Romney in Israel: Palestinian Culture, Occupation, Racism and Providence

*This was going to be a much longer post and one with a slightly different emphasis but as often happens work and other events intervened and required me to abbreviate it greatly. Hopefully that will be a good thing as I am always seeking to write more concisely anyway.

So boring apologia aside you may have heard that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a bit of a gaffe recently when he made remarks that could be construed as insulting  by comparing the Israeli culture to that of the Palestinians and suggesting that not only was the Israeli culture superior but also that the Israelis were blessed by God and that these two things explained the difference in economic success between the two peoples. Needless to say, this did not go over very well with the Palestinians, who blasted the statements as ignorant and racist. 

Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the nearby Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

"As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel.**

"And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence."

Of course Palestinians are not a key source of funding for Romney's campaign so Romney had no problem doubling down on his statements in a National Review editorial. Picking a fight with people who have virtually no representation in the Western media on behalf on people who have immense representation in the Western media would not seem to be a particularly brave thing to do but then again Romney never claimed to be a profile in courage. I do think however that he and his advisers, including the neo-con Dan Senor, really are being honest about their understanding of the difference in economic output between Israel, or more precisely, Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians, whether they live within the 1967 Israeli borders or in the occupied West Bank and restricted Gaza Strip. This honesty is useful. But it's not restricted to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's something that we see time and time again whenever one group of people have conquered or subjugated another one.

For example, let's say you are taking a shortcut off the expressway from one suburb to another and temporarily wind up in Inner City USA. You're going to notice that the houses and stores (if they exist) are not as new or as clean as in your area. You're going to notice that the people are demographically much different. You may find it prudent to lock your doors and windows.
You may not see a lot of economic activity.
Or let's say that you visit an Indian reservation. You will probably find a number of people who are suffering from alcoholism or unreported sexual assaults or obesity and diabetes. Again, chances are you won't find a huge number of new clean supermarkets.
You could repeat the same scene in a Brazilian favela or a number of Indian cities and so forth and so on.

Now if you lack curiosity or interest in what's going on around you and you REALLY don't want to know that people that look like you might have had something to do with those situations, it would be much easier on your ego to state that those people just have an inferior culture. They have chosen to make bad decisions and that's why they're where they are. It's too bad but unless and until they decide to be more like me, chances are they'll be in the same spot. I'm no racist but why don't they just do blah, blah, blah.. and so on.

On the other hand if you are historically curious or even slightly open to the idea that people aren't all THAT different and few people WANT to be impoverished or poor you might do some research and find out that the black people in the inner city are generally descended from people who had to work for free for over 250 years and were non-citizens for another 100 years. They also had their cultures, languages and religions erased and replaced with an ideology that told them they were the lowest of the low and God didn't look like them or love them. It's only in the past 40-50 years that some of that has started to slowly and fitfully change.

You might do some research and learn that those people you see on the "reservation" had and have a vibrant culture but were defeated in battle, slaughtered en masse and virtually exterminated from the continent. The reservations are almost always located in undesirable places that the larger society doesn't want and are both beyond many local legal protections and often subject to dictates from the Federal government.

Or were you Romney, you might do some basic research and discover that those Palestinians once had the majority of what is today Israel but like the American Indians, have fallen victim to a militarily superior group of people, who having ethnically cleansed much of Israel from Palestinian presence, are stubbornly continuing a policy of occupation, colonization and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians have been under military occupation longer than I've been alive. One of the critical things about military occupation is that it's rather difficult to build an independent functioning economy. EVERYTHING that a business or entrepreneur would need to build or expand his business can be revoked in the twinkling of an eye by a bully with a gun. Think you'll expand your factory in the next lot? Sorry, the IDF just took that lot over for artillery practice. Considering opening an olive supply business? Too bad, the army and settlers decided to uproot your olive grove for a new road for Jewish settlers. Want to open a pizza delivery business? Well you can forget about 30 minutes or less delivery as there are roadblocks and delays all over your area and even if there weren't, again any soldier who's in a bad mood can arbitrarily decide to prevent you or your drivers from traveling the next 5 miles-for no reason other than she feels like it.

I don't deny that cultures differ nor do I deny that some individuals need a kick in their a$$. Many of us know the uncle or friend who always has his hand out for a loan but avoids job interviews like a vampire avoids sunlight, the sister-in-law who always has the latest cell phone and apps but can't seem to plan for her mortgage, or the ne'er-do-well nephew who has big get rich quick plans that require your financial underwriting. It's precisely because we know these individuals that as individuals we can feel comfortable in saying "Get a job" or "No I'm not giving you any money" or "What you really need to do is blah, blah, blah".

