May We Remember

Like many Americans the news of the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, and of the police officers in Texas shook me to the core. Feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear, and from those anger, flooded me for several days. Then, like many Americans, ordinary everyday routine reclaimed my life, the knots in my stomach along with the anxiety, fear and anger ebbed. It’s not that I (we) forgot what happened, but I (we) could turn away from the immediacy and relax.

Lying in bed last night awake in the dark early morning hours, it finally occurred to me that this ability of most Americans to push these issues out of the forefront of our lives is part of the problem. Because the people most directly concerned – African Americans (especially young black men) and uniformed law enforcement – do not have this luxury.  Sadness, anxiety, fear and anger are embedded in their daily lives in way that the rest of us cannot really understand.  

However, the experiences of African Americans and uniformed law enforcement while similar in some ways are not identical.  

Sociologists use the term “master status” to encompass things those things in our lives that are central to our definition of self and our identity.  Both being “African American” and a “law enforcement officer” are important master statuses, central to the personal identity and sense of self of most of the individuals who can claim those statuses. The difference is that being “African American” is an ascribed status, one conferred at birth by having parents/grandparents with African ancestry, one imposed by society regardless of one’s own wishes, and impossible to exit except by death.  Being a “law enforcement officer” is an achieved status, obtained by study  and practice, consciously chosen as an occupation by an adult over other possible occupations; while far more central to a person’s identity than “working in a factory” or “flipping burgers,” achieved statuses such as law enforcement officer can be exited by choice resignation and retirement, or can be forced upon one by disability or death. Exiting the status of law enforcement by death is the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, law enforcement officers can and do take vacations from their status – they can take their family to Disney World and not be perceived by anyone else as a law enforcement officer.  There is no vacation from being African American.

So the thought came to me as I lay in the dark, that it is important for the rest of us – who are neither African American nor law enforcement – to remember the intensity of the fear, the anxiety, the anger and to remember that while we can let it go and get on with our lives, others must continue to deal with those destructive, life-corroding feelings every day. The goal is not to make us all live in fear and anger, but to use our memory to assist in building a society in which no one need feel that way every day. 

America's Two Cultures

Back in 1992 when James Davison Hunter published Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law and Politics in America, he was careful to note that America was not really divided into two distinct cultural camps, but rather what he was writing about were culturally extreme minorities (the "orthodox" and the "progressive") at either end of the a continuum in which most Americans fell on a middle ground.

Several excellent pieces of sociological research, as well as personal observations, lead me to think that today's America is far closer to a "culture war" today. There is less middle ground and more polarization. Facebook has been a fertile ground for observing that culture war. Between my husband (also a sociologist) and myself, our combined Facebook circles encompass significant numbers of people on both sides of the culture war. 

One striking example of the differences between the two cultural camps are two quite different apocryphal stories (below) currently circulating on Facebook. Both have been posted by people on my personal Friends list (with well known political and cultural biases) in 2013. The persons circulating these stories appear to believe them to be true stories.  However, a quick search of debunking websites such as TrueorFalse and Snopes make it clear that both stories are considered fiction or hoax.  There is no basis in a fact (no recorded incidents) for the conservative version of the story on the right below. The progressive version of the story on the left below is a variation of a story that has been circulating on the Internet since 1998. The original 1998 version places the incident on a British Airways flight out of Johannesburg and may possibly, but not necessarily, be based in fact. But the current version presented as a contemporary story in the United States is fiction.

