Is It Racism?

            Of all the debates over the November election, one of the most important for the future of the country is the role played by racism.  Despite the remarkable split in voting between racial groups, and other information such as the enthusiastic backing for the Republican candidate by neo-Nazi groups, the statements about blacks, Mexicans, and Muslims by the eventual winner, and the racial incidents occurring at rallies and elsewhere, often in the candidate’s name, many voters, and some commentators, have argued that voters did not decide on the basis of racial attitudes but for other reasons.  Put simply, racists did not elect Him.

            Such arguments depend on a narrow view of what constitutes racism and racists.  On the narrow view, racism consists in believing that a particular, dominant race, is superior to others and that certain discriminatory actions follow logically from that conviction.  So slavery, miscegenation laws, educational and housing segregation, employment discrimination, and so forth are signs of racism.  A racist is one who holds those views and acts on them.

            There are three things wrong with this definition. 

            First, it takes what philosophers would call an essentialist view.  You are either a racist or you are not.  But if we replace racist with most other terms, we can see that the either/or rule rarely applies.  It does work in legal categories: citizen/non-citizen, employed/unemployed.  But it rarely works in self-defining cases: kind/unkind, smart/not smart, athletic/un-athletic.  Even in categories we used to think of as more stable, our judgments and the evidence change: old/young, white/black, even male/female, are more ambiguous than they once seemed.  For most categories, we are all on the spectrum, so to speak, which is why we usually deal in adjectives.  At one time there were people who were ladies and gentlemen; now there are only people who behave in those ways some of the time. As the old joke goes, there are only two things you can’t be “a little bit”: pregnant and dead.   And you can certainly be a little bit racist.

            Second, it equates racism with conscious and consistent views and actions, rather than with situational behaviors, often not consciously involving racist beliefs on the part of the actor.  Studies have shown that HR directors who consciously affirm that they are seeking diversity in the workforce nevertheless are significantly less likely to interview candidates whose first names are overtly Afrocentric (Kwame, Jamilla) than the same resumé when the candidate’s name is European (Kevin, Jane).  (National Bureau of Economic Research, nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html). 

            The Implicit Apperception Test (implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), which asks subjects to choose between positive and negative words when these are associated with either black or white faces, consistently shows that a majority of people are instinctively biased, and that the instinctive bias is a better predictor of behavior than stated racial attitudes.  This test has been applied many thousands of times, over nearly 20 years, and in many cultures and contexts (gender and religion as well as race) with consistent results.  See Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Banaji & Greenwald, Delacorte Press.

            Therefore a person’s statement that they are not racist or that they did not vote with racial biases in mind has remarkably little value in assessing their actual motivations.

            Third, and perhaps most important, racism would not be so damaging if it were confined to those who performed overt racist acts.   Take an analogy: a person who says he or she is not callous, cruel, or brutal, but can stand by and watch women, children, or animals being beaten is, by any standard, contradicting their statement not by their action, but by their passivity. 

            The great analyst of race, Beverly Daniel Tatum, noted many years ago the asymmetry between racist and non-racist behavior.  She divided behavior into four quadrants:  Active Racism, Passive Racism, Active Anti-Racism, and Passive Anti-Racism.  Taking the example of a racist joke, she placed telling the joke in the Active Racism box, laughing at the joke in the Passive Racism box, and objecting to the joke in the Active Anti-Racism box.   Then she asked “What behavior falls into the Passive Anti-Racism box?”  After a few feeble suggestions – not laughing, walking away without comment, the audience had to agree that there is no such thing as Passive Anti-Racism. 

We have known this for a long time:

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

                                                                                    -- Eldridge Cleaver (attributed)

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”                                                                                    -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”                                                                                     -- Edmund Burke

“He who is not with us is against us.”            -- Jesus

           

            In recent years we have codified this understanding into the tripartite division into perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, to which has recently been added a fourth term “upstander,” to describe those who consciously defend victims from perpetrators.  So Yehuda Bauer wrote “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” 

            So to the tens or hundreds of thousands of voters who expressed overt racism in their decision, we should add the millions who were so indifferent to the racist views and even promised actions of the Republican candidate that they also voted for him, and also the ultra-passive who saw little enough difference between the two that they refused to vote at all. 

