ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

This is why Caldwell refers to poverty-stricken Muslim enclaves as "the strongest communities in Europe" — strong, that is, in the context of a pitifully weak post-religious and post-nationalist Europe. "Islam is not the second religion of Europe but the first," he says, because it has maintained its "vital energy," while there is nothing left to European Christianity but a superficial "lifestyle." He even ends up agreeing with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, that Europe's "materialist civilization" is "on the verge of collapse." Caldwell feels more at home with Muslim values than with the values of contemporary Europe — as, he says, would Dante. And Caldwell also values women's chastity more than women's autonomy because chastity (not to mention virginity) "can further dignity, responsibility, and self-respect." You may think that burqas and niquabs demean women, he ironizes, but what about "jeans that cinch halfway down the bum crack"?

Although no official turnout figures are available and the election results are not yet final, election monitoring groups and political activists from Taliban-plagued provinces report that in dozens of insecure districts, almost no women voted. Nationwide, they say, women's participation was much lower than in either the 2004 presidential or 2005 parliamentary elections.

The sense of eroding political rights for women did not begin with this election. In the past several years, Taliban attacks on prominent women have sent a powerful message to others who dreamed of entering public life. In the southern province of Kandahar alone, a female legislator, a women's affairs official and a female prosecutor were gunned down by terrorists. Others have received constant threats, travel with armed guards or rarely visit their constituencies.

...

"Things are reverting, and it's because of a mix of insecurity, economy and culture," said Soraya Sobrang, a physician and member of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "For a few years when security was better, women could participate in public life and the new constitution gave them political rights. But then the attacks started, and people were warned not to send their daughters to school, not to send their wives to work. All their new rights came under threat, and nothing really changed in their lives."

Now, Sobrang said, many Afghan women have lost hope.

"We have lost a lot of the ground we made. Women still face forced marriages, still work in the fields, still depend on men who beat them every day," said Sobrang, who voted on Aug. 20 in a very short line of nervous, unsmiling women. "We can give a card to a woman and tell her to vote, but that does not protect her from danger, and it does not give her any real rights at all."

At work, gender should not come into it. Women are right to refuse to make the coffee, but when you get home I'm afraid you have to make the coffee.

'It's such a waste of time trying to tell your husband to pick up the socks or clean the loo. It's much easier just to do it yourself.'

As for feminism, Weldon said: 'Life is much better, because you are not dependent on the goodwill [!] of men. But the trouble is, the battle became too fierce, and the whole culture encouraged women to believe that men are stupid, useless creatures who are the enemy.

'But men nowadays aren't s***. They're actually much nicer.'

'Women want boyfriends to be like their girlfriends, fun to go to the pictures with, but men are not like that. They want sex and they grunt. If you really want a man to be nice to you, never give him a hard time, never talk about emotions and never ask him how he is feeling.'

Critics accuse her of losing touch with the aspirations of women.

Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to the Obama event in Arizona last week, attended a fiery anti-Obama sermon the day before the event, in which Pastor Steven Anderson said he was going to "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell", Anderson confirmed to TPMmuckraker today.

Anderson also said Broughton had informed the pastor about his planned show of arms-bearing, but "he planned out the AR15 thing long before he heard that sermon," delivered Sunday August 16 at the fundamentalist Faithful World Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ.

This is the second example of the gun-toters at the Arizona Obama event tied to the violent fringes of American life.

"I don't obey Barack Obama. And I'd like Barack Obama to melt like a snail tonight," Anderson said in the sermon.

The sermon, which was titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama" and also contained virulent anti-gay themes

My Newborn Is Like a Narcotic

Why won't feminists admit the pleasure of infants?

Etsy.com Peddles a False Feminist Fantasy

No, you can't quit your day job to make quilts

•Average scores dropped 5 points for females and 2 points for males. While females represent more than half (53.5%) of test takers, their total average score (1496) is 27 points below that of males (1523).

At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as "Women's Equality Day".

The date was selected to commemorate the ... passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings ... at the world's first women's rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York.

