A Way to Understand American History

An original version posted on 3/10/2010 as "Time Is Right For New Social Studies Education after LAUSD Incident" @ Examiner.com

Three teachers at Wadsworth Elementary school in South Los Angeles were suspended for allegedly having students carry pictures of troubled former football player OJ Simpson, basketball player Dennis Rodman, and female impersonator RuPaul during a Black history month parade.

The Black history month parade is an annual event. Each class chose figures from the school-approved list, which dates back to 1985. While OJ Simpson was already on the list, Dennis Rodman, and Rupaul were allegedly written in via pencil.

First, second, and fourth grade students carried pictures of these controversial figures during the parade.

Despite having a remarkable college and professional football career, OJ Simpson has had numerous brushes with the law. He is currently serving time after being convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in 2008.

Dennis Rodman, a former professional basketball player had been a public icon in the 1990s. Since his career officially ended in 2005, he has made appearances on celebrity shows and has had minor skirmishes with the law.

RuPaul has been a big hit within the entertainment industry as an actor, musician, and filmmaker. He has made numerous guest appearances on television, movies, and print media, and currently hosts the reality television show RuPaul's Drag Race. While he himself has had little public controversy, his entertainment personality is associated with lesbian, gay, and transgendered issues, which in the context of marriage has drawn national controversy.

The suspended teachers, who are white, have not been identified.

The controversy came in a Black History month that saw furious public debates over racism at UCSD and many other college campuses. Click here to read "Public debate over racism erupts after student theme party". Also, click here to read "Recapping the aftermath of Compton Cookout and sugggestions for change"

Perspective: Little sympathy for the teachers

The fact that someone, likely the three adult teachers would write in RuPaul and Dennis Rodman shows more than a conscious effort to make some sort of statement.

Making such a statement by using such an impressionable population as a vehicle to this message in an already tense climate where 5,200 LAUSD jobs are on the line, they should have fully anticipated the consequences. Click here to read "California's Public Education in Peril"

Sorry, no sympathy for those teachers here.

"Teaching is the art of changing the brain" says Biologist James Zull.

If these were true educators as opposed to the currently-employed hacks they appear to be, the focus would have been built on getting children to understand why or why not a Black history month is needed.

Based on the boldness of the statement they made, it doesn't appear that they have had that dialogue. They instead taught disrespect for peoples' cultures and traditions.

Their actions make you wonder what they've been telling these children all along and what other political views have bled over into their work.

We need to perceive of American history as a "family album"

I think if those teachers were grounded in a more critical understanding of history, I would be comfortable with them teaching again. If the Compton Cookout invitation writer was grounded in a more critical understanding of history, he wouldn't have so ignorantly tied Black history month with the ghetto culture.

History is not one big cluster of rote indisputable facts, names, and dates.

If I can make a metaphor about history in general, it is this: history is a series of pictures and albums strung together to make a coherent storyline to determine present and future courses of action.

Pictures and albums aren't meant to capture every angle. Sometimes they're blurry, sometimes they're clear. Sometimes the pictures are very representative of a person, sometimes they aren't.

Pictures capture points in history and are endlessly interpreted and judged, regardless of the original intent or focus of the photographer.

We say that in this age of Obama we want to look past race and have it be of minimal consequence. If we want to minimize that difference, the histories we tell students need to integrate people of color.

If we are to minimize the importance of ethnic or racial history months, like Black History month or Asian Pacific History month, we need to look at American history the same way we look at a family album.

Family members who are missing or are otherwise given scant attention in the album feel excluded and less likely to participate in family activities.

The "family album" works best if we equally represent all members of the American family.

Black Americans, many whose ancestors have been in the United States longer than many other Americans only have representatives in the metaphorical album involved in rebuffing slavery and asserting civil rights. It is as if civil rights was the only issue they were interested in.

In the American family album, we already have many landscape photos of people of color, not just black people, as if they are one monolithic entity.

For example, the average 4th grade social studies textbook about California will talk about the great Indian tribes. We only get a landscape picture of them.

We learn that the Chumash were expert canoe builders and had their own system of government. We do not get any sense however that there were any great Chumash individuals who initiated anything of significance. We do not learn of individuals with strong characteristics and traits.

These metaphorical landscape photos contrast sharply to the detailed protraits of white American individuals. In schools, museums, popular culture, we will get plenty of metaphorical and figurative photos of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington --- their mythical characteristics and traits, and most importantly achievements illustrated through popular fables.

