Some random thoughts that have arisen because of this sad affair:
Suppose what happened with Tupac happened today. Suppose people found out that the mother decided to tell the doctors "DNR". Would his life be worth saving?
Many of us will have to deal with this situation, if we haven't done so already.
When I worked in the U.K., a woman needed to have the test done for Tay-Sachs disease. She had it done, but the test results got lost in the medical system. She and her husband had a window of opportunity to get the test done and they feared the second test results would not be returned in time.
You see, on a regular basis, children in the womb who test positive for the disease are aborted.
And the outcry there is where?
The leading energy analysts who foretold Enron's demise have an alarming new claim: The world's major oil companies are almost tapped out.
Today, the analysts at Herold -- a research-only firm that issues valuations on several hundred publicly traded energy companies -- are making predictions even bolder than their call on Enron. They have begun estimating when each of the world's biggest energy companies will peak in its ability to produce oil and gas. Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil.
Many analysts have estimated when the earth will reach its peak oil production. Others have done estimates on when individual countries will hit their peaks. Herold is the first Wall Street firm to predict when specific energy companies will hit their peaks.
Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science Opens
In fall 2005, the University will open the Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science [(MS)2], a public charter school committed to academic excellence with a specific focus on mathematics and science. The school is the first component of the University’s planned Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Center.
We plan to enroll 120 sixth grade students for the 2005-06 academic year, and only D.C. residents are eligible to apply.
Applications are being accepted during the month of March. They are available online at www.howard.edu/ms2, or may be picked up from the Howard University Community Association, located at 2731 Georgia Avenue, NW. Any applications received after March 31st will be added to the school’s waiting list.
If you have any questions or require additional information, please contact us at information@middleschool.howard.edu or 202.806.7725.
I was reading the Post for news about Johnnie Cochran when my eye caught the link to this article:
Assessing the KIPP Schools -- a New Perspective
When reading it, this paragraph caught my eye:
Some critics (although not Rothstein) have suggested that KIPP's scores have increased so much because they recruit students with the most motivated parents. This seems wrong to me. Those students had those same great parents when they were getting much lower scores back at their regular schools. Their progress would almost certainly deteriorate if all the KIPP schools closed tomorrow and they had to return to low standards and disorganized teaching at their neighborhood schools, no matter how conscientious their parents were.
For some time I have been saying that parents of kids who are under performing are being criticized for their children's performance and the children are also being cirticized for being "anti-intellectual". I thought that some of this criticism may be misplaced because when the children get into private schools, or other schools, many times their grades improve. But the parents are the same and the children are the same. The variable that changes is the school.
So, why is school performance being tied to "anti-intellectualism"?
If you aren't familiar with Harold Cruse and his works, and consider yourself a scholar of American life, whether you are a social scientist, or a philosopher, you're on crack. I had the chance to take a class with Cruse as an undergrad, and a number of chances to talk with him while in grad school at the University of Michigan. A few of my boys and I held a conference in his honor several years ago, and Jelani Cobb (no relation to Mike) came out with an edited collection of his best pieces. In fact it was through Jelani that I'd gotten word that Cruse passed in his sleep on Friday. I wish I could've found out sooner. We were in the middle of our annual conference for black political scientists, and it would have been an excellent time to reflect on his legacy. Vision Circle would not be here if it weren't for people like Cruse. He'll be sorely missed.
This is a piece by a Maryland political commentator. He's "plugged into" Maryland Democratic politics and has a decent understanding of what goes on. However, he doesn't get the Black sde of Maryland politics very well, IMO.
But this piece about the senate race to replace Sarbanes is good for some thought:
Here’s the deal: The hypothetical match-up between Kwiesi Mfume and Lt. Gov. Michael Steele comes down to this: Voters will get to choose between a man in a dashiki with six illegitimate sons and an ex-seminarian who goes to mass every Sunday with his wife and kids.But Senate race 2006 is unlikely to produce such a contrast between the two black candidates. And the reason is that Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin will likely spoil the equation.
Assume that’s the case, and Mfume’s a loser either way – to Cardin in the primary election, or to Steele in the general. Assume further that in a Cardin-Steele face-off, Cardin will carry the election for the Democrats and retain the seat of Sen. Paul Sarbanes.And if Cardin tip-toes into the fray, as is his cogito, ergo sum approach to politics, he’s likely to squeeze out other Democrats as well.
The new paradigm in politics is the so-called 527 committee, i.e., Swift Boat Veterans, that operate as vigilante groups outside the margins of formal campaigns. Consider how the Swift Boat Vets bludgeoned John Kerry and think, for a moment, how a similar shadow group will decapitate Mfume.To be sure, Mfume packs a ton of baggage leftover from his incendiary past and his louche life as a wastrel youth, just the right stuff for slice-and-dice attack television ads. To his everlasting credit, though, Mfume picked himself up, dusted himself off and went on to become virtually the president of black America as head of the NAACP.
For the sake of argument, let's accept the premise that the "pro-life side" of the Schiavo mess is a result of "the religous right" being given their due because of their support of the Republican party.
Given that, what does it say about Black politicians who couldn't get Clinton to let the cocaine and crack sentencing disparity to sunset?
What does it say about Black politicians who couldn't get Clinton to pay more attention to the situation in Rwanda?
What does it say about Black politicians who tried, late in Clinton's last term, to address the slavery issue in Sudan and other countries?
What does it say about Black politicians tried but couldn't get Clinton to change the U.S. policy towards Haiti?
What does it say about the CBC?
What does it say about the Democratic party and it's core base?
So, if Republicans are trying to get 20% of the Black vote by going to Black preachers, good for them as long as Blacks get something out of it this time.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.
No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1.
Well...this is the country you really live in:
The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
"The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
"The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
"Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
"The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
"U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
"Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
"Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
"Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
"Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
"Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
"The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
Prince rocked the Image Awards.
