I saw this interesting article someone else posted yesterday: Why isn't the co-pilot who downed the GermanWings flight being called a terrorist?
The author of the article, Zak Cheney-Rice (who has perhaps the most Republican-Slash-Fiction name ever), made some salient points about religion and race and the skin color of the pilot. All of the author's points are spot on, and yet I think he made a critical linguistic error - that is, that the word "terrorism" isn't the right word to be using for anyone, regardless of race or religion, who simply commits mass murder. Instead, it is a word reserved for those who act in such a way as to make others terrified.
In fact, the U.S. State Department is pretty clear about their definition:
"the term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;" (source).
They are missing the purpose for these attacks. Using this definition alone, the U.S. has long been responsible for terrorism (that is, our clandestine agents have made premeditated, politically motivated, violent attacks against non-combatant targets frequently in the past 50 years). If we assume that our nation is not potentially responsible for terrorism, then we also need to expand the definition.
The Patriot Act also provides its own definition with regards to terrorism on U.S. soil:
(5) the term ‘domestic terrorism’ means activities that
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. (source)
And that seems to be more in-line with what I would expect of such a definition. We could cobble those together to exclude references to U.S. or state law, perhaps adding a provision for the execution of peoples by a country in-line with that country's laws regarding such execution. We could merge the definitions under 5B into the U.S. State Department definition.
Regardless, the definition must always include a political motivation - an attempt to influence national or state policy. We have no evidence of such a thing happening in the case of the pilot. We have no indication that the pilot's motivation was anything other than personal. He made no videos for youtube or statements on facebook indicating that he felt mass-murder might be necessary to accomplish a political goal.
Yes, we sometimes jump to audacious claims about Muslims who murder people, that they are "terrorists" when they are also not acting for political gain. Such was the case here in Oklahoma when Alton Nolen beheaded a woman at work. Immediately, many people made the claim that he was a terrorist, such as CNN commentator Mel Robbins. The claims about this being terrorism apparently prompted the FBI to actually come out and say that this case had nothing to do with terrorism. This is what Cheney-Rice got right.
The problem may be race, or it may be simple linguistics, but if we jump at every murder or act of mass violence and call it "terrorism," we forget the point of terrorism, that these acts are an attempt to divide us and conquer us through the use of fear.
Of course, violence itself isn't necessary. The point of these attacks is to achieve political change by scaring a population. Given that we immediately threw out Habeas Corpus and made it legal for our country to monitor everything we do through the Patriot Act, maybe the people who perpetrated 9-11 were successful terrorists. Interestingly, though, they were only a part of the problem, as another group of people around the same time began engaging in a massive fear-based propaganda campaign, aimed at terrifying the populace and using that fear to motivate them into voting for laws that reduce personal liberty and security through increasing violence and economic depression. Such an organization has far more in common with terrorism than a co-pilot who never expressed such a political interest.
So, perhaps our newest great political commentator is Russell Brand, for recognizing and not being afraid to say just as much.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Why isn't there a NAAWP?
The title refers to a complaint I heard recently, and a thought I used to have long ago - why is it acceptable to have a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but not a National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP)? Why is there a Black History Month and not a White History Month?
To many, this doesn't seem racist. After all, the fight against racism is a fight FOR equality, and what's more equal than having separate-but-equal organizations?
If we were a truly post-racial society, perhaps that would be true - but in a truly post-racial society, the organizations wouldn't be separate. We wouldn't see the NAACP as an entity that specifically serves the needs of other. "Colored People," in our definition, would include "extremely-light tan" and "pale."
And that distinction between self and other is part of where this argument hinges. Note that no one ever proposes that all races have their own chapters of the NAACP, or similar organizations, but rather that there are two: NAAWP/NAACP. It's a distinction between "White" and "Colored."
But, it's also more than that - the only reason for a NAAWP is the perception that people of other races are somehow benefited by the NAACP in a way that the self-race is not. It's a perception of a loss of power in comparison to other that must be regulated through the use of an imposed power organization benefiting self. It is, essentially, the perception of war.
That's the heart of the argument - the belief that the other is waging war against the self, and is doing so through establishing special history months, etc.
It fails to recognize that we are not in a post-racial society (which you can read about in my last post). It fails to realize that every other organization is an NAAWP, that the basic power structures of our society are still built to support White Men to the detriment of women and minorities. It fails to recognize that the other 337 days of the year are White History Month, and the other 334 days of the year are Men's History Month.
It fails to recognize these things because it is entirely self-perceptive - that is, people who fall into this trap are only able to see their own experiences, and not the experiences of others.
Imagine that you could measure power. When white men held slaves, the power ratio was something like 99.99/0.01 - that is, a white man might occasionally have to fear a slave revolt or runaways, but the chances of such a thing were so small and the punishments for slaves so great that this was realistically unlikely. Runaway slaves surviving to freedom were the exception, rather than the rule. When slavery ended, the power shifted slightly, to perhaps 99/1 - truly significant to the former slaves, but relatively minor to the former slave-holders (after all, they were still able to hire former slaves at effectively slave-wages). By the 1960s, the power had shifted to perhaps 90/10, and when segregation ended, the power shifted to maybe 75/25.
Since 1970, we can measure that ratio in terms of income. Doing so reveals that the power ratio today is 57/43 for men and 47/53 for women (black women actually make more than white women). The power ratio of white men to white women is 55/45 (and white men to black women is 52/48). That's assuming the statistics are correct - In 2010, just 5 years ago, the ratio for white men to black women was 59/41, and had been for many years. At any rate, equality would be 50/50 for each group.
Now, imagine you can't see that second number. As a white man, you see your power dropping: 99.99, 99, 90, 75, 57.... your power is slipping through your fingers, and that means that other groups are stealing it away.
It's the cause of so many in this country feeling like they're under attack - and why Fox 'News' uses attack descriptions in their demagoguery.
