How far have we come?

While in the process of reading Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell”, it has become apparent that one of the recurrent themes throughout the book is not just the negative perceptions that lead to abusive behavior, but a certain socialist perspective she has in pointing out that the major abuses come not from evil people, but from altruistic-appearing, powerful entities who use their stature and power to push their own status quo agenda upon those who might act against them, even if that is just their perception rather than reality.

The San Francisco earthquake example is the first she uses, but what was very obvious throughout this entire section of the book is that all of the major abuses that took place were power play operations that were designed to maintain a certain status quo of power, not necessarily of status quo circumstances. The military responded with force not because of a need to suppress looters and evil happenings, but because of a desire of the local post commander to keep a certain state of power in operation, something that could only be done by having soldiers act with violent actions towards victimized citizens, often as a prelude to perceived threats that were probably never going to occur.

She follows this up by showing that some of the major political figures who existed in San Francisco at the turn of the century were individuals who were already caught up in class politics with challengers, and that the reaction to the earthquake was used as further leverage in long-running battles. The acts of political figures against Universal Railroad and other union suffragists were waged as preemptive strikes to keep power from changing hands, even though much of the power in question was economic, rather than political and military. The political forces in place used the opportunities presented to them from the earthquake to make sure that such economic forces did not act against them, and that when the emergencies were over, that they would not have the chance to rise up again.

The military’s cooperation in this whole mess is scary, because often it is discussed how the dichotomy of the military and civilization power structure serves to keep the United States in its state of citizen-first separation. In her reporting, it is observed that the military often acted with the mindset that the citizens were to be feared and subjected to violence rather than protected. In history books, and especially in the words of the military, the reaction of the US armed services during this period was exemplary, saving the people, but in reality the reaction of the US military was one of violence, where citizens were seen as secondary citizens, subject to the whims of individual soldiers who had little problem with opening fire on citizens seen in the ruins, treating them as looters, thieves and criminals before ever considering why they might be there in the first place. This sort of mentality still exists within the military, and no one ever really questions it, because it is the exact type of wording we receive when we hear that the US military has attacked “insurgents” whenever an air strike takes place where the victims are often unknown because strikes of that nature are not known for their exactness. Quite often, our military treats any skirmish and death as “us versus them” where those who make up the “them” have to prove themselves to be worthy of victim status, or they are forever considered enemy combatants who are casualties of war. That is the exact approach the military took towards San Francisco after the earthquake. Today, many citizens who were shot and killed by soldiers, acting on their own decisions, are still seen as the guilty party. What no one bothers to point out is that soldiers in the United States, even back then, were not authorized to open fire on citizens unless they were acting in the interests of an actual martial law situation. There was no official martial law declared in San Francisco back then; the military acted on its own, taking its orders from a military general who declared martial law in theory alone. The president, the governor, and even the mayor (the last two not actually having the power to do so) never instigated martial law in that emergency. The deaths that were caused happened as a result of soldiers taking the law into their own hands. No, that fact has never really been discussed all that much. It’s not really just a footnote in history, but it doesn’t even get treated as that.

The book, although somewhat condemning in its style of writing, does present a pretty strong case for why we really should be paying more attention to these sorts of things. It took only an unannounced emergency to turn a civilized city into a stomping ground for injustice. When it finally ended, no one was really held accountable, and to this day, we don’t even teach what really happened.

If anything should come out of a book like this, that should be the lesson. We’re still the victims of “the winner writes the text books” philosophies in this country. We haven’t moved that much further than such barbaric actions. Unfortunately, every time we try to take a step back and pretend that we’re some enlightened society that is so distanced from the bad days, we should remember that we’re really only a disaster away from falling down that rabbit hole again, even in the greatest, freedom loving societies all around us.

One of my biggest criticisms of modern name America is that I don’t believe we’re all that as enlightened as we like to think we are. It was only a century ago when we enslaved a great deal of the population, actually arguing that it was the “right” thing to do. It was less than four decades ago that we were quite willing to separate parts of the population from drinking from the same water fountain, convinced that there was some morality involved in such decisions. Every day, we find ourselves facing our own selves in the fact that we do not believe we could ever be like that again, yet everywhere around us, someone is still acting in that type of interest. Granted, the victims keep changing, but the attitudes do not. And the reasoning still exists just as much as it always did. We always claim morality, either through religious grounds or through some other equally mundane process of whatever makes us feel better.

Some day, we’ll get it right. We’re just not there yet.

Stumble It!

Observations on Race, Racism, Ethnicity and Racial/Ethnic Identity

Having recently returned from South Korea, I would like to say for the record that that county is, in my opinion, one that has never gotten over the idea that diversity is something to be cherished rather than avoided. Most of the population is Asian, and most of that population is most definitely Korean. The only difference seen is what can be chalked up to the "foreigner" element. Foreigners are present in the country mainly for business, and every now and then that foreign element marries into the Korean population. And that's kind of where things start to get really murky.