The observance of Women's Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment, but also calls attention to women's continuing efforts toward full equality. Workplaces, libraries, organizations, and public facilities now participate with Women's Equality Day programs, displays, video showings, or other activities.

THE TRUTH

Accepting the truth is the only way to be able to change the truth. Accepting the truth is difficult sometimes. We often think things are other than what they are, and desire makes us search for evidence that something hidden will come to light and prove things were the way we expected them to be all along.

Meanwhile, had we just accepted events as they happened, unpleasant as they may be, we would have been freed immediately to work on changing things.

Choosing which truth to accept and which to reject is just as bad as rejecting all the truth. We accept pleasant truths and deny unpleasant ones. Or we accept unpleasant truths and deny pleasant ones - you know people that do that, don't you? Go on, tell the truth.

How do you know what the truth is, though?

It's easy, really. Much easier than most would have you believe. The only reason anyone would have you think otherwise is so that they can think otherwise and not be exposed.

Be awake. Pay attention. Ignore nothing that happens to you. Instead of acting as though things will turn out as you expect, give your best effort to make it turn out as you choose. And watch to see how it actually turns out, each action. You'll be wrong at first, because by rejecting the truth in the past, you learned the wrong ideas about how the world works. And it will be painful sometimes. But pain is as much a part of life as joy is...that's the truth.

And as you remain alert, as you stay aware, as you stop explaining away the difference between your expectations and events, you learn. And as you learn, the truth becomes clearer. And you feel strong enough to handle whatever pain comes to you.

But you're actually no stronger than you ever were. You just stop wasting your strength on the imaginary, unnecessary battles that result from denying the truth.

Why do U-People romanticize the lower economic class?
Because we all know we can wind up in that class as a result of something stupid that's out of our control. We need something to look forward to.

Why do U-People complain about unfair treatment then turn around and try to treat others unfairly?
If you want to go north and find out you're going west, your original destination isn't north from where you are, it's northeast.

Why can't U-People just act like everyone else?
We do. We just do it in in a situation you don't recognize, so you don't recognize the results.

Why do U-People score lower on standardized tests if you're not stupider?
The standardized tests are best at testing conformance to the standard. The standard is a white male. As evidence, even white women score less well on the SAT than men with the same grades in college - or to phrase it differently, women get higher grades than men with the same SAT scores.

Either way, there's evidence that some factors relevant to both intelligence and success are missed by the standardized tests.

Why are U-People so violent?
As compared to what? Where is there a non-violent people?

Why do U-People always think everyone is a racist?
Well, everything in America is looked at through, measured in terms of, categorized and stored by race. So we know you have thoughts and opinions about us. Then we look at everything the society produces that depicts us. We consider that to be tangible evidence of the collective attitude. So now we know that the collective opinion of our race is negative.

This is a competitive disadvantage, and when, as a tactic, our abilities are immediately discounted to the degree that we can be made to fit people's preconceptions, we feel the tactitician and the one who executes the tactic is racist. When the tactic succeeds, we feel those who hold the preconceptions that were played on are racist.

Why don't U-People want to just accept the way things are and work to get ahead?
I need to use a metaphor for this one. Euro-American economic development has depended on extracting the value of the efforts of others. In the USofA, this has meant leveraging Black people. It's very much as if you had to get over a chasm using one of those teeter-totter arrangements Wile E. Coyote uses. . . you know, where you stand on one end of a lever, toss a heavy weight on the other end and you are catapulted forward. The USofA has used Black people as that heavy weight. The weight, in this case, has been the forced and spontaneous products of Black activity.

What we are offered now, at best, is an opportunity to toss some of our own people on the other end of our lever, to fuel our progress at the expense of others of our people.

This is not acceptable.

Why are so many of U-People in jail if you don't have criminal tendancies?
We have roughly the same proclivity to crime as everyone else. It's just that the crimes of opportunity are different for us, and you can't commit a crime without opportunity. The crimes of opportunity for us are the ones that scare the hell out of you. The crimes of opportunity for you seem to be forgivable because they're kinder and gentler (though its overall effect on the nation has been far more damaging than the muggings and such).

