Bigotry is the New Racism

Prejudice again shows its ugly face. The vocabulary changes (discrimination, segregation, racism, xenophobia, bigotry) but the core issue remains the same -- too many people cannot believe that all humans are in the same boat and mankind are all alike. Our differences are less important than our similarities. If my life has a theme it is confronting that demon and doing all I can to disable it. 

My blogging life repeats that tune like a broken record. (I travel that trail so often it sometimes bores even me.) So Britain's vote to leave the EU, the rise of Donald Trump, a political shift to the right in many countries and the displacement of more millions since World War Two (economic migrants, refugees, political and religious groups escaping persecution) have combined in a global pandemic. Here, then, is a blog post I compiled in 2004, updated as needed. 

Discrimination is alive and well, everywhere

Here is an essay by a smart young man practicing law in New York published in one of the better weblogs of 2004 which has now vanished. Here he reflects on the challenges that some Jews encounter when they move to Israel from some other part of the world. Ironically the prejudice they find there echoes antisemitism. The essay is worth reading in full.

"With second and third generations now born in Israel, the Indian Jews have gradually come to feel accepted in their new homeland." 

But this is nothing new, I have heard the same sentiment expressed to me by second generation Indians in Britain and those from the USA and this seems the norm for the cycle of immigration/ acceptance into most Western countries for such immigrants. It is only to be expected that Israel would replicate the same structure, with its attendant problems as well as opportunities. The powerful integrative factor of a common religious background and an ethnic-based nationalism would be centripetal influences that don't exist in the same way for Indian immigrants to other countries and where acceptance is carved out along different axes of identification. The thrust of Mandalia's inquiry to me seems misplaced as it seems to assert that Israel should somehow be different; when there is no reason why this should really be the case and his plea for tackling racism seems slightly inappropriate juxtaposed to the phenomenon of Antisemitism elsewhere.

I have spent my adult life looking at discrimination in its many forms and trying to figure out how to overcome it. The challenge started sometime in my teens when I came across Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice.  I was too young to realize that what I was reading was about to destroy to foundations of much of what I had been spoon-fed growing up in the South in the fifties. By the time I reached the college classroom and learned in a sociology class that a first-generation African from the bush could, with the right environment, grow up to be an engineer or physician, my universe of racial prejudice was entirely destroyed.

I was a ripe convert for the civil rights movement and found myself taking part in picket lines and sit-ins. I learned early how easily one's peers could dismiss your acquaintance when you were willing to stand for certain principles. Character development was, for me, a product of on the job training.

Later, during a tour of Korea, hosted by the Army Medical Service Corps, I learned first hand that Koreans were no less prone to prejudice than we were. Not only did they discriminate among GI's of color (which they had learned, of course, from the military itself, watching how military units were segregated by color during the Korean conflict) they were also able to discern among various Asian racial groups, pointing out those who looked Chinese or Japanese or Korean, even among their own population! I learned that their Declaration of Independence began "We declare ourselves to be an independent nation and an independent race..."

My sad conclusion early on was that prejudice in all its forms seems to be an inborn characteristic of mankind. I reared my children with deliberate efforts to vaccinate them against the poison of prejudice, but sometimes I sense that the lesson is still not learned.

I do understand at a visceral level how tough the battle can be to stay clean of this bad thinking. Sometime in the seventies white people were politely but firmly invited out of "the movement" as black leaders were able to say in so many words "thanks but no thanks; this is our issue, not yours" which, when you think of it, is another form of the same thinking.

I could go on for hours about this subject, but nothing would be added to the store of knowledge that would change any minds. I can only point to others who are still manfully fighting the demons and hope that in time the landscape can change for the better. 

More from the Head Heeb 

(Great pseudonym for one Jonathan Edelstein, now vanished from the web.)

Unrelated to the topic above (but maybe not) is another essay that describes jury selection in Eighteenth century England. For anyone interested in history, particularly the history of law and juries, this is one of the blog host's passions. The historic foundations of the jury can make us very glad that the law is able to become more resilient with the passing of time...