Liberal Apocryphal Story

Conservative Apocryphal Story

A 50-something year old white woman arrived at her seat and saw that the passenger next to her was a black man. Visibly furious, she called the air hostess. "What's the problem, ma?" the hostess asked her "Can't you see?" the lady said - "I was given a seat next to a black man. I can't seat here next to him. You have to change my seat" "Please, calm down, ma" - said the hostess "Unfortunately, all the seats are occupied, but I'm still going to check if we have any." The hostess left and returned some minutes later. "Madam, as I told you, there isn't any empty seat in this class - economy class. But I spoke to the captain and he confirmed that there isn't any empty seats in the economy class. We only have seats in the first class." And before the woman said anything, the hostess continued "Look, it is unusual for our company to allow a passenger from the economy class change to the first class. However, given the circumstances, the commandant thinks that it would be a scandal to make a passenger travel sat next to an unpleasant person." And turning to the black man, the hostess said: "Which means, Sir, if you would be so nice to pack your handbag, we have reserved you a seat in the first class..." And all the passengers nearby, who were shocked to see the scene started applauding, some standing on their feet. SHARE IF YOU ARE AGAINST RACISM

A 50-something year old Muslim man arrived at his seat on a crowded flight and immediately didn't want the seat. The seat was next to an elderly white woman reading her Bible. Disgusted, the man said, "I cannot sit here next to this infidel!" then summoned the flight attendant, demanding a new seat. The flight attendant responded, "Let me see if I can find another seat. "After checking, the flight attendant returned and stated "There are no more seats in economy, but I will check with the captain and see if there is something in first class. "The flight attendant returned, stating "The captain has confirmed that there are no more seats in economy, however there is one in first class. It is our company policy to never move a person from economy to first class, but being that it would be some sort of scandal to force a person to sit next to an UNPLEASANT person, the captain agreed to make the switch to first class." Before the irate Muslim man could say anything, the attendant gestured to the elderly woman and said, "Therefore, m'am, if you would so kindly retrieve your personal items, we would like to move you to the comfort of first class as the captain doesn't want you to sit next to an unpleasant person." Passengers in the seats nearby began to applaud while some gave a standing ovation. I say, can I get an Amen to that!

The two stories share the same structure. As a liberal social scientist I see them as carrying quite different messages.  From my perspective the story on the left decries racism, while the story on the right reinforces negative religious stereotypes.  However, as a sociologist I am also fully aware that the conservative friends would most likely interpret the meaning of the two stories quite differently. Conservative friends would be likely to say that the story on the left reinforces negative racial stereotypes (all elderly white people are racists), while the story on the right decries obvious religious bigotry on the part of Muslims. 

The two cultures in America not only tell different stories, but we interpret each other's stories in very different ways.

political advertising and values

Campaign advertising is an interesting art form. In just 30 to 60 seconds an advertisement wants to use images, sound, and a small amount of text to strike a chord in potential voters. Positive ads aim to provide images and words that will make viewers identify with a candidate, often by appeals to values (family, patriotism, smaller government, environmental protection, education, and so on). Negative ads aim to conjure adverse reactions to one's opposition with unpleasant images and phrases (like "higher taxes" or "soft on crime" or "liar").

Over the last week or so, I've found McCain's ad campaign curious and confusing. Never before have I seen the ads of one candidate (the ads actually "approved by" the candidate) feature positive and attractive images of his opponent so prominently, for such a large percentage of the ad time. Yet that is exactly what the McCain ads do. Yes, the big evil word "TAXES" is display prominently next to Obama's picture in one part of the ad, but for the most part the images of Obama are attractive, show him smiling, show people smiling at him. This is unprecedented in national campaign advertising, especially negative advertising where the few pictures of the candidate being slammed are generally chosen to be unflattering and appear only briefly. Which left me puzzled -- why would McCain promote these positive images of Obama?

This afternoon, while watching the Olympics my husband and I were talking about how Americans view athletes who immigrate from other countries to the U.S. and compete on our teams. My husband, a serious competitive runner, who spends a lot of time on-line on running discussion boards and blogs, has told me that many of the people on the boards have expressed negative feelings about Bernard Legat and Lopez Lomong, as "foreigners" who should have stayed where they belonged. We were watching women's gymnastics at the time, and the performance of Nastia Liukin a member of the U.S. women's team. Liukin is the daughter of a former USSR Olympic medalist in men's gymnastics; in other words she is an immigrant like Legat and Lomong. We were speculating whether attitudes about immigrants similar to those expressed in the running world were expressed in gymnastic circles about Liukin. We wondered if age made a difference. Then we wondered if race and ethnicity made a difference; do you get a pass if you are blonde and blue-eyed?

