It strikes me that the North and the South have a lot in common, on the slavery issue. Both the North and the South have significant histories of racist slavery. Both of them tried to rewrite history, to make themselves look less awful.

The difference is that the North succeeded in rewriting history; very few people now remember that all the original Northern states were slave states. And in the North, just like in the South, it was not a moral awakening but a war that delivered a mortal blow to slavery; but in the North’s case, it was the Revolutionary War that did slavery in.¹

The South hasn’t succeeded that well, so everyone remembers that the South had slaves, but somehow many people now believe — contrary to what the South’s leaders, in the lead-up to the Civil War, said — that the South didn’t fight the civil war to preserve slavery.

I respect attempts to uncover the whitewashed history of slavery and racism in the northern states. But I don’t think that project either requires or excuses whitewashing the history of slavery and racism in the southern states.

1. I’m aware that slavery in the North didn’t end instantly with the Revolutionary War, any more than it ended instantly in the South with the Civil War. But in both cases, the War can reasonably be seen as the essential event bringing the eventual end about. (back)

From the International Herald Tribune:

A female teacher and a 13-year-old student planned some sort of life together in Mexico after fleeing Nebraska together, but they were tripped up by a lack of cash, the Baja California policeman who detained the pair said Saturday.

Kelsey Peterson, a 25-year-old sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, was detained Friday in the border city of Mexicali.

She was turned over to the FBI early Saturday and remains in custody. The boy, ________, is staying with relatives in Mexicali.

As an undocumented migrant, ________ apparently will not be allowed to return to the United States. But police here have told him to stay in touch in case he is needed to testify in any possible criminal case.

Via ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!, who also points out that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is refusing to say if they’re planning to deport the victim’s parents or not.

So when the next unauthorized migrant gets raped or kidnapped, the parents now have a very powerful reason to try and resolve the situation themselves, rather than report it to police. Lovely.

Tiny Cat Pants, in a post entitled “How Nice For Child Molesters,” gets at why this story is so horrifying:

Great. Let’s just have a whole underclass of people with no legal standing and no legal recourse and let’s just let every corrupt corporation and evil jackass prey on them while we all sit back and wring our hands about whether they don’t deserve it just a tiny bit because they or their parents came here illegally.

That will be good fun and totally moral!

For more discussion of this, see posts by Brownifemipower and Anxious Black Woman.

A fascinating New York Times article, “The Evangelical Crackup,” argues that the Evangelical right is changing; Bush disillusionment and the passing away of the elders is making a new Evangelical right that will be more focused on social work and fighting poverty, and less on restricting reproductive rights and fighting the gay menace.

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.

The backlash on the right against Bush and the war has emboldened some previously circumspect evangelical leaders to criticize the leadership of the Christian conservative political movement. “The quickness to arms, the quickness to invade, I think that caused a kind of desertion of what has been known as the Christian right,” Hybels, whose Willow Creek Association now includes 12,000 churches, told me over the summer. “People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening.”

I don’t know. The article’s author, David Kirkpatrick, has apparently put years into learning about the Evangelical movement, and I hesitate to question his expertise. But even so, what’s going on right now could just be a temporary retrenching in the wake of the failed Bush presidency; a more successful right-wing presidency, next year or four years after that or four after that, could bring all the borderline evangelicals right back into the fold.

Reading his article reminded me of the many right-wingers who have confidently declared feminism to be dead, again and again and again and again, every five or ten years for as long as I can recall. And, for that matter, conservatives who just a few years ago were pontificating on why it is the Democrats would Never Win Elections Again. They were wrong, and I suspect lefties who confidently predict the death of the Christian right are wrong for the same basic reason: It’s easy to believe what we wish to be true.¹

Over at Orcinus, Sara Robinson argues that we are going to see two Evangelical futures; much of the base will peel away into the mainstream, as the Times article argues is already happening, but a new hard-core of radical right Christians will remain, focused on Muslims rather than Blacks, queers or Mexicans as the new symbol of Ultimate Evilhood. (Robinson argues that the younger generation of evangelicals simply lacks the ferocity of homophobia necessary to maintain lesbians and gays as the ultimate boogie monsters). I’m not totally persuaded by Robinson — for example, her belief that anti-migrant xenophobia won’t find much traction in the US seems very optimistic, and very unlike what’s going on in the country today — but her discussion is smart and damned interesting. (I’m not sure that right-wing Christians will get much out of it other than pissed off, however.)