But to generalize to a whole group of people and claim that their problem is their culture seems a bit much. You have to look at the whole picture. That picture is going to include ugly things like racism, genocide, self-hatred, and OCCUPATION. We might even flip the script, as Martin Luther King once suggested, to do an intensified study on the dominant group to ask what is the problem with THEIR culture?

There are several countries with higher per capita GDP than Israel. Would Romney suggest that those countries have a superior culture?
Romney ignored the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its unceasing land theft because those ugly little facts might have a little more to do with Palestinian economic growth than God not loving them or their deficient culture. Of course the Palestinians could have a bad culture that inhibits growth. To be sure, at the very least we would need to run an experiment in which the Palestinians put the Israelis under military occupation for multiple decades, imprison thousands of Israelis without trial or charges, and take more and more land.  Maybe even under those conditions the Israelis would be more economically productive than the Palestinians are today. Only one way to find out!!!

** I just have to mention the horrible irony of Romney giving his speech at the King David Hotel. This was the scene of a horrible terrorist attack by members of the hardline Irgun Jewish group. It killed over 90 people and has never quite been forgiven by the British or repudiated by the Israelis. In fact some Irgun members later became Israeli political leaders. One man's terrorist really is another man's freedom fighter.

What are your thoughts?

Were Romney's statements bigoted?

Does culture impact a society's economic success? If so how much?

Chris Rock, Melissa Harris-Perry, Conservatives, Racism and Patriotism

You may have missed it but Chris Rock had a tweet on the Fourth of July that sent some easily and perpetually outraged conservatives off the deep end.

Happy white peoples Independence Day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.

Additionally Professor Melissa Harris-Perry had a piece about what the Fourth of July meant to her. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This also sent many of the same (mostly white) conservatives into fits of rage. Actually the points made by Chris Rock and Professor Melissa Harris-Perry weren't really all that different from the points made by our very own Janitor in his Independence Day post.

One thing which is important to remember is that the people who define themselves as Black and/or are defined by others as Black in the American context generally have ancestors that arrived on these shores before 1820 and in many cases as early as the 1700's or before. And even if they don't have those particular ancestors, as long as they LOOK like they do, they will be treated as if they do. So even if you're a recent Somalian or Malian immigrant who just got off the boat or plane, even if you lack certain cultural heritages shared by other Black Americans you're gonna get the same treatment.

Now I just want you to imagine something. Let's say that Black people had deliberately and despite everyone begging them not to do so, started the bloodiest and most destructive war this country had ever seen, one that divided families and pitted fathers against their sons, brothers against brothers. Let's say that Black people specifically and proudly rejected the United States government and said they wanted a nation based on the age old principles of Black supremacy, which should be obvious to anyone who is intelligent, by which they primarily meant other Black people. Now imagine that even after Black people badly lost this war, they never really admitted to themselves that they lost or that their cause was wrong. Instead they worked overtime to alter the historical record so that the cause of the war was not actually their ownership of a despised minority and their eagerness to split the nation, but instead the war was all a tragic misunderstanding caused by among other things big government racial egalitarians.  And let's say that over time this attitude seeped into the Black media, which did all it could to portray the fighters as noble though tragically outnumbered warriors. And finally let's stipulate that far from reaching some sort of understanding that the revolt was wrong, Black people put up statues and monuments to those who led the revolt, spoke fondly of the revolt and every chance they could waved revolt battle flags. Do you think that if Black people had done and were doing this, that they would be accepted as patriots by conservatives or shunned as single minded bigots with dangerous revanchist fantasies?

Well we know the answers to that don't we?  Conservatism has many strains but since the sixties or so, conservatism has increasingly worn a Southern racist face. Think about this. The same people who are attempting to chastise Chris Rock or Professor Perry as insufficiently patriotic or horribly ungrateful never ever ever have an unkind word to say about Confederate memorials, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Daughters of the Confederacy, Southern Partisan, Secession Memorial balls and parties, and any other host of mainstream organizations, events, literature, parties, books and other media designed to remember and celebrate the people who started the ugliest and bloodiest war in American history, primarily because they believed in white supremacy and wanted to ensure their right to hold slaves and expand slavery. No that's all ok.

But let a Black person point out that prior to 1865 most Black people were slaves and those that weren't were often at a very real risk of becoming a slave and suddenly that's the crime of the century. No, apparently Black people, alone among humans, should have a memory that eliminates all the bad things. In fact some conservatives, such as Michael Medved, think that slavery wasn't that bad and Black Americans are better off for it  while others, such as Mark Krikorian argue that Haiti would have been better off with more, not less, colonialism and slavery.

