My view on the Occupy Movement as of right now

A family member recently asked me about my view on the Occupy Movement. I thought about it for a few days and realized that I could write 20K words about it in an attempt to explain my views, but that this would take much more time than I have in the midst of a new job, the book project, the Holidays, etc. So, I will let far more knowledgeable and eloquent people speak on my behalf, and call upon one extremely flawed counter-example for contrast.

Here is my view on the Occupy Movement as of right now:

If truth statements fall in the wilderness, will a Southern apologist hear it?

Another comment on a Linkedin group I belong to spurred me to post a reply.

Chris Rivait posted a link to his blog that quoted in full the Roanoake Times article Rebel flags barred from Lexington poles outlining the Lexington, Virginia, city council's recent decision not to raise the Confederate battle flag at city-sponsored events:

The arguments have been made thousands of times before. The Confederate flag is a symbol of history and Southern heritage. No, the flag is a symbol of hatred and racism.

In essence, the same arguments dominated a public hearing held Thursday night by the Lexington City Council . . .

The first commenter in this post was a gentleman named Stephen Quick, who linked to his website on which he attempted to defend the representation of the Confederate battle flag. I will leave it up to the reader to navigate to Quick's website to read his interpretation in full.

In reply to Quick, I wrote:

Perhaps it's time to allow Texas to secede?

We awoke late last week to Texas governor Rick Perry's words coming through the radio. It was one of those mornings where I was waking slowly, so the first bit of his segment was incorporated into my dream. Here is what I thought I heard him say:

If you want to live in a state that has high taxes, high regulations — that is favorable to smoking marijuana and gay marriage — then move to California . . . [In Texas,] we still believe in freedom,freedom from over-taxation, over-regulation, over-litigation.

This is what he actually said:

The Texas School Board continues its quest to change history

Some on the Texas School Board oppose proportional representation of the history of Islam in world history textbooks. A resolution before the board in September asserted an anti-Christian, pro-Islam bias in K-12 world history textbooks.

The Texas School Board, as a body, has already proven itself to favor misrepresentation in K-12 social science standards.

Some specifics of the shallow-minded ideological machinations of the majority of the Texas School Board here.

What the Texas School Board and its supporters fail to understand is that ignoring, misrepresenting, skewing, or otherwise manipulating historical narratives does not magically transform the resulting fallacy into truth. However, what they do understand is that if they can influence historical narratives to reflect their personal biases and ideology, they can get these inaccurate notions into the minds of K-12 students and create future citizens and voters who are uninformed. As Depeche Mode sings in their song "New Dress":

You can't change the world / But you can change the facts / And when you change the facts / You change points of view / If you change points of view / You may change a vote / And when you change a vote / You may change the world

-

Narration to 1940 silent film "Willamette River Pollution"

I recently received an email query from someone researching Willamette River pollution about the location and content of the narration to William J. Smith's 1940 film "Willamette River Pollution." I blogged about the content of this film here and here, but I haven't yet written anything about the narration. Therefore, below the fold I'll provide my interpretation of the film's narration, by way of providing the substance of my response to that email query.

Also, below this, I've pasted the partial transcription of the narration that I made from a copy with rather poor audio.

Ignorance by any other name would still smell as foul . . .

I've recently been alerted to the escalating bigotry associated with the possibility of having a mosque constructed at/near the former site of the Twin Towers in NYC (here and here). The most shrill voices in opposition to this project include people we have already come to know as ideologically-motivated blowhards who select and manipulate data in any way that will further their political agenda: Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

Inaccurate and offensive Oregon history

I discovered something quite disappointing the other day when I typed in the search terms "oregon history" into Google. Link # 5 led me to:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/oregon.htm

On this website I came upon such gems of inaccuracy and offensiveness as . . .

The Internet as a forum for cowardice

Sometimes.

Not always, but sometimes.

Sure, there are reasons for being anonymous.

I've engaged in a conversation about this here.

This may very well be another example of a person screaming into the wind, but I wanted to invite the coward to respond here. Except that RedState tells me: "Error: You have not been registered long enough to comment."

