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."
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
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.
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