Led by Democrats since the start of this year, Congress now has a "confidence" rating of 14 percent, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1973 and five points lower than Republicans scored last year.
The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.
--Alexander Cockburn
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Are Your Cell Phone and Laptop Bad for Your Health?
In the wee hours of July 14, a 45-year-old Australian named John Patterson climbed into a tank and drove it through the streets of Sydney, knocking down six cell-phone towers and an electrical substation along the way. Patterson, a former telecommunications worker, reportedly had mapped out the locations of the towers, which he claimed were harming his health.
In recent years, protesters in England and Northern Ireland have brought down cell towers by sawing, removing bolts, and pulling with tow trucks and ropes. In one such case, locals bought the structure and sold off pieces of it as souvenirs to help with funding of future protests. In attempts to fend off objections to towers in Germany, some churches have taken to disguising them as giant crucifixes.
Opposition to towers usually finds more socially acceptable outlets, and protests are being heard more often than ever in meetings of city councils, planning commissions, and other government bodies. This summer alone, citizen efforts to block cell towers have sprouted in, among a host of other places, including California, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, North Dakota and north of the border in Ontario and British Columbia. Transmitters are already banned from the roofs of schools in many districts.
For years, towers have been even less welcome in the United Kingdom, where this summer has seen disputes across the country.
Most opponents cite not only aesthetics but also concerns over potential health effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields generated by the towers. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they're starting to get backup from the scientific community.
It's not just cell phones they're worried about. The Tottenham area of London is considering the suspension of all wireless technology in its schools. Last year, Fred Gilbert, a respected scientist and president of Lakehead University in Ontario, banned wireless internet on his campus. And resident groups in San Francisco are currently battling Earthlink and Google over a proposed city-wide Wi-Fi system.
--Stan Cox
In recent years, protesters in England and Northern Ireland have brought down cell towers by sawing, removing bolts, and pulling with tow trucks and ropes. In one such case, locals bought the structure and sold off pieces of it as souvenirs to help with funding of future protests. In attempts to fend off objections to towers in Germany, some churches have taken to disguising them as giant crucifixes.
Opposition to towers usually finds more socially acceptable outlets, and protests are being heard more often than ever in meetings of city councils, planning commissions, and other government bodies. This summer alone, citizen efforts to block cell towers have sprouted in, among a host of other places, including California, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, North Dakota and north of the border in Ontario and British Columbia. Transmitters are already banned from the roofs of schools in many districts.
For years, towers have been even less welcome in the United Kingdom, where this summer has seen disputes across the country.
Most opponents cite not only aesthetics but also concerns over potential health effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields generated by the towers. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they're starting to get backup from the scientific community.
It's not just cell phones they're worried about. The Tottenham area of London is considering the suspension of all wireless technology in its schools. Last year, Fred Gilbert, a respected scientist and president of Lakehead University in Ontario, banned wireless internet on his campus. And resident groups in San Francisco are currently battling Earthlink and Google over a proposed city-wide Wi-Fi system.
--Stan Cox
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Pro-Life
Many Christians consider themselves “pro-life” (i.e. anti-abortion), but how many of us ever consider what being truly pro-life implies? To be wholly pro-life means to be willing to advocate for and minister to all vulnerable members of society—not just the unborn but also the women who fear bringing new life into the world; not just the physically and cognitively handicapped but also the ill and the elderly; and what about the poor, the neglected, the abused, and even those souls who are so despairing of existence that they desire to end it?
As Christians who worship the Creator God, we serve the ultimate Pro-Lifer, the Lover and Giver of life itself. We have an opportunity to show the world what being completely pro-life means: loving our neighbor as ourselves. Let’s encourage each other to see every member of society as our neighbor. And let’s remember that, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus didn’t answer the young lawyer’s question about who his neighbor was—instead, he turned the question around and essentially asked what kind of neighbor the young man himself was. Let us invite Christ to search our hearts, too, so that we may discover what kind of neighbor we are, and how we can become the kind that God wants us to be.
--Kristyn Komarnicki
As Christians who worship the Creator God, we serve the ultimate Pro-Lifer, the Lover and Giver of life itself. We have an opportunity to show the world what being completely pro-life means: loving our neighbor as ourselves. Let’s encourage each other to see every member of society as our neighbor. And let’s remember that, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus didn’t answer the young lawyer’s question about who his neighbor was—instead, he turned the question around and essentially asked what kind of neighbor the young man himself was. Let us invite Christ to search our hearts, too, so that we may discover what kind of neighbor we are, and how we can become the kind that God wants us to be.
--Kristyn Komarnicki
Media Coverage
Why has so much of the media coverage of the mine collapse focused on folksy Bob Murray, the stalwart and kindly mine owner, instead of mining mogul Robert Murray, whose company has 19 mines in five states which have incurred millions of dollar in fines for safety violations over the last 18 months, and who may have been at least partly responsible for decisions that led to the disaster?
--Arianna Huffington
--Arianna Huffington
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Emergent Church
[The "emergent church"] probably mean[s] something different to everyone you would ask, but from my perspective, the “emergent church” is an ongoing conversation about how new times call for new churches, and that the mortar-happy church of the last half of the 20th century is ill-poised to face the promises and perils of the future. In fact, attempting to define the “emergent church” betrays the essence of the movement because the emergent consciousness questions the notion that there is such a thing. Rather, there are only individual emerging churches that are missional in orientation that grow out of the indigenous soils in which they are planted. In other words, no two emerging churches are alike.
Pews are now antiques. Since the focus of emerging churches is on community, their worship space is flexible. Some have tables and chairs. Others have a more living room look and feel. But emerging churches are proving to be very surprising. For example, hymns are now back. And the church’s liturgy and Eucharist are being rediscovered in creative and compelling ways. A lot of emerging churches are very “smells and bells” in their worship. Whatever the diversity of spiritual practices, the key words for emerging churches are incarnational, missional, and relational.
--Len Sweet
Pews are now antiques. Since the focus of emerging churches is on community, their worship space is flexible. Some have tables and chairs. Others have a more living room look and feel. But emerging churches are proving to be very surprising. For example, hymns are now back. And the church’s liturgy and Eucharist are being rediscovered in creative and compelling ways. A lot of emerging churches are very “smells and bells” in their worship. Whatever the diversity of spiritual practices, the key words for emerging churches are incarnational, missional, and relational.
--Len Sweet
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Not About Vick
I'm not here to talk about Vick but, rather, about why certain of my readers so dearly want me to talk about him. I get these e-mails, you see. Anybody who's been a black columnist longer than 15 minutes knows the kind I'm talking about. They arrive reliably as the tides any time some African American gets in trouble. Inevitably, some Caucasian gentlemen will dare you to lay into this individual the way you ''always'' do white guys.
I'm not talking about the polite requests (''What's your take on this?''), but about the sneering demands. The "reasoning'' seems to be that black malefactors get a pass from black pundits who'll tear a white guy a creative new orifice when he misbehaves. So the black pundit must prove himself to the white guy by tearing some black embarrassment to humanity a hole exactly equal in size and shape. That reasoning is long on smugness, long on entitlement, long on everything except, you know, fact.
Frankly, I doubt Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Whitney Houston, Tim Hardaway, Isaiah Washington, New Orleans DA Eddie Jordan, Ray Nagin, the NAACP, Ice Cube, 50 Cent, Ludacris, the family of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other black folk who have been ripped and ridiculed in this space would agree that I give black folks a free ride. But again, we're not talking about facts here. For that matter, we're not talking about me, nor even about journalism.
No, what we're talking about is that some white people -- emphasize: some -- seem to feel they have a perfect right to demand, overtly and repeatedly, that a black professional prove himself to them. We're talking about the realization, as a black professional, that for them, you will forever be on probation, your mastery of your profession, your right to be there, constantly subject to demands for verification.
We're talking about the black lawyer second-guessed by the client who never spent a day in law school. About the black money manager whose clients won't accept her advice until it is seconded by her white partner. About the black cardiologist whose diagnoses are rejected by patients unwilling to accept them from a doctor of her gender and race.
And yes, I know some people would argue that this is only to be expected, that the very existence of affirmative action entitles white people to question the competence of black ones. That's a cop-out. I've said it before, I'll say it again: If affirmative action is defined as giving preferential treatment on the basis of gender or race, then no one in this country has received more than white men.
Still, though the rationalization is lame, it serves a purpose: It deflects us from thinking too hard how it must feel to learn that, even after years of education and apprenticeship, after the hard slog of working your way up and waiting your turn, some people will still find it problematic to accept you as a professional. Will still raise a hoop and regard you with an expectant stare.
--Leonard Pitts
I'm not talking about the polite requests (''What's your take on this?''), but about the sneering demands. The "reasoning'' seems to be that black malefactors get a pass from black pundits who'll tear a white guy a creative new orifice when he misbehaves. So the black pundit must prove himself to the white guy by tearing some black embarrassment to humanity a hole exactly equal in size and shape. That reasoning is long on smugness, long on entitlement, long on everything except, you know, fact.
Frankly, I doubt Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Whitney Houston, Tim Hardaway, Isaiah Washington, New Orleans DA Eddie Jordan, Ray Nagin, the NAACP, Ice Cube, 50 Cent, Ludacris, the family of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other black folk who have been ripped and ridiculed in this space would agree that I give black folks a free ride. But again, we're not talking about facts here. For that matter, we're not talking about me, nor even about journalism.
No, what we're talking about is that some white people -- emphasize: some -- seem to feel they have a perfect right to demand, overtly and repeatedly, that a black professional prove himself to them. We're talking about the realization, as a black professional, that for them, you will forever be on probation, your mastery of your profession, your right to be there, constantly subject to demands for verification.
We're talking about the black lawyer second-guessed by the client who never spent a day in law school. About the black money manager whose clients won't accept her advice until it is seconded by her white partner. About the black cardiologist whose diagnoses are rejected by patients unwilling to accept them from a doctor of her gender and race.
And yes, I know some people would argue that this is only to be expected, that the very existence of affirmative action entitles white people to question the competence of black ones. That's a cop-out. I've said it before, I'll say it again: If affirmative action is defined as giving preferential treatment on the basis of gender or race, then no one in this country has received more than white men.
Still, though the rationalization is lame, it serves a purpose: It deflects us from thinking too hard how it must feel to learn that, even after years of education and apprenticeship, after the hard slog of working your way up and waiting your turn, some people will still find it problematic to accept you as a professional. Will still raise a hoop and regard you with an expectant stare.
--Leonard Pitts
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Harry Potter
Here is the sum of my Harry Potter experience: I read half the first book and struggled to stay awake through the first movie. Yet somehow, without trying, without wanting to know, without visiting any Harry Potter websites, clicking any Harry Potter links or watching a single episode of Access Hollywood, I have learned that Harry Potter and theDeathly Hallows is the seventh book in the series, it was released at a minute past midnight on Friday, it's the last book in the series and it's expected to chronicle the deaths of two characters, one of whom may be Harry.
I couldn't even tell you where I learned all this, just that it's been pounded into my disinterested head to the point where I feel like I've always known it. Such is life in the era of viral knowledge.
My personal gag reflex was triggered when a certain newspaper, which we'll call ''The Miami Herald,'' published a piece, complete with quotes from worried mothers and the obligatory advice from talking heads, on how to help your children cope if Harry is killed.
Beg pardon, but I seem to recall that a previous generation of children saw Bambi's mother killed by the hunter without the need for grief counselors standing by.
And if you think the point is, what prissy wimps we have become, well, yes. But it's also this: Shouldn't you be able to safely peruse the health section without being ambushed by Harry Potter "news''?
--Leonard Pitts
I couldn't even tell you where I learned all this, just that it's been pounded into my disinterested head to the point where I feel like I've always known it. Such is life in the era of viral knowledge.
My personal gag reflex was triggered when a certain newspaper, which we'll call ''The Miami Herald,'' published a piece, complete with quotes from worried mothers and the obligatory advice from talking heads, on how to help your children cope if Harry is killed.
Beg pardon, but I seem to recall that a previous generation of children saw Bambi's mother killed by the hunter without the need for grief counselors standing by.
And if you think the point is, what prissy wimps we have become, well, yes. But it's also this: Shouldn't you be able to safely peruse the health section without being ambushed by Harry Potter "news''?
--Leonard Pitts
On Iraq
As we debate what to do in Iraq, here are two facts to bear in mind:
First, a poll this spring of Iraqis -- who know their country much better than we do -- shows that only 21 percent think that the U.S. troop presence improves security in Iraq, while 69 percent think it is making security worse.
Second, the average cost of posting a single U.S. soldier in Iraq has risen to $390,000 per year, according to a new study by the Congressional Research Service. This fiscal year alone, Iraq will cost us $135 billion, which amounts to a bit more than a quarter-million dollars per minute.
We simply can't want to be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there. That poll of Iraqis, conducted by the BBC and other news organizations, found that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, down from 32 percent in 2005.
If Iraqis were pleading with us to stay and quell the violence, maybe we would have a moral responsibility to stay. But when Iraqis are begging us to leave, and saying that we are making things worse, then it's remarkably presumptuous to overrule their wishes and stay indefinitely because, as President Bush termed it in his speech on Tuesday, ''it is necessary work.''
We can't afford universal health care at home -- but we can afford more than $10 billion a month so that American troops can be maimed in a country where they aren't wanted? If we take the total eventual cost of the Iraq war, that sum could be used to finance health care for all uninsured Americans for perhaps 30 years.
Or imagine if we invested just two weeks' worth of the Iraq spending to fight malaria, de-worm children around the globe and reduce maternal mortality. Those humanitarian projects would save vast numbers of lives and help restore America's standing in the world.
--Nicholas Kristof
First, a poll this spring of Iraqis -- who know their country much better than we do -- shows that only 21 percent think that the U.S. troop presence improves security in Iraq, while 69 percent think it is making security worse.
Second, the average cost of posting a single U.S. soldier in Iraq has risen to $390,000 per year, according to a new study by the Congressional Research Service. This fiscal year alone, Iraq will cost us $135 billion, which amounts to a bit more than a quarter-million dollars per minute.
We simply can't want to be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there. That poll of Iraqis, conducted by the BBC and other news organizations, found that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in Iraq, down from 32 percent in 2005.
If Iraqis were pleading with us to stay and quell the violence, maybe we would have a moral responsibility to stay. But when Iraqis are begging us to leave, and saying that we are making things worse, then it's remarkably presumptuous to overrule their wishes and stay indefinitely because, as President Bush termed it in his speech on Tuesday, ''it is necessary work.''
We can't afford universal health care at home -- but we can afford more than $10 billion a month so that American troops can be maimed in a country where they aren't wanted? If we take the total eventual cost of the Iraq war, that sum could be used to finance health care for all uninsured Americans for perhaps 30 years.
Or imagine if we invested just two weeks' worth of the Iraq spending to fight malaria, de-worm children around the globe and reduce maternal mortality. Those humanitarian projects would save vast numbers of lives and help restore America's standing in the world.
--Nicholas Kristof
The New Lone Rangers
by David Brooks
If you've been driving around listening to pop radio stations this spring and summer, you'll have noticed three songs that are pretty much unavoidable, and each of them is a long way from puppy love.
First, there's ''Before He Cheats,'' by Carrie Underwood. This is a song about a woman who catches her boyfriend in a bar fooling around with someone else. But she's not wounded or insecure. She's got nothing but contempt for the slobbering, cologne-wearing jerk. She's disgusted by the bleached blond girly-girl who's leading him on and who doesn't even know how to drink whiskey.
As she rages, she's out there in the parking lot rendering a little frontier justice -- slashing his tires, taking a baseball bat to his headlights, carving her name into his leather seats.
The second song is ''U + Ur Hand,'' by Pink. This is about a woman out for a night on the town, very decidedly without men. She's at the bar doing shots with her girlfriends and she's not in a Cole Porter frame of mind. She snarls at the pathetic guys who come up offering to buy her a drink, telling them: ''Keep your drink, just give me the money. It's just you and your hand tonight.''