1. Since I wrote this paragraph, I came across this excellent post in the Revealer making the same argument about the Times article. (back)

From Feministe, via Fetch Me My Axe:

Tuesday, November 6, is election day in Philadelphia, and presents an opportunity for Philly voters to do something about Judge Teresa Carr Deni, who recently dismissed rape charges against a defendant who stood accused of raping a prostitute at gunpoint because she felt it was a robbery, not a rape.

In a rare move, the Philadelphia Bar Association has come out against the retention of Judge Deni after initially recommending retention. If you’re a voter in Philadelphia, this is your chance to make a difference and boot out a judge who clearly does not know the law, or does not believe the law applies to sex workers.

Here.

From Reappropriate:

Story Quickpoints:

• In 2004, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ephraim Cruz became a whistleblower against the mistreatment of detainees that he witnessed while working at the Douglas Border Patrol Station. Reported abuse of detainees included overcrowding of cells, denial of food for 20-30 hours to children and pregnant women, and the forcing of a male detainee into a “stress position” until he collapsed in pain and exhaustion.
• Though Ephraim wrote memos and letters to his supervisors and political representatives for nearly a year, nothing was done about the mistreatment of undocumented aliens at the Douglas station. Meanwhile, Ephraim faced retaliation from his co-workers and supervisors in U.S. Border Patrol for his whistle-blowing.
• In 2006, Ephraim was charged — and acquitted in federal court — of transporting an illegal immigrant across the border. Ephraim believes the charges brought against him were thinly-veiled retribution for his whistle-blowing.
• Now, U.S. Border Patrol is attempting to dismiss Ephraim based on the same charges that he was acquitted of by a federal court. He has until Friday (November 9, 2007) to either resign from his post or be fired.
• Ephraim doesn’t have the money to hire a civil attorney to help combat this latest move by the U.S. Border Patrol, nor can he find a lawyer willing to take on the case pro bono. Ephraim Cruz needs your help!
• If you are (or you know) a civil attorney experienced in a case like this and willing to help Ephraim, please email him at ephraimcruz@hotmail.com.
• If you are willing to donate a few dollars to offset Ephraim’s projected legal fees, please contact him at ephraimcruz@hotmail.com.
• If you are a blogger, journalist, or a member of a non-profit organization, please forward / re-post / link this post to everyone you know to help us get Ephraim’s story out!

Click through to Reappropriate to read the full story. Jenn at Reappropriate has really done a lot of good interviewing work, as well as quoting extensively from primary source documents; there’s a lot more to this story, and Jenn’s post, than the quickpoints quoted above.

UPDATE: For more background on this story, read these three stories from the Tucson Weekly: November 2005 (about the charges being pressed against Cruz), March 2007 (about Cruz’s acquittal), and September 2007 (about the apparent lack of investigation into Cruz’s allegations of abuse of migrants).

It was March 2004 when U.S. Border Patrol Agent Ephraim Cruz first broke ranks, by reporting the grave mistreatment of immigrant detainees at the agency’s station in Douglas.

But despite Border Patrol claims to the contrary, an investigation of these allegations may never have occurred. Or if it did, perhaps the results were too embarrassing for public consumption.

Either way, after a dizzying two months and several dozen phone calls, the Tucson Weekly has been unable to learn which government agency actually conducted the probe–or whether the investigation transpired at all. This failure denotes either outright stonewalling by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security–parent agent to the Border Patrol–or a startling level of federal ineptitude.

Sydney loves hanging off the side of the loft bed like this.