With a focus on individual characteristics, we perceive of these individuals having made a difference for everyone. Because they made such a widespread difference, they can rightfully occupy the same place in history as entire groups of people. This feeds the social perception that white Americans do things that make a difference for everyone and are still the driving force behind any kind of decisionmaking.

Yes, school teachers will say a little something about Fredrick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, but they get painted as people merely responding to their own social problems. They are not perceived to have these mythic personalities, lacking illustrative stories and fables that could relate to people outside of the black community.

Not learning that individuals of color can take on mythic personalities as well fosters a widespread social perception that people of color act only in accordance with their racial or ethnic groups. As a result, many white Americans assume that people of color have allegiance first and foremost to their racial or ethnic group. From this point, everything they do can be perceived as responding to problems within their own little groups.

Black history month, like other ethnic history and heritage months are an attempt to show that black Americans have interests other than civil rights, and innovations. They should be celbrated because they are likely not going to be any other time.

The idea of Black history month comes from a history of segregation and discrimination which omitted the role of blacks in influencing American culture. Celebrating the month and people in it is celebrating of people overcoming a struggle.

To place less importance on Black history month or other ethnic history months, we need to make a firm commitment towards a "family album history."

The family album history should attempt to reveal a sense of interaction or trading of influence within the different demographics of American history. It isn't a story of extraordinary individuals, presidents, political figures, but a story of networks of individuals, mere human beings wielding their power through their connections with other people as they saw fit.

Breaking Down the Falsities of Texas Public School Social Studies' Curriculum

An original version posted on 5/18/2010 as "Deconstructing the Texas Calls for Social Studies Overhauls" @ Examiner.com

The past few months have seen an uptick in proposals across two states to radically reform public State education in Social Studies and US History.

Officially signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on May 11th, Arizona banned ethnic studies classes in public education because of what supporters say are displays of "ethnic chauvanism."

Most controversial in the law are provisions which ban courses "designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group" and "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals." The courses affected include Mexican-American/Chicano Studies, African-American Studies, and Asian Studies, which according to Tom Horne, Superintendent of Schools in Arizona, "divides students up, just like the old South."

If public schools do not adhere to law, they stand to lose state funding. The LA Times reported that the Tucson Unified School District's 14-year old Chicano studies program was a main target of the state law.

The latest call for reform for social studies reform will be decided in Texas tomorrow on May 19th when the State Board of Education will vote on whether to pass a list of proposed changes.

The Texas Board of Education released its 5th and Final draft of required Social Studies curriculum for public schools in April. Much contention has arisen over highlighting the influence of religion on the founding fathers with a notable de-emphasis on Thomas Jefferson's influence and the "unintended consequences" of big government programs such as the New Deal or the War on Poverty. Read the document here.

Also included is a call for a "Celebrate Freedom" week.

Perspective: Texas Proposal aims at selective truth

I grew up learning that the truth was the most important thing to aim for in history.

As I've come up in my education, I've learned that history isn't necessarily about telling one objective truth, but about rounding up primary sources and having subjects share their stories about events.

They used parts of American history to invoke a sense that America is rooted in exceptionality, or in other words "being better" than other people. I am quite sure that this type of thinking hints at a truth, but I am not sure that it represents the entire truth.

History is dynamic, always being made, and contains an infinitude of stories to be understood in one neat way.

If American history can be understood as a big collection of snapshot pictures, Texas is taking only the most flattering portraits of American policy and its conservative bases, but catching only invasive paparazzi voyeuristic ones of liberal and international views.

The view presents US history as every event in naturally and eventually agreeing upon or evolving into whatever happens to be the status quo.

The Texas brand of social studies is bent on suggesting that the origins of equality were already implemented in the document. They had been trying to say that the Declaration of Independence which was declared in 1776 was really the stimulus behind undoing slavery in 1865, how it allowed for women's rights movements in the 1920s, and the driver behind diversity we came to accept in law by 1965.

Saying that origins of equality were already in the Declaration of Independence gives off the impression that equal opportunity was all only a matter of rationalized legislation, like changes were all going to happen anyway, minimizing the struggles of different peoples.

The document is based on minimization of the negative impacts of US Foreign policy and conservative domestic policy.

