So a buddy of mine sent me an email with a video link discussing “illegal immigrants” using health care facilities in the United States. Along with the video came some text (that he did not write). It’s one of those emails that gets sent around to the ever present protesting subculture of web users. Here’s the text that was in the email:

This is one small hospital in Florida…Unbelievable! PLEASE WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO. EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS. IT AFFECTS EVERY ONE OF US!!! This is why you can’t afford good health care. This should offend every US tax paying citizen. This is not only happening in Florida, but every state in the U.S.

Before I make any comments, you’ll need to watch the video.

So you’re probably outraged that this could happen, especially if you’re one of the many tens of millions of Americans who do not have health care or who are in mountains of debt because of health care bills that you can not pay. Imagine returning to your country of origin and leaving all of those bills behind — and not even having to pay for your return flight! I’m sure you’re thinking that that would be a nice option to have.

But as matters such as these go, especially things that seem so incredibly outrageous, there are always other factors to consider.

Let me discuss just one. There are over four million U.S. citizens living permanently in other countries. This doesn’t include students studying abroad, nor are Americans serving at U.S. military bases on foreign part of the mix. It does include people working for multinational companies, however. So if we assume that half of this group (two million people) are simply living on their own in foreign countries and not for some company that probably provides them with health care, we probably should also assume that a large number of the remaining number of people are uninsured. Anecdotal observation on my part while spending years living abroad would lead me to conclude that there are a lot of people who just wanted to blow out of the U.S. and live somewhere else because they didn’t appreciate their lives here — like many of the nearly 700,000 Americans currently living in Canada.

Here’s the hitch. A significantly large segment of these uninsured, free-wheeling expats are living in countries where they have access to government health care (e.g., Canada, UK, Mexico, among probably a hundred other places). What do you think happens when one of them who is living on the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland is suddenly stricken with pneumonia? Do you think that the locals just let them die? Absolutely not. He or she goes to the hospital and the Irish doctors and nurses take care of the problem. And when it’s time to pay? Sometimes the hospital is reimbursed and other times the staff simply says “You’re welcome” as our fellow countryman or woman walks back into their Irish life.

Back in the 1980s I spent three days in a hospital in Mexico City having my appendix removed. It was a crazy story — and I mean A CRAZY STORY — and one that I never seem to get around to telling. It was in a hospital in a particularly gritty part of town and the doctors said that an appendectomy was a simple procedure for them compared to the gun shot and knife wounds they typically dealt with. My total bill? A pint of blood. They asked me to donate a pint of blood…adding to the end of the request, “if you wouldn’t mind.” That’s it. Here’s this gringo hanging out in Mexico who eats too many jalapenos and drinks too much tequila and ends up needing an emergency appendectomy — and the people of Mexico have to pay for it. I’m sure some investigative journalist could have done a provocative expose about the hospital beds that were being occupied by “rich Americans” while poor Mexicans were being turned away.

I’m not saying that all things are equal and that U.S. citizens should be happy and willing to pay for the health care of people who are living as undocumented laborers in this country. What I am saying is that I’d like to see someone add up the total health care costs of Americans who are living abroad that are paid by foreign tax payers. If I had to guess, I’d surmise that the total cost for foreigners who lack insurance and are living legally or illegally here in this country would be more, but only because our health care costs are inflated. Many of the million dollar charges discussed in the video are largely unreasonable, even if they are true on paper. For example, my wife had shoulder surgery last summer and her insurance company was billed twenty bucks for a small bag of ice that they got out of an ice cooler. So I imagine that if the Guatemalan man receives a few packs of ice every day for a year, that amounts to $22,000 — and I’m sure the hospital is keeping track of every single charge hoping that they’ll one day be reimbursed by somebody…anybody.

I’m also not saying that this is something about which we ought not be concerned. And it’s unreasonable to think that any hospital should absorb all of the charges for the care of someone who is not even a resident of the state in which that hospital or clinic is located. However, let’s keep these matters in their proper context because when we point a finger at someone else there are always three directed back at us.

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Our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, has found himself in hot water with some comments that he made on Wednesday: “In things racial we have always been, and I believe continue to be in too many ways, essentially, a nation of cowards.” Pundits, particularly those on the right, have called these words “reprehensible” and “inflammatory.” While he actually said nothing new, it seems to be the fact that he used the word “coward” that has people upset. But which people? White people? Black people? Brown people?

Beyond this single statement, listen to this portion of his speech and try to find something that is outlandish.

What he said, in a nutshell, is that Americans are afraid to discuss race. What is wrong with making that claim? Is he off-base about that? He didn’t single out any group. Or are some folks assuming that he implied that only white people are the cowards? How would this be received if this was George Bush saying this? Or Bill Clinton?

Lots of people are saying that fifty million cowards seemed to have gotten beyond their fear and put an African American in power who would then appoint Holder as the Attorney General. However, he’s not discussing any singular act of racism or anti-racism or racial preference but, rather, the way we live our lives — which is to tolerate other races in our work lives but maintain very segregated personal lives. By the way, the data pretty clearly support him on this.

The overarching problem with Holder’s words is that white people don’t know how to interpret them–and so they return to the old script: “It’s a black guy speaking about race. So he must be critiquing us.”

Another element of the old script is that most any statement made about race from one group is going to offend another group. That’s exactly what Holder is talking about. So if we’re not a nation of cowards, we would just allow him his critique and keep talking to each other, don’t you think?

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The killing of Oscar Grant III, an African American, by a white Oakland police officer is startling in many respects. For one, the question of responsibility in the vast majority of such killings is murky at best, and never has there been video that so clearly captures and validates the claim that is made by so many people of color, especially black people — that police regularly mistreat people of color and sometimes kill people in cold blood (and then receive immunity for their actions). Even the case of Amadou Diallo had some gray shadings in the middle of the facts — the police thought that he was reaching for a gun when he was reaching for his wallet. In Oakland by contrast, it certainly seems to me that there was virtually no possibility that the police officer could have imagined that Grant was a danger to anyone, not even himself. In fact, the video makes it look like an open and shut case of cold-blooded murder.

Let’s comment on this — but do so in light of the following six statements:

1. The only police officers in this country who are NOT appalled by Grant’s killing (aka: “murder”) are likely those who are members of some underground white supremacist organization for cops or the police officers who are just plain psychotic. So don’t t say something like “the police are racist” unless you are also willing to stand behind some other stereotype such as “Mexicans are lazy” or “Irish are drunks.”

2. The vast majority of murders of young black and brown men in the United States are committed by other young black and brown men and NOT the police. That many of these murders are committed for inane reasons (e.g., “he called me out”) seems to me to be an excellent reason to riot in the streets and call for and end to the violence.

3. Racism allows people to act toward people from other groups in ways that they would not otherwise act — and we have to imagine that the officer did not see Mr. Grant as one of his own people (i.e., his nephew, his brother, or even a version of himself).

4. It’s not easy being a police officer in neighborhoods where large numbers of people hate you until they need you (and therefore call 911 and expect you to help them in some way). It’s a very stressful job and one that operates on fear and suspicion. It’s not a reason to commit cold blooded murder — but it is a point to reckon with and one that few people ever take the time to entertain, until they become a cop.

5. This killing happened three weeks before the swearing into office of the first “black” U.S. President.

6. Because you rarely hear about violence committed by the police it doesn’t mean that this is an isolated case. Watch this if you don’t believe me:

So what do you think? What do you make of these two killings? And why haven’t we heard more about the second shooting at the hands of the New Orleans Police Department? How many more egregious acts of violence and hate do law enforcement personnel commit against innocent people that never make the news?

If your first response is “I can’t believe that this could happen in the U.S.,” then what do you think actually does happen out there on the streets? I mean, what do you think is REALLY going on? What might you not be seeing?

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I generally have a low tolerance for people who want to make a big deal out of isolated incidents when it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia and what are generally intolerant actions and attitudes. And so with that in mind, I’m a bit reluctant to discuss what appears to be a spike in intolerance among some segments of the U.S. populace as a result of our recent election.

Nonetheless, I’d be remiss for not examining what may be an issue upon which the “everything is better crowd” needs to reflect. None of this is surprising, of course, but it might be happening under the radar of our major media outlets because there is more important news to cover–like the end days of the global capitalist empire. Just a small story that merits a few weeks of saturating coverage.