Odd milestone: For ages, Bean and I have been modeling the “see you later, alligator / in a while, crocodile” way of saying goodbye to Sydney (by saying goodbye to each other that way). For the last year or so, Sydney has been imitating us but not quite getting it: if you say “see you later, alligator” to Sydney on the way out of a room, she’d reply “see you later crocodile.”

But in the last week or two, she’s suddenly started responding “see you while crocodile.” Which still isn’t totally correct, but she suddenly gets that it’s supposed to rhyme.

Read the rest of this entry »

(See also: Racial Diversity In Presidential Campaign Staffs).

At The Huffington Post, Zephyr Teachout and Kelly Nuxoll provide a breakdown of presidential campaign staffs by gender. (They also provide links to an explanation of their methodology and a spreadsheet of their data). Yay them!

What they didn’t provide is simplistic color graphs for the simpleminded among us, like me. So that’s what I’m adding.

Erica at Slog writes:

Just two of 15 senior Edwards staffers are women, with women filling 37 percent of the top-paid roles. Three of Obama’s 12 senior staffers are women, and women fill 45 percent of the highest-paying jobs. […] On her campaign, eight of 14 senior staffers, 12 of the top-20 staffers, and 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers are women. Women are also much more likely to play important strategic roles in the Clinton campaign; in the other campaigns, women are more likely to work in finance and internal operations.

This may seem like petty stuff, but I think it foreshadows the gender breakdown of executive staff under a Clinton administration. As I’ve written before, gender matters. Women understand, and care about, women’s interests, which is one reason many women are supporting Clinton despite reservations about her politics.

TheGarance suggests that this data “can fairly be viewed as proxies for what their administrations would look like.” Matthew Yglesias expands on Garance’s point:

Indeed, my bet is that one of the most important legacies of a Hillary Clinton administration would be bequeathing to the Democratic Party a network of powerful plugged-in insiders that winds up containing substantially more women in senior roles than we have right now, along with perhaps a higher number of men comfortable working with power female colleagues and superiors. Given that the party’s voting base is composed mostly of women, this is a transformation that’s going to have to be made sooner or later, and the progressive coalition will definitely be stronger once it’s done.

For example — as Donna quoted in “Alas” comments — “The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Patti Solis hails from Chicago and likely to be White House chief of staff and gatekeeper should Mrs Clinton become president. The President’s Chief of Staff is a very powerful position sometimes dubbed “The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington”. ”

Kevin Drum adds, “if you really want to see a testosterone imbalance, check out each candidate’s list of foreign policy advisors: a grand total of 7 women out of 148 advisers.”

Honestly, I still don’t favor Hillary among the Democrats running; I have problems with all the candidates, but Hillary’s generally hawkish views on international policy are a deal-killer for me. Nonetheless, it’s likely I’ll wind up voting for her in the general election, even if I vote against her in the primary. As Bitch PhD points out, that Hilary will probably bring in the most diverse staff with her — both racially and gender-wise — is a significant consolation.

And there’s no doubt, looking at those senior staff numbers, that Obama and Edwards both suck when it comes to hiring women into positions of power.

Curtsy: Ann at Feministing.

So I watched the new season of The Business, IFC’s oh-so cutting-edge parody of the movie business. Hey, look! Lance, the vain, shallow character very into his sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And he initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(But don’t worry, after some episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, he’s back to his thin self.)

Then I watched the new season of 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s critically-acclaimed mainstream sitcom that prides itself on quirky humor as it makes gentle fun of the TV business. Hey, look! Jenna, the vain, shallow character very into her sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And she initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(But don’t worry, after a few episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, she’s back to her thin self.)

Then yesterday I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Ugly Betty, the critically acclaimed dramedy that prides itself on not going along with the shallow appearance-obsessed bigotries of the rest of TV while it parodies the fashion business. Hey, look! Amanda, the vain, shallow character very into her sexiness, comes back from the between-season break fat! And she initially tries to bluff past the problem! Hoooo-hah! Funny!

