Gates Case has Everything to do With Racism, Which is Probably why it Won’t go Away.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. participates in a panel on CNN's live show 'Moment of Truth: Countdown to Black in America 2,' Wednesday, July 22, 2009 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

The ink had barely dried on Henry Louis Gates’ arrest record before people were falling over themselves to debate whether or not the arrest had anyhing to do with race. Even President Obama was asked to weigh in at a White House press conference. But at least one person involved in the scandal—the eminent Harvard professor himself—believes race was a factor.* In fact, expressing this opinion to Officer Crowley is what got him arrested.

Somewhere in this mess is Lucia Whalen, the 911 caller who’s been accused of racism for mentioning to the dispatcher that the suspects were Black. The recently released 911 tape provides some vindication—some vindication because, while she does not specifically use the word ”Black,” she does tell the dispatcher that one of the suspects looked “kind of Hispanic.” Kind of Hispanic? What exactly does kind of Hispanic look like anyway? Because pictures of Gates’ accomplice have been hard to come by, it’s safe to assume Gates—with his mocha skin—was very likely the Hispanic-looking one. But it doesn’t matter because in Boston—which doesn’t exactly have a great reputation for racial inclusivity—”kind of Hispanic” translates into “not White,” which pretty much answers the dispatcher’s question about the suspects’ race.

If race was not a factor, why then does a suspect’s skin color matter in the first place? Wouldn’t “what are they wearing?” be just as good for identifying suspects? After all, the police are perfectly capable of identifying suspects by their clothes, hairstyles, or physical features, no? Gates, for example, has a very recognizable limp. So again, if race didn’t play a role, why was it so important to the dispatcher?

But wait! Just when things couldn’t seem more cut and dry, genetics throws a spanner into the works. In an ironic twist, professor Gates has traced part of his genetic ancestry to an Irish warlord! Even more astonishing is the fact that Officer Crowley, who maintains that his decision to arrest Gates had nothing to do with race, is descended from the same warlord!!! This means that Professor Gates and Officer Crowley are related!!!

So the question becomes: if not for racism, how on earth could Officer Crowley and Professor Gates end up in the confrontation that splashed their photos all over the national press and got them invited to the White House for beers with the President? On the one hand you have Crowley, a White police officer, a symbol of law and order in his community. On the other hand, you have Gates, a Black man and a renowned Harvard professor—albeit surprisingly unknown and unrecognizable to Crowley. On the 911 tape, Crowley tells the dispatcher, ”I have an ID of a Henry Louis Gates.” Apparently, he had no idea who this “gentleman” even was! So again, how did Gates become a burglary suspect in his own home? More importantly, how did these two men—who share DNA!—wind up on opposite ends of the racial binary, one presumed to be an upstanding, fairminded citizen and the other so easily mistaken for a burglar? It seems pretty cut and dry.

According to Officer Crowley, Gates was “uncooperative”—as anyone with any dignity or self-respect would have been in that situation—so the handcuffs had to come out. But giving a police officer a piece of your mind because he basically accused you of burglarizing your own home is not disorderly conduct, it’s freedom of expression. Expecting any person to grin and bear such indignity and humiliation is not only unfair and insenstive, it borders on tyranny. Isn’t protection from the caprices of an overbearing executive one of the foundational principles of the Constitiution, a document with which Professor Gates is no doubt familiar? Luckily, Cambridge PD sympathized with the professor and dropped the charges. That should have been enough vindication.

But not for everyone. In nearby Boston, Officer Justin Barrett was so incensed by a local columnist’s defense of Gates that he wrote her an email in which he called the professor a “banana-eating jungle monkey”! Even more troubling is Barrett’s assertion:

I am not a racist, but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid.

Apparently, Officer Barrett, despite his dislike of stupid people, is incapable of recognizing racism. He goes on to conclude that Professor Gates “has indeed transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey,” and adds that, had he been in Officer Crowley’s place, he would have pepper-sprayed the professor in the face.

So we’re back to the same question: on what foundation did Barrett’s letter rest, riddled as it was with “frequent grammatical and spelling errors”? This barely literate man, despite having been an English teacher, does not even know the meaning of transcend—to rise above, to move onwards and upwards—or that it has a positive connotation (the word he was looking for is “regressed”). Yet for some reason, he confidently and mercilessly denigrates an acclaimed Harvard professor! In fact, this incident defies logic and can only be understood as an irrational emotional response born of prejudice and ignorance. Kinda like . . . racism?

But, lest anyone get the impression that this case is all about race and nothing else, it’s only fair to point out that Officer Barrett also had a few choice words for the columnist, Yvonne Abraham:

Barrett, who identified himself as a veteran . . . also took issue with Abraham’s journalistic ability, calling her ‘a hot little bird with minimal experience in a harsh field,’ as well as ‘an infidel.’ The rambling e-mail also suggested that she ‘should serve me coffee and donuts on Sunday morning,’ later returning to that line of thought with, ‘I like a warm cruller and hot Panamanian, black. No sugar.’

Good to see that Officer Barrett is well-rounded in his prejudice. After all, his sentiments give the impression that having been born with a penis—kinda like having been born with  the right skin color—entitles him to insult and dismiss a professional journalist for no reason other than that she was born with the wrong genitals. Oh, and he disagrees with her on the Gates issue.

The only good that might come out of this episode is that Officer Barrett will be removed from the police force, prompting a huge collective sigh of relief from “infidels,” ”hot little birds,” and “jungle monkeys” all over the Boston area. In the meantime, I gotta cancel my subscription to Ms. Magazine and tear up my NAACP membership card. I won’t be needing those anymore!