Check out this article by Andrea Shalal-Esa that was carried by Reuters: “White Community Adapts to Obama Reality”

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Check out this article about Obama and white supremacists. No, the movement is not dead; it was not driven into obscurity by the groundswell of populist racial solidarity that seems to have swept through the country last fall. But when was the last time you read a story or watched a TV feature about some off the hook neo-Nazi or KKK family? If you’re under thirty, and even if you’ve been paying attention to the popular media feature stories in recent years, I’ll wager that you’ve probably never heard of the Aryan Nations, David Duke, W.A.R., Posse Comitatus, and the A.N.P. That last acronym, by the way, stands for the American Nazi Party.

I can assure you that such stories were commonplace in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. There was talk of the entire state of Idaho being taken over by white supremacists–and some people argued that we should let it happen in order to “just get rid of this country’s rogue elements.” You could hardly turn on the daytime television without surfing past a story about a family that thinks Satan lives on earth disguised as a Jew or that black people “rose out of the mud.” The news of marches and beatings and secret societies captured the public imagination back in those years. And while these groups never went away, they’ve certainly not captured the interest of mainstream media outlets for well over a decade.

But they’re back. The skinheads, the Nazis, and the Bruders Scheweigen–they’re all back and they have some things to say to everyone who is not a convert. They want to talk about this Barack Hussein Obama guy. They have some things to discuss about Mexicans and gays and lesbians…and this country’s future. And if we are to believe the following article, pretty soon we’re all going to once again start finding their recruiting leaflets on our windshields when we return to our cars after a fun day of search for blue light specials at K-Mart. I’d like to imagine that we’ve moved beyond such polarized thinking, but I’m afraid that that has not happened. And so we are probably in for some rather interesting 20/20 episodes–”Are there Nazis working somewhere in the White House?” On the bright side, the return to the limelight of these nefarious characters will surely keep Jerry Springer on the air for another four years.

“Obama Called a ‘Visual Aid’ For White Supremacist Recruiting”

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Being an iconoclast and a humorist, I find that I am often amused by irreverence. This is especially true when the impious behavior is directed toward poking fun at the rich and powerful, regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. And yes, in my own attempts to juxtapose disparate ideas or simply get a laugh, I have certainly stepped over that ever shifting and often unrecognizable line between being clever and being offensive. I never try to offend, I should add, but when pushing into new territories of thinking, sometimes it just happens.

Recently I have been struck by some pieces of humor directed toward Barack Obama and I have been trying ascertain whether the creators have crossed a line. The first one, the photo with the watermelons (above), is titled something like “No, children, there will be no Easter Egg hunt at the White House this year.” Playing directly on the stereotype that black people lose themselves in the presence of watermelon, any of us would have a difficult time maintaining that the photo was created in the spirit of a good, healthy laugh.

But why would it be seen as offensive? First, when someone says that something is “offensive,” that person is actually saying that he or she feels attacked–and that the attack hurts. Second, feeling attacked in this way stems from sensing that the attacker believes that there is some degree of truth to their offensive statement, video, photo, etc. I’ve always thought that “offense” is the wrong way to describe such a feeling, but it’s the one that we’re stuck with for the time being.

While I find myself saying that people can too easily toss around the “I’m offended at that” statement, particularly because when asked many cannot say exactly what they are offended by, I do recognize that the essential feeling of not wanting to be judged is what is at the core of the feeling–and how many of us mind if others compare us to people who are like us in some identifiable way (e.g., from our nuclear family) but then engage in some immoral or improper behavior (e.g., walk around town naked while proclaiming the gospel of L. Ron Hubbard)?

I’ve heard people argue that joking that black people like watermelon is much like joking that Japanese like sushi or that Koreans like kimchi or that Mexicans like hot peppers. Sure not all do, but by and large those foods are extremely popular in those three cultures and so the generalization works. The difference, and hence why the White House watermelon image is offensive, is that blacks have been historically portrayed as hapless, stupid and apelike while eating watermelon. In other words, the watermelon has been used as a prop to drive home the point that black people are inferior.

So last year someone produced a CD with a number of songs on it and passed it around in (mostly) conservative circles–after Rush Limbaugh hawked it on his radio show. Most of the songs simply poke fun at liberals and hypocrisy (e.g., John Edwards Poverty Tour”), but others were written to provoke. One was called “Barack the Magic Negro” (the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” with lyrics about Obama). My first question to myself was, Is this how Republicans are hoping to recapture the black vote? In fact, one of the men who was vying for leadership of the Republican National Committee, Chip Saltsman, sent it to his supporters. That’s pretty dumb. Forget about political correctness for a moment, and whether free speech should be curtailed. Just ask this question: Would you want a guy leading YOUR political organization who thought it was okay to send such a song out to people who are already considered by many to be oblivious to race concerns–if not outright racist? Oh yeah, THAT GUY will surely revive the Republican Party.

Listen for yourself:

“Barack the Magic Negro”

Here’s another song making light of Latinos who are perceived to not want to assimilate into the United States and who, it is thought by many, want to turn this country from one that is English speaking to another that is Spanish speaking. So imagine that you are like the majority of Mexican Americans in this country and have taken residency in the United States, speak English, and swear allegiance to the stars and stripes. Along comes a song that tells others around you–your barber, your electrician, your boss, your child’s teacher–that Mexicans don’t want to be Americans and have fealty first and foremost to Mexico. The negative repercussions could be enormous, like the Latino residents who have recently been killed by angry youths on the streets of NYC who simply wanted to beat down an immigrant. Clearly someone or some thing helped these youth to cross over some line between humor and offense–and the shift had grave consequences for those who died. (One, by the way, was from a tiny town in the Ecuadorian Andes where I spent several weeks working with the local priest, and so the story did hit home with me.)

Listen to this song:

“Star Spanglish Banner”

What do you think? Do YOU know how Mexicans feel? With how many Mexicans have you spoken about this issue? What do you know about how such sentiments positively or negatively affect their lives? How would you feel about Mexican neighbors or co-workers or roommates or playmates for your child AFTER listening to this song?

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There is a family in northeast Pennsylvania who wanted the bakery at their local ShopRite supermarket to make a cake for their son and they were upset that the store refused to put their child’s name in the frosting. They went public thinking that they would get some sympathy–all they wanted, after all, was for their son to celebrate his birthday as other children do–but the compassion wasn’t forthcoming. Clearly this is one of those stories that necessitates an understanding of ALL of the facts. So here they are:  the child’s name is Adolph Hitler Campbell. (Pictured in the photo is JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Adolph’s younger sister, and the father.)  Keep in mind that “Adolph Hitler” is just a name; nothing more than a unique vocalization that creates a sound that others can recognize as descriptor for, in this case, another person. But most of us don’t look at it like this particular name because attached to the sound of Adolph Hitler are some very dark associations.

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Rick Warren and Barack Obama appear to have a strained relationship. Apparently they first met a couple of years ago when Warren invited the then Senator to speak at his church in southern California. I guess it went well enough that Obama was invited back during the presidential campaign–but was then summarily shown the door by questions (from Warren) that he was not prepared to answer. Seems it was the singular moment in an eighteen month run where the masterful politico slipped and fell.

And now, suddenly, the jeans wearing minister is back on the national scene after being invited to deliver the opening prayer at the Presidential Inauguration. The problem is that this man with a modest wardrobe but an enormous influence embraces a number of views that many Obama supporters do not accept. And more than a few of the Warren critics think that choosing him for this role in the day’s ceremony is a slap in the face to thousands of LGBT people and their supporters who worked long and hard to elect this 44th President.

Here, for example, are some of the minister’s comments about same-sex marriage that were pulled from a December 2008 interview with Steven Waldman, editor-in-chief of Beliefnet:

Waldman: Do you support civil unions or domestic partnerships?

Warren: I don’t know if I’d use the term there. But I support full equal rights for everybody in America. I don’t believe we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles, or whatever stuff like that. So I fully support equal rights.

Waldman: What about partnership benefits in terms of insurance or hospital visitation?

