began and ended as a very cordial affair. Most will remember that Netanyahu and Obama had had a thorny relationship and most assumed that Trump's would more than likely be more amicable. But just as I was feeling comfortable, Mr. Trump glibly said that there would discussions about one state or two states and implied who knows? This was a bombshell for me. Am I overreacting? I do sometimes, but I've paid close attention to the Arab-Israeli conflicts since I began reading newspapers and watching the nightly news. Any of my World Powers or Global Issues will feel that they've heard most of this from me before, but stay with me.
Israel, as Zionists see it, is a Biblical land grant. But what was once Israel became Ten Tribes ending up after thousands of other incarnations as the Palestinian Mandate (with the United Kingdom in charge) after WW I carved up the holdings of the losing Ottoman Empire. It remained thus from 1922-1947. After WW II, the winners were forced to see what Hitler and the Nazis had done primarily to the Jews in what has come to be known as the Holocaust. There had been voices demanding a homeland for the Jews for decades, but the world was finally compelled to listen.
UN Resolution 242 did just that. The British held area called Palestine was divided in a bizarre way to create the nation of Israel. Palestine was the rest after the carve-up but not given nation status. Arab v. Israeli wars immediately followed, and Israel gained even more of the areas that had been ceded to Palestinians. Thus, Israel has been and remains a twice promised land: once in Genesis and once by the UN. Very importantly, people's lives were collateral damage.
I always reminded my students to think how they might have felt had new lines drawn in Congress given our county to Ohio since we in Vanceburg lived on the Ohio River. What if we had to give our farm to someone from Ohio? Where would we go? To learn from history, point of view is always vital.
The conflicts are ongoing and have been calmed but a few times. After the Israeli-Egyptian War, Egypt's Anwar Sadat went to the Israeli Knesset to talk with Menachem Begin in 1979. Wars on the Egyptian border ended, Begin and Sadat won Nobel Peace Prizes. Sadat was assassinated.
Under President Clinton, PLO leader Yasser Arafat (or terrorist depending on the time in history) and Yitzhak Rabin met in DC with the President to discuss options. More conflicts, Jewish settlements built on land claimed by Palestinians, an Israeli wall built with check points to separate the two areas, terror attacks.
The concept of a two state solution first arose in the UN in 1974, but most recently by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Many applauded this as the only common-sense approach to the war-torn area.
Just what are those two states? Israel--currently a nation state recognized by all but some Arab nations--and Palestine, giving statehood to the erstwhile Palestinian territory. It's clear why Palestine's leaders might desire this as they have little international standing as a territory. But why would Israel consider this? (Many moderate Israelis do.) A one state solution, folding the entire East and West Banks (of the Jordan River) into one nation, creates an Israel that is no longer a Jewish state. Palestinian Arabs outnumber Israeli Jews. Very few Israelis wish to see this.
The Israeli-Palestinian "Problem" continues. Diplomats with years of experience in and knowledge of this area have worked to unravel these many difficult and seemingly impossible-to-solve problems. And failed. Recently, President Trump suggested he'd send his son-in-law, a Jew, over to deal with it. Kushner's parents have known Netanyahu for over ten years, which could be useful, but Bibi is in a bit of difficulty in his own country. I do not disparage the capabilities of the President's son-in-law, Jared Kuschner. Yes, he's brilliant, but brilliant in real estate. While this situation does deal with real estate, it's a real estate problem that is millennia old. It involves an understanding of ancient history, Arab and Jewish culture, a knowledge of conflicts within these groups, an understanding of the area's effect on the entire area, and much more. This is hardly Let's Make a Deal. It is not our deal to make. The US can facilitate, encourage, and do what is asked, but peace in the Middle East depends upon careful thought, cool heads, and a willingness to realize that no one will get everything desired and everyone will have to give up something as well.
What should not happen is anyone speaking without being briefed. Shooting from the hip on this issue can easily cause bullets to fly in the Gaza and on the West Bank. All interested in peace must proceed with caution. Perhaps, as the Arab-Israeli War Era old soldiers' power passes to the next generation, there will be more hope. As for now, I flinch easily.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Power and Blood Status
From our very beginnings as a nation, we have had beliefs, policies, social conventions, and laws based on a theoretical color of blood. The slave-holding states fought to have slaves counted in the number of people in their states as it a boosted their number of representatives. A compromise settled this. Article I, section 2, clause 3 originally stated that "a state's number of representatives shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons...." Also included were slaves indentured for three years, "excluding Indians not taxed...." It goes on to say that "three fifths of all Other Persons" are also counted. The "all Other Persons" were slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment freed the slaves, and, theoretically made them free Persons. This increased the number of Reresentatives in former slave-holding states, but former slaves and white people were different kinds of free persons. As in Orwell's Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." In the South, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1968, Jim Crow Laws assured that people of color were far less equal.
In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the magic world's prejudices parallel those of our own world. There are characters like Dumbledore and the Weasley family who believe there is no difference among witches and wizards, whether muggle born, half-bloods, or pure-bloods. Slytherin House witches and wizards believe only pure-bloods should attend Hogwarts. The Malfoy family are virulent racists, and by the time we read The Deathly Hallows, the Ministry of Magic is rounding up muggle-born and exiling them from the community.