*Considering Professor Gates has written books on the question of race and racism in America, I’m going to have to assume he knows what he’s talking about and agree with him.

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Gang Rape/Murder Trials May Strike a Blow for Women’s Rights in South Africa.

A little over a year ago, the body of 31-year-old Eudy Simelane was found in a park near her home on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. She had been gang raped and stabbed 25 times. Eudy was a sportscaster and a former midfielder on the South African national women’s football team. She was also a lesbian.

In a country where rape and violence against women is endemic, Eudy is one among countless victims. A recently published survey found that one quarter of South African men admitted to having committed rape. Further compounding the problem, the One in Nine Campaign, which takes its name from the grim statistic that only one in nine victims comes forward, maintains that rape is grossly underreported. This is no surprise considering that in South Africa, as elsewhere, women who are raped often find themselves blamed for it. For example, in a recent high-profile rape trial, the current president defended himself with the old she-made-me-do-it line, arguing (among other things) that the victim had provoked the sexual encounter by wearing a kanga—a traditional wrap-around garment—while she was a guest at his house. Unlike the president, however, most South African rapists are never tried for their crimes.

But Eudy Simelane’s case is somewhat different from the others. She was well-known, so the trial of the men accused of raping and killing her is bringing a lot of needed attention to South Africa’s rape crisis, especially to the targeted rape of lesbians. Dubbed “corrective rape,” The Guardian describes it as a practice wherein men—or gangs of men—rape lesbians in the belief that after sex with them, a lesbian will “become a girl.”

Earlier this year, one man accused of playing a role in Eudy Simelane’s death pled guilty to robbery and murder, but not rape. Today, the remaining suspects go to trial. Womens’ and gay rights activists are organizing around the trials—as well as around two other cases of “corrective rape”—hoping to push the government to take stronger action against rape, sexual violence, homophobia, and other hate crimes.

The convictions and sentences handed down in these cases ought to send a strong message that rape is wrong and go a long way towards improving life for lesbians—and other women—in South Africa. After all, it was the first country in the world to constitutionally guarantee gay rights, and the outcome of these cases will show whether, and to what extent, the South African government is committed to the ideals enshrined in the post-Apartheid constitution.

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This Is Mexico . . ..

I’ve been in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for four days now, and have only now had the time and ability to write a short post. I had intended to write a cheerful and upbeat post about how great Puerto Vallarta is, but made the mistake of checking my email first.

In my inbox were emails from several people who had sent me links to the latest news on the verdict in the Luis Ramirez case, which I’d blogged about since Ramirez, a Mexican, was beaten to death in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. On a July night last year, he was walking home with a teenaged girl when he encountered a group of teenaged boys in a park. Words were exchanged—not a few of them racist insults hurled in Ramirez’s direction—and the situation escalated into an all-out fistfight that ended with Luis Ramirex laying on the ground unconscious and foaming at the mouth. He died in hospital two days later from severe head injuries sustained during the fight.

The jury was tasked with, among other things, sorting out who exactly delivered the blow that killed Luis, since at least three of the teens fought with him directly. They found the accused not guilty of all but the least serious charge: simple assault. I understand that sometimes, people make mistakes. But some mistakes are more serious than others. For example, someone might make the mistake of drinking and getting behind the wheel of a car. If they make it home safely, fine. But if they accidentally run over a pedestrian and kill him, they do not get off simply because they made a mistake. Yet here we have a case in which a human being’s life was taken by people using their fists and feet as weapons, yet they got off scott free.

So, as I sit here watching the orange sun set over a glassy bay, I find myself writing a very different post from the one I had intended. I wanted to write about how amazing Puerto Vallarta is. Every single person I have met here has been nothing but wonderful: warm, hospitable, generous, and good-humored. It was everywhere around me, once I left the taxi-and-package-tour-hustle-and-bustle of the airport. This was what I had planned to write about . . . before I checked my email. Now, the kindness and warmth of the Mexicans I’ve met stands out even more starkly when viewed against the backdrop of the Luis Ramirez case: I cannot imagine a situation in which six Mexican teenagers would find cause to make a disparaging remark towards me or any of the people I’m here with, let alone attack any of us so viciously as to leave us brain-damaged and dying in a park.

I know I’m here as a tourist and that tourist dollars are the lifeblood of the local economy. But I’m also here as a foreigner. I look physically different from every single Mexican I’ve seen, and my Spanish is far from good enough to allow me to pass. Yet nobody has yelled a racial slur in my direction, and nobody has told me—out of contempt or frustration—to learn Spanish. And, while I’m sure Puerto Vallarta has its share of crime both petty and violent, I haven’t found myself in a situation in which I’m made to feel uncomfortable or threatened because of my skin color, hair texture, or non-flueny in the local language.

After all, despite the obvious benefits tourists bring to the towns along Mexico’s coasts, there is more than enough reason for Mexicans to be hostile towards me. I’m a foreigner, a tourist, and an American. There is a long history of tension between our two countries, and I’m sure some tourists and foreigners comport themselves in a less-than-decent way with the locals. But none of this has been enough—in my admittedly limited time in Mexico—to cause the locals to treat me with suspicion, scorn, resentment, or outright hostility. When I attempt to communicate in my piss-poor Spanish, they listen patiently, correct me when I ask for correction and, when I eventually give up and ask if they speak English, graciously switch to fluent or near-perfect English.

I imagine that, had the teenagers who were found not guilty of beating Luis Ramirez to death ever found themselves in Mexico, they would have met the same reception as me and my fellow travelers. I imagine that Brian Scully too—the one who made the comment that started the fight and who yelled racial epithets while his friends were beating Luis Ramirez—would have been treated with nothing but kindness, warmth, and good humor.