Suddenly I had a flash of an idea. What if the unspoken subliminal message of the McCain ads is "Look at this extraordinarily popular BLACK man -- he just might get to be president! Be afraid, be very afraid." What if, the McCain ads are aimed at the unspoken reservoir of racism that they know runs deeply under the surface of American life? What if the ads are just simply to visually underline the one thing that they are not allowed to actually say -- "oh, my God, this is a BLACK man."

I'd like to think it isn't true, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder. Let me be clear, I am most definitely not saying that McCain is a racist. Nor am I saying that the individuals who plan and produce McCain's ads are racists (I don't know who those people are and would not presume to attach that label to someone I didn't know well). What I am suggesting is that the people responsible for the content of the ads may be hoping to strike a chord with the racist values of some Americans, values that they know exist out there in America, and that if they can mobilize some voters around that particular value, McCain is likely to benefit. What do other people think?

Open Letter to Barack Obama

Please do not write off eastern Kentucky and the rest of central Appalachia. There have been two excellent pieces in the last few days, by West Virginian dawnt on the daily kos and by Dee Davis of Whitesburg, KY on Salon.com about the need for Obama to include central Appalachia in any campaign for the presidency. Both writers explain why it is a huge mistake to write off this region of the nation. Appalachians can be won over. We just have to be asked -- in person -- for our support.

Appalachians are the last American ethnic group that it is socially acceptable to negatively stereotype. While I'm not suggesting that no basis exists for some of the stereotypes, the stereotypes blind people (inside and outside the region) to the reality of the rich human tapestry here.

Folks living here in Appalachian include affluent business owners, educated professionals, solid middle class white collar workers, technical and health care workers, hard working skilled blue collar workers, dedicated factory workers, minimum wage workers who scramble to make ends meet for their families, retired folks on social security, and poor folks on SSI and temporarily on welfare. Yes, the percentage of elderly, disabled, and poor are higher here than suburban America, but they are not the majority.

We may live in "hollers," and the red-lining practices of banks may make manufactured housing ("trailers") easier to obtain than "built" houses, but folks here lavish care on their homes as much (or maybe more) than folks anywhere. [All photos are of homes in my "holler" in Hemphill].

People in Appalachia care about the same issues as other Americans: Health care, the economy (jobs and prices), the war in Iraq, the environment. In fact, I would argue that each of these issues is even more important to us here, since there are fewer jobs that provide health insurance, lower median incomes mean that economic uncertainties hit harder, a higher percentage of our young people are likely to enlist, and the nasty consequences of strip mining have immediate impacts on us here.

One of the most damaging stereotypes that has been brought up in this election is of Appalachians as racist. Sure there are racist folks here, as there are in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C., Eugene, Oregon, etc. But there are also African Americans who live and work peacefully along side whites in Appalachia. There may not be many African Americans in eastern Kentucky, but there also aren't any ghettos in eastern Kentucky. In Letcher County, there are black teachers, administrators, sanitation workers, surgeons, ministers, housewives, coal miners, secretaries, and many other occupations.

Moreover, being a lower income region, a very higher percentage of the physicians in this region are from the middle east and the Indian subcontinent (and many of whom are Muslim and Hindu). A brief perusal of the physicians listed in this region includes names like Ahmed, Alam, Alchureiqi, Ali, Ambalavanan, Appakondu, Bajwa, Chandarana, Chandrasheker, Chaturvedi, Garimella, Guindi, Gutti, Ghazal, Khater, Khouzam, Mehrpouyan, Mohmand, Narola, Pampati, Paliwal, Podapati, Quddus-Roopani, Rahman, Sahay, Singh, Abubakar Tidal, Valavalkar, Yalamanchi. These are highly respected members of the professional community. For example, folks around these parts swear by Dr. Tidal. I can't even begin to count the number of times in the past 12 years, that one of my students has said started a sentence with "Dr. Tidal says..." Until I did this little search for this post, I had no idea that Dr. Tidal wasn't an native born American of European descent.

