Data comes courtesy of the 2000 General Social Survey and the 2000 Census.

One of the things that fascinates me is how confused people are about the actual racial and ethnic make-up of the US.  The 2000 General Social Survey (GSS) asked respondents what percent of the population they thought each group represented.  As you can see from the data below, people tend to underestimate the white population percent, and they tend to overestimate the population for people of color.  People also overestimated the Jewish population, but the GSS doesn’t have a comparable question for Christians.  The GSS only groups respondents into three racial categories–Black, White, and Other, so I wasn’t able to do a thorough comparision between groups, but a glance at the data for these 3 groups indicates that the patterns are fairly similar.

The first number represents the average guess for what percent of the population each group represents in the US, and the second number in () represents the actual percent of the population that each group represents. ¹

% White Guess–58.92 (69)

% Black Guess–31.48 (12)

% Jewish Guess–17.88 (2)²

% Asian/Pacific Islander Guess–17.7 (3.6)

% Latino Guess–24.68 (12.5)

% American Indian Guess–14.21 (.7)

% Mixed Race–43.43 (1.6)³

1. The Census does not considered Latinos a race, so for the purposes of the actual percents for Whites, Blacks, Asians, American Indians, and Mixed Race people I used data for only non-Latinos.  This of course means Latinos can be off any race. (back)
2. The US Census does not track religion, so this is an estimate based on random sample surveys.  Obviously, Jews are not a race, but since the GSS asks about Jews I figured I would include it. (back)
3. Goes up to 2.4% when Latinos are included. (back)

Since I don’t have time to write a post today — or, rather, I don’t have time to write a post NOW, because I’ve just spent a bunch of time leaving comments on a thread at “Feminist Critics” — I thought I’d just reproduce a comment I left over there. (By the way, Renegade Evolution is now posting at “Feminist Critics,” which improves the blog substantially, in my opinion.)

The context is a discussion of a scene in the most recent episode of Dr. Who, “Blink,” so consider this a spoiler alert.

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Two Nigerian writers have garnered major prizes in literature within the past week. 

Renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction, which is awarded biannually for a body of work. If you are not familiar with his work here is a little summary from the AP article announcing the prize:

The author began work with the Nigerian Broadcasting Co. in Lagos in 1954 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corp. in London.

During Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, Achebe’s Ibo people of the eastern region tried to establish an independent Republic of Biafra, and Achebe tried publicize the plight of his people.

Achebe is currently professor of languages and literature at Bard College, New York, and has lectured in universities around the world.

In 2004, he refused to accept Nigeria’s second highest honor, the Commander of the Federal Republic, to protest the state of affairs in his native country. Nigeria held a presidential election in April that marked the first time one elected leader handed over power to another in a country plagued by military rule and dictators since gaining independence from Britain in 1960.

Achebe, who was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1990 car accident, is married with four children.

“Things Fall Apart” has sold more than 10 million copies around the world and has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.

Achebe was not the only Nigeria write to make news in recent weeks.  A writer, much his junior, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the Organe Prize, which is given annually for the best full-length novel by a woman author written in English and published in the UK.  Here’s a excerpt from a interview with Adichie:

Adichie resists stereotypical views of Africa. “We have a long history of Africa being seen in ways that are not very complimentary, and in America [where she has been studying for the past 10 years] being seen as an African writer comes with baggage that we don’t necessarily care for. Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe Aids. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. I was told by a professor at Johns Hopkins University that he didn’t believe my first book [Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003] because it was too familiar to him. In other words, I was writing about middle-class Africans who had cars and who weren’t starving to death, and therefore to him it wasn’t authentically African.”

 Adichie makes several other important points in the interview about race, media coverage of Africa, collective memory, and the middle class in African countries.  It’s well worth the read.

I also found it particularly interesting this has been framed as a great success for “African” writers, and it is.  But is shouldn’t be lost on people that both writers are Nigerian; they are both from the same ethnic group–Igbos, and they both have similar subject matter in their work.

If anyone has read the works of either of these authors and would like to add any reviews or discussion of the works in the comments section, feel free.

This cartoon is years old, but it’s one of the best political cartoons I ever did. Donna reminded me of it last month (you can see the black-and-white version at her post), and I decided it would be a fun exercise to color it. I was tempted to redraw the whole thing, too — the original is very crudely drawn, which I realize is part of its charm, but occasionally it reduces the effectiveness (particularly in facial expressions) — but instead I just redrew all the faces and some of the hands.

Genarlow Wilson, the teenage boy who was sentenced to ten years in prison for consensual¹ oral sex with another teenager (at the time, he was 17 and the girl was 15, which is “aggravated child molestation” according to Georgia law), had his sentence thrown out by a judge who called his sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice.” But the Attorney General of Georgia has appealed, meaning that for now Wilson remains in prison.

Wilson’s long minimum sentence stems from the fact that Georgia’s laws, at the time of Wilson’s conviction, called for a harsh 10-year minimum sentence for “aggravated child molestation” (which includes oral sex). If Wilson had had coital sex with the 15-year-old, rather than getting a blow job, he would have been sentenced to one year instead of ten years. I suspect the harsher penalties for non-coital sex were based on the association of non-coital sex with homosexuality; so although Wilson is being punished for straight sex, he may be a victim of homophobia.

It’s also hard not to suspect that the system would have found a way to be more merciful — or the Attorney General would have given this appeal a pass — if Wilson weren’t Black.