However, here's what I wanted to say, and, perhaps, RedState will eventually grace me with the privilege of expressing myself in their restricted venue:

Hey hogan, you're an ignoramus and a coward!*

I've made some comments about your post on this site. If you have any interest in responding, feel free to respond on my blog (I can't extend the invitation for you to post on the first blog as it is not mine).

Whatever. At least we're not dead yet!

----
* Clarification May 28, 2010: In reflecting on the way I phrased this post, and this sentence in particular, I recognize that this likely comes across as ad hominem. However, before you come to this conclusion, please do read the EotAW comment thread I link to above, because I do try to support my case with evidence. My general point with all of this is that ignorance and cowardice need to be addressed directly, and not perpetuated (as Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh would prefer us to do). If you read the thread and still come to the conclusion that my language is unjustified, please do make your case.

-

Banal writing about beer

This article at Slate.com is a smarmy, uninformed, and, ultimately, frustratingly droll piece regarding the so-called relative places of beer and wine in American culture.

It isn't until the third from last paragraph in the piece (regarding how the development of one type of beer--bland American-style pilsener--went hand-in-hand with the development of industrial technologies) that I agreed with anything the author writes. I guess this proves that one need not really know anything about what one is writing about in order to get something published. In this way, the article is also a great example of constructing a straw man to dismantle subsequently with half-considered, generalized banalities.

Oy...

-

"Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America . . ."

Who do we blame when we're looking for ways to reduce complex, multi-variate, living systems to soundbites & platitudes?

The scapegoats, of course!

These rascally scapegoats always seem to be the ones to which simplistic, ideologically-driven explanations will adequately apply.

In the case of the forward-forward-forward email that Seth alerted me to (produced below for your reference), it's those dastardly "environmentalists" and the evil, catch-all "others" who are standing in the way of American progress.

You'll find Seth's reply to this email in a comment to this blog post. He approaches the substance of the email with the logic that when a system in equilibrium receives a quantitatively significant amount of input, the laws of physics tell us that the system will go through a transition period before settling in to another, different, state of equilibrium. In the case of the Earth and CO2, the new state of equilibrium that we may possibly see could involve the inability to sustain human life, or at least human life as we've known it. As soon as ideologically-driven climate change denialists come around to understanding this and wanting to join the rest of us in finding solutions, we'll all be much better off.

I welcome your comments! I'm particularly interested in comments that include references and links to concrete examples of the many, many, many ways that "environmentalists" are actively involved in finding ways not only to decrease our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, but from petroleum products as a source of energy altogether (such as biofuels, wind generation, wave generation, efficiency, electric vehicles, increasing CAFE standards, etc. etc.).

This evidence may help people move beyond trying to find scapegoats.

=================

Here's the forward-forward-forward email, edited for length while retaining substance:


About 6 months ago I was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest. . . . The host said to Forbes, ". . . how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground[?]" . . . [the Forbes representative] said, "more than all the Middle East put together."

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April ('08) that only scientists and oil men knew was coming . . . It was a revised report (hadn't been updated since '95) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana . . .

The Bakken [oil field] is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska 's Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable, at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

“This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,” reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. . . . the “Big Oil” companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves, and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels [that] will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! . . . enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.

And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from TWO YEARS AGO!

“U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World!” (Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006)

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY? [Italics & bolding mine]

Don't think OPEC will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists? [Of course, a conspiracy! Italics & bolding mine]

Got your attention/ire up yet? Hope so! Now, while you're thinking about it .... and hopefully P.O'd, do this:

Pass this along. If you don't take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you want to complain about gas prices, because by doing NOTHING, you've forfeited your right to complain

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book. By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911


-

What came first?

You may have seen the email pasted below, as it was another of those forward-forward-forward emails. A dear friend -- and fellow USN veteran -- sent me this email some time ago. In this post I want to analyze the email's content in the interest of bringing some of the complexity back to a subject that is often over-simplified.

The purpose of the email is to recognize the men and women of the armed services who have sacrificed their time, and sometimes their health or lives, in the name of the United States of America. In its attempt to achieve this end, however, the email does a disservice to truth by over-simplifying the issues. By "truth" I mean the attempt to represent as accurately as possible the full range of the complex social, cultural, and political threads of our collective history.