Again, let's try this argument out in some different historical contexts. The modern state of Israel would probably not have come to exist without Hitler. His genocide of six million Jews and weakening of the British Empire gave the Jewish groups in Palestine both moral suasion over the Western powers as well an opportunity to create facts on the ground. Does anyone in their right mind really think that Israelis should weigh the lives of their ancestors against their modern state and say, "Yes, too bad about them but what the heck it was worth it?". Uh no.

Similarly does anyone go to the Lakota Sioux and say "Why don't you stop talking about Wounded Knee. After all some of you people got casinos out of it?" Probably not.

Finally if you went to Germany and everywhere you looked you saw Nazi flags, Iron Crosses, streets and monuments named after prominent Nazis and local "Nazi Veterans Day celebrations" wouldn't you think that some Germans had some issues on which they needed help?

People remember. They remember the good and the bad. And it is pointless to try to make them do otherwise. And frankly it is somewhat insulting. Many people on this planet organize their lives on what some people consider to be completely mythical events that happened 2000-4000 years ago. So it is rather silly to suggest that people forget about things that happened just a mere 200-300 years ago or in some cases in living memory.  America is a great country. But it also has committed multiple sins. America is the freedom to live as you want AND it is also the rubbing of salt into a slave's wounds after whipping for purely sadistic reasons.

Jackson begins his narrative with several instances of harsh treatment he received and witnessed during his time as a slave, including the role of women in the horrors of slavery.  He says of the slave owner’s wife, “The sight which most delighted her eyes was to see a slave whipped,” and one of her daughters grew up to murder Jackson’s sister by having her whipped to death.

If we intend to tell the truth and be honest we have to remember both sides. We should remember for example that some Black people fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War. Why? Because the British offered freedom and some of the would be Americans did not. Were they bad people? No they weren't. They were doing what it took to secure their freedom.

We have got to stop whitewashing things. Tell the truth and let people make up their own minds. The controversy over statements by Professor Perry and Rock show that history is not really about happened. It's more about how we intend to shape the story of what happened for current day political reasons. It's often propaganda.
h/t Harvey's Global Politics

Thoughts?
Should black people just forget the uglier parts of history?
Do conservatives secretly feel guilty about the American history of slavery? After all it wasn't conservatives who were agitating for abolition.

Why do conservatives freak out anytime someone mentions the bad parts of American history?

Anti-Immigration Violence, Racism, Illegal Immigrants, Israel and the Ethnostate

Riot victim explains what happened

I've been really busy with other things over the past month so I am just now getting around to writing about this. But I as it turns out with it's still somewhat timely because of our recent discussions over illegal immigration, the President's decision to administratively implement portions of the Dream Act and this week's expected Supreme Court decision on Arizona's SB1070 law.

Let's say that a group of Caucasians ran violently amok against Third World illegal and legal immigrants, whom they blamed for increased crime, disease, unsustainable fertility and basic cultural and racial incompatibility. Imagine that their political and religious leaders endorsed the rioters' concerns in explicitly white supremacist language and promised new steps to detain and deport illegal immigrants while preventing legal immigrant entry on the basis of stopping a clear and present demographic danger. Allow that the leaders spoke of shooting illegal immigrants dead and driving out legal immigrants who were the wrong color or who had had the chutzpah to either compete for jobs with citizens, open businesses or date/marry citizens. Finally let's say that political leaders started building new detention centers just so any particularly dense illegal immigrants got the hint.


You'd probably think that Arizona had finally lost it. You might say that the National Guard needed to be sent into Arizona to protect visibly Hispanic people from violence. And if you shared the immigrants' ethnicity or were otherwise just a decent person upset about violence and racist language, you might be demanding that President Obama make it clear through word and deed that these sort of actions would not be tolerated.

Israeli citizens express desire for Africans to leave

What I described above above all happened but it was not in Arizona and did not involve Hispanics. It occurred in Israel and involved Africans. So this didn't get a lot of mainstream U.S. media attention. Surprising I know. I was intrigued by it though because it touched on some basic truths about humanity and history that I think we overlook at our peril.


The United States is unusual in being (theoretically anyway) a country in which race and ethnicity are delinked from citizenship. As long as you are born here you are a citizen. Period. Most Americans may still be Caucasian but anyone on the planet can become an American. There is no way that you can look at someone and automatically say he's not an American. This country was multiracial and even multicultural from the start. The American political journey has been to formally recognize these facts and deal with the hypocrisies, challenges or opportunities that flow from them. 


But many other countries simply were not created like that and certainly aren't crazy about diversity now. Although times are changing there remains a pretty good chance that you can visually discern Ugandans from Finns or Japanese from Scots. Some countries make a link between ancestry, culture, ethnicity and citizenship. Israel is one such country. If you are non-Jewish, there is a slightly less level of citizenship enjoyed, that is if you are allowed to become a citizen in the first place, which you probably won't be. Israel intends to remain a Jewish state. 