Finally, anyone whose name, address or occupation didn't match the list provided to the prisoner was ineligible to serve, even if the mistake was as minor as a name misspelled by one letter. This was a time when the law was still highly formalistic and the concept of "harmless error" - an error so trivial as to have no legal significance - had not yet been developed. It was during this era that a defendant accused of stealing a duck was acquitted because he had been caught with a drake, and William McAndrew was dismissed from Crossfield's jury panel because he lived in Lower Thames Street instead of Lower Thomas Street.

~~~~~

Until now I never looked at that link cited above, just the single line quoted in Edlestein's post. 
I wonder now about the status of the Israeli Jews tagged Bene Israel.

...I met Yuval Abraham at a party, again in Mumbai. Yuval was a 37-year-old engineer whose family had returned to the subcontinent from Israel. As a Jew, he had always dreamed of living in the Jewish state, and in 1999 he and his family emigrated to the Negev Desert town of Beersheba. However, within two years they were back in India. Life in Israel was not as rosy as they had imagined. Yuval explained: "In India, we have never experienced any discrimination from Hindus or even Muslims. As Israel was a Jewish state, we thought our lives there would be even better. In fact, it was worse. Forget army service and suicide bombings - what really upset me was the racist attitude of other Jews. In Israel, if you are not a white Ashkenazi [European Jew], you're treated like a second-class citizen." 

As an Indian (although Hindu) who had visited Israel, I could understand his sentiments. On my latest trip, in 2003, I shared a taxi from the airport to Jerusalem with British Jews. I was to be dropped off last because I was the only one staying in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
"Don't you feel scared living there?" asked one female fellow passenger. "No, not really," I replied. I listed the reasons why I didn't stay in the Jewish half of the city: I was stared at; constantly stopped by soldiers for no reason; ignored in bagel shops; shouted at by bus drivers; blanked whenever I asked for directions. 

Yuval belonged to the Bene Israel (Jews from the state of Maharashtra), who form the majority of the 50,000 Indian Jews who, it is estimated, live in Israel. There were two main migrations of India's Jews to Israel. The first came with the almost simultaneous partition of India and Palestine in 1947 and 1948, which led to the creation of the religiously exclusive states of Pakistan and Israel. In Palestine, the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who were forced out of their homes or who fled were replaced by Jews from across the world. From India came the Bene Israel, who were joined in smaller numbers by the Cochin Jews of Kerala and a few Baghdadi Jews from Mumbai.

Remembering Alvin Toffler & Newt Gingrich

This week the passing of Alvin Toffler intersects with mention of Newt Gingrich as a possible vice-presidential pick for Donald Trump. Most people will never connect those two dots, but I have had more than the usual awareness of both of these men (and blogged as much about ten years ago) so I decided to visit my old blog and update what I wrote at that time. I have omitted some of the inactive links and added a video that some will find interesting. At the suggestion of a friend I looked at an article in Commentary magazine, Americanism [hyphen] and Its Enemies and made the following notes.

~~~~

I read the article. No, that's not quite right. I scanned the article, because the word Americanism is for me one of those buzzwords without meaning that I avoid using, and normally would avoid reading about. The word is a kind of Rorschach of North American English, evoking for both speaker and listener a host of undefined notions that each of them considers normative, although neither of them gets around to defining plainly.

[Apparently Joe Carter of the Outpost (now gone) wanted to illustrate the power of the Long Tail, a meme and corresponding article in Wired Magazine that I had blogged about previously. I was happy to participate, not because the subject grabbed me, but because I felt I was taking part in a technological spectacle. Here was my submission for that symposium.]

As I read over the essay, I revisited a few scenes from my past that the title helped me remember. I'm sure none of what I have to add to this discussion will be germane to any thread, but I will write it out all the same, mainly for my own amusement.

