race

Notes from North of 49ºN.

Macleans magazine, like any other, likes to create lists.  I was going through old issues before I pitched them and I spied an article about Canada’s Most Dangerous Cities.  {Here’s the 2009 version}. Caledon, Ontario for two years straight was deemed the safest place in Canada, a town of 58,000 about 40 kilometers/25 miles from Toronto.  I’ve seen Caledon from the air, heading into Toronto’s Pearson Airport, a town on the edge of the greater Toronto area {GTA}, where the 410 freeway peters out on the rural outskirts.   I recall the town where I worked the past few years, Thousand Oaks, CA, was deemed one of the safest places by the FBI, which wasn’t too surprising.  It was fairly affluent, suburban, and homogeneous at 85% white in the 2000 Census.  The 2008 Macleans article went into the reasons why Caledon had such low crime, while crime seemed to be on the rise in neighbouring Brampton.

How safe is Caledon.  According to the Macleans article::

“Of the 100 biggest cities or regions in Canada, Caledon is the safest. In 2006, the most recent year for which there’s annual data, it ranked the lowest —107 per cent below the national average — for a score combining six crimes (murder, sexual assault, breaking and entering, vehicle theft, aggravated assault, and robbery)”.

So, what makes it so “safe”?

• Strict police
• Visible police {6,000 hours of foot patrol with 100,000 interactions and only 12 public complaints}
• “Restorative justice” {which brings suspect and victim together with a mediator instead of a court judge} has been used extensively since 2006 to resolve non-violent incidents, from neighbour disputes to vandalism.
• Relative wealth:: median income of about $32,900, compared with $24,800 across Ontario.
• The population is overwhelmingly white and English-speaking {almost half of all residents are third-generation Canadians or more}.

Are problems on the horizon?  The local youth complain of nothing to do and a lack of public transportation makes them feel “stuck” unless they have a driver’s license.  Petty crimes and vandalism are a going concern in Caledon.  The big concern is growth.  Problems with crime in Canada are correlated with areas of growth, where the local infrastructure and support mechanism are outgrown.  Crime has followed the pattern of Canadian growth in the West.  Population in Caledon is expected to increase by 48% by 2021 and “racial fights” are starting to erupt in local schools, where students from nearby Brampton {a town with over 60% first-generation Canadians} are being bussed to.  Also, while robberies in Caledon are rare, Brampton is seeing a spike, so local law enforcement {Caledon’s Ontario Provincial Police} is trying to be proactive with robbery prevention seminars.

What’s the policy implication here?  What’s the relationship between diversity and crime?  Toronto celebrates its diversity {the seal of Toronto has the motto, “diversity our strength”} and enjoys on of the lowest crime rates in North America, so the socioeconomics of cities likely plays a role, along with other factors like geography and demography, not to mention the cultural differences between Canada and the US.

I think what Caledon has now is a sense of “community,” based on a way of life that tends to be more homogeneous and with a slower pace.  Does impending growth threaten this, particularly with the scalability of the public infrastructure.  Specifically, if growth outpaces the capacity of the public infrastructure, could there be a danger of those with the means starting an exodus -or- will those in the community work to strengthen the infrastructure?

A few weeks ago, I was in Sleepy Hollow, NY in Westchester County, less than a hour north of Manhattan.  While on the surface, the Village of Sleepy Hollow seems like a homogeneous suburb on the Hudson, it actually is diverse culturally and socioeconomically.  The “downtown” core is a vibrant shopping area and let’s face it, it’s Sleepy Hollow and has caché as a Washington Irving/Halloween-themed tourist destination, but one gets a sense of community and meaning.  I’m actually interested in visiting Caledon to see if it has what I observed in Sleepy Hollow.  I never got a sense that Thousand Oaks had any sense of community and meaning, but I freely admit I never looked very hard to find it.

Twitterversion:: Dissecting Canada’s “safest” cities. Role of diversity? Scalability public infrastrture? Community/meaning? http://url.ie/2xmk #ThickCulture @Prof_K

Song:: Lavender Hill – The Kinks

I’m finally back in Toronto, but had an interesting sidetrip to Québec and will be blogging about separatism and Canadian identity in a future post.  I saw on Twitter that a trending topic was the hashtag, “#thingsdarkiessay.”  I knew it had to be some “inside joke” or meme I wasn’t aware of and the above tweet explained that it originated in South Africa, but was gaining attention in the US, due to the use of the term “darkies.”  Several observations on people’s tweets, pointing out the “irony,” noted that blacks were making it a trending topic.  I didn’t go through the thousands of tweets, but I’ll surmise {given the above} that the hashtag originated from black South Africans.

Regardless of intent, as a meme goes viral, it takes on a life of its own, making Roland Barthes‘s Death of the Author{s} quite salient.  Is this related to -or- independent of an idea that with some content {e.g., race or language referring to race}, the author becomes irrelevant or somehow transformed?  How does this inform dialogues about race, particularly as the Internet blasts apart contextual boundaries, let alone the determination of the “offensiveness” of content in a global context.