One last disturbing note about this case: Wilson was also acquitted of raping a different girl at the same party. Of course it’s impossible to be 100% certain, but from what ABC reported, it sounds to me like Wilson probably is a rapist, despite the acquittal.

In a portion of a tape obtained by “Primetime,” Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

Other portions of the tape show a second girl, who was 15 and later said she did not drink that night. She was recorded having oral sex with several boys in succession, including Wilson.

The following morning, Wilson got a phone call that would change his life. He learned from a friend that the 17-year-old had gone to the police to report that she’d been raped.

“I was, like, ‘What? When was this happening? Did this happen at the same party I was at?’” Wilson said. “It was shocking to me.”

Authorities believed the 17-year-old alleged rape victim and said she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual acts, which is what Georgia law requires, otherwise these acts can be considered rape.

Wilson maintained his innocence. “I know that it was consensual,” he told “Primetime.” “I wouldn’t went on with the acts if it wasn’t consensual. I’m not that kind of person. No means no.”

Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson — the only one without a police record — held out. [...] Jurors voted to acquit Wilson of raping the 17-year-old.

“I mean it wasn’t even an hour,” said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. “We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty.”

Notice that Wilson’s defense — that he understands that “no means no” — is exactly the kind of thinking that leads a lot of date rapists to think their rapes of semi-conscious victims are justified. “She didn’t say no,” in their minds, is enough to make the event “not rape”; that she actively say yes is not required, in this view.

Unfortunately, that belief is held not just by a lot of date-rapists, but by a lot of people everywhere, which is (perhaps) why the jury found acquitting Wilson of rape so easy. My view is that when someone is nearly asleep during sex with a half-dozen boys and men, and when she’s so out of it that she has to be pulled off the bed (presumably because she wasn’t able to get up by herself), and then she says that she didn’t consent — that’s rape.

EDITED TO ADD: Just to be clear, folks, I am in no way claiming that punishing Wilson for consensual sex is okay because in a separate incident he probably raped someone. Obviously, I don’t want the law to work that way. Sorry if my post was unclear on this point.

1. According to Wikipedia, the girl herself has repeatedly said that the oral sex was consensual. (back)

From the Washington Post:

Durham District Attorney Michael B. Nifong, under fire from the North Carolina State Bar for his handling of the Duke lacrosse sexual assault case last year, appeared in court today to defend his own conduct on grounds it was a prosecutor’s duty to pursue a case if he believed a crime had occurred.

“It is not unethical to pursue what some may see as an unwinnable case,” said Nifong’s lawyer, David Freedman, as his client sat at a table before a three-person panel of the bar’s Disciplinary Hearing Commission.

Nifong is fighting to keep his law license. The allegations him include making pretrial inflammatory statements, withholding evidence helpful to the defense and lying about it to a judge.

If it can be proven that Nifong withheld evidence and lied to the judge, he should be disbarred and, ideally, put behind bars.

The Post article makes it sound as if the state bar’s attorney, Katherine Jean, is really emphasizing the “she changed her story” angle:

At that time he learned that the accuser had already twice recanted to police and had given conflicting accounts of the number of men involved in the alleged assault, ranging from three to five to 20, Jean said.

The “she said she was raped by 20 men” claim is complete bullshit, and Jean shouldn’t be using it. The only evidence Mary Doe ever claimed that “20 men” raped her claim was a thirdhand report from a police officer who never actually spoke to her; no police officer, or other witness, has said they heard her make this claim.

Looking at this from a broader perspective, the expectation that a rape victim’s story will never change is an instance of “The Platonic Rape Victim Fallacy” - the belief that there is a single, correct fashion in which all True Rape Victims behave. If a rape victim acts in any other way — for example, in in the earliest hours after the alleged rape she fails to produce a simple, coherent, well-organized narrative when talking to police — then according to the Plationic Rape Victim Fallacy, she wasn’t raped at all.

Whether or not the Duke Lacrosse Players committed rape that night (I now believe they did not, although of course I could be mistaken), thinking that an inconsistent narrative shows no rape took place is wrong.

I’m also bothered that (again, according to the Post article, which may not be giving complete info) Jean is not attacking Nifong over the bad photo ID procedures used, an example of genuine misconduct.

(Curtsy to a comment left by Sailorman).

A NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: With trepidation, I’m not limiting the comments here to feminists. However, obnoxious drive-by comments will not be tolerated. If you have something intelligent to say, and you can say it without being belligerent, then go ahead; otherwise, please go away.

My grandmother died on the weekend. I’m going to try and write something about her life at some point.

In the meantime all I’ve got energy to write about is TV. They aired the season finale of Heroes* in NZ yesterday. My main reaction was to miss Joss Whedon. I know that he could never have kept as many threads going as the creators of Heroes did, but the season finale would have been much better if he’d written it:

1. The ending of Hiro’s story for this season wouldn’t have been him leaving Ando to go kill Sylar alone. I have no time for individualistic superhero crap.

2. The female characters would have occasionally talked to each other, this may even have lead to them developing relationships with each other.

3. The two characters with the most central arcs in the season wouldn’t be the rich, powerful, white guys.

Although we are spared yet another crazy, very skinny female character.

* A show I’ve only just started watching. It’s enjoyable to watch, and has its moments - but the virgin/whore complex is a problem and I’m not loving the existance of a mystical black man without a name.