Scene one...
Even before he came up with the "Contract With America" my Congressman was Newt Gingrich. I had occasion to write him a couple of times and he graciously replied. The man is very, very smart. He is the only public person I have heard make reference to Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock. That impressed me. Anyway, he mentioned he was working on an idea for either a book or something that had to do with "American Civilization." I know that is not exactly the same as Americanism but it's close enough. I didn't get around to responding to Mr. Gingrich, but if I had I would have argued that his phrase "American Civilization" made use of not one, but two buzzwords, and perhaps he could find some clearer way to express his ideas. I had in mind that there were a good many people in Central and South America who might object to his proprietary use of those words when he was really talking about the USA and something less than a Civilization. Moreover, there are populations in the USA who might take umbrage at being denied a dissenting opinion in his grand vision. I was thinking here about descendants of slavery, North American Indians and a few other minorities that have since emerged from various closets.

I knew where he was going, of course. He was articulating the Conservative agenda that would later make him Speaker of the House, and the phrase "American Civilization" had such a wonderful ring that he had to find out where it could take him. I never heard much about the topic, but we sure heard a lot about Mr. Gingrich as time went on.

Scene Two...

One of my college teachers opened a class on State and Local Government by first laying the foundation of politics in the early days of our history. Before he got into the particulars, he made certain that we grasped the idea that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the cornerstone of everything that has developed in our political and social development. He used the phrase intermittently throughout the quarter so we could never lose track of it. Massachusetts Bay Colony. It has an irresistible ring. You know when you hear it that you are hearing something important. Do a Google search with those three words and you will want to stand up and salute the monitor.

And here is where my memory and this essay converge. There is an undeniable historic connection between church and state. But my take on the connection is not the same as that of Mr. Gelernter. He frames the connection in negative terms, defining Americanism in terms of (as the title suggests) its adversaries. My take on the impact of Puritanism has more to do with how we interpret prosperity.

The Puritan view of prosperity was straightforward. God loves us and wants to see us happy. When we do His will, then He will bless us. Really bless us, materially. And if we fail to do His will, He will punish us. Really punish us. Materially. Therefore, those who are well off must be living right. And those who are poor must be failing in some way to please God, else He would be blessing them, not allowing them to be poor.

Tempered by the fires of Calvinism, the connection between hard work, prosperity and virtue took root and grew in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It set the tone for the future of the republic, and at some level most people want to believe it today. Oh, we have big hearts for the poor. Nothing is quite so satisfying as sharing our blessings with those who have not been blessed. But in the end, most people tend to measure virtue in dollars and cents. [The discerning reader may recognize here the seeds now called meritocracy, a popular justification for the heartless toxins of libertarian arguments.]

Our predilection to equate wealth with virtue continues to be the defining quality of our society alienating a great many people. We are a new nation. People who live in places where history is measured in millennia instead of centuries have a very different view of wealth. I prefer not to argue the point. I know that mine is a minority opinion. And I still think the word "Americanism" is a buzzword. But it pleases me to be able to participate in this symposium.

Addendum:

Since my friend Deborah White linked to this post I thought it prudent to check out some authority rather than trusting my own mortal memory of a distant class in political science. In fairness to the Puritans, the reader can consult a more charitable description of their view of prosperity than I have depicted. The Puritan Mind, now vanished, was a site is heavily documented from original sources and I have no desire to pick nits with someone who is clearly an expert on the subject.

Having said that, I stand with my original thoughts. I seriously doubt that the man on the street has any appreciation for the nuances of Puritan thought, or any notion that his everyday life is connected with that heritage. Just as one doesn't have to be either Jew or Christian to buy into what is popularly called "Judeo-Christian" traditions, neither does one need to understand Puritanism to subscribe to one of it's more dubious, if misunderstood legacies.

Here endeth my reflections of the past. 

And here is the video mentioned above, with the following description which appears at You Tube. Make of it what you will...