Beyond that, it's a truism that what you see depends on where you look. And since law enforcement officials have classified our very appearance as cause for suspicion (if we're hip-hop we're gang-bangers; if we drive a luxury car we're suspected drug dealers) they look at us a lot.

Labels: domestic violence, Sexism

Labels: Poetry

Little safe haven for sexually assaulted LGBTQ victims
University of Oregon study finds barriers to seeking help, even from agencies and law enforcement

Being a victim of sexual assault and seeking help is difficult for anyone, but when the victim is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or queer (LGBTQ) the thought of reporting a crime may well be laced with added layers of uncertainty and mistrust, according to a study in Oregon.

The study, appearing in the August issue of the journal Violence Against Women, found that 94 percent of respondents -- most of them identifying as LGBTQ in Eugene-Springfield -- think sexual violence is a problem, but just 72 percent agreed it is in their community. Eighty-seven percent of respondents also said that that sexual violence prevention tailored to the LGBTQ community is needed, and more than 60 percent felt local agencies and law enforcement were ill-equipped.

Of 130 participants, ranging in age from 15 to 71, 58 percent claimed to have been sexually assaulted. The participants were 83 females, 40 males, six who identified as transgender and one who did not specify sexual identity. Thirty respondents (23 percent) were gay, 20 percent were lesbian, 18.5 percent were bisexual and 18.5 percent were heterosexual; the remainder claimed to be in multiple categories or did not respond.

"The take-home message was that sexual violence is real and complicated for members of the LGBTQ community," said lead author Jeffrey L. Todahl, a professor of couples and family therapy in the UO College of Education's department of counseling psychology and human services. "There are additional barriers because of discrimination. It is hard enough to reach out to ask for help if you are sexually assaulted. This is compounded when you have to wonder if people in law enforcement, at a hospital or with an agency will think poorly of you because of your sexual orientation. An LGBTQ victim will ask, 'Will I be judged, and is your organization safe? If I can't trust you, I cannot get the help I need.'"

The study, drawn from a convenience sample rather than a random one, was part of a larger project funded by the Oregon Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force. Potential respondents were recruited through various targeted means, including through a listserv for sexual and domestic violence social service activists and providers.

In addition to the survey, four focus groups with a total of 14 participants (mean age 41) identified the biggest problem is low community awareness and support. Researchers found a "social ignorance of the existence of LGBTQ communities and limited open discussion of the sexual violence occurring within the LGBTQ community." Several focus group members noted that society in general -- and even LGBTQ members -- dismiss even the possibility that sexual violence occurs in the LGBTQ community.

When a sexual assault occurs, Todahl said, members of the LGBTQ community continue to be cloaked in fear of judgment. "LGBTQ persons live in an inherently dangerous environment and reasonably assume that they may be targeted, mistreated and blamed -- even by service providers, law enforcement and health-care professionals," Todahl and colleagues noted.

"They have to start with the assumption that I don't trust you," Todahl said, adding that "you" refers to organizations, police, friends and even family members who don't accept their lifestyle choices. They don't feel safe and worry that they will be quickly judged."

The study, he said, allowed LBGTQ members to voice their experiences. "And it provides a chance for us to explore a deeper understanding of the issue. Because of the discrimination they feel, they have to circle the wagons. They don't feel safe anyway. They have to protect the legitimacy of their sexual orientation. If assaulted by a member of their own community, they don't want it to get out because many people think there is something wrong with them as it is."

Based on the study, researchers learned that participants believe that sexual assault must be more clearly defined socially and must carry real consequences. "The general community needs to be more welcoming of people's sexual orientation," Todahl said. Participants also suggested that workers at agencies, from police to health care to social service agencies, be trained to better understand sexual assault and what it means to be a member of a sexual minority, he added.

LGBTQ members need to know what agencies are safe, Todahl said. Agencies should be re-evaluating such things as their names and the messages a name imply, and even what their intake forms look like. "Are they welcoming?" he said.

Co-authors with Todahl were his departmental colleague Deanna Linville; Amy Bustin of Sexual Assault Support Services, a non-profit organization in Lane County; Jenna Wheeler, a UO doctoral student in counseling psychology; and Jeff Gau of Abacus Research of Eugene.