Warren: Not a problem with me…I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000 year old definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Waldman: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

Warren: Oh, I do. For 5,000 years marriage has been defined by every single ulture and every single religion…as a man and a woman.

My somewhat imperious nature emerges when it comes to religious belief systems, and so I feel the urge to say something about the “5,000 years” comment. Here goes.

Most people have a idyllic vision of marriage and families when they look to our past–which they characterize as guided by a noble moral order and cultural practices that were inspired by and acceptable to their creator. But in fact, families, sex, and marriage were rarely characterized by behavior that current moralists would endorse. So, for example, even as recent as the late 19th century, the age of consent (for marriage) for young girls was ten years of age in over half of the U.S. states and territories–and very often ten year olds were married off to men two and three times their age. This is just one small factoid from a past that most Christians would not want to recognize for their “Christian nation”–but it’s enough for me to raise an eyebrow in any moralistic reference to our “glorious past.”

And now to bringing people to the table, the issue at hand…

Given my distaste for anything that even remotely smacks of heterosexism or homophobia, I can understand the annoyance of Warren’s detractors. However, I have to give Obama credit for sticking to his word about bringing everyone to the table. The “table” he is referring to, after all, is (or should be) the one where important decisions are made and “everyone” includes the very people with whom he disagrees most vehemently. Anyone can pretend to involve the other side in their decision-making conversations by pretending to listen to their ideas–much like a savvy parent learns feign interest in the protestations of a teenager. But Obama’s critics are off the mark if they think that a man should be left off the guest list when his views about same-sex marriage are in line with 52 percent of his state’s (California) residents. Warren is the spokesperson for other side and his people, regardless of how distasteful their ideas to some, would take up over half the seats of that table if they all received invitations to come dialogue.

Somewhere in here is a lesson for most of us. How often do we share a table with the very people with whom we so stridently disagree–and then attempt to see the world from their eyes? How often do we see ourselves as they do — as crazy and out of touch, or as too intransigent in our strident opinions. More often than not, I would venture to guess, it’s considerably easier for most of us to simply lob derision grenades in the direction of our enemies.

Bush failed at being a uniter. Clinton wasn’t serious when he claimed that he would surely listen to all perspectives. Bush, Sr., Reagan, Carter, et. al. — they all claimed that they would work to build alliances but then fell short of this estimable goal. Obama, by contrast, a man who is turning out to be the consummate politician, might surprise us all; he might actually mean what he says.

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Sometimes one person can change the tide. A single life. A single story. A single face. Someone to whom we can relate, someone who we can imagine as a friend. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish may now, to his own horror, fit the profile of one who can help change the course of the violence in some small measure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. Abuelaish is an unusual man, a Palestinian doctor who reports for Israeli television. Though he lives in Gaza, he was educated in Israel, speaks Hebrew, and works in an Israeli hospital. Dr. Abuelaish has been giving Israelis daily reports on the military campaign in Gaza, and he is a man who works for peace, who builds bridges between worlds. This past Friday, he witnessed three of his daughters and a niece killed by Israeli bombs (and another daughter seriously wounded). His first panicked moments of terror were broadcast live on Israeli television.

WATCH a three minute video of this television segment.

As we all know, there is often little compassion between warring people, little willingness to recognize the humanity in one another. After all, how would it be possible to kill others if we didn’t see them as less human than us? How would Palestinians find justification for launching rockets into Jewish civilian neighborhoods? How do Jews justify bombing Palestinian civilian homes in their search for their enemy?

But ironically, Dr. Abuelaish is the face of a friend to Israelis. That very simple fact is what has the power to make a difference, to crack open hearts so that enemies begin to see one another as human, as suffering, as wanting the same things for themselves and their families.

So what if we apply this to our own wars? What if we knew the faces and the stories and the pain of hundreds of thousands of grieving Iraqis as well as we are coming to know the faces of the passengers on U.S. Air Flight 1549 (the plane that landed in the Hudson River)? What if, just as we saw ourselves in the cracking composure of the father who could return home to kiss his five year old daughter after surviving a plane crash, we could see ourselves in each relationship and family that is lost and torn and broken by war? How would “our” Iraq war be different? How would we be different?

And what if we step back and apply this to the way we war with one another figuratively? How differently would we treat people who we hate from a distance if we could see ourselves in them, and if we could actually see the shared pain we all carry within?

So this story is not simply about Israelis and Palestinians; it’s about all of us.

WATCH another video that includes reactions from Dr. Abuelaish’s Jewish colleagues.

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Really. That’s the question that I’m asking myself right now.

Why? Because I just read that a CNN poll from last week found that 69 percent of blacks in America currently believe that MLK’s vision “has been fulfilled.” This is quantum levels of optimism beyond a mere majority. Say what? Black people? You mean the very people who for as long as we’ve been doing opinion polls have been the quintessential pessimists? Yes…those people.

I know you’re thinking that if black people are so effusive, then white people must practically unanimously agree that we have reached the promise land. And in this case, you would be wrong…because only 46 percent of them do.

Yes, we have suddenly turned the world upside down.

Let me give you some context. When asked if this country had fulfilled Martin Luther King’s vision in March 2008, the poll numbers were as unnewsworthy as they were predictable: 34 percent of black respondents said “yes,” compared with 35 percent of white respondents. If we go back several years, before Barack Obama entered the public limelight, those numbers were more like 20 percent for blacks and 40 percent for whites.

This just might be the first time ever in our history that African Americans are more optimistic than white Americans with respect to the position of black people in the United States racial hierarchy.

OK, so what’s going on? That’s what I want to know. What’s this mean?

I have a few thoughts. Black people are riding a spiritual high that crescendoed right after the election when, for the first time ever, a majority said that we would eventually find a solution to our race conundrum. And now on the eve of a (half) black president, the glee is too much to contain. Sure, the enthusiasm will wane, but for the moment how can the world not look rosy and cheerful — as long as people with brown skin refrain from riding the subway in Oakland. (OK, I’m being cynical here; I’ll return to that story in a future posting.)

The white celebrations, by contrast, do not have the momentum of 400 years of mistreatment and second (or third) class citizenship. Maybe white people are feeling a bit nervous about having their racial universe turned on its head. Sure, there are positives to the transformation — like the prospect of being able to have normalized relationships and straightforward conversations with black and brown people. But on the negative side, there is a visible crack in the foundation of white privilege and I can only imagine that it’s weakening the support beams holding up the house of normal — and white people are feeling the stress.

But really, I feel like I’m shooting plastic ducks floating past at one of those midway stands at a carnival — and it’s highly unlikely that I’ve tagged the one with the star on the bottom. In other words, I’m at a loss on this one. Someone tell me what these poll numbers mean.

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Soon, the first African American president will be sworn into office. Let’s leave aside the historical nature of this event and analyze what makes Barack Obama “African American.” Clearly, he has African roots; his father was Kenyan. But his mother was a white woman from Kansas and one of her parents claimed to have some Native American ancestry. And his stepfather, the man who helped shape his personal moral and ethical sense of the world, was Indonesian. But while he hardly knew his African father, having spent only a couple of weeks in his presence as a young boy, he was well acquainted with his stepfather. And while his mother is the person about whom he says “the best parts of me are because of her,” he also spent considerable time with his white grandparents. So how is it that any of us would think to simply call this man “African American”?

It is possible to imagine how these relationships could develop in Barack Obama a global, multi-ethnic identity. But they do not. For in spite of the fact that he is the quintessential “multicultural, multiracial human being,” at some point in his post teen years he chose to identify himself as African American.

But did he really choose?

Consider this: If identity grows out of culture (the people and environment in which we grow up as opposed to the blood that flows through our veins), one would think that Obama might consider himself white—or maybe even Indonesian. In fact, technically he has as much claim to being a “white American” as to being a “black” or an “African American,” and clearly he is more personally connected to white culture than he is to black or African culture. But he nonetheless refers to himself as “black” and “African American.”

We know that he was seen by others as “black,” and those of us who have up close and personal experience with multiracial people know that they are generally labeled by their dominant features. But people who are multiracial do not have to accept those labels…right? So could Obama have chosen to identify himself as white? What about refusing to choose one or the other and instead claim his biracial status? Was this possible?