I believe that most folks in Appalachia would welcome Barack Obama if he'd just take the time and come and visit with us face-to-face. We like to judge people as individuals, on their character, but we're folks who want to make those judgments in person. We need to see and talk to folks to decide whether or not we trust them. We don't like to depend on media images or stereotypes.

Here goes....

Since it would appear that no one actually reads my blog, I might as well write whatever I want. So...

I was just watching Brit Hume's "Special Report" on Fox News (yes, I watch Fox News, it's always important to know what the enemy is up to). He had a panel of very articulate, interesting and thoughtful guests having a rational discussion about the immigration bill being debated in Congress. Two of the panelists pointed out that the current bill does not really have the support of the business community, because it does not go far enough with the guest worker program.

The current bill only offers 400,000 guest worker slots per year, and proposes that the workers only stay 2 years, then go back to their country of origin for one year, before being able to return for another two year stint. The American business community, according to one of Hume's conservative panelists, would rather see a million workers a year, with a three year work permit, that can be renewed for another three years without having to return home. (If you doubt my version of this, check out Brit Hume's "Special Report" website on Thursday, and click on the transcript for today's show -- Tuesday May 22, 2007 -- it won't go up until later today or early tomorrow).

I have absolutely no doubt that this speaker is right on the money when it comes to a large proportion of American businesses which depend very heavily on the inexpensive labor of immigrants, especially illegal workers.

What I find so fascinating about all this, is that the American upper class and business elite, have been stoking the fires of xenophobia and racism for more than a hundred years as a means of keeping the working class divided among itself and unable to joing together as a politically coherent class based political power. The power elite as G. William Domhoff calls them, make use of their ownership and control over mass media outlets, to promote this rabid anti-immigrant sentiment. [And don't give me any crap about the so called "liberal media" -- Lou Dobbs, who I am sure is considered "liberal" by folks on the far right, does a superb job in ramping up the hysterial xenophobia of his viewers].

If you're interested in a serious, well documented sociological study on the use of racism and ethnic divisions to control the work force, check out the classic Blue Collar Community by William Kornblum about steel workers in South Chicago in the 1970's. For a less scholarly, but well written view of the same issue, read bell hooks where we stand: class matters [no capitals in the original].

As a genuine left winger, I would like to see amnesty for all immigrants with jobs [if they are legal, they won't worry about being deported, and they can be more radical and agressive in pressing for better pay and working conditions]. If it weren't for that, I'd be crowing for joy that the American business community is not getting what they want out of this immigration bill. It seems only fair that if you spend a hundred years of fanning the flames of hate and fear, that hate and fear will suddenly be inconvenient when you suddenly decide you actually need a lot more cheap workers. Hoisted on their own petard.

Obama, memories, and me

Recent dissection of Barack Obama's youth and his memories of that youth in his book "Dreams from My Father" (see the Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703250359mar25,1,605874.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed), prompted me to think about two of my most significant and influential memories of conversations.

The Chicago Tribune article about Barack Obama states:

"He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. 'Not even close,' he said, adding that Obama was dealing with 'some inner turmoil' in those days."

"'But it wasn't a race thing,' he said."

The article goes on to say:

"Some of these discrepancies are typical of childhood memories -- fuzzy in specifics, warped by age, shaped by writerly license."

My own experience suggests that a remembered conversation can be "about" something, even if it was not part of the conversation. Two conversations that I had with friends, about two months apart were extraordinarily influential in shaping my career path. The first of those conversations was "about" the impact of racial/ethnic and cultural differences, the second was "about" the impact of social class.