Since 2005, I have been following the story of the Cherokee Freedmen.  The Freedmen are the descendants of Cherokee slaves, and there has been a move afoot to strip the Freedmen of their voting and citizenship rights.  They have been living, intermarrying, and actively participating in the nation for well over 100 years.  What first drew me to this story was the fascinating racial dynamics of the story; in particular I was interested in how whiteness and blackness were influencing the definition of who is/isn’t Cherokee.  However, since I started following the story more actively over the past several months, I discovered some of the other issues beyond the racial identity dynamics.  The other elephant in the room is the corrupt government of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (CNO), which is currently under the leadership of Chad Smith.  The ploy to remove the Cherokee Freedmen is just one of the many tactics that Smith and his predecessors have used to solidify their own power.

The upcoming June 23rd election pits Smith (Principal Chief) and Joe Grayson (Deputy Chief) against Stacy Leeds (Principal Chief) and Raymond Vann (Deputy Chief) .  Leeds was the first woman Justice on the Cherokee Supreme court, and she wrote the decision that initially prevented the Freedmen from being ousted from the CNO.   Leeds is also a law professor.

Chad Smith and his political allies have shown many signs that they do not like to play fair.  For example, recently the Tribal Council passed a last minute proposed Constitutional Amendment for the June 23rd ballot.  The problem–many absentee voters have already received their ballots, and the time to pursue necessary debate on the subject is minimal.  But this is just one more misdeed in a long list for Smith.  Smith and company are well connected Republicans, and Smith has even been connected to the likes of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.¹  Then, of course, there is his decision to work to disenroll the Cherokee Freedmen.  With a relatively small percentage of the CNO voting, the Freedmen were disenrolled. However, thanks to court injunctions the Freedmen will still be able to vote in this election. Having followed this for a while what seems clear is that Smith and company are much more concerned about cronyism and keeping themselves in power.  They don’t demonstrate a respect for the rule of law and Constitutional politics, and they are bankrolled by big Republican money.

As we’ve discussed before, this decision threatens to undermine the tribal sovereignty of the CNO, and the tension between the CNO and the Congressional Black Caucus is rapidly building.  I’m confident that most people of the CNO are not corrupt, anti-black racists.  You don’t have to look far to find people like Stacy Leeds, John Cornsilk, David Cornsilk, my blog friend The Local Crank, the bloggers at Wampum and professor Steve Russell, who believe that the Cherokee Nation is a strong multiracial Nation.² It was a very small minority of the Cherokee citizens who voted to disenroll the Freedmen (the turn out for the election was atrocious).

In contrast to her opponent, Stacy Leeds is the progressive candidate.  She is pro-choice; she not underwritten by the Republican party; and she supports the rule of (Constitutional) law.  She supports women rights and has been active in the effort to prevent violence against women.  Leeds doesn’t believe that race should be the basis for citizenship, and she has several other progressive elements to her platform, which you can read here. 

Chad Smith and his cronies have tried to find every way possible to subvert the rule of law, and they need to be stopped.  It looks like a Stacy Leeds administration will be able to do that. 

Other Cherokee Election Links

A Link to my Previous Cherokee Posts

Wampum is very closly following the election.

Leeds Campaign Site

On June 15th at 6PM The Cherokee Phoenix is hosting a Debate; the debate can be seen on the Cherokee Phoenix website www.cherokee.org

1. I don’t know if Smith was directly involved in any of Abramoff’s misdeeds, but what is relevant is that these are the types of folks with whom Smith associates. (back)
2. Earlier Temple 3 commented saying, “I believe the Cherokee nation has a right to self-determination - just as Africans do in the US and beyond. I suppose I need to hear more of the consequences, and there could be many. After all, I don’t suspect that those rolls were 100% correct…that would be impossible. So, what’s the appeal process? How does that work?”  I can’t comment on exactly how the appeal works–I do have some Cherokee legal folks who read this site, who may be able to explain the details.  The Cherokees do have a Constitution, and much of this is related to what appears to be Smith’s desire to change the Constitution to fit his political needs.  I personally believe that citizenship in a nation should not be based on race, and the closest analogy to this case I can think of would be if the US decided that our black citizens were no longer citizens. (back)

(Spoilers are an inevitable part of life. And of this post.)

I loathe the mob-drama genre. But I make two exceptions: Miller’s Crossing and The Sopranos.

The smart opinions about The Sopranos’ final episode are split — some people hated it, some thought it “perfect.” At least one blogger has already posted on both sides, first con, then pro.

Not to mention the debate about that final cut to five seconds of black (you can rewatch the last scene on YouTube); did Tony get killed without ever knowing it?¹ The entire last scene was filmed and edited to give the audience the expectation that something horribly violent was about to happen, and my first thought was that Tony had been neatly shot through the head — instant death for the mob boss, horror for his watching family (exactly what happened to Phil Leotardo earlier in the episode).

But it wasn’t that ending, which everyone was expecting and wanting and probably would have found disappointing. It was an anti-ending; the Sopranos aren’t whacked. Life just goes on. Tony isn’t in hell, but he is in New Jersey. And at some level he and Carmilla are expecting the end every time a stranger walks through a door. As Berger says “It seems to me that, in the end, Tony is condemned to live perpetually in the kind of suspense that the restaurant scene developed so well.”

Tony doesn’t get whacked just then; but he gets whacked eventually. Or he doesn’t, and winds up dying miserable and hated by his relatives, like his mother and his uncle. But until he dies, he won’t grow, and he won’t change, because in The Sopranos people don’t change; they just become more refined and horrible versions of what they always were. Tony is what he always was, a sociopath who loves his wife and kids and doesn’t really feel a thing for anyone else.