            Racists may not have caused the outcome of the election, but racism almost certainly did.

           

           

Pogo Was Wrong

            Walt Kelly’s wise possum once affirmed, “I have met the enemy and he is us.” A sensible cautionary statement, to be sure, but not one for our times.  I have met the enemy, and he isn’t us – he’s them.  Why am I feeling so dogmatic?  Because for the first time I actually was in an online  (or actual, for that matter) conversation with Trump supporters.  Not only that, these supporters were professionals in the field of mediation and conflict resolution, gathered to discuss the recent election and how to hold difficult conversations.

            The leaders, two highly respected members of the field, spoke about the ugly rhetoric of the campaign and about their personal fears of the coming administration. Both noted their Jewishness, and one described himself as a direct descent of Holocaust victims and survivors.  Each of the first half dozen cited recent political statements that made them fearful for their own well-being or for that of others in the United States.

            Then two new voices entered the conversation.  They were both white men, one seemingly a southwestern non-Hispanic Christian, and the other a northeastern Catholic with a legal education.  The first noted that he too had had fears, not only in this election, but also during the Clinton and Obama administrations.  What fears?  Abortion, he said, and the teaching of moral relativism to his children in the public schools.  The first is, of course, an issue on which there can be principled difference, but did he think that abortion rights would be expanded if a Democrat held the White House? For the second, I wondered what grounds there could be for fearing that a Democratic administration would assert control over the ethical teaching content of public education, (I imagine there would be some connection to gender and sexual orientation issues, but if so, that was not stated.)

            The second new voice was the only person in the group to speak as if lecturing the assembled listeners.  His main points were:

1.     That the phrase climate change deniers echoed the term Holocaust deniers, which upset him. He began talking about the distinction between natural and anthropogenic climate change.  He did not explain what he feared from a Democratic administration pursuing concern about climate change.

2.     That everyone has fears, and fears are fears – surely a reasonable statement for a therapist, mediator, parent, etc., but hardly a claim that should foreclose discussion about the validity and significance of fears in the public arena.

3.     He then made his one statement of a personal fear: too much power in the Executive Branch, which he attributed to the Obama administration’s overreach.  Unfortunately in a webinar you can’t catch the moderator’s attention and try to make an observation (We were plodding through a list of speakers that had been created at the very beginning of the question period, and no one that failed to make that instant list ever got to speak.)

I have to admit, that at that point I was lost in incomprehension.  First, I thought, if there was a danger in concentration of power, wouldn’t control by one party of the Executive, both branches of the Legislative, and very likely the Judiciary, be a far worse danger than Presidential overreach?  Second, wasn’t it clear from the past eight years that the Congress had the tools it needed to balance the Executive?  The Dream Act, TPP, single-payer health insurance, suspension of deportation actions, and a liberal-leaning Supreme Court had all been blocked.

            What struck me most about these speakers was their clear assumption that their fears, which for the most part seemed to be that someone else might be able to do something (marry, have an abortion, or whatever unspoken “moral” fears they might have), or about a fairly abstract level of political concern, was more important to them than the concrete fears of others about what might be done to people like them.

            The conversation, and particularly the false equivalency of fears, put me in mind of some dialogue from a recent Cable police procedural.  (I have no idea if the claims made were true, but they seemed entirely plausible and very much to the point.)  According to one character, a woman had asked a group of men what they most feared about women. “That they’ll laugh at us” was the answer.  She asked a group of women what they most feared about men.  “That they’ll kill us.”

            I admit I have strong opinions on the one side.  But I was actually hoping to hear some moderating views that might make me understand what I might be missing.  Instead, I came away more confirmed than ever that moral vacuity and lack of empathy are all but prerequisites of the winning side in this election.

           

A New Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal for Preventing Homeless Children From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Nation, and for Making Them Beneficial to Proponents of the Second Amendment

( News item 12/22/16: 

Liberty University to Spend $1 Million on the Homeless. I Mean, on a Gun Range.

by Benjamin L. Corey
Liberty University had an extra million dollars to spend, so what did they spend it on? A gun range.)

            The recent plan at Liberty University to devote excess funds to the building of a gun range rather than to the relief of the homeless, however wise in immediate benefit, misses the opportunity to address both issues in a more enduring manner.