The third song is ''Girlfriend'' by Avril Lavigne, which is done in the manner of an angry cheerleader chant, a sort of drill sergeant version of the '80s Toni Basil hit, ''Mickey.'' It's about a woman who tells a guy to make his loser girlfriend disappear so she can show him what good sex is really like. Or as she sneers: ''In a second, you'll be wrapped around my finger, cause I can ... do it better! She so stupid! What the hell were you thinking?''
If you put the songs together, you see they're about the same sort of character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago.
This character is hard-boiled, foul-mouthed, fedup, emotionally self-sufficient and unforgiving. She's like one of those battle-hardened combat vets, who's had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who no longer has time for romance or etiquette. She's disgusted by male idiots and contemptuous of the feminine flirts who cater to them. She's also, at least in some of the songs, about 16.
This character is obviously a product of the cold-eyed age of divorce and hookups. It's also a product of the free-floating anger that's part of the climate this decade. But as a fantasy ideal, it's also descended from the hard-boiled Clint Eastwood characters who tamed the Wild West and the hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart and Charles Bronson characters who tamed the naked city.
When Americans face something that's psychologically traumatic, they invent an autonomous Lone Ranger fantasy hero who can deal with it. The closing of the frontier brought us the hard-drinking cowboy loner. Urbanization brought us the hard-drinking detective loner.
Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don't get married until they're past 30. That's two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn't a transition anymore. It's a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.
Once, young people came a-calling as part of courtship. Then they had dating and going steady. But the rules of courtship have dissolved. They've been replaced by ambiguity and uncertainty. Cellphones, Facebook and text messages give people access to hundreds of ''friends.'' That only increases the fluidity, drama and anxiety.
The heroines of these songs handle this wide-open social frontier just as confidently and cynically as Bogart handled the urban frontier. These iPhone Lone Rangers are completely inner-directed; they don't care what you think. They know exactly what they want; they don't need anybody else.
Of course it's all a fantasy, as much as ''The Big Sleep'' or ''High Plains Drifter.'' Young people still need intimacy and belonging more than anything else. But the pose is the product of something real -- a response to this new stage of formless premarital life, and the anxieties it produces.
In America we have a little problem with self and society. We imagine we can overcome the anxieties of society by posing romantic lone wolves. The angry young women on the radio these days are not the first pop stars to romanticize independence for audiences desperate for companionship.
If you've been driving around listening to pop radio stations this spring and summer, you'll have noticed three songs that are pretty much unavoidable, and each of them is a long way from puppy love.
First, there's ''Before He Cheats,'' by Carrie Underwood. This is a song about a woman who catches her boyfriend in a bar fooling around with someone else. But she's not wounded or insecure. She's got nothing but contempt for the slobbering, cologne-wearing jerk. She's disgusted by the bleached blond girly-girl who's leading him on and who doesn't even know how to drink whiskey.
As she rages, she's out there in the parking lot rendering a little frontier justice -- slashing his tires, taking a baseball bat to his headlights, carving her name into his leather seats.
The second song is ''U + Ur Hand,'' by Pink. This is about a woman out for a night on the town, very decidedly without men. She's at the bar doing shots with her girlfriends and she's not in a Cole Porter frame of mind. She snarls at the pathetic guys who come up offering to buy her a drink, telling them: ''Keep your drink, just give me the money. It's just you and your hand tonight.''
The third song is ''Girlfriend'' by Avril Lavigne, which is done in the manner of an angry cheerleader chant, a sort of drill sergeant version of the '80s Toni Basil hit, ''Mickey.'' It's about a woman who tells a guy to make his loser girlfriend disappear so she can show him what good sex is really like. Or as she sneers: ''In a second, you'll be wrapped around my finger, cause I can ... do it better! She so stupid! What the hell were you thinking?''
If you put the songs together, you see they're about the same sort of character: a character who would have been socially unacceptable in a megahit pop song 10, let alone 30 years ago.
This character is hard-boiled, foul-mouthed, fedup, emotionally self-sufficient and unforgiving. She's like one of those battle-hardened combat vets, who's had the sentimentality beaten out of her and who no longer has time for romance or etiquette. She's disgusted by male idiots and contemptuous of the feminine flirts who cater to them. She's also, at least in some of the songs, about 16.
This character is obviously a product of the cold-eyed age of divorce and hookups. It's also a product of the free-floating anger that's part of the climate this decade. But as a fantasy ideal, it's also descended from the hard-boiled Clint Eastwood characters who tamed the Wild West and the hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart and Charles Bronson characters who tamed the naked city.
When Americans face something that's psychologically traumatic, they invent an autonomous Lone Ranger fantasy hero who can deal with it. The closing of the frontier brought us the hard-drinking cowboy loner. Urbanization brought us the hard-drinking detective loner.
Now young people face a social frontier of their own. They hit puberty around 13 and many don't get married until they're past 30. That's two decades of coupling, uncoupling, hooking up, relationships and shopping around. This period isn't a transition anymore. It's a sprawling life stage, and nobody knows the rules.
Once, young people came a-calling as part of courtship. Then they had dating and going steady. But the rules of courtship have dissolved. They've been replaced by ambiguity and uncertainty. Cellphones, Facebook and text messages give people access to hundreds of ''friends.'' That only increases the fluidity, drama and anxiety.
The heroines of these songs handle this wide-open social frontier just as confidently and cynically as Bogart handled the urban frontier. These iPhone Lone Rangers are completely inner-directed; they don't care what you think. They know exactly what they want; they don't need anybody else.
Of course it's all a fantasy, as much as ''The Big Sleep'' or ''High Plains Drifter.'' Young people still need intimacy and belonging more than anything else. But the pose is the product of something real -- a response to this new stage of formless premarital life, and the anxieties it produces.
In America we have a little problem with self and society. We imagine we can overcome the anxieties of society by posing romantic lone wolves. The angry young women on the radio these days are not the first pop stars to romanticize independence for audiences desperate for companionship.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Role Models Help Rescue Troubled Teens
by Leonard Pitts
"I sure hope Timothy doesn't come to school today.''
It was when that thought came to mind, says Frederica Wilson, surveying the faces at the conference table in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters, that she knew she had a problem. After all, she was a school principal, a black woman. And Timothy was a student, a black boy. But Timothy was also a terror and as she drove to school, she found herself hoping he wouldn't be there.
The thought shocked her. If she dreaded Timothy, she says, how must her Hispanic and white teachers have felt about him? And why was it every time she held a disciplinary conference, it was for a black boy? Why were they the ones who always seemed to be in trouble?
So she started meeting with them, ''trying to find out why they were so angry and why they were so disruptive and why they wanted to fight all the time.'' Then she started calling men in to help her.
Fourteen years and more than 15,000 boys later, Wilson is a Florida state senator and the mentoring effort she started has become the 5000 Role Models of Excellence. It operates in 91 Miami-area schools and claims better than 95 percent success at keeping its boys out of trouble with school officials and the law.
Full disclosure: Years ago, I spoke at a Role Models assembly. I think it's a fine example of What Works. As in, my series of columns profiling programs that improve the odds for black kids. Wilson and some of the Role Model men are joined at the conference table by graphic evidence that their program works: boys who became men under its guidance.
One of them is Kionne McGhee. Child of a single mother, he was suspended 47 times, labeled emotionally handicapped and learning disabled. Today he is an assistant state attorney. ''The problem was, I was acting out because I needed a black male or somebody that could relate to me,'' he says, as opposed to someone who understood him only "through theory.''
Police sergeant Thurman MacNeal is one of 3,000 men who have trained as Role Models. As a black cop whose interactions with black boys too often involve handcuffs, he says, it can be ''discouraging because so many of these young men have so much talent it's amazing. But because of other things that are going on with them and because those talents are not being developed . . .'' The thought trails away.
''We have to start somewhere,'' he says, "and this program has allowed us . . . to make a difference.''
The program is funded by the school system and by private and corporate sponsors. Its components are many: workshops; scholarships; a basketball tournament; peer, group and one-on-one mentoring; and field trips, including to those opposite poles of black male potential: colleges and penitentiaries. There is a Role Model pledge, a Role Model hymn, custom-made Role Model athletic shoes and even a Role Model tie. It bears the program's logo: large hands touching small ones. Each boy wears one.
To be surrounded by black men who are productive members of society, says Wilson, allows those boys to envision themselves becoming the same. "I believe children who have a vision of themselves in the future have hope. And without a vision of yourself in the future, you don't value your life and consequently, you don't value the lives of others.''
It works, says 20-year-old Joseph Dubery, because "it's not a pamphlet saying, 'Don't do drugs.' It's different levels you have to earn. You earn your tie, you earn your shirt, you earn the right to say that pledge, you earn the right to sing that hymn. It's constant achievement, constant mentorship, constantly people watching out for you.''
Dubery, a med student, should know. He used to be a Role Model boy
"I sure hope Timothy doesn't come to school today.''
It was when that thought came to mind, says Frederica Wilson, surveying the faces at the conference table in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters, that she knew she had a problem. After all, she was a school principal, a black woman. And Timothy was a student, a black boy. But Timothy was also a terror and as she drove to school, she found herself hoping he wouldn't be there.
The thought shocked her. If she dreaded Timothy, she says, how must her Hispanic and white teachers have felt about him? And why was it every time she held a disciplinary conference, it was for a black boy? Why were they the ones who always seemed to be in trouble?
So she started meeting with them, ''trying to find out why they were so angry and why they were so disruptive and why they wanted to fight all the time.'' Then she started calling men in to help her.
Fourteen years and more than 15,000 boys later, Wilson is a Florida state senator and the mentoring effort she started has become the 5000 Role Models of Excellence. It operates in 91 Miami-area schools and claims better than 95 percent success at keeping its boys out of trouble with school officials and the law.
Full disclosure: Years ago, I spoke at a Role Models assembly. I think it's a fine example of What Works. As in, my series of columns profiling programs that improve the odds for black kids. Wilson and some of the Role Model men are joined at the conference table by graphic evidence that their program works: boys who became men under its guidance.
One of them is Kionne McGhee. Child of a single mother, he was suspended 47 times, labeled emotionally handicapped and learning disabled. Today he is an assistant state attorney. ''The problem was, I was acting out because I needed a black male or somebody that could relate to me,'' he says, as opposed to someone who understood him only "through theory.''
Police sergeant Thurman MacNeal is one of 3,000 men who have trained as Role Models. As a black cop whose interactions with black boys too often involve handcuffs, he says, it can be ''discouraging because so many of these young men have so much talent it's amazing. But because of other things that are going on with them and because those talents are not being developed . . .'' The thought trails away.
''We have to start somewhere,'' he says, "and this program has allowed us . . . to make a difference.''
The program is funded by the school system and by private and corporate sponsors. Its components are many: workshops; scholarships; a basketball tournament; peer, group and one-on-one mentoring; and field trips, including to those opposite poles of black male potential: colleges and penitentiaries. There is a Role Model pledge, a Role Model hymn, custom-made Role Model athletic shoes and even a Role Model tie. It bears the program's logo: large hands touching small ones. Each boy wears one.
To be surrounded by black men who are productive members of society, says Wilson, allows those boys to envision themselves becoming the same. "I believe children who have a vision of themselves in the future have hope. And without a vision of yourself in the future, you don't value your life and consequently, you don't value the lives of others.''
It works, says 20-year-old Joseph Dubery, because "it's not a pamphlet saying, 'Don't do drugs.' It's different levels you have to earn. You earn your tie, you earn your shirt, you earn the right to say that pledge, you earn the right to sing that hymn. It's constant achievement, constant mentorship, constantly people watching out for you.''
Dubery, a med student, should know. He used to be a Role Model boy
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Surpassing Superficiality
Norman Borlaug's success in feeding the world testifies to the difference a single person can make. But the obscurity of a man of such surpassing accomplishment is a reminder of our culture's surpassing superficiality. Reading Walter Isaacson's terrific biography of Albert Einstein, I was struck by how famous Einstein was, long before his role in the atom bomb. Great scientists and humanitarians were once heroes and cover boys. No more. For Borlaug, still vital at 93, to win more notice, he would have to make his next trip to Africa in the company of Angelina Jolie.
The consequences of obscuring complex issues like agriculture are serious. Take the huge farm bill now nearing passage, a subject Borlaug knows a thing or two about. Because it seems boring and technical and unrelated to our busy urban lives, we aren't focused on how it relates directly to the environment, immigration, global poverty and the budget deficit, not to mention the highly subsidized high-fructose corn syrup we ingest every day. We can blame the mindless media for failing to keep us better informed about how $95 billion a year is hijacked by a few powerful corporate interests. But we can also blame ourselves. It's all there on the Internet (or in books like Daniel Imhoff's breezy "Food Fight"), if we decide to get interested. But will we? Sometimes it seems the more we've got at our fingertips, the less that sticks in our minds.
--Jonathan Alter
The consequences of obscuring complex issues like agriculture are serious. Take the huge farm bill now nearing passage, a subject Borlaug knows a thing or two about. Because it seems boring and technical and unrelated to our busy urban lives, we aren't focused on how it relates directly to the environment, immigration, global poverty and the budget deficit, not to mention the highly subsidized high-fructose corn syrup we ingest every day. We can blame the mindless media for failing to keep us better informed about how $95 billion a year is hijacked by a few powerful corporate interests. But we can also blame ourselves. It's all there on the Internet (or in books like Daniel Imhoff's breezy "Food Fight"), if we decide to get interested. But will we? Sometimes it seems the more we've got at our fingertips, the less that sticks in our minds.
--Jonathan Alter
Yes, We Can All Be Insured
Prepare to be terrorized, shocked, scared out of your wits. No, not by jihadists or Dementors (you do read "Harry Potter," right?), but by the evil threat of ... universal health insurance! The more the presidential candidates talk it up, the wilder the warnings against it. Cover everyone? Wreck America? Do you know what care would cost?
But the public knows the American health-care system is breaking up, no matter how much its backers cheer. For starters, there's the 46 million uninsured (projected to rise to 56 million in five years). There's the shock of the underinsured when they learn that their policies exclude a costly procedure they need—forcing them to run up an unpayable bill, beg for charity care or go without. And think of the millions who plan their lives around health insurance—where to work, whether to start a business, when to retire, even whom to marry (there are "benefits" marriages, just as there are "green card" marriages). It shocks the conscience that those who profit from this mess tell us to suck it up.
I do agree that we can't afford to cover everyone under the crazy health-care system we have now. We can't even afford all the people we're covering already, which is why we keep booting them out. But we have an excellent template for universal care right under our noses: good old American Medicare. When you think of reform, think "Medicare for all."
--Jane Bryant Quinn
But the public knows the American health-care system is breaking up, no matter how much its backers cheer. For starters, there's the 46 million uninsured (projected to rise to 56 million in five years). There's the shock of the underinsured when they learn that their policies exclude a costly procedure they need—forcing them to run up an unpayable bill, beg for charity care or go without. And think of the millions who plan their lives around health insurance—where to work, whether to start a business, when to retire, even whom to marry (there are "benefits" marriages, just as there are "green card" marriages). It shocks the conscience that those who profit from this mess tell us to suck it up.
I do agree that we can't afford to cover everyone under the crazy health-care system we have now. We can't even afford all the people we're covering already, which is why we keep booting them out. But we have an excellent template for universal care right under our noses: good old American Medicare. When you think of reform, think "Medicare for all."
--Jane Bryant Quinn
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Sad Fate of the Comma
I have always liked commas, but I seem to be in a shrinking minority. The comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. In text messages and e-mails, commas appear infrequently, and then often by accident (someone hits the wrong key). Even on the printed page, commas are dwindling. Many standard uses from my childhood (after, for example, an introductory prepositional phrase) have become optional or, worse, have been ditched.
If all this involved only grammar, I might let it lie. But the comma's sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can't-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes pause. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don't have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma's fading popularity is also social commentary.
It is true that Americans have always been in a hurry. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville has a famous passage noting the "feverish ardor" with which Americans pursue material gains and private pleasures. What's distinctive about our era, I think, is that new technologies and astonishing prosperity give us the chance to slacken the pace. Perish the thought. In some ways, it seems, we Americans have actually become more frantic.