* * *

The thing that most puzzles me: That creepy cat. Mikey suggests that it’s Christopher reincarnated, which would be pathetic; Christopher comes back and not only is he not pissed at Tony, he’s still a complete narcissist.

The two funniest moments: Janice declaring that she’s nothing like her own mother, and following that up by asking if anyone’s ever grateful to her for that? (Lord, those poor children.)

And Meadow saying that she was inspired to be a civil rights activist because of all the times she watched the FBI drag her father away.

1. ”You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?,” as Bobby asked Tony hopefully. As it turned out, the answer to Bobby’s question, at least as pertains to Bobby, was that you not only hear it, you see it as well, in agonizing slowmo. (back)

1) Best. Footnote. Ever.

Twelve extremely eminent law professors — Vikram Amar, Randy Barnett, Robert Bork, Alan Dershowitz, Viet Dinh, Douglas Kmiec, Gary Lawson, Earl Maltz, Thomas Merrill, Robert Nagel, Richard Parker, and Robert Pushaw — have submitted an amicus brief in defense of Scooter Libby. The judge’s order granting the request contained this footnote:

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

Curtsy: Hilzoy and The Debate Link.

2) Riborkulous and Hypoborkable.

Judge Robert Bork is suing the Yale Club of New York City for a million dollars plus punitive damanges because he fell while climbing onto a one-foot-high speaker’s dias (the dias lacked stairs or a handrail). I’m sorry to hear of Judge Bork’s injuries, and hope he recovers completely.

Nonetheless, Judge Bork better hope his case’s Judge isn’t a fan of Judge Bork’s legal opinions. To quote Judge Bork¹ :

Our expensive, capricious and unpredictable civil justice systems present precisely the kind of conflicting and costly state regulation of commerce that the Commerce Clause was designed to solve. Lawsuits, verdicts, settlements and the insurance necessary to defend and indemnify against them, are driving up the cost of goods and services everywhere, and consumers are paying the bill. The litigation explosion has no respect for the state lines because commerce and insurance are now national. Interstate commerce and trade have become the principal victims of a runaway liability system.

Courts are now meccas for every conceivable unanswered grievance or perceived injury. Juries dispense lottery-like windfalls, attracting and rewarding imaginative claims and far-fetched legal theories. Today’s merchant enters the marketplace with trepidation - anticipating from the civil justice system the treatment that his ancestors experienced with the Barbary pirates.

As The New York Personal Injury Blog points out, Bork’s case seems exceptionally weak; it is difficult to imagine Robert Bork the judge having much sympathy for Robert Bork the plantiff.

Curtsies to Overlawyered, Volokh, and (again) The Debate Link.

1. Bork and Olson, Trial Lawyers and Other Closet Federalists, Washington Times, March 9, 1995 (back)

I posted this a while back on Ambling Along the Aqueduct, and Amp linked to it in one of his link farms, but given my tendency to post about political narrative, I thought it might be good to have this post around for people to refer to if they’re wondering about my positions.

Collective Unconscious

My anthropological theory of literature, basically, is that through reading a large sampling of a culture’s literature, it’s possible to deduce some of the basic concerns and narratives running through that culture’s subconscious. This is especially true when a subject becomes trendy in science fiction.

For instance, the way that we (as science fiction writers) explore virtual reality as a social space reflects our anxieties about social spaces in the “meat” world. Depictions of virtual reality tend to cleave to older cultural dialogues about cities. They’re seen as freeing, a place for people to move beyond mundane concerns — much as the theorist Simmel saw cities — or they’re seen as oppressive places where human interaction is traded for fetishization — much as the theorist Durkheim saw cities.

I see art as our culture’s roiling subconscious. Our beliefs and anxieties bubble to the surface. Especially in the fiction of ideas.

Narrative and Society

I think that one of the strongest effects of culture on the human psyche is to shape the narratives that we use to dissect the world. These narratives give me a lens for interpreting what happens to me. I, as a western woman, am likely to interpret my choices from an individualistic perspective. I decide things. I make them happen. In Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal, Laura Ahearn discusses the ways in which Nepali women will talk around the concept of agency; saying, for instance, that they were forced to make a love match because of a magic spell, rather than that they chose to make a love match.

Narratives obviously shape our interpretations of gender as well. The ways we view the actions of men, and the ways in which we view the actions of women, are subtly but importantly different. This is one of the major reasons, I believe, why people are so disturbed by gender ambiguity. When presented with an individual who does not visually present as male or female, people have trouble figuring out what narratives to apply to that person, and thus how to interpret or interact with hir.

Cultural narratives are shaped in manifold ways, of course. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to look at novels and short stories (and plays and television shows) as direct ways in which we shape our narratives. When The Simpsons presents an image of a boorish, stupid husband who is too stupid to be trusted with simple tasks, and his competent housewife who is content to be his helpmeet — they are tapping into those narratives. At times, they manage to use the narratives to mock themselves, in a complex weave of upholding and subverting the paradigm.

Roseanne, on the other hand, presenting complex individuals who do not so easily fit into the standard narratives of male and female, breaks the paradigm for a moment. It pries open our narrative space just long enough to give us a framework for talking about fat, bossy, but extraordinary women, and men who are both involved in manly work and not always in control. (Hat tip to Myca at Alas, a Blog for those examples.)