First off, I'd like to focus on the foreigner population that is there for business as its main purpose. Twenty or so years ago, a foreigner in Korea was seen as a cherished encounter. Little kids would run up to the "wayguk" and follow him or her, often touching the person over and over, much to the befuddlement of the foreigner himself or herself. Strangers would walk up to that foreigner and attempt to speak English, to show that the language was learned at some time in the past. Other old timers would smile and speak Korean to the foreigner, often trying to engage in some kind of hand gestures that indicated that there was some comraderie that might exist between them.

Fast-forward a couple of decades, and you'll find some of those artifacts still in the Korean repertoire, but you'll also find a segment of the population that has grown tired of foreigners, often picking fights with foreigners and then blaming those foreigners for "not understanding Korean culture". Quite a few legal cases here in Korea are decided against foreigners based on that factor alone. Not too long ago, a Samsung crane barge collided with a Hong Kong cargo ship the Heibi Spirit, causing a massive oil spill. The Samsung crane barge was the initiator of the disaster, but a Korean court decided that Samsung was not the guilty party, and the blame was laid on the victims of the actual accident. Subsequent responses to the court case were met with several accusations of "not understanding Korean culture."

Another one of those misunderstandings: Women. Apparently, foreigners don't understand Korean customs either. Quite often, a Korean male will become lustful towards a foreign female and do innocent little things like invade her home and try to have sex with her without her permission. When that woman goes to the police, she is often told that she just doesn't understand Korean custom. Well, they're right because recently there have been a few major cases where a woman has been sued by a major company because she breached her contract by having the crap beaten out of her by her boyfriend. This happened just a few days ago to an actress who committed suicide because she was upset over some insignificant little thing; apparently her representation management felt that she needed to sleep with every man they set her up with because that's part of Korean entertainment culture. To add insult to injury, the company that hired her as spokesperson sued her and won when they discovered she was seriously beaten by her estranged boyfriend. See, even the Korean women don't understand Korean culture.

But I could talk bad about Korea all day, and believe it or not, that's not what this post is about Instead, I wanted to talk about race itself. And it has very little to do with Korea. Korea just opened my eyes to focus on this sort of thing.

When I returned home last week, I started focusing a lot more on the differences between people. To start, I moved to Oakland, and in case you grew up in a cave, in Michigan, you can't go two feet in Oakland without realizing that this is a place that is a powder keg just waiting to go off. Oh, people deny that and go on with their daily lives, while walking quickly down some streets and running down others, knowing not to make eye contact with the regulars.

There's a huge racial and ethnic divide in Oakland and surrounding areas that seems really sad, mainly because most of us here all have the shared identity as Americans, or US residents/citizens. You would think that would mean something, but it only really means anything when you're faced with the dichotomy outside of the US environment. It's really bizarre when you think about it.

Let me explain. When I was in the service, the people who served with me represented all demographics that exist in the USA. Blacks, Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, and any other ethnicity that comes to mind all served together as part of a bigger picture. Sure, in some units there were problems when the commanders didn't understand that they needed to teach that the unit was more important than shared other identities. I can tell you a couple of stories of a couple of infantry and engineer units I was in where it felt more like a prison population with separations of skinheads, African-Americans and Latinos meaning more than anything else. And then in other units, the idea of race and ethnicity meant nothing to anyone but an afterthought. Quite often, the leadership made the difference in how people perceived themselves. People never really figure these sorts of things out.

It's no different here in Oakland. Really. The leadership here is what makes the differences what they are. Whenever a person runs on a platform of race or ethnicity, that automatically sets up a dynamic that is going to transpose itself on the population itself. I'm reminded of the TV show, The Wire, where a white politician decides to run for mayor of Baltimore against an incumbent black mayor. He does it by pitting another African-American against him and ends up splitting the black vote. Although the show is fiction, it is a strong representation of some of the forces that really do work in politics in this country. There are places in this country where no white person can ever run for office and other places where no one of any ethnicity but white can ever achieve an elected position. And that's just sad.

As I've been taking the bus around town a lot these days, I find myself within the same company of a lot of people who don't look or sound like me. And unfortunately, this is not what the founding fathers wanted when they were hoping for a melting pot. What you discover in this kind of situation is that people who identify as something other than you tend to avoid you or see you as an adversary. Taking the bus in Oakland is interesting in the very idea that someone who may be open to race and ethnicity may also be taking his or her life into his own hands because not everyone else feels the same way. I was in a McDonald's yesterday reading the newspaper when I turned to a group of older black gentlemen behind me and asked them if they wanted my newspaper as I was leaving. This led to a friendly conversation between me and the four of them that stretched on for about five or ten minutes. We parted in a friendly manner, and as I was leaving, a younger black man who was sitting at the next table wandered over to them and said to the other men in an almost challenging way, "Who was that asshole?"

This is part of the problem I think that has plagued most forward thinkers. For those of us who have done higher education and the graduate school route, when you encounter someone from a marginalized demographic that you would not normally encounter in daily life there is no problem seeing that person as another equal person who contributes to the educational discourse. But outside of that environment, you're constantly encountering people who never learned to "play well with others" and when you end up trying to treat someone in a fair, friendly way, that doesn't always achieve positive results. In some cases, it can get you killed.