(I haven’t watched any of the subsequent episodes yet. My guess is that after 1-3 episodes of funny, funny fat suit jokes, Amanda will be back to her thin self.)

So, remember:

1) Priding yourself on being original is no reason not to use a hackneyed fat suit gag.

2) Becoming fat is the oh-so-funny just desserts vain, sexy characters receive. It’s ironic, get it? Get it?

To be fair, 30 Rock made some feeble gestures at parodying the stupid tastelessness of anti-fat jokes on TV shows like… uh… 30 Rock. To me, this came across more as a attempt to have their cake and eat it too than as sincerely giving a damn about their support of bigotry against fat people.¹

But at least 30 Rock, loathsome as the fat suit plotline was, doesn’t pretend to be a progressive show that’s questioning norms of attractiveness. But for Ugly Betty, which is so sanctimonious about appearance issues,² to pander to anti-fat bigotry this way is extra-special, isn’t it?³

By the way, Ben Silverman, one of Ugly Betty’s executive producers, also co-created and produces The Biggest Loser.

1. Especially when they merchandise the bigotry they were supposedly making fun of. (back)
2. I have nothing against sanctimony on appearance issues, as long as you really mean it and apply the critique to your own work. Ugly Betty doesn’t. (back)
3. Not that this was even the most loathsome thing about that episode of Ugly Betty; the most loathsome thing was the critique of the shallow fashionistas trying to demonstrate how oh-so-very sensitive they are by using disaster victims as props, even as the episode’s script tried to demonstrate how oh-so-very sensitive Betty is by using disaster victims as props. (back)

Via Language Log.

I was reminded of this by Why Am I Not Surprised?

On this date in 1979, a group made up of both African-Americans and European-Americans gathered in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest against the Ku Klux Klan. As soon as they began, however, forty KKK members and American Nazis drove into the crowd, got out of their vehicles, got out their automatic weapons and opened fire, killing five and wounding ten others. The massacre was filmed by four television stations. Nevertheless, after two trials, two all-White juries acquited all defendents and no one has ever served a day in jail for these cold-blooded killings in broad daylight while law enforcement officers looked on.

Hey dudes and dudettes,

I’ve got a lot of grad school work to get done in the next couple weeks, so alas, my writing for Alas must suffer.

I’ve got a couple posts that are half-written, so I may be able to touch those up and get them online over the next couple weeks. There are also a few queer-centered writing projects I wanted to link to, so I may be able to get that done.

But on the whole, I’m going to be working on exams, non-fiction articles, critiques, and lesson plans, with a teaspoon of fiction writing on the side.

I first heard about this case when I was listening to BBC radio on Tuesday. I tuned in during the middle of of this story, and it seemed so bizarre that I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Well, now I got the chance to hear the whole story. It turns out that some foreign aid groups tried to take a group of 103 children out of the country. The aid workers are now accused of child trafficking and violating international laws.

Some members of the NGO Children Rescue/Arche de Zoe have been arrested for attempting to take the 21 girls and 82 boys - the youngest being about a year old and the oldest about 10 - out of Chad. The agency workers were French. Three journalists who were travelling with the volunteer workers and the Spanish crew who were to fly them back to France are also being held. In Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, a prosecutor on Wednesday also charged Jacques Wilmart, a Belgian pilot involved in the affair, with “complicity in abduction”, before sending him to jail.

Zoe’s Ark says it wanted to rescue children from Darfur, but French officials and UN aid workers say they believe many were from Chad and were not orphans.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called the attempt to separate the more than 100 young Chadian children from their parents and then take them to France for adoption an “illegal and totally irresponsible move.” The UN said the children had family in the country.

“They are not orphans and they were not sitting alone in the desert in Chad, they were living with their families in communities,” Annette Rehrl of U.N. refugee agency UNHCR told Reuters in Abeche.

UNICEF spokesperson Veronique Taveau told journalists in Geneva that what happened had violated international rules, such as The Hague Convention on international adoption and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Taveau said the case was not an isolated incident but one that was highly visible because of the size of the group of children.