--Robert Samuelson
If all this involved only grammar, I might let it lie. But the comma's sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can't-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes pause. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don't have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma's fading popularity is also social commentary.
It is true that Americans have always been in a hurry. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville has a famous passage noting the "feverish ardor" with which Americans pursue material gains and private pleasures. What's distinctive about our era, I think, is that new technologies and astonishing prosperity give us the chance to slacken the pace. Perish the thought. In some ways, it seems, we Americans have actually become more frantic.
--Robert Samuelson
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
A Very Inconvenient Truth
by Paul Watson
The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.
The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc. in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.
We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world's sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world's seals.
So why is it that all the world's large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry? Why did Al Gore's film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?
The Greenpeace ships serve meat and fish to their crews everyday. The World Wildlife Fund does not say a word about the threat that meat eating poses for the survival of wildlife, the habitat destroyed, the wild competitors for land eliminated, or the predators destroyed to save their precious livestock.
When I was a Sierra Club director for three years, everyone looked amused when I brought up the issue of vegetarianism. At each of our Board meeting dinners, the Directors were served meat and only after much prodding and complaining did the couple of vegetarian directors manage to get a vegetarian option. At our meeting in Montana we were served Buffalo and antelope, lobsters in Boston, crabs in Charleston, steak in Albuquerque etc. But what else can we expect from a "conservation" group that endorses trophy hunting.
As far as I know and I may be wrong, but my organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is the only conservation organization in the world that endorses and practises vegetarianism. My ships do not serve meat or fish ever, nor do we serve dairy products. We've had a strictly vegan menu for years and no one has died of scurvy or malnutrition.
The price we pay for this is to be accused by other conservation organizations of being animal rights. Like it's a bad word. They say it with the same disdain that Americans used to utter the word communist in the Fifties.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not an animal rights organization. We are exclusively involved in interventions against illegal activities that threaten and exploit marine wildlife and habitat. We are involved in ocean wildlife conservation activities.
Yet because we operate our ships as vegan vessels, other groups, and now the media dismiss us as an animal rights organization.
Now first of all I don't see being accused of as an animal rights organization to be an insult. PETA was co-founded by one of my crew-members and many of my volunteers come from the animal rights movement. But it is not accurate to refer to Sea Shepherd as animal rights when our organization pushes a strict conservation enforcement policy.
And secondly we do not promote veganism on our ships because of animal rights. We promote veganism as a means of practising what we preach, which is ocean conservation.
There is not enough fish in the world's oceans to feed 6.6 billion human beings and another 10 billion domestic animals. That is why all the world's commercial fisheries are collapsing. That is why whales, seals, dolphins and seabirds are starving. The sand eel for example, the primary source of food for the comical and beautiful puffin is being wiped out by Danish fishermen solely to provide fish meal to Danish factory farmed chickens.
This is a solid conservation connection between eating meat and the destruction of life in our oceans.
In a world fast losing resources of fresh water, it is sheer lunacy to have hundreds of millions of cows consuming over 1,000 gallons of water for every pound of beef produced.
And the pig farms in North Carolina produce so much waste that it has contaminated the entire ground water reserves of the entire state. North Carolinians drink pig shit with their water but its okay they say, they just neutralize it with chemicals like chlorine.
Most people don't want to see where their meat comes from. They also don't want to know what the impact of their meat has on the ecology. They would rather just deny the whole thing and pretend that meat is something that comes in packages from the store.
But because there is this underlying guilt always present, it manifests itself as anger and ridicule towards people who live the
most environmentally positive life styles on the planet -- the vegans and the vegetarians.
This is demonstrated through constant marginalization especially in the media. Any organization, like Sea Shepherd for example, that points out the ecological contradictions of eating meat is immediately dismissed as some wacko animal rights organization.
I did not set the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society up as an animal rights organization and we have never promoted animal rights in the organization. What we have promoted and what we do is oceanic wildlife and habitat conservation work.
And the truth is that you can't practise solid and constructive conservation work without promoting veganism and/or vegetarianism as something that promotes the conservation of resources.
A few years ago I attended a dinner meeting of the American Oceans Campaign hosted by Ted Danson. He opened the dinner by saying that the choice he had to make was between fish and chicken for the dinner, and what was the point of saving fish if you can't eat them?
Guest speaker, Oceanographer Sylvia Earle put Ted in his place by saying she did not think that he was being very funny. She said that she considered fish to be her friends and she did not believe in eating her friends. So neither Sylvia nor I ate dinner that night.
I met Sylvia again at another meeting, this time of Conservation International held at some ritzy resort in the Dominican Republic. Harrison Ford was there and the buzz was what could be done to save the oceans. I was invited as an advisor. I sat on a barstool in an open beachfront dining plaza as the conservationists approached tables literally bending from the weight of fish and exotic seafood including caviar. I looked at Sylvia Earle and she just shook her head and rolled her eyes.
The problem is that people like Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, or the heads of Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and many other big groups just refuse to accept that their eating habits may be just as much a part of the problem as all those things they are trying to oppose.
I remember one Greenpeacer defending his meat eating by saying that he was a carnivore and that predators have their place and he was proud to be one.
Now the word predator in relationship to human beings has a rather scary connotation having nothing to do with eating habits, but for any human being to describe themselves as a carnivore is just plain ridiculous.
Humans are not and have never been carnivores. A lion is a carnivore as is a wolf, as is a tiger, or a shark. Carnivores eat live animals. They stalk them, they run them down, they pounce, they kill, and they eat, blood dripping, meat at body temperature. Nature, brutal red in tooth and claw.
I've never met a human that can do that. Yes we found ways to run down animals and kill them. In fact we've come to be rather efficient at the killing part. But we can't eat the prey until we cut it up and cook it and that usually involves some time between kill and eating. It could be an hour or it could be years.
You see our meat eating habits are more closely related to the vulture, the jackal or other carrion eaters. This means that we can't be described as carnivores. We are better described as necrovores or eaters of rotting flesh.
Consider that some of the beef that people eat has been dead for months and in some cases for years. Dead and hanging in freezers, full of uritic acid and bacteria. It's a corpse in a state of decomposition. Not much that can be said to be noble about eating a cadaver.
But a little dose of denial allows us to bite into that Big Mac or cut into that prime rib.
But that one 16 ounce cut of prime rib is equal to a thousand gallons of fresh water, a few acres of grass, a few fish, a quarter acre of corn etc. What's the point of taking a shorter shower to conserve water as Greenpeace is preaching if you can sit down and consume a 1000 gallons of water at a single meal?
And that single cut of meat would have cost as much in vegetable resources equivalent to what could be fed to an entire African village for a week.
The problem is that we choose to see our contradictions when it is convenient for us to see them and when it is not we simply go into a state of suspended disbelief and we eat that steak anyway because, hey, we like the taste of rotting flesh in the evening.
Have you ever thought why it is that with a person, it's an abortion, but when it comes to a chicken, it's an omelette?
Does anyone really know what's in a hot dog? We do know that the government health department allows for an acceptable percentage of bug parts, rodent droppings and other assorted filth to go into the mix.
And now tuna fish comes with a health warming saying it should not be eaten by pregnant women or small children because of high levels of mercury. Does that mean mercury is good for adults and non-pregnant women? What are they telling us here?
Eating meat and fish is not only bad for the environment it's also unhealthy. Yet even when it comes to our own health we slip into denial mode and order the Whopper.
The bottom line is that to be a conservationist and an environmentalist, you must practise and promote vegetarianism or
better yet veganism.
It is the lifestyle that leaves the shallowest ecological footprint, uses fewer resources and produces less greenhouse gas emissions, it's healthier and it means you're not a hypocrite.
In fact a vegan driving a Hummer would be contributing less greenhouse gas carbon emissions than a meat eater riding a bicycle.
The meat industry is one of the most destructive ecological industries on the planet. The raising and slaughtering of pigs, cows, sheep, turkeys and chickens not only utilizes vast areas of land and vast quantities of water, but it is a greater contributor to greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry.
The seafood industry is literally plundering the ocean of life and some fifty percent of fish caught from the oceans is fed to cows, pigs, sheep, chickens etc. in the form of fish meal. It also takes about fifty fish caught from the sea to raise one farm raised salmon.
We have turned the domestic cow into the largest marine predator on the planet. The hundreds of millions of cows grazing the land and farting methane consume more tonnage of fish than all the world's sharks, dolphins and seals combined. Domestic housecats consume more fish, especially tuna, than all the world's seals.
So why is it that all the world's large environmental and conservation groups are not campaigning against the meat industry? Why did Al Gore's film Inconvenient Truth not mention the inconvenient truth that the slaughter industry creates more greenhouse gases than the automobile industry?
The Greenpeace ships serve meat and fish to their crews everyday. The World Wildlife Fund does not say a word about the threat that meat eating poses for the survival of wildlife, the habitat destroyed, the wild competitors for land eliminated, or the predators destroyed to save their precious livestock.
When I was a Sierra Club director for three years, everyone looked amused when I brought up the issue of vegetarianism. At each of our Board meeting dinners, the Directors were served meat and only after much prodding and complaining did the couple of vegetarian directors manage to get a vegetarian option. At our meeting in Montana we were served Buffalo and antelope, lobsters in Boston, crabs in Charleston, steak in Albuquerque etc. But what else can we expect from a "conservation" group that endorses trophy hunting.
As far as I know and I may be wrong, but my organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is the only conservation organization in the world that endorses and practises vegetarianism. My ships do not serve meat or fish ever, nor do we serve dairy products. We've had a strictly vegan menu for years and no one has died of scurvy or malnutrition.
The price we pay for this is to be accused by other conservation organizations of being animal rights. Like it's a bad word. They say it with the same disdain that Americans used to utter the word communist in the Fifties.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not an animal rights organization. We are exclusively involved in interventions against illegal activities that threaten and exploit marine wildlife and habitat. We are involved in ocean wildlife conservation activities.
Yet because we operate our ships as vegan vessels, other groups, and now the media dismiss us as an animal rights organization.
Now first of all I don't see being accused of as an animal rights organization to be an insult. PETA was co-founded by one of my crew-members and many of my volunteers come from the animal rights movement. But it is not accurate to refer to Sea Shepherd as animal rights when our organization pushes a strict conservation enforcement policy.
And secondly we do not promote veganism on our ships because of animal rights. We promote veganism as a means of practising what we preach, which is ocean conservation.
There is not enough fish in the world's oceans to feed 6.6 billion human beings and another 10 billion domestic animals. That is why all the world's commercial fisheries are collapsing. That is why whales, seals, dolphins and seabirds are starving. The sand eel for example, the primary source of food for the comical and beautiful puffin is being wiped out by Danish fishermen solely to provide fish meal to Danish factory farmed chickens.
This is a solid conservation connection between eating meat and the destruction of life in our oceans.
In a world fast losing resources of fresh water, it is sheer lunacy to have hundreds of millions of cows consuming over 1,000 gallons of water for every pound of beef produced.
And the pig farms in North Carolina produce so much waste that it has contaminated the entire ground water reserves of the entire state. North Carolinians drink pig shit with their water but its okay they say, they just neutralize it with chemicals like chlorine.
Most people don't want to see where their meat comes from. They also don't want to know what the impact of their meat has on the ecology. They would rather just deny the whole thing and pretend that meat is something that comes in packages from the store.
But because there is this underlying guilt always present, it manifests itself as anger and ridicule towards people who live the
most environmentally positive life styles on the planet -- the vegans and the vegetarians.
This is demonstrated through constant marginalization especially in the media. Any organization, like Sea Shepherd for example, that points out the ecological contradictions of eating meat is immediately dismissed as some wacko animal rights organization.
I did not set the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society up as an animal rights organization and we have never promoted animal rights in the organization. What we have promoted and what we do is oceanic wildlife and habitat conservation work.
And the truth is that you can't practise solid and constructive conservation work without promoting veganism and/or vegetarianism as something that promotes the conservation of resources.
A few years ago I attended a dinner meeting of the American Oceans Campaign hosted by Ted Danson. He opened the dinner by saying that the choice he had to make was between fish and chicken for the dinner, and what was the point of saving fish if you can't eat them?
Guest speaker, Oceanographer Sylvia Earle put Ted in his place by saying she did not think that he was being very funny. She said that she considered fish to be her friends and she did not believe in eating her friends. So neither Sylvia nor I ate dinner that night.
I met Sylvia again at another meeting, this time of Conservation International held at some ritzy resort in the Dominican Republic. Harrison Ford was there and the buzz was what could be done to save the oceans. I was invited as an advisor. I sat on a barstool in an open beachfront dining plaza as the conservationists approached tables literally bending from the weight of fish and exotic seafood including caviar. I looked at Sylvia Earle and she just shook her head and rolled her eyes.
The problem is that people like Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, or the heads of Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and many other big groups just refuse to accept that their eating habits may be just as much a part of the problem as all those things they are trying to oppose.
I remember one Greenpeacer defending his meat eating by saying that he was a carnivore and that predators have their place and he was proud to be one.
Now the word predator in relationship to human beings has a rather scary connotation having nothing to do with eating habits, but for any human being to describe themselves as a carnivore is just plain ridiculous.
Humans are not and have never been carnivores. A lion is a carnivore as is a wolf, as is a tiger, or a shark. Carnivores eat live animals. They stalk them, they run them down, they pounce, they kill, and they eat, blood dripping, meat at body temperature. Nature, brutal red in tooth and claw.
I've never met a human that can do that. Yes we found ways to run down animals and kill them. In fact we've come to be rather efficient at the killing part. But we can't eat the prey until we cut it up and cook it and that usually involves some time between kill and eating. It could be an hour or it could be years.
You see our meat eating habits are more closely related to the vulture, the jackal or other carrion eaters. This means that we can't be described as carnivores. We are better described as necrovores or eaters of rotting flesh.
Consider that some of the beef that people eat has been dead for months and in some cases for years. Dead and hanging in freezers, full of uritic acid and bacteria. It's a corpse in a state of decomposition. Not much that can be said to be noble about eating a cadaver.
But a little dose of denial allows us to bite into that Big Mac or cut into that prime rib.
But that one 16 ounce cut of prime rib is equal to a thousand gallons of fresh water, a few acres of grass, a few fish, a quarter acre of corn etc. What's the point of taking a shorter shower to conserve water as Greenpeace is preaching if you can sit down and consume a 1000 gallons of water at a single meal?
And that single cut of meat would have cost as much in vegetable resources equivalent to what could be fed to an entire African village for a week.
The problem is that we choose to see our contradictions when it is convenient for us to see them and when it is not we simply go into a state of suspended disbelief and we eat that steak anyway because, hey, we like the taste of rotting flesh in the evening.
Have you ever thought why it is that with a person, it's an abortion, but when it comes to a chicken, it's an omelette?
Does anyone really know what's in a hot dog? We do know that the government health department allows for an acceptable percentage of bug parts, rodent droppings and other assorted filth to go into the mix.
And now tuna fish comes with a health warming saying it should not be eaten by pregnant women or small children because of high levels of mercury. Does that mean mercury is good for adults and non-pregnant women? What are they telling us here?
Eating meat and fish is not only bad for the environment it's also unhealthy. Yet even when it comes to our own health we slip into denial mode and order the Whopper.
The bottom line is that to be a conservationist and an environmentalist, you must practise and promote vegetarianism or
better yet veganism.
It is the lifestyle that leaves the shallowest ecological footprint, uses fewer resources and produces less greenhouse gas emissions, it's healthier and it means you're not a hypocrite.
In fact a vegan driving a Hummer would be contributing less greenhouse gas carbon emissions than a meat eater riding a bicycle.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Put Away the Flags
by Howard Zinn
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Sometimes, Our Suspicions are Unfounded
by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
My wife and I have a running joke.
Say the doctor informs me he's going to administer some test that will hurt like heck. When he leaves the room, I whisper to Marilyn, "You know why he's doing it, don't you? It's because I'm black.''