Just flat out to' it up!
In a bass solo, he played the ax just like Larry Graham.
Morris Day and Jerome got some love.
Shelia E got some love!
Little dude can rock.
Unpacking the science and the politics could be complicated absent a clear understanding of what *blackness* is. It is fundamentally a unique form of interpersonal communion arising in the uniquely hostile social environment which was chattel slavery and jim crow America - nothing more and nothing less. Now if a simple autodidactic layperson - such as myself - can easily grasp this fact, what's wrong with all these big-headed scientists? Fascinating discussion of the Leroi article posted on the 15th - especially big props to the editor-in-chief of the New Scientist who fundamentally gets it. The Provost at Georgetown shows his behind in a Lawrence Summers on steroids moment...,
Armand Leroi is bound to please the right wingers with his view that "genetic data show that races clearly do exist". I'm sure that is not his intention but I also doubt that everyone will read as far as his belief that "skin colour does not give the measure of a man, that it tells nothing about his abilities or temperament". That genetics has a bad history of being misunderstood and misapplied scarcely needs restating.
James J. ODonnell, Andrew Brown, Tim D. White, Alun Anderson, Nicholas Humphrey respond to Armand Leroi
JAMES J. O'DONNELL
Classicist; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace
From the Enlightenment forward, it has been assumed that good science is the instrument of good politics. Science disabuses us of error and shows that bad politics are undergirded by falsehood.
But what if good politics turn out to be undergirded by falsehood? Then the honest and honorable supporters of science are tempted to suppress, modify, or veil in discreet silence the discoveries of science -- or even the questions that scientists would ask. That is a dangerous temptation, because the enemies of good science are still all around us, promoting notions of "intelligent design" (to argue that while the deity may have the taste, talent, and ingenuity of Rube Goldberg in the things he creates, at least he exists) and opposing lines of research that offend ancient proscriptions.
The answer is better science, better reporting about science, and bravery. The future of genetics will surely reveal differences between and among groups of people that overlap with stereotypes, prejudices, and myths. Some of those developments will appear to reinforce bigotry: so be it, as far as that goes, but the important thing is to communicate a science that continues to move forwards. In the 1950s, going heavy on the margarine and light on the eggs seemed the apex of science regarding cholesterol and heart attack risk. Now the margarine of those days appears itself to be a killer. Similarly, the genetic discovery today, while true, will also likely be at a greater level of generality than what we will know in 10 or 20 years.
That's why it will take bravery: to tell the truth now, to persist in research, to oppose people who draw stupid conclusions from good science, and to make better science.
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ANDREW BROWN
Journalist, the Guardian; Author, In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite
Yes, of course the genetics of human diversity are interesting, and some scientists are interested in them for disinterested motives. But I think it is unfair to Gould to suppose that there are only bad reasons to be leery of this interest, and unfair to Lewontin to suppose that there is anything very much more illuminating or important that we can say than that race is a social construction even if we can find genetic clusters which would, as Armand Leroi suggests, allow a geneticist to look at a sample of my spit and tell from it where all my great great grandparents lived.
In defence of Gould, I would say that of course a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and the best cure for dangerous knowledge is more and better knowledge. However, there is no guarantee that we will find this further knowledge quickly or at all; while we are looking, great harm may be done with the dangerous and partial stuff. There is nothing unreasonable in wishing that certain discoveries had never been made. Some people would consider lobotomy, or even Freudian psychoanalysis cases in point. I am certain that any research in to human genetic differences will be seized on by racist scientists and racists generally. Whether you think an advance in knowledge is worth this cost is a political judgement with no obvious or final answer.
The Left is often accused of groundless optimism about human nature. In this case Gould was pessimistic and his grounds for pessimism seem reasonable to me. If you look at the way that science is twisted and abused in the current American debates on climate change and creationism, it's difficult to feel that a public debate on the reality of race will be conducted in a spirit of disinterested longing for truth.
But let's look at the sort of knowledge that Leroi wants. The genetics of skin colour are interesting and could perhaps be worked out quite quickly. The genetics of breast shape are possibly even more interesting and I'm sure you could get funding to study them. But the real fascination and the real tabus surround the genetics of intelligence and behaviour. If these turned out to vary between races, as it appears they vary between sexes, we would have a sensational scientific discovery.
Now, one of the points about this list is that the more interesting these qualities are, the harder it is to read them out from the genome. Breast shape may be produced by genes and nutrition, but what constitutes a desirable shape has varied greatly in the last fifty years, and the kind of nutrition that fashionable women allow themselves has varied with this preference too. Similarly, the kinds of intelligence, and the kinds of behaviour, that are rewarded and considered desirable in children, have changed a great deal in the last hundred years, and will presumably change a great deal in the next century too. To call some human trait "socially constructed" doesn't mean we can change it at will; and it certainly doesn't mean there is no genetic component.
This comes out clearly in the classic Wilson/Daly studies of homicide rates. These show there must be a strong genetic component to our species' homicidal behaviour, simply because the pattern stays constant across widely differing societies with widely differing homicide rates. But the evidence which shows us this also shows that changing the environment can hugely diminish the rate at which young men do in fact kill each other. Which half of the story is more important?
Still, we can be certain that the research will be done. Some new things will be found, and on an individual level, they will be important and useful. We will know more about genetic variations among human groups, and we may, just possibly, discover more about the genetics of behaviour and intelligence and how they vary. On that subject we could hardly know less than we do now. The real question is how these two kinds of knowledge will fit together. Will there be any correlation between the clusters of genes that control appearance, which do undoubtedly exist, presumably as a result of sexual selection; and other gene clusters, as yet undiscovered, which affect intelligence and behaviour? It is these second clusters that people are really interested in, and here there is no evidence to suggest that Lewontin's results are misleading and that the variations are greater within races than between them (and that the greatest variation is found in Africa). But we won't know for a very long time because we don't know which genes are involved and even whether they cluster.