Here’s the question for the moment: What is it that makes Obama feel most connected to (i.e., identified with) black people? And what is it that allows most of us to accept this identification with little dissonance?

And what about the identities of each one of us? Why do we select the racial, ethnic, and ancestry labels that are applied to us? Think about it: Why do we respond in the way that we do when someone asks us, “What are you?” What aspects of our culture/biological ancestry/physical appearance are we including and excluding in our identifications? Are we merely mimicking our parents and grandparents?

Check out this map of the “Obama extended family” from the New York Times.

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I’ve already said a few things about what Obama’s victory means for race relations in the United States. I don’t want to go over the top with this, but I found this article that John McWhorter wrote last summer. McWhorter is black and conservative and frames the importance of an Obama presidency in very succinct terms. Read the article.

“Obamakids” by John McWhorter

What stands out for me, and what has always stood out for me, is the importance of seeing someone other than a white man in this symbolic position of power. It matters that a black or brown or female American can be a CEO or some sort of mega-popular Hollywood god or goddess. But it matters more that such a person can sit in the symbolic seat of the most powerful person in the country.

What McWhorter says about ten year olds living their entire formative years with this man as president is truly worth pondering. There is no way anybody can begin to measure how that might shake up the way people of different groups interact or see themselves. I’m quite looking forward to watching this play itself out.

Just some food for thought.

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According to recent research on that tired issue of politics in the classroom, the political opinions of professors do not seem to have any influence over the political opinions of students. (New York Times)

Having been included in the book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, the issue hits close to home for me, as one might imagine. I’m not surprised, of course, given that I can hardly entice my students to follow my advice to read the newspaper, not to drink themselves into oblivion, cut down on consuming needless goods–let alone think like I do about a wide range of complex political issues that perplex me most of the time.

So I’m left to wonder about what students are learning in the classroom if they do not follow their professor’s direction on political concerns. Granted I am biased, but I happen to think that my personal opinions about Obama and McCain and all of the other candidates are noteworthy. I’m a learned person and have given serious thought to which one would make a better president. For twenty-five years my full-time job has been to reflect on these kinds of issues and I think that students probably ought to listen to me…and then listen to the person teaching in class next to mine and the next person and so forth. Where are students receiving their information if not from professors? The Daily Show? Hardball? The fair and balanced commentaries on Fox News? Their parents? These alternatives are really not very appealing for the spread of democratic process.

Go beyond the idea that classrooms should be an objective-neutral-dispassionate-etc. space for the transmission of ideas. And step outside of the box labeled “professors have inordinate persuasive powers and should not impose their ideas onto vulnerable students.” We throw our youth to the wolves every time they leave the home.

And why is it better or more acceptable for people to follow their parents over their professors? As someone whose job it is to unravel the bigotry and narrow-minded provincialism that some (perhaps “many”) parents have imposed on their progeny–and this seems to begin as soon as consciousness forms–I’m not especially hopeful about the possibility of love-acceptance-generosity-tolerance-democracy flourishing if we primarily rely on the magical fertilizer of parent-child socialization.

OK, so that sounds harsh, but I’m trying to make a point. My experience has led me to conclude that most parents have relatively little information about lots of complex issues and therefore have no business imposing their narrow vision on their children. Oh, except they’re parents and that’s one of the privileges of being a parent, right? As a parent one gets to tell one’s children all of the things that they wish our own parents either told or did not tell us.

So I guess what I’m really trying to say is that most parents do not think like me…and until they do they should let me brainwash their kids. Did I really just write that?

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The symbolism of a run on guns starting on the morning after Barack Obama’s election victory is almost too much to take. Finally, a black man is walking up the front steps to the nicest house in town, the one we all look to with reverence each time we pass, the one whose residents always more attention than any others in the neighborhood…and white people are scrambling for their guns.

Amazing.

Before you get defensive, let me clarify that I think that if Obama was a strong Second Amendment advocate, gun owners and ammo lovers would not think that he’s going to pass some sort of gun control designed to either take their guns–presumably “from their cold dead hands”–or make it nearly impossible to buy more. In other words, I think that for most of these post-election gun enthusiasts, the fact that Obama is black has nothing to do with mad scramble for protection.

Did I just say “most”? Let me think about this again. Bill Clinton supported gun controls that were more extreme than those supported by Obama. Clinton supported the Brady Bill and an assault weapons ban. Obama wants people to be limited to purchasing one handgun per month! (In case you’re not counting, that is twelve per year, or nearly fifty in a four year period.) OK, so Obama does support allowing local governments to shape their own gun laws, more extensive background checks, curtailing the sale of armor piercing bullets, and semi-automatic weapons. But still, Clinton campaigned on gun control and I don’t recall lines at gun shops on the days following his victory.

Alright, I won’t delve into cynicism. Maybe this economic melt down has everyone edgy and wondering whether a serious run on the banks might look like the urbanized 21st century version of the “Gunfight at the OK Corral.” Get one more gun…just in case.

Let me think positively and assume that white people are not afraid–well not most of them anyway–that black people are going to get out of hand. I’ll maintain that the law-abiding center of middle white America is not afraid, that the people plopping guns down on the counters represent the fringe elements who believe the spam emails that are sent to them and still think Obama is a Muslim. But that center of middle America still thinks that our paramilitary police forces will still have the upper hand and they know how many guns white people own?

In my most optimistic state of mind, these antsy gun buyers simply fear one particular black man, not all of them.

Certainly all of this is one way to see how the United States has evolved as a nation because not long ago many more white people clearly would have been running for their weaponry. Seriously…probably the entire population of white people.

It’s just the juxtaposition that makes me shake my head and ponder the irony that even the white power fighting, Black Panther supporting, Africa uniting, afro wearing black activists of the sixties could not have scripted this any better. “Why of course,” I can hear them saying, “the white man just can’t let it go.”

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OK…so I’ve heard what I’m about to say so many times now that it’s almost unthinkable to imagine myself adding to the chorus. But like every other pundit writing sound bites to the amorphous public, I have my own unique perspective and I can’t seem to rest until I put it out there.

Obama. This is big. Really. For the countless interactions we haphazardly define as “race relations” in this country, I have to say that this is probably as BIG as the Civil Rights Movement. Here’s what I see.

I heard from someone that upon realizing that Obama won the election Whoopi Goldberg said something to the effect of, “I feel as though I can finally unpack my bags.” All but a few black people know exactly what she meant. Other people of random backgrounds have no idea what she was referring to. And some people no doubt get her point exactly and feel flabergasted at yet another person of African descent proclaiming that he or she has never felt like a full citizen. Let me make it real.

I know lots of people who never got that essential unconditional love as a child. Surely you know some of them also, right? No matter what they do, regardless of the successes they accumulate along the way, they always want some kind of intangible recognition that will presumably satisfy the deep seated yearning for acceptance and inform them that they are good enough. I must confess, I have a low tolerance for these people. Maybe it’s because I seemed to manage quite fine in the quest for self love without having received a tremdous amount as a child; perhaps it’s simply because I have a disposition that neither craves nor benefits from the love and recognition I receive from others around me.

In any case, when I encounter people like this I am often left wondering what it could possibly take for them to finally look in a mirror and say the imortal words of Stuart Smally, the Saturday Night Live character: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” For some people, of course, the answer is “nothing”; tt is never going to happen. For others, however, it can be one simple random achievement or a long-awaited rocognition from someone in their lives.

So let’s flip the script and look at African Americans (as opposed to West Indians and more recent immigrants from Africa). Here is a population of people who were never accepted. In fact, they were called and treated as “beasts” and “sub humans” and every attempt to integrate them into the American fold and treat them as people with the inalienable rights as spelled out in the Constitution was met with violent and (usually) bloody resistance. This is true right up into the second half of the 20th century. Sure, each decade seemed to offer its own unique opening, but watching the police turn the dogs loose on peaceful demonstrators in the 1960s or the prisons fill will non-violent black men in the 1980s and 90s, leads me to conclude that those “rights” were often handed out sparingly.

So imagine the collective trauma and the stories people passed through their communities that allowed them to hold their heads up and see themselves as fully human when most everyone else did not agree. Without getting sacchrine and drawing on white guilt, I think that reading the post 1865 history of black America is the only way to fully envision how remarkable it is that this community remained both strong and proud.