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of the 62 leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. The UO is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

Sources: Jeff Todahl, assistant professor of couples and family therapy, 541-346-0919, jtodahl@uoregon.edu; Deanna Linville, assistant professor of couples and family therapy, 541-346-0921, linville@uoregon.edu

I once wrote

I sometimes think of the USofA like it's the planet Saturn: Black folks are the ring system, considered part of the planet by everyone that's interested, but not really. It's been suggested the ring system is the remnant of a solid body. In this metaphor, the African American Culture Wars is between those who want to reassemble the shattered moon and those who want to negotiate a soft landing on the planet. And the rings, the individual moonlets, continue the dance that ornaments the planet.

I like that metaphor so I want to work with it for minute.

This is how the USofA looks from the outside		This is how the USofA looks to Black folks.

I'd like to include a view of the rings as seen from Saturn, but all I could find was science fiction fantasy art.

Labels: Poetry

Mr. Paul, whose original name was Lester William Polsfuss, was born on June 9, 1915, in Waukesha, Wis. His childhood piano teacher wrote to his mother, “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.”

Did you have time to take a look at the New Yorker article -- Wilder Women -- that I mentioned the other day? If so, I came up with the following questions for discussion. Yes, I know they sound like one of those back-of-the-trade-paperback “extras” for book club use. Anyway, not in any particular order of importance …

1. To what extent, if any, do the mother and daughter’s respective politics inform their relationship?
2. Did Rose’s jump in social class have any effect on their relationship or on her view of her mother?
3. At one point Rose said, “My life has been arid and sterile, because I have been a human being instead of a woman.” Rose had lived through first wave feminism, though, and certainly lived the life of a feminist. Why would she think the concepts mutually exclusive? As“just a woman”(by her daughter's definition), was Laura any less of a feminist?
4. Although Laura had been writing a column for a while, her big literary success didn’t happen until she was sixty-five years old. Rose had been a successful writer for more than ten years by that time. What happens when mother professionally eclipses daughter?
5. Rose claims to have received “no affection” from her mother, yet Rose shared her talent for editing with her mother, which by the author’s account, made them better books. Does Laura seem to have had anything to give to Rose aside from material to edit and to incorporate in her most successful work?

Did you read the “Little House” books? I read them all around second or third grade, as I recall. I know that when I asked my fourth grade teacher to give me a “grownup” novel, she directed me to My Antonia.

This is Laura.

This is Rose. (I like her hat.)

“Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. So you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband.”
...
No matter the issues she was talking about — encouraging good governing, ending Africa’s wars, lifting women up from their lowly position in a place like Congo. The interest in this trip, it seemed, was not about the problems facing Africa. It was about her.

As [Hillary Clinton] circles the globe in coming years, making the case for women’s empowerment, starting with their basic right to be taken seriously, Clinton really has her work cut out for her. And it isn’t just because the situation of women around the world is so dire, and the ocean of problems confronting them — maternal mortality, sex trafficking, domestic abuse, malnourishment, lack of education, lack of adequate medical care, just for starters — is so wide and so deep. And it isn’t just that her historic mandate — to equally empower the other half of the world’s population, to chip away at the forces “devaluing women,” in the words of Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s new ambassador at large for global women’s issues — is so huge and vague and seemingly overwhelming. It’s also because the tide of trivialization that washes over all things “Hillary” is just so powerful. That tide threatens to drown out anything of substance Clinton might attempt for a population whose problems have long been obscured in the androcentric world of diplomacy. And that’s a huge pity.

My personal experience has been that there remains a strongly conservative core segment of physicians who are wary of [health care] reform for temperamental and financial reasons (not to paint with too broad a brush, but a group that is anchored in the high-dollar medical specialties).

Female supervisors more susceptible to workplace sexual harassment
Study is first to examine trend over time and clearly demonstrate use of harassment as a workplace equalizer

SAN FRANCISCO — Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever, large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and sexual harassment.

The study, which will be presented at the 104th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, reveals that nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles. While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.

"This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination," said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study's primary investigator. "Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power."