That's not to justify these feelings, but rather to point out how they're based in an inability to perceive and empathize with others. If we would like to reach people who feel this way, we need to understand why they do.
Maybe the NAAWP needs to be an organization that advances the White Race by teaching people who feel this way to empathize with other races, to support changing those ratios to 50/50, to show how such a change strengthens everyone of all races, white included.
To many, this doesn't seem racist. After all, the fight against racism is a fight FOR equality, and what's more equal than having separate-but-equal organizations?
If we were a truly post-racial society, perhaps that would be true - but in a truly post-racial society, the organizations wouldn't be separate. We wouldn't see the NAACP as an entity that specifically serves the needs of other. "Colored People," in our definition, would include "extremely-light tan" and "pale."
And that distinction between self and other is part of where this argument hinges. Note that no one ever proposes that all races have their own chapters of the NAACP, or similar organizations, but rather that there are two: NAAWP/NAACP. It's a distinction between "White" and "Colored."
But, it's also more than that - the only reason for a NAAWP is the perception that people of other races are somehow benefited by the NAACP in a way that the self-race is not. It's a perception of a loss of power in comparison to other that must be regulated through the use of an imposed power organization benefiting self. It is, essentially, the perception of war.
That's the heart of the argument - the belief that the other is waging war against the self, and is doing so through establishing special history months, etc.
It fails to recognize that we are not in a post-racial society (which you can read about in my last post). It fails to realize that every other organization is an NAAWP, that the basic power structures of our society are still built to support White Men to the detriment of women and minorities. It fails to recognize that the other 337 days of the year are White History Month, and the other 334 days of the year are Men's History Month.
It fails to recognize these things because it is entirely self-perceptive - that is, people who fall into this trap are only able to see their own experiences, and not the experiences of others.
Imagine that you could measure power. When white men held slaves, the power ratio was something like 99.99/0.01 - that is, a white man might occasionally have to fear a slave revolt or runaways, but the chances of such a thing were so small and the punishments for slaves so great that this was realistically unlikely. Runaway slaves surviving to freedom were the exception, rather than the rule. When slavery ended, the power shifted slightly, to perhaps 99/1 - truly significant to the former slaves, but relatively minor to the former slave-holders (after all, they were still able to hire former slaves at effectively slave-wages). By the 1960s, the power had shifted to perhaps 90/10, and when segregation ended, the power shifted to maybe 75/25.
Since 1970, we can measure that ratio in terms of income. Doing so reveals that the power ratio today is 57/43 for men and 47/53 for women (black women actually make more than white women). The power ratio of white men to white women is 55/45 (and white men to black women is 52/48). That's assuming the statistics are correct - In 2010, just 5 years ago, the ratio for white men to black women was 59/41, and had been for many years. At any rate, equality would be 50/50 for each group.
Now, imagine you can't see that second number. As a white man, you see your power dropping: 99.99, 99, 90, 75, 57.... your power is slipping through your fingers, and that means that other groups are stealing it away.
It's the cause of so many in this country feeling like they're under attack - and why Fox 'News' uses attack descriptions in their demagoguery.
That's not to justify these feelings, but rather to point out how they're based in an inability to perceive and empathize with others. If we would like to reach people who feel this way, we need to understand why they do.
Maybe the NAAWP needs to be an organization that advances the White Race by teaching people who feel this way to empathize with other races, to support changing those ratios to 50/50, to show how such a change strengthens everyone of all races, white included.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Race V. Culture
Had a recent Facebook argument with someone who is convinced that racism is over in America. I eventually walked out on the conversation, because it was clear that no good could be accomplished from further discussion, but he did remind me of an old argument I used to make...
That is, that what we call racism today is really "culturism" - or the hatred of particular cultures rather than races.
As if that is somehow better.
But let's assume for a moment that culturism is acceptable, while racism is not. It assumes that all of the negative things I used to say about race and which I've recently refuted about race aren't appropriate to apply to race, but are appropriate to apply to culture.
Rather than a black person being more likely to be targeted by police because of skin color, for instance that black person is more likely to be targeted because of obvious cultural elements which are expressed through clothing choices, tattoos and piercings, and so on.
I used to believe this myself, for a brief while between the time I was unabashedly racist and the time I think I really started to understand racism. It was a step in the healing process between the two, although only a baby step.
What I didn't realize at that time was that it betrayed certain assumptions on my part. For instance,
We know that blacks are far more often pulled over by police, and far more often arrested for the same crimes, and far more often convicted. If we make the assumption that those blacks who were pulled over, etc., were all members of the same culture, then we can easily say that this is a cultural issue, that police were targeting those markers of black culture rather than black race. But, that betrays inherent assumptions about race - such as that black people will all (or mostly all) be wearing the same types of clothes, be featuring the same hair styles, or jewelry, or whatever.
And you know what we call such assumptions about members of a race?
The fact is that black people in America are all more likely to be targeted by police, across all cultures of black. We can't say "African Americans" even, because the fact is that foreign-born black men and women are also targeted, and in most of these cases it should be abundantly clear to us that the victims share nothing in common with what a culturism-proponent might term "American black culture" or I used to call "stereotypically-black culture." Even applying such a name itself reveals its racist origins, and yet we all know what people mean when they say "stereotypically-black" and we can easily extend such a phrase to culture.
Because we're all racist.
And that's OK, as long as we face it head-on and try to cut it off. We can't do that if we're trying to dress up our racism as something else.
Final thought on this subject: only a few days ago, a news story broke right here in Oklahoma where a group of young men did their best to openly embrace racism, without even the veil of culture. The students who led the racist chanting have been expelled, which is a great start, but clearly we have a long way to go.
That is, that what we call racism today is really "culturism" - or the hatred of particular cultures rather than races.
As if that is somehow better.