Let me help make this more real. Consider the mythology that a child must create to explain how he or she is still a wonderful person in spite of the fact that that child’s parents have told him or her repeatedly to look in the mirror and see worthless, good for nothing trash. Sure, they might have an endearing uncle or neighbor who warns not to listen, who tries to reassure with statements like, “Don’t listen to him, honey, you’re really quite beautiful. You’re a little princess.” Unfortunately, it is not difficult to imagine that for all but a handful of such child victims of parental brutality such words understandibly fall on deaf ears.

Back to the African American community.

Throughout slavery there was a black professional class — doctors, dentists, lawyers, professors and teachers. It was small but it offered hope and an alternative vision for some. The end of slavery marked a relatively small uptick in possibility (since not much really changed in 1865), and some expansion of that hope in the black community. Over time this professional class grew, a black middle class emerged, a unionized and dignified working class started to take root. And then there were black mayors and CEOs and Generals and Congressional Representatives and even two Secretaries of State.

But it wasn’t the mountaintop. White society never said “not only do we accept you, but actually we want to follow you…so why don’t you lead us all of us.” There is something about that cherished office, the highest in the land, and how giving the keys to a black American has symbolic meaning that cannot be measured. You see, like that broken person who never got that love, there have been just too many black people for whom those other achievements were not enough. Almost…but not quite.

This is the ultimate welcoming to Americans of African descent, the one that far too many have wanted but, I can safely say, never expected so suddenly. And it is why black Americans by the millions are feeling as though they can finally unpack their bags and make themselves at home.

As someone who has spent nearly twenty years on the front lines of race and ethnic relations in the United States, I can say with confidence that this is really big.

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OK…so “paranoia” is a strong word. But I wanted to grab your attention. Perhaps projection is a better way to describe a couple of things that I’m hearing.

First, Obama received support from 43 percent of white voters, while 55 percent of the white electorate voted for McCain. On one hand, this is seen by many people as a remarkable achievement. Imagine that. Some 43 percent of non Hispanic white Americans–remember that white people represent slightly less than 70 percent of the total American populace–case their ballot for a president of color. Take yourself back two years and imagine someone telling you that. How many of us would have believed it?

On the other hand, I have heard some somewhat disgruntled mumbling about how it was “only” 43 percent of white Americans. The underlying sentiment with that word “only” thrown in is that not even half of white America supported his presidency.

Such concerns are befitting a people who have a short attention span for the details of history, but they do not account for one powerful anecdotal fact: that 43 percent is a remarkable achievement when compared with past presidential campaigns. Consider the percentage of non Hispanic whites who voted for the following presidents:

2004 Kerry – 41 percent
2000 Gore – 42 percent
1996 Clinton – 43 percent
1992 Clinton – 39 percent
1988 Dukakis – 40 percent
1984 Mondale – 35 percent
1980 Carter – 36 percent

Obama beat all of them except Clinton’s second campaign, a president who by that time was often referred to as our “first black president.” The truth is, the majority of white Americans are Republican or Independent while blacks and other racial minorities lean heavily Democratic. This heavily impacts those numbers.

On another note, and this is more in line with paranoia, I’ve heard many black people voice their concern that Obama is going to be “judged more harshly” than previous (white) presidents simply or primarily because he’s black. This reflects old school thinking emerging out of the black community and it’s definitely not without merit. Anyone with an honest eye on race relations would conclude that black Americans have undoubted been held to a higher standard than other people, especially white Americans. This is not news to anyone paying attention, especially black people.

But in fairness, if black people go into the Obama years wearing these lenses, then we’re in for some serious disagreements because ALL presidents are “judged harshly,” even for silly seemingly mundane decisions. Obama has just taken the world’s worst job. For every friend he’ll make two enemies. For each slap on the back he’ll receive another in the face. Remembering the harsh way in which all U.S. presidents are judged will do wonders for averting unnecessary arguments about the kind of job our new president is doing.

So all of the people who have had this concern, get ready for your man to take a harsh smack down for the next four or eight years. Trust me, it goes with the job.

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I’m sure some people are confused about the difference between a “marriage” and a “civil union” and don’t understand why it matters to many people in the LGBT community which one they are are allowed to experience. Here’s my quick take on the core argument, and keep in mind that I’m not a constitutional scholar.

Here is a prefatory comment.

Religiously inclined Americans hold a wide range of ideological perspectives when it comes to the nexus between civil society and their churches. Some, like the televangelist Pat Robertson, think this is a christian nation and that Christian “rules” and “laws” should dictate the behavior of the people living inside of the boundaries of the United States. Others, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, call for a severe separation of church and state and do not even support voting.

So what about marriage?

Depending on where you stand on the continuum, it is either a legal dictate of our secular government or a covenant from god…or both. Sociologically speaking, in every society there must be some sort of legal union that is sanctioned by the state or cultural leaders because people who hinge their lives together must account for emergent legal issues such as who is eligible to be a beneficiary of a person’s life insurance, land and other estate payments. For example, are parents, spouses, or children primary beneficiaries?

But over time, such “legal unions” have come to involve god and so most religious bodies weigh in on how they are performed and what they signify. Generally speaking, the terminology changes when god enters the picture and we start calling these unions “marriages.” And herein lies the brouhaha.

Why would anyone come to imagine that the “proper” coupling who deserves a marriage license must be a man and a woman? Where did we get this idea? Why religion, of course. We just walked into murky water.

And it gets murkier. Religious leaders in the United States have the power to dictate the conditions of these unions (i.e., marriages) that bind people together and settle secular legal questions and claims. In other words, people acting “on behalf of god” involve themselves in the affairs of the state — which means that they are also acting, in effect, as “functionaries” of the government. So one would think that they should either marry everyone who wants to be married or be relieved of the power to perform ceremonies for select individuals on behalf of the government, ceremonies that create legal contracts that are recognized by the courts. If they refuse to do this, one could reasonably argue that they can no longer have the privilege of acting as agents of the state.

A way to resolve the problem is to say that everyone, including all religious believers, should have to accept a contract called a “legal union.” People could still be married in their church, but that ceremony would not be sanctioned by the secular government unless a secular authority was there as a witness. In other words, without a secular representative that ceremony would not generate the rights and responsibilities of a secular union (e.g., determine a person’s estate beneficiaries and so on).

At issue is whether such “discrimination” under the rubric of the government is constitutional and whether religious believers should have the power to control the secular affairs of the state when they are acting in such a “discriminatory” way. This is, after all, a founding principle of the United States. (Of course, such religious believers who think homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God rarely see their actions as “discrimination”; they’re just carrying out God’s will.)

In any case, this is the root of the idea that “prohibiting gay marriage is unconstitutional.” At issue is that it’s unconstitutional according to many state charters. With this in mind, it’s only a matter of time before such anti gay marriage amendments are overturned in some states…or so it seems to me. But I’m no legal scholar. Remember, I’m the knucklehead who just last year said that we’d never elect a man named “Hussein” as our president.

I’ll leave off with some words from Arnold Schwarzenegger in speaking about the passage of Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment in California: “It is unfortunate but it is not the end because I think this will go back into the courts. … It’s the same as in the 1948 case when blacks and whites were not allowed to marry. This falls into the same category.”

And while Aaaaarnold is probably correct in saying that this will go back to the courts, it will certainly go back to the voters and they will eventually pass a pro gay marriage resolution. Exit polls show that a majority of young voters of color actually voted against Prop 8 in California (i.e.,the youth actually supported gay marriage). So it’s just a matter or time before more waves of young people register to vote.

Watch Keith Obermann, the liberal commentator speak on this. I’m generally not prone to admiring such a one-sided perspective and for my tastes Obermann seems like he’s filled with a mix of hot air and self-righteousness, but there is something unique about the way he pushes this issue right into one’s face that makes me smirk. Perhaps it’s my own self-righteousness and arrogance. He misses a couple of critical points, to be sure, but on at least one point–that this is really about love and relationship–it’s thought-provoking. Of course, if you think that God frowns upon LGBT love, however it occurs, then don’t bother to click on the link. It will just upset you. Wait, I just watched it a second time and I think it’s really worth watching.

Watch the Video.