And that's the problem with where we are with race and ethnicity in the 21st century. The bigger part of the problem is that we're trained to not acknowledge it. We put things into categorical boxes like partisan behavior and pretend that these sorts of things don't happen. The Democratic Party is a good example of this. They are the party that incorporates the most of the previously marginalized, disenfranchised voters, but at the same time that party doesn't do a very good job of bringing people up to a common ground but instead takes great pains to contribute to the separate but equal placement we maintain between these entities. Again, we don't acknowledge this, but like in Lani Guinere's Tyranny of the Majority, she points out that a different kind of perspective is needed to move the races and ethnicities forward, but unfortunately the people who benefit from these differences, like old style Civil Rights leaders, also benefit from keeping those differences present. That's a problem that the Martin Luther King, Jr's never envisioned: What do you do with the civil rights organizations when you start to achieve equality, and even more important, how do you keep the identity of difference from overwhelming the organization so that it doesn't become a badge of honor rather than a bridge to cross? And that's the real problem. As long as someone has something to gain from separating races and ethnicities, what chance do we have of those same people casting off the cloak of power that their organizing brought about? It's similar to the whole communism in reality argument. Sure, communism sounds like a great idea, but how do you strip the state from the skeleton once you achieve the destruction of capitalism? You can't because those who put all their marbles in that game aren't capable of taking their marbles and claiming victory.

So, having returned home, I find myself in the middle of so many different people, and I want to stand up and shout how happy I am that I can embrace the idea of diversity with so many people. But I'm afraid to do so because if I make that much noise, someone's going to see me and probably kill me for speaking out in public in the middle of a crowd of people who are different than me.

Stumble It!

Someone you know is looking for you!

I get these really annoying emails all of the time from spammers that try to look like they're legit. Some of these come from some legitimate sources, like Classmates.com, but they're still spam and they drive me nuts. One of the recent waves of spam messages has been the "Someone you know is looking for you!" Then you click it and it takes you to some social networking or singles site that wants you to sign up so you can "discover" who it is that "might be" looking for you. If you've ever been stupid enough to sign up, you discover that no one is actually looking for you, but now you have another gateway to lots and lots of spam.

So I started wondering: Who would ever be looking for me anyway? I mean, I'm on Facebook, so if someone wants to find me there, that's okay. Some people have. I've found some of my old friends, too. Good thing.

However, I realize there might be "other" people looking for me, too. First off, there are people who want to sell me things. Things I don't need. Things I don't want. But they will continue to send me information telling me how much I need a Viagra pill, penis enlargement surgery or new credit (I honestly think there's a connection between the three, but I'm not smart enough to make that connection). Eventually, they go directly into the spam filter.

Then there are bill collectors. Well, the ones that NEED to find me have found me. Anyone else is pretending to be a bill collector, or is someone I never would have paid in the first place.

Then there's the Army. Yes, the Army still keeps trying to convince me that I should go back into the Army...as an enlisted member. Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen. I'm going to go back into the service, join as an enlisted member this time, take orders from some 23 year old with a BA degree who thinks that BA degree and ROTC training at UCLA makes him a natural leader. My 2 MA degrees, nearly completed Ph.d., numerous BA/BS degrees, combat service and my West Point training really doesn't agree with that supposition. I asked an Army recruiter why I can't go back in as an officer, and they don't really know why the age restrictions were raised to 42 for enlisted but still remain around 30 for officers. That's a nonstarter.

So who else might be looking for me? Ex-girlfriends? Like the crazy one that I still fear might be looking for me? The one that talked about the different ways she would like to dismember the entire male population (where I was affectionately referred to as "the last victim")? The one that sent me an itemized bill when I finally convinced her that our relationship was over? For the record, all of those are the same woman.

So, I'm just not all that thrilled whenever I discover that "someone I know is looking for me!". No, I prefer they not find me. My stuffed animals and I are doing okay without being found.

Stumble It!

The US Army and civilian job boards

I know this probably doesn't bother anyone else, but it drives me batty. I'll be reading over some job board, like Monster or Career Builder, and then of the 20 jobs they send me that are of "interest to me", 80 percent of them are Army National Guard jobs. Instead of just placing ONE AD that states the Army National Guard is hiring, they list EVERY FREAKING MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY IN THE ARMY as an open job, so that these job boards spam the hell out of you with Army National Guard jobs that have the exact same contact information. It makes job boards completely useless. There aren't 30 different businesses hiring in this context; there is ONE government military hiring and stealing 30 spots of ads that disappear on the boards themselves because these recruiters have become experts at product placement. Spam is still spam, even if our government does it. Doesn't really change a thing.

Stumble It!

General Petraeus and his many medals

I guess as a veteran I was kind of put off by the number of medals awarded to a general who only saw "combat" for the first time five years ago. He has nine rows of medals on his uniform. I saw quite a bit of combat during my time in the service, and my uniform only had four rows, and most of them were combat-connected.

This is one of the problems with our service these days. They give out medals for showing up, brushing your teeth, organizing a file drawer, building a campfire and whatever. I notice he has a bronze star; I've received that one, too. I'm curious what action he conducted in a war where he was a general that constituted that particular medal. The rest of those medals are essentially "thank you for showing up" awards.

Stumble It!