They really want to call capitalism, "free enterprise" in attempt to negate its negative connotations. If were going to play this game of calling everything by a more positive name, let's call communism, socialism or Marxism by their intention-based positive phrase too: "people's needs-based system."

The way they plan to represent other countries is particularly troubling in their selective application of certain loaded and controversial terminology. Bothersome is their selective employment of the word "imperialism."

Traditionally, "imperialism" has been used to describe US foreign policy in the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century. However, notice how imperialism is something only the Japanese do.

• "...explain the major causes and events of World War II, including the German invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, the Holocaust, Japanese imperialism, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Normandy landings, and the dropping of the atomic bombs."

This clause is buried deep in the document and very specific. I only read about Japanese imperialism and a broad "European" imperialism. I didn't read anything about American, France, German, Italian, Belgian, Portugese or Spanish imperialism. It is merely German "invasion" of Poland and Soviet Union, no mention of the driving ideology of Nazism, while the Japanese take on a label of "imperialism" as if Japanese people were inherently imperialistic.

Equally troubling is the framing of the Palestine and Israel conflict. They use loaded terminology to circle Palestinians and Arabs, nonchalantly labeling them "terrorists" and pretending that State of Israel wasn't established under much controversy. By framing it as the Arabs rejecting the state of Israel, it makes it seem as if the Arabs were the problem.

The only things the Texas State Board of Education wants students to openly analyze and question are the people and movements that they decidedly don't like. For example, the document calls for "analyzing the unintended consequences of affirmative action and Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society." There is also a call to "Analyzing the effectiveness of the approach" taken by the Black Panthers versus the "philosophically persuasive" tone of Martin Luther King Jr."

It's peculiar how "consequences" and "effectiveness" are a cause for concern with equal opportunity and civil rights programs.

While given the freedom to analyze the tactics used in civil rights era movements, there doesn't appear to be any similar mandate to analyze the "unintended consequences" of the "conservative resurgeance" of the 1980s or the mandated "Celebrate Freedom Week" itself.

The "conservative resurgeance" was a period that saw Ronald Reagan triple the national debt by cutting taxes while cutting social programs. His great work was being able to firmly instill into the American consciousness the image of the black, undeserving "welfare queen", a distasteful and ultimately divisive image upon which a generation of conservative and tea partiers have used to drum up distaste towards social programs.

Texas: Giving a blueprint for Eugenicist thought

The image of the welfare queen is still alive and well. It's an image of dependency, laziness, and all-around incompetence that continually informs popular perception and legislative decision-making.

The image pervades the way Texas plans to do social studies and teach people about America in the 21st century. They do not give people of color or perceived predecessors any credit for their own advances. It's as if any advancement they have made was a result of "other people's" actions, which by default tends to mean "white people."

For example, when talking about the cultures whose people appear to descend from what is now known as Mexico, the only way to understand them is as outgrowths of people prior to them. The people prior to them are Greece and Rome.

• "...compare the major political, economic, social, and cultural developments of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations and explain how prior civilizations influenced their development"

Why is there no need to study how prior civilizations influenced the development of Greece or Rome?

Its as if Greece or Rome were people who self-generated themselves and fathered all our ideas, hence fitting this narrative of self-sufficiency coming from one race, the White one.

While the white people were thinking up great ideas in the West, the sparsely populated brown-skinned peoples were just waiting around to be inspired by them.

If white people were the originators of ideas and it is presented that way, it follows that rationally and naturally they would be entitled to ownership over the land; everything in their view was earned fairly. This mentality follows that minimal benefit can be gained from immigration or the infusion of different cultures, which has actually shown to be the opposite in some studies.

They want students to learn that everything of consequence emerged from Europe without any influence or contact from any other group of people whatsoever.

Never mind that Islam and Arabics, some heavy targets in popular American media today for their way of thinking, were responsible for innovations in the medieval era, making contributions to what we label now as "Western medicine." Never mind that the very number system we use today would not have been possible with Roman numerals, but also took Eastern thought to come up with the idea of zero to make the number system work.

The idea of dependency where people from minority cultures need to wait around for white males to come to the rescue is reflected in the way they represent contemporary battles for equal opportunity.

• "Explain actions taken by people to expand economic opportunities and political rights, including those for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as well as women, in American society"

This provision reads as if women, racial, ethnic, or religious minorities took little or action on their own behalf. They needed "people" to swoop in save the day and are ultimately dependent on majority action.