In literature, we see this with something like Delany’s Trouble on Triton, which poses some alternate methods for categorizing sexuality. Rather than gay and straight exclusively, we see people categorized by whether they prefer younger or older partners, their inclination toward sadomasochism, and so on.
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The students and faculty at Riverdale Christian Academy decided to have a plantation party for their graduation. Notice that the party was not to promote any kind of understanding of history; it was a graduation party with a “Southern plantation during the Civil War” theme. So the students and teachers decided to dress up wearing blackface, and mocking runaway slaves.  According to the school principal, the point of the skit was to “roast the graduates” and “poke a little fun at their mannerisms.” You can see him actually make this statement in the video posted at this link.

The photos were brought to light when blogger Tate Hill, at Urban Knowledge, found the photos at a photo sharing site called Bebo. The photos are no longer viewable via the links he provided; I’m assuming the poster either made them private or took them down.

Now Mr. Hill is getting deluged with comments from anonymous racism apologists, certainly not a big surprise for those of us who routinely blog against racism. Isn’t it so incredibly sad to see how people’s bigotry spews out when they think they are anonymous?

I also find the “well many of the school’s students are Hispanic” argument to be utterly unconvincing.  Apparently, some folks think it is acceptable for Latinos to be anti-Black, which several commenters noted is fairly absurd.

I have posted just one of the pictures above, which apparently had the caption “Bringing home the runaway slave in the Senior skit.”

Readers can go to Urban Knowledge blog to see some of the other photos, and their captions.  Mr. Hill also has two follow up posts in response to the bigots who tried to take over comments in his first post.  You can check them out 1st here and 2nd here.  Plus, I know that my readers realize that we can’t let the comments on Mr. Hill’s site be overtaken by people who think a Civil War Plantation themed party is a good way to “roast graduating students” and ”poke fun at some of their mannerisms” (in the school Principal’s words not mine).   Go give the man some love for fighting these ignorant folks.

I find it very sad to see how so many people think racism and slavery are a joke, but the themed parties show no sign of waning.

I went to a reading by Khaled Hosseini last night, at the bay area Book Group Expo. Khaled read from a section of his new book A Thousand Splendid Suns, which someone described as being the history of Afghanistan viewed through the eyes of two women.

The reading was fascinating/frightening: it detailed the search of a pregnant woman and her surrogate mother for a hospital that would take them in while she gave birth. Women had been banned from all the hospitals in Afghanistan, bar one, and that one lacked water, electricity, and basic medical supplies. When the woman’s baby turned out to be in the breech position, the doctor apologized for the lack of anasthetic, and then continued to do a cesarian section anyway.

Khaled Hosseini is a physician who has worked internationally; consequently, the medical details had a frightening heft. He described the way in which the pregnant woman’s mouth stretched back and frothed with pain.

As he passed into this description, the audience, which was full, began to shift. The demographic was mostly women, but with more men than last year (I’d make a guess at 25-30%). Everyone was uncomfortable. As Hosseini described the doctor’s whispered apologies, I heard people exclaiming to each other “There isn’t going to be any anasthetic…!” Everyone appeared to find the idea shocking, unthinkable. Hosseini himself said that when he had gone into Afganistan as a physician, hoping to lend aid, he’d been shocked to hear from doctors that the sheer number of injuries that had been incurred by the war when the warlords entered Afghanistan meant that physicians were constantly running out of basic supplies. A doctor told him that it had, during the war, become expected to perform cesarian sections, and even amputations, without anasthetic. “As a doctor from the west,” said Hosseni, “the idea was wild…”
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From Scoop:

Top established Wellington fashion designers Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel, and Voon will join some of the city’s most promising up-and-coming new design talent to raise money for Wellington Women’s Refuge, on Thursday June 7.

Fashion HQ will showcase Wellington fashion talent at an All-Star fashion auction on June 7. Organised by a team of Massey University public relations students, the auction will feature garments donated by deNada, Paris House and Haley Smith NZ, as well as renowned Wellington designers Fin, Robyn Mathieson, Ashley Fogel and Voon. All proceeds will be donated to Wellington Women’s Refuge.

The designers who are so generously donating their garments to a good cause, live off the labour of garment workers. In New Zealand those women would be paid near the minimum wage of $11.25 (that’s $6-8 in the US, depending on what the exchange rate is doing at the time), and when the garments are made off-shore, the women workers are paid much less than that. The people who made the clothes that were donated to Refuge wouldn’t be able to afford to leave an abusive relationship.

I don’t want to simplify the dynamics of violent relationships; I don’t think pay equity alone would end abuse, but it would make it easier for women to leave. So until they pay the women who make their clothes enough money so that the women would have no financial problems if they needed to leave a violent relationship, those designers are full of shit.

PS - I have lots more I want to write about, but am quite distracted, so I may not be posting much till the end of the week.

“Subprime mortgages.” Boy, I sure pick exciting topics, don’t I?

There’s a larger version of this cartoon on Znet.

Women’s deaths are a useful goad for keeping other women in line.

Discuss.

Over at The Debate Link, David, discussing the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, writes:

An interesting article in the UK’s Telegraph asks what the media would do had Israeli forces, rather than Palestinians, abducted a BBC crew. Suffice to say, media coverage would be rather different.

Well, the phrase “Israeli forces” usually refers to Israel’s armed forces, part of the Israeli government. I would hope that if the Israeli government kidnapped a journalist, media coverage would be rather different, compared to the coverage of an obscure terrorist splinter group kidnapping a journalist. These are two very different news stories, and they shouldn’t be treated alike.

