Living proof that ascribing racial categories based on genetics is messed up

Check this out.

Hering: Hate crime laws are unnecessary

Hering:

Some day our hate-crimes laws may go too far. The creation of this category of crime was not really necessary in order to prosecute offenses. Threatening behavior, doing damage or causing injury could always be prosecuted even without the additional label.

He misses the crux of the argument for hate crime laws: Committing a crime for the specific reason of intimidating a particular population, because the crime is motivated by hatred, is substantially different - substantially worse - than doing it for some other reason. For example, something like burning a cross on someone's lawn does a lot more damage than just burn the lawn: it can frighten whole communities.

Also, this:

But by adding the label and enhancing the penalties we’ve taken a step toward the way they make laws in France.

That falls well foul of the slippery slope fallacy.

(The Lack of) Diversity in Corvallis

I would hold this up as an example of both how the majority of Corvallis might view the idea of diversity and, simultaneously, why that's a bit of a problem:

The booth generated a mixed reaction from pedestrians on Saturday. Some thought it was a clever way to promote diversity and initiate a discussion on race in the mostly white city. Others said it was unnecessary for liberal-leaning Corvallis, where many residents pride themselves on championing diversity — including passage of a charter amendment that makes it a priority.

Because everyone knows that a charter amendment championing diversity is all that's needed to end racism and discrimination.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Corvallis is 86% white.

I'm sure that has nothing to do with the above paragraph.

Robert Jensen

On the future:

There is no easy route to a different future. In our laziness and greed we have narrowed the range of our choices and eliminated too many options for us to pretend there are easy solutions. I can’t predict the future, but I am relatively certain that the future will be hard. There is sorrow in coming to terms with all of this, but sorrow is not the same thing as despair. Sorrow need not lead to paralysis; sorrow isn’t the end. Sorrow is simply a part of life, which can help us understand where we’ve been and in what direction we must move.

[Movies] Juno & The Great Debaters

So I saw two movies today (officially yesterday, but I'm still awake, so...). Juno, the first, was an excellent movie, and if I was still subbing I'd be talking it up to HS students (to be perfectly honest). It's much, MUCH better than Knocked Up.

Juno deals with one woman (played to perfection by Ellen Page) who happens to get pregnant while a junior in high school. I am loathe to give away the plot, so let's just say that I am now in love with Diablo Cody, the movie's screenwriter - and Ellen Page, who puts on a terrific performance as Juno herself.

My one critique of the movie is that I wasn't sure what the point was - i.e. that I'm not sure how the characters changed as a result of the events that occurred when the camera was on. And while that might seem like a serious critique, I still think it's a movie unquestionably worth seeing.

For anyone who has seen it: What was going on with Mark (Jason Bateman)? Was he supposed to be sympathetically viewed? Was he (in the words of a friend of mine (sympathetic or just plain pathetic?

...

The second movie I saw today was The Great Debaters. As brilliant as it was different from Juno (and wow, was it different... apples and oranges, to say the least), The Great Debaters was a Denzel Washington-directed, few-if-any-holds-barred film that addressed (in a way this philosophy major could love) serious issues of race, gender, morality and ethics in early 20th-century America.

It actually reminded me of the potential upside of debate (a subject I am sad to say I've had poor experiences with): The issues that get debated are often the major issues of the day, and in participating, the debaters often get to sharpen their minds for the "real" struggles they will face in the world.

The Great Debaters is not a movie to be taken lightly. It is often brutally honest, to the point that the crowd I saw it in clapped, laughed, shouted and most likely cried.

I think that's another of saying that y'all need to go see it - now. Just make sure to bring your serious self when you do.

An Anecdote about Editors and Technology

From a reader who wishes to remain anonymous:

The last journalism conference I went to was at PSU and it was for editors only. One of the workshops was on journalism and technology, and there was a guy from a Redmond, Wash. paper who was leading it and told his audience that his newspaper's entertainment guide now had its own MySpace page and it was getting a lot of comments, critiques, blah, blah, and that it was really reaching the younger audiences.

A balding, middle aged guy shot his hand up: "What's myspace?"

Every balding, middle-aged male editor (yes it's a stereotype but it was a true one at this conference!) shared the same question. This was less than two years ago.

It's going to take a new generation to make switch to technology-based journalism. And that's... going to take awhile.

Sidebar: That conference WAS odd though because the stereotypical "editor" was there and when I walked in it felt like... I was a complete outsider, or the person that should've been getting them their coffee. One of those things you'll never forget.

This reminds me of the new comment system instituted at the Albany Democrat-Herald, Lebanon Express, and Corvallis Gazette-Times: It would have been neat in 2002. Too bad it's almost 2008.

This conversation started as a result of this post.

The Mutability of IQ

Via Ezra Klein, this book review by Malcolm Gladwell on James Flynn's work on the statistical changes (and significance thereof, especially as it pertains to race) of IQ over time.

Gladwell:

Our great-grandparents may have been perfectly intelligent. But they would have done poorly on I.Q. tests because they did not participate in the twentieth century’s great cognitive revolution, in which we learned to sort experience according to a new set of abstract categories. In Flynn’s phrase, we have now had to put on “scientific spectacles,” which enable us to make sense of the WISC questions about similarities. To say that Dutch I.Q. scores rose substantially between 1952 and 1982 was another way of saying that the Netherlands in 1982 was, in at least certain respects, much more cognitively demanding than the Netherlands in 1952. An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are. [emphasis added]

A test like the Wechsler test, or any IQ test, really, can't help but be testing (and made up of) localized, culturally bound knowledge. There is no way for it to be universal, since those that created it - us humans - do not have a universal knowledge or perspective (though of course many privileged folks claim to do so).