Tragically, the reception Luis Ramirez got in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania was markedly different from the one I am getting from his compatriots in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In fact, his experience could not have been more different, a difference made even more grotesque by the fact that his attackers were ultimately found to be not responsible for his death.

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Post-Racialism Marches On in America.

Image distributed by Los Almitos Mayor Dean Grose, showing the White house lawn prepped for the annual Watermelon hunt. Grose is claiming he was unaware of the racial stereotype that Black people love watermelon.

Lest anyone was having trouble remembering that we are now living in a post-racial America, here are a few reminders.

In Los Alamitos, Mayor Dean Grose has come under fire for sending a doctored photo titled “No Easter egg hunt this year.” Offended recepients, including Keyanus Price, a Black businesswoman, have demanded an apology from the mayor. Speaking in his own defense, the mayor claimed that he had no idea there was a racial stereotype involving Black people and watermelons.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, issued a reluctant apology for the above cartoon, drawn by Sean Delonas.

Other examples of post-racialism at work  have attracted nationwide attention. Take, for example, the New York Post cartoon in which two White officers shoot dead a chimpanzee, and one of the officers says to the other, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” While the Post and its supporters tried to argue that the cartoon ape and the reference to the stimulus bill were not coded racist references to President Barack Obama, there is no escaping the association. Although admittedly the president is not the bill’s author, a cursory Google search on the term “stimulus bill” turns up tons of articles that reference Obama in their opening paragraphs (see also here). So while the cartoonist may want people to believe that the link was unintentional, the reality is that on one hand, the ape has long been used as a  racist caricature of Black people, and on the other hand, there is a long history of White people doing violence to Black people. When the links among the stimulus bill and Barack Obama, the history of police violence towards Black men, and the ape as a racist caricature are considered, it’s hard—if not impossible—not to see the racist overtones in this cartoon.

Sadly, some of the other signs of post-racialism are much more real than a doctored photo or a newspaper cartoon, and the town of Paris, Texas provides a few examples. Paris is where a 14-year-old Black girl was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile prison for pushing a hall monitor. The sentencing judge had earlier sentenced a young White girl to probation for arson! Paris is also home to Turner Industries’ pipe factory, whose Black employees are complaining that nooses, confederate flags, and racist graffitti are prominently displayed all over their workplace.

Ah yes! We are living in heady times! Post-racial fever is sweeping the nation and everybody’s catching the bug! According to CNN, there has been a huge upswing in the number of Americans joining hate groups. Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard (what an unfortunate last name for a KKK Grand Wizard!?), told the cable news network that 2,000 people joined his online hate group the day after Obama’s inauguration: prior to the inauguration, he got about 80 new members a day.

Clearly, in this post-racial climate, many people are confused and disoriented, and don’t know how to handle life in the new America. In the spirit of post-racialism—and as a personal favor to Mayor Dean Grose, Turner Industries’ White employees, Don Black, and anyone else who wants to jump on the post-racial bandwagon—here are a few ways in which the post-racial esprit de corps can be advanced:

• Don’t make any jokes about Native Americans and alcoholism;
• Do not make casual references to Asians, math prowess, and/or penis/butt/breast size;
• Avoid associating Black people with grape soda, fried chicken, drug dealing, or primates of any kind;
• Whatever you do, DO NOT join a hate group. Joining a hate group will severely undermine your post-racial credentials.

Boy, it feels great to be living in a post-racial America! I shudder to think what America was like before post-racialism.

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We Have Not Overcome.

On election night, I joined thousands of revelers in the streets of Washington, DC in a spontaneous celebration of Barack Obama’s presidential victory. And we were not alone: similar celebrations erupted all across the United States and around the world. Seventy-seven days later, the spectacle was repeated on an even grander scale as over a million people streamed into DC to witness the inauguration, and millions more around the world watched it on television and computer screens.  The inauguration of Barack Obama was hailed as a truly historic occasion, a sign that America had changed, that we had entered a post-racist era. We united in self-congratulation as we watched Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi end their rendition of Sam Cooke’s classic with the line, “a change has come, ” while the more eschatologically minded described Mr. Obama’s ascension to the presidency as nothing less than the fulfilment of Martin Luther King’s prophetic dream. But have we really overcome?

Well, if news headlines from around the country are any indication, we still have a long way to go. It will take more than a changing of the guard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to fix what ails our country because, while Obama’s victory is significant for many reasons, it has not brought us into a post-racist world.

Take, for example, what is taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona, where  Sheriff Joe Arpaio—who already has a reputation for brutally mistreating undocumented county residents—sank to hitherto unimaginable depths. A short while ago, the tough-on-immigration sheriff marched over 200 immigration detainees (mainly Latino men) from the county jail to a tent city created just for them. Detainees were dressed in old-time striped prison uniforms and paraded publicly to the tent city, which is surrounded by an electric fence. In the past, the sheriff’s department has caught flak for racial profiling and disproportionately targeting Latinos for arrest and harrassment. There have also been numberous reports of mistreatment of detainees, who have been hog-tied, beaten, and forced to work in chain gangs. To put things in perspective: 70% of Arpaio’s detainees have not been tried or convicted of any offense! So much for the American ideal of “innocent until proven guilty.” One doesn’t have to be a holocaust scholar to be sickened by Sheriff Arpaio’s pogrom against Maricopa County’s Latinos.

The situation is no better on the other side of the country where Jack Lacy, the ex-president of Hamilton Township in New Jersey, was forced to resign after sending an e-mail in which he compared President Obama’s inauguration to the evacuation of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. According to Lacy, “How can two million blacks get into Washington, D.C., in sub zero (temperatures) in one day when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans at 85 degrees with four days notice?” So . . . when over a million Black people gathered in DC to celebrate what could be the greatest day in the history of Black America since emancipation, Jack Lacy saw fit to compare it to what was possibly the worst time in recent Black American history.