The email contains six over-simplified statements that set up false dilemmas. These six examples correlate to constitutional rights provided for in the Bill of Rights [I've identified the particular Amendments in brackets in the email text below]. These rights were not given to us by the military. Some of these rights were negotiated at the time that the Constitution was being drafted in 1787, and these are the original ten Bill of Rights. Other rights had to be won through conflict and struggle of one kind or another: Civil War in the case of the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments, ongoing social movements and political pressure in the case of all Amendments.

It is the case the military veterans played an important role in securing fundamental American rights. For example, the Army, Navy, and Marines helped win the Revolutionary War that provided the security in which politicians could gather to draft and debate the Constitution. However, military veterans were not present in large numbers during the Constitution-drafting process itself -- this delegation was also composed of politicians, doctors, brewers, newspapermen, farmers, slave owners, merchants, etc. etc.

The lesson here is that a military could have just as easily provided security for a group of men to come together to establish a dictatorship -- so, military contributions to this process are not in-and-of-themselves a requisite for securing freedoms of any kind. Thus, to say, for example, that "It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech," is to lose critical aspects of the story through over-simplification.

Another complication to the simplified storyline presented in the email below is that the same military that helped win the Revolutionary War and helped provide a secure space within which the Constitution could be drafted also provided a secure place within which the institution of slavery could continue. For the rest of the 18th and over half of the 19th century, dedicated groups of citizens organized themselves to abolish slavery. The majority of citizens of the United States during these long decades helped perpetuate slavery, however, either actively or passively, including the institutions of the U.S. military.

Once Abraham Lincoln finally abolished slavery and the Union won the Civil War, it was another century of struggle and strife to overcome the most egregious examples of quasi-slavery in this country, including Jim Crow, segregation, lynching, unequal education, etc., etc. To be sure, at times the U.S. military played an important role in helping propel this agenda, but I would argue that the contributions of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evars, and countless other Civil Rights activists were in most ways more critical in overcoming these inequalities. Therefore, once again, to assert that "It is the VETERAN, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote," is a gross over-simplification of the historical record.

Whenever I come upon an example of over-simplification such as is represented in the email below, my antennae perk up and I ask myself, "what interests are being served by this incomplete portrayal?"

If members of the U.S. military are sworn to protect the constitution, and the constitution has been drafted (and modified occasionally) to protect the rights of citizens in a democracy, and a democracy ostensibly thrives only when citizens are as informed and educated as possible about whatever it is they're voting on, then it stands to reason that members of the U.S. military are sworn to help ensure that citizens have access to accurate and complete information. Therefore, to misrepresent the complexities of history, politics, and society to construct simplified myths about a military that is supposedly dedicated to serving our complex nation is a disservice to our veterans.

If the military is mythologized in this way, we run the risk of perceiving it as fully outside of the rest of society. If the military is perceived as being outside of society, then it may be given undue deference and preferential treatment that further alienates the military from the society that creates and maintains it. Once this happens, a critical balance of power has shifted, with the possibility that the military then becomes its own center of power, and is no longer answerable to society. What we'd have in this case is a Frankenstein monster, a banana republic situation in which the military has a life of its own and begins to exert its power in non-democratic ways. This is reminiscent of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of.

I'm not saying that X without fail will lead to Y which then necessarily brings about Z. I'm just saying that we need to be conscious about and careful of the ways in which we choose to simplify & mythologize our national narratives, because it's all fun and games until someone gets an eye out.


=======

Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 6:57 AM
Subject: Fw: ONE OF THE BEST EMAILS EVER

MEMORIAL DAY IS COMING-HERE IS WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT.

Keep it moving, please, even if you've seen it before.

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble. [1st Amendment]

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. [5th, 6th, & 7th Amendments]

It is the VETERAN, not the politician, Who has given us the right to vote. [Not explicitly enumerated in Constitution because power given to the states, but the right to vote is extended by the 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments]

It is the VETERAN who salutes the Flag,

It is the Veteran who serves under the Flag,

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

I'd be EXTREMELY proud if this email reached as many as possible. We can be very proud of our young men and women in the service no matter where they serve.

... God Bless them All ..

-

The comments are appalling!