In the mean time, all those people who already think they know what "race" means will be convinced that science has proved them right. They will twist the work of decent scientists like Leroi to indecent ends. Gould himself had this happen to him when creationists abused his work on punctuated equilibrium. Only if you think that racism is, in the modern world, less widespread than creationism can you laugh at the spectacle of Gould's ghost wringing his hands.
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TIM D. WHITE
Paleontologist; Co-director Middle Awash Human Origins and Evolution Project
Human Variety: Evolution's Creation
Armand Leroi's points are made stronger by adding the dimension of time. Countries and races may seem ancient and fixed without the perspectives of history and evolutionary biology. It is sobering to consider that only fifteen generations separate us from Washington, Jefferson and Napoleon.
Ten thousand generations ago, a man died at the edge of a tropical African lake. The place, now called Herto, is in today's Ethiopia. We now know Herto man by the tools his people fashioned from volcanic rock, and by his skull. His skin was almost certainly dark, but a forensic scientist would be baffled by the shape of the man's skull. It clearly belongs to our species Homo sapiens, but it defies attribution to a specific modern human group.
Whether measured in geological or evolutionary terms, Herto man didn't live very long ago. After all, the well-known Australopithecus female "Lucy" was born nearby, but she had died about 200,000 generations before Herto man was even conceived. By any reckoning, our species is a youngster among hominids, primates, and mammals.
The Herto man lived at the same time that European neanderthals (presumably light-skinned) inhabited a landscape refrigerated by the penultimate glaciation. Therefore, when combined with studies on modern human and neanderthal DNA, it is clear that Pleistocene Earth witnessed hominid biological variation at the species level.
Human evolutionists have long known that today's one-hominid planet is an anomaly rather than the rule. And racial variation would certainly have characterized any of the hominid species spread across major segments of the Old World. We can already dimly perceive a bit of that sub-specific variation in the skeletal fragments already recovered, but we can still only imagine the soft tissue features that would have distinguished Iberian, Malayan and Somalian Homo erectus.
But when did geographic diversity arise within Homo sapiens? By baffling the forensic scientist, the Herto man gives us a clue. His skull is shaped more like a modern Australian aboriginal than a modern Ethiopian, but no modern human matches it exactly.
So the 160,000-year-old Herto cranium shows us that the skeletal features allowing contemporary forensic scientists to differentiate today's Africans from Europeans or Asians had not yet evolved, even at this late date in human evolution. Confirmation comes from studies of the modern human Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. These suggest that the common roots of the human species are very shallow compared to the vast majority of other mammalian species. Whether considered paleontologically or genetically, it appears that much of the physical variation to which Armand Leroi draws our attention evolved during the last little bit of our more-than-six-million-year tenure as a lineage separate from the African chimpanzees.
Like Marco Polo, Herodotus and Columbus, we all recognize that modern human physical variation is geographically patterned. Was this always the case? No, most fundamentally because we were not always modern humans! Phenotypic variation among primates results primarily from Darwinian selection, mate choice, and genetic drift. Our molecules and the fossilized bones of our ancestors indicate that our roots are shallow relative to other mammalian species. Our anatomical and physiological variation inform us about the where and when of our origins.
Our genes, our bodies, and the racial variation in our young species are not social constructs. Rather, these are all the products of evolutionary forces operating over the last couple of hundred millennia. Understanding any of them requires the unique perspective of evolutionary biology.
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ALUN ANDERSON
Editor-in-Chief, Publishing Director, New Scientist.
Armand Leroi is bound to please the right wingers with his view that "genetic data show that races clearly do exist". I'm sure that is not his intention but I also doubt that everyone will read as far as his belief that "skin colour does not give the measure of a man, that it tells nothing about his abilities or temperament". That genetics has a bad history of being misunderstood and misapplied scarcely needs restating.
Leroi's call for a better understanding of the genetics of human diversity is welcome. Whether everyone would classify "we don't know why some girls have big breasts and some of them have small breasts" as an "important question", I'm less than sure although it may be one that will attract novel sources of research funding! More generally, knowing more about diversity might settle the question of whether "beauty" is really an expression of biological fitness and that would certainly be worth knowing.
Trying to resurrect race is much less worthwhile. All that has really happened in recent years is that some geneticists have realised that if you measure a number of different genetic differences between people you can then cluster these differences into groups that broadly mirror our common sense notion of race. This is not really too surprising as we would anticipate that if we can make a reasonable guess about someone's origins then must be some set of genetic differences underlying them.
The trouble is that these genetic clusters are not that well defined, still muddle up some people with quite different origins, and have not been associated with anything deep or fundamental about people of different origins. Leroi pretty much says so himself. To fill out the quote above, Leroi says in full that "Some [contributors to the journal Nature Genetics] argued that, looked at the right way, genetic data show that races clearly do exist". Elsewhere we find "Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences". Leroi at first appears to support the view that classifying people by "race" would at least make it possible to "improve medical care" by tailoring treatment to race. But he quickly goes on to say that: "Everyone agrees that race is a crude way of predicting who gets some disease or responds to some treatment".
Indeed so, for a focus on race can blind doctors to groupings that cut across racial lines. Sickle cell anaemia, for example, is often regarded as an African disease but occurs in a number of groups around the world. Nor would a broad classification based on "racial categories" tell you that Ashkenazi Jews, for example, are prone to a rare mutation that causes breast cancer. These issues have been explored in some depth in New Scientist.
Race is too crude and too shallow a concept to be worth resurrecting even as a scientific shorthand and has already done too much harm. In medicine, it is the individual genotypes determining disease susceptibility and drug reactions that are worth pursuing. If we would like to know more about diversity—why some people have straight and some have curly hair, for example—classifying broad racial clusters does not really help us to find the answer.