And finally, who can forget the spate of hate crimes that erupted around the election? In Long Island, New York, a gang of teens went on an immigrant-bashing spree that culminated in the death of Marcelo Lucero. Another case involved a Black family of Obama supporters in New Jersey who found a burnt cross on their lawn a few days after the election. On Staten Island, New York, a Black man was beaten by two teenagers: during the beating, they insulted their victim with racial slurs and called him “Obama.” It’s worth noting that these are not isolated incidents, the death throes of bigotry in a post-racist America. In fact, there was a spike in hate crimes and ethnic intimidation around the country, according to a report put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

There are countless other examples but there’s no need to recount more, because those who share my outlook already know about them, and those who don’t cannot be convinced. Suffice to say, attitudes from racial America have been effortlessly carried over into post-racial America, and eliminating these attitudes will take much more than a Black family in the White House. America is still America and, lest we forget, Obama did not get 100% of the votes cast. Far from it. He got only slightly over half. Yet watching the nation bask in collective self-congratulation, one might be forgiven for thinking that Americans had—by the mere act of electing the first Black president in our nation’s history—accomplished nothing less than the elimination of racism from the face of the earth.

Part of the explanation for this response lies in Americans’ limited understanding of racism. Many Americans understand racism simply as namecalling or violence. Other Americans see racism as the absence of Black people or other people of color in positions of power. Racism is both these things, of course, but it is also much more. However, for the average American, who understands racism as merely the absence of colored people in positions of power, the Obama presidency is a major blow against racism: some of the more sanguine of that lot even consider it a fatal blow. But there’s more to this racism-is-dead rhetoric. The claim that America has entered a post-racist era is nothing less than an extension of our national mythology.

Our nation’s myths tell us that we are a special nation destined to blaze a unique trail in the world. America, we are often reminded, is a city on a hill, a shining beacon for the world. Everything we do, everything to do with America, is further proof of our unique place in the world. Even when we are doing wrong, it’s gets spun as proof of our inherent greatness. At any given point in our history, for instance, the majority of Americans have tolerated unimaginable injustices carried out against minorities—enslavement, segration, lynching, ethnic cleansing, torture, the racist “war on drugs,” unprovoked war against Iraq, illegal roundups of undocumented immigrants. Yet when a few courageous individuals lay their lives and freedom on the line to end some form of  injustice, we unite in collective self-congratulation, holding up the victory as proof of how great our country is.

But is the constant need for some to triumph over injustice really proof of America’s greatness? Clearly, that is what the myth-makers would have us believe. After all, we are reminded, only a great society would give a dedicated handful of people the chance to risk their lives and liberty in the fight against state-sanctioned injustice. We point to people like Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks as proof of America’s greatness, a place in which even those who are brutalized by the system can, through superhuman acts of heroism, become full citizens. Yet we never stop to wonder why these people were, in the first place,  living in a society in which they were compelled to stand up and demand that their dignity and inherent humanity be recognized. Why have minorities in America had to exert heroic efforts just to be recognized as full human beings and full citizens? What does it say about America that she has demanded nothing less than heroism from non-White people whenever they have aspired to nothing more than the chance to live as ordinary people? Would Frederick Douglass have chosen to be born a slave just for the chance to achieve greatness by rising from slave to human? Would Rosa Parks not have preferred to live in a society in which heroism was not a prerequesite for being able to sit wherever one pleased? Naturally, our myth-makers never answer these questions. Hell, they never even ask them. Instead, they tell us only that America is a great country in which Black people like Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass can become national heroes. But they never tell us why the systems of injustice under which they suffered—which forced them to become heroic—came to be so widely accepted in the first place.

And so the myth-makers are spinning the story of Barack Obama, the first Black president . . . of the United States, anyway, because many other countries have had Black presidents. The difference is that in most of these countries, White privilege and racism were never so institutionalized that it became remarkable that a non-White person would rise to the ranks of the presidency. The fact that we find it so remarkable that America actually has a Black president says a lot about our society. But our nation’s myth-makers would rather ignore this inconvenient truth, choosing to remind us instead that Obama’s victory is further proof of how great our country is.

But the Sherriff Arpaios and Jack Lacys of the world remind us of something else. They remind us that we still have a long, long way to go.

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When is a Racial Slur not Offensive? Never.

Not long ago, Prince Harry, son of the late Princess Diana and third in line for the British throne, unleashed a storm of controversy after a three-year-old home video was released in which the prince used the terms paki and raghead. The video was shot while Prince Harry was still a cadet at Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy.

In the first scene the prince pans his camera over fellow soldiers waiting in an airport departure lounge, pausing on fellow cadet Ahmed Raza Khan and referring to him as “our little paki friend.” In another scene, he tells another soldier that he “look[ed] like a raghead.” Prince Harry rightfully caught flak and did the right thing by promptly apologizing, but he’s had more than his fair share of apologists who want us to believe that calling someone a paki or raghead is not really that offensive. But they’re wrong: directing a racial slur at someone is always offensive.

Rod Richards, a former Royal Marine and Foreign Office minister in the Conservative government of John Major had this to say in defense of Prince Harry’s use of the slurs:

I am a Welshman and it was quite common for people like me to be called Taffy. Similar nicknames are also used for people from other parts of the world. The use of the word ‘Paki’ doesn’t surprise me but in a military context, it is not derogatory. People are making an issue out of something that is not an issue.” 