So the current situation in Israel vis a vis the immigrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa is pretty interesting because there is hypocrisy enough to go around for everyone. Obviously I don't and can't agree with the ugly white supremacist thinking revealed and reveled in by some Israelis. One woman legislator compared the Africans to cancer patients and then apologized ...to cancer patients. Seriously. Someone tried to burn down an apartment building inhabited by Eritreans. Netanyahu has said the Africans are a demographic threat. A rabbi who is the spiritual leader of Shas said that Africans are ruining the Jewish dream and need to go build their dream in their own countries.

"A society personifying a social time bomb of robbery, violence, sodomy as well as assimilation alongside the destruction of the institute of marriage and the proper family unit – such a society must be separate and distant, and the sooner the better. Listen up, dear and kind Sudanese people. In the United States, Martin Luther King's dream came true. Giuliani will tell you how he made it happen. Go forth and implement this in Sudan and Eritrea. We promise to help you, we'll even be delighted to help, as always."

LINK

Yishai, of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told the newspaper Maariv on Friday he saw the African arrivals, many of whom are Muslims or Christians, as a demographic threat."The infiltrators along with the Palestinians will quickly bring us to the end of the Zionist dream," Yishai said, adding that Israel had its own health and welfare issues. "Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn't belong to us, the white man," Yishai said in the interview with Maariv.

LINK

Abraham Alu, a 35-year-old refugee from what is now South Sudan, was on his way to the store last Wednesday night when an anti-African protest in south Tel Aviv turned violent. Jewish Israelis chased and beat African asylum seekers, broke the windows of a car full of African men, and smashed storefronts of African-owned stores in south Tel Aviv. Alu, who was headed out to buy food, almost ran into a mob. But police pointed to the group headed in his direction and said, “Run, they’ll murder you! Run!” Alu turned around and headed back to the tiny, one-room apartment he shares with 11 other South Sudanese men.

LINK

TJ, a 29-year-old migrant from Nigeria, watched the violent chaos from his rooftop having been chased and pelted with rocks when he attempted to leave his house."There were protesters everywhere smashing shop and car windows," he said. "A group of about 10 or 15 boys stopped one black kid cycling on his bike. They pulled him off and were punching and kicking him in his head. The police just stood and watched until it got really out of control." Other witnesses described a gang assaulting a mother carrying a young baby so violently that she was forced to drop her child. Others stopped shuttle buses to search for migrant workers among their passengers.'TJ' says he is among the few who has left his home following the violence: "Black people have been too afraid to leave their homes to go to work today. Racism in Tel Aviv is not only getting worse it's getting out of hand and the police are no help. We are terrified." 

These immigrants and refugees generally aren't welcomed in Arab North Africa either or the Middle East, often for the same reasons. The overthrow of Qaddafi released some of the same anti-black hatred. Israel hardly stands alone. Egypt doesn't want these people any more than Israel does. Some Israelis feel that because Israel was set up as a place of Jewish refuge then it must be one for other refugees, even if they look different or have different cultures. Some Israelis are saddened and disgusted by the vituperative racism shown by some of their countrymen and countrywomen. Others say, racism or no, that there is a point beyond which a group or nation cannot accept outsiders without losing that which made the nation worth having in the first place. There are roughly about 5.8 million Jews in Israel. They have no intention of allowing immigrants to reach the numbers or percentages that are seen in America or France or the UK. Israel was not the former colonial power of Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia or Eritrea and in this point of view really bears no responsibility for economic or political refugees from those countries. A new law allows a three year detention of illegal immigrants to Israel.

The really incredibly disgusting hypocritical thing though is if any political leader in Europe dared to say anything remotely negative about the presence of Jewish people within their historic homelands, some of the same thugs yelling "Throw the blacks out" in Tel Aviv would be the first people howling about anti-semitism in Europe. And God forbid if an European nation experienced a new anti-Jewish Kristallnacht type riot. I have no doubt that the US ambassador to the UN would be standing up to loudly condemn that country while Netanyahu adroitly reminded everyone that this is how the Holocaust got started. But that's life I guess. Hypocrisy is deeply woven within humans. Perhaps we all have a tendency to look out for our own first and say to hell with the other guy.


Both liberal and conservative strands are part of what make us human. To horribly generalize for a moment, often the liberal wants to accept and help others and often has an issue admitting that peoples or cultures are different or that there really is such a thing as "in-group" or "out-group". Liberals are at their best making appeals to universal and transcendent human values and not necessarily parochial national or ethnic ones. Some liberals can be rather suspicious of or hostile to solidarity appeals based solely on group membership, especially if the group is one you were born into or is not a "disadvantaged group". At the extremes of course well this can fall into an inability to recognize that your own culture or way of life is valid and worth defending.