            For it is well-known that the homeless, being often feckless, unemployable, and most importantly prolific breeders, pose a continual burden to the Nation, and to their parents (who are of course largely liable because of their obstinate insistence on dropping offspring whom they can neither feed nor house). 

            On the other hand, our Nation is both blessed and cursed with an abundance of arms and armed individuals who have little or no outlet for their commitment to self-defense, or to protection of the Nation from those who would destroy it from within, whether under cover of military necessity or by establishment of Sharia Law, so-called transgender bathrooms, and other abominations.

            Further, animal rights activists, vegetarians, and others have sharply reduced enthusiasm for such traditional uses of arms as big game hunting and the wearing of animal pelts, without which our species would never have attained the dominance, prosperity and safety it now enjoys.

            But there is a ready solution to these problems. For I have heard from several learned gentlemen, some of whom trace their ancestry back even beyond the glorious first fourscore years of our Republic to the age of Feudalism, that a human child can, when properly trained, be a notable object of venery, both elusive and at times dangerous.

            My proposal therefore is as follows:

That the parents of homeless children be encouraged to turn their offspring over to the Nation, to be raised as instruments for arms training.

·       That current and future children between the ages of six and fourteen be immediately available for adoption by the state.

·       That parents offering their children for adoption be compensated by receiving permanent housing, on condition that they either submit to sterilization, that worthy invention of a wise earlier era that has unfortunately fallen into disrepute; or that they contract to deliver any new offspring to the Nation upon reaching the age of six.  These provisions ensure that no funds will be squandered on the public education of such persons.

·       That such parents be encouraged to persuade other families to do the same, with monetary compensation for each success.

·       That these children be divided into age and ability cadres:

·       From 6-8, children will be taught to evade notice, hide skillfully, and appeal to the weaker sentiment of their hunters, a feat well-known to be part of the repertoire of most young mammals, and even some birds.

o   These children will be hunted by novices, typically ages 11-14, but with some variation depending on local cultures.  The weapons used will simulate actual firearms, but will employ such ammunition as paintballs (with some lightly corrosive element introduced to cause mild pain to the game).

·       At the next stage 9-11 or 12, children’s skills will be assessed.  The more able will go on to further training in quarry behavior, while the less able will remain at the prior stage for a period not to exceed 6 months.

o   In either case, such quarry, either at first or after further training, including advanced physical education, will be hunted using rubber bullets or other ammunition that will cause considerable, but neither lasting nor permanently injurious, pain.

·       At the final stage, 12-14, the quarry will be trained in the arts of unarmed self-           defense, and perhaps equipped with such defensive weapons as slingshots         (rubber-loaded), bolos, and other devices that might serve to incapacitate a     hunter briefly.

·       All able-bodied, housed and productive youth will be required to participate in the first two hunting stages (6-8 and 9-11).  After that stage, they may choose to continue their training, with such incentives as promotion to the State Guard Units that will be established, or to return to permanent civilian status.

o   These students may continue to use non-lethal ammunition, but in order to graduate with complete certification, which will allow them access to numerous opportunities and privileges in employment, taxation, and otherwise, they will be required to complete at least one certified human kill of a third-level quarry.

·       Third-level quarry who have survived for two years or 24 hunts, whichever comes first, will be offered the opportunity to become breeders, as the older generation of homeless may now be beyond childbearing age, and many younger persons may strenuously avoid homelessness to avoid the breeding role, or choose early sterilization, thus defeating the purpose.  Should they reject this option, they will immediately be subject to sterilization, and to permanent labor raising and training their successors.

Finally, lest this system be thought to condemn too many to a lifelong status based solely on their parentage, a certain percentage of the Stage 3 students, perhaps titled “the Talented Tenth,” will, upon recommendation of their trainers, be allowed to shift roles and be retrained as Hunters for the Nation.

           

How Much Should We Worry?

            Yes, I’m afraid of Donald Trump and his administration.  The damage he is likely to do, particularly domestically, to education, civil rights, labor, the environment, and consumer protections are immense.