And they aren’t treated alike — but not in the way David is implying. Judging from the article David approvingly links to, David expects that the press would pay more attention to, and be more condemning of, Israeli forces kidnapping¹ a reporter. David provides not a single fact or example to support this belief.

So what would happen? For a start, when Israeli forces kidnap a journalist, no one calls it a kidnapping: it’s called an “arrest.”

Palestinian journalist, Awad Rajoub, a reporter for Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language Web site was held by Israeli authorities for close to six months [in 2006] after being accused by the military of “threatening state security.” Rajoub was arrested on 30 November 2005, at which time his computer and mobile phone were seized. He was released on 24 May after an Israeli court ruled there was insufficient evidence to send him to trial.²
Rajoub, who also writes for the Qatari-based Al-Sharq newspaper and the Islam Online Web site, said that he was beaten during his detention.

I did a Nexis search and found that in the two months following his arrest, Rajoub was mentioned exactly twice in major newspapers; neither mention was over 150 words, and neither mention was at all disapproving of Israel’s action.³

In contrast, Nexis found 248 mentions of “Alan Johnston” in conjunction with “Gaza” in the two months following Johnston’s kidnapping. These stories are far longer and more substantive than the stories about Rajoub’s arrest, and are not written in neutral terms (nor should they have been). For example, the Washington Post’s story on April 13, 2007 bore the headline: “Hundreds Rally for Captive Reporter; International Effort Mounted for BBC Journalist Abducted a Month Ago in Gaza Strip.”

Contrary to David’s expectations, it’s clear that the press is far more interested and far more critical when a Palestinian terrorist group kidnaps a journalist than when the Israeli army does.

I’m sure that some folks will be quick to point out that there is “no moral equivalence,” as they say, between the Israeli army jailing a journalist for six months and the terrorists who are holding Alan Johnson, because with the Israelis, there is a possibility of a court looking at a case. I am happy to agree the Israeli system of kidnapping journalists is morally superior to terrorism, however, so please leave that particular strawman in peace.

More importantly, I’d argue that the moral equivalence David implies between “Palestinians” and “Israeli forces” doesn’t exist either. To quote Pendantry:

Now, remind me, exactly how many troops does the Palestinian army have? Oh yeah, none whatsoever.

There is a very simple notion in political science, one that goes back to Max Weber: A state possesses, by definition, a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, and it protects that monopoly. When a state is unable to protect that monopoly, it isn’t a state. There is no Palestinian state, and a non-existent state can not have a monopoly on violence.[...]

However, it seems that there are quite a few people who seem to think that “the Palestinians” are responsible for terrorism, and that making concessions to them is giving in to terrorists. This article, for example, by an author who appears to suffer from the double stigma of being both a Likudnik and a Randroid, suffers from this sort of thinking. It is just like believing that “the Jews” control the banks. This kind of thinking derives not so much from a false belief as from a confusion between ontological categories.

To explain this, I need to talk a bit about the basic theory of collectives. Margaret Thatcher once said that there is no such thing as society. She was right, although unsurprisingly for all the wrong reasons. Society does not possess the ability to have mental states, goals, intentions or to undertake cognition. Society is just a collection of people.

Any bunch of things can be a collection. Collections may not have clear definitions. They may be fuzzy or ambiguous. They need not be Aristotelian sets. The Americans are a collection. The Israelis are a collection. The Jews are a collection. I need not be able to identify precisely who is an American, an Israeli or a Jew to identify those things as collections. I just need to assert that there is more than one person or thing that is American, Israeli or Jewish.

Collections are not entities capable of cognition or coherent action. They do not plan, consider possibilities, have needs or goals, or take responsibility for things. There are, however, groups that can have needs and goals, that can plan, undertake cognition and take purposeful actions. They are called collectives.

Firms, armies, states, governments, unions, churches, clubs and many other kinds of groups are collectives. They can be identified as collectives because they can be recognised as having needs, goals, and intentions, a capacity for cognition, and the ability to undertake coherent, meaningful action. Collectives can, therefore, be responsible for the actions they undertake. Collections can not. [...]

Now, this is the key point of this whole post: The Palestinians are a collection, and are therefore incapable of being responsible for terrorism. Hamas is a collective. Fatah is a collective. Al-Qaeda is a collective. They are capable of bearing collective responsibility for terrorism. The Palestinians are not.

That is why there is no moral equivalency between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel is a collective. It is an entity capable of cognition, intentional action and responsibility. The actions of the IDF, the state of repression that prevails in the West Bank and Gaza - Israel is responsible for those things, whether justified or not. The Palestinians, because they are not a collective, are not responsible for terrorism, even when it is undertaken in their name by some collective entity.

The Palestinians are not even a member of the same category as Israel, and thus no moral equivalency is possible.

It’s tragic that a terrorist group kidnapped Johnston, but attributing the acts of a terrorist group to “Palestinians” is inaccurate, unfair and bolsters the worldview of anti-Palestinian racists. (If someone said that “the Jews were caught trying to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque,” that would be be wrong for similar reasons; the Makhteret is a Jewish terrorist group, but it doesn’t follow that Makhteret’s acts can be fairly attributed to “Jews”).