McLaughlin and her co-authors examined data from the 2003 and 2004 waves of the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective study of adolescents that began in 1988 with a sample of 1,010 ninth graders in the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school district and has continued near annually since. Respondents were approximately 29 and 30 years old during the 2003 and 2004 waves. The analysis was supplemented with in-depth interviews with a subset of the YDS survey respondents.

The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).

In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual (gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to experience harassment.

Researchers also found that those who reported harassment in the first year (2003) were 6.5 times more likely to experience harassment in the following year. The most common scenario reported by survey respondents involved male harassers and female targets, while males harassing other males was the second most frequent situation.

McLaughlin co-authored the study with sociologists Christopher Uggen, chair of the University of Minnesota's sociology department and a distinguished McKnight professor of sociology, and Amy Blackstone, associate professor of sociology at the University of Maine. The multi-method research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The paper, "A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual Harassment in Young Adulthood," will be presented on Saturday, Aug. 8, at 8:30 a.m. PDT in the Parc 55 Hotel at the American Sociological Association's 104th annual meeting.

To obtain a copy of McLaughlin's paper; for more information on other ASA presentations; or for assistance reaching the study authors, contact Jackie Cooper at pubinfo@asanet.org or (202) 247-9871. During the annual meeting (Aug. 8-11), ASA's Public Information Office staff can be reached in the press room, located in the Hilton San Francisco's Union Square 1 & 2 room, at (415) 923-7558, (415) 923-7561 or (301) 509-0906 (cell).

I want to start with an old essay I wrote at the start of my time as a Black partisan (no, I was not always one). At the time I called myself an "aggregationist."

Claude McKay said in his autobiography, "Negroes do not understand the difference between group segregation and group aggregation. And their leaders do not enlighten them, because they too do not choose to understand."

This is all too true. Fortunately, I'm not a leader. I have chosen to understand. And I have chosen to explain the difference, and the difference that difference makes.

Segregation and aggregation both refer to a gathering together of things according to some shared characteristic. Both imply considering that group a single entity. But just as all other things can be constructive or destructive, so can this viewing groups of people collectively. Aggregation is the positive side of this collective viewing, while segregation is the negative side.

What makes segregation negative is that it's something that's done to you, whereas aggregation is something that is done by you. Segregation is imposed on you, aggregation is chosen by you. When you aggregate, you draw together with people. When you segregate, you push people aside.

When I wrote the essay it was to explain why it is no sin for Black folks to actively support each other on principle…the nature of aggregation was under discussion. This time it is the nature of segregation being considered, and I'm doing it in connection with the widely reported "failure" of integration to "close the education gap."

Yes. Scare quotes. And you gotta do some history with me. Can't change it, but it is the only source of data we have to analyse.

We all know Jim Crow was the order of the day at the time Brown was decided. And as the neo-Confederates will never fail to reminder us, it wasn't only in the South that The Negro had problems. I think it safe to say that at the time a plurality of mainstream types actively disliked The Negro and a majority of the balance didn't much find him to be the sort of fellow one would associate with.

But have you ever wondered (okay, I'm assuming you knew) why there were so many intelligent, erudite Black folks so quickly after the War Between The States? One reason is their teachers volunteered to teach them. People who though it important enough that The Negro be educated that they moved into his midst. That all broke down of course, and wasn't intended to end segregation anyway...separate can be equal, but you have to give it an honest shot.

And it was almost tried.

It took me a while to wrap my mind around the fact that Brown v.Board of Education wasn't the seminal case decided that day. For some reason, perhaps because I wasn't as familiar with the details as I could have been, I thought the set of class actions was named for the case of greatest significance.

Wrong.

Ironically, it was not Brown but the case from South Carolina, Briggs v Elliott, that was the more important and interesting of the four. The Topeka case arose out of an 1867 law that permitted towns of more than 15,000 to segregate their elementary schools; the other states had constitutional and statutory provisions that mandated racial segregation at all levels.