Although in my view Leroi overstates the case for race as a useful concept, I still applaud him for speaking about diversity and biology. At a recent session I chaired at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Gender and the Brain, the real anger came from US scientists and intellectuals, venting their frustration that any discussion of biological differences relating to sex or race is a forbidden zone in universities in America. Although this session occurred at the height of the controversy over Larry Summers's poorly thought out remarks on female scientists, which certainly raised temperatures, it does indeed seem an indicator, as Leroi put it, that "it's time that we grew up".
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NICHOLAS HUMPHREY
Psychologist, London School of Economics; Author, The Mind Made Flesh
Let me change the subject away from race, to Leroi's provocative remarks about beauty and deformity.
Here's the problem. If the most beautiful person in the world is whoever it is who carries the fewest fitness lowering mutations, then (other things being equal) presumably the most beautiful person in the world is also the fittest person in the world. But this begs the question. Is she the fittest because she is regarded by potential mates as the most beautiful (and therefore gets to choose the best possible of fathers for her children). Or is she regarded as the most beautiful because she is seen by potential mates as the fittest (and therefore gets to be chosen by them as the best possible mother for their children).
Either way, I worry about Leroi's assumption that maximal beauty does in fact equal maximal fitness. There are many reasons why, as matter of fact, great beauty may not lead to great reproductive success. W.B. Yeats pointed to more than one of these when, in his "Prayer for his Daughter," he prayed for her to have beauty but not too much of it.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Still more to the point, in the context of Leroi's discussion of deformity, sometimes an admixture of ugliness — even of deformity — can be a positive asset in its own right. For the fact is that individuals who start life with a disadvantage, and who are obliged to compensate as best they can, may come up with alternative ways of doing things that leave them ahead of the game. Lord Byron, who is said to have had a club foot, drew attention to this paradoxical aspect of deformity in a remarkable poem, "The Deformed Transformed."
... Deformity is daring.
It is its essence to o'ertake mankind
By heart and soul, and make itself the equal —
Aye, the superior of the rest. There is
A spur in its halt movements, to become
All that the others cannot, in such things
As still are free to both, to compensate
For stepdame Nature's avarice.
Thus even "deleterious mutations" can prove a blessing in disguise. Of course no doubt Leroi would say in that case they don't count as "deleterious." But this is an old move. As Sir John Harrington pointed out, on the subject of "Treason.":
Treason is ne'er successful
Here's the reason:
When it's successful,
Then it's not called "treason."
I've found the past couple days' assessment and response to Roland Fryer immensely gratifying. It's not that I care about Fryer. I consider much of economics to be *just-so* storytelling limited by the specific cultural psychology over which it is mapped. To me, economics is less universal science of the human exchange of goods and services than it is western post hoc rationalization of the uniquely western instantiation of methods for the exchange of goods and services. Much of the back and forth, round and about on the rigor or insightfulness of Fryer's work bears this contention out.
What tickles me enough here to comment about it, is that I believe I see a digitally-accelerated, racially-motivated instantiation of the following;
1. JUST FOR KICKSIn 2002, a team of researchers led by psychiatrist Gregory Berns from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, used brain imaging to find out what is going on inside our heads when we cooperate. They discovered that when players work together in the prisoner's dilemma game (see Diagram), the active parts of their brain include the orbitofrontal cortex and the striatum - areas associated with processing reward (Neuron, vol 35, p 395). And, last year, economist Ernst Fehr and psychologist Dominique de Quervain of the University of Zurich discovered that we get a similar mental buzz when we punish cheats, even when it means incurring a personal monetary cost (Science, vol 305, p 1254).
2. IT's GOOD FOR THE IMAGEPunishing others who don't toe the line can boost your reputation, as a recent study by anthropologists Rob Boyd and Karthik Panchanathan of the University of California at Los Angeles shows. Using computer simulations, they explored the benefits of a strategy of punishment that entails simply shunning others with a bad reputation and helping those with a good reputation. By doing this, individuals can enhance their own standing, they found. What's more, by altering their behaviour according to people's reputations, these individuals minimise the cost of meting out punishment and gain the edge over indiscriminate cooperators who help anyone regardless of reputation (Nature, vol 432, p 499).
The article in its entirety focuses on the structural and functional basis of cooperation. It's economics alrighty, or game theory at least, but anytime you add the fMRI data and watch what the old noodle is up to whilst the sapiens are sapienting, BLAM!!! it kicks it up just that extra little notch required to give me a mental buzz and make me feel like we're no longer in the land of just-so storytelling, but have meandered into the domain of an objective science..., oh, and I very much respect the Punisher role itself..., I think we'll see more and more of this as we enter the twilight of the western era..., and that's a good thing!!!
Keep movin', movin', movin', Though they're disapprovin', Keep them dogies movin', rawhide. Don't try to understand 'em, Just rope 'em, throw, and brand 'em. Soon we'll be livin' high and wide. My heart's calculatin', My true love will be waitin', Be waitin' at the end of my ride.Move 'em on, head 'em up,
Head 'em up, move 'em on,
Move 'em on, head 'em up, rawhide!
Head 'em out, ride 'em in,
Ride 'em in, let 'em out,
Cut 'em out, ride 'em in, rawhide!Keep rollin', rollin', rollin',
Though the streams are swollen,
Keep them dogies rollin', rawhide.
Through rain and wind and weather,
Hell bent for leather,
Wishin' my gal was by my side.
All the things I'm missin',
Good vittles, love and kissin',
Are waiting at the end of my ride.Move 'em on, head 'em up,
Head 'em up, move 'em on,
Move 'em on, head 'em up, rawhide!