David seems to think that “Palestinians” (his phrase)⁴ are getting off light in the press compared to “Israeli forces,” but his own chosen example shows that the reverse is true. Israel is, by and large, given a pass by the mainstream press when they kidnap arrest reporters. This is opposite of how the press should act. It’s legitimate to expect the Israeli government (or any government) to act with much greater moral decency than a terrorist group; and the press should be willing to hold governments to higher standards, and to make it a big deal when a government stoops to arresting reporters. Too many of Israel’s supporters seem to suggest that it’s wrong (or even anti-semitic) to expect Israel to act better than the scummiest governments and terrorist groups in the world. I disagree.

By the way, David also linked to a good Martha Fineman Nussbaum essay arguing “Against Academic Boycotts.” Fineman Nussbaum makes a good case that academic boycotts are both useless and morally dubious.

1. Not that kidnapping is the worst Israeli forces have ever done to a journalist; remember the British journalist James Miller, who was shot to death by Israeli forces while wearing a helmet and jacket marked “TV” and waving a white flag? (back)
2. I should note that at least in this case, the Israeli system — in which Rajoub was freed after six months due to lack of evidence — is superior to the US practice. (back)
3. Here is the complete text of The Washington Post’s coverage of the Rajoub arrest, published on December 5, 2005: “JERUSALEM — Israeli forces have arrested a reporter for the Web site of the Arabic satellite television channel al-Jazeera in the West Bank town of Hebron. An army spokeswoman said Awad Rajoub, 29, was being held ‘for security reasons.’” (back)
4. And yes, the title of my post is intentional irony. (back)

A reader (Sekou) at Rachel’s Tavern sent me a link to this fascinating article about a Black single mother who had to file a law suit several years ago to adopt a white child.  I have said before that I don’t personally know of any cases of white kids being adopted into black families.  That obviously doesn’t mean that it does not happen, but it is indeed rare.  The article from the Detroit News says between 2001-05 78 white kids in the state of Michigan were adopted by blacks, compared to 677 black kids adopted by whites.  So white kids raised by black parents are there, but they are uncommon.

There is one glaring problem with the article, and this is a common problem as I have noted in the past.  The article cites that National Association of Black Social Workers as a source of opposition to transracial adoption, but that really is not relevant here.  I can just about guarantee that the NABSW doesn’t have a problem with this case.  Their concern was about a black children being aopted by white parents in large numbers, while prospective black adoptive parents faced numerous hurdles. The article fails to cite one real life white person who was opposed to this adoption on racial grounds. (They do cite some stares by random white people at the end.) 

However, the article does a good job highlighting several other issues.  What is also interesting is that part of the reason the adoptive mother want to adopt this child was to keep her with her sister, who is biracial (black/white I’m assuming).  The adoption of the biracial sister appeared to be a non-issue with opponents.  Now this my friends points out the utter absurdity of conflating race and culture, which I have also addressed before. (Lyonside also helped me put the smackdown on a troll in the comments. It’s worth reading.)  How can you have two siblings being raised by the same biological mother, and people have decided that they somehow have a different culture?  Their difference is race, not culture.  If this was a cross cultural or international adoption, that discussion would be more relevant.  I also think it could be more relevant if this black mother knew absolutely nothing about white people in America, which would mean she didn’t watch any TV, read any magazines, get a job with whites, etc.  Do you realize how difficult that would be? 

What is even more interesting is the part where the black adoptive mother was asked–what kinds of (white) foods she would cook for the daughter.  The mother replied that all the kids eat hot dogs and hamburgers.

I also found the part about people asking her “why she talked black” to be quite fascinating.

Go read the entire article from the Detroit news; it’s really a good story.

Via Mahablog and Lawyers Guns And Money, I read this interesting Washington Post article about a split in the “pro-life” movement over the “Partial Birth Abortion” ban.

What’s interesting is that some of the pro-lifers are admitting to the truth about the Partial Birth Abortion ban (PBA ban) — truths that leaders of the pro-life movement have been blatantly lying about for years. In this story, pro-lifers admit:

• That a PBA ban will not prevent a single abortion.
• That the alternative procedures are more dangerous for women.
• That some alternative procedures doctors will use now are if anything more brutal from a fetus-centric point of view.
• That PBA bans have nothing to do with reducing abortion and everything to do with fundraising and Republicans winning elections.

It’s refreshing to read pro-life leaders finally (albeit temporarily) telling the truth.

The most appalling quote comes from the vice president of Focus on the Family, Tom Minnery, arguing in favor of the PBA ban. It’s nothing we didn’t already suspect, but it’s amazing that Minnery was careless enough to say it in pubilc:

“The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

For years pro-lifers have been pushing the same lie: they’ve claimed¹ that a procedure that involves inserting forceps into a woman’s uterus as many as a dozen times over (a standard D&E) has no greater chance of causing injury than a procedure which requires only a single insertion (a D&X, which is more-or-less the procedure that’s been banned by the Partial Birth Abortion ban).²

Now Focus on the Family’s man in charge of policy not only admits that was a lie, but suggests that increased risk to women is a benefit: the “greater danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus” is good, because it might discourage some “later-term”³ abortions.

As Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money writes:

As you can see, most anti-choicers (despite the bad faith Congressional findings that 2+2=171) don’t really think that these bans on a safer procedure protect women’s physical health. They simply believe that women can’t be trusted to make judgments about their own lives, and if this causes some women to be seriously injured that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s almost impossible to overstate how disgusting this legislation is, and how deeply entwined outright misogyny is with the American “pro-life” movement.