The story in South Carolina was very different. South Carolina had been the nullification state in 1832, the first to secede in 1860, and since the 1890s had built a rigid set of laws and customs segregating the races. Harry Briggs, a tenant farmer and navy veteran, with five children, "figured anything to better the children's education was worthwhile...."[2] Clarendon County was part of the old cotton belt and most blacks were poor tenant or sharecropping farmers The county school enrollment was 6,531 blacks and 2,375 whites ; and the total value of the 61 black schools was officially listed as $194,575; the value of the white schools was put at $673,850. In 1949-50 Clarendon County spent $179 per white child in the public schools; but only $43 for each black child.[3] In District #1 of the county, where Briggs and the other plaintiffs lived, there were 2,800 African Americans and 295 whites.[4] Such a picture repeated itself over and over in the Deep South.

Even more significant that the statistics was the solution the State of South Carolina proposed:

At the beginning of the hearing the defendants admitted upon the record that 'the educational facilities, equipment, curricula and opportunities afforded in School District No. 22 for colored pupils * * * are not substantially equal to those afforded for white pupils'. The evidence offered in the case fully sustains this admission. The defendants contend, however, that the district is one of the rural school districts which has not kept pace with urban districts in providing educational facilities for the children of either race, and that the inequalities have resulted from limited resources and from the disposition of the school officials to spend the limited funds available 'for the most immediate demands rather than in the light of the overall picture'. They state that under the leadership of Governor Byrnes the Legislature of South carolina has made provision for a bond issue of $75,000,000 with a three per cent sales tax to support it for the purpose of equalizing educational opportunities and facilities throughout the state and of meeting the problem of providing equal educational opportunities for Negro children where this had not been done. They have offered evidence to show that this educational program is going forward and that under it the educational facilities in the district will be greatly improved for both races and that Negro children will be afforded educational facilities and opportunities in all respects equal to those afforded white children.

This wasn't what I would call a noble gesture, but the best one could do if one truly both believed in segregation and acknowledged federal law takes precedence: fulfill the law in the narrowest means possible, In this case it meant providing the "equal" part of separate but equal...in public facilities. This was the first sales tax ever enacted in South Carolina. It meant they had to pay to maintain their segregation...and the significance of that is they were willing to do so.

The offer South Carolina made has fascinated me for years. I've read a number of alternate universe science fiction and can't help by see that moment as a turning point

This would have been an acceptable outcome to folks on the ground because we minorities ain't stupid. I can assure you, based on talks with older folks than me, they were fully aware of how strongly the local white folks felt about segregation since they were the ones constantly being pushed aside. Do you know what the settlement the Black folks of Selma, AL originally asked for in their bus boycott? Only that they not be required to give up a seat, or be left on the sidewalk, after they'd paid for it. They had no problem being seated from back to front while white folks were seated from front to back, or even getting on at the back of the bus. They wanted what they paid for, and when the all the seats were filled the next passenger of whatever race would stand until a seat was available.

No, Black folks weren't stupid enough to directly repudiate such a deeply held fusion of religion and politics.

But even though South Carolina offered this up, the Brown legal team felt they had to consider the bigger picture. South Carolina was just one state; it would probably set a precedent for the other states of the old Confederacy given its status as historical role model, but how long would that take? There's this divine impatience you get when you're sure you doing God's will, when you surf the cresting wave of destiny. When I was studying the history of Europe (as one must) it occurred to me that Germany's biggest flaw pre-WW I was impatience. As Europe's dominant economy, home of the most prestigious learning and research centers, and with their growing influence, I really feel had they simply kept doing what they were doing all along Europe would have unified under Germany in the normal course of events. But when you're on that wave, you want to make sure you see the way it turns out.

From PBS's African American World site:

Several years before 1963, the African American community had adopted the motto "Free by '63". And by 1963, a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the civil rights movement had made much progress: lunch counters and other public accommodations had become integrated and the Kennedy administration announced new civil rights proposals.

I suspect divine impatience was an element in how the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund decided to handle these cases. I believe it affected the whole community. Black folks figured if they were in the same place at the same time as white folks were being taught they would learn too; this is a very different goal than integration

Thing is, they weren't expecting to change. Integration was to give us access to the stuff we need to have our own. And they didn't consider the fact that the mainstream's memory those legal cases that made us so giddy was different than ours, but just as fresh, vivid and inspiring. Given that we humans were happy to be on the winning side, how do you suppose being on the losing side made them humans feel?