African immigrants seeking food

But the conservative person has no problem accepting in-groups and out-groups. Often such identities track closely with how he sees the world. "Ours" and "Mine" are not automatically bad words to a conservative. The idea that this particular bunch of goodies or patch of land belongs to the people who live there and not to those "others" is self-evident to many people with this pov. Again, taken to the extremes this falls into hierarchical thinking, an inability to recognize yourself in others, xenophobia and open gleeful racism. There is a serious conflict between democracy and racial/ethnic/religious tribalism.


This is not just a black-white phenomenon or even a First World-Third World issue. There have been anti-Chinese riots in Zambia, anti-African riots in China (The Tiananmen Square uprising mutated from anti-African clashes), Muscovite Russians rioting against Caucasian Russians, Indian Hindus seeking to slaughter Indian Muslims, Black South Africans attacking illegal immigrant Black Zimbabweans and so on. US/THEM thinking is something that may be ugly and seemingly atavistic in humankind but it's certainly not going away anytime soon. The trick is to recognize it and channel it properly without giving into it completely, as seems to be happening in Israel. There is a middle ground which welcomes the legal newcomer but doesn't ask to remove the concept of a nation. Despite all the epithets hurled at Americans who are opposed to illegal immigration, I don't see the current American political structure welcoming or endorsing the open violence we see in Israel. I think part of this is chickens coming home to roost as some forms of political Zionism lend themselves or almost require the sort of ugly chauvinism and racism that we see expressed. Zionism is not, after all, completely congruent with the American political system.


What's your take?
1) Had you heard about this? Are you surprised?
2) Do countries have a right to expel illegal immigrants and/or people who have different cultures? Do countries have a right to seek to maintain a certain demographic balance?
3) Does Israel have any special duty to accept refugees?
4) Should President Obama censure Israel for its actions?
5) Is the nation state passe? Should everyone have open borders?

Naomi Schaefer Riley: Arrogance and Ignorance

I can outline but do not fully understand such scientific concepts as Schrodinger wave equation, general and special relativity, Olbers' paradox, Planck's law, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, study of fluid mechanics, Bernoulli equation, or several other ideas that are basic building blocks of modern physics and engineering. I've got the big picture on some of those ideas but definitely can't go into the nitty gritty details or the mathematical equations. Why? Well I took a few classes some decades ago and enjoy reading about them but I'm not a physicist or an engineer. So I'm not the man to speak with authority about any of those topics in either an applied or theoretical sense.

Imagine if I didn't let that little lack of knowledge or any basic credentials in physics stop me. Suppose I sauntered into a convention of physicists discussing string theory and smugly informed them that not only were their equations and calculations all wrong but also their entire field was balderdash, completely worthless. I declared the only reason they were involved in the field was because of a Eurocentric bias against non-Western modes of understanding the Universe. So to me, they were all, by definition, losers and racists with a special hatred of black people.


Let's say that, once challenged to share my credentials and experience in the field, provide some evidence of my claims, or even simply show that I had even read some of the sources which I was categorically dismissing, I arrogantly responded that I hadn't read any of their simple-minded twaddle and had not the slightest intention of doing so. If I were asked to leave it wouldn't be censorship. It would be an incident of experts involved in grown folks' discussion realizing that I was neither expert nor grown and had nothing of value to add.

Former Wall Street Journal writer Naomi Schaefer Riley did what I just described above, only being a conservative, she substituted black studies (history, sociology, everything) for physics. She was invited to give her opinion on the field by the Chronicle of Higher Education. When you're writing critically for something which is read by actual educators and scholars you need to come correct but Riley did not. You can read what she wrote here. Her essay shows that she has such incredible contempt for anything investigating the history, culture, or sociology of black people that she not only thinks such academic endeavors are not worth her time, she doesn't think they're worth anyone's time.  For example:

You’ll have to forgive the lateness but I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them....

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments. If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man

OK. By all means please read the entire piece yourself. Riley had more to say, much of it nonsensical in my view but make up your own mind. The biggest problem with what she wrote is that she freely admits she didn't even read the dissertations she was mocking. Because to her it's just not worth her time. In some aspects her know-nothing attitude is akin to what Dubois had to deal with at the turn of the century.