But let's assume for a moment that culturism is acceptable, while racism is not. It assumes that all of the negative things I used to say about race and which I've recently refuted about race aren't appropriate to apply to race, but are appropriate to apply to culture.
Rather than a black person being more likely to be targeted by police because of skin color, for instance that black person is more likely to be targeted because of obvious cultural elements which are expressed through clothing choices, tattoos and piercings, and so on.
I used to believe this myself, for a brief while between the time I was unabashedly racist and the time I think I really started to understand racism. It was a step in the healing process between the two, although only a baby step.
What I didn't realize at that time was that it betrayed certain assumptions on my part. For instance,
We know that blacks are far more often pulled over by police, and far more often arrested for the same crimes, and far more often convicted. If we make the assumption that those blacks who were pulled over, etc., were all members of the same culture, then we can easily say that this is a cultural issue, that police were targeting those markers of black culture rather than black race. But, that betrays inherent assumptions about race - such as that black people will all (or mostly all) be wearing the same types of clothes, be featuring the same hair styles, or jewelry, or whatever.
And you know what we call such assumptions about members of a race?
The fact is that black people in America are all more likely to be targeted by police, across all cultures of black. We can't say "African Americans" even, because the fact is that foreign-born black men and women are also targeted, and in most of these cases it should be abundantly clear to us that the victims share nothing in common with what a culturism-proponent might term "American black culture" or I used to call "stereotypically-black culture." Even applying such a name itself reveals its racist origins, and yet we all know what people mean when they say "stereotypically-black" and we can easily extend such a phrase to culture.
Because we're all racist.
And that's OK, as long as we face it head-on and try to cut it off. We can't do that if we're trying to dress up our racism as something else.
Final thought on this subject: only a few days ago, a news story broke right here in Oklahoma where a group of young men did their best to openly embrace racism, without even the veil of culture. The students who led the racist chanting have been expelled, which is a great start, but clearly we have a long way to go.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Brown, Garner, et. al. post #3: If it's all about power, why are we talking about race?
So we've established now that the arguments surrounding the logistics of the cases - the condemnations of Brown and, to a lesser extent, Garner, and the lack of impeachment of the police officers who killed them - are actually arguments about power. But this does leave alone those arguments about race that get made, where the Right says race isn't a part of it, and the Left says it is, and people roll out statistics to back up their claims either way. I certainly believe the statistics of the Left more than the Right, but we believe the statistics we want to believe, so let's ignore them for a moment...
We need to understand that the argument about power is deeper than simply the cause of fear via abuse. Power is wielded constantly by the powerful to help maintain that power.
This is something inherently understood by most people. We can all imagine a corporate CEO who wheels and deals with a board of directors to make sure s/he keeps his/her job when the company seems to be doing badly. We can also imagine politicians who ignore threats from independent candidates to focus on candidates from their rival political parties, thereby showing the voting populace that only the two parties' candidates are legitimate. We can imagine easily both parties being owned by financial interests, as Gore Vidal famously said:
By keeping the conversation merely two-sided, these parties set up a false dichotomy that causes conversations outside of the dichotomy to become irrelevant. That is, they take what ideally should be a false premise - that a third party candidate cannot be elected - and then they throw money into arguments with each other and ignore outside arguments, which prevents the third party candidate from getting valid and free attention that the inside-party candidates get, and they force the premise to be true as a result. And we, the voters, believe their premise and vote for the parties accordingly. By naming ourselves as "Republican" or "Democrat," we identify more and more with their policies, and defend them when they do things we didn't want.
This is how power maintains itself - by focusing conversations in such a way is to invalidate the non-powerful.
Racism is nothing if not a tool of the powerful. Racism is, in essence, a way of separating "self" and "other." For white Americans like myself - and we are still the majority - racism means promoting our power over that of other races, and assuming that those races are trying to actively usurp or derail that power. We see this in obscure ways...
In the case of Garner, we see a fight between corporate and individual power. The corporation has a vested interest in maintaining sales, and so it packages cigarettes in bulk for sale. Individuals who cannot afford a full pack, but who are nonetheless addicted, must either suffer through that addiction or save enough for a pack. There is no way to casually smoke. Corporate power, already made powerful by way of a huge mountain of cash, is codified into the law by making the selling of individual cigarettes illegal. There is no essential crime behind the selling of loose cigs - that is, there is nothing different between the selling of an individual cigarette and a pack of cigarettes beyond three things - the surgeon general's warning, the age of the purchaser, and the protection of the corporation. Since the law doesn't specify that loose cigs can be sold if the surgeon general's warning is provided, and if the age of the purchaser is verified, we can assume that the law is really about the third issue. In this way, the corporation has greater protection under the law than the individual.
And, since poverty is still largely racial - that is, it affects black people more than white people - and poverty is a large driver behind the need to purchase loose cigs, we can also see how the law protects the rich more than the poor and whites more than blacks.
We see this repeated throughout society across all laws, but especially drug laws. For some statistics, I'll turn to an admittedly-biased source - but, since they're statistics, they should be fairly safe from bias (the takeaway from them might not be, but let's limit that at the moment):
We also know that police systems are nothing if not power systems - that is, they are the enforcement arm, at the local level, of the state power structure. Because power systems have a need to continue maintaining power, they also have a vested interest in protecting members of the power system who abuse that power (See parts 1 & 2 of this article for more info on that). And, because power systems were established by mostly white people, they reflect white values of power, which largely inhibit black power by way of making illegal things that are available to black people and taking away systems that might change that balance of power (such as public schooling and public assistance for college, which have both been declining).
That all explains why blacks are the victims of power itself more, but is that true of police power?
Well, take a look back at an article I wrote in August. There, I talk about the perception of "thuggery" and link to an article that reveals that blacks are killed by police at an alarming rate. That perception of thuggery, I think, is the key to why this might be the case.