Shouldn't have been so triumphal. Though I hate to say NewsMax got something right, Newsmax got something right:

In fact, the civil rights movement was not about politics. Nor was it about which politicians did what and which political party should take the most credit. When it came to civil rights, America's politicians merely saw the handwriting on the wall and wrote the legislation to make into federal law the historical changes that had already taken place. There was nothing else they could do.

Now, how would it feel to watch people you are convinced are not only your inferior but your subordinate stake out territory you expressly forbade him?

And if you're honest, how can you not see the reaction as a most eminently human one? You don't have to like it. But you do have to acknowledge it. It doesn't seem to me the Black community did so.

I'm not sure if our legislators took it into account or not, because the method chosen to integrate was SO blind to human nature it may have been intentional sabotage along the lines of Howard Smith's adding women to the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, with the intent of making it tough enough to frighten off the support Bull Connor so thoughtfully arranged. I mean, didn't we just lose over some buses? We have to let them sit wherever they want, but next to my sweet child? And it's bad enough you want to bus them over here, but what caring parent would allow their child to be shipped across the city before the sun even comes up sometimes to go to that school...the one even niggers don't want?

Not.

Too.

Bright.

It's important to remember the collective response because the whole teaching vibe is voluntary. It's a matter of knowledge, skills and experience, yes, but it's also a matter of intent. You can't force intent, nor can you fake it. Right now there's a teacher somewhere grumbling and mad as hell because there ain't enough supplies for the whole week's lesson, but fuck that I'm coming out my pocket, bring that shit myself hmph how the hell they expect me to do my job I got kids to teach I'll put the can of corned beef hash in the fridge until it's firm slice it thin enough for sandwiches all week so I can get this stuff for my kids. Bastards.

It was years before our children were feeling that kind of love.

Then there was the change from integration-as-tactic to integration-as-goal. But I intend to post this today.

I guess what I'm saying in my overextended way is, when you look for a reason the "failure" of integration to "close the education gap" you can't be simplistic about it because now is always the result of a confluence of events, forces, human reactions and timing.

And if you're looking for someone to blame, don't. Because we're at the beginning of a new road and Black folks are as inexperienced at being free as white folks are having us among them as such. Almost as inexperienced. And it's still trial and error out here.

I'd like to think if we all keep that in mind it would help.

Sarah Palin calls it “evil.”

Randall Terry of the tired old pro-life machine Operation Rescue calls it the “Kill Granny” clause.

The well-organized anti-reform conservative arms would have you believe that if the Obama health care package passes, government-sponsored panels will be convened to decide if seniors get life-saving treatments or get to die in the gutter.

That these panels appear nowhere in the actual bill seems to have no bearing on the panic flamed by the Randall Terrys and Sarah Palins of the debate.

That uninsured patients already live by the de facto, unacknowledged death-panel approach to care seems not to have entered into the debate.

That the origin of these myths lies in a clause that offers reimbursement to physicians who set aside visits for a sit-down talk about end-of-life care – something physicians already do, largely unpaid, every day – seems to stem the tide of rancor not at all.

As a primary care physician, let me lay out the case for full and just reimbursement for appointments dedicated to what (to steal from the right wing) amounts to “death care.”

In the last six months, I have taken care of a patient with advanced dementia whose daughter cares for her at home. The family is congenial but financially stricken, and tension remains over the matriarch’s care and the use of her remaining resources. The treatment for advanced dementia is minimal and mostly palliative, and we continue to pursue that at every visit, as well as a few minor other issues. But at every visit, I also ask the family (nay, plead with the family) to hammer out what their and the patient’s wishes are on the day that something unpleasant happens: pneumonia, a hip fracture, what have you. Do they want all measures taken? Do they want palliation over putting an elderly person through risky surgeries and pain that cannot be explained to a brain that has passed beyond the era of comprehension? And if the patient “codes” – heart stops beating in a manner that can deliver oxygen, lungs stop pulling air – do they want rib cracking chest compressions, shocks to the heart, a tube down the throat that will likely never come out of a her alive on the off chance she makes it coughing and sputtering through an ICU stay, or do they want to let her go?