Now I do not believe that social sciences are quite as rigorous as the disciplines of physics or mathematics (personal bias) but I do believe that before you dismiss something you need to at the very least know something about it. That's true in every discipline, soft or hard science, music, sport, art, whatever. It's an academic and logical crime to jump to a conclusion without even evaluating the evidence. Clearly Riley was not willing to engage in fair criticism; her mind was already made up beforehand. So the Chronicle of Higher Education(CHE) decided maybe it would be for the best that she blogged and critiqued elsewhere. On cue, the usual suspects started screaming and crying about academic freedom and political correctness and censorship.

This all misses the point. Riley's puerile and viciously lazy condemnation of an entire academic body of knowledge is really quite breathtaking in what it reveals about the thinking of SOME right-wing, mostly white conservatives.

• There is nothing that black people have done, are doing or will do in America that is worthy of rigorous study.
• The only reason anyone would study black history, sociology, anthropology, etc is because they hate white people.
• Black studies are only of worth to the extent that they agree with a conservative ideology around race.
• Even if some black person somewhere did something worth studying, black studies departments lack the ability to produce such study.

That pretty much sums it up. Never mind that there are such esoteric fields as Judaic studies, seminars on Ottoman economics, scholarly books about music printing in Leipzig during the 30 Years War, or a myriad of other popular or obscure topics in which some number of people study, become expert, teach and obtain doctorates. Only the study of Black people , and especially the study of Black people by Black people seems to call forth such putrid bile by the right wing. 

Riley ignores the fact that there is of course no reason that you could not be both right-wing and an expert on Harlem Renaissance poets or Negro Baseball league economics. You could be damn near fascist and know more than any living soul about sharecropper political economy in the Mississippi Delta of the late thirties or musical sharing between 1920's Cuba, Jamaica and New Orleans. So you can make your own judgments on why Riley is so fearful and contemptuous of Black studies. You can also read what Black Ivy League scholars had to say about their field here.


QUESTIONS
1) Was the CHE right to part company with Mrs. Riley?
2) Do you think black studies is a worthwhile field of endeavor?
3) Is it fair to condemn something without examining it?
4) Can you explain special relativity in ways that I could get it?

Racism: Beauty and The Beast

It is occasionally comforting to imagine that the people of evil spirit all look evil or ugly. That way you can tell who they are ahead of time and avoid them. It is also comforting to imagine that the election of a black President meant that America was finally starting to move past its ugly history of white supremacy and racial hatred towards a "post-racial" era. However, both of those ideas are complete fairy tales. Racial hatreds persist. And it's not just the stereotypical obvious skinheads or toothless inbred Southerners driving pickup trucks who spew racial hatred of the other, especially black people. Nope this stuff is nationwide. It's found in high-class and low-class people. People of great beauty and people of astounding ugliness can agree on how much they hate blacks. People who are living paycheck to paycheck and people who can light Cuban cigars with hundred dollar bills can find camaraderie in their shared disdain for citizens of African descent.

I am talking of course of two recent incidents. One incident involved mathematician and conservative columnist John Derybshire. The UK born Derbyshire (who is a walking example of why I think the US should have a more restrictive immigration policy) has a long history of writing hateful pieces about Black people. But in a recent piece for Takimag, he outdid himself in a scornful rebuttal to the idea that Black parents have to caution their children how to behave around whites, particularly white police officers. You can go read it there if you like. Basically his "argument" is that most black people are stupid and violent. He also thinks blacks are lazy and primarily have jobs via affirmative action. He sums up by saying he warns his children to avoid black areas or events with large numbers of black people. This is a typical excerpt.

(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”
(12) There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.

There was actually some conservative push back. A conservative economist was actually one of the first people to call for The National Review to fire Derbyshire for his Takimag article. The National Review did "fire" Derbyshire. Derbyshire himself did not seem too bothered by this. He has self-identified as a racist since at least 2003. No one who has ever read a representative sampling of his work can honestly say they weren't aware that Derbyshire has a special dislike for Black people and NAMS (Non Asian Minorities-Derbyshire is married to a woman of East Asian descent and evidently makes exceptions for that group).

The second incident of note was that a Chicago area bartender named Jessica Harr, decided to share with the Facebook world how much she hated Black people. She called for expulsion of blacks, used racial slurs, talked about how ugly and dumb black people were and said she'd never hire any blacks. Of course when the s*** hit the fan this MENSA member made her page private but by then it was too late and her employer decided that it was probably best if Harr found a new place to earn money.

UPDATE: Proof owner Mike Bloem, who waited almost 24 hours to respond to the situation, had this to say about the incident: "Proof would like to confirm its belief in equality, fairness and tolerance to all our friends and partners. Sadly, on occasion, we are all exposed to ignorance and racism. We believe that by continuing to be true to our ideals and leading through our actions that each of us can be an agent for positive change." 