The study of US geography also carries a Eugenicist bent.

Specifically, they want students to identify "the effects of population growth and the impacts on physical environment." For over 100 years, this has been a pseudo-scientific way to criticize immigrant populations.

If they were really concerned about the physical environment, children should learn that resources tend to be concentrated in the hands of very few people, and continued hyper-consumption combined with a culture of disposal and landfills, those kind of human activities are the real harm to the physical environment, not necessarily certain demographic groups.

For more analysis of the Texas curriculum proposal:

NY Times deconstructing Texas

The Nation deconstructing Texas

The Nation deconstructing Conservatives who use history

The Answer to the Weight of Stereotypes on Test Performance: Get Amnesia!

An original version posted on 4/4/2009 as "Stereotype Threat, Obama Effect, and Social Memory" @ AMMMO

It's a question I've been interested in since I read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel when he compared his academic knowledge of biology with the knowledge of "uneducated" healers. It's a question that evolution, Darwinism explained away by saying that colored people were closer to apes than "normal", "regular" white humans.

So...

The question: Why aren't brown, black, yellow people the ones coming up with scientific and technological innovation?

Why do disparities in educational attainment, test scores, income persist between racial and ethnic demographics persist? Why aren't people seeing that this is their opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps?

Most saliently, most importantly, and straight to the point, are people of color inherently retarded or something that they can't do simple stuff like go to college and earn middle-class income jobs?

Those questions act as reinforcements of a documented social psychological phenomena called the Stereotype Threat.

Countering the stereotype threat, in comes research on a phenomena called the Obama Effect, described here by the Situationist, reported first via the NY Times:

[R]esearchers have documented what they call an Obama effect, showing that a performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Mr. Obama’s nomination all but disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.

...In the study made public on Thursday, Dr. Friedman and his colleagues compiled a brief test, drawing 20 questions from the verbal sections of the Graduate Record Exam, and administering it four times to about 120 white and black test-takers during last year’s presidential campaign.

...On the initial test last summer, whites on average correctly answered about 12 of 20 questions, compared with about 8.5 correct answers for blacks, Dr. Friedman said. But on the tests administered immediately after Mr. Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, and just after his election victory, black performance improved, rendering the white-black gap “statistically nonsignificant,” he said.

Even though it's a very small sample and over a small time period on one test, it's something to be looked at and hopefully taken into account with our mega-informocracy and online social networking.

The claim is that Obama's position as the most powerful man of one of the most powerful nations on the planet and his identity as the product of a multi-racial demographic primed the African-American testtakers for confidence. The idea is that those clips of Obama, a positive achievement by an individual who is categorized within "African-American" seem to work subconsciously on its viewers' confidence and is directly correlated to their improvements in their scores.

With priming figuring prominently in this study, this should bring up the question of what everyday media from the school to the public and popular discourse primes students from historically disadvantaged demographics to think the way they do.

This brings up questions of social memory: what do demographics internalize and take with them as somewhat important when they take the test? What kind of baggage do they carry with them? How does that baggage manifest itself in the unconscious and implicit memories?

Trailing off my posting on identity and amnesia, I'm thinking that if members of the African-American demographic did not carry with them the socially-constructed and reinforced, yet unconscious meme that they were inherently intellectually inferior in the first place, there wouldn't be as many gaps.

It seems like there would need to be a mass social amnesia about that meme.

Solutions for Change After Compton Cookout

An original version posted on 3/1/2010 as "Recapping the aftermath of Compton Cookout and solutions for change" @ Examiner.com

The aftermath of the Compton Cookout organized by students at UCSD has seen a flurry of responses.

Responses have included: a student calling blacks ungrateful on campus television, a protest led by the Black Student Union, plans for a "Compton Cookout Part Deux" and the discovery of a noose at a UCSD library.

The events at UCSD may have touched off a wave of crimes at other college campuses.

Last week, Kris Gregorian, an editor of a controversial campus newspaper said on campus television after the Compton Cookout, "You should be thankful you ungrateful n****." Later after his segment was aired, a piece of cardboard was later found in the studio with the words "Compton lynching" written on it.

Later in the week, Mike Randazzo, organizer of the Compton Cookout, announced plans for a repeat of the Compton Cookout, "We pretty much want people to just choose a culture and harmlessly poke fun at it."