Although Minnery is correct to say that the ban he and his movement favor puts women in danger, I doubt there will be any less abortion as a result. Chuck Donovan of the pro-life Family Research Council is probably right when he says “there may not be even one fewer abortion in the country as a result” of the PBA ban — but note that he’s only admitting that now that the PBA ban has been made law. For years, contrary to what Donovan now admits, pro-life leaders have been claiming — ridiculously — that the partial-birth abortion ban would save little baby lives (all the better to pry open the wallets of the pro-life rank and file). And the vast majority of pro-lifers in this country, who are either totally amoral about lying or complete dupes of their leadership, have been content to let them get away with it.

Now some in the pro-life movement — although no one as major league as Focus On The Family or the Family Research Council — are complaining about the constant lying about this issue by pro-lifer leaders. From “An Open Letter To James Dobson”:

Dr. Dobson, you mislead Christians claiming this ruling will “protect children.” The court granted no authority to save the life of even a single child…. Your correspond­ence depart­ment… told us that with this PBA ruling, “The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for women to have an abortion in the last trimester.” Online at KGOV.com, we also document other pro-life media outlets misrep­resenting this vicious ruling. Following your example, many national ministries have spent years using the PBA ban to motivate financial donations, all the while misrepre­senting the legal effect of the ban. Today millions of Christians, including your own staff, have been deceived. …The court explicitly stated the PBA ban “does not on its face impose a substantial obstacle” to “late-term” abortion (p. 26). And since this ban cannot prevent a single abortion, of course, it imposes no obstacle, and neither does it “protect children” (your words) or ban “abortion in the last trimester” (words offered by some of your staff).

More pro-life dissidents, quoted in the Washington Post article:

Rev. Bob Enyart, a Christian talk radio host and pastor of the Denver Bible Church, said the real issue is fundraising. “Over the past seven years, the partial-birth abortion ban as a fundraising technique has brought in over a quarter of a billion dollars” for major antiabortion groups, “but the ban has no authority to prevent a single abortion, and pro-life donors were never told that,” he said. “That’s why we call it the pro-life industry.”

In Rohrbough’s view, partisan politics is also involved. “What happened in the abortion world is that groups like National Right to Life, they’re really a wing of the Republican Party, and they’re not geared to push for personhood for an unborn child — they’re geared to getting Republicans elected,” he said. “So we’re seeing these ridiculous laws like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban put forward, and then we’re deceived about what they really do.”

But despite this deep split within the pro-life movement, rest assured that there are some things that they all have in common. For instance, the way that virtually all of these pro-life spokespeople are men. For another, the way that none of them ever express the slightest concern for women’s health or well-being. So you see, they agree on the fundamentals.

More blogging on this story: Our Bodies Our Selves, Feministing, Balkinization,A Foolish Consistency, Dizzy Dayz, Political Animal, and Ryoga. And the aforementioned Mahablog and Lawyers, Guns and Money. And (edited to add) The Debate Link, The Thinkery, Fattmixx, Bligbi, RH Reality Check, Pseudo-Adrienne, The Carpetbagger Report, Obsidian Wings, and Pandagon.

1. See, for example, the text of the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban, which explicitly claims “partial birth” abortions are never safer. (back)
2. This article, via Mahablog, describes other ways doctors are experimenting with possibly less safe procedures in order to avoid breaking the new law. (back)
3. In fact, as Mahablog points out, most uses of the now-banned D&X procedure take place pre-viability, and would be more accurately described as “mid-term” than “late-term” abortions. (back)

The National Center for Children in Poverty has released a brief on how state policies affect low income children and children living in poverty. You can link to the entire report here.  Here are the states with the highest and lowest percentages of children who are poor or low income.

10 States With the Highest % Low Income Children (low income is defined as income at or below 200% of the poverty level; this would be under $40,000 for a family of 4 in 2006)

1. New Mexico 58% 
2. Arizona 55%
3. Mississippi 55% 
4. Montana 55% 
5. Louisiana 53%
6. Texas 53%
7. West Virginia 50%
8. Oklahoma 49%
9. Arkansas 49%
10. Kentucky 48% (tie)
11. Washington, DC 48% (tie)

10 States With the Highest % Children in Poverty (poverty would be below $20,000 for a family of 4 in 2006)

1. Washington, DC 30%
2. Alabama 29%
3. Louisiana 29%
4. New Mexico 28%
5. Arkansas 26%
6. Mississippi 26%
7. Texas 26%
8. Arizona 25% 
9. Montana 24%
10. Kentucky 24%

10 States With the Lowest % of Low Income Children

1. New Hampshire 21% 
2. Minnesota 26% 
3. Massachusetts 27%
4. Connecticut 28%
5. New Jersey 29%
6. Hawaii 32%
7. Maryland 32%
8. Colorado 35%
9. Delaware 35%
10. Virginia 35%

10 States With the Lowest % of Children in Poverty

1. New Hampshire 8%
2. Minnesota 10%
3. Massachusetts 12%
4. Hawaii 12%
5. Alaska 13%
6. Colorado 13%
7. Maryland 13%
8. Nevada 14%
9. Vermont 14%
10. Connecticut 14%

There are is a correlation between the level of poverty among children and the percentage of the population in each state that is Non-Hispanic White. I calculated the correlation between the number of low income children and the % of the population that is Non-Hispanic White.  The correlation is r=-.242.  Which basically means that there is a negative association between the percent white and the number of low income families, or plainly put–the number of low income families increases as the percentage of the Non-Hispanic white population decreases.