I know for a fact that race/ethnicity and culture were never even mentioned in the first conversation, yet that is precisely what that conversation was "about." August before my sophomore year in college I gave a party to reunite some friends from high school. Much of the conversation revolved around men and romance (pretty typical of a group of 19 year old women). Two of my friends, blond blue-eyed Betty and raven haired, brown-eyed Debbe, started talking about being attracted to young men who were different from themselves. Betty's affections were drawn to a man a few years older, from South America, and Japanese-American Debbe had been interested in a Caucasian man. Betty was still seeing her young man despite disapproval by her parents, but Debbe explained that after a great deal of thought and some anguish, she had decided dating someone of another race was not worth incurring the disapproval of her parents.

Betty and Debbe's discussion became heated, when Betty suggested that Debbe needed to show some spine and independence, and stop letting her parents decide who she would date. As they argued about this for some time, it was obvious to me, as the observer, that they both thought about this argument in terms of personality and individual preference, but that it was really about racial/ethnic and cultural differences in the way they were raised, and how they thought of themselves in relationship to their families.

As a result of this conversation, I spent the next several years researching racial/ethnic and cultural differences in child raising and identity, especially among Chinese- and Japanese-Americans. I'm sure that my memory of this conversation and what is was about, is entirely different from Betty and Debbe's memory of it -- if they even remember it at all.

The second remembered conversation is from just two months later, October in my sophomore year. I was stuck in Cleveland Hopkins Airport trying to stand-by for flights to Washington, D.C., and I ran into a fellow student, Ivory, also having difficulty getting on a flight. [I always traveled stand-by, but Ivory was the victim of flight cancellations due to striking air line employees).

I had something of a crush on Ivory, and knowing what I was like back then, I could be more than a little obnoxious to the objects of my affections. So in retrospect, it was kind of him to take the time to talk with me while we both waited to catch a flight. We conversed for nearly five hours stretched out over much of the day. Most of what we talked about is lost to memory. But two things about the conversation remained with me clearly. The first was that he was desperately unhappy at Oberlin College. The second was that at least some of that unhappiness derived from the mismatch between his family's view of purpose of a college education and the view held by the faculty and most of the students at Oberlin.

Ivory's family, like my own, sent him to college to become a teacher. To his parents, like mine, college was an instrument for obtaining a decent job. But the ethos at Oberlin College, in that day, was quite different. Having an instrumental approach to education was frowned upon -- unless it was as an instrument of social change. College was for intellectual, artistic and personal discovery. God forbid that any Oberlin student should show any concern for the pecuniary benefits of education [unlike the Commonwealth of Kentucky today that has signs saying "education pays" posted on every state vehicle and along the road sides].

Ivory expressed great anguish, and a sense of being rent in two, by the differing expectations of family and college community. Although I did not experience the pain Ivory did over this clash of values, I was very much aware of the disparity between my family's views about education and the views of my professors and friends at Oberlin.

The conversation stayed with me because I felt honored to have been the recipient of such confidences, and because it resonated with my own experiences. By the time I reached graduate school (5 years later) I remembered this as a discussion about social class, and the pain and bewilderment faced by working class students in an upper middle class environment. However, in retrospect, I cannot honestly say that either Ivory or myself spoke about social class at the time we had the conversation. Perhaps we did. Perhaps we did not. That does not make it any less "about" class.

The memory of this conversation, about social class, heavily influenced my work as a sociologist. Almost everything I have done has been in some way or another "about" social class, and the millions of ways that class affects our lives.

So who is really to say, just because Senator Obama's friend "Ray" (Kakugawa) does not remember Barack talking about race, does not mean that the pain he expressed at the time did not have a racial component. Sometimes it takes years to gain perspective on our pasts and know why it really was that we suffered.