The pure-blood doctrine of the Death Eaters is no different from that of White Supremacists today. The rounding up of muggles alludes to Nazi Germany and makes clear that government enforcement of racial superiority ends badly. Racial epithets are meant to make "the other" a less-than. If a human is viewed as a person, a person of color or a black person should be acknowledged as a person. Those who stoop to using words of denigration make their targets unpersons. Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a mud-blood, and Ron is horrified. Mud-blood in Harry Potter World is the same as the N-word in ours.
Those who scream that the world has become too PC must think beyond that knee-jerk reaction. I taught grammar for nearly 30 years. My career began when we used he or she with everyone, when we used chairman for men and women. It was grammatically correct, and I thought it was overreacting when early feminists saw this usage as sexist. I did until a child's perception smacked me into reality. My daughter came home from elementary school in the 1980s wishing she could run as her room chairman for the Fall Festival. "Why don't you?" I asked. "Mom! It's chairman. Man! I'm a girl!" Words matter more than we know. A child who grows up being told that he or she is being diminished by name-calling grows up either angry or demoralized. Neither makes our world stronger or better. I read a tweet recently saying that racism and sexism are siblings. They are indeed. Both are efforts to make one group like pure-bloods--or at the very least half-bloods--the better group.
White better than black or brown? Males superior to females? Straights better than gays? In our country's history, blacks have been enslaved, women treated as chattel. We interned and took the possessions and property of American citizens who happened to be Japanese. Our great history includes Indian genocide, signs reading "No dogs or Irish allowed." Harry Potter teaches us to look at these attitudes and to decide where we stand. Where would the Sorting Hat put place you? Harry Potter sat on the stool in the Great Hall of Hogwarts and thought, "Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin." I hope the U.S. finds its way to "not Slytherin."
In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, the magic world's prejudices parallel those of our own world. There are characters like Dumbledore and the Weasley family who believe there is no difference among witches and wizards, whether muggle born, half-bloods, or pure-bloods. Slytherin House witches and wizards believe only pure-bloods should attend Hogwarts. The Malfoy family are virulent racists, and by the time we read The Deathly Hallows, the Ministry of Magic is rounding up muggle-born and exiling them from the community.
The pure-blood doctrine of the Death Eaters is no different from that of White Supremacists today. The rounding up of muggles alludes to Nazi Germany and makes clear that government enforcement of racial superiority ends badly. Racial epithets are meant to make "the other" a less-than. If a human is viewed as a person, a person of color or a black person should be acknowledged as a person. Those who stoop to using words of denigration make their targets unpersons. Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a mud-blood, and Ron is horrified. Mud-blood in Harry Potter World is the same as the N-word in ours.
Those who scream that the world has become too PC must think beyond that knee-jerk reaction. I taught grammar for nearly 30 years. My career began when we used he or she with everyone, when we used chairman for men and women. It was grammatically correct, and I thought it was overreacting when early feminists saw this usage as sexist. I did until a child's perception smacked me into reality. My daughter came home from elementary school in the 1980s wishing she could run as her room chairman for the Fall Festival. "Why don't you?" I asked. "Mom! It's chairman. Man! I'm a girl!" Words matter more than we know. A child who grows up being told that he or she is being diminished by name-calling grows up either angry or demoralized. Neither makes our world stronger or better. I read a tweet recently saying that racism and sexism are siblings. They are indeed. Both are efforts to make one group like pure-bloods--or at the very least half-bloods--the better group.
White better than black or brown? Males superior to females? Straights better than gays? In our country's history, blacks have been enslaved, women treated as chattel. We interned and took the possessions and property of American citizens who happened to be Japanese. Our great history includes Indian genocide, signs reading "No dogs or Irish allowed." Harry Potter teaches us to look at these attitudes and to decide where we stand. Where would the Sorting Hat put place you? Harry Potter sat on the stool in the Great Hall of Hogwarts and thought, "Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin." I hope the U.S. finds its way to "not Slytherin."
Learning Newspeak in 2017?
2017--Age of Information? Or Misinformation? When we live in an age in which we can read and hear only the information with which we agree, are we placing democracy in great peril by living in a self-imposed bubble, a community fortress of our own thoughts and prejudices? While this has been a danger since the end of the Fairness in Broadcasting dictate as well as 24/7 cable news, the danger is greater now because we have a president who believes in alternative facts and alternative realities. Our President and his team want to tell us that what is true in 2017. This should horrify you.
In George Orwell's 1984, he tried to warn us of the necessity of vigilance when fascism comes creeping. Newspeak in Oceania was a government-controlled language designed to eliminate individual thought. A vital aspect of Newspeak was Doublespeak--in use as I write--meant keeping two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time and believing both. For example, the 2017 Inaugural crowd was less than 1/2 the size of the one in 2009. We saw the photos, saw it at the time, but Sean Spicer said Trump's crowd was biggest in the history of time, and added Period at the end of this statement, so Doublespeak? We used to know that "one of these things is not like the other"; we are not to accept that any more?