Head 'em out, ride 'em in,
Ride 'em in, let 'em out,
Cut 'em out, ride 'em in, rawhide!
RAWHIDE!!!
Pfizer, NAACP Unite to Impact Black Health Care and AIDS Prevention
A DVD promoting HIV/AIDS prevention among black women is one of the first national projects developed in an unprecedented collaboration between the NAACP and Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company.
Pfizer, according to NAACP executives, will also serve as the exclusive sponsor of the Health Fair at the NAACP's national convention in July, providing free health screenings and health information to the more than 12,000 blacks expected to be in attendance.
The three-year, $1 million partnership between Pfizer and the nation’s oldest civil rights organization formalizes a long-standing relationship and will now accelerate distribution of health-care research and development of national advocacy programs for black Americans, officials said.
“This partnership is important because racial and ethnic health disparities disproportionately impact African-Americans,” Lucy Perez, national health director for the NAACP’s Health Advocacy Division, told BlackAmericaWeb.com last week.
Take one, any one:
Or take them both. I don't care.
Maybe something will get done.
Hat tip: Booker Rising
Ok. The Fryer meme has been going around and hitting up some of my boys. Bomani emailed me about my thoughts after reading Cobb's take...and I've already weighed in on Prometheus' ideas on him. In as much as the number of black social scientists with blogs is currently at two (Melissa Harris-Lacewell has one but doesn't really claim it as such) I thought I'd weigh in.
Here's the deal. I don't know Fryer personally, but I heard of him around the same time I heard of Steven Levitt. I don't think Levitt's conclusions are all that deep. Those who are in the know have always known that drug dealing doesn't REALLY pay more than McDonalds. If it really did, then the ghettoes wouldn't all look...well, like GHETTOES. Hell, one of the reasons that the drug of choice in urban areas shifted from crack to heroin was because the supply was so great that the profit margins on the product were so slim that fools couldn't really make loot off of it.
So they shifted.
When I hung out with Cobb (and as an aside the moment was just as he captured it. If I didn't have writing deadlines up the wazoo I'd write more. Suffice it to say that it was one of the best times I've ever had in my life.) I said as much. For Levitt this question was interesting enough to ask...whereas for us (that is, black social scientists with access to drug dealers and even some intimate knowledge about dealing) these questions weren't as interesting.
I mentioned this to Prometheus. I know a couple of mid level drug dealers well enough that if I wanted to I could've gotten this information from them. I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT DOING SO. And I'm decent at what I do. This in and of itself separates Levitt from me. And this in and of itself qualifies him as a talent.
So even though Levitt is simply a riff off of the Dalton Conley story (I don't feel like linking, do a google search if you're so inclined) I admire his chops.
Now where does Fryer come in?
Fryer co-authored the naming paper with Levitt, so that in and of itself identifies him as having skills. The article though doesn't focus on his work half as much as it focuses on the hurdles he overcame on the way to Harvard.
Here's a dirty secret--while there ARE actually a number of second and third generation black PhDs floating around, most of us come from hard knock environments and had to work our asses off to get to where we are. There is a reason why you can count the number of black professors at Washington University on a couple of hands sans some fingers. My best friend in the discipline grew up in Mississippi when it was Mississippi. Segregation isn't an academic concept for him--he was there.
Hard knock stories and a few dimes will still leave you a buck short if you're trying to get from Union Station to Dupont Circle on the Metro. You can't convince me that someone is the next Dubois (a title I do aspire to) based on a hard knock life.
It also isn't clear that Fryer really wants to tackle the hard questions about black behavior. Throw a rock blindly in the prominent black blogging cirlces and you're bound to hit someone who believes that black culture is inferior to white, and that Affirmative Action hurts more than it helps. You want to go against the grain in the most conservative of all social sciences? Tackle white supremacy, jack. So whereas Levitt is asking interesting questions (granted, coming up with non-interesting answers but still...) with innovative datasets, the best that Fryer can come up is a salt narrative???
With with that said, I'm willing to bet that Fryer is as cool as the other side of the pillow as far as a running buddy. He'd probably fit in well with me, Bomani, and at least SOME of our boys. But I'm not going to hold my breath. As far as I'm concerned the best social scientists of my generation are: Claudine Gay, Mark Sawyer, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Vincent Hutchings [political science], Stephanie Rowley, Rob Sellers [psychology], Dalton Conley, Tyrone Forman, Mary Patillo [sociology]. And Bomani has a much better shot at being a Dubois-style economist (that is, one who publishes in high quality journals AND in public fora) than Fryer does. Now if he just gets that diss finished....
These links are presented without comment:
Sleeping lawyers in the court room.
BUSH: Couple issues I do want to talk about, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together last night to give Terri Schiavo's parents another opportunity to save their daughter's life. (Cheers and applause.) This is a complex case, with serious issues. But in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life.
For those in the DC area, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) will be having their annual conference in Alexandria this week. Among the panelists are Manning Marabla, Adolph Reed, Kevin Powell (don't ask), and myself. If you want more information go here or just ask me. I'll be on a panel on Black Political Development Thursday morning with Profs. Reed, and Marable (along with Melissa Harris-Lacewell out of Chicago. I'll also be on a black presidential panel on friday afternoon sometime. If you're interested let me know.
Presented without comment.
Study: Risks Remain for Teens Who Pledge Abstinence
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 18, 2005; 8:05 PM
Teenagers who take virginity pledges -- public declarations to abstain from sex -- are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities.
"The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior," said lead author Peter S. Bearman, a professor at Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. "From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement that encourages no vaginal sex may inadvertently encourage other forms at sex that are at higher risk of STDs."
The findings are based on the federally funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey begun in 1995 that tracked 20,000 young people from high school to young adulthood. At the start of the project, the students were 12 to 18 years old and agreed to detailed, sexually explicit interviews. They were re-interviewed in 1997 and again in 2002, when 11,500 also provided urine samples.