And this was the response of Michael Evans, Defense Editor of the Times Online:

Prince Harry was clearly not attempting to be deliberately offensive towards his Pakistani colleague but appeared to be using the pejorative term in a light-hearted way. Similarly, the term ‘raghead’ is used not infrequently in the Army when soldiers are referring to the ‘opposition’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Richards and Evans, and the many others who defended the prince, are missing the point. Paki and raghead are not mere pet names that can be tossed around willy-nilly. They are racial slurs and that makes them offensive. For starters, paki and raghead are used solely in reference to South Asians and Arabs/Muslims respectively, and never as terms of endearment or respect. Furthermore, calling people names based on their skin color, ethnicity, language, or region of origin is plain wrong. Even kindergarteners know that. After all, nobody chooses their skin color or where they were born, and nobody should be called names because of things over which they have no control.

But the bigger issue here is that unlike nicknames, which may stem from an individual’s height, weight, or hair color, racial slurs are used against entire populations. And, unlike nicknames, racial slurs are created and used in specific  historical and political contexts. In other words, they are created in a context of inequality in which one group (let’s call them the namecallers) creates and uses a slur while simultaneously doing violence to, marginalizing, exploiting, or otherwise denigrating another group (let’s call them the namecallees). For this reason, it is impossible to separate a racial slur from the context in which it was created.

Take, for example, two common American slurs—nigger and gook. These words were created, and came into popular use, at a time when the namecallers were doing some kind of violence to the namecallees. Nigger came into use at a time when Africans were being captured and sold into plantation slavery in the New World, and continues to be used as a derogatory term to this day. Gook came into being as long ago as 1899 and has been used sequentially against Filipinos, Japanese people, Koreans, and Vietnamese people. Is it any coincidence that these uses followed the sequence of America’s wars in Asia?

Similarly, paki came about at a time when newly arriving South Asians were experiencing hostility, to say nothing of violence, at the hands of native-born Brits. Is it any wonder, then, that attacks against South Asian immigrants came to be known as paki bashing? Michael Evans, the Times editor, lent (perhaps inadvertently) support to this point when he reminded his readers that “the term ‘raghead’ is used not infrequently in the Army when soldiers are referring to the ‘opposition’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Put another way, this means that British and American soldiers are doing violence to Arabs and Muslims, all the while referring to them as ragheads.

Wars might end and time—to say nothing of equal rights legislation—might pass, but racial slurs do not cease to be offensive, nor do they lose their power to denigrate. Because they are conceived and used in violence, they can never go back to being mere words. To call someone a nigger, a paki, a gook, or a raghead is not just to remind them of the violence done to people who shared their skin color, religion, or birthplace. It is also to point out that they are different, that they do not belong, and that they will always be outsiders in the dominant culture. After all, can nigger be separated from the brutality of the Middle Passage, plantation slavery, and Jim-Crow segregation? Can anyone honestly claim to have successfully divorced paki from paki bashing? When will gook lose its connotation of napalm and free-fire zones? And, long after the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan come to an end, what meaning will raghead retain? Will it really be possible to draw a neat, sharp line between the word and the violence done by British and American soldiers to the people they called “ragheads“?

To be clear, this is not to argue that anyone who uses a racial slur is a racist. The question, ultimately, is not whether it is possible for someone to use these words and simultaneously not be a racist, but whether it is decent to do so in the first place! After all, racial slurs on their own do not constitute racism but their use is an essential component of it. Using racial slurs is an exercise of power by the namecaller, used to establish his dominance over the namecallee and everyone else who shares his skin color, religion, language, or birthplace. In addition to being reminders of past violence, racial slurs let the namecallee know that he does not belong, that he is inferior to the namecaller. The intended use of a racial slur is immaterial: the context in which it was created—in other words, how it acquired meaning and thus the power to offend and demean—is what really matters.

So while Prince Harry may not be a racist (although showing up to a party wearing a swastika armband does little to rule out the possibility), his casual use of racial slurs proves that a top-notch education does not necessarily endow its recipient with common sensitivity, let alone common sense. As for Ahmed Khan, Prince Harry’s “little paki friend” (now a captain in the Pakistani army), there is no way to know how he feels about having been called a little paki: the army has barred him from discussing the matter.

At the end of the day, Prince Harry’s affinity for swastikas and racially insensitive language says a lot about his level of cultural sensitivity, but at least he has enough sense to apologize when he has caused offense. That’s much more than can be said of the people who rallied to his defense and tried to argue that paki and raghead aren’t so offensive after all.

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Anti-Immigrant Organizations Linked to Racist Hate Groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) just issued a report linking several mainstream anti-immigrant organizations to racist and White supremacist groups. The report concludes that the groups FAIR, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. Here’s an excerpt:

Three Washington, D.C.-based immigration-restriction organizations stand at the nexus of the American nativist movement: the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), and NumbersUSA. Although on the surface they appear quite different — the first, the country’s best-known anti-immigrant lobbying group; the second, an “independent” think tank; and the third, a powerful grassroots organizer — they are fruits of the same poisonous tree.

FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the “puppeteer” of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots. As the first article in this report shows, Tanton has for decades been at the heart of the white nationalist scene. He has met with leading white supremacists, promoted anti-Semitic ideas, and associated closely with the leaders of a eugenicist foundation once described by a leading newspaper as a “neo-Nazi organization.” He has made a series of racist statements about Latinos and worried that they were outbreeding whites. At one point, he wrote candidly that to maintain American culture, “a European-American majority” is required.

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

The full report can be found here.

There was always something deeply troubling about the rhetoric coming out of the anti-immigrant camp but it was hard to put a finger on exactly what it was. But it’s clear now, thanks to the folks at the SPLC.