We have a cultural perception that blacks are more likely to be criminals than other races. It's actually true, sadly. Violent crime is where that distinction is most marked, as the number of black people who commit murder each year is 6 times higher, per capita, than whites (source). But this is a problem of perception - while blacks do commit more murders than whites, the rate is still "only" 20 per every 100,000 people - meaning that 99.9998% of all blacks in America are not murderers.
This cultural perception is a two-part problem: first, it started with perceptions way back in slavery times that whites used to reinforce their feelings of superiority over their slaves, a kind of self-created authority allowing them to keep slaves without violating their morals; second, it got reflected in the media. See, something "we all know" is that the media is a fear-mongering propaganda machine, overemphasizing dangers we face ostensibly as a way of informing us of how to protect ourselves, while at the same time using that fear to make obscene profits. The logic of the news media is now circular - it will only report on stories people want to watch, but people only want to watch stories that agree with the things they already believe, and they already believe those things because they have seen them on the news. In such a way, it consistently reinforces its own beliefs of racial power, including ideas of black violence and criminality.
So, with the perception of criminality in place, police naturally and subconsciously react to it. It's impossible not to. It's the natural result of power.
Power is always racist.
We need to understand that the argument about power is deeper than simply the cause of fear via abuse. Power is wielded constantly by the powerful to help maintain that power.
This is something inherently understood by most people. We can all imagine a corporate CEO who wheels and deals with a board of directors to make sure s/he keeps his/her job when the company seems to be doing badly. We can also imagine politicians who ignore threats from independent candidates to focus on candidates from their rival political parties, thereby showing the voting populace that only the two parties' candidates are legitimate. We can imagine easily both parties being owned by financial interests, as Gore Vidal famously said:
I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.Regardless of whether you vote Democrat or Republican, you're always voting in favor of big corporations. The specific corporations these parties support are somewhat irrelevant. People vote based on non-corporate decisions - such as fears over Ebola and terrorism, fears about climate change, fears about abortion and homosexuality (either for or against), but the first thing a party does when it comes into power is to change laws in favor of their big corporate donors. Need proof? Look at the tax bills that passed the senate and house, which rolled back the consumer protections of Dodd-Frank we put in place after the economic crash of 2008. Banks didn't want those changes, so they funded people who would change them.
It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican. - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0806#sthash.ndT4BMLU.dpuf
By keeping the conversation merely two-sided, these parties set up a false dichotomy that causes conversations outside of the dichotomy to become irrelevant. That is, they take what ideally should be a false premise - that a third party candidate cannot be elected - and then they throw money into arguments with each other and ignore outside arguments, which prevents the third party candidate from getting valid and free attention that the inside-party candidates get, and they force the premise to be true as a result. And we, the voters, believe their premise and vote for the parties accordingly. By naming ourselves as "Republican" or "Democrat," we identify more and more with their policies, and defend them when they do things we didn't want.
This is how power maintains itself - by focusing conversations in such a way is to invalidate the non-powerful.
Racism is nothing if not a tool of the powerful. Racism is, in essence, a way of separating "self" and "other." For white Americans like myself - and we are still the majority - racism means promoting our power over that of other races, and assuming that those races are trying to actively usurp or derail that power. We see this in obscure ways...
In the case of Garner, we see a fight between corporate and individual power. The corporation has a vested interest in maintaining sales, and so it packages cigarettes in bulk for sale. Individuals who cannot afford a full pack, but who are nonetheless addicted, must either suffer through that addiction or save enough for a pack. There is no way to casually smoke. Corporate power, already made powerful by way of a huge mountain of cash, is codified into the law by making the selling of individual cigarettes illegal. There is no essential crime behind the selling of loose cigs - that is, there is nothing different between the selling of an individual cigarette and a pack of cigarettes beyond three things - the surgeon general's warning, the age of the purchaser, and the protection of the corporation. Since the law doesn't specify that loose cigs can be sold if the surgeon general's warning is provided, and if the age of the purchaser is verified, we can assume that the law is really about the third issue. In this way, the corporation has greater protection under the law than the individual.
And, since poverty is still largely racial - that is, it affects black people more than white people - and poverty is a large driver behind the need to purchase loose cigs, we can also see how the law protects the rich more than the poor and whites more than blacks.
We see this repeated throughout society across all laws, but especially drug laws. For some statistics, I'll turn to an admittedly-biased source - but, since they're statistics, they should be fairly safe from bias (the takeaway from them might not be, but let's limit that at the moment):
African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense. (source)So, our entire criminal justice system is slanted heavily against blacks. We already know this.
We also know that police systems are nothing if not power systems - that is, they are the enforcement arm, at the local level, of the state power structure. Because power systems have a need to continue maintaining power, they also have a vested interest in protecting members of the power system who abuse that power (See parts 1 & 2 of this article for more info on that). And, because power systems were established by mostly white people, they reflect white values of power, which largely inhibit black power by way of making illegal things that are available to black people and taking away systems that might change that balance of power (such as public schooling and public assistance for college, which have both been declining).
That all explains why blacks are the victims of power itself more, but is that true of police power?
Well, take a look back at an article I wrote in August. There, I talk about the perception of "thuggery" and link to an article that reveals that blacks are killed by police at an alarming rate. That perception of thuggery, I think, is the key to why this might be the case.
We have a cultural perception that blacks are more likely to be criminals than other races. It's actually true, sadly. Violent crime is where that distinction is most marked, as the number of black people who commit murder each year is 6 times higher, per capita, than whites (source). But this is a problem of perception - while blacks do commit more murders than whites, the rate is still "only" 20 per every 100,000 people - meaning that 99.9998% of all blacks in America are not murderers.