...
Conservative academics said the paper overlooked earlier important findings about adolescents who take virginity pledges, most notably that they have fewer pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births.
"It's hugely successful on those variables," Rector said. "Bearman has focused in on the one variable he thinks can show they [pledgers] don't do better."
Dear Readers, civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. I hope not. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse Bible sect or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is a scientific conclusion of the best-paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by the phenomenon known as global peak oil.
Conservative Congressman Roscoe Bartlett serves as Chairman of the Projection Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. One of three scientists in the Congress, Dr. Bartlett is also a senior member of the Science Committee. Due to his ten years of experience as a small business owner, he also serves on the Small Business Committee and is its Vice Chairman. Published on 15 Mar 2005 by US Congressional Record. Archived on 16 Mar 2005.
The Senate voted yes on drilling in ANWR:
The provision would allow oil companies to drill in a coastal plain that covers about 1.5 million acres of the wildlife refuge, which encompasses a total of about 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska. More than 10 billion barrels of crude oil are estimated to lie under the refuge, and President Bush today urged that they be tapped to help ease high fuel prices and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Big whoop. Let's suppose drilling in ANWR happens. Will it really reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil?
Uhh... no?
Think about this for a bit.
Global companies will extract the oil. The oil will be refined at locations that can be any place in the world. It may be refined in the U.S. or it may be refined outside of the U.S. But that still doesn't matter.
The global companies will then send the refined products to where ever the market dictates that it go.
There is no guarantee that the refined product will go to the U.S. for further refining (turning into plastic products) or consumption (fuel).
Thus the opening of ANWR and reducing U.S. dependency on foreign oil can't be determined because the oil will go where the market determines it needs to go.
Some believe that China will be the place that it goes because of the growing demand and the growing economy.
It's more oil on the market, but ANWR doesn't appear to be a big enough reserve to make a difference on the global market.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea to drill in ANWR, I'm just saying people are being given vaporware.
Hat tips: Ramblings Journal
Solve this paradox;
We're discussing people who honestly feel friendly, but withold somewhere in their minds a willingness to be equally human.
Then you may be psychologically qualified to undertake this science
there's one aspect of human inheritance that people are resolutely ignoring. And that is normal human variety. Or, to put it more crisply: race. If we look around the world we find that people look very different from each other. These differences are manifestly genetic. They must be. That's why people's kids look like them. Yet we know nothing about that variety. We don't know what the differences are between white skin and black skin, European skin versus African skin. What I mean is we don't know what the genetic basis of that is. This is actually amazing. I mean, here's a trait, trivial as it may be, about which wars have been fought, which is one of the great fault lines in society, around which people construct their identities as nothing else. And yet we haven't the foggiest idea what the genetic basis of this is. It's amazing. Why is that?
From eWeek:
America Online, Inc. has quietly updated the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging application, making several changes that is sure to raise the hackles of Internet privacy advocates.The revamped terms of service, which apply only to users who downloaded the free AIM software on or after Feb. 5, 2004, gives AOL the right to "reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote" all content distributed across the chat network by users.
"You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the content or to be compensated for any such uses," according to the AIM terms-of-service.
Although the user will retain ownership of the content passed through the AIM network, the terms give AOL ownership of "all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this [user] content.
I will be delivering a lecture on hip hop and politics at Whittier College in Whittier, CA. From what I understand it is 20 minutes from LAX. The talk is open to the public. If any readers are near the area come by. The talk is (or at least SHOULD be) open to the public. If you want more information email me at unbowed at gmail dot com. I'll be jetting Wednesday.
will be making a dramatic rebound far sooner than most people think. I say, "why wait for the rush?"
Begin organizing the wagontrains now...,
Right now in California, there is a health care crisis. It is a crisis of supply. It is also an extraordinary opportunity, and I am perplexed about it.
The simple fact is that California has a nursing shortage. We are 21,000 nurses short, which places us 49th out of 50 states. Over at Monster.com I found 405 openings for RNs in Los Angeles alone. On the radio yesterday they were talking about how the Phillipines is one of the greatest outsourcers of medical personnel in the world. So what I want to understand is how it happens that Americans are not interested or are unwilling to do nursing.
How does it happen that, especially as regards black Americans, the abundant opportunities in health care are not being exploited? Let me say it plainly, if you believe that black America has an unemployment problem, the answer is written in capital letters (and in blood). Get your black butt into medical school!
Dilbertization of overly eager shareholders and boosters of the neocon corpostate aborning is going to become my new hobby. Naomi Klein does a really nice job of summarizing exactly what's going on in the well-spun world of neocon brand management.
"There is a reason Bono is so admired in the Administration that the White House might just choose an Irishman. As frontman of one of the world's most enduring rock brands, Bono talks to Republicans as they like to see themselves: not as administrators of a diminishing public sphere they despise but as CEOs of a powerful private corporation called America. "Brand USA is in trouble...it's a problem for business," Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is "to re-describe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values."
The Bush Administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by its occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the US solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to "change the story."
Hopefully, at some point in the spirit of Sarbanes Oxley which seeks to hold management accountable for truth in performance reporting, we'll shrug off all the rhetorical corpospeak distracting us from a cold, clinical, and ruthless audit of what the corpobeast is really up to, before we find ourselves holding the bag like bunch of Enron patsies and stooges...,
Evidently Eddie Huff from Project 21 had a run in with Jesse Lee Peterson over what happened at Peterson's forum.
I think it's pretty funny that it happened. I've "crossed keyboards" with Huff before and to hear him say some of the same things I said, Is. Just. Plain. Funny.
Huff wrote something called, "Are We Bcoming What We Hate?"
Does anyone have a link to it?