Uploaded on Jan 1, 2012
Toffler's writings call for abolition of the United States Constitution and the concept of national sovereignty. Toffler calls for a world government, which will be ruled by technocratic elites. There are entire subchapters in the book titled "the sub-elites" and the "super-elites." The Third Wave lays out a society similar to Huxley's Brave New World, but sprinkled with some Republican lingo. Toffler suggests religion should be replaced with loyalty to government and refers to religion in our current system as "cults." The book describes a society where abortion, homosexuality, and divorce are not only accepted but idolized. After all, Toffler proclaims the need to reduce world population which the aforementioned would indeed facilitate. Gingrich calls Toffler his mentor, which explains Gingrich's connection with the militant environmental movement. 

New Sharia Court in Israel

Ayelet Shaked (born May 7, 1976) is
Minister of Justice of Israel's 20th
Knesset and realize her 34th
on behalf of the party "Jewish Home".

[This is a Google translation of a Hebrew link. The language seems awkward in places and there are curious "words" in a few bullet points that I don't understand. The link is accessible here.]

Chairman of the Movement "My Israel" former.

Ayelet Shaked was born as Ayelet Ben-Shaul mother was a teacher and father an accountant. Babylonian raised in northern Tel Aviv and studied at the city high school Wednesday.
In her youth she was an instructor and main counselor of the Boy Scouts.
During her military service served as an education coordinator in the Golani Brigade.
She holds a B.Sc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Tel Aviv University.
Before his election to the Knesset worked as a marketing manager at Texas Instruments.
Married to a fighter pilot, a mother of two children, and lives today in childhood, Bavli neighborhood.

public activity

In 2006-2008 worked as the office manager was Benjamin Netanyahu, when he served as opposition leader. In March 2008, Netanyahu's office affair.
In early 2010, established together with Naftali Bennett, the movement of "My Israel" movement of Zionist activity and information on the Internet, and headed it until May, 2012.

Among the outstanding actions in motion:  

• kmfiin Criticized the National Bank, in light of the possibility that the bank will sell the real estate company which operates Digal Palestinians in Jerusalem to an investor group. (Bank retracted and finally sold the company to a group of Jewish investors).
• After the terrorist attack in Itamar Shaked pizza, with the consent of the family, graphic pictures of the Fogel family were murdered. In a press interview said: "It was a tough decision, but that's war. Pictures is more powerful than words, and it worked and received titles. Palestinians make use of digital media and communications sterile we do. It is time to return fire."
• June 2011, led the campaign against the movement embodied radio station Galei Tsahal, which aims to integrate says during peak hours of broadcasters whose opinions can not be identified with the Left and prevent Hamas from the station to interview people in time of war.
• bsftmbr 2011 called for a "protective marches" of citizens to defend the country and the soldiers facing Palestinian marches and designed so that eventually took place.
• hhl End of 2011 has campaigned against infiltrators from Africa to Israel, claiming they pose a danger to the Jewish and democratic character of the state. She called to enforce the law forbidding them to work, return them to their countries of origin and engrave law about it.

Activity 19th Knesset:

• Chairman of the Jewish Home faction in the Knesset.
• Enterprise Committees economics, the Knesset and Acting Finance Committee.
• Chairman of the Commission for equal burden, also called the "Committee Shaked", a committee to pass a law raising Haredi society to replace the Tal Law.
• Chairman of the Lobby for Pollard Saturday with MK Nachman Shai.
• Chairman, Lobby for the return infiltrators to their country.

Minister of Justice:

After the dissolution of the elected government worked to first place in the primaries of the party "Jewish Home".
Currently serves as Minister of Justice of the State of Israel.
Minister almond engaged in this role a number of areas, including: reducing the burden from the courts, regulatory relief, Bill social (between them a bill granting discharge to debtors limited means and reform insolvency), a committee Arbel examine the boundaries between freedom of expression freedom of incitement, war boycott organizations, finding solutions to the issue of illegal aliens in Israel, stricter punishment for terrorists and engage in terrorism and more ..
Almond minister is the chairman of the ministerial committee for legislation, as well as a committee to appoint judges, as well as a political-security cabinet.