            What worries me far more, though, is the synergy of Trump and his followers.  I don’t believe that anyone can have voted for Trump without one of two motives: 1. He’ll be good for me, and who cares about anyone else? (e.g. those who see a major tax break and a rising stock market), 2. And those who believe that he’ll be good for them by being very bad for someone else (e.g. racists, anti-immigrant groups, anti-globalists, abortion opponents, and on and on).  Put the former together with the latter and I see a witches’ brew of trouble: The greedy will back him for their own benefit, while the needy (both lacking in material things and lacking in character), will be further tempted to take matters into their own hands; to push Trump to acting on his worst instincts, and to seek ever more irrational explanations and more radical “heroes.”

            We’ve been hearing the Hitler analogy for quite a while, mostly aimed at Trump.  The analogy has some massive weaknesses:  Hitler was an abject failure until he found his medium in rabble-rousing speech.  Trump is a seeming success, who parlayed that apparent success into national attention.  Hitler was an open racist whose theories, however externally incoherent, made sense on their own terms.  Trump, whose incoherent reasoning isn’t even consistent from week to week.  (Case in point: Hitler carried out all his threats to lock people up or worse, while Trump only used that meme as a tool.)

            The similarity, I believe, is more between the cult of Hitler as it played out in Germany and the cult of Trump as it may play out here.  Like almost every president before Trump, I look to history for some understanding of the present, realizing that conditions vary.  

            Parts of Ian Kershaw’s 1000-page biography of Hitler, published in 1998, with a new preface in 2007, could have been written about Trump:

            “How is that someone with so few intellectual gifts…without the background that bred high office, without even any experience of government before becoming Reich Chancellor, could nevertheless have such an immense historical impact, could make the entire world hold its breath?”

            His explanation focuses on the image of Hitler held by his followers:

            “’Charismatic authority’…did not rest primarily on the demonstrable outstanding characteristics of an individual.  Rather it derived from the perception of such qualities among a ‘following’ which, amid crisis conditions, projected onto a chosen leader unique ‘heroic’ attributes and saw in him personal greatness, the embodiment of a ‘mission’ of salvation.” 

            “The crowds that began to flock in 1919 and 1920 to Hitler’s speeches were not motivated by refined theories.  For them, simple slogans, kindling the fires of anger and resentment, were what worked.” 

            The  remarkable difference is how much worse off Germany was in 1933 when Hitler took power than the U.S. is in 2016.  The German unemployment rate in 1933 was 33%, ten times what it had been only five years earlier.  The U.S. unemployment rate in October 2016 was 4.9%, 37% lower than when Obama took office, and 14.4 million jobs have been added.  Germany had suffered defeat in World War I, four years of catastrophic hyperinflation, and Communist and Fascist paramilitaries.  The U.S. has had minimal inflation, slow but real GDP, and a housing recovery.  As CNN put it, last summer, “Americans are vastly better off than they were 8 years ago. But most are worried. They feel they should be a lot better off than they are.”

         In other words, by any historic standards, the American people as a whole have little to complain about.  But as the Manchester Guardian’s American reporter, Henry Fairlie titled one of his books, we are The Spoiled Child of the Western World.  Or as Lucy Van Pelt once said, Why do there need to be ups and downs?  I only want ups and ups.” 

            Therefore my biggest fear is not what Trump does, but what his followers will do when he fails to deliver on his impossible promises, and when economic reality continues to disfavor the poorly educated rural voters who were key to his success.  More violence against those they hold responsible – immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter, Jews?  A quest for an even more extreme savior?  Attacks on government institutions far worse than the Malheur Wildlife Refuge or even Oklahoma City?   To paraphrase Frost’s “Once by the Pacific”

            It looks as if a night of dark intent

            Has come, and not only a night, an age.

            We all had better be prepared for rage.

Orwell, You Should Be Here Now

            In 1946 George Orwell published one of the most famous essays of the past century.  Entitled “Politics and the English Language,” it contained sentences such as “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” It also prefigured the slogans of his 1984 Big Brother:

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

            It would be impossible to list all the ways these statements prefigure the events of 2015-16, and I don’t intent to try.  Instead I want to focus on the ways those who should have been, and should still be, standing against the indefensible and the contradictory have fallen into the traps Orwell described.

            One of the first was New York Times Public Editor Liz Spade’ s September 10 piece arguing that journalists should not exercise any degree of judgment between positions and candidates, no matter how clear the issues might be.  (At that time I cancelled my subscription to the Times.)  Had we not had innumerable articles that presented the Republican’s and Hillary Clinton’s positions without comment, who knows how many minds might have been changed.