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There is much to say about the election of Barack Obama, and no doubt we will. For the moment, however, let me say that it’s ironic that the Americans who were instrumental in bringing our first president of color into office (black and Hispanic voters) ALSO played a major role in rolling back progress on the road to egalitarian same sex relationships and marriage. Exit polls show that approximately 70 percent of voters in these groups supported gay marriage bans.

This was almost entirely religiously inspired, of course, given the disproportionate numbers of Catholic and evangelical Christians in these two populations. “Thank you Jesus for delivering Barack Obama to the great white house built by slaves…and for protecting us from the sin of loving the wrong person.” Right brain open. Left brain close.

OK, so I don’t want to offend anyone who believes that homosexuality is a sin but please, read on.

I’m wondering when members of these two groups will comprehend what it has taken white Americans so long to understand — when we deny others the valued rights that our own group relishes we inevitably weaken our own grasp of these rights along with our ability of our government to exercise them when needed. It’s a rather sobering realization, to be sure, and one that anyone who does not have a reserved seat at table of the ruling classes would be wise to note.

What’s truly ironic about this, in my humble opinion, is that in another 20-30 years the children and grandchildren of the Obama youth may well look back to this election as another “shameful chapter” in this country’s history of unequal treatment of minority groups. “Oh yeah, sure they elected Obama,” I can almost hear some politicized college student say, “but they buried the rights of the gay ( or some new term) community. What good was it?” Electing a black man will be less noteworthy than disenfranchizing a gay person.

The difference will be that when this conversation occurs the fingers will be pointed in some unexpected directions given how anti-gay marriage amendments were supported by so many racial and ethnic minorities.

Most of the time I open my mouth I seem to be wrong–I was just reminded by a former student that last fall I stated that this country would never elect a man named “Hussein” as its leader, after all–but mark my words, the youth of the future are going to be somewhat more open-minded about race than current generations but they will surely also see homosexuality very differently. They are, I am convinced, going to be much more open about LGBT issues than voters today. I guess every generation will have to wage its battle with bigotry and fear…and grow stronger from it.

Rock on to them. Personally, I must say that I hope they make more progress on this issue than the current generations are making.

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I was facilitating a group discussion last week and a white participant raised the question of why it’s acceptable for black (and brown) people to drop the N-bomb but not white people. “It’s an unfair double standard,” she said, as have hundreds of other before her.

I’ve always found this to be an odd complaint. There are all sorts of things that each one of us can say to family and friends that would be off limits if a total stranger said those very same words.

But so many white people have voiced this double standard complaint over the years that I’ve come to see their struggle as rooted in more than the issues unique to race relations and the disturbing legacy of that word. What I see now is that young white people in this generation do not want to drop the N-bomb (with the “a” ending) as a means of entitlement, “If you get to say it, we get to say it.” I’m starting to think that they want to do so because that word has become the “gold standard of cool.”

Let’s face it. Urban African Americans are the epitome of coolness. It’s been like this for generations. Jazz. Cool. Rock -n- Roll. Cool. Hip Hop. Cool. Timberland shoes worn by white people. Uncool. Tims worn by black people. Cool. You get my point.

Watch Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock and a long list of lesser others kicking around N-bombs. What white person with any healthy barometer of coolness does NOT want to be as cool as Chapelle or Rock? And what it looks like these days is you’re not going to get there if you can’t drop the N-bomb — especially in mixed company, with black gatekeepers of cool nodding or laughing in approval. THAT is the ultimate statement that says “I’m cool,” AND “I’ve been admitted into the club.”

Very simply, young white people may be wrestling with “nigga” not so much as a racial signifier as a signifier of “cool.” In comparison to the generations that preceeded them, black people have reshaped the word from its singularly hateful focus and now it stands in the center of the culture as an indicator of much more than the state of race relations.

More to come…

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I first heard the term “race traitor” about fifteen years ago while watching a documentary on white supremacist groups. A KKK member used it in reference to white people who marry outside of the white race and, in her estimation, weaken the “natural and God given supreme power of white people.” Years later I began hearing references to race traitors coming from some members of the black and Chicano (i.e., Mexican American) communities. They used it to refer to black and Mexican people who do not embrace the “white privilege leads to white racism leads to black and brown disempowerment” paradigm. An example of this kind of race traitor would be Ward Connerly, the conservative-libertarian African American activist who has fought to roll back government and social policies that put minorities in special categories such that they are, in his words, “treated differently than members of majority groups” (e.g., affirmative action programs).

So recently I’ve read some references to Obama as a “race traitor” because he has stood behind some ideas that have been popular among people who are often demonized by leftists as racist and bigoted. One of these ideas is that some of the responsibility for impoverishment and disenfranchisement in communities of color rests with the members of those very communities. For example, Obama has excoriated black and Hispanic men for fathering and not taking responsibility for children. (Nearly two-thirds of black babies are born to unmarried women, as are nearly half of all Hispanic babies.) He has chastised people young and old for searching for a quick dollar but being unwilling to suffer through the sweat and strain of school and moving up the social mobility ladder from minimum wage to something better by way of hard work. Yes, this does sound reminicent of the criticisms that I’ve been listening to all of my life: “all minorities want to be on welfare” and “blacks and Hispanics don’t want to work hard.”

Certainly the problem is that such blanket generalizations are absurd and, for the most part, racist. Most people on welfare are white, after all, and the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics have jobs and work as hard as anyone else. But as a community activist who has spent many years in neighborhoods that have been rocked by joblessness and limited economic and educational opportunities, Obama has witnessed his share of people who actually do NOT take responsibility for the decisions they make and who consequently weaken the social fabric of their communities. What Obama has said is that when these decisions negatively affect others–as when a poor, unmarried woman gets pregnant or a jobless man gets a woman pregnant–other people must invariably step in to help provide social and economic assistance. In other words, responsibility must shift from one person to another person, family, or even an entire community.

Complicating all of this, Obama has argued, is that sympathetic observers and sometimes the actors themselves often try to defend the negative behavior by claiming that it is caused by racism, as though individuals could not have acted otherwise. This type of thinking, he insists, will never change the underlying structures of inequality that undermine poor communities; it only leads to white resentment and further unwillingness to critically example past wrongs and their present-day consequences.

In this sense, Obama represents a new generation of activists and thinkers in the black and brown communities, people who are willing to publicly examine the ways in which poor people participate in their own plight. They are open to examining the nexus of individual free will and the structural constraints of human behavior. In doing so they offer all of us an opportunity to step away from old arguments that bury opportunities for dialogue and move us toward some new kind of common ground.

Emphasis here, what is new about their approach, is that they want to do this publicly. Members of black and brown communities have always been engaged in this debate–it’s just that somehow when the debate shifted to a public volume free will and individual responsibility were toned down while the structural constraints of racism and discrimination were voiced loudly for all to hear, especially white people. The fear has always been that if concerns about individual responsibility were carried into the public arena, then white people would use these concerns as an excuse to no longer accept their share of responsibility for the racism and discrimination that does exist and that does benefit white communities. This is why the Rev. Jesse Jackson whispered that he’d like to “cut off Obama’s nuts” for continually attacking irresponsible black men. According to the thinking of Jackson and others, these black men would not be “irresponsible” if it were not for deeply institutionalized racism and descrimination, if they had had a fair shake in the marketplace of school and work.

Jackson’s criticism makes sense, of course, but the genie may be out of the bottle and these new activists of color may not be willing to keep these criticisms localized to the black and brown communities. They want an open, honest conversation because they believe this is crucial for the change they want to see. And even if it means that leftists like Obama and Corey Booker, the young mayor of Newark, New Jersey, are sitting at the same table as conservatives like Connerly, the conversation is going to take place in public. The only way to create the change that all sides want to see, they say, is to focus on empowerment and THAT must come by way of a thorough accountability for people’s actions–white people AND black and brown people.

As the old guard lose their grip on the public conversation, their ability to silence the “race traitors” is going to become increasingly difficult.

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I was listening to a story on National Public Radio this evening about “poor people”–which turned out to be about black and Hispanic Americans living in a central city somewhere in the U.S. I was troubled by how often we focus on black and Hispanic people when the topic is about poor people–as if the two are the same. Given this lopsided way race and poverty are portrayed and discussed in our media, it is not surprising that so many of us (including black and Hispanic Americans themselves) assume that connection.