I was discussing this issue with friends the other day and we were all lamenting the base level of commentary that online news articles often receive. I'm not sure how to take this: Does the anonymity of the Internet bring out the most vile opinions in our community, or is the aggregate perspective of our community less educated and more mean-spirited than many of us like to think? Or, is it something else?

I have found that the comments on the vast majority of news articles that I have read online are appalling, and fall in to one or another of the categories enumerated below. These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive:

1) Mean and spiteful
1a)Outright racist/bigoted/homophobic/sexist
1b) Mean in some other way

2) Politically reactionary
2a) Right-wing reactionary
2b) Left-wing reactionary

3) Illustrating the intellectual shortcomings of the commenter to a level that is embarrassing
3a) Ignorant of historical context
3b) Logically inconsistent and/or fallacious
3c) Ignorant of the substance of the article being commented upon
3d) Grammatically incorrect

I made direct reference to comments with some of these characteristics in an earlier post on the Superfund site in Portland's harbor, and I welcome hearing of examples of other lamentable comments and possible reasons for why this is phenomenon is so common.

-

"Rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems"

Below you'll find the text of an interesting Letter to the Editor from John Beau in response to the Oregonian article "Evolve or die? It's crunch time for the Willamette" (that I posted an entry about a few days ago), and a response to Mr. Beau by "dtroutma."

Considering this Letter to the Editor and the comment to it, I want to discuss four points:

First, Beau's letter is a knee-jerk reaction against taking steps to address Willamette River water quality based predominately on considerations of finances: "as a taxpayer, I can't support the program," Beau writes. To support this position, Beau creates a "straw-man" by misrepresenting Whitworth's position as advocating for restoration to some kind of pastoral, pre-human (or pre-Euroamerican settlement) ideal: "Restoration to what condition?" Beau asks, "A condition that existed at the end of the last ice age or in 1858?" In setting up this inaccurate false comparison that, by definition, would be impossible to achieve, Beau is then able to support implicitly his finance-centered point of view -- because, based on his logic, of course it would be foolish to expend millions of dollars in taxpayer money in an attempt to achieve something impossible!

Second, Beau does raise a good point when he states that it might be wise not to move forward "without a clear written statement of the problem(s)." However, the ideological filter[1] through which he is viewing the topic keeps him from reading clearly Whitworth's article: Whitworth identifies specific ways in which accurate information is being gathered and actionable plans developed through the use of an open-source software solution and collaborative efforts among government and citizens.

Third, Beau writes that "rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems" because they "carry everything that is swept into them." Through this fallacious appeal to natural law, Beau then wants us to take no action so as to "not try to undo what nature does best." However, as Whitworth writes regarding this supposed "natural" state of affairs, "we have dramatically altered how the Willamette River functions. We removed streamside vegetation . . . built dams and dikes to drain fields and change flood patterns . . . cut roads and cut slope-stabilizing trees to build houses." Commenter dtroutma echoes this point, and there have been hundreds of books and thousands of academic articles written on various aspects of such changes and the impacts they have had on watersheds.[2]

Finally, to return again to the notion that "rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems," Beau articulates here an idea that has roots well into the hazy mists of time immemorial. The scholars I cite in note 2 below have written on this idea extensively. Jamie Benidickson, in particular, has written an aptly-named book on the subject, The Culture of Flushing. This is precisely the mentality that clean waters advocates have been struggling against since at least the 19th century.

----
[1] Which I would characterize as conservative or libertarian, based on the evidence from this one letter.

[2] My goodness, there are so many that I'll give just a few names of scholars working in this area: Adam Rome, Joel Tarr, Martin V. Melosi, Philip Scarpino, Linda Nash, Arn Keeling, Jamie Benidickson, Gregory Summers, Terence Kehoe.


================================

December 04, 2009, 4:00AM

Don't undo nature's sewers

The Joe Whitworth columns regarding the Willamette River were informative, but as a taxpayer, I can't support the program (most recently, "Evolve or die? It's crunch time for the Willamette," Nov. 29).

Specifically, what is the problem that requires restoration of the river? Silting, toxins, trash fish, invasive species, etc.? Restoration to what condition? A condition that existed at the end of the last ice age or in 1858?

I am not enamored with the expenditure of "tens of millions of dollars" by a number of "watershed councils and conservation districts" -- all well meaning folks, I'm sure, but without a clear written statement of the problem(s), it is all for naught as the column admits.