It is, of course, a joke with a point. Namely, that some black folks can read race into anything. Some of us keep indignation in our hip pockets and conspiracy on speed dial.
But we'll get back to Isaiah Washington in a moment.
First, the obvious disclaimer: I am not saying race is never the reason bad things happen. Au contraire. One often gets pulled over because one is black. One often gets substandard healthcare because one is black. One often fails to get the job because one is black.
Worse, because those in charge of pulling people over, giving healthcare or making hiring decisions are seldom clear and candid that race is their reason, it's easy to become paranoid, to believe everything is race until proven otherwise. So to be African American is often to walk a tightrope above a snake pit of suspicions, both founded and un.
Apparently, Washington has fallen and he can't get up.
He is, you will recall, the African-American actor from Grey's Anatomy who used an anti-gay slur during a fight with a castmate. Months later, backstage at the Golden Globes, he used the word again in denying he had used it the first time. In the ensuing uproar, Washington apologized, entered what he calls an ''executive counseling program'' and filmed a public service announcement promoting tolerance. Last month, after all that, he was fired.
Frankly, it was cheesy of his bosses to wait so long. Why let the man jump through so many hoops just to give him the axe at the end?
But what sympathy you might have for Washington is undercut by the fact that he has gone on a public relations offensive to talk about a firing that he believes happened, at least in part, because he is black. As he told Newsweek: 'Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation and that can be a problem for people sometime. I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that `some people' were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her, 'Why, because I'm a 6-foot-1, black man with dark skin and who doesn't go around saying 'Yessah, massa sir' and 'No sir, massa' to everyone?' ''
Which brings us to two truths that may seem contradictory but aren't:
1) There is epidemic racism in this country.
2) You can find racism where it does not exist.
Forgive me, but Washington seems far more illustrative of the second axiom than the first. For what it's worth, the creator and producer of Grey's is a black woman, Shonda Rhimes. And Washington is, by his own admission, a temperamental actor who used a hurtful word toward a colleague. Yet he thinks he was fired because he is black.
He -- like many of us, black and otherwise -- seems knee jerk where race is concerned. I mean is it so hard to believe people feared him because they thought he was a volatile jerk? Or that a white actor of middling fame who disrupted his workplace would have also been fired? In his rush to make himself a martyr, Washington fails to consider these and other obvious questions.
He comes across as one of those brothers the running joke is meant to mock -- the kind for whom race is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, like the boy who cried wolf, such people trivialize what is serious and give others license to do the same.
He lost his job for saying an awful thing. I wish he'd stop whining and deal with that.
Step 1 is to realize that black is not an excuse.
My wife and I have a running joke.
Say the doctor informs me he's going to administer some test that will hurt like heck. When he leaves the room, I whisper to Marilyn, "You know why he's doing it, don't you? It's because I'm black.''
It is, of course, a joke with a point. Namely, that some black folks can read race into anything. Some of us keep indignation in our hip pockets and conspiracy on speed dial.
But we'll get back to Isaiah Washington in a moment.
First, the obvious disclaimer: I am not saying race is never the reason bad things happen. Au contraire. One often gets pulled over because one is black. One often gets substandard healthcare because one is black. One often fails to get the job because one is black.
Worse, because those in charge of pulling people over, giving healthcare or making hiring decisions are seldom clear and candid that race is their reason, it's easy to become paranoid, to believe everything is race until proven otherwise. So to be African American is often to walk a tightrope above a snake pit of suspicions, both founded and un.
Apparently, Washington has fallen and he can't get up.
He is, you will recall, the African-American actor from Grey's Anatomy who used an anti-gay slur during a fight with a castmate. Months later, backstage at the Golden Globes, he used the word again in denying he had used it the first time. In the ensuing uproar, Washington apologized, entered what he calls an ''executive counseling program'' and filmed a public service announcement promoting tolerance. Last month, after all that, he was fired.
Frankly, it was cheesy of his bosses to wait so long. Why let the man jump through so many hoops just to give him the axe at the end?
But what sympathy you might have for Washington is undercut by the fact that he has gone on a public relations offensive to talk about a firing that he believes happened, at least in part, because he is black. As he told Newsweek: 'Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation and that can be a problem for people sometime. I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that `some people' were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her, 'Why, because I'm a 6-foot-1, black man with dark skin and who doesn't go around saying 'Yessah, massa sir' and 'No sir, massa' to everyone?' ''
Which brings us to two truths that may seem contradictory but aren't:
1) There is epidemic racism in this country.
2) You can find racism where it does not exist.
Forgive me, but Washington seems far more illustrative of the second axiom than the first. For what it's worth, the creator and producer of Grey's is a black woman, Shonda Rhimes. And Washington is, by his own admission, a temperamental actor who used a hurtful word toward a colleague. Yet he thinks he was fired because he is black.
He -- like many of us, black and otherwise -- seems knee jerk where race is concerned. I mean is it so hard to believe people feared him because they thought he was a volatile jerk? Or that a white actor of middling fame who disrupted his workplace would have also been fired? In his rush to make himself a martyr, Washington fails to consider these and other obvious questions.
He comes across as one of those brothers the running joke is meant to mock -- the kind for whom race is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, like the boy who cried wolf, such people trivialize what is serious and give others license to do the same.
He lost his job for saying an awful thing. I wish he'd stop whining and deal with that.
Step 1 is to realize that black is not an excuse.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
When is Enough Enough?
by Bob Herbert
Chances are you didn’t hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”
Her comment came on the same day that a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts.
There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal.
Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren’t even counted in the government’s official jobless statistics.
And now this new majority on the Supreme Court seems committed to a legal trajectory that would hurl blacks back to the bad old days of the Jim Crow era.
Where’s the outcry? Where’s the line in the sand that the prejudiced portion of the population is not allowed to cross?
Mrs. Clinton’s comment was made at a forum of Democratic presidential candidates at Howard University that was put together by Tavis Smiley, the radio and television personality, and broadcast nationally by PBS. The idea was to focus on issues of particular concern to African-Americans.
It’s discouraging that some of the biggest issues confronting blacks — the spread of AIDS, chronic joblessness and racial discrimination, for example — are not considered mainstream issues.
Senator John Edwards offered a disturbingly bleak but accurate picture of the lives of many young blacks: “When you have young African-American men who are completely convinced that they’re either going to die or go to prison and see absolutely no hope in their lives; when they live in an environment where the people around them don’t earn a decent wage; when they go to schools that are second-class schools compared to the wealthy suburban areas — they don’t see anything getting better.”
The difficult lives and often tragic fates of such young men are not much on the minds of so-called mainstream Americans, or the political and corporate elites who run the country. More noise needs to be made. There’s something very wrong with a passive acceptance of the degraded state in which so many African-Americans continue to live.
Mr. Smiley is also organizing a forum of Republican candidates to be held in September. I wholeheartedly applaud his efforts. But if black people were more angry, and if they could channel that anger into political activism — first and foremost by voting as though their lives and the lives of their children depended on it — there would not be a need to have separate political forums to address their concerns.
If black people could find a way to come together in sky-high turnouts on Election Day, if they showed up at polling booths in numbers close to the maximum possible turnout, if they could set the example for all other Americans about the importance of exercising the franchise, the politicians would not dare to ignore their concerns.
For black people, especially, the current composition of the Supreme Court should be the ultimate lesson in the importance of voting in a presidential election. No branch of the government has been more crucial than the judiciary in securing the rights and improving the lives of blacks over the past five or six decades.
George W. Bush, in a little more than six years, has tilted the court so radically that it is now, like the administration itself, relentlessly hostile to the interests of black people. That never would have happened if blacks had managed significantly more muscular turnouts in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (The war in Iraq would not have happened, either.)
There are, of course, many people, black and white, who are working on a vast array of important issues. But much, much more needs to be done. And blacks, in particular, need to intervene more directly in the public policy matters that concern them.
In the 1960s, there were radicals running around screaming about black power. But the real power in this country has always been the power of the vote. Black Americans have not come close to maximizing that power.
It’s not too late.
Chances are you didn’t hear it, but on Thursday night Senator Hillary Clinton said, “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”
Her comment came on the same day that a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts.
There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal.
Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren’t even counted in the government’s official jobless statistics.
And now this new majority on the Supreme Court seems committed to a legal trajectory that would hurl blacks back to the bad old days of the Jim Crow era.
Where’s the outcry? Where’s the line in the sand that the prejudiced portion of the population is not allowed to cross?
Mrs. Clinton’s comment was made at a forum of Democratic presidential candidates at Howard University that was put together by Tavis Smiley, the radio and television personality, and broadcast nationally by PBS. The idea was to focus on issues of particular concern to African-Americans.
It’s discouraging that some of the biggest issues confronting blacks — the spread of AIDS, chronic joblessness and racial discrimination, for example — are not considered mainstream issues.
Senator John Edwards offered a disturbingly bleak but accurate picture of the lives of many young blacks: “When you have young African-American men who are completely convinced that they’re either going to die or go to prison and see absolutely no hope in their lives; when they live in an environment where the people around them don’t earn a decent wage; when they go to schools that are second-class schools compared to the wealthy suburban areas — they don’t see anything getting better.”
The difficult lives and often tragic fates of such young men are not much on the minds of so-called mainstream Americans, or the political and corporate elites who run the country. More noise needs to be made. There’s something very wrong with a passive acceptance of the degraded state in which so many African-Americans continue to live.
Mr. Smiley is also organizing a forum of Republican candidates to be held in September. I wholeheartedly applaud his efforts. But if black people were more angry, and if they could channel that anger into political activism — first and foremost by voting as though their lives and the lives of their children depended on it — there would not be a need to have separate political forums to address their concerns.
If black people could find a way to come together in sky-high turnouts on Election Day, if they showed up at polling booths in numbers close to the maximum possible turnout, if they could set the example for all other Americans about the importance of exercising the franchise, the politicians would not dare to ignore their concerns.
For black people, especially, the current composition of the Supreme Court should be the ultimate lesson in the importance of voting in a presidential election. No branch of the government has been more crucial than the judiciary in securing the rights and improving the lives of blacks over the past five or six decades.
George W. Bush, in a little more than six years, has tilted the court so radically that it is now, like the administration itself, relentlessly hostile to the interests of black people. That never would have happened if blacks had managed significantly more muscular turnouts in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (The war in Iraq would not have happened, either.)
There are, of course, many people, black and white, who are working on a vast array of important issues. But much, much more needs to be done. And blacks, in particular, need to intervene more directly in the public policy matters that concern them.
In the 1960s, there were radicals running around screaming about black power. But the real power in this country has always been the power of the vote. Black Americans have not come close to maximizing that power.
It’s not too late.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Racism Takes Many Hues
by Leonard Pitts
An old adage comes to mind: "If you're white, you're all right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, get back.''
It was a folk saying--property of no one, property of everyone--that we African Americans used to encompass defining realities of our lives. Meaning not just the fact that some white men would think themselves better than you because they were white, but the fact that some black men would, too, because they were light. This was a legacy of slavery, when light skin often meant less brutal treatment.
So to be here in Brazil, to wander through this culture where a man the color of Bishop T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle might, with a straight face, deny the Africa in him and people earnestly debate ''who is black,'' well . . . it feels like you've stumbled into a fun-house mirror of race in which everything is exactly the same as it is back home, except where it is completely different.
As this month's Miami Herald reports on black life in Latin America vividly attest, that sense of falling through the fun-house mirror fits much of the black experience in this hemisphere. That black woman in Guatemala who made history by winning a beauty title could be Vanessa Williams. That Argentine kid who got called Kunta because he went to a white school could be a kid bused to school in Boston 30 years ago. That black man in Cuba getting harassed by police could be my son or, indeed, any young black man in America.
In much the same way, race in Brazil has a way of seeming both hauntingly familiar and exotically strange. Some here will tell you that this nation's triumph is that it never encoded race into its laws as did the United States. While that sounds like, and in some ways is, a laudable thing, the punch line is that those same people will also tell you this did not save Brazil from the sin of racism.
Indeed, they will haul out anecdotes and statistics illustrating the fact that Brazilians the color of T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle tend to find it harder to get work, education or healthcare, but damnably easy to get followed around the department store by security guards who equate darkness with dishonesty.
This country is engaged in a debate over how to best address those issues. They are fighting over an affirmative-action program that would offer educational and healthcare advantages to Brazilians who are black.
Which brings us back to that earnestly debated question: Who is black?
The question is more complex than an American might believe. In Brazil, a nation of indigenous peoples and descendants of African slaves, European colonists and immigrants, a dark-skinned man who might automatically be called black elsewhere has a racial vocabulary that allows him to skirt the Africa in his heritage altogether. He can call himself moreno (racially mixed), mestizo (colored) or pardo (medium brown). Anything but afrodescendente (Africa-descended) or negro (black).
In this, he's not unlike his counterparts in the United States, where black people also have an extensive vocabulary to describe variations in skin tone. In the United States, one can be ''high yellow'' (i.e., of very light skin); one can be ''red'' (i.e., with a reddish tint; one of Malcolm X's early nicknames was Detroit Red); or one can be any of a number of synonyms for dark. Like, for instance, Smokey. In fact, the famous (and ''high yellow'') Motown singer William Robinson was given that nickname in affectionate irony by one of his father's friends--sort of like calling a fat guy Tiny.
But here's the thing: In the States, no matter your skin tone, your race is never in question. Detroit Red was black. Smokey Robinson is black. T.D. Jakes is black. Don Cheadle is black.
The same is not true in Brazil. And if the United States is a country where black people with light skin used to sometimes ''pass,'' i.e., pretend to be white, well, in this country ''passing is a national institution.'' So says Elisa Nascimento with a laugh. She is white, American-born and the wife of Abdias do Nascimento, a 90-year-old black Brazilian artist and political icon. And the insistence of some Brazilian blacks on ''passing,'' she says, has political consequences in that it tends to distort statistics on black life. "The way racism works in Brazil . . . there is a hierarchy, and so people tend to identify themselves lighter than they necessarily would be.''
But Simon Schwartzman, a white social scientist, thinks that allowing Brazilians to self-identify beats the alternative. "I think it's very wrong for the government to start labeling people and saying, `You are officially black or you are officially white, or you are officially something.' You have all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, and I don't think it's the business of government to classify and label people.''
So the question of ''Who is black?'' is tricky, to say the least. If a man the color of T.D. Jakes or even Smokey Robinson says he is not black, do you take him seriously? Do you laugh in his face?
Maybe your instinct is the latter. In the U.S. of A., after all, we know what black is.
Of course, the U.S. of A. is also the country where, in 1896, an ''octoroon'' (i.e., one-eighth black) man named Homer Plessy, white to all physical intents and purposes, lost a Supreme Court case that started when he was ordered to move to a ''colored'' train car. And it's also the country where educator Gregory Howard Williams, a man who would disappear in a room of middle-age white men, saw his life change in 1954 from middle-class comfort to ostracism and racial slurs when it was revealed that his father was half-black.
As Williams, the author of the 1995 memoir Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black once told me in an interview, "The issue in America has never been color. It's always been race.''
So in deriding the silliness of another nation's racial mores, an American finds himself in the unenviable position of the pot calling the kettle . . . well, black.
Indeed, it is America's history of encoding its racial biases in law--everything from the Constitution designating blacks as three-fifths of a human being in 1787 to the restrictive housing covenants and segregation statutes that persisted into the 1960s--that Yvonne Maggie points to in explaining why she objects to Brazil's flirtation with affirmative action.
''We don't need to say that race exists,'' says Maggie, an anthropologist and university professor. "We have to say that race is not important to define people in social terms, that black and white are the same kind of people.''
It is worth noting that Maggie is white, her ex-husband is black, and they lived for a while in the United States. In 1971. In Texas.
''It was a rough time,'' she says in her imperfect English. "For me, was impossible to live there. We could not be married. Why I married with a black guy, you know? So when I say to you that Brazil was different . . . even my first husband didn't think of himself as black. In Brazil, he was a Brazilian, even though he was black. He never thought of himself as someone different from me because he was another color.''