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In Defense of Single Moms and Black Men.

Yesterday, I had the rare pleasure of attending a City Council hearing on education reform in Washington, DC, which has some of the worst public schools in the country. The highlight of the event for me was seeing former Mayor and current Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry live and in person.

My excitement, however, quickly turned to disappointment once Mr. Barry’s turn came to address the witnesses. In his attempt to explain to the panel of experts why their “academic” policy suggestions might not work in the District’s socioeconomic and cultural climate, Councilmember Barry dragged out the tired old trope about how 80-something percent of DC households were headed by single mothers and how this fact alone was responsible for much of the District’s problems. But Marion Barry is not the first Black person to put forth this argument. It seems like only yesterday that then-candidate Barack Obama scored points on the campaign trail for calling on Black men to take a more active role in parenthood. But despite its popularity, this man-in-the-house argument is problematic for many reasons, not least of all because it is classist, sexist, and heterosexist.

First off, I won’t pretend to not understand that two-parent households can be more stable than single-parent ones. But we totally miss the mark if we assume that a household is more stable simply because it is headed by two parents, or because one of the household heads is a man. Poverty, not single motherhood, is the real problem in DC and other urban communities. Of course, a two-parent household potentially has double the earnings of a single-parent household, but this only holds true in cases in which both parents are earning an income. In today’s troubled times there is no guarantee that one, let alone both, adults are earning an income, and in impoverished urban communities—like much of DC—the question then becomes not whether or not there are two parents heading the household but whether household income can cover the family’s basic needs. And with national unemployment rates skewed so heavily against Black men, simply having a man in the house is no guarantee that the family will earn enough to improve its fortunes.

The man-in-the-house argument is also problematic because it is classist, too often brought up in the context of low-income households—thanks to the nexus of race and class in the US, low-income households are also often Black households. In other words, it’s an argument that’s made almost exclusively in the case of poor or working-class women, a substantial percentage of whom happen to be Black. Needless to say, any argument that applies only to people of a certain class or skin color is problematic, for obvious reasons. In fact, the man-in-the-house argument is almost never brought up publicly when affluent single women choose to raise their biological children out of wedlock, to not remarry after a divorce, or to adopt children. Clearly, what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander: if low-income Black women need a man in the house, shouldn’t the same hold true for affluent women?

There is also a pervasive element of sexism in the man-in-the-house rationale, because it assumes that women are somehow less capable of heading a household or raising a family. As mentioned above, household income is much more relevant to the stability or success of a household than whether or not it is headed by a woman. More importantly, this argument trivializes the significant and inescapable fact that generations of Black people—men and women—have been raised by women. When men have been unwilling or unable to be there for their children, it is the Black woman who has borne the responsibility of caring for the family. From the days of slavery when the “kitchen baby” was rejected by its White father’s family, it was up to Black women to raise and care for that child. Today, Black women are raising not only their children but also their children’s children. Without Black mothers there would be no Black community, and to continually insist on the importance of Black men is to trivialize and outright ignore the tremendous role played by Black women in American society.

Finally, the man-in-the-house argument is heterosexist, because it assumes that the ideal household is one headed by a man and a woman. So, are we to believe that a two-woman household is worse off simply because it lacks a man? Again, the argument holds little water because many lesbian couples are successfully raising children in stable homes without men. Obviously, the presence or absence of a man in a lesbian household is a moot issue. What matters more is whether or not a single woman or a two-woman couple can provide materially and emotionally for their children.

In light of the aforementioned points, the man-in-the-house argument is self-contradictory. On one hand we are asked to believe that single-mother homes have dire consequences for an entire community, but on the other hand, few people can deny that an affluent woman—or two financially stable women—can maintain a household. But even in cases where the woman is not affluent, it is wrong to assume that she would be better of with a man in her home.

Take, for instance, the issue of domestic violence (DV). Some studies indicate that up to 85 percent of DV victims are women. Closer to home, the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that in 2005, 43 percent of the almost 5,000 victims of DV were residents of Ward 8, Marion Barry’s own district. This is not to disparage Marion Barry or to argue that all men are abusers. It is simply to argue that in many cases, having a man in the house actually makes matters worse. One final point: the man of the house is much more likely to squander a family’s income on alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Is it any surprise then that international development organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations have recognized that putting a woman in control of a household’s finances benefits not only her family but also the community at large?

So why does the man-in-the-house argument carry so much weight? Part of the answer, I believe, lies in the inherent sexism of our patriarchal society, which presumes that men are natural leaders and that social problems arise when men do not lead. After all, we are taught that men lead nations, armies, churches, and corporations, so it is only natural that they should lead households. But the damage done to the Black two-parent heterosexual family—not to mention the wider Black community—is not the result of decisions made by individual Black men. Rather, it is the consequence of the same social and economic structures that continue to keep Black men under-educated, under-employed, and over-represented in the criminal justice system. This reality, however, does not totally exonerate Black men: many of us cling to the man-in-the-house argument, perhaps because we—despite being marginalized in many ways—still feel entitled to be higher on the patriarchal pecking order than women. Perhaps because we are so marginalized in the wider society, many of us view the home as one area in which we ought to dominate.

At the end of the day, the problems facing the Black community are wider and deeper than Marion Barry and the other proponents of the man-in-the-house argument dare to admit. Long-term solutions will require much more than two-parent, man-woman households, and we must not lay the responsibility for solving what is, in reality a national problem, solely at the feet of Black men. This is not to say Black men bear no responsibility. There is certainly much we can do to help. We can recommit ourselves to supporting our families and we can take a public stand against domestic violence. We can re-evaluate our attitudes towards schooling and start thinking of ways to make the schools work better for us and our children. And we can get more involved in our communities by mentoring youth and educating them about the challenges they will have to overcome as they make their way through American society.