Oh. My. How did I miss THAT okie doke? I've been doped on a rope. I didn't connect the dots.
What am I talking about? Eminent domain in New London.
I read somewhere on the web where eminent domain was used by a local government to condemn a Toyota dealership so that someone could open a BMW dealership.
I know why congress hasn't addressed it loudly. It's because the buggers benefit. The government doing a land grab and not paying fair value is something the critters like. The fact that they can do it for people who will fill their coffers, is even better.
The bastards.
So says David Lambro:
At a well-attended "town hall" meeting in heavily black Prince George's County, Md., some 250 people turned out to hear Mr. Mehlman in a question-and-answer dialogue. It was a rare event in a party that has all too often ignored the black community. A chief adviser to Mr. Mehlman told me this week he plans to meet with and speak to a broad range of black groups in the coming weeks. A major speech is planned at predominantly black Howard University, and he plans to visit more black neighborhoods. "There will be a lot of community-type events within the African-American community," this adviser told me. Notably, Mr. Mehlman appeared last week on the nationally televised PBS talk show named after and hosted by Tavis Smiley, who sponsored the civil-rights meeting in Atlanta that alarmed Miss Brazile. An independent-minded black leader who wants a broader political dialogue in the black community, Mr. Smiley is being sounded out by the NAACP to become its next president, a sign that the venerable black organization may be ready to soften its often-harsh anti-GOP rhetoric.
This is funny.
You know what? I like this move by Republicans.
Looking to further expand their party's political advantage, Republican officials will announce today a committee of African American leaders and experts on minority voting to develop a strategy to attract more blacks to the GOP. ..."This is a very serious priority for this party today," said Kenneth Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In recent days, Mehlman attended a series of town hall meetings in black communities and appeared on a television show hosted by black commentator Tavis Smiley. ...
President Bush won 11% of the black vote in the 2004 presidential election. ... [H]e got 16% of the black vote in Ohio, which helped secure his victory in that state.
Bush had drawn 9% of the African American vote ... in 2000. ...
The new GOP board includes former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie; Bishop Keith Butler, pastor of the World of Faith International Christian Center in Detroit and a likely U.S. Senate candidate; Alphonso Jackson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development; National Black Chamber of Commerce President Harry Alford; and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele.
You know why I like it? Because of Power Politics.
I keep writing that if the Black Democrats in congress and in the DNC knew anything about using the political power that they have, by sheer numbers, they would be running the Democratic party. Instead, the Democratic party pimp smacks Black politicians and Black voters at every step. At least that's my opinion on the matter.
After J.C. Watts announced he was leaving congress, he and Charlie Rangel appeared on Meet the Press. Rangel said that he wished there were more J.C. Watts' in congress so that he could get more concessions "from my party."
Think about that one.
The man is a ranking Democrat and he has to "get concessions" from the Democrat party?
At this point, some Blacks who are thinking about jumping into the political game as Democrats, should jump in as Republicans and game the system. Some Democrat politicians should be working the Democratic party to get some things to "help fight off the Republicans."
Of course, if the Republicans in congress fight the Dems, the Dems have something to bash Republicans with. If the Republicans help, the Dems can take credit. Republicans won't even try to say they helped out. Look at the poor media job they have done with the support of HBCUs.
This seems like a win-win to me. Those who believe that the Black Dem politicians have the plan, can follow that path. Those who believe that giving money to "conservative" Black churches is the plan, can follow that path.
Win-Win.
But the Black Dem politicians are clueless. They are afraid of facing off the Dem power structure. Or they are just inept in confronting it.
Hat tip: LaShawn
Hat tip: cnulan
Update:
Key excerpt from The Campaign for Black Republicans;
Bradley's Michael Joyce broke the mold. He knew (or sensed) the truth about the black clergy—that only a minority had ever belonged to the progressive "social gospel" branch of the church, personified by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The unrelenting needs of the black community made it highly vulnerable to capital penetration and manipulation. Black Milwaukee became the foundation's political laboratory, confirming Joyce's theory that vouchers and faith-based initiatives could undermine a Black Political Consensus forged through generations of struggle. Most importantly, Joyce demonstrated locally that capital could recruit and train sufficient black voucher cadre, and entice enough preachers, to have a measurable effect on mass African-American political behavior. The perception, if not the reality, of a Black Political Consensus might be shattered.
Call me an old fool from the old school, but I see nary a trace of Buck or the Preacher in the leadership of Project 21.
Inquiring minds want to know if the Ridenours are riding down a trail that a conservative black partisan would be inclined to take his family and friends?
[ Edited for some clean up ]
If "Black liberals" can be race hustlers, why can't "Black conservatives"?
[ edited ] Didn't Alan Keyes race hustle when he ran for the senate seat in Illinois? Come on, tell the truth.
From an exchange on Booker Rising:
Massie as race hustler, DS? Which race is he hustling?
LB, I number of times I've pointed out glaring inconsistencies in some of his pieces.
In this one, I point out that he's slamming Blacks for the idea of a Black community. If he believes that Blacks should look at Blacks as a part of America, then he should stop bashing the Black community because it's something that he doesn't believe in.
By bashing the Black community, which he doesn't believe in, he's using race when it's convienient. Thus, to me, he's hustling the race issue.
Next, the idea that most Blacks don't consider ourselves as being part of America fails under the light of inspection.
Start with the fact that Blacks are more likely to live in an integrated neighborhood than whites. Continue with the fact that most Blacks still strive for, and believe in, integration.
Consider the make up of the military, recent recruiting data not withstanding. The percentage of Blacks in the military exceeds the percentage of Blacks in the general population. If Blacks didn't consider ourselves as a part of America, the percentage in the service would be lower than in the general population.