Yeah, whatever. The truth of the matter is that women who look like Harr usually don't have a problem getting hired in the nightclub/food service/hospitality industry. I am certain that in a short period of time she will have a new gig. And perhaps she will only share her racist rants in person instead of on Facebook. Problem solved, right?

Well, not really. The issue is that Derbyshire and Harr both appear to have lots of supporters, judging by the comment boards of some conservative websites. And as I stated Derbyshire's attitudes have been crystal clear for years. He didn't all of a sudden decide that he hated Black people. So I don't really understand why now The National Review decided that it could no longer publish his work. The other interesting thing to me is that Derbyshire's relative openness about his attitudes is almost of benefit to me. I know exactly where he stands. I know that he doesn't like me and won't give me a fair shot. But Harr is the sort of person who smiles in your face but goes home to rant about how she wants you expelled from the country. Unless I'm looking for it, I may miss it. I have worked with and for people like Harr in the past. There's always some seemingly non-racial reason they have for why they're moving forward and you're not. And it's always delivered with a smile. Such people are dangerous.

QUESTIONS
1) Do you think the US is more racist now than before the 2008 election or are people just dropping their masks?
2) Is it fair to fire someone for what they wrote on their Facebook page? How about private email?
3) Had you heard of Derbyshire before now? Is there anything he said that was true? Do you think his attitudes are common among conservatives?
4) Why did The National Review decide to sever ties with Derbyshire now?
5) Ever worked with open racists? 

Jason Whitlock Racially Insults Jeremy Lin

If you don't keep up with the NBA you might have missed this year's current feel good story. The Knicks, in a fit of desperation after injuries, absences and players that weren't quite working out, turned to the end of the bench and started playing Jeremy Lin, a journeyman guard that was about THIS close from being bounced from the league altogether.


However Lin so far has not only shown that he belongs in the NBA, he's shown that he's someone other teams need to plan for and worry about. The undrafted Harvard grad is playing with (and outplaying) people like Kobe Bryant. Time will tell if he can keep up this pace but right now he's handling his business.

Of course anytime someone is successful there will shortly be along someone who feels it's their duty to bring them back down to earth. Enter one Mr. Jason Whitlock, previously best known for making insulting comments about Serena Williams' looks, physique and work ethic.
Mr. Whitlock felt it necessary to go to twitter to drop this knowledge on the world immediately after Lin scored 38 points in a win over the Los Angeles Lakers.

Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight.

Oh that's a laugher that is. Yup. I wonder how many times Lin has heard that stereotype before.

This brings up a few things which really amaze me.

Unless he's been living under a rock, Whitlock just saw another black male celebrity journalist post something stupid on twitter and get chin checked hard. Now, regardless of whether you thought it was right or not that Roland Martin got the reaction he received, it seems that you would have taken notice and adjusted your public utterances accordingly. I mean really, Whitlock, how hard is this? Don't make insulting references to people's gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality in public and ESPECIALLY don't do it over twitter. Because unless you happen to be a new Facebook multi-millionaire/billionaire and thus just don't care, chances are you're putting your job at risk.

Of course Whitlock made a half-hearted apology :

I then gave in to another part of my personality — my immature, sophomoric, comedic nature. It's been with me since birth, a gift from my mother and honed as a child listening to my godmother's Richard Pryor albums. I still want to be a standup comedian.
The couple-inches-of-pain tweet overshadowed my sincere celebration of Lin’s performance and the irony that the stereotype applies to pot-bellied, overweight male sports writers, too. As the Asian American Journalist Association pointed out, I debased a feel-good sports moment. For that, I’m truly sorry.

SOURCE
Who knows what's in Whitlock's heart. But this should show us a few things.
Black people are not by definition more sensitive to other people's issues.
Black people have ingested stereotypes just like anyone else. The "good" ones we like. The "bad" ones we reject.
It is quite possible for some Black people to be threatened by non-black excellence in traditionally Black dominated sports the same some whites are in the reverse (remember Fuzzy Zoeller's comments about Tiger Woods??)  I think Whitlock should be fired, primarily for stupidity. But I'm interested to hear your take.

QUESTIONS
1) Should Whitlock be suspended or fired for his comments?
2) Are you impressed with his apology?
3) Are stereotypes ever ok to joke about in public?

Super Bowl Commercial: Republican Racism or Fair Criticism?

There is a honest way to criticize the role that China plays today in our world-its devotion to mercantilism, its general refusal to protect US intellectual property rights, its contribution to climate change, its currency manipulation, its reliance on cheap labor and repressive central government. However Michigan Republican senatorial candidate (and former congressman) Pete Hoekstra decided not to make any of those thoughtful arguments in his campaign ad attacking Michigan Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. No, Hoekstra went for the more visceral approach.