Rivers and streams are nature's sewer systems. They carry everything that is swept into them. Let's not try to undo what nature does best.

JOHN BEAU
Lake Oswego


"dtroutma" posted the following in reply:

We HAVE treated our rivers and waterways as sewers, for centuries around the world. But it is important to realize that riparian zones and wetlands are not "sewers" they are the SEPTIC SYSTEMS natural process uses, and millions of acres of these valuable resource lands have been eliminated, just since 1900. These areas once purified and cleansed water systems for us, (though our population growth has overtaxed even these "natural" systems alone) now the "effluent" is channelled to run straight through to our over-polluted oceans, and threaten existence of many species, including us.

Restoring these acres to functioning systems is not only essential, but "cheap" when considering the long term penalty if we do not.

-

On humanure and straw men

My friend Seth forwarded the URL for Joseph Jenkins' book The Humanure Handbook to a bunch of us on email over a year ago. He sent it in the midst of my work researching and preparing to write the first draft of my thesis on water pollution abatement efforts along the Willamette River, so my mind was filled with various historical treatments of the science, psychology, economics, politics, technology, and sociology involved in waste treatment systems and approaches in the 19th and 20th centuries.[1]

My reading prompted a great discussion between Seth and I, using the old-fashioned technology of actual speech, but no one among the ten or so recipients of Seth's email and my response bothered to contribute. Below is the text of my initial response to reading The Humanure Handbook:

==========

This is interesting: whereas I don't doubt the underlying science of composting that Jenkins provides, and though I do agree with his call for us to re-connect the natural cycle of things as it relates to human poo, the author definitely has an axe to grind and he lets his polemics carry himself away from any kind of accurate representation of history.

He's also got a fixation on Asian nations that are supposedly doing better at dealing with night soil without trying to get to the bottom of what might contribute to this difference between Western and Asian cultures as it relates to poo -- besides berating Western culture as being "fecophobic." It's far easier to decry and discount one approach to life over another than it is to try to determine the underlying reasons why such differences have come to be; it's far easier to ascribe difference to some amorphous, ephemeral "psychological" / sociological state-of-mind (and thereby create a straw man) than it is to really look at the complex intersections of science, technology, economic systems, cultural norms, and other such tangible things that actually constitute the reasons for the difference. The author has taken the easy road that avoids complexity and characterizes things in a simple -- yet false -- dichotomy.

Such an approach has the tendency to put me off, and then I question other things about the work.

My primary critique, then, is that the author lets his polemics guide his narrative, and he doesn't have to, because the real story is much more complex & interesting -- AND I support his call for a more responsible way of taking care of human poo.

Here's one element that I do know something about: the historical narrative of the science and technology related to the development of sanitation systems in England in the mid-19th century and beyond (Jenkins, pp. 79-80) is cursory to the point of being inaccurate, which is no surprise considering the polemical nature of this work. I see in his citations that he doesn't make use of ANY of the most recent scholarship on the topic of urban sanitation systems, such as Joel Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink, Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City, and Andrew Hurly, ed., Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis.[2] Another important source shows that France stopped using human waste as farm compost by 1939 because it was NOT economical[3]. This finding is echoed in Melosi's analysis of the topic in the U.S. in general and also in my analysis of options considered by Oregon cities in the 1920s and 1930s. This finding contradicts one of the Jenkins's primary contentions. So, my conclusion here is that when Jenkins finds a fact is inconvenient to his polemical narrative then it's easier for him to ignore it and continue his simplified narrative than it is for him to address it directly.

Here are an array of quotes that I find problematic for the reasons outlined above:

** "Fecophobia is a deeply rooted fear in the American, and perhaps even human, psyche" (p. 226). I find this to be overly simplistic pyscho-social mumbo-jumbo that obscures more than it illuminates.

** "I'm simply suggesting that we begin considering new approaches to the age-old problem of what to do with human excrement" (p. 227). Scholarship on the topic shows that the urban sanitation systems developed beginning in the mid-19th century were, at the time, revolutionary new approaches to the "age-old problem"; this is not to say that there aren't down-sides to the systems developed in the 19th century and beyond, but if Jenkins could stop stroking his own ego long enough to do some research he'd understand better the complexity of the issues involved; he's NOT the first genius to think about this stuff.