In truth, however, half of all black and Hispanic families are “middle class.” Granted, that term is extremely broad and, in fact, most Americans consider themselves “middle class”–including many people who earn over $100,000 and less than $15,000 per year. This is because for most people the category has as much to do with cultural values as it does income, wealth, and status.

Nevertheless, with respect to their economic circumstances, families can be considered more or less firmly embedded into the middle class. Economists call this “Middle Class Economic Security,” and a report was published this past summer by Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization, in which the security of black and Hispanic middle class families was examined and compared to the security of middle class American families as a whole. (Unfortunately they left Asians and Native Americans out of their analysis.) By and large the research seems to be carefully crafted–and the findings are worth considering.

To begin, they measure “security” according to five broad indicators:

1. Assets: number of months able to live at 75% of a family’s current living expenses using only savings
2. Academic Degree: a family with at least one person with a college degree is more secure
3. Housing: percent of after tax income spent on housing
4. Budget: amount left over at end of year after paying taxes and all expenses
5. Healthcare: number of family members covered by health insurance.

From these indicators, they create an “index of security” that they use to ascertain how secure a given family or group of families appears to be. Here is a summary of their findings:

While 31 percent of American middle class families are securely in the middle class, only 18 percent of Hispanic families and 26 percent of black families have the combination of assets,
education, sufficient income, and health insurance to ensure middle-class financial security.

And while one in five (21 percent) of American families are at high risk of falling out of the middle class, one in three (33 percent) African American familes and twice as many (41 percent) Hispanic families are in serious danger of slipping out of the middle class.

Keep in mind that the security index of “American families” includes black and Hispanic families and is not an index measure of white families — and so it is skewed downward. Having said that, it is worth pondering just how many Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are at risk.

Consider this:

* A full 95 percent of African-American and 87 percent of Hispanic middle class families do not have enough net assets to meet three-quarters of their essential living expenses for even three months if their source of income were to disappear. Both figures are well above 78 percent, the national average among all middle-class families.

* Sixty-eight percent of African-American and 56 percent of Hispanic middle-class households
have no net financial assets whatsoever and live from paycheck to paycheck. Just over half (52 percent) of Americans in general have no financial assets.

Check out the “By a Thread” report. It is worth thinking about.

Though it is essential to understand these differing patterns of wealth and poverty between groups, it is also important to notice how often our perception of this data is skewed by the sheer number of times the media mixes the term “poor” with the term “black” or “Hispanic.”

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There is considerable discussion these days about how racism of many undecided white voters might be the factor that keeps Barack Obama out of the White House. This is something worth pondering and an idea that I’ve been thinking for several months now.

In effect, large numbers of white people have conflicted feelings about black people and other racial minorities, just as many black and brown people feel conflicted about white people. And regardless of their political leanings, white people tend to want to be open-minded and accepting of other people who are not like them–and they tend to believe that they “don’t see color.” However, below the surface many of them unwittingly have questions and concerns that often do not become articulated thoughts.

At the same time, large numbers of white people feel inundated with the message that “all racism is bad.” Naturally, they learn a coded language for how to think and act in multicultural situations or whenever one’s behavior and ideas about race might be judged; they learn to say the right thing and appear as though they’re a member of the multicultural team, even if they play for another side. Extensive research on “latent racism” (i.e., the racism that is largely buried just beneath the surface of our waking consciousness) clearly suggests that when the moment comes to pull the lever for a black man, many white people are not going to be able to do it.

Dick Meyer, an editorial director for NPR Digital Media, has written a very balanced piece that suggests that Obama’s run for the seat in the Oval Office may well be derailed by our inability to create a society that is not mired in prejudice and racism. I’d like to think that Mr. Meyer’s research is off base and ill-informed, that he’s digging up divisive issues and playing the race card, and that the American public is progressing away from racism. But from what I know about the sociological underpinnings of racism in our society today, I think he may be on target.

You be the judge:

Against the Grain: Obama, Race and Undecided Voters

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I thought Penn State students were with me on the cusp of a new era. Even though most of us live (and too often die) by the “racial” group to which our appearances give us membership rights, I thought that DNA ancestry testing would inspire us to re-imagine how we identify ourselves—and how we relate to one another.

I was wrong.

It’s not that I don’t spend time pondering these issues. I have been sitting in circles with college students scaling the mountain of race relations for nearly fifteen years. When I do the math, it turns out that I have either facilitated or observed close to 1,000 small group conversations on the topic. Given all of the straight talk and sensitivity, breakdowns and breakthroughs that have occurred on my watch, I can say that there have been no topics too small or too large for us. We talk in earnest about everything from who can call their hair “nappy,” to the nature of historical trauma, to how different cultural groups bathe, raise their kids, and think about the future. I thought DNA ancestry testing would be a welcome addition to our conversational repertoire.

So when Sam offered the opportunity to take such a DNA test (www.ancestrybydna.com) as part of the SOC 119 curriculum, I expected the experience to catalyze the weekly discussion groups in ways that we had never seen. Each student received an estimate of the proportions of their heritage drawn from West African, West European, East Asian, and Native American population groups. Most were shocked to discover that at least two-thirds of them are some “mix” that they did not anticipate. I expected that this surprise would naturally begin the process of dismantling the unsophisticated views of race to which Americans hold so tightly in our politics, our policies, and our personal relationships.

Wrong again.

Instead of critiquing the way we categorize a person as “Asian” whose ancestry may include significant influences from other population groups, or someone as “black” when barely half of their ancestry originates from Africa, the vast majority of students focused on their own results. And they exhibited the gamut of emotion that occurs when individuals learn who was chosen to be on the team or to receive the first place prize. One dark-skinned woman excitedly posted the fact that she was “27 percent European” on her away message, while one light-skinned woman angrily destroyed the CD containing her results when she discovered her ancestry to be 100 percent West European. But this wasn’t meant to be a contest to see who was in and who was out.

So much for the lesson plans.

In almost every instance, my attempts to initiate a discussion of the test were met with unusually curt replies. “The test makes no difference,” I heard over and over again. “I know who I am; a blood test won’t change anything,” many huffed. “People won’t treat me any differently because of the results,” others insisted, “so what’s the point?” This was the tenor of comments I even heard from the teaching assistants who recognized the value in untamed conversations of all varieties and who had been willing to go with me into the wildest terrain. These were not individuals who participated on the margins; these were the ones who jumped in and got wet.

I didn’t get it. Genetic science seemed poised to tear down our accepted racial categories on a massive scale by revealing the false groupings that we follow like a religion—and everyone was acting uninterested. All I wanted was for us to ponder what it could mean if science was showing us that the way we classify our groups is inaccurate, or to explore what might happen if we realized that few of us wear our precise racial affiliations on our sleeves (as so many of us believe), or to picture how things would be different if we had to ask for this information when we met someone (as opposed to determining it haphazardly for ourselves in the time it takes to notice them rushing by to catch a train).

No one seemed to care about all of that.

But finally, I have begun to make sense of the collective malaise I encountered. One insight came last semester when a student posed an intriguing question to one of the discussion groups. He asked, “How would we treat each other if we came together without the baggage of our respective histories?” The consensus was that, without our histories, none of us would be who we are. So the thought experiment was impossible, the group concluded.

Click.

I got it. The ancestry testing did not even begin to discredit our concept of race simply because…it couldn’t. We don’t know how to live without the dividing lines that we have inherited to define us. We don’t know how to identify ourselves or how to recognize one another without them. So we have no choice but to side-step new information, dutifully fitting ourselves “into” the only available categories—even when we sense that those categories are wrong.

So it seems that DNA ancestry testing is a mirror. And if we dare to behold its reflection, we get to see how little imagination we have when it comes to race, and how much we resist living without our familiar fault lines. But genetic science has found its way to the surface and is now demanding that we respond to its challenges with something more substantial than our worn stories and stereotypes.