Which brings you to the heart of the matter, the reason any discussion of race and racial terminology that goes on long enough eventually comes to seem silly and overly complicated. African American? Afro-Brazilian? Negro? Colored? Moreno?Afrodescendente? Red? Pardo? Smokey?
The reason the language struggles so hard for precision is that it seeks to describe that which does not exist. As a scientific matter, there is no such thing as race. We are all of the human race, something we probably will not fully understand until it is explained to us by green people with eyes waving on stalks.
Whereas U.S. history flies in the face of that fact with its centuries of pretense to hard and fast racial boundaries, it's a point of pride for Maggie that her country never--officially--bought into that lie.
I respect the principle she argues--race does not exist and therefore should not be acknowledged in law. But that raises a question: How can you have racism without race?
Maggie insists that you can. She says that what Brazil has is a kind of ''social racism'' supported not by law, but by custom. One suspects that those who suffer under it would be hard-pressed to tell the difference--or find reason to care. Which is why, given the choice, many dark-skinned Brazilians choose to be other than ''black.'' It is a means of escape, if only linguistically.
One morning, my translator and I ride out to the favela made infamous in City of God, the Oscar-nominated 2002 film about the drug wars that suck in children and spit out bones. We wait outside a community center for the Brazilian hip-hop star I have come to interview. Inside, a funeral has just come to an end. A casket is borne out to a van, followed by a handful of young people. Some have light skin, some have dark. All have sad eyes.
After a while, the man I'm waiting for appears. His given name is Alex Pereira Barbosa, known professionally as MV Bill. The MV stands for Mensageiro da Verdade, Messenger of Truth, and he is famous for rapping about conditions in the favelas.
When I mention the funeral, he explains that the dead boy worked for one of the drug lords and met a violent end. When I mention that the boy was mourned by young people both black and white, MV Bill gives me a look. He considers all of them black.
''One of the characteristics of Brazilian racism,'' he says, "is that the person can choose to be what she wants. `Oh, I'm white, I'm not black.' Here, the darker you are, the more discrimination you suffer. And that makes it difficult for the blacks, from light to dark, to understand each other. The lighter-skinned blacks avoid the darker-skinned blacks because they don't want to suffer the same discrimination. It's hard for them to work together because of the degree of discrimination according to your color.''
The cruelest racism, says MV Bill, is actually intraracial, perpetuated by light-skinned blacks against dark-skinned blacks. Fair skin, he says, represents power, even in the favela.
After being in this country a while, I find myself doing something I'd never feel the need to do at home. I ask people I'm interviewing ''what'' they are. When dark-skinned people identify themselves as ''black,'' there is an unmistakable little thrill of victory, a notch for ''our'' side, as in someone who was brave enough and tough enough to accept the designation this society despises. Someone who understands that the problem isn't color and never was; rather, it is what some people have arbitrarily decided color means.
Lucia Maria Xavier de Castro, coordinator of Criola, an activist group representing black women, says she has known many people who were unable to accept their own blackness. "The person does everything to get rid of black traces. Straightens her hair, dresses like white people--not colorful. People do everything to eliminate traces. It's as if this person had a birth defect and was trying to correct it by taking those attitudes.''
Brazil likes to think of itself as a racial democracy, says Miriam Leitao, but that's a delusion. She has, she says, been making that argument for 10 years and has become one of the nation's most controversial journalists in the process.
When she writes about racism in Brazil, people tell her she's crazy. ''I don't know how to explain the thing that, for me, is so obvious,'' she says.
And there it is again, that sense of race as a glimpse in a fun-house mirror. Indeed, as Leitao relates the responses she receives, I find myself laughing in recognition. One reader, for example, accused her of "creating a problem because I talk about it.''
''Because of you,'' the reader wrote, "one day, we will be racist.''
I've gotten that exact same e-mail. Many times. And it's funny, Lord knows it is, but it's also maddening. You wonder how intelligent people can turn logic so thoroughly inside out. How smart people can say such stupid things.
Over the years, I have come to understand that it's not about the strength of the argument. Leitao has a computer full of statistics documenting ''a very strong and permanent gap between black and white in Brazil.'' Over the years, I must have quoted a hundred government and university studies illustrating a similar gap between black and white in the United States. Yet at the end of the day, sometimes, it's like you wrote it in sand.
You begin to realize that denial is stronger than logic. And that while it is, your country--whatever country it is--will always fall short of its self-image.
America, the land of the free? Not always, not quite.
Brazil, the land where race matters not?
''We have a carnaval song,'' says Leitao. "For 40 years, the people, every year, sang this song. And this song is terrible. [Whites] never think about what they are singing. The song is: "Because your color won't contaminate me, I would like your love.''
"It's offensive,'' says Leitao. "And the people never realize. Why we don't never realize that we have a problem here?''
Her frustration makes me chuckle in recognition.
She is a newspaper columnist who writes about race in a nation 4,100 miles away.
But she is also a reflection in a fun-house mirror.
An old adage comes to mind: "If you're white, you're all right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, get back.''
It was a folk saying--property of no one, property of everyone--that we African Americans used to encompass defining realities of our lives. Meaning not just the fact that some white men would think themselves better than you because they were white, but the fact that some black men would, too, because they were light. This was a legacy of slavery, when light skin often meant less brutal treatment.
So to be here in Brazil, to wander through this culture where a man the color of Bishop T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle might, with a straight face, deny the Africa in him and people earnestly debate ''who is black,'' well . . . it feels like you've stumbled into a fun-house mirror of race in which everything is exactly the same as it is back home, except where it is completely different.
As this month's Miami Herald reports on black life in Latin America vividly attest, that sense of falling through the fun-house mirror fits much of the black experience in this hemisphere. That black woman in Guatemala who made history by winning a beauty title could be Vanessa Williams. That Argentine kid who got called Kunta because he went to a white school could be a kid bused to school in Boston 30 years ago. That black man in Cuba getting harassed by police could be my son or, indeed, any young black man in America.
In much the same way, race in Brazil has a way of seeming both hauntingly familiar and exotically strange. Some here will tell you that this nation's triumph is that it never encoded race into its laws as did the United States. While that sounds like, and in some ways is, a laudable thing, the punch line is that those same people will also tell you this did not save Brazil from the sin of racism.
Indeed, they will haul out anecdotes and statistics illustrating the fact that Brazilians the color of T.D. Jakes or Don Cheadle tend to find it harder to get work, education or healthcare, but damnably easy to get followed around the department store by security guards who equate darkness with dishonesty.
This country is engaged in a debate over how to best address those issues. They are fighting over an affirmative-action program that would offer educational and healthcare advantages to Brazilians who are black.
Which brings us back to that earnestly debated question: Who is black?
The question is more complex than an American might believe. In Brazil, a nation of indigenous peoples and descendants of African slaves, European colonists and immigrants, a dark-skinned man who might automatically be called black elsewhere has a racial vocabulary that allows him to skirt the Africa in his heritage altogether. He can call himself moreno (racially mixed), mestizo (colored) or pardo (medium brown). Anything but afrodescendente (Africa-descended) or negro (black).
In this, he's not unlike his counterparts in the United States, where black people also have an extensive vocabulary to describe variations in skin tone. In the United States, one can be ''high yellow'' (i.e., of very light skin); one can be ''red'' (i.e., with a reddish tint; one of Malcolm X's early nicknames was Detroit Red); or one can be any of a number of synonyms for dark. Like, for instance, Smokey. In fact, the famous (and ''high yellow'') Motown singer William Robinson was given that nickname in affectionate irony by one of his father's friends--sort of like calling a fat guy Tiny.
But here's the thing: In the States, no matter your skin tone, your race is never in question. Detroit Red was black. Smokey Robinson is black. T.D. Jakes is black. Don Cheadle is black.
The same is not true in Brazil. And if the United States is a country where black people with light skin used to sometimes ''pass,'' i.e., pretend to be white, well, in this country ''passing is a national institution.'' So says Elisa Nascimento with a laugh. She is white, American-born and the wife of Abdias do Nascimento, a 90-year-old black Brazilian artist and political icon. And the insistence of some Brazilian blacks on ''passing,'' she says, has political consequences in that it tends to distort statistics on black life. "The way racism works in Brazil . . . there is a hierarchy, and so people tend to identify themselves lighter than they necessarily would be.''
But Simon Schwartzman, a white social scientist, thinks that allowing Brazilians to self-identify beats the alternative. "I think it's very wrong for the government to start labeling people and saying, `You are officially black or you are officially white, or you are officially something.' You have all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, and I don't think it's the business of government to classify and label people.''
So the question of ''Who is black?'' is tricky, to say the least. If a man the color of T.D. Jakes or even Smokey Robinson says he is not black, do you take him seriously? Do you laugh in his face?
Maybe your instinct is the latter. In the U.S. of A., after all, we know what black is.
Of course, the U.S. of A. is also the country where, in 1896, an ''octoroon'' (i.e., one-eighth black) man named Homer Plessy, white to all physical intents and purposes, lost a Supreme Court case that started when he was ordered to move to a ''colored'' train car. And it's also the country where educator Gregory Howard Williams, a man who would disappear in a room of middle-age white men, saw his life change in 1954 from middle-class comfort to ostracism and racial slurs when it was revealed that his father was half-black.
As Williams, the author of the 1995 memoir Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black once told me in an interview, "The issue in America has never been color. It's always been race.''
So in deriding the silliness of another nation's racial mores, an American finds himself in the unenviable position of the pot calling the kettle . . . well, black.
Indeed, it is America's history of encoding its racial biases in law--everything from the Constitution designating blacks as three-fifths of a human being in 1787 to the restrictive housing covenants and segregation statutes that persisted into the 1960s--that Yvonne Maggie points to in explaining why she objects to Brazil's flirtation with affirmative action.
''We don't need to say that race exists,'' says Maggie, an anthropologist and university professor. "We have to say that race is not important to define people in social terms, that black and white are the same kind of people.''
It is worth noting that Maggie is white, her ex-husband is black, and they lived for a while in the United States. In 1971. In Texas.
''It was a rough time,'' she says in her imperfect English. "For me, was impossible to live there. We could not be married. Why I married with a black guy, you know? So when I say to you that Brazil was different . . . even my first husband didn't think of himself as black. In Brazil, he was a Brazilian, even though he was black. He never thought of himself as someone different from me because he was another color.''
Which brings you to the heart of the matter, the reason any discussion of race and racial terminology that goes on long enough eventually comes to seem silly and overly complicated. African American? Afro-Brazilian? Negro? Colored? Moreno?Afrodescendente? Red? Pardo? Smokey?
The reason the language struggles so hard for precision is that it seeks to describe that which does not exist. As a scientific matter, there is no such thing as race. We are all of the human race, something we probably will not fully understand until it is explained to us by green people with eyes waving on stalks.
Whereas U.S. history flies in the face of that fact with its centuries of pretense to hard and fast racial boundaries, it's a point of pride for Maggie that her country never--officially--bought into that lie.
I respect the principle she argues--race does not exist and therefore should not be acknowledged in law. But that raises a question: How can you have racism without race?
Maggie insists that you can. She says that what Brazil has is a kind of ''social racism'' supported not by law, but by custom. One suspects that those who suffer under it would be hard-pressed to tell the difference--or find reason to care. Which is why, given the choice, many dark-skinned Brazilians choose to be other than ''black.'' It is a means of escape, if only linguistically.
One morning, my translator and I ride out to the favela made infamous in City of God, the Oscar-nominated 2002 film about the drug wars that suck in children and spit out bones. We wait outside a community center for the Brazilian hip-hop star I have come to interview. Inside, a funeral has just come to an end. A casket is borne out to a van, followed by a handful of young people. Some have light skin, some have dark. All have sad eyes.
After a while, the man I'm waiting for appears. His given name is Alex Pereira Barbosa, known professionally as MV Bill. The MV stands for Mensageiro da Verdade, Messenger of Truth, and he is famous for rapping about conditions in the favelas.
When I mention the funeral, he explains that the dead boy worked for one of the drug lords and met a violent end. When I mention that the boy was mourned by young people both black and white, MV Bill gives me a look. He considers all of them black.
''One of the characteristics of Brazilian racism,'' he says, "is that the person can choose to be what she wants. `Oh, I'm white, I'm not black.' Here, the darker you are, the more discrimination you suffer. And that makes it difficult for the blacks, from light to dark, to understand each other. The lighter-skinned blacks avoid the darker-skinned blacks because they don't want to suffer the same discrimination. It's hard for them to work together because of the degree of discrimination according to your color.''
The cruelest racism, says MV Bill, is actually intraracial, perpetuated by light-skinned blacks against dark-skinned blacks. Fair skin, he says, represents power, even in the favela.
After being in this country a while, I find myself doing something I'd never feel the need to do at home. I ask people I'm interviewing ''what'' they are. When dark-skinned people identify themselves as ''black,'' there is an unmistakable little thrill of victory, a notch for ''our'' side, as in someone who was brave enough and tough enough to accept the designation this society despises. Someone who understands that the problem isn't color and never was; rather, it is what some people have arbitrarily decided color means.
Lucia Maria Xavier de Castro, coordinator of Criola, an activist group representing black women, says she has known many people who were unable to accept their own blackness. "The person does everything to get rid of black traces. Straightens her hair, dresses like white people--not colorful. People do everything to eliminate traces. It's as if this person had a birth defect and was trying to correct it by taking those attitudes.''
Brazil likes to think of itself as a racial democracy, says Miriam Leitao, but that's a delusion. She has, she says, been making that argument for 10 years and has become one of the nation's most controversial journalists in the process.
When she writes about racism in Brazil, people tell her she's crazy. ''I don't know how to explain the thing that, for me, is so obvious,'' she says.
And there it is again, that sense of race as a glimpse in a fun-house mirror. Indeed, as Leitao relates the responses she receives, I find myself laughing in recognition. One reader, for example, accused her of "creating a problem because I talk about it.''
''Because of you,'' the reader wrote, "one day, we will be racist.''
I've gotten that exact same e-mail. Many times. And it's funny, Lord knows it is, but it's also maddening. You wonder how intelligent people can turn logic so thoroughly inside out. How smart people can say such stupid things.
Over the years, I have come to understand that it's not about the strength of the argument. Leitao has a computer full of statistics documenting ''a very strong and permanent gap between black and white in Brazil.'' Over the years, I must have quoted a hundred government and university studies illustrating a similar gap between black and white in the United States. Yet at the end of the day, sometimes, it's like you wrote it in sand.
You begin to realize that denial is stronger than logic. And that while it is, your country--whatever country it is--will always fall short of its self-image.
America, the land of the free? Not always, not quite.
Brazil, the land where race matters not?
''We have a carnaval song,'' says Leitao. "For 40 years, the people, every year, sang this song. And this song is terrible. [Whites] never think about what they are singing. The song is: "Because your color won't contaminate me, I would like your love.''
"It's offensive,'' says Leitao. "And the people never realize. Why we don't never realize that we have a problem here?''
Her frustration makes me chuckle in recognition.
She is a newspaper columnist who writes about race in a nation 4,100 miles away.
But she is also a reflection in a fun-house mirror.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Being There
One of the hardest truths of parenthood is that you never know how well you've done till it's too late to do anything about it. When that child who once clung to your shin becomes a man looking you in the eye, you realize with an abruptness that the time for molding personality and imparting life wisdom has passed.
I have fathered three kids, step-fathered two more, the youngest now 16. And there is not one of them for whom I wouldn't like to have a do-over so I could fix something I did or do something I should've.
[S]o often what a child remembers best and values most is not what you did or didn't do. I'm not saying those things don't matter. But what matters more is that you are there. Predictably, dependably, reliably there. Indeed, putting aside food and shelter, arguably the most fundamentally important thing you give a child is simply your presence. We change the equation when we are there.
--Leonard Pitts
I have fathered three kids, step-fathered two more, the youngest now 16. And there is not one of them for whom I wouldn't like to have a do-over so I could fix something I did or do something I should've.