            Now that the unthinkable has happens, I  see an even more depressing example of what might be called diplomacy, but is really Orwellian doublespeak, coming from two of my all-time favorite politicians (and people).  In the last week, President Obama and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has each made parallel statements that shock me.  Obama said to the Republican, “If you succeed then the country succeeds.”  Deval Patrick almost paraphrased this in the Boston Globe, “I will pray for the President’s success and the success of the country.” 

            Did they actually say that?  If the Republican succeeds in deporting millions of undocumented workers, splitting families, eviscerating environmental protections, repealing the Affordable Care Act, weakening our relations with our European allies, closing our country to foreigners whose views of America don’t square with his, abolishing the Department of Education, defunding Planned Parenthood, and on and on, then the country succeeds?

            In fact, if either of them believes this, then they should be perfectly indifferent to who won the election.   Because the theory that presidential success the national success, besides being complete nonsense, means there’s no point in campaigning.  Just give someone the job and pray for their success.  (We probably cold have done just as well if we did that, and saved months of torment and billions of dollars.)

            I’m with Elizabeth Warren, who said "You start every fight by being clear so the people on the other side understand: These are the places I’ll help you, these are the places I’ll do everything I can to block you. We are not turning this country over to what Donald Trump has sold. We’re just not.” As John  Oliver said on Sunday, the worst thing we can do is normalize this state of affairs.
            As John  Oliver said on Sunday, the worst thing we can do is normalize this state of affairs.  Keep the words “not normal” on your refrigerator, your screen saver, or wherever else you’ll see them.  This is Vietnam, it’s Germany 1933.  Don’t sit back.

One Bad Apple

I’ve been away for a long time, because after all what’s the point of adding my voice to the chorus of WTF’s as Donald Trump bids to become America’s Sylvio Berlusconi and Mussolini rolled into one Clairol-dyed package?    

But there’s an issue that has me going enough to comment again, and it’s not politics, it’s business.  I remain astonished that so many political liberals can back Apple’s refusal to unlock its phones at the same time they’re cheering Bernie Sanders’ attacks on Wall Street, sharing their Occupy selfies, and cursing the Koch brothers.  When did Apple become the Little Guy fighting the good fight?  Apple is no DC bookstore trying to avoid giving Ken Starr Monica’s purchase list.  It’s one of the two biggest companies in the world, and it’s already been called on for numerous corporate abuses, from patent infringement to child labor.  But now they’re the heroic defenders of everyone’s privacy, which they and the rest of the tech sector have done more to compromise than the FBI or CIS ever dreamed of.

Well they’re not.  Look at their filing in the court case, which says much more about their real reasons than any Tim Cook blather about “chilling effects.”  Their grounds for not wanting to unlock the phone: it "could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand."  Its business, folks, and all Apple cares about is getting you to spend your money. 

They may be right.  Sales to ISIS, Al Qaeda, drug dealers and organized crime may well slip.  The use of so-called “burner” phones may well climb back up, now that Apple can’t offer them a lifetime guarantee on their current iPhone6.

But will 99% of us be more or less safe if iPhone wins?  I say we’ll be less safe as the rush to buy unbreakably encrypted phones among terrorists and plain vanilla criminals becomes a flood.

A good friend said to me recently that the iPhone debate is full of analogies, and none of them are perfect.  That’s probably true, but let me add two of my own.

First, do you believe that the danger to our right to privacy is too great to allow the government to regulate the tech industry to protect our society from possible attacks?  Then you should also believe that the danger to our right to self-defense is too great to allow the government to regulate the gun industry to protect our society from mass killings.  For me, no iPhone unbreakable encryption and no right to assault weapons go hand in hand.

Second, let’s imagine a historical analogy.  We’re in a war with a foreign power.  They have exceptionally effective encryption, so we don’t know where they’re going to attack next.  One of their encryption devices falls into our hands.  But it’s made by an international company, and the company, citing privacy and business concerns, refuses to help us unlock the device.  Our courts back the company, and the enemy’s attacks on our cities and commerce continue unabated.

Watch the The Imitation Game again – or don’t bother, because if Apple has its way my history tae is just current events.