"On Cinco de Mayo, we have parties making fun of Mexicans; on Veterans Day, we make fun of veterans (yes, the same veterans who uphold our rights to free speech); on St. Patrick's Day we make fun of the Irish. Everyone gets made fun of out of jest now, not hate,” the invitation read."

The Black Student Union Protest responded to the week's events organizing a teach-in chanting "Real Pain, Real Action." The teach-in drew over 300 students and lead to a student walk-out.

The latest incident happening late Thursday night involves the discovery of a noose at a UCSD library at around 10:30 PM. An unnamed student has since confessed to the incident, claiming she did not think that "hanging the noose would be a big deal."

A wave of incidents has since been touched off at UC Davis and the University of Missouri.

At UC Davis there have been two instances of race and ethnicity related vandalization. A swastika was carved into a Jewish student's dorm room earlier last week. On Saturday, there was discovery of vandalism at the UC Davis Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender building.

At the University of Missouri, balls of cotton were found strewn together in front of the University's Black Cultural Center. The strewn cotton has significant association to associations of slavery.

Perspective: Why Compton Cookout was not that funny

The party organizers were not intending to harm groups of people, but intention doesn't need to be present to actually harm individuals or groups of people. That's the very definition of "negligent."

However, the fact that it was a party which was planned, ultimately garners little sympathy here. These kids throwing racial parties, products of the 7th-ranked public university in the US News College rankings anticipated such controversy.

People need to recognize that organizing racial theme parties such as the Compton Cookout were not simply mistakes made by simple slips of the tongue. These individuals made deliberate, poor decisions and need to be called out for it each and every time they do organize a similar gathering or event.

I love off-the-cuff jokes and humor as much as the next person, but I can't find Compton Cookout, south of the border, white trash, or Eurotrash parties that funny.

Maybe it's because I know the "ghetto culture" wasn't something fabricated by MTV and merely popularized by rap music. It is a culture of people bred in response to centuries of segregation from advancement and opportunity. It is a symbol of inequality, survival, and ongoing struggle that was created by centuries of logic and policy that excluded black people.

These "ghetto", racialized theme parties puts out to the public that it's acceptable to trivialize products of struggle from different communities.

I know that the theme party to be thrown by Randazzo encourages a mindset that we all need to laugh at ourselves. I agree, laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

But it's hard to see how a fraternity full of white guys taking elements of black culture they only know through TV and computer monitors, is actually laughing at "themselves."

Advice to Compton Cookout organizers: equal opportunity offending is a horrible solution

Party organizer Mike Randazzo has served up the argument that these racial theme parties are an attempt to treat every race equally. They would do this by offending every race or ethnicity --- when I was in college this was called "equal opportunity offending." Seems to draw a lot on the methods of Borat, a movie I absolutely abhored.

The problem however is that this type of offending tends to not to actually be an "equal offender."

The idea of equal opportunity offending is essentially a justification to fight for the right to be ignorant.

Yes, there are so-called "Euro-trash" and "white trash" parties, but they are very specific to certain sub-cultures dominated by white people. If a big percentage of people were white trash or Euro-trash, there would probably be more outrage of those parties by those populations.

Through television, newspapers, radio, and our schooling, we have learned that white Americans are so varied, so unique, and carry such a diversity of opinion. Because they and everyone else absorbing US media have learned that they are so unique, many including themselves perceive their racial and cultural identities are essentially meaningless to the outside world.

With meaningless racial and cultural identities, they get the idea that race and ethnicity is something that could easily be ignored and either turned on or off.

In contrast, people of color tend to be recognized in popular media and work mostly for their cultural differences, whether real or not.

In news reports you see the labels of ethnicity demarcating an individual. You always see the labels "African-American" or "Latino" used to demarcate individuals, and that's even when there is no missing person or suspect on the loose. However, you rarely see the labels "Caucasian-American", or "white American" to describe an individual's background.

As it is, people of color are often perceived by decisionmakers like job interviewers to be monolithic thinkers with no variance, no diversity of opinion, and no uniqueness other than the color of their skin and accompanying culture. It's as if their diversity is the full extent of the uniqueness and talent that they bring.