Condi Rice and Colin Powell have called themselves African-American. Now tell me that by them calling themselves African-American, they don't consider themselves to be American. Yet, those who are intellectually lazy or who just want to throw flames, state that by calling themselves African-American, they are belittling themselves as American. Or better stated, they are down playing that they are American.
There is a sticker that says, "American by birth. Texan by the grace of God!". I've seen that sticker a lot. Does it mean that the person is not considering themselves to be American?
Of course not.
Let's look at something here. More and more, employers are complaining about high school graduates, no matter what race, not knowing basic things to make them good ENTRY LEVEL employees. McDonald's uses pictures on their registers for a reason. It's because the employees are less prone to errors if there are pictures on the register instead of ordinary numbers.
"Anti-intellecutalism" exists in America, in general. People don't want to admit it, but the "geek" vs. "cool" thing is an issue of "anti-intellectualism". But, it's a Black issue?
In "The End of Racism", D'Nish D'Souza bashes Blacks for believing in the group. But then he turns around and writes that Blacks should act like Jewish people whose money circulates in the Jewish community a number of times before "leaving" the Jewish community. "Black money" cirulates less than 1 time before it leaves the Black community. He wrote that Blacks should act like some immigrant groups who poll money to fund start up businesses for others within their group.
Am I the only one to see the intellectual flip-flop there? How can you say Blacks should not act as a group and then turn around and say Blacks should act like these groups who act like a group?
I keep writing that Blacks shouldn't allow ourselves to be caught up in the madness and this is just a small example of why I think so.
Based on a ""conversation" I've gotten myself into on LaShawn's blog, I've noticed a continuing trend that I find fascinating.
"Liberals" call me "conservative".
"Conservatives" call me "liberal".
Define "liberal" or/and "conservative" and then define why I'm classified as such.
I can't, and don't, classify myself. I know most people won't even agree on the definitions of both labels when hard pressed.
Damn.
Just.
Damn.
On so many levels.
All who took part need to be Drop Squadded and then shot.
Just. Damn.
Leave that crap to Howard Stern.
Damn.
Ok. So I'm watching the State of the Black Union now. (I wanted to watch something that would get me pissed enough to go off for 30 points in my first Y-league game tonight.) I appreciate what Tavis is trying to do but here's what I see from jump:
1. The power panel? The one with Long, Farrakhan, Fraser and the others? ONLY ONE ELECTED OFFICIAL.
As far as I'm concerned everything falls on its face right there. You can talk about economic development as long as the day is long. But the bottom line is political policy. Whether that policy is one that creates rules favorable to economic development, or a policy that deals with the growth of HIV/AIDS (or both), we need political policy. Furthermore, we need mechanisms of transparency and accountability. How the hell can you even begin to really grapple with these things if out of a 13 person panel only one has a visible viable constituency?
2. There are three issues that I think black people have a shared vested interest in fighting for. The protection of our civil rights. The promotion of policies designed to ensure equality of opportunity and/or results. The promotion of policies designed to deal with HIV/ADS.
Of those three two of them are HEAVILY CLASS BASED. No one is getting turned away from Eastern Iowa University because they are black. And on the other hand very very few students from East Saint Louis High are applying to Harvard or Michigan. Furthermore, working class black folk are much more worried about being brutalized than they are about being profiled.
The promotion of health policies help all black people. Given the way that HIV/AIDS spreads, combined with the fact that black people for the most part kick it and marry other black people, a sound HIV/AIDS policy would undoubtedly help all of us. But even here there are still problems to consider. The type of HIV/AIDS policy that would best fit MY needs, is NOT necessarily the type of policy that would best fit the needs of black sex workers. In as much as we're both black, and we cannot necessarily have a one-size-fits-all policy SOMEBODY'S GOT TO LOSE.
Take another example--education. I'm homeschooling my kids, but if Baltimore asked me to pay more taxes for their public schools I would. How many black homeschoolers feel similar? I don't know. So any "black policy" that deals with education is going to end up either stiffing the private school going folk, the growing homeschooling folk, or the public school folk. SOMEBODY'S GOT TO LOSE. And in both cases those somebodys will both be BLACK and be worthy of being CALLED black.
I've got a great deal of appreciation for the work of people like Amzie Moore. Like Fannie Lou Hamer. Like Ella Baker. Like Medgar Evers. Like John Lewis. And yes...like the mainstays.
But I am soooo sick and tired of commemorations. Every time I see or hear about one I'm thinking in my head about two groups of folks--people who continually relive their high school days, and alzheimer victims.
I picked up the Wu-Tang Manual after checking it out on Amazon.com I think. The RZA can't play chess for a damn, but the book contains layers upon layers. Then I hear this interview conducted by Terry Gross. I remember an interview Kevin Powell conducted with Wynton Marsalis, and Powell gave Marsalis a softball that allowed Wynton to go off on one of his anti-rap tangents. Listening to the interview with the RZA it is clear that Wynton's problem is that he has a very different conception of disciple--again that word. And that he doesn't have the ear to hear what's going on with something like Enter the 36 Chambers. Now granted, it isn't necessarily like Ludacris has an ear for The Magic House either...but you know what I mean.
Jason Whitlock goes off on Chris Webber again. Basic argument? That if Webber would've just stayed in the low-post and did the low-post thing he'd be the best power forward ever. Whitlock has some history with Webber, having covered him for the Ann Arbor News some 13 years ago.
I have some history with Webber too, having known him indirectly since he was in the eighth grade. And I was at Michigan during the Fab Five years....before the Fab Five years...and AFTER the Fab Five years. Whitlock's piece bears reading not just for the mistakes of analysis he makes about Webber. Let's be clear, Whitlock is no Ralph Wiley. But I think it says a lot about the three modern meanings of discipline, and the role they have to play in black male lives.
A passage:
Chris Webber had the potential to become the best power forward the game has ever seen. He could've been as relia