L’Express reports the Europeans offered sweets and biscuits to encourage the children to leave their homes.

“My parents had gone to work in the fields. As we were playing some Chadians came and said here are some sweets, why don’t you follow us to Adre and then we’ll take you home. We were taken to the hospital in Adre,” said a young boy who gave his name as Osman. Adre is a town on the Chad-Sudan border.

“We spent seven days in Adre and I’ve been here in Abeche for more than one month. We were well fed by the whites, there was always food. I would like to go back to find my parents,” he told reporters at the Abeche orphanage where the children are being cared for by local and international aid workers.

Many European media outlets were putting a slightly more favorable spin on this, but as more information comes out, these so called aid groups are not looking good at all. The UN has said that most of these children were not orphans, which they found out from interviewing the older children. Now many of the children are separated from their families, and there are concerns that the youngest children may not be reunited because they are too young to talk. Needless to say this is not going over well with people all over Africa. As the International Herald Tribune article cited in this paragraph notes:

The scandal has sparked outrage and condemnation across Africa, where it has a deep resonance from the colonial era, when slave traders, missionaries and colonial officials blithely separated African families with little regard to their wishes. In Congo, government officials suspended all adoptions by foreigners to examine their procedures more carefully, according to The Associated Press, and protesters angry about the attempted kidnappings took to the streets in Chad.

The scandal has also raised tensions between Chad and France just as the European Union begins deploying a peacekeeping force in the region aimed at shoring up Chad, which has been increasingly drawn into the four-year-old conflict in neighboring Darfur.

This history is one reason why adoptions by Westerners are not common in African countries. Incidents like this contribute to the destruction black families, and I suspect these aid workers felt no need to respect the rights of poor black African families.¹

1. Why oh why am I having flashbacks to this old Rachel’s Tavern post/comment? I was so angry at that woman. I could barely contain myself. (back)

Assuming that Obama or Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, that is. (Personally, I hope Dodd wins, but of Obama or Clinton I’d prefer Obama.)

From The Debate Link:

There is a very predictable media narrative that will form if two members of politically underrepresented groups appear on the Democratic ticket. One person is ground-breaking and history-making. Two people, by contrast, is an “affirmative action” choice and proof the Democrats are in thrall to “interest groups.” If Obama picks a woman, it will undoubtedly be cast as “appeasing” women’s groups who were ready to see Clinton break the ultimate glass ceiling. If Clinton picks a Black running mate, same thing, except replace NOW with the NAACP. This is what Derrick Bell calls the unspoken limit on affirmative action. Even if at first the diversity is applauded, at some point folks will start getting uncomfortable with too many women or people of color. A presidential ticket that doesn’t include a White male is virtually inconceivable, and it’s equally inconceivable that the media won’t make heavy note of that fact in the unlikely instance it comes into being.

(See also: Gender Ratios of Presidential Campaign Staffs.)

Via the blog Mercury Rising:

Some scattered thoughts:

1) Wish they had covered Dodd, who I am leaning towards favoring at the moment, due to his leadership in regards to FISA. (UPDATE: But having watched this clip, I’m now officially off the Dodd train.)

2) It’s not a surprise that the candidate who is Black has the greatest percentage of Black staffers, and that the candidate who is Latino has the greatest percentage of Latin@ staffers. It’s interesting, however, that Clinton has far and away the most Asian staffers. I have no idea what’s behind that; possibly it’s a secondary effect of a geographic difference?

3) Wow, are American Indians shut out of participation at this level.

4) Once again, Giuliani manages to be worse than other Republicans. (Speaking of Giuliani suckage, read this excellent post about Giuliani’s use of racism in his campaign for mayor.)

5) I’ve generally been anti-Clinton in this race, and I still am; she’s the most pro-war of the Democratic candidates, and that’s a deficit that nothing else overcomes, for me. But she’s the only one who can claim to have a staff that’s mostly people of color.

* * *

Feel free to use this thread for general discussion of the presidential race, as well as discussion of the above graphic.