"Equal opportunity offending" in the form of parties and tropes tends to hit Americans of color harder than white Americans. No matter how much they try to escape their stereotypes, people of color are linked more tightly by the outside world to the stereotypes of their race and ethnicity. As a result of this closeness, they tend to feel the mocking of their ethnicities and races a lot more.

Equal opportunity offending communicates to the word that its still acceptable to look down upon people of color using old familiar tropes that have denied people of color opportunities.

In the meanwhile, this equal opportunity offending offers less relevant tropes for the vastly varied white cultures and ethnicities. This ends up stinging no white person and confirms belief for them that making fun of race and ethnicity is essentially harmless.

Solution: We would build better racial understanding if we assume the best in people

While the idea of "racial and cultural sensitivity" means well, it is a somewhat ineffective idea to describe what is needed in working towards racial understanding.

"Racial sensitivity" for many young white Americans has meant a feeling to need to walk on eggshells when speaking with people of color, careful never to offend. The uncertainty many white Americans feel when dealing with people of color and race and ethnicity leads to this pointlessly rebellious "equal opportunity offending", first-ammendment-asserting Compton Cookout-type backlash.

"Racial sensitivity" is antithetical to "making fun" of something.

People of color suggesting "racial and cultural sensitivity" as opposed to "making fun" makes it seem like people of color have no sense of humor and that we absolutely allow no room for any mistake around them.

One solution to addressing these racially-themed parties and incidents is simple: tell people why exactly it isn't funny. Emphasis on "why exactly" as a way towards rational explanation.

It isn't funny because I understand that many black Americans are struggling still. These stereotypes floating in people's thoughts aren't bound to help anyone in job interviews and decisionmaking, and frankly it isn't my place to judge or make light of what I see people struggle through. Even amongst the best intentioned, bias does play a role when evaluating people of color.

I feel like there would have been no "Compton Cookout" or at least, less justifications of the event, had these kids been familiar with understanding the connections between events, policies, attitudes in the past with today's events, behaviors, and attitudes.

The public needs to understand that there are reasons why people live the way they live, and do the things they do. As James Loewen argued in his classic Lies My Teacher Told Me, people need to understand that the "effects" we observe in the world today all have "causes."

Studying history's many perspectives and establishing connections to today allows people to build on the assumption that there is logic, rationality, intelligence in individuals caught up in so-called "ghetto-cultures" and basically all cultures.

However, if you don't want to learn history and just want to build better racial and cultural understanding, here's something simple: Assume that people of color or white people or anyone with a different background is just like you and have done the best they could, given their circumstances.

Forget education levels, current employment status, assume that all people regardless of background are trying their best at something.

Assumptions we hold of groups of people direct how we see and ultimately understand people.

For example, if you assume that white Americans are evil, then you're likely to keep looking for examples of white people being evil. But if you run on the assumption that white Americans are trying their best, then you'll be more likely to accept and understand that they are essentially just individuals who are not intentionally keeping people down.

Inversely, if you assume that black Americans are lazy, then you're likely to keep looking for examples of black people being lazy. But if you run on the assumption that black Americans are trying their best, then you'll be more likely to accept and understand how hard it is to move up in America.

If these UCSD kids assumed the best of "ghetto people" meaning they assumed that black people were doing the best they could with what they had,they would instead simply see another group of people trying to get by in this even funnier thing called life.

They would not even see such superficialities such as "limited vocabulary" or "speaking loud" as anything particularly noteworthy, interesting, shocking, or attributable to "ghetto chicks."

Everyone has moments when they have "limited vocabulary" or "speak loud."

With nothing noteworthy, interesting, shocking about another culture, there would be less of a pressing "need" or a burning desire to throw parties as if those superficialities were something unique or interesting.

One tangible step people can take towards assuming the best in people is understanding that no matter what Bill Cosby thinks, "ghetto" language or what is referred to as black English is not broken English with mistakes.

It has its own pronunciation rules and logic. Perhaps a speaker of the language displays a lack of college education, but it does not necessarily mean a lack of knowledge or competency.

However because people conflate "education" with "knowledge", Black English speakers are perceived to be lacking knowledge, therefore competency, and subsequently, are looked down upon as speaking "broken" English.

As was stated by Texas A&M Sociologist Joe R. Feagin, "Language mocking and subordination are not about standards for speaking as much as about determining that some people are not worth listening to and treating as equals." Language is simply a tool that people use to understand each other, nothing more nothing less.