This cultural perception is a two-part problem: first, it started with perceptions way back in slavery times that whites used to reinforce their feelings of superiority over their slaves, a kind of self-created authority allowing them to keep slaves without violating their morals; second, it got reflected in the media. See, something "we all know" is that the media is a fear-mongering propaganda machine, overemphasizing dangers we face ostensibly as a way of informing us of how to protect ourselves, while at the same time using that fear to make obscene profits. The logic of the news media is now circular - it will only report on stories people want to watch, but people only want to watch stories that agree with the things they already believe, and they already believe those things because they have seen them on the news. In such a way, it consistently reinforces its own beliefs of racial power, including ideas of black violence and criminality.
So, with the perception of criminality in place, police naturally and subconsciously react to it. It's impossible not to. It's the natural result of power.
Power is always racist.
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Conceid
Imagine, if you will, that you're a straight man. It's easy for me to imagine, of course, and there's a reasonably good chance (somewhere around 43%) that it'll be somewhat natural for you to imagine as well.
As a straight man, you know one very important thing about sexuality: women are hot. Not all women, necessarily, but many. There are aspects that you might use to identify a woman that you would also identify as being attractive to you: breasts, slender legs, diminutive features when compared to an adult man, long hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, red lips or cheeks, and so on. Your specific definition might be unique to you (perhaps you like women with mohawks, or women who've had amputations; I don't know), but you'll likely identify with several "standard" ideas of what's attractive in a woman. We agree so well on these that scientists have produced ideal ratios of attractiveness (If you measure the distance from the top of a woman's head to the bottom, the distance between her eyes and lips should be 36% of that first distance for optimal attractiveness; similarly the distance between eyes is 46% of total width - Link).
It's easy, as a straight man, to see what other straight men see in a beautiful woman. It is also easy to understand what a gay woman might see in another woman. It is quite easy for us to understand homosexuality in women, even if we might dislike it for fear of its extracting women from the pool of eligible mates (yes, that's how I actually thought back in my older, dumber days).
But homosexuality in males is another matter. It's difficult for a straight man to see another man as sexually attractive, even if the other man is physically attractive - that is, I can readily admit to the physical attractiveness of your Brad Pitts and George Clooneys of the world, but difficult if not impossible to translate that understanding into an understanding of someone's sexual desire for them.
As a result, we deny their physical sexuality by virtue of their attractiveness, and ascribe sexuality to other factors - fame, money, prestige, strength, masculinity, and so on. We assume that a woman who is interested in them must be interested in them for one of those reasons (aka, "gold diggers") rather than physical attractiveness.
We take this even further when trying to understand homosexual men's attraction to another man, and assume either femininity on the part of the attractee - that is, the more masculine male in the relationship is attracted to the more feminine male because of his femininity; the more feminine male is projecting his own femininity by searching for a more masculine partner. (This is the assumption behind the "pitcher and catcher" cliche.) When seeing a gay man alone, who does not possess any obvious (read: stereotypical) gay traits, we may search for other causes, such as a missing father figure (the need for non-sexual male bonding being mistaken for sexual male bonding).
Regardless, the reason can never be simple physical attraction.
And, as you can hopefully see, these are exactly the points we all generally agree with - that is, unless we know we have things incorrect and have investigated them to draw them out, we take these points at face value, and they drive a lot of our conversations about each other.
Which is a backwards way of saying that everything we think about sexuality and what is attractive and what assigned roles people are filling within this complex story are all directly derived from that initial premise: that the actor and subject creating these definitions is a straight male.
As a straight man, you know one very important thing about sexuality: women are hot. Not all women, necessarily, but many. There are aspects that you might use to identify a woman that you would also identify as being attractive to you: breasts, slender legs, diminutive features when compared to an adult man, long hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, red lips or cheeks, and so on. Your specific definition might be unique to you (perhaps you like women with mohawks, or women who've had amputations; I don't know), but you'll likely identify with several "standard" ideas of what's attractive in a woman. We agree so well on these that scientists have produced ideal ratios of attractiveness (If you measure the distance from the top of a woman's head to the bottom, the distance between her eyes and lips should be 36% of that first distance for optimal attractiveness; similarly the distance between eyes is 46% of total width - Link).
It's easy, as a straight man, to see what other straight men see in a beautiful woman. It is also easy to understand what a gay woman might see in another woman. It is quite easy for us to understand homosexuality in women, even if we might dislike it for fear of its extracting women from the pool of eligible mates (yes, that's how I actually thought back in my older, dumber days).
But homosexuality in males is another matter. It's difficult for a straight man to see another man as sexually attractive, even if the other man is physically attractive - that is, I can readily admit to the physical attractiveness of your Brad Pitts and George Clooneys of the world, but difficult if not impossible to translate that understanding into an understanding of someone's sexual desire for them.
As a result, we deny their physical sexuality by virtue of their attractiveness, and ascribe sexuality to other factors - fame, money, prestige, strength, masculinity, and so on. We assume that a woman who is interested in them must be interested in them for one of those reasons (aka, "gold diggers") rather than physical attractiveness.
We take this even further when trying to understand homosexual men's attraction to another man, and assume either femininity on the part of the attractee - that is, the more masculine male in the relationship is attracted to the more feminine male because of his femininity; the more feminine male is projecting his own femininity by searching for a more masculine partner. (This is the assumption behind the "pitcher and catcher" cliche.) When seeing a gay man alone, who does not possess any obvious (read: stereotypical) gay traits, we may search for other causes, such as a missing father figure (the need for non-sexual male bonding being mistaken for sexual male bonding).
Regardless, the reason can never be simple physical attraction.
And, as you can hopefully see, these are exactly the points we all generally agree with - that is, unless we know we have things incorrect and have investigated them to draw them out, we take these points at face value, and they drive a lot of our conversations about each other.
Which is a backwards way of saying that everything we think about sexuality and what is attractive and what assigned roles people are filling within this complex story are all directly derived from that initial premise: that the actor and subject creating these definitions is a straight male.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Brown, Garner, et. al. post #2: We're still assuming it's not about race...