Tweet from Lahav Harkov, Senior Knesset reporter for the Jerusalm Post.

Mr. Google is your friend.

This will come as a shocking surprise to many Americans whose reaction to the mention of sharia law is viscerally repellent. Those of us who dare defend Muslims in general or their faith in particular typically come across the final Islamophobic response "They believe in Sharia Law and want to replace the Constitution with Sharia Law!"  It reminds me of the old pre-1964 days when I tried -- usually in vain -- to discuss the ugliness of racism with my Southern friends and family. After all the examples of equality I could think of and stories of personal experiences and discoveries, there was always that ugliest of all outcomes: miscegenation -- race mixing! Loving v Virginia was not decided until 1967 and it was against the law in many places for mixed couples (Negro and white) to be married. So all arguments came to an end wit the final card was played: Would you want your sister to marry one???

My discussions usually never progressed that far because I tried to be more persuasive than confrontational, sensing that the ultimate outcome of desegregation was, in fact, the eventual appearance of mixed marriages. Had discussions ever got to that point I had an answer ready: Which one? (Black people, just like white people, come in a range of types, from criminal to accomplished. Of course I wouldn't want my sister to marry a law-breaker but would be honored to have an accomplished business success or literary success for a brother-in-law.) It was a perfect illustration of how different mind sets often cannot bridge the gap of mutual understanding. I could understand the reasoning of racists but their prejudice blocked the way they might understand mine.

Here we are half a century later and anti-Muslim bigotry is the new racism. And mentioning Sharia Law has become the new dreaded specter of miscegenation. Just as in the Sixties, many of my sincere, well-meaning Islamophobic friends and family are crippled by a different stripe of bigotry. And just as in the Sixties they have a lot of reading and homework to do before their blind ignorance is overcome.

Yanis Varoufakis: Basic Income is a Necessity

Yanis Varoufakis  (b.24 March 1961) is a Greek economist who was a member of the Parliament of Greece between January and September 2015. He represented the ruling Syriza party and held the position of Minister of Finance for seven months. He voted against the terms of the third bailout package for Greece. In February 2016, Varoufakis launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25).

Music Therapy and Mass Shootings -- Notes

An intriguing link appeared in my Facebook feed this morning which reminded me of an experience I had as an undergraduate music education student in 1963. I recorded my memories of that and a a couple of other thoughts following the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. Here with a bit of updating is that blog post.

The Virginia Tech Incident Is About Mental Health

Less than seventy-two hours have passed and we now know that thirty people are dead because a mentally ill person, diagnosed and returned to society repeatedly, was able to plan, document and execute a nightmare conceived in his damaged brain.

Since these blog notes were written in 2007 the subject
of deinstitutionalization has been examined extensively.
Professionals and lay people alike have much work to do. 

This is not about guns.

This is not about evil.

This is not about politics.

This is not about religion.

This is not about immigration.

This is not about the media.

And most of all, it is not about comparing the magnitude of tragedies.

What we are witnessing, not only with this high-profile event but every day of our lives, is the consequence of a trend set in motion about fifty years ago to change the manner by which we as a society handle (or not handle) those of us who are mentally ill. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Some of the darkest stories of history are about mental hospitals as places of torment and neglect, repositories of human wreckage that also doubled as places to hide political prisoners, abused family members of all ages and connections, and just about anyone without the social skills, political connections, family prestige or financial resources to defend himself.

Mental hospitals were not just hospitals. They also doubled as jails, poor houses, work houses, and closets for those whose public appearance, harmless though it might be, might embarrass or make others uncomfortable. The stories about them are truly horrible (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest comes to mind) as well as the manner in which patient were treated. The words patient and treatment took on twisted meanings that seem inappropriate now. My post a few weeks ago about one man's experience with having been lobotomized in his younger years is a case in point.