Klein on that paragraph:

If, rather than testing some innate capacity known as "intelligence," IQ actually tests how familiar individuals are with a particular mode of abstract analysis, that throws the whole universe of hereditary determinism into chaos. It suggests that what we call intelligence is, on some level, closer to a skill, and it can be refined and strengthened through practice.

I think Klein gets it exactly right: Intelligence is not immutable - or, at the least, whatever it is IQ measures is not immutable.

Certainly this should lead to a whole new set of policy prescriptions, especially in education.... but it won't.

Another Story on Oregon Native Mascots

From a friend in Forest Grove:

Athletic Director Wymon Smith is Shoshone Indian.

Assistant Principal Jim Smith’s heritage is linked to the Algonquin, Chippewa and Assiniboine tribes.

Each administrator is proud of his ancestry, and both want to keep the Braves as Banks High School’s mascot.

...

“There’s nothing wrong with Chiefs, Warriors, Indians or Braves,” insisted Jim Smith. “It’s not about names. It’s about how people treat each other. I’m totally in support of keeping things the way they are.”

That's a common argument against changing the mascots: "I'm Native and I say it's OK!"

I have to wonder what the lives of the two men mentioned in the article are like. Are they often visually identified by others as Native American? Were they raised in a traditional fashion, or, frankly, as white people?

In any case, I don't think the "I'm Native and OK with it" argument is a good one. The strongest argument against Native mascots, as far as I can see, is that such mascots maim the dignity of Native people. End of story.

The student body president pulls out another time-tested argument:

“If it were offensive or if it had discriminatory undertones, I’d find it logical,” he said. “But we’re not making (Native Americans) look bad in any way.”

Why does he get to decide? I've been over this what seems like a million times in the last month or so - members of the oppressing class do not get to decide what counts as oppressive or not. At the very least, that's fixing the match. It's also extremely marginalizing.

See also this comment from an '89 Banks High School graduate named Jeremy Larsen (Hey! A local paper that has comments! Imagine that!):

School mascots are about pride, unity and belief in our kids' belief in school and community nothing more. [Italics added]

That same comment has been made quite a bit in the context of the appearance of black facepaint at OSU. It's just as wrong in the one place as the other.

Again, why do people that look and/or sound awfully white always seem to get to determine the parameters of what counts as racist or offensive (or at all)?

It's much harder to acknowledge someone else's pain at some cost to oneself than it is to simply write others' pain off as illegitimate, I know. But it's incredibly important for white folks to do nonetheless.

Interesting LTE in the Baro

Side Note: I guess the Baro is printing more stuff on the blackface issue after all...

I had to stop and think about the last letter on the page, the one from Marcus Hibdon.

I think he's right - the generally abysmal failure rate and failure to recruit Black non-athletes as students is a big problem.

However, I don't think we need to make a choice between noticing that and working against ignorant displays like blackface or leftover nooses. They are two different things: The latter are signs of uninformed individuals (though such ignorance is certainly the result of institutional factors), while the former is a sign of an institutional problem.

But I do think that Hibdon brings a great point to the table: Let's not forget to pay attention to structural disparities.

An Observation

Many, many of the folks who have commented on the recent use of black facepaint at OSU football games have claimed that race or racism have nothing to do with the real issue at hand, which is "just football."

As if the intersection of American football and race means nothing.

Say hello to everyone's good friend white privilege.

In this case, that means the privilege of never having to think about race and football.

How and Why My Uncle Likes Obama and John McCain at the Same Time

Noted without comment except to say that I agree:

Obama support offers people a chance to symbolically demonstrate their enlightenment at no cost. I’ve heard and read a number of times now about racist white people developing a strange attachment to Obama. They don’t normally like Democrats but this kid seems alright. It doesn’t hurt that he uses language designed to help him buddy up with those who are, more or less, afraid of black people — he is, in some ways, professionally a nonthreatening black man. I don’t mean that as a criticism. To an extent this highlights the expert way in which he has navigated this country’s complicated and often awful relationship with race, but ultimately it doesn’t mean much for his chances come election day. People are brilliant in this country at finding ways to vote conservative when everything they know tells them not to. My mother knew Bush was a disaster and she voted for him anyway not because Kerry would do anything to make abortion more common but because he approved of it. They’ll find something or other like that come election day if Obama gets the nod. There’s no reason they can’t say one thing and do another. They might even go on doing it after the fact. Obama has been adopted by many racists and anxious, defensive republicans as a symbol, but that’s as far as it goes.

Talking About Race

Via Engage, this list of 10 things it's a bad idea to do when talking about race.

I really like this list, but I can predict a lot of white folks are going to either go "huh" at some of these or outright resist (probably because we've made these mistakes before and don't want to own up to them).

My favorite:

1. Thinking It's Not OK to Talk About It
Race is such a touchy topic because it is often associated with all of the negative history and oppression of minorities in this country. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans share a history of physical and social abuse at the hand of the white majority. Yes, that leads to anger and distrust, feelings so strong that they’ve survived for centuries. But the only way to bridge the gap and move forward as a more unified society is to talk about it: all of it.

“We are supposed to be engaged in a cultural conversation about race – a dialogue largely taking place on television and at the movies. We've traded unquestioned racism for a twisted multicultural correctness. Everything is celebrated, nothing can be discussed. We seem to want to live in an imaginary world without racism, where we celebrate differences but never base our beliefs on them.” – Sallie Tisdale, author of “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” “Harvest Moon” and “Lot's Wife, Stepping Westward and Talk Dirty to Me”