Unfortunately, what I see every day is that individuals of all colors share a propensity toward provincial views, overly simplified assessments of issues, and thinly veiled prejudices about other groups. That means we are walking together on the edge of a perilous cliff with few among us of any color prepared to truly assess the landscape we are facing. Many seem resigned to waiting for a lightening bolt for direction—like the student who poignantly stated, “It will probably take something a lot bigger than a DNA test to really change my outlook on race and racial issues.” All I could imagine was September 11th. That was the last time I thought something large enough had happened to begin to shift the dynamic of race relations in this culture. I thought it had to offer us a clearer vision of ourselves.

I was wrong then too.

So I’ve learned that what really matters are the tiny epiphanies that happen off stage, one at a time, when one person comes to see what another person sees and they view the world with the same eyes for a moment. In that instant, all who are present feel the ground breaking beneath their feet because, when we have the opportunity to witness a change of heart live, we know something profound is happening.

Of course, these singular awakenings turn out to be more about effort and grace than about lesson plans. But I am convinced that they do more to undermine the tangles of our bigotry than the more dramatic events that we all keep mistaking for the cure. That is why I continue to sit in conversation circles, doing my part to unravel our knotty multicultural macramé, person-by-person, story-by-story—because, as my students and a DNA test have so convincingly demonstrated to me, there are just no shortcuts to undoing the breadth of our illusions.

I don’t think I’m wrong about that.

Laurie

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I found a seven minute video that offers an interesting analysis of “power” as it is related to our political system. I think it is worth viewing; it will provoke some outside-the-box thinking.

As you watch, however, keep in mind the following:

Politics is all about how people manage the concentration of power in any system. Myriad decisions must be made in every large collectivity and it is impossible for all members to participate equally in each and every one of them. Consider the many collective resources that we all utilize: waste removal and clean-up, water purification and delivery, electrical generation, road construction and maintenance. This list is long and increasingly convoluted.

And because it is impossible for everyone to have a say in every aspect of collective (i.e., governmental) services, we must find ways for individuals and groups to “represent” the interests of the collectivity as a whole. Think about how EVERY organization has leaders who meet and make untold numbers of decisions on behalf of the that organization. There are always too many decisions to make for us to arrange an organization (or collectivity) in any other way.

But how do we select those representatives? How do we decide which individuals or groups will sit at the head of the table and think and act on everyone’s behalf?

For most government positions in the U.S. we do this with elections. But how do we determine who has an opportunity to run for one of these positions? If they meet select criteria such as certain minimum age requirements or legal residency of a state or district, any citizen is eligible to run for any office. All they need to do is get their name out to the voting populace and convince those people to vote for them.

And that’s the difficult part, of course, because that requires money–lots of money for major elections (i.e., positions of greater power). People who are wealthy can largely self-finance their elections on their own (e.g., Mayor Bloomberg in New York City who is a billionaire) while people without money can turn to other individuals and groups for help. Turning to masses of individuals is ideal–get everyone involved and expand the democratic base–but it takes a lot of effort and upfront money to convince isolated people to donate small amounts of cash. So what generally happens is that candidates turn to fewer numbers of wealthier individuals and groups who can contribute larger amounts. But here’s the catch.

Few people give money with no strings attached. Would you donate to a campaign without concern for the specific policies that a candidate will pursue once elected? Probably not. And who could blame you for wanting something in return for your hard earned cash?

And so we have very well-organized and powerful groups contributing the bulk of the funds for political campaigns that each year are more and more expensive, and to the exclusive parties that each season are more and more lavish. It is not difficult to imagine that every one of these groups, let’s say the “telecommunications industry,” has legislation pending before Congress that could lead to millions or billions of dollars in profits or losses, depending on how bills are written. While this legislation may or may not be in the public’s interest, it is always in the interest of the companies footing the bill for those campaigns and parties. Why else would they do it.

So what about race?

Take a look at the video at the end of this essay. Look at the people partying at the exclusive venues during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. What’s their racial background? They’re nearly all white. It’s a club that does not deliberately exclude black and brown people, but white people established the criteria for membership many years ago and seem to be inclined to reserve the few spaces that open to their friends and relatives–who more often than not are white.

This is not to say that there are no black and brown people with power. Far from it. half of all black Americans are middle class, after all. But the people who occupy those special seats of power, the people who make decisions that move millions and billions of dollars into and out of various private coffers, are mostly white. This is something that has not changed much over the years.

Is this going to change if Obama is working out of the Oval Office? You watch the video and respond to that question yourself.

For those who watched the conventions, compare your memories of the extremely “colorful” Democratic National Convention with the images (from the video) of the exclusive parties in downtown Denver where the DNC was held. All the darker skinned people seem to have been inside the convention and not at these parties where the “wheeling and dealing” was happening. That’s odd for a party of “inclusion.” The RNC in Minneapolis was almost entirely white, so the same contrast doesn’t hold–they have no need to pretend.

Finally, keep in mind that this video was produced by ABC which is owned by Disney and is a massive media conglomerate. You might wonder why it is that they would show something that so clearly appears to undermine that corporation’s ability to shape the decision-making of our political leadership. I’ll let you answer it for yourself.

VIDEO

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I’m going to write about Obama in these blogs (just as I will discuss him in my race class) because of the sheer historical significance of his candidacy with regard to race relations. But in order to do so freely, without parts of my discussion being misread as a political endorsement, let me explain some things about the way I vote.

I have never missed casting my ballot in a presidential election in my thirty years of legal adulthood. And as a student of political sociology for nearly all of that time, I do the research and I take my vote very seriously.

This year, as we have candidates who are not white and male running in both major parties, we are clearly faced with an opportunity to advance this nation culturally, keeping us in step with most of the world’s more industrialized countries (and many less developed ones) that have already elected racial minorities or women to their highest seats of power. Furthermore, whether we put Barack Obama or Sarah Palin into office, this election will influence how we see all women or all people of color in both subtle and not so subtle ways. Speaking as a sociologist, this is fascinating to contemplate. Speaking as a person whose work involves building bridges between balkanized racial and ethnic groups, it is groundbreaking.

And yet, as I examine the gravity of all of the issues we face, I am left to conclude that the value of cracking one of these twin glass ceilings cannot alone determine the way I cast my ballot. In my view, we need a party that is willing to truly tackle the issues of terrorism and war, depletion of natural resources, the explosion of the world’s population and the deepening of global poverty—and to do so in radically different ways. I don’t mean spinning words to attract constituents. I’m talking about actually encouraging and carrying out system transformation.

Unfortunately, the differences between our two major parties on all of the issues are mostly cosmetic and rhetorical. It might appear as though their differences are significant—why else would their respective members be arguing with one another so vociferously? But I see two parties that are sponsored by and answerable to the same power base—and, for me, that adds up to little expectation for change when we most need it. The following are two broad issues that are of particular concern to me. But there are others:

Natural Resources. I’m not talking about the prices of gas or heating fuel or the sudden spike in airfares. I’m talking about sustaining life on this planet. I think the data we have about global climate change is sobering. Most of it does not appear to be hysterical exaggeration. And I think we are foolish not to genuinely heed this warning. We need to begin by severing the ties between corporations and politicians who are bought and sold in the basements and back rooms of congressional buildings, the White House, and K Street. Because I think this is so essential to making decisions that have the people and the planet in mind, I have never voted for a candidate who is not committed to and capable of putting natural resources ahead of short-term profits.

War and Terrorism. The United States produces and sells more military weapons than the next eight top weapons manufacturing nations combined, and we spend more money on our military than the militaries of the twenty-five next most powerful countries in the world. War will always occur and there will always be threats to our national security. But we can only avert these threats if we cease supporting a military industrial complex whose profits are unfortunately rooted in waging war (and threatening the national security of other nations). In other words, we must stop ourselves before it is too late. Imagine a nuclear bomb in New York City. This doesn’t have to happen. But it is the outcome we are likely to witness if our leaders do not shrink the size of the military industrial complex and curtail the proliferation of weapons. I have never voted for a candidate who does not see this as crucial for our protection and survival.

For my entire voting life, I have observed that neither of the major parties has substantively addressed these (and other) critical issues. And once again in 2008, neither party has made history with their platforms because they are still beholden to vested and powerful interests that maintain the perilous status quo. They have only made history with the faces of their candidates. This is not insignificant, to be sure, but I have to cast my vote for more than that, for a future, for a sustainable world that we can actually live in.

Sam

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