** "[humanure] could be collected regularly, emptied, its contents composted, and the compost sold to farmers and gardeners as a financially self-supporting service provided by independent businesses" (p. 233). Certainly it could, from the standpoint of logistics and technology. From the perspective of financial feasibility, however, it's not that easy. As much as I understand critiques of our current economic-focused culture, such considerations are, nonetheless, unavoidable. Until cultural priorities shift, of course.

** A big concern I have about humanure composting along the lines that Jenkins proposes aren't the pathogens -- which are relatively easily neutralized with thermophilic bacteria -- but all the concentrated chemicals from the foods we eat that won't be effected by thermophilic decomposition, i.e., ibuprofen, birth control hormones, caffeine, antibiotics, etc. How do we deal with this issue? Jenkins doesn't seem to have an answer to this question.

===========

Anyway, those were my thoughts last summer, and they're still valid, from my understanding of the history of this issue.


----
[1] I can assure you that this was quite a lot of happy funness to have at the top of one's mind! I highly recommend it!!

[2] Another great source that I've come across since last summer on this topic is: Jamie Benedickson, The Culture of Flushing

[3] Sabine Barles and Laurence Lestel, "The Nitrogen Question: Urbanization, Industrialization, and Water Quality in Paris, 1830-1939," Journal of Urban History 33:5 (July 2007), 794-812.

-

It's disheartening to realize that these sentiments are out there, pt. 2

And then there's the following racist email below that I've excerpted for your entertainment. (If you want the whole text, just run an Internet search on "I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race" and you'll find all kinds of wonderful links.):

---

"WHITE" Pride"

This is great. I have been wondering about why Whites are racists, and no other race is...

Proud to be White. Michael Richards makes his point...

---

When I got this forward-forward-forward, I replied to all with:

I disagree completely with the substance and tenor of this email because it ignores the full and complex historical context within which people of color in the U.S. have had to differentiate themselves from the dominant white culture in order merely to survive. If slavery, Jim Crow, racism, segregation, ghettoization, real estate restrictions, inadequate education, lynching, unequal employment opportunities, internment, etc., had not been ingrained within or at least facilitated by the white-dominated legal and social structures of this country in the first place, peoples of color would not have had to organize and identify themselves in quite the ways that they have had to. For starters, see:

Slavery
Jim Crow
Segregation
Lynching
Japanese American internment during WWII
Racial restrictive real estate covenants
Trail of Tears
Anti-Chinese laws
Anti-"Hindu" riots
Migrant farmworker struggles for equal rights
Segregated military units
Suffrage movement

Rights, being a social construct, are potentially infinitely inclusive. Therefore, there is no necessary inverse relationship when extending equal rights to groups of citizens formerly denied these rights: the increase of rights for one group does not, by definition, mean the decrease of rights for other groups. Granting women the right to vote with the 19th Amendment in 1920 did not disenfranchise white and non-white men, it merely increased the overall number of voters in this country. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 did not take away the rights of white children to an education, it granted to peoples of color the right to an education equal to the white majority. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not take employment, housing, and education rights away from white men, it guaranteed equal employment, housing, and education rights to women and peoples of color.

I would argue that more rights are abridged in more egregious ways by the following factors: first, the FCC's media ownership rules that allow monopolization of local and regional public airwaves by for-profit corporations; second, the so-called PATRIOT Act enacted in 2001 by the Bush II administration that suspends fundamental constitutional rights such as habeas corpus and due process; third, undermining the effectiveness of labor unions, initiated by Reagan when he broke the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981; fourth, the de facto granting of "personhood" and, therefore, constitutional rights to corporations in the 19th century. I could go on. These are much more subtle, yet much more pervasive, erosional factors on our basic American constitutional rights than ever would be the case in helping ensure that my African American next-door neighbor's children would be able to dream of becoming a lawyer or businessperson or to own their own home in whatever neighborhood they wanted when they grew up, just like my children would be able to dream.