Today, I could hardly believe what I heard. Kellyanne Conway said, with a straight face, the "White House and media are going to share joint custody of this nation for eight years. We ought to figure out how to co-parent." Do we all have to pay child support and agree upon who has whom for the holidays? I'm over seventy years old and have voted in every election since 1966. We citizens had better pay attention, or Big Brother will be jailing us all for Thought Crime, or as Trump prefers, sued for some reason, real or imagined.
Trump is like the king in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Someone on his team had better start telling him the truth. And soon. Freedom of Information in the government our Forefathers envisioned is an essential. Freedom of the press and freedom of petition (protest) are First Amendment guarantees. I understand we cannot compromise National Security, but we need information--funded by us tax payers, by the way--in order to make decisions about our daily lives. Is there lead in my water? Ecoli in my beef? Is the smog index too high for my asthmatic child to leave the house today? While we are worrying about whether Trump's hair is real or not, Executive Orders limiting the amount of information we can have are now in place as of yesterday. We now need to ask who is informing us? For what reason? And is it even true or just a "number" our President saw somewhere.
As of now, the Agricultural Research Services of Federal Department of Agriculture--their scientists and other employees in its main research division--cannot publicly share everything from the summaries of scientific papers, not in tweets or in newspapers or anything else.
Emily Atkin posted about the EPA: "No press releases will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media accounts which may become more centrally controlled." In addition, Trump has asked to see any scheduled speaking engagements among the staff, and "no new content can placed on any website." Have you not read 1984?
None of this may be as sinister as it sounds, but I need to know more. I am not encouraged when the Department of the Interior Twitter accounts were temporarily deactivated after a National Parks Service account was used to re-tweet the crowd-size comparisons. When I read that, I thought of the naked emperor being told how lovely his new robes were. Where is a Walter Cronkite when we need one?
And here I go all preachy-teachy. Being a responsible citizen takes work. It takes more than flag-waving and flag-pin wearing. You must be informed by more than the sites that preach to your choir. Democracy is a frail thing. It could easily disappear.
It does give me hope that Amazon reported soaring sales of 1984 after Kellyanne Conway used the term alternative facts.
In George Orwell's 1984, he tried to warn us of the necessity of vigilance when fascism comes creeping. Newspeak in Oceania was a government-controlled language designed to eliminate individual thought. A vital aspect of Newspeak was Doublespeak--in use as I write--meant keeping two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time and believing both. For example, the 2017 Inaugural crowd was less than 1/2 the size of the one in 2009. We saw the photos, saw it at the time, but Sean Spicer said Trump's crowd was biggest in the history of time, and added Period at the end of this statement, so Doublespeak? We used to know that "one of these things is not like the other"; we are not to accept that any more?
Today, I could hardly believe what I heard. Kellyanne Conway said, with a straight face, the "White House and media are going to share joint custody of this nation for eight years. We ought to figure out how to co-parent." Do we all have to pay child support and agree upon who has whom for the holidays? I'm over seventy years old and have voted in every election since 1966. We citizens had better pay attention, or Big Brother will be jailing us all for Thought Crime, or as Trump prefers, sued for some reason, real or imagined.
Trump is like the king in "The Emperor's New Clothes." Someone on his team had better start telling him the truth. And soon. Freedom of Information in the government our Forefathers envisioned is an essential. Freedom of the press and freedom of petition (protest) are First Amendment guarantees. I understand we cannot compromise National Security, but we need information--funded by us tax payers, by the way--in order to make decisions about our daily lives. Is there lead in my water? Ecoli in my beef? Is the smog index too high for my asthmatic child to leave the house today? While we are worrying about whether Trump's hair is real or not, Executive Orders limiting the amount of information we can have are now in place as of yesterday. We now need to ask who is informing us? For what reason? And is it even true or just a "number" our President saw somewhere.
As of now, the Agricultural Research Services of Federal Department of Agriculture--their scientists and other employees in its main research division--cannot publicly share everything from the summaries of scientific papers, not in tweets or in newspapers or anything else.
Emily Atkin posted about the EPA: "No press releases will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media accounts which may become more centrally controlled." In addition, Trump has asked to see any scheduled speaking engagements among the staff, and "no new content can placed on any website." Have you not read 1984?
- Media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
- Information will not be released until a Digital Strategist comes on board.
- No new content can be placed on any website.
- Information will be centrally controlled.
None of this may be as sinister as it sounds, but I need to know more. I am not encouraged when the Department of the Interior Twitter accounts were temporarily deactivated after a National Parks Service account was used to re-tweet the crowd-size comparisons. When I read that, I thought of the naked emperor being told how lovely his new robes were. Where is a Walter Cronkite when we need one?
And here I go all preachy-teachy. Being a responsible citizen takes work. It takes more than flag-waving and flag-pin wearing. You must be informed by more than the sites that preach to your choir. Democracy is a frail thing. It could easily disappear.
It does give me hope that Amazon reported soaring sales of 1984 after Kellyanne Conway used the term alternative facts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)