What is left unsaid in both of my critiques is the undertone of each...
The undertone of the Randian argument is fear that someone who is unbound by the law will be able to do those things which I (if I were a conservative), being bound by the law, only wish I could do.
The undertone of the quid-pro-quot argument is that I (as a liberal) recognizing that quid-pro-quo happens constantly in matters unrelated to law enforcement, fear it happens there as a protection of police who have used and will, as a result of a lack of punishment, continue to use physical abuse against various people, myself included.
Both are based in a common fear: powerlessness. We are primordially afraid of people who have power over us because we see examples of that power being abused every time we turn on the news.
Case in point - the language of gun rights activists:
In a home invasion in Georgia, CNN tells us, a man used a crowbar to break in, and the female homeowner, hiding with her children in the attic, unloaded on him when he opened the door. The response by gun rights activists was completely typical for what we've seen on national media many times before:
Statistics on invasion events are hard to find, but here's some detective work we can do on it:
But the real question is - how many people are involved in those crimes? Are marauding gangs of thugs involved?
Well... sadly, yes. Sometimes. We don't have statistics on that - for some reason, no one is asking that question. To listen to, for instance, Erich Pratt's quote above, you'd think it was happening in every break-in. It's not. But, to what extent it is happening, we just don't know.
But gun laws are based off of the belief that it's always happening - which is why we insist on the need for guns with high rates of fire, so that if four people come into the house, the homeowner can mow them down in a hailstorm of bullets. It's the fear of these invasions, the fear of "stranger danger," that drives some people to buy guns for protection.
(I'm not, here, getting into the argument of whether that causes more harm than good.)
In the same way, it's fear of police officers abusing their authority that leads some people to protest them. Certainly not all, but some. That fear seems justified in light of the statistics I previously posted about the incidence of indictments of police officers. Here again, though, national statistics are impossible to find, and only local state statistics can help to fill in the gap a tiny bit. In Cleveland, for instance, the Justice Department recently released a report showing that cops “too often use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution” (link).
So fear of crime is justified. Fear of cops is justified. Each one of these things is an example of a power dynamic - a fear of powerlessness in the face of power.
The two types of power are markedly different, though.
Normal crime, even violent crime, is a personal power. It is the ability for one person to overpower another through physical means - which could be strength, weapons, drugs, and so on. In this situation, the perpetrator acts relatively alone; while he or she could have the support of criminal colleagues, the support ends there. There is no intended institutional support for the criminal actions, and there will never be a vote of the people to grant political power to the criminals in those actions (e.g., a "right to rob someone's house").
In the case of a criminal attack, there are means to fight back. A person can own guns and use them in self-defense. A person can learn martial arts and use that for self defense. A person can buy alarm systems, a very large dog, security bars, and so on. These measures ARE supported by law.
Police brutality, on the other hand, is an institutional power. When a police officer places a suspect in a choke hold, or shoots a suspect, or sits on a suspect, etc., the institutions in place help to protect that officer (the lack of indictment is just one example; another is the fact that the officer continues drawing pay even if on leave while the incident is investigated).
In the case of a police attack, there are no legal means to fight back. Anything a person does is taken as resisting arrest, and many people are quick to rush to the defense of the officer by saying that the brutality wouldn't have happened if the suspect had simply not resisted (See this NY Times article on the Garner case). When an incident between an officer and a suspect comes into court, we as a society are inclined to believe the officer's side of the story, even though both sides have bias and their own reasons for lying to the court.
The inherent power we grant to police officers is far greater than that of criminals. This is by design, so that police can fight crime - but, currently, the result of that power is the abuse of said power. Rather than going easier on police as we currently do, we should be harder on them than we are on criminals, to hold them to a higher standard, to expect more out of them based on the power we grant to them. If punishment fits the crime, then every crime of the police that has a non-police antecedent/corollary should also include "abuse of power" as part of its bill.
It's why we send teachers to jail when they sleep with their students, even the students who are of legal age - because the chance for an abuse of power is too great, that the teacher could expect sexual payout for good grades, etc.
And note that even our arguments of fear of criminality assume violent criminality; in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, there was no violence on their parts. Selling untaxed cigarettes ranks even further down the "dangerous list" than jaywalking, and stealing cigars by pocketing them and walking out, rather than using a gun or making any threats, etc., is akin to shoplifting. Yes, it's bad, but there's a reason we don't allow security guards at Wal-Mart to shoot people who've shoplifted - because it's not the equivalent of a human life.
So even if this whole thing is not about race, we still have a very real reason to stand in support of Brown and Garner, of Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, and the seemingly inexhaustible list of other black men and women killed by police - because we do not tolerate bullies, and when police abuse their power, that's exactly what they are.
(All that said, it is still about race... but if I write that part, it will be part 3...)
The undertone of the Randian argument is fear that someone who is unbound by the law will be able to do those things which I (if I were a conservative), being bound by the law, only wish I could do.
The undertone of the quid-pro-quot argument is that I (as a liberal) recognizing that quid-pro-quo happens constantly in matters unrelated to law enforcement, fear it happens there as a protection of police who have used and will, as a result of a lack of punishment, continue to use physical abuse against various people, myself included.
Both are based in a common fear: powerlessness. We are primordially afraid of people who have power over us because we see examples of that power being abused every time we turn on the news.
Case in point - the language of gun rights activists:
In a home invasion in Georgia, CNN tells us, a man used a crowbar to break in, and the female homeowner, hiding with her children in the attic, unloaded on him when he opened the door. The response by gun rights activists was completely typical for what we've seen on national media many times before:
"It's a good thing she wasn't facing more attackers. Otherwise she would have been in trouble and she would have run out of ammunition," said Erich Pratt, director of communications for the Gun Owners of America.Don't you hate it when your home is broken into by roving gangs of marauders? Yeah, me too.