Twitterversion:: Trending topic #thingsdarkiessay originated in #SouthAfrica but sparks tweets in the global Twittersphere. #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2s8n

Song::  F*ck You (Distasteful Ruff n Ready Mix) – Lily Allen

The high school I went to was John F. Kennedy, where the mascot was a leprechaun and the nickname for the sports teams was the Fighting Irish.  The “branding” and the fight song were all University of Notre Dame ripoffs.  I also seem to recall some Boston Celtics influence on the logo front.  I never thought about it being offensive.

Fast forward a few years when in my consumer behaviour course {text was by William Wilkie}, I read about the policy implications of sports marketing, particularly when it came to using Native American tribes as mascots.  This week, the decision of whether the current nickname for the University of North Dakota will continue to be The Fighting Sioux was extended for 30-60 days by the North Dakota state Board of Higher Education.  This will allow the university to get the opinion of the the state’s two tribes, as per the NCAA mandate that says that they cannot hold postseason events without approval of the tribes, after deeming the nickname “hostile and offensive.”

Proponents say the name honors the tribes and are an important part of the school’s tradition.  On ESPN, a university official did everything possible to state the university position is whatever the tribes and the Board of Higher Education decides, while an activist stated that all tribes in all states where Sioux people reside should have a say.

The Stanford {Leland Stanford Jr. University} nickname was the Indians until 1972, when, after protest, it was changed to the Cardinal, for the colour, not the bird.  The mascot went from Prince Lightfoot to the Stanford Tree, but not overnight. The tree was a mascot candidate offered by the Stanford band in 1975, although it did not win a student referendum that allowed suggestions that year.  According to Wikipedia::

“The 1975 vote included new suggestions, many alluding to the industry of the school’s founder, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford — the Robber Barons, the Sequoias, the Trees, the Cardinals, the Railroaders, the Spikes, and the Huns. The Robber Barons won, but the university’s administration refused to implement the vote.”

Ah, so much for campus democracy.  This reminds me of the server of my first web URL at UC Irvine:: “avarice.gsm.uci.edu”

I guess I’m not a stickler for tradition.  I’ve gone to schools where the nicknames were Ducks and Anteaters.  {As an aside, I do believe the Stanford “tree” is still banned from Autzen Stadium at the University of Oregon for a spotted owl skit in the 1990s.  Oregon was/is logging country.}  If the mascots were changed, so be it.  I must admit I would think it was pretty funny if Stanford did become the Robber Barons.  That said, changing a nickname or a mascot on the basis that it offends a group doesn’t bother me at all.  I can see how this is a clash of meaning systems.

So, is this no big whoop or is the NCAA imposing an overly politically correct culture on collegiate America?

Twitterversion:: Univ.N.Dakota Fightng Sioux mascot mght go the way of the dodo.Ovrly PC #NCAA or are times just a changin’? #ThickCulture http://url.ie/2k0e @Prof_K

Songs:: Smells Like Teen Spirit – Paul Anka

Mighty Oregon – Fight On: The Greatest College

After being on the road for a week, I finally had the chance to catch up on news and such, including the US Supreme Court appointment controversy of Sonia Sotomayor.  The Meet the Press {NBC} soundbite that caused the maelstrom was this Sotomayor quote from 8 years ago::

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

This quote was from a 2001 UC Berkeley-Boalt Hall lecture, which was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.  This soundbite ignited lively debate, as well as charges of racism and reverse-racism, serving to frame Sotomayor::

David Gregory, host of Meet the Press, opted to provide a little more context this week, but he still failed to provide the widest context for her 2001 remarks.  MediaMatters highlighted the parts Gregory omitted in bold::

“Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

[…]

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Gregory added more context, but his spin still doesn’t give the full picture.  I “get it” why Gregory chose to focus on the text he did, as it was controversial and generated buzz.  {Don’t get me started on press coverage of the BC election, particularly the supposed “beer tax” [non-]issue.}  I grow tired of journalists or this new breed of quasi-journalist, the commentator {read:: infotainment}, engage in ratings-grabbing soundbitery from both ends of the ideological spectrum.

I feel that Barack himself has thwarted to a certain extent being “soundbit” into a pigeonhole.  

• Is this because of a specific relationship that has evolved with the media -or- is this particular to his rhetorical skills that embrace complexity?  

In contrast, the US has had 16 years of “bubbas” who made it a point to boil things down to a lowest-common-denominator vernacular.  In other Sotomayor news, I saw this sociogram {below} of her present and past relationships.  I haven’t verified this mapping, but I wonder if the Senate Republicans will try to go after her in the confirmation hearings based upon this type of “evidence,” which can always be used to trip people up.  Given that Republicans are already backing off on the racism angle, I’m wondering how much of this racism angle will even be used.  Why bother, when you can frame her as “dumb”?