And so far Hoesktra is holding firm in defending the ad. Hoekstra is not exactly known for being union-friendly but Michigan is a state which has not had much benefit from "globalization". Whether it be foreign students in Michigan universities, foreign car sales threatening the health of the Big Three, or US companies packing up and moving their entire operation overseas, globalization and outsourcing are epithets around here. Still, Hoekstra HAD to know that such an ad would bring commentary and disgust, which may well be what he wanted. He is claiming that his detractors are the ones bringing race into the discussion, not him. I think this is kind of like repeating the children's ditty about Chinese and Coca-Cola and being surprised and offended that anyone is actually, well , offended. The other issue in the background is that once these sorts of feelings get aroused and exploited, who knows where they can end up.

King said it's too early in the campaign to know what kind of impact the ad  will have politically. It depends, she said, on whether he can neutralize the fallout and how the opposition uses it.
There was one immediate effect. Washtenaw County Commissioner Alicia Ping on Monday was so offended by the ad she donated money to Hoekstra opponent Clark Durant's campaign."For him not to know that this is unacceptable, either he doesn't care or he doesn't get it," said the Saline Republican, who is Chinese-American.

On Monday, Hoekstra stood by the $144,000 statewide ad buy, blaming the "left" for bringing up racial concerns to divert the conversation from the real issue he was pushing of Democratic incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow's spending record.
"We're stereotyping here the American left who's more than willing to spend, spend, spend," Hoekstra told a group of supportive voters in Birmingham on Monday morning. "This is why they're angry. They're not angry about stereotyping the Chinese. They don't care."
Hoekstra said he wanted to be "bold" and "daring" and he urged supporters to explain to friends that it's his opponent who is "politically incorrect."  "Debbie is spending your money, and your kids' and your grandkids' money. That's politically incorrect," he said. 

Nick De Leeuw, a Michigan GOP consultant, scolded Hoekstra's spot on Facebook: "Racism and xenophobia aren't any way to get things done." TV host Lou Dobbs said on Fox News that Hoekstra is "doing a terrific job" at defining results of public policy choices.

SOURCE

QUESTIONS
1) Do you find this offensive? If not, why?
2) Is China's economic relationship with the US a fair topic to discuss?
3) How would you re-work this ad if you were a consultant?

British woman spews hate

You may have heard about this. Old Guru brought it to our attention. A British woman, one Emma West, evidently lost it on a train and started ranting about the number of non-British people in Great Britain, including but not limited to Polish, Caribbeans and Africans. Basically like Eric Clapton and John Cleese before her, she noticed a change in the British demographic and weighed in against it.

West was arrested and charged with a racially aggravated public order offense. She was denied bail and remains in jail.  If convicted she could face anywhere from six months to two years behind bars.

Now from a US perspective  that sentence may seem outrageous for someone who is ultimately just speaking her mind, racist though it may be. But the UK is a different country with a different idea about which ideas may be publicly spoken. The British National Party, an ugly right-wing explicitly white separatist political party, is making noise of support for her.

The problem I see though is that whether we like it or not, people are not fungible. You can not just move millions of people from one culture to another and expect that people won't notice or occasionally have some issues. Most European countries are effectively tribal homelands of one kind or another. With a few exceptions (The Austro-Hungarian Empire being the most obvious) most European countries did not traditionally have a huge difference between country and ethnicity. To be a UK citizen (exceptions noted) was generally understood to mean you were of predominant Anglo-Celtic heritage. This sort of blood based citizenship was common across Europe (and elsewhere) and was essential to some cultures' embrace of the modern nation-state. The US is different.

With the creation of the European Union and increasing immigration from poorer European nations into richer ones as well as immigration from the Global South into the Global North, the meaning of the European nation state is being challenged and transformed. That may be to the best; it may not be. But West's rejection of it is not just a Western European trait.

• Black South Africans complain of (and riot over) illegal immigration by Black Zimbabweans. 
• The Uighur deeply resent the influx of Han Chinese into their areas.
• Russia isn't overly fond of movement of Central Asians or people from the Caucasus into Russia. 
• Dominicans have a history of trying to prevent Haitians from entering.
• The Libyans aren't crazy about the presence of Sub-Saharan Africans within their country.

In short, everyone on the planet has some in-group and out-group thinking. And I think that there are definite limits to how far this can be either suppressed or reworked.  Globalization may increasingly start to run up against those.

QUESTIONS
1) Is it permissible for citizens of one nation to want to keep their nation's current ethnic/cultural balance as is?

2) Should West have been arrested? What should her sentence be if any?

3) Have you ever run across vulgar public hate like this? If so what was your response?