If we assumed that people were trying their best given their circumstances, we'd be past feeling suspicious of other people.

If more people assumed the best of different people, the question we'd attempt to answer would be past the warring stage, where people are battling every day trying to scream the existence of racism.

If we assumed the best of people, we'd already know that it happens, and we'd focus on addressing how and why racial division happens, and negotiating how we can all come to some kind of agreement that permits even exchanges across racial, ethnic, and cultural divides.

Explaining the Social Infrastructure of White Privilege Through an Urban Planning Metaphor

An original version originally posted on 1/12/2010 as "Social Infrastructure of White Privilege and Bike Lanes" @ AMMMO

I felt very aware of my race and ethnicity almost all the time during my most formative years.

I knew that I was Filipino before I began going to the "puti" high school. It was going to be different from the more homely Filipino-dominated grade school.

I knew that I was one of only a few Filipinos in my college dorms. I didn't have too many white friends going to the "puti" high school.

I know that I am one of the few Filipinos interested in pursuing anthropology and science studies as a career. I come from a background of nurses and future nurses, and in my stage of liminality, I keep getting pulled towards a career like that.

There's just a bit of a "disconnection" between where I've gone/where I want to go and what has surrounded and currently surrounds me.

I use the word "disconnection" because that's exactly how I feel when I become "aware" of my race/ethnicity in a setting. I feel "disconnected" from the people who inhabit the space, like I can't make a connection, like we share almost nothing in common.

I can become "aware" of that when I'm in an academic conference full of older white guys as the key speakers and experts, when I'm in a wine-tasting shop in Silver Lake. I don't become as "aware" of this when I'm at the basketball court in Glassell Park.

My thinking implies that people who have a feeling of "fitting in" either consciously or unconsciously feel or have a connection. Let's assume that's true. What fosters that connection?

It is at this point that I'll borrow the term "infrastructure." "Infrastructure" fosters that connection.

"Infrastructure" is used in the context of public works projects. It is defined as the "basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise." Infrastructure is the freeways, roads, BIKE LANES, power plants, power-lines water sources, the internet, phones, and other forms of communication. I use the term "infrastructure" to mean "a collection of connective strands used to maintain a system."

When you are a white American, and probably male, there is an "infrastructure" that firstly, helps you forget the negative parts of your identity and secondly, fosters the ability to go in and fit in almost anywhere.

You see your likeness reproduced in all kinds of public discourse and spaces. You see yourself in movies, academia, arts and high-class theater, corporate jobs. You can literally identify with being almost anything cause you know that no matter where you are, someone with your identity, perhaps even your looks, are there and you can probably talk to them, and they can hook you up.

If you're a white guy in America, unless you're queer and/or poor, you don't really have to constantly (whether conscious or not) re-evaluate your "belongingness" in mid-high class settings. You don't have to think about where you come from because you're already everywhere and the possibilities are endless. You can do this and this and this. You can just be "human" and not focus on your color. You know that your opinion really counts. The infrastructure in the form of movies, academia, arts carries these people any and everywhere and they don't have to stop and think as much cause they're so connected to whatever they want to do.

Conversely, the existence of an "infrastructure" working so well for a white American male implies that there is little to no infrastructure for a person of color. There isn't as much infrastructure that would firstly help a person of color forget the negative parts of their identities. There isn't as much infrastructure that would help a person of color fit in almost anywhere.

There are infrastructures that help people of color, but are more insular (or at least can be perceived that way). The demarcation that something like a Scholarship fund is for blacks, or Asians, or Latinos makes it seem to plenty of white folk that there is just all this opportunity for people of color. The very naming and labeling of the organization makes it very explicit that it benefits who it does. There is no formal naming if any involved in the process of a white guy getting into a business or high position because he "fits" the culture or "knew someone". Without that formal naming, is an informal, connected, embedded network.

Like the BIKE LANES in LA that last for one block, the infrastructure for people of color is piecemeal and far and few between.

Bike lanes and infrastructure are built only on certain streets.

Even without any BIKE LANES/INFRASTRUCTURE on streets and avenues, a few people will still bike, but it's not expected that they will bike.

People could technically go anywhere with their bikes without "infrastructure" but it isn't a safe bet, and usually most drivers, pedestrians, don't expect bikers on their streets. The streets are reserved for drivers.