[S]o often what a child remembers best and values most is not what you did or didn't do. I'm not saying those things don't matter. But what matters more is that you are there. Predictably, dependably, reliably there. Indeed, putting aside food and shelter, arguably the most fundamentally important thing you give a child is simply your presence. We change the equation when we are there.
--Leonard Pitts
Monday, June 18, 2007
Driving to the Funeral
by Anna Quindlen
The four years of high school grind inexorably to a close, the milestones passed. The sports contests, the SATs, the exams, the elections, the dances, the proms. And too often, the funerals. It's become a sad rite of passage in many American communities, the services held for teenagers killed in auto accidents before they've even scored a tassel to hang from the rearview mirror. The hearse moves in procession followed by the late-model compact cars of young people, boys trying to control trembling lower lips and girls sobbing into one another's shoulders. The yearbook has a picture or two with a black border. A mom and dad rise from their seats on the athletic field or in the gym to accept a diploma posthumously.
It's simple and inarguable: car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among 15- to 20-year-olds in this country. What's so peculiar about that fact is that so few adults focus on it until they are planning an untimely funeral. Put it this way: if someone told you that there was one single behavior that would be most likely to lead to the premature death of your kid, wouldn't you try to do something about that? Yet parents seem to treat the right of a 16-year-old to drive as an inalienable one, something to be neither questioned nor abridged.
This makes no sense unless the argument is convenience, and often it is. In a nation that developed mass-transit amnesia and traded the exurb for the small town, a licensed son or daughter relieves parents of a relentless roundelay of driving. Soccer field, Mickey Ds, mall, movies. Of course, if that's the rationale, why not let 13-year-olds drive? Any reasonable person would respond that a 13-year-old is too young. But statistics suggest that that's true of 16-year-olds as well. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that neophyte drivers of 17 have about a third as many accidents as their counterparts only a year younger.
In 1984 a solution was devised for the problem of teenage auto accidents that lulled many parents into a false sense of security. The drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. It's become gospel that this has saved thousands of lives, although no one actually knows if that's the case; fatalities fell, but the use of seat belts and airbags may have as much to do with that as penalties for alcohol use. And there has been a pronounced negative effect on college campuses, where administrators describe a forbidden-fruit climate that encourages binge drinking. The pitchers of sangria and kegs of beer that offered legal refreshment for 18-year-olds at sanctioned campus events 30 years ago have given way to a new tradition called "pre-gaming," in which dry college activities are preceded by manic alcohol consumption at frats, dorms and bars.
Given the incidence of auto-accident deaths among teenagers despite the higher drinking age, you have to ask whether the powerful lobby Mothers Against Drunk Driving simply targeted the wrong D. In a survey of young drivers, only half said they had seen a peer drive after drinking. Nearly all, however, said they had witnessed speeding, which is the leading factor in fatal crashes by teenagers today. In Europe, governments are relaxed about the drinking age but tough on driving regulations and licensing provisions; in most countries, the driving age is 18.
In America some states have taken a tough-love position and bumped up the requirements for young drivers: longer permit periods, restrictions or bans on night driving. Since the greatest danger to a teenage driver is another teenager in the car—the chance of having an accident doubles with two teenage passengers and skyrockets with three or more—some new rules forbid novice drivers from transporting their peers.
In theory this sounds like a good idea; in fact it's toothless. New Jersey has some of the most demanding regulations for new drivers in the nation, including a provision that until they are 18 they cannot have more than one nonfamily member in the car. Yet in early January three students leaving school in Freehold Township died in a horrific accident in which the car's 17-year-old driver was violating that regulation by carrying two friends. No wonder he took the chance: between July 2004 and November 2006, only 12 provisional drivers were ticketed for carrying too many passengers. Good law, bad enforcement.
States might make it easier on themselves, on police officers and on teenagers, too, if instead of chipping away at the right to drive they merely raised the legal driving age wholesale. There are dozens of statistics to back up such a change: in Massachusetts alone, one third of 16-year-old drivers have been involved in serious accidents. Lots and lots of parents will tell you that raising the driving age is untenable, that the kids need their freedom and their mobility. Perhaps the only ones who wouldn't make a fuss are those parents who have accepted diplomas at graduation because their children were no longer alive to do so themselves, whose children traded freedom and mobility for their lives. They might think it was worth the wait.
The four years of high school grind inexorably to a close, the milestones passed. The sports contests, the SATs, the exams, the elections, the dances, the proms. And too often, the funerals. It's become a sad rite of passage in many American communities, the services held for teenagers killed in auto accidents before they've even scored a tassel to hang from the rearview mirror. The hearse moves in procession followed by the late-model compact cars of young people, boys trying to control trembling lower lips and girls sobbing into one another's shoulders. The yearbook has a picture or two with a black border. A mom and dad rise from their seats on the athletic field or in the gym to accept a diploma posthumously.
It's simple and inarguable: car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among 15- to 20-year-olds in this country. What's so peculiar about that fact is that so few adults focus on it until they are planning an untimely funeral. Put it this way: if someone told you that there was one single behavior that would be most likely to lead to the premature death of your kid, wouldn't you try to do something about that? Yet parents seem to treat the right of a 16-year-old to drive as an inalienable one, something to be neither questioned nor abridged.
This makes no sense unless the argument is convenience, and often it is. In a nation that developed mass-transit amnesia and traded the exurb for the small town, a licensed son or daughter relieves parents of a relentless roundelay of driving. Soccer field, Mickey Ds, mall, movies. Of course, if that's the rationale, why not let 13-year-olds drive? Any reasonable person would respond that a 13-year-old is too young. But statistics suggest that that's true of 16-year-olds as well. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that neophyte drivers of 17 have about a third as many accidents as their counterparts only a year younger.
In 1984 a solution was devised for the problem of teenage auto accidents that lulled many parents into a false sense of security. The drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. It's become gospel that this has saved thousands of lives, although no one actually knows if that's the case; fatalities fell, but the use of seat belts and airbags may have as much to do with that as penalties for alcohol use. And there has been a pronounced negative effect on college campuses, where administrators describe a forbidden-fruit climate that encourages binge drinking. The pitchers of sangria and kegs of beer that offered legal refreshment for 18-year-olds at sanctioned campus events 30 years ago have given way to a new tradition called "pre-gaming," in which dry college activities are preceded by manic alcohol consumption at frats, dorms and bars.
Given the incidence of auto-accident deaths among teenagers despite the higher drinking age, you have to ask whether the powerful lobby Mothers Against Drunk Driving simply targeted the wrong D. In a survey of young drivers, only half said they had seen a peer drive after drinking. Nearly all, however, said they had witnessed speeding, which is the leading factor in fatal crashes by teenagers today. In Europe, governments are relaxed about the drinking age but tough on driving regulations and licensing provisions; in most countries, the driving age is 18.
In America some states have taken a tough-love position and bumped up the requirements for young drivers: longer permit periods, restrictions or bans on night driving. Since the greatest danger to a teenage driver is another teenager in the car—the chance of having an accident doubles with two teenage passengers and skyrockets with three or more—some new rules forbid novice drivers from transporting their peers.
In theory this sounds like a good idea; in fact it's toothless. New Jersey has some of the most demanding regulations for new drivers in the nation, including a provision that until they are 18 they cannot have more than one nonfamily member in the car. Yet in early January three students leaving school in Freehold Township died in a horrific accident in which the car's 17-year-old driver was violating that regulation by carrying two friends. No wonder he took the chance: between July 2004 and November 2006, only 12 provisional drivers were ticketed for carrying too many passengers. Good law, bad enforcement.
States might make it easier on themselves, on police officers and on teenagers, too, if instead of chipping away at the right to drive they merely raised the legal driving age wholesale. There are dozens of statistics to back up such a change: in Massachusetts alone, one third of 16-year-old drivers have been involved in serious accidents. Lots and lots of parents will tell you that raising the driving age is untenable, that the kids need their freedom and their mobility. Perhaps the only ones who wouldn't make a fuss are those parents who have accepted diplomas at graduation because their children were no longer alive to do so themselves, whose children traded freedom and mobility for their lives. They might think it was worth the wait.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
True Philosopher
Christ is the true philosopher because he embodies in his ministry the welcoming and caring reception of others so that they might more fully be the beings they are meant to be. Indeed, in the Christlike effort to understand, serve, heal, feed, and reconcile the earth and its communities we show forth the highest wisdom.
--Norman Wirzba
--Norman Wirzba
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
What's Acceptable? What's Possible?
by Jim Wallis
(This column is adapted from a commencement address that Jim delivered at Georgetown University on Sunday, May 20.)
Each new generation has a chance to alter two very basic definitions of reality in our world--what is acceptable and what is possible.
First, what is acceptable?
There are always great inhumanities that we inflict upon one another in this world, great injustices that cry out to God for redress, and great gaps in our moral recognition of them. When the really big offenses are finally corrected, finally changed, it is always and only because something has happened to change our perception of the moral issues at stake. The moral contradiction we have long lived with is no longer acceptable to us. What we accepted, or ignored, or denied, finally gets our attention and we decide that we just cannot, and will not, live with it any longer. But until that happens, the injustice and misery continue.
It often takes a new generation to make that decision--that something that people have long tolerated just won't be tolerated any more.
So the question to you as graduates, as ambassadors for a new generation, is this: what are you going to no longer accept in our world, what will you refuse to tolerate now that you will be making the decisions that matter?
Will it be acceptable to you that 3 billion people in our world today--half of God's children--live on less that $2 per day, that more than 1 billion live on less than $1 per day, that the gap between the life expectancy in the rich places and the poor places in the world is now 40 years, and that 30,000 children globally will die today--on the day of your graduation--from needless, senseless, and utterly preventable poverty and disease? It's what Bono calls "stupid poverty."
Many people don't really know that, or sort of do but have never really focused on the reality or given it a second thought. And that's the way it usually is. We don't know, or we have the easy explanations about why poverty or some other calamity exists and why it can't really be changed--all of which makes us feel better about ourselves--or we are just more concerned with lots of other things. We really don't have to care. So we tolerate it and keep looking the other way.
But then something changes. Something gets our attention, something goes deeper than it has before and hooks us in the places we call the heart, the soul, the spirit. And once we've crossed over into really seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting the injustice, we can never really look back again. It is now unacceptable to us.
What we see now offends us, offends our understanding of the sanctity and dignity of life, offends our notions of fairness and justice, offends our most basic values; it violates our idea of the common good, and starts to tug at our deepest places. We cross the line of unacceptability. We become intolerant of the injustice.
But just changing our notion of what is unacceptable isn't enough, however. We must also change our perception of what is possible.
In that regard, I would encourage each of you to think about your vocation more than just your career. And there is a difference. From the outside, those two tracks may look very much alike, but asking the vocational question rather than just considering the career options will take you much deeper. The key is to ask why you might take one path instead of another--the real reasons you would do something, more than just because you can. The key is to ask who you really are and what you want to become. It is to ask what you believe you are supposed to do.
You do have great potential, but that potential will be most fulfilled if you follow the leanings of conscience and the language of the heart more than just the dictates of the market, whether economic or political. They want smart people like you to just manage the systems of the world. But rather than managing or merely fitting into systems, ask how you can change them. You're both smart enough and talented enough to do that. That's your greatest potential.
Ask where your gifts intersect with the groaning needs of the world--there is your vocation.
The antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action. And action is finally born out of hope. Try to remember that. At college, you often believe you can think your way into a new way of living, but that's actually not the way it works. Out in the world, it's more likely that you will live your way into a new way of thinking.
The key is to believe that the world can be changed, because it is only that belief that ever changes the world. And if not us, who will believe? If not you, who?
(This column is adapted from a commencement address that Jim delivered at Georgetown University on Sunday, May 20.)
Each new generation has a chance to alter two very basic definitions of reality in our world--what is acceptable and what is possible.
First, what is acceptable?
There are always great inhumanities that we inflict upon one another in this world, great injustices that cry out to God for redress, and great gaps in our moral recognition of them. When the really big offenses are finally corrected, finally changed, it is always and only because something has happened to change our perception of the moral issues at stake. The moral contradiction we have long lived with is no longer acceptable to us. What we accepted, or ignored, or denied, finally gets our attention and we decide that we just cannot, and will not, live with it any longer. But until that happens, the injustice and misery continue.
It often takes a new generation to make that decision--that something that people have long tolerated just won't be tolerated any more.
So the question to you as graduates, as ambassadors for a new generation, is this: what are you going to no longer accept in our world, what will you refuse to tolerate now that you will be making the decisions that matter?
Will it be acceptable to you that 3 billion people in our world today--half of God's children--live on less that $2 per day, that more than 1 billion live on less than $1 per day, that the gap between the life expectancy in the rich places and the poor places in the world is now 40 years, and that 30,000 children globally will die today--on the day of your graduation--from needless, senseless, and utterly preventable poverty and disease? It's what Bono calls "stupid poverty."
Many people don't really know that, or sort of do but have never really focused on the reality or given it a second thought. And that's the way it usually is. We don't know, or we have the easy explanations about why poverty or some other calamity exists and why it can't really be changed--all of which makes us feel better about ourselves--or we are just more concerned with lots of other things. We really don't have to care. So we tolerate it and keep looking the other way.
But then something changes. Something gets our attention, something goes deeper than it has before and hooks us in the places we call the heart, the soul, the spirit. And once we've crossed over into really seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting the injustice, we can never really look back again. It is now unacceptable to us.
What we see now offends us, offends our understanding of the sanctity and dignity of life, offends our notions of fairness and justice, offends our most basic values; it violates our idea of the common good, and starts to tug at our deepest places. We cross the line of unacceptability. We become intolerant of the injustice.
But just changing our notion of what is unacceptable isn't enough, however. We must also change our perception of what is possible.
In that regard, I would encourage each of you to think about your vocation more than just your career. And there is a difference. From the outside, those two tracks may look very much alike, but asking the vocational question rather than just considering the career options will take you much deeper. The key is to ask why you might take one path instead of another--the real reasons you would do something, more than just because you can. The key is to ask who you really are and what you want to become. It is to ask what you believe you are supposed to do.
You do have great potential, but that potential will be most fulfilled if you follow the leanings of conscience and the language of the heart more than just the dictates of the market, whether economic or political. They want smart people like you to just manage the systems of the world. But rather than managing or merely fitting into systems, ask how you can change them. You're both smart enough and talented enough to do that. That's your greatest potential.
Ask where your gifts intersect with the groaning needs of the world--there is your vocation.
The antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action. And action is finally born out of hope. Try to remember that. At college, you often believe you can think your way into a new way of living, but that's actually not the way it works. Out in the world, it's more likely that you will live your way into a new way of thinking.
The key is to believe that the world can be changed, because it is only that belief that ever changes the world. And if not us, who will believe? If not you, who?
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Illusion
A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. And yet we experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical illusion of our consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
--Albert Einstein
--Albert Einstein
The End of an Era
by Ron Sider
Jerry Falwell's death marks the end of an era.
Falwell had a major impact on American public life. His Moral Majority, launched in 1979, not only helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, it also encouraged a whole generation of apolitical fundamentalist Christians to join the political debate. Falwell played a central role in focusing the political agenda of that new group of theologically conservative voters on the issues of abortion, marriage, and sexuality, and in aligning them almost entirely with the Republican Party.
Therein lies the tragedy of Jerry Falwell. He deserves much credit for helping millions of unengaged fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals understand that one aspect of biblical faith is faithful political engagement. Tragically, Falwell failed to develop a biblically balanced agenda for his political work. His tone was sometimes too harsh, but Falwell was largely right in what he promoted on the sanctity of human life and marriage. But he said little about economic justice, overcoming racism, and care for creation. Falwell is one of the significant reasons why evangelical political engagement was so one-sided for more than 20 years.
Jerry Falwell's death marks the end of an era.
Falwell had a major impact on American public life. His Moral Majority, launched in 1979, not only helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, it also encouraged a whole generation of apolitical fundamentalist Christians to join the political debate. Falwell played a central role in focusing the political agenda of that new group of theologically conservative voters on the issues of abortion, marriage, and sexuality, and in aligning them almost entirely with the Republican Party.