I have broached the subject briefly at roughly every other visit with this family as they have dawdled along in their decisions as their elderly mother gets more ill and functional at every visit; this sounds something like, “Have you thought any more about what you might want for her care if something happen to her and she has to be hospitalized?” I do not get reimbursed for this; I bill under the diagnosis of dementia, we review and adjust some meds, and the talk comes as an afterthought. To my knowledge Medicare does not allow me to bill a visit to sit down and have a comprehensive talk about these issues currently; under Obama, it would…once every five years. These visits would be voluntary to the patient. They would be paid by Medicare. The outcome would be that the wishes of the patient would be documented and – in the best case scenario (barring the interference of family, the most frequent cause of unfulfilled end-of-life wishes I have seen) – honored. In medicine, we call this “patient-centered care;” it’s all the rage these days, or at least we like to talk about it like it is.

I want to be cared for in my death; I would put money on it that you want to be cared for at that final stage of life too. Most Americans die in hospitals with aggressive interventions still running at the bedside; when polled, most Americans express a firm desire to die at home, in the care of family with the support of the home health services like hospice (notably, finances and ethics are not at war here). Adequate, compassionate, dignified care requires some planning and some dedicated time to set aside the diabetes and the dementia and the aches and groans of the aged (and their families) to talk about the what-ifs and the what-thens of what will inevitably come for every one of us.

But these objections, these “kill granny” media campaigns, they are distractors. They are ways of mobilizing the AARP generation against a reform that is fundamentally beneficial to them: shoring up the enormous social and private financial burden that is healthcare in America is a fundamental part of rebuilding a flagging economy that at present threatens the stability of a retiring generation. By riling up seniors against the straw man of non-existent “death panels” and “kill granny” clauses, the right has shrewdly – and incredibly callously – used one of the most vulnerable cohorts to shoot their own selves in the foot.

Because, of course, the end is all economics. The neo-con right will always place private free-marketeering (in this case, the right of insurance companies to make a buck or two or a couple billion banking on your medical needs) over community health, and are entirely without conscience in doing so. The odious stink of money in the kill-granny media storm should turn any good Christian’s stomach; that Palin and Terry and their ilk wallow in it should be a good sign about the green face of the god that they worship most: capitalism.

That is not to say that there is no solid grounds on which to object to the Obama health care plan; there are many, on which I shall not even get started (ok, wait, I will: lack of a single payer plan, for one). But this red herring of death panels and kill granny tells far more about the media figures that promulgate the myth the health care plan itself. And it is not a pretty picture it paints.

Cross-posted from my infrequently-updated blog, Loose Chicks Sink Ships.

Labels: Sexism

Labels: Poetry

Labels: rally disruptors, response, teabaggers, town halls

God and Abstinence from Stuart Productions on Vimeo.

Sweet magnolia breeze! I do declare! [Clutches petticoat in pre-swoon anticipation.] Alabama is in a dither over a drawing of a nude nymph on a wine bottle label, so they've banned the product from being sold. Their liquor regulations forbid the display of "a person posed in an immoral or sensuous manner" on any alcohol packaging. We have to side with Alabama on this one—after all, we're not sure you can ride a bike naked without eventually doing something immoral, whether you mean to or not.

The owner of the winery that produces Cycles Gladiator says that he won't change the label, so if you live in Alabama it looks like you'll have to pick up your bottles when you go on your sex toy purchasing trips.

Labels: Alabama, boobies, legislature, pixies, sex toys, wine

Labels: Health

MARSEILLES, France, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The majority of passengers on a cruise ship carrying dozens of possible flu victims were allowed to disembark on Saturday after health tests, the local government's office said.
But 146 people -- both passengers and crew members, some of whom showed signs of flu -- remain in quarantine, a spokesman for the local government department said.

Labels: flu, H1N1, influenza, swine