Yes, we see a few people of color here and there in some movies, some academic fields, some arts, some sports, infrastructure that holds up popular culture. But there are only certain professions and things that people of color can be acknowledged to do, like my whole my family and the nursing profession.

People of color could technically go anywhere with their careers without "infrastructure", but it isn't a safe bet and usually families and people in power, won't expect those people of color to be in professions like that dealing with Science Studies or Anthropology. The streets are reserved for white Americans and obssessive Asian kids.

So the question is how do we keep building that infrastructure for people of color?

For me...Manny Pacquiao is a start.

Conversation on Race and Barack Obama

An original version posted on 3/25/2008 as "Conversation on Race and Barack Obama"@ throwascrewinit.blogspot.com






Barack Obama's speech on race was one of the big highlights of his remarkably successful 2008 Presidential campaign.

As you might remember, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, someone Obama had clear ties with, made some remarks that didn't sit well with a lot of the big talking heads of America.

He cited various instances of US government deceit. He said that the government(s) lied about a gross number of things from Pearl Harbor to the treatment of Nelson Mandela.

He also cited various instances of the US government mistreating people of color. He cited the administration of the Tuskegee experiment, the internment of Japanese Americans, the taking of Indian lands, and the overall mistreatment of African-Americans throughout American history.

Essentially, the public and media had largely perceived him to be saying that America's bad kharma was simply coming back to haunt them. What Wright said in the sermons reflected back negatively on Obama. How could the American people a man whose spiritual leader hated America?

Hot on the campaign trail, Barack was pestered for a response to Wright's comments.

At first, he tried to distance himself. Apparently, he didn't hear of Wright's comments.

However, as the questioning heat up and it was no longer acceptable to say that he wasn't aware, he finally confronted Reverend Wright's comments in his dramatic speech "A More Perfect Union."

He condemned Wright's comments, but didn't condemn Reverend Wright the person. He explained before a national audience where Reverend Wright was coming from and bridged that with an anecdote about his white grandmother's own racial beliefs.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

The speech was as great synthesis and explantion of the touchy issue racial relations as you could expect from a politician.

Most of the media outlets covering the speech made me indifferent.

Then, there was one that dropped a ton of big red bricks of dumbass on me.

The tired LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg with enough pomposity to fill a hot-air balloon.

Then there was one that got the neurons firing, the white matter connecting, the soul uplifting.
A piece by a quick-rising, quick-rhyming Blue Scholar.

Goldberg said that we already talk about race so much. He listed the things we already have dedicated to race: We have a Black history month, the movie "Crash", entire majors devoted to race, books about race, corporate diversity consultants. What more could we possibly need?

Goldberg represents talks as if that there aren't anymore race problems. Now that good ole Martin Luther King Jr. bravely fought against segregation, thus effectively ending racism as far as he was concerned, people of color are now just "creating or re-hashing problems."

In his world, race issues in regards are merely deliberate schemes to hustle billions of dollars from the good old American system. If it's a problem, people of color or at least the ones "making race an issue" by continually producing these books, producing these graduates of race and ethnic studies, and generally making a living off of emphasizing race.

In reality, it's actually been a very unhealthy passive-aggressive relationship between white folk and people of color.White people shit-talk folks of color. Folks of color shit-talk white people. Unless they agree to do it and/or happen to understand each others' humor, they just never actually do it in front of each other.

So where do the two sides meet?

Prometheus Brown, the eminent Blue Scholar, makes the simple but poignant point: racism is everyone's problem.

However, it's hard to see how it actually is everyone's problem.

The subject of race is only mentioned in media lock-in-step when it involves people of color, which gives the image that race is a one-street in which only people of color participate. Otherwise, for most white Americans, it's an issue that seemingly doesn't exist.

"Some people point to Obama’s successes as a sure sign that America has taken many steps forward in resolving its racial contradictions. But isn’t the fact that Obama gets singled out for his views on race a big red flag? Where do Clinton and McCain stand on this issue, and why haven’t they weighed in? Why is nobody asking them what they think about racism?"

The point I glean from all this is just that white folks and folks of color need to actually be engaged in conversation together about race, and not so polarized in their own circles discussing things. White folks reach out. Folks of color reach out.

It's an easy common sense solution, but not so in reality.

The question has been here way before Obama and will probably still be there after him, but the question is will there ever be any political or social will to ensure anything happens towards that dialogue?