Therein lies the tragedy of Jerry Falwell. He deserves much credit for helping millions of unengaged fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals understand that one aspect of biblical faith is faithful political engagement. Tragically, Falwell failed to develop a biblically balanced agenda for his political work. His tone was sometimes too harsh, but Falwell was largely right in what he promoted on the sanctity of human life and marriage. But he said little about economic justice, overcoming racism, and care for creation. Falwell is one of the significant reasons why evangelical political engagement was so one-sided for more than 20 years.
Speak the Truth
To keep struggling against hate and to practice forgiveness need not mean abdicating one's rights or renouncing justice. This should be emphasized over and over again. It is part of loving one's enemy that Christians must remind the "enemy" of justice and right. It is part of loving to speak the truth.
--Naim Ateek
--Naim Ateek
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
We Cannot Merely Pray
We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end war:
For we know You made the world in a way
That we must find our own path of peace
Within ourselves and with our neighbor.
We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to root out prejudice:
For you have already given us eyes
With which to see the good in all people
If we would only use them rightly.
--Rabbi Jack Riemer
For we know You made the world in a way
That we must find our own path of peace
Within ourselves and with our neighbor.
We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to root out prejudice:
For you have already given us eyes
With which to see the good in all people
If we would only use them rightly.
--Rabbi Jack Riemer
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Quotes from Albert Einstein
Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.
I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres.
Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.
I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.
The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who--in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses'-- cannot hear the music of the spheres.
Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The Age of U-Turns
by Bruce Grierson
It's easy to get the sense these days that you've stumbled into a party where the punch is spiked with some powerful drug that dramatically alters identity. The faces are familiar, but the words coming out of them aren't. Something has happened to a lot of people you used to think you knew. They've changed into something like their own opposite.
There's Bill Gates, who these days is spending less time earning money than giving it away--and pulling other billionaires into the deep end of global philanthropy with him. There's historian Francis Fukuyama, leading a whole gang of disaffected fellow travelers away from neoconservatism. And in the back, humming Give Peace a Chance, the new Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, former head of the Marxist Sandinistas. The comandante has come around on open economies and free trade and is courting foreign investment as the way out for his nation's poor.
From modest recants--Oprah Winfrey on James Frey, NBA commissioner David Stern on leather balls, Rupert Murdoch on global warming--to full-on ideological 180s, reappraisal is in the air. The view long held by social psychologists that people very rarely change their beliefs seems itself in need of revision.
To flip-flop is human. Oh, sure, it can still sometimes be a political liability, evidence of a flaky disposition or rank opportunism. But there are circumstances in which not to reverse course seems almost pathological. He's a model of consistency, Stephen Colbert said last year of George W. Bush: "He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday--no matter what happened on Tuesday."
It's still too early, post 9/11, to get an accurate bead on how much that day actually affected people's lives in a concrete way. But what you can say with confidence is that those slicing jets pierced the bubble of privileged optimism that many Americans had been enjoying. It changed the perception that there was an inside detached from an outside you could voluntarily avoid.
Over the past three years, while researching a book on what I call secular epiphanies, I found people who had pulled a big U-turn in their lives. There was a slaughterhouse worker who became an animal-rights activist, a venture capitalist who quit to found a high-minded nonprofit, a death-penalty advocate who became a leading death-penalty opponent. Often the insight came in a forehead-smiting moment in the middle of the night: I've got it all wrong.
It looked at first like a random bunch of data points, a sprinkling of outliers beyond the curve of normal human experience. But when you stepped back, a pattern emerged. What these personal turns had in common was the apprehension that, well, we're all connected. Everything leans on something, is propped up by something--is both dependent and depended on.
Sure, there were folks who didn't don the love beads but buried them: ex-Greenpeacers who morphed into industry apparatchiks, utopians who left their kooky social experiments for banker's hours. But these aren't typically the kinds of journeys one makes suddenly--and in that sense they didn't count as epiphanies. There are lives that one slowly acquires, like a carapace. And sometimes these are the same lives that, in one deeply private moment of dead reckoning, get shed.
"The difference between you and me," a visiting Chinese student told University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett not long ago, "is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it's a line." The remark caught the professor off guard with its size. It prompted him to write a book, The Geography of Thought, about the differences--culturally encoded over a few hundred generations--between the Western and the Asian mind.
To Western thinking, the world is linear; you can chop it up and analyze it, and we can all work on our little part of the project independently until it's solved. The classically Eastern mind, according to Nisbett, sees things differently: the world isn't a length of rope but a vast, closed chain, incomprehensibly complex and ever changing. When you look at life from this second perspective, some unlikely connections reveal themselves. You're forced to retreat from the den of libertarianism and sniff the wind, to wake up when someone in Khartoum or Mogadishu twitches in his sleep.
I realized this was what almost all the U-turns had in common: people had swung around to face East. They had stopped thinking in a line and started thinking in a circle. Morality was looking less like a set of rules and more like a story, one in which they were part of an ensemble cast, no longer the star.
It's easy to get the sense these days that you've stumbled into a party where the punch is spiked with some powerful drug that dramatically alters identity. The faces are familiar, but the words coming out of them aren't. Something has happened to a lot of people you used to think you knew. They've changed into something like their own opposite.
There's Bill Gates, who these days is spending less time earning money than giving it away--and pulling other billionaires into the deep end of global philanthropy with him. There's historian Francis Fukuyama, leading a whole gang of disaffected fellow travelers away from neoconservatism. And in the back, humming Give Peace a Chance, the new Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, former head of the Marxist Sandinistas. The comandante has come around on open economies and free trade and is courting foreign investment as the way out for his nation's poor.
From modest recants--Oprah Winfrey on James Frey, NBA commissioner David Stern on leather balls, Rupert Murdoch on global warming--to full-on ideological 180s, reappraisal is in the air. The view long held by social psychologists that people very rarely change their beliefs seems itself in need of revision.
To flip-flop is human. Oh, sure, it can still sometimes be a political liability, evidence of a flaky disposition or rank opportunism. But there are circumstances in which not to reverse course seems almost pathological. He's a model of consistency, Stephen Colbert said last year of George W. Bush: "He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday--no matter what happened on Tuesday."
It's still too early, post 9/11, to get an accurate bead on how much that day actually affected people's lives in a concrete way. But what you can say with confidence is that those slicing jets pierced the bubble of privileged optimism that many Americans had been enjoying. It changed the perception that there was an inside detached from an outside you could voluntarily avoid.
Over the past three years, while researching a book on what I call secular epiphanies, I found people who had pulled a big U-turn in their lives. There was a slaughterhouse worker who became an animal-rights activist, a venture capitalist who quit to found a high-minded nonprofit, a death-penalty advocate who became a leading death-penalty opponent. Often the insight came in a forehead-smiting moment in the middle of the night: I've got it all wrong.
It looked at first like a random bunch of data points, a sprinkling of outliers beyond the curve of normal human experience. But when you stepped back, a pattern emerged. What these personal turns had in common was the apprehension that, well, we're all connected. Everything leans on something, is propped up by something--is both dependent and depended on.
Sure, there were folks who didn't don the love beads but buried them: ex-Greenpeacers who morphed into industry apparatchiks, utopians who left their kooky social experiments for banker's hours. But these aren't typically the kinds of journeys one makes suddenly--and in that sense they didn't count as epiphanies. There are lives that one slowly acquires, like a carapace. And sometimes these are the same lives that, in one deeply private moment of dead reckoning, get shed.
"The difference between you and me," a visiting Chinese student told University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett not long ago, "is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it's a line." The remark caught the professor off guard with its size. It prompted him to write a book, The Geography of Thought, about the differences--culturally encoded over a few hundred generations--between the Western and the Asian mind.
To Western thinking, the world is linear; you can chop it up and analyze it, and we can all work on our little part of the project independently until it's solved. The classically Eastern mind, according to Nisbett, sees things differently: the world isn't a length of rope but a vast, closed chain, incomprehensibly complex and ever changing. When you look at life from this second perspective, some unlikely connections reveal themselves. You're forced to retreat from the den of libertarianism and sniff the wind, to wake up when someone in Khartoum or Mogadishu twitches in his sleep.
I realized this was what almost all the U-turns had in common: people had swung around to face East. They had stopped thinking in a line and started thinking in a circle. Morality was looking less like a set of rules and more like a story, one in which they were part of an ensemble cast, no longer the star.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Hope of the World
by Shane Claiborne
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Don’t let anyone make you think that God has chosen America as [God's] divine messianic force to be reckoned with.” There are compelling voices who claim that God has chosen America (not the church) as a special embodiment of hope for the world, and then there are times (perhaps in more recent history) where it seems America embodies an antithesis of what God hopes for. U.S. flags colonize the altars and the money is branded “In God We Trust,” but the economy is an eerie reflection of the seven deadly sins listed in scripture, with a culture dangerously close to the sins of Sodom, a culture the prophet Ezekiel describes as “arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned.” Given the fact that America and God’s kingdom are not the same--and are often at odds--how do we resist the temptation of thinking that America, rather than God or God’s church, is the hope of the world?
Perhaps reflect on the following words from George W. Bush: “The ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” And the recent words of Barack Obama on the Late Show with David Letterman, “This country is still the last best hope on earth.” As Christians, how do we reconcile where our ultimate faith lies, especially within an empire as mesmerizing as Rome or America?
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Don’t let anyone make you think that God has chosen America as [God's] divine messianic force to be reckoned with.” There are compelling voices who claim that God has chosen America (not the church) as a special embodiment of hope for the world, and then there are times (perhaps in more recent history) where it seems America embodies an antithesis of what God hopes for. U.S. flags colonize the altars and the money is branded “In God We Trust,” but the economy is an eerie reflection of the seven deadly sins listed in scripture, with a culture dangerously close to the sins of Sodom, a culture the prophet Ezekiel describes as “arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned.” Given the fact that America and God’s kingdom are not the same--and are often at odds--how do we resist the temptation of thinking that America, rather than God or God’s church, is the hope of the world?
Perhaps reflect on the following words from George W. Bush: “The ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” And the recent words of Barack Obama on the Late Show with David Letterman, “This country is still the last best hope on earth.” As Christians, how do we reconcile where our ultimate faith lies, especially within an empire as mesmerizing as Rome or America?
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Questions for the Democratic Candidates
by Brian McLaren
I'm writing from the Republic of South Africa, where I've been speaking in conferences and other gatherings with church leaders from across many denominations. With the memories of apartheid still alive here, with a poverty rate of about 40 percent, with crime rates moving higher and higher--in part due to desperate immigrants from Zimbabwe--and with
the continuing work of creating a successful multicultural democracy ongoing, several questions come to my mind for the three candidates. Here is how I would formulate them sitting in a home in downtown Johannesburg:
1. For Senator Clinton: If you are elected and serve two terms, it would mean that two families would share the presidency of the United States for 28 years. It's hard not to conclude that we are living in something more like an oligarchy or plutocracy than a democracy. Would you reflect on this problem so we can see how deeply you have thought about it, and would you propose what can be done about it?
2. For Senator Obama: I've heard critics express fear that you aren't tough enough or militaristic enough to be president in a world of terrorism and nuclear weapons. I would imagine that would prompt you to want to prove you are indeed capable of being tough and militaristic. But many of us are hoping for someone who will present another vision for the role of America in the world--something beyond the world's dominant military force, the world's police, or the world's imperial center. Not that America would be weak, but that we would be strong in new and different ways. Can you comment on your vision for the role of America in the world, and what you would do to pursue that role?
3. For John Edwards: When the subject of terrorism comes up, many Americans seem to think that terrorism can be stopped by guns and bombs. But others believe that wherever there is a large gap between rich and poor countries, terrorism (like high crime rates) will be likely, perhaps inevitable. If that is the case, creating a more equitable global economy becomes one of the most essential dimensions of reducing terrorism. Do you agree, and if so, what can America do to increase its security by helping poor nations improve their economic systems?
There are two additional questions I would want to ask all the candidates:
1. America seems to be caught in a cycle of fear. Politicians use fear to garner support and inhibit criticism. News media profit when people are afraid and watch TV news more often, raising ratings and advertising income. The arms industry profits when fears run high. Political parties compete for fear dominance over other parties. Cycles of fear are hard to break. How will your campaign and your presidency address this rise in the fear quotient?
2. The United States is not leading the world in addressing our unsustainable economy. We are the world's prime example of an unsustainable consumer society, and if our lifestyles were generalized to the whole human population, we would need many planet earths to sustain us. Should we be a leader in environmental stewardship and sustainability? How would you lead in this regard? What would your priorities be in environmental renewal and sustainable living?
I'm writing from the Republic of South Africa, where I've been speaking in conferences and other gatherings with church leaders from across many denominations. With the memories of apartheid still alive here, with a poverty rate of about 40 percent, with crime rates moving higher and higher--in part due to desperate immigrants from Zimbabwe--and with
the continuing work of creating a successful multicultural democracy ongoing, several questions come to my mind for the three candidates. Here is how I would formulate them sitting in a home in downtown Johannesburg:
1. For Senator Clinton: If you are elected and serve two terms, it would mean that two families would share the presidency of the United States for 28 years. It's hard not to conclude that we are living in something more like an oligarchy or plutocracy than a democracy. Would you reflect on this problem so we can see how deeply you have thought about it, and would you propose what can be done about it?
2. For Senator Obama: I've heard critics express fear that you aren't tough enough or militaristic enough to be president in a world of terrorism and nuclear weapons. I would imagine that would prompt you to want to prove you are indeed capable of being tough and militaristic. But many of us are hoping for someone who will present another vision for the role of America in the world--something beyond the world's dominant military force, the world's police, or the world's imperial center. Not that America would be weak, but that we would be strong in new and different ways. Can you comment on your vision for the role of America in the world, and what you would do to pursue that role?
3. For John Edwards: When the subject of terrorism comes up, many Americans seem to think that terrorism can be stopped by guns and bombs. But others believe that wherever there is a large gap between rich and poor countries, terrorism (like high crime rates) will be likely, perhaps inevitable. If that is the case, creating a more equitable global economy becomes one of the most essential dimensions of reducing terrorism. Do you agree, and if so, what can America do to increase its security by helping poor nations improve their economic systems?
There are two additional questions I would want to ask all the candidates:
1. America seems to be caught in a cycle of fear. Politicians use fear to garner support and inhibit criticism. News media profit when people are afraid and watch TV news more often, raising ratings and advertising income. The arms industry profits when fears run high. Political parties compete for fear dominance over other parties. Cycles of fear are hard to break. How will your campaign and your presidency address this rise in the fear quotient?
2. The United States is not leading the world in addressing our unsustainable economy. We are the world's prime example of an unsustainable consumer society, and if our lifestyles were generalized to the whole human population, we would need many planet earths to sustain us. Should we be a leader in environmental stewardship and sustainability? How would you lead in this regard? What would your priorities be in environmental renewal and sustainable living?
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Baptism
I have glimpsed intimations of baptism being fulfilled in a multitude of unexpected reminders: laughing with the inner-city children I taught as we spashed in the gushing water of a fire hydrant on a sweltering afternoon. Washing dishes at the kitchen sink with my grandmother. Sharing a canteen of icy water with thirsty hikers at a trail junction in a mountain wilderness. Hand watering my dad's newly planted vegetable garden.
--Pat Peterson
--Pat Peterson
Advertising
by Adam Wells
I find it painfully interesting to muse on how advertising make us less free. Consider the following argument: The purpose of advertising is to peak our desires of products: sneakers, foods, cars, drugs and so on. According to a host of wise people, religious, spiritual, and otherwise, it is desires that take us away from a more ideal life, God, or enlightenment, for example. In sum, desires create suffering. This applies both to individuals and humanity.
When we desire, we are not satisfied. When we desire we feel we are lacking something. This could be anything from more genuine human interaction to more shoes or more beer. Ads channel this human desire to consumptive goods, goods that we buy from people making money. From a broader perspective, desires create vast amounts of suffering for people and the ecosystems that they inhabit.