Twitterversion::  Sotomayor soundbite framed as racism-wider context less damning. More journalism fail? Obama defies soundbites-why? WWSD? Whatwillsenatedo?

Song::  It Says Here (LP Version) – Billy Bragg

If any of you are looking for a good text on race, ethnicity and American politics (of which there are very few), my colleague (and fellow Cuban) Jessica Lavariega Monforti has co-edited a volume that you might want to examine. She’s an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at the University of Texas – Pan American. The book is called Black and Latino/a Politics: Issues in Political Development in the United States (2006 Barnhardt and Ashe). She describes the rationale for the book below:

As students of urban, racial, and ethnic politics in the United States, we are intimately aware of the fact that very few issues embraced by U.S. officials and institutions over the past quarter century have excluded considerations of race and ethnicity, but this fact is not reflected in the literature of mainstream political science. We wanted to create an edited volume that speaks to this problem by looking at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and political development in the U.S.

In Black and Latino/a Politics, we have included chapters on identity, empowerment, political and social issues, political participation, black-brown coalitions, and public policy. Our hope was to produce a text that was comprehensive in nature, so we also included issues of gender and urban politics as well as analyses of institutions and organizations within these communities of color. There is no more important story to be told than the struggle by Blacks and Latina/os for power in the face of a multitude of constraints that seek to undermine the full flowering of Black and Latina/o strength in the political process.

The processes of governance, the distribution of political power and resources in society, and the emergence and movement of ideas in this country have been profoundly influenced by the existence, beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors of Latinos and Blacks. In other words, Blacks and Latinos have been active participants in the political development of this nation-state and the political institutions therein.

Inherently it seems as though we are headed toward a point in time where critical decisions about the future of Latino and African American political development will be made. New leaders will surface, new relationships will be cultivated, and old relationships may be reinvented to deal with some of the same trials and tribulations that the African American and Latino communities have been confronting for over 400 years. At present, it seems clear that we have a unique opportunity to again change the face of politics in the United States. For better or worse we have been able to determine why — but the questions of who, when, how, and where remain unanswered.

Chip Saltsman, a candidate to head the Republican National Committee (RNC), decided to spread holiday cheer by sending an audio CD to members of the RNC that included a parody song called “Barack the Magic Negro.” The song a mocks Obama’s appeal to whites in the voice of an Al Sharpton sound-a-like.

As someone who worked in politics (briefly) before going into academia, I find it difficult to wrap my head around boneheaded decisions like this. Why would anyone, no less a candidate for RNC Chairman, think this was a good idea. It isn’t like this is a Congressman without greater ambitions catering to a constituency that might find this amusing (Saltzman was Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager). If that were the case, I could understand using out-group racial mockery to strengthen ties among your brethren. But this guy is running for a national party. Unfortunately for him, he’s running the be operational head of a party in an increasingly diverse country. Tough break, that.

Maybe it because I’m getting older, but I find myself shaking my head at incidents like this rather than indulging in righteous anger. The act seems petty, the behavior of a flailing wing of a political party that would just as soon cast explicit racists out (See current RNC chair Mike Duncan’s response).

For a party that needs to get its bearings quickly if it wants to serve as a useful push back to the majority party, these types of stunts renders it impotent. Those of us who are more left of center can hold this incident up as an example of a backwards, bigoted party. In reality, most of the ideas of the Republican party have a place in American political discourse but this stuff doesn’t help.

You live by the Southern strategy, you die by the Southern strategy… I guess. My New Years hope for my Republican friends is that they have the good sense to elect Michael Steele, the sensible, African-American, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, for RNC chair. A two party system works better with two viable parties, and it would be nice to drown the Southern strategy in the bathtub (not the federal government… Grover Norquist).

As I try to get out from under the mass of “green books” (the blue book is a casualty of campus greening efforts), I thought I’d give a shout to my Race, Multiculturalism and Politics students at California Lutheran University. I’m a pretty mild mannered person in general, but for some reason, I often perform “high wire acts” with untested assignments.

This semester, I asked my Race classes (mostly first-semester freshmen) to create Wikipedia entries for books from the suggested readings section of my syllabus. I was a bit nervous about this assignment. Particularly as students began coming to me reporting that the “the crowd” on Wikipedia had decided to delete their blog entries.

Today, some of my students presented their Wikipedia pages, and I was blown away. Other than the occasional typo here or akward sentence structure there, they exceeded my wildest expectations. Here are two examples:

Wikipedia page for Multiculturalism Without Culture, by Anne Phillips
Wikipedia page for Unequal Childhoods by Annette Lareau

I was impressed with my students ability to synthesize pretty heady stuff. I wonder how presenting material in such a public forum changed the work product. Has anyone given a similar assignment? How did it work out? I was stunned by the zeal with which many of the students approached this project. I’d love to hear your thoughts.