The larger picture was that large repositories of mentally ill people, whatever the reasons, were being dismantled. Cases judged to be worse than his were taking up space in a shrinking pool of available facilities. As I said, this was all done with the best of good intentions, but you know what they say about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

Wikipedia has stimulating reading about Psychiatric Hospitals, with an even more provocative link to another article entitled "Anti-Psychiatry."

This morning I have no solutions to the problems we now face with the management and treatment of people with mental disorders. All I know is that when I was a student in college about forty-five years ago I went on a field-trip with a group of other students pursuing courses in Music Therapy. I was studying music ed. at the time , not MT, but I was along for the experience. We spent a day at Georgia's Central State Hospital, once known (together with another one in New York) as one of the world's biggest and worst of its kind.

We were told that thanks to the efforts of a former first lady (it may have been the wife of Governor Vandiver) a large fund had been raised for the renovation and upgrading of the hospital. We saw two large facilities that looked more like hotels than hospitals, new, comfortable-looking, with amenities that even included a place that resembled a lounge or bar, but without the alcohol. It was the first time I had seen an atrium-styled large building with an overhead roof with skylights several stories overhead. It was very impressive.

We were also told that there were places in the hospital where visitors were not permitted to go because conditions were so bad, not only the barbed-wire enclosure pointed out as the place for the criminally insane, but other places that were systematically being renovated and reviewed for updating. I recall an interesting statistic: the "inpatient daily census" (the taxonomy sounded so clinical) was said to be in the thirty-thousand range. That number was larger than the number of students I knew were attending the university where I was studying and it struck me as unbelievable. The facility covered hundred of acres, including a farm where food was grown that was also being used to feed patients. Patients worked on the farm as well. Chickens and eggs from the farm were used in the food facilities.

Sometime between then and now, everything changed. When I checked the website yesterday, that same hospital is now reduced to about five hundred inpatients. Sometime over the last forty years a rolling number in the vicinity of some thirty-thousands have been released to care for themselves or rely on the resources of others. I'm sure some of them did not need to be there. 

I am personally aware of one woman who worked for me put there as a child because she was judged to be mentally retarded and was not released until a re-evaluation in her twenties revealed that she was entirely "normal" (whatever that means). She was later "released." I don't know the details, but "put out" would probably be a better term. She may be better off because her teeth, which had turned brown from years of over-medication, had to be replaced by dentures. As a middle-aged woman with no education, poor social development and little to serve her by way of personality or looks, the best she could find to support herself was a job in a cafeteria serving line.

As I said, I don't have the solution, but I do know this: Something in the way we handle deranged people has gone badly wrong and the incident at Virginia Tech should be a wake-up call. Finger-pointing is out of order. So, too, is all this yelling about politics, gun-control and other issues that are nothing but distractions from the main problem. My own instinct is that Big Pharma and Big Insurance have a lot to do with this trend. I have known for years that both of these mammoth interests have powerful friends in high places and they quietly keep those friends happy with obscene amounts of money euphemistically called "lobbying" which in reality are nothing more than bribes.

But that's just an old guy bitching this morning. My most heartfelt appeal is not to the politicians but to everyday people who need to back away from events of the last three days and try to see a bigger picture. That picture is one of homeless people and poor people whose numbers are swollen beyond what should be the case if they are expected to contribute to the gross national product. Too many people cannot and will not make any meaningful contribution unless and until they are either appropriately treated or taken off the streets. The real challenge is how best to accomplish that goal.

Addendum: The ranks of poor and homeless are a tragedy, but a bigger challenge is posed by extremists and others whose access to firearms has reached epidemic levels. In too many cases perpetrators of mass killings not only have access to highly efficient killing machines, but technical training in how they are used. Shooters in Orlando, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood and others came from the ranks of trained professionals.