As a nation, Americans consume enormous amounts of products that are not produced within sight. Indeed many of these products are produced in less than desirable conditions across oceans. Consider how often something that is consumed in this nation was produced at the cost of the happiness, health, or wellness of a human being.
It is reasonable to say that much of this consumption is driven by advertising. When we look at our consumption in this way, it becomes obvious that advertising is truly an evil force in modern times in that it is horrifically unhealthy, both physically and spiritually for both consumers and producers.
I would not hesitate to claim that advertising is one of the most awful and horrific inventions that humans have ever conceived. It makes profits for a few while fueling systems of oppression and suffering for billions of human beings. I am reminded why I avoid television at all costs.
I find it painfully interesting to muse on how advertising make us less free. Consider the following argument: The purpose of advertising is to peak our desires of products: sneakers, foods, cars, drugs and so on. According to a host of wise people, religious, spiritual, and otherwise, it is desires that take us away from a more ideal life, God, or enlightenment, for example. In sum, desires create suffering. This applies both to individuals and humanity.
When we desire, we are not satisfied. When we desire we feel we are lacking something. This could be anything from more genuine human interaction to more shoes or more beer. Ads channel this human desire to consumptive goods, goods that we buy from people making money. From a broader perspective, desires create vast amounts of suffering for people and the ecosystems that they inhabit.
As a nation, Americans consume enormous amounts of products that are not produced within sight. Indeed many of these products are produced in less than desirable conditions across oceans. Consider how often something that is consumed in this nation was produced at the cost of the happiness, health, or wellness of a human being.
It is reasonable to say that much of this consumption is driven by advertising. When we look at our consumption in this way, it becomes obvious that advertising is truly an evil force in modern times in that it is horrifically unhealthy, both physically and spiritually for both consumers and producers.
I would not hesitate to claim that advertising is one of the most awful and horrific inventions that humans have ever conceived. It makes profits for a few while fueling systems of oppression and suffering for billions of human beings. I am reminded why I avoid television at all costs.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Chatty World
In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us to keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and recreative word to the present world.
--Henri J.M. Nouwen
--Henri J.M. Nouwen
Put Peace Back in Mother's Day
by Marcia Angle and Naila Bolus
For moms, nothing is more important than making the world safe for their children. Mother's Day was originally founded in America as a holiday to unite women against war. Yet today we are bombarded with news and images of warfare and violence.
In proposing a "Mother's Day for Peace" more than a century ago, the American abolitionist and women's rights advocate Julia Ward Howe called on women to use their powerful maternal instincts to turn the world around.
Howe witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Civil War and the scourge of violence, death and disease that claimed the lives of soldiers both on and off the battlefield. She worked with widows and orphans of both Union and Confederate soldiers and later traveled to Europe, where she encountered the devastation of the Franco-Prussian War. In response to all this, she called on mothers of the world to gather to work for peace, as she proclaimed the first special day in their honor in 1870:
"Arise, then, women of this day!" she wrote, "`Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience."
What can we do?
More than a century later, our nation is again at war. Today, more than ever, it's time for us to put peace back into Mother's Day.But how can we do this? Most of us can't just pack up our bags for Iraq or Sudan or other conflict-torn regions badly in need of peace building. Nor can we step in and broker peace negotiations among warring nations.
Still, there are many things we can do on Mother's Day, or any other day, to promote the ethics of peace that Howe envisioned.
• Make room for peacemakers. Even though the daily news focuses overwhelmingly on conflict, this is only part of the story. To kindle a sense of hope in our children and grandchildren, we can tell them about people who are working to make the world safer and more secure for us all.
Why not use Mother's Day to talk about what inspiring and courageous moms are doing around the globe? Moms like Wangari Matthai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner whose Green Belt Movement motivated thousands of ordinary citizens in Kenya to overcome fear and a sense of helplessness and to defend democratic rights. Or Susan Granada of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, who works on the ground in Sri Lanka to facilitate dialogue between opposing sides in that country's civil war. Or Susan Shaer of Women's Action for New Directions, who works to ensure that women have a seat at the table on Capitol Hill. You can find more stories about moms working for peace at www.rediscovermothersday.org.
• Break down barriers. Most wars and violent conflict can be traced to clashing ideologies that have drowned out our common humanity.
Introduce your children to different cultures by inviting people of different races, nationalities, religions and cultures into your home. Visiting their houses of worship can break down barriers that could contribute to hate and misunderstanding. Encourage your children to stand up for any child who is being bullied, even when it is unpopular to do so.
• Be a role model. There are many ways to model your values. Practice resolving everyday conflicts by asking questions rather than rushing to judgment. Mend fences whenever possible. Speak out against injustice in your community and in the world. Volunteer for and make family donations to groups that work for peace. Explain to your child on Election Day why you're voting and what you're voting for.
• Consume ethically. Talk to your children about shopping decisions you make to support products from companies that protect our environment and countries with good human and workers' rights records. And work with your family to use energy wisely, because reducing our dependence on fossil fuels makes us all more secure.
War enters our homes on a daily basis through the TV, over the Internet and in conversation at the dinner table. As parents and grandparents, we owe it to our kids to make sure peace gets an equal hearing. Mother's Day is the perfect chance to begin that conversation, to hold a space in our homes for something better.
How do we talk to our children about war? The answer is simple: Talk to them about peace.
For moms, nothing is more important than making the world safe for their children. Mother's Day was originally founded in America as a holiday to unite women against war. Yet today we are bombarded with news and images of warfare and violence.
In proposing a "Mother's Day for Peace" more than a century ago, the American abolitionist and women's rights advocate Julia Ward Howe called on women to use their powerful maternal instincts to turn the world around.
Howe witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Civil War and the scourge of violence, death and disease that claimed the lives of soldiers both on and off the battlefield. She worked with widows and orphans of both Union and Confederate soldiers and later traveled to Europe, where she encountered the devastation of the Franco-Prussian War. In response to all this, she called on mothers of the world to gather to work for peace, as she proclaimed the first special day in their honor in 1870:
"Arise, then, women of this day!" she wrote, "`Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience."
What can we do?
More than a century later, our nation is again at war. Today, more than ever, it's time for us to put peace back into Mother's Day.But how can we do this? Most of us can't just pack up our bags for Iraq or Sudan or other conflict-torn regions badly in need of peace building. Nor can we step in and broker peace negotiations among warring nations.
Still, there are many things we can do on Mother's Day, or any other day, to promote the ethics of peace that Howe envisioned.
• Make room for peacemakers. Even though the daily news focuses overwhelmingly on conflict, this is only part of the story. To kindle a sense of hope in our children and grandchildren, we can tell them about people who are working to make the world safer and more secure for us all.
Why not use Mother's Day to talk about what inspiring and courageous moms are doing around the globe? Moms like Wangari Matthai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner whose Green Belt Movement motivated thousands of ordinary citizens in Kenya to overcome fear and a sense of helplessness and to defend democratic rights. Or Susan Granada of the Nonviolent Peaceforce, who works on the ground in Sri Lanka to facilitate dialogue between opposing sides in that country's civil war. Or Susan Shaer of Women's Action for New Directions, who works to ensure that women have a seat at the table on Capitol Hill. You can find more stories about moms working for peace at www.rediscovermothersday.org.
• Break down barriers. Most wars and violent conflict can be traced to clashing ideologies that have drowned out our common humanity.
Introduce your children to different cultures by inviting people of different races, nationalities, religions and cultures into your home. Visiting their houses of worship can break down barriers that could contribute to hate and misunderstanding. Encourage your children to stand up for any child who is being bullied, even when it is unpopular to do so.
• Be a role model. There are many ways to model your values. Practice resolving everyday conflicts by asking questions rather than rushing to judgment. Mend fences whenever possible. Speak out against injustice in your community and in the world. Volunteer for and make family donations to groups that work for peace. Explain to your child on Election Day why you're voting and what you're voting for.
• Consume ethically. Talk to your children about shopping decisions you make to support products from companies that protect our environment and countries with good human and workers' rights records. And work with your family to use energy wisely, because reducing our dependence on fossil fuels makes us all more secure.
War enters our homes on a daily basis through the TV, over the Internet and in conversation at the dinner table. As parents and grandparents, we owe it to our kids to make sure peace gets an equal hearing. Mother's Day is the perfect chance to begin that conversation, to hold a space in our homes for something better.
How do we talk to our children about war? The answer is simple: Talk to them about peace.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Deadened to Depravity
by Rod Dreher
The Washington Post recently carried out an unusual experiment. It hired Joshua Bell, one of the world's most famous classical musicians, to dress like a common street busker and play his Stradivarius in a D.C. metro station during rush hour. The anonymous violinist played Bach, he played Schubert, he played some of the most beautiful music ever to emerge from the minds of mortals. And virtually nobody stopped to notice.
The point was not that most people are uncultured clods. The point, rather, is that we are so caught up in the routine of our lives that we fail to see extraordinary beauty right in front of us. Something's wrong with us.
As Post reporter Gene Weingarten wrote, "If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that--then what else are we missing?"
If we don't see the beauty that we should, we don't see the ugliness either. For much of my career I was a film critic and saw just about every movie that came out. Every now and then, I'd take my wife to screenings with me, and I'd observe her flinching at intensely violent or explicitly erotic images onscreen. Though I shared her conservative moral sense, or so I thought, I pitied her oversensitivity.And then I changed jobs. I went from seeing 30 or so movies a month to seeing maybe three. It was as if I'd been a heavy smoker who'd gone cold turkey and was shocked to experience my sense of taste returning. Without meaning to, I began to watch movies differently.
The graphic sex and extreme violence that I'd manage to aestheticize away earlier, I no longer could deal with. I told my wife I must be turning into a prude. "No," she said, "you're becoming normal again."
Around that time, I became a father for the first time. One evening not long after my son was born, the mob picture "Goodfellas" came on cable. Three years earlier, I'd written that it was the best movie of the year. Forty minutes into the film, I turned it off. Couldn't stomach the onscreen savagery. Having a newborn gave me eyes to see things I couldn't before. Those eyes that had looked with wonder at this soft pink miracle could no longer take any pleasure in looking upon vivid images of human beings being shot, stabbed, beaten, tortured and abused.
Once we were a culture that looked to our art to educate our moral imagination, to show us what it meant to be fully human. Human in all our brokenness and passion and glory. Even artists who confronted evil did so with an eye toward illuminating the good (which is not a synonym for "nice").
Now, we are afraid to call anything good or evil and no longer have the confidence to assert that standards exist. When people ask if a movie, book, album or play was good or bad, what they're really asking is, "Was it entertaining?" In a culture with an insatiable craving for sensation, boredom becomes the root of all evil.
Thus our moral imagination declines into decadence. A decadent society is one that has lost its hold on standards and denies that they exist. A society in the early stages of decadence loses its sensitivity to beauty and to the good. As it slips further into decadence, it loses its ability to recognize how far it has fallen.
Which brings us to the case of Seung Hui Cho. We may never know to what degree he was psychopathic and what fed his insanity. But Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter identified striking parallels between the mass-murder ritual Cho conceived as performance art, and the hyper-violent films of director John Woo. While it's impossible to say these films "made" Cho go berserk, Hunter is right to assert that all creative artists have to face the real-life consequences of their work.
What does it say about our culture that there is a hot genre of mainstream films called "torture porn," the point of which is to show human beings being eviscerated? The latest entry, "Vacancy," opened days after the Virginia Tech savagery. It's about a couple who are unwittingly set up to star in a snuff film--a movie in which people are tortured to death for the viewer's sexual pleasure. The Los Angeles Times called "Vacancy" a "ruthlessly efficient stalk-and-slash machine"--this, in a favorable review.
Something is wrong with us, all right.
We have learned to expand our understanding of the normative to include art that exalts things that ought to be repugnant to those who love life. In so doing, we teach ourselves to embrace death, or at least to remain indifferent to its putrid presence. "A human body that cannot react is a corpse," wrote literary critic Russell Kirk. And a human imagination that cannot react against that which would destroy it is nothing more than fever dreams of a zombie.
Do you want to live? Then look at the culture of death, say not this, not anymore--and turn to the good, the beautiful and the true. It's still here, hiding in plain sight.
The Washington Post recently carried out an unusual experiment. It hired Joshua Bell, one of the world's most famous classical musicians, to dress like a common street busker and play his Stradivarius in a D.C. metro station during rush hour. The anonymous violinist played Bach, he played Schubert, he played some of the most beautiful music ever to emerge from the minds of mortals. And virtually nobody stopped to notice.
The point was not that most people are uncultured clods. The point, rather, is that we are so caught up in the routine of our lives that we fail to see extraordinary beauty right in front of us. Something's wrong with us.
As Post reporter Gene Weingarten wrote, "If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that--then what else are we missing?"
If we don't see the beauty that we should, we don't see the ugliness either. For much of my career I was a film critic and saw just about every movie that came out. Every now and then, I'd take my wife to screenings with me, and I'd observe her flinching at intensely violent or explicitly erotic images onscreen. Though I shared her conservative moral sense, or so I thought, I pitied her oversensitivity.And then I changed jobs. I went from seeing 30 or so movies a month to seeing maybe three. It was as if I'd been a heavy smoker who'd gone cold turkey and was shocked to experience my sense of taste returning. Without meaning to, I began to watch movies differently.
The graphic sex and extreme violence that I'd manage to aestheticize away earlier, I no longer could deal with. I told my wife I must be turning into a prude. "No," she said, "you're becoming normal again."
Around that time, I became a father for the first time. One evening not long after my son was born, the mob picture "Goodfellas" came on cable. Three years earlier, I'd written that it was the best movie of the year. Forty minutes into the film, I turned it off. Couldn't stomach the onscreen savagery. Having a newborn gave me eyes to see things I couldn't before. Those eyes that had looked with wonder at this soft pink miracle could no longer take any pleasure in looking upon vivid images of human beings being shot, stabbed, beaten, tortured and abused.
Once we were a culture that looked to our art to educate our moral imagination, to show us what it meant to be fully human. Human in all our brokenness and passion and glory. Even artists who confronted evil did so with an eye toward illuminating the good (which is not a synonym for "nice").
Now, we are afraid to call anything good or evil and no longer have the confidence to assert that standards exist. When people ask if a movie, book, album or play was good or bad, what they're really asking is, "Was it entertaining?" In a culture with an insatiable craving for sensation, boredom becomes the root of all evil.
Thus our moral imagination declines into decadence. A decadent society is one that has lost its hold on standards and denies that they exist. A society in the early stages of decadence loses its sensitivity to beauty and to the good. As it slips further into decadence, it loses its ability to recognize how far it has fallen.
Which brings us to the case of Seung Hui Cho. We may never know to what degree he was psychopathic and what fed his insanity. But Washington Post film critic Stephen Hunter identified striking parallels between the mass-murder ritual Cho conceived as performance art, and the hyper-violent films of director John Woo. While it's impossible to say these films "made" Cho go berserk, Hunter is right to assert that all creative artists have to face the real-life consequences of their work.
What does it say about our culture that there is a hot genre of mainstream films called "torture porn," the point of which is to show human beings being eviscerated? The latest entry, "Vacancy," opened days after the Virginia Tech savagery. It's about a couple who are unwittingly set up to star in a snuff film--a movie in which people are tortured to death for the viewer's sexual pleasure. The Los Angeles Times called "Vacancy" a "ruthlessly efficient stalk-and-slash machine"--this, in a favorable review.
Something is wrong with us, all right.
We have learned to expand our understanding of the normative to include art that exalts things that ought to be repugnant to those who love life. In so doing, we teach ourselves to embrace death, or at least to remain indifferent to its putrid presence. "A human body that cannot react is a corpse," wrote literary critic Russell Kirk. And a human imagination that cannot react against that which would destroy it is nothing more than fever dreams of a zombie.
Do you want to live? Then look at the culture of death, say not this, not anymore--and turn to the good, the beautiful and the true. It's still here, hiding in plain sight.
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