Like George Carlin said, there's no reason to be "proud" for something one doesn't have any power over -- such as the color of one's skin or the location of one's birth. One can be HAPPY to be white, to be American, etc., but PRIDE should be reserved for something one has accomplished, achieved, attained, etc.

I can sort-of, vaguely, understand the type of fear and frustration that would motivate a person to write such an email as below, but I believe strongly that if anyone would take the time to step back, think rationally, educate themselves, and admit to the less-than-rosey history of race relations in this country that the borderline white supremacist tone of the email would be more than apparent.

Warmly,

Whitey Cracker,

James

p.s., Here's an interesting commentary on this same email.

-

It's disheartening to realize that these sentiments are out there

I received one of those forward-forward-forward email a few months back; I've excerpted the key points below, for your benefit.

This is one of those scary emails that is patently false. As snopes.com details, this email originated by xenophobes in Canada when the Canadian national anthem was supposedly going to be sung in Hindi, and then some enterprising citizens of the U.S.A. changed a few words so it would be culturally appropriate. Even thought it is false, the reactionary among us forward such things along without consideration. It seems to me that this indicates a deep-seated racism, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism, in the same vein as many of those stellar citizens at Fox News.

How can we help overcome the rampant fear, lack of empathy, and lack of intellectual curiosity that leads to such sentiment?

---

No apology for sending this! ! !

After hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish
-- enough is enough. Nowhere did they sing it in . . . any other
language because of immigration. It . . . should be sung word
for word the way it was written. The news broadcasts even gave
the translation -- not even close.

NOT sorry if this offends anyone because this is is MY COUNTRY
-- IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP -- please pass this along.

I am not against immigration -- just come through like everyone
else. . . . live by the rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other
immigrants have in the past -- and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

. . . If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending
someone -- YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

It is Time for America to Speak up

-----

Whenever I get such things I reply to all on the email list with stuff like:

I don't fear offending anyone and I definitely don't want to be
part of the problem, so I thought I'd alert everyone to the following
link:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/canadaanthem.asp

A couple deep breaths and just a couple minutes' worth of Internet
research can go a long way.

Paz, carino, y comprension,

-

Pretty close to being the most shallow treatment of this complex topic one might find

Jennifer and I have been on a few cleanses, and we have gotten many happy results from them. We've felt centered and cleaned-out and re-set. We also get to share intimate details about our gastrointestinal systems, which is important in building a strong partnership.* Even though we go through ups-and-downs during the 30-day cleansing period, in the end we find it highly valuable in some important physical and spiritual ways. Together, she and I have done two cellular cleanses.**

The other day, I came upon this treatment of one type of cleanse through slate.com. This short video is just about the most shallow treatment of the complex topic of cleanses that one could possibly imagine. Why? Because:

1) She doesn't talk to anyone who's had positive experiences with the cleanse.

2) She talks to a doctor who doesn't seem to know what he's talking about -- if she was really interested in this topic, she'd get a range of opinions on this issue.

3) She sets up the "black snake" as the great mystery of the master cleanse, yet she never makes any attempt to talk to anyone who might know what that phenomenon actually is.

4) Because of her lack of research, she falsely perceives the only motivation of a cleanse to be weight loss.

5) Her desire to cash in on the fad of the Beyoncé-style master cleanse leads her to look at the cleansing in general through the false frame of pop culture, which then leads her to the false conclusion that no cleanse is worth doing.

6) She doesn't set up any kind of quantitative measurement to attempt to gauge the degree to which she is or isn't getting any benefits from the cleanse.

7) She doesn't even have the journalistic curiosity to carry the cleanse out to its end, as she ostensibly set out to do in the beginning.

Essentially, the way I read this video, she was trying to do a Morgan Spurlock 30 Days-style thing, but lacked the intellectual curiosity, journalistic credentials, empathy, and personal discipline to do it. The result is that now there is a shallow, silly video out there in the world that will serve as the primary--and possibly only--perspective on the issue for, what, 1,000, 10,000 people? This result seems to fit into this observation of a lack of intellectual curiosity in our society these days.

-----------
* : )

** I make no claim in support of the capitalist empire that Mr. Ohlgren is building in connection with his cleanse -- I claim here only that we've had great results using the fundamentals of his cleanse techniques. I've only paid about $5 for a used copy of this book.

-