Statistics on invasion events are hard to find, but here's some detective work we can do on it:
- There are 115,226,802 households in the U.S. (link).
- There are 3,700,000 household burglaries in the U.S. annually (link).
- 266,560 home break-ins result in violent harm to residences of the home (link).
But the real question is - how many people are involved in those crimes? Are marauding gangs of thugs involved?
Well... sadly, yes. Sometimes. We don't have statistics on that - for some reason, no one is asking that question. To listen to, for instance, Erich Pratt's quote above, you'd think it was happening in every break-in. It's not. But, to what extent it is happening, we just don't know.
But gun laws are based off of the belief that it's always happening - which is why we insist on the need for guns with high rates of fire, so that if four people come into the house, the homeowner can mow them down in a hailstorm of bullets. It's the fear of these invasions, the fear of "stranger danger," that drives some people to buy guns for protection.
(I'm not, here, getting into the argument of whether that causes more harm than good.)
In the same way, it's fear of police officers abusing their authority that leads some people to protest them. Certainly not all, but some. That fear seems justified in light of the statistics I previously posted about the incidence of indictments of police officers. Here again, though, national statistics are impossible to find, and only local state statistics can help to fill in the gap a tiny bit. In Cleveland, for instance, the Justice Department recently released a report showing that cops “too often use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution” (link).
So fear of crime is justified. Fear of cops is justified. Each one of these things is an example of a power dynamic - a fear of powerlessness in the face of power.
The two types of power are markedly different, though.
Normal crime, even violent crime, is a personal power. It is the ability for one person to overpower another through physical means - which could be strength, weapons, drugs, and so on. In this situation, the perpetrator acts relatively alone; while he or she could have the support of criminal colleagues, the support ends there. There is no intended institutional support for the criminal actions, and there will never be a vote of the people to grant political power to the criminals in those actions (e.g., a "right to rob someone's house").
In the case of a criminal attack, there are means to fight back. A person can own guns and use them in self-defense. A person can learn martial arts and use that for self defense. A person can buy alarm systems, a very large dog, security bars, and so on. These measures ARE supported by law.
Police brutality, on the other hand, is an institutional power. When a police officer places a suspect in a choke hold, or shoots a suspect, or sits on a suspect, etc., the institutions in place help to protect that officer (the lack of indictment is just one example; another is the fact that the officer continues drawing pay even if on leave while the incident is investigated).
In the case of a police attack, there are no legal means to fight back. Anything a person does is taken as resisting arrest, and many people are quick to rush to the defense of the officer by saying that the brutality wouldn't have happened if the suspect had simply not resisted (See this NY Times article on the Garner case). When an incident between an officer and a suspect comes into court, we as a society are inclined to believe the officer's side of the story, even though both sides have bias and their own reasons for lying to the court.
The inherent power we grant to police officers is far greater than that of criminals. This is by design, so that police can fight crime - but, currently, the result of that power is the abuse of said power. Rather than going easier on police as we currently do, we should be harder on them than we are on criminals, to hold them to a higher standard, to expect more out of them based on the power we grant to them. If punishment fits the crime, then every crime of the police that has a non-police antecedent/corollary should also include "abuse of power" as part of its bill.
It's why we send teachers to jail when they sleep with their students, even the students who are of legal age - because the chance for an abuse of power is too great, that the teacher could expect sexual payout for good grades, etc.
And note that even our arguments of fear of criminality assume violent criminality; in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, there was no violence on their parts. Selling untaxed cigarettes ranks even further down the "dangerous list" than jaywalking, and stealing cigars by pocketing them and walking out, rather than using a gun or making any threats, etc., is akin to shoplifting. Yes, it's bad, but there's a reason we don't allow security guards at Wal-Mart to shoot people who've shoplifted - because it's not the equivalent of a human life.
So even if this whole thing is not about race, we still have a very real reason to stand in support of Brown and Garner, of Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, and the seemingly inexhaustible list of other black men and women killed by police - because we do not tolerate bullies, and when police abuse their power, that's exactly what they are.
(All that said, it is still about race... but if I write that part, it will be part 3...)
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Brown, Garner, et. al. post #1: Let's assume it isn't about race...
I'm going to assume, for a moment, that the Right is honest in its protestations that recent police killings are not about race. Let me propose a couple of theories as to what could be going on...
#1.
Republicans as a general rule hold three literary sources to be holy and sacrosanct: the Bible, the Constitution, and the collected works of Ayn Rand. Randian ideology holds up the individual as exemplary. Truth is knowable, and deeply internal. A person who seeks Truth will find it, and can use it to become mighty. Truth can be recognized in the individual by those individuals who shuck off the bonds of society and grab for themselves everything they want, because not only is Truth the divine right of the individual, but so is everything else. The mightiest person is the one who climbs on top of the heap of others, becoming the most politically and economically powerful, too. Many people can achieve success and be Randian, but certainly not most, and only the king of them all is the true winner of the philosophy.
One problem occurs when we realize that the heroes of Rand's books are not beholden to the law, and in fact actively work to subvert the law when the law seems to prevent them from attaining all the power they believe is their right. The law cannot stand up to the Truth of a Randian hero.
And once again, this is what I was actually taught in my own religious upbringing - that when Truth and law disagree, it is the responsibility of people to stand up to the law in favor of Truth.
We all believe this, of course. We praise Rosa Parks for fighting for Truth. We praise Martin Luther King Jr. for fighting for Truth. We praise Nelson Mandela for fighting for Truth. Abraham Lincoln. George Washington. etc.
But we tend to forget that those they fought against also thought THEY were on the side of Truth. The slave owners had convinced themselves that slaves were actually better off under their control. In the American Revolution, many people born and raised on this continent gave their lives in service to King George.
Truth, as with other things, may be decided by the victors.