But the problems we face are not caused solely by individual action or inaction, and it will take a collective national effort to rebuild Black communities. For starters, everyone needs to stop thinking of our communities as Black communities and start thinking of them as American communities: What’s good for Black people is also good for America. All Americans need jobs that pay a living wage. We all need better public schools, greater opportunities for educational advancement, and job training to ensure career mobility. And we all need a more affordable, accessible, and equitable health-care system. It may sound like we need a lot but as a society, it is hypocritical for us to demand that Black men provide for their families while we simultaneously deny them opportunities for moral uplift and social advancement. Historically, Black men have proven themselves to be a resilient lot, bearing with grace and flair the brunt of what our society has dealt us. But we are in the end mere men. And while some of us are indeed capable of working miracles, rebuilding our communities will take much more than simply having a man in the house.

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In Iran, Opium is the Opiate of the Masses.

Back in 2001, the BBC ran a story on Iran’s drug problem and quoted a doctor who put the number of “serious addicts” at 1,200,000. The article goes on to say that the number of drug users was rising by 600,000 each year, with ever-increasing numbers of women among the new users. Drug addiction had suddenly become the primary social concern for the government, with over 70% of the country’s prison population incarcerated on drug-related charges. At that time, opium consumption in Tehran alone was estimated to be five tonnes a day. A more recent two-part BBC documentary states that Iran has the highest rate of opiate addiction in the world, with the official figure set at over two million addicts: Unofficially, the figure could be twice that. But as alarming as the figures are, Iran’s drug problem might merely be a symptom of wider and deeper problems.

After all, drug use in Iran is by no means a recent phenomenon. Just last year Rudi Matthee, a history professor, published The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton University Press), for which he won the Albert Hourani Book Award and the Said Sirjani Award. Nonetheless, the fact that today’s Iran is governed by religious law does render the high rates of drug use a bit surprising, if not outright shocking. Further research, however, turned up some answers.

One explanation—also mentioned in the BBC documentary—was the impact of the eight-year war with Iraq, during which many young men started their drug use. This is plausible, considering it’s not unusual for soldiers to use drugs in wartime. The experience of American GIs during the Viet Nam War is a good example, differing only in that just a small percentage of returning American soldiers lapsed into opiate use once back in the US. Similarly, the chief psychiatrist in Sierra Leone reports that about 90% of the mental-health cases he has dealt with involve substance abuse. During Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war, drug-influenced fighters (including child soldiers as young as 11) could be found in the ranks of all the warring factions. Although drug use declined after the war, it is once again on the rise. It is conceivable, then, that after a long and destructive war, many Iranians may have brought their drug habits back from the war front.

The experience of war, however, only explains drug use among that segment of the population that was old enough to actively take part in the war. And, since that population is largely made up of men (although women did fight as well), how can one explain the increasing rates of drug use among young Iranians and Iranian women? There’s always the possibility that the documentary was biased or that the figures they cited were inaccurate, but there can be no doubt that Iran has a drug problem. The issue has recently been examined by the UN, the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Herald Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, so regardless of the figures, it seems hard to argue that Iran does not have a drug problem. 

But is the experience of long-term war the only explanation? The answer appears to be “not entirely.” Another reason for the high rates of drug use is the availability of cheap, raw opium. After all, Iran shares a border with Afghanistan, a top producer of unprocessed opium, making Iran a natural conduit for drugs making their way to markets in Europe, the Mediterranean, and or other parts of the Middle East. Clearly, Iran is also becoming more of a market for these drugs. Introductory Economics teaches that the closer a product is to its state and source of extraction, the cheaper it is. In other words, a more refined, processed, or finished product fetches a higher price. Uncut diamonds are therefore cheaper than cut and polished ones, peanuts are cheaper than peanut butter, and iron ore is cheaper than steel. Moreover, a product’s cost can increase as it moves farther away from where it was originally extracted. So it’s not unexpected that Iranians would—thanks to their country’s proximity to Afghanistan—have access to cheaper opium and opium-based drugs than say, someone living in Paris.

But all this leaves one glaring question unanswered. How is it possible that a country ruled by a conservative theocracy—which governs through religious law—happens to have the world’s highest number of drug users? Perhaps the answer lies in the question. After all, a government that believes that all the solutions to social problems can be found in religion might not be best equipped to deal with problems like depression and drug addiction, problems that cannot be easily solved through prayer and meditation. Perhaps such a government might not be the best suited for managing an economy and retaining human and intellectual capital, both vital for a strong economy. Is it any surprise that, according to the IMF, anywhere between 150,000 and 180,000 highly skilled Iranians annually vote with their feet by emigrating? Perhaps there is a possibility that those who are unable—or for whatever reason, unwilling—to leave join the ever-growing ranks of drug users. After all, lack of economic opportunity and personal and professional fulfillment lead to frustration and depression, which in turn may lead to substance use.

But there is yet another, darker possibility. In 1848, a famous German scholar wrote that religion was the opiate of the masses. A century later, George Orwell gave us a dystopia ruled by a brutal and despotic regime that used pornographic literature and alcohol to pacify the nation it governed. Today, with Iran having the lowest mosque attendance of any Muslim country, it seems the regime is witnessing the limitations of religion’s power to stupefy the nation. Luckily for them, though, it appears the nation has decided to replace a metaphoric opiate with the real thing.

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In VP Debate, Sarah Palin Talked Straight to the American People . . . and Insulted Their Intelligence.