But while we're in the midst of a fight, Truth is still decided by the individual - each individual fights for his/her own unique definition of Truth.
And, as I've noted before, on the Republican side of the aisle, we have a supposed arbiter of Truth that cannot be argued against. That is, that when someone believes his/her Truth comes directly from God, there can be no discussion about it, no bending, no giving in to the demands of the other side...
no diplomacy.
The other side always already belongs to Satan, because if God is Truth, and Truth is absolute, then those who agree with Truth are with God, and those who disagree are with Satan. It's exceedingly and necessarily dichotomous.
And it is this Truth that narrowly limits the Randian heroes from everybody else. For, when a person walks into a store and takes everything at gun point, they are not living within the Truth. When a person uses legal means to take everything from someone else, however, they are right in doing so, for they are the ideal Randian hero. When a social group, like the government, uses legal means to take a portion of things from someone else, they are right if those things are to be distributed to other Randian heroes, and wrong if those things are to be distributed to others.
Sadly, the inner Randian is often at odds with the Truth. For a true Randian would not give one whit about someone ELSE's definition of Truth, even if that someone else is a religious figure of global impact. Ayn Rand herself was, after all, an atheist. If a Randian wants to take someone else's property, at gunpoint or no, then he will take it - or will long to, and believe it is his/her divine right to do so, but may stay his/her hand to avoid going to jail.
And this sensation lies under the surface of the subconscious, always waiting for a chance to act. The greatest Randians I've known haven't held themselves back very far.
Now consider what someone might do who holds that philosophy and encounters someone who does not pay attention to the law, someone who takes what s/he wants or does what s/he wants. The existing feeling of entitlement would find itself jealous, and would seek to eliminate the competition.
It could do so through passing laws for longer prison time, through allowing Randians to commit murder of those they deem a threat to their order, and through economic and social manipulation to ensure that those on the other side who have not yet gone to prison or been murdered by the Randians would have to stay as far away as possible, in their own worlds.
Now, thus far I've been theorycrafting, but we see this every day.
In the case of Michael Brown, those on the Right claim he is a thief, as if it's OK to gun down a thief in the street. Well, in the model I just described above, it is! A thief takes what s/he wants, and a Randian who follows the law cannot abide that, so the Randian will accept the thief's murder as a just punishment for the crime.
I'm making no claim here whether Brown did or did not steal anything - rather, I'm making only a claim about the justification for the use of lethal force.
Based on all of that, we could, perhaps, make a claim that it isn't about race, but rather purely about the extremes to which Randian beliefs have taken over the Right.
Then we got another case similar to Michael Brown's. Like Brown's, Eric Garner was a black man killed by police for suspected illegal activity. Unlike Brown's, his criminal action wasn't quite on the same scale. He was suspected of selling individual cigarettes, which would help people avoid paying tax on them. As Ben Shapiro notes on Right-wing blog site Breitbart.com, "Garner had been arrested some eight times for selling 'loosies.' That said, even Shapiro says, "by virtually any logic, it is the height of irresponsibility and depravity for a man to end up dead for selling loose cigarettes" (link).
I would, of course, claim the same is true for simple theft of cigars, but there may be a link to my Randian argument yet - remember that in Brown's case, he was supposedly stealing directly from a store, pitting a non-Truth Randian (Brown) against a Truth Randian (a store owner); however, in Garner's case, he was supposedly a non-Truth Randian stealing from the government of New York, a government that is, itself, inherently non-Randian. Ergo, no crime was committed against Randianism.
And yet, Garner still died. And not only did he die, but police were cleared of charges, even though by all accounts they used an inappropriate subdual method.
#2
Grand Juries almost always indict. Ben Casselman, on ESPN's news site "fivethirtyeight.com" (I know... ESPN and news in the same phrase...), reveals the numbers:
... U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.That's 0.006%. That's 1 out of ever 14,727 cases. You have a better chance of winning an Academy Award than avoiding an indictment. You have a better chance of injuring yourself with a chainsaw. Or with a toilet. You have a better chance of dying in a horrible bicycle accident.
Casselman goes on to explain,
Cases involving police shootings, however, appear to be an exception. As my colleague Reuben Fischer-Baum has written, we don’t have good data on officer-involved killings. But newspaper accounts suggest, grand juries frequently decline to indict law-enforcement officials. A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment.Yikes. In Dallas, at least, you have only a 1 in 81 chance of being indicted if you're a cop. For comparison, you have a 14545 times greater chance of not being indicted if you're a cop, at least in Dallas, than of not being indicted if you're *anybody else*.
The obvious answer to that, of course, is that the prosecutor likely intentionally threw the case. That's easy to imagine, given that the prosecutors in Grand Jury cases are the same prosecutors as in every other criminal case, and thus they have to rely on and work with the police department every day. At the least, there's reason to suspect they would throw the cases just to stay on the good sides of law enforcement, a kind of "I've got your back, you've got mine" mentality. At worst, it's a reflection of outright fraternity between prosecutors and police.
This, of course, presents a problem from the standpoint that both police and prosecutors are supposed to be working not for each other, but for the people of their districts. If the people need to be protected, even from the police, then it is the job of the prosecutors to go after the police and keep the people safe.
What's weird, though, is that even with this knowledge, we see the Right saying that a lack of indictment in the Brown case was the right thing to do. For reference, an indictment is not a conviction - rather, it's saying that there's reason to further try the case, much like impeachment is not removal from office. It would have given people a more thorough and more open trial, to see all the evidence and make a decision for themselves, rather than allowing police to hide behind the protections of a Grand Jury to prevent that evidence from becoming a matter of public record.
It's weird, I say, only if this case was purely about attorneys protecting police - because anyone can acknowledge that it's wrong for them to use their position to protect an officer from being further tried in a court of law.
But it's not about that... it's about power. And I'll get there in my next post on this topic.
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