About thirteen minutes into last Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Republican candidate Sarah Palin declared that she was not going to answer the questions the way her opponent, Joe Biden or Gwen Ifill, the moderator, would have liked. Instead, she said, she was going to talk straight to the American people. By the end of the debate, it became clear that Sarah Palin’s straight talk was little more than rambling, disjointed answers, folksy anecdotes about small-town life, and political talking points. It also became clear that Sarah Palin has little regard for the intelligence of the American people.

Take, for example, her answer to the question about taxation. After pointing out that paying taxes is not patriotic, she went on to state that she and her husband, Todd, are middle class. While it’s difficult to get hold of exactly how much Sarah Palin earned as governor of Alaska, at least one source reports that she earned $125,000, and that her and her husband’s assets add up to a net worth of over $1 million. However, despite her six-figure salary (which is roughly half of her family income), Sarah Palin insists on painting herself as an everyday, middle-class American. Now, I’m not sure what planet the Alaska governor inhabits but here on planet Earth, a six-figure salary puts its earner above joe-sixpack status. Yet Sarah Palin spoke as if the American people are not expected to know this—in much the same way they were not expected to see any irony in the fact that the Republican party (which is trying to sell itself as the people’s party) mocked community organizers at their recent convention. In keeping with this line of thinking, Sarah Palin actually said in the debate that the Republican party puts people first. Of course, anyone who remembers 2005 would have been forgiven for asking if she was talking about the same party that so notoriously failed to put the people of New Orleans first.

Such hypocrisy seems par for the course for the Republican party, so there’s nothing new here. After all, this is the party whose presidential candidate owns more houses than he can count—including a $12 million mansion in Arizona—yet accuses his Democratic opponent of being elitist. But again, that sort of hypocrisy has become commonplace in presidential campaigns. At the end of the day, it was Sarah Palin’s utter failure—or refusal—to even engage with the moderator’s questions or her opponent’s rebuttals that was most insulting to the American people’s intelligence. Several times she ignored the question outright and answered whatever she pleased. For example, when given the chance to rebut Biden’s charge that Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain supported “deregulation almost across the board,” Palin responds, “Oh, I’m still on the tax thing . . ..” Clearly, even when the discussion had moved on, Palin insisted on answering only the questions she wanted. Why?

At another point, after the moderator had asked—and Joe Biden had answered—a question about subprime mortgages and legislation that had made it harder for debt-strapped Americans to declare bankruptcy, Palin decided she would rather ”talk about again my record on energy versus your ticket’s energy ticket also,” because she thought it was “important to come back to.” First of all, what kind of incoherent, rambling answer is that? Secondly, how could she have expected to get away with so blatantly not answering the question? But she didn’t miss a beat. She started talking about how “East Coast politicians” are keeping energy-rich states like Alaska from tapping into their energy resources, thereby leaving the US dependent on foreign oil while sending around $700 billion dollars to foreign countries who don’t necessarily like us. Although Sarah Palin’s energy-policy answer had nothing to do with the issue being discussed nor the challenge her opponent had just put on the table, she seemed unperturbed. She was on a roll. Throughout this charade, in fact, she acted as though the American people were not expected to notice any of this.

The rest of the debate continued in much the same fashion. On the issue of global climate change, Palin agreed the planet’s getting warmer but didn’t admit it was the result of human activity. Instead, she went back to oil drilling as a path to energy independence; as if burning oil drilled in the US was any more of a solution to climate change than burning imported oil. Palin’s rationale? The US is too reliant on countries that produce more oil and pollute more “than America would ever stand for.” Presumably, US dependence on these countries forces us to tolerate their pollution? Sarah Palin must have assumed that the American people don’t know that the US is the largest per capita producer of carbon dioxide, thereby making us the largest greenhouse-gas emitter. When asked about interventionism and nuclear weapons, Palin did not hesitate to make up a General McClellan, who she said is on the ground in Afghanistan. It turns out there’s no General McClellan in Afghanistan (though there was a Civil War–era general who went by that name). And, after Biden rebutted her answer on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Palin responded by calling his plan for an exit strategy in Iraq a “white flag of surrender.” Again, no answer, just a childish taunt. I could go on and on but that would mean listening to the entire debate again, which even I am not prepared to do.

Ultimately, Sarah Palin’s performance in the debate was very revealing. She showed herself to be charming and personable. She proved she is capable of speaking—or at least reading a flashcard—for 90 seconds at a time. She showed that she’s also good at dodging questions and reciting talking points since, more often than not, she barely responded to the question that was being discussed. What she isn’t good at, however, is coherence. But Sarah Palin’s apalling performance revealed something else about her. She is confident—perhaps it’s a trait she honed during her days as a beauty pageant contestant. How else are we to explain her unflinching demeanor during the debate? Anybody who only looked at her body language—or watched the debate with the sound off—would have sworn Sarah Palin was getting the better of Joe Biden. At times, it almost seemed as though she herself thought her answers were brilliant. This raises three possibilities: Sarah Palin is a phenomenal actress; she is delusional and out of touch with reality; or she simply believed that her answers were good enough for the American people. I think it’s the third one.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that Sarah Palin didn’t try hard enough during last week’s debate. In fact, I’m certain she did her best up there on that stage. The trouble is that her best just wasn’t good enough. No doubt, confidence is a good quality for any politician to have but, as a certain former Texas governor showed the world, confidence is not enough. Leading the most powerful country in the world will take more than self-assuredness. It will take experience, knowledge, insight, and—dare I say it?—education. This is something we should all be mindful of, considering there is a 50% chance Sarah Palin may literally find herself a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Hopefully the American people realize this. Otherwise, we might end up with something even worse than more of the same.

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