On further analysis, I have decided that science fits better with hope than it does with history. History and Religion are more properly located in studies that explore what is and what was. These are explorations in big-T Truth, unlike science. Science cannot explore bit-T Truth because science is nothing more than a tool, like a crescent wrench, or a strong judicial system.
Tools- Science, Crescent wrenches, hope, and a strong judicial system are all tools that we use to get things done. They are beliefs, not truths. It is improper to say that science is true because science is necessarily founded on the premise that better science will eventually come. How can Truth be better or worse? It cannot. Truth is static and either is or is not. The kind of truth that science encompasses is not in fact Truth at all, but storytelling, a fiction of sorts, that enables human beings to do things. It's like a U.V. filter.
When we drop a scientific theory over the way that we see the world, the world is made simple enough that we can understand how it works. However, at the same time, we are necessarily filtering out a lot of what the world has to offer. When astronomy was still based on the theory that the Earth was the focal point of the universe, astronomers were able to make calculations that correctly predicted the movements of the stars, the planets, and even predict early eclipses. However, when we moved to a model of the solar system that placed the sun at the center, all of those calculations became better, more accurate, and more simple. If scientists believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system today, we would still be able to make sense of the solar system, but we would not have progressed to easily or quickly in astronomical science.
So it must be with science, that a good scientist can never believe in any kind of big-T truth, because the next fiction that comes along, perhaps that the solar system is actually centered around a point in space that is only very near the sun, could make the calculations to Mars and back more accurate. Right now, we are only able to calculate the movements of the planets to within a couple of dozen meters or so, but if we found another point to center our universe, perhaps we could start calculating to a couple of dozen centimeters, and then perhaps millimeters as our fictions and our stories change.
So too must it be with evolution. One of the problems of the scientific and secular communities who are attempting to defend evolution is that we present it as though it is some kind of big-T Truth, but this is a basic misunderstanding of science. Big-T Truth can never change. Big-T Truth can never be adjusted and is not malleable, and it either works entirely, or leads only to disaster. Evolution is, like all science, at best, a half truth, and perhaps it is only a very small amount of truth with a lot of guess work. Evolution is a means of understanding the world that makes every known living thing come into sharper focus than it ever has before. Science must necessarily only move incrementally, while big-T truth is all or nothing. Scientists who have made evolution into some kind of bit-T truth will be desperately disappointed every time we make a discovery that brings things into sharper focus (like homo floresiensis). In a misguided attempt to defend science, they will constantly alienate those who know that science will never be able to explain everything, because science is only a tool, not a paradigm.
It is improper to say that evolution is not a theory, because if it is not a theory, but some kind of scientific fact, than human beings have reached the end point of exploration for the origins of human beings, and we have ceased to progress. Science is a belief, just as is religion, but it is not truth. Science is a belief just like when we look at a soccer ball and a net and say, "I believe in kicking." We should not say that we believe that kicking exists, that somewhere on the planet, right now, even as we speak, some child is kicking a soccer ball into a net. What we mean is that the best way to get that soccer ball into that net is to kick. When we say, "I believe in evolution." we are saying that the best way to understand the way that things work and to have those things work for us, as far as we know, is through the code book written by Darwin and his progeny. It is needless, and anti-scientific, to say that we believe in the physical existence of australopithicines, homo erectus, and homo habilis. Not only does it not matter if they actually existed, worse than that, it is anti-scientific because it speaks about the thing rather than the evidence of the thing. Scientists are allowed to use shorthand for the evidence of a thing, by saying australopithicus afrensis (think Lucy) as though it exists as a fact, but they only do so in order to build on the theory behind evolution and attempt to challenge the theory until it is best able to conform with the world. It is only a bad scientist that does not understand that evolution is only a theory, a tool, which can, for example, help us to understand generational change, which is a tool for helping us understand DNA, which is a tool for saving lives.
Religion is a belief like when we say, "I believe we are in Delaware." as we drive up I-90. Believing that we are in Deleware is a belief about the existence and relation of things. When we say "I believe in God and that he created the world." we are speaking about the existence of a deity, and his relationship to the creation of the world. Because we believe that he told us how he created the world, we also believe that the world was created a certain way, and that way cannot be modified. When we believe in God as told through the Bible, we must believe in the Bible, because it is God's book. The words are literally true, as true as any words can literally be. We can take into consideration the possibility that our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and every Christian does at some point feel that her understanding of the Bibile is flawed (usually our spiritual guides help us through those moments), but we can never question the truth of the Bible. That does not mean, however, that we must turn down medication that was only available through understanding of the theory of evoltiuon. We are all still allowed to take antibiotics despite the fact that they wouldn't be possible without the theory of evolution. Our belief in the existence of things and their relationship to one another does not change when we take that pill in order to save our own lives.
So why, then, do we feel so threatened by seeing the tool in use? Because we are confused. We think that evolution is the same as the Bible in that it pruports to be big-T truth, and for many misguided scientists it does, but the fact remains that it cannot and does not. Learning about evolution and believing in it as a way to create powerful drugs, plants, and domesticated animals that we use and enjoy every day of our lives is like learning about and believing in democracy. For millenia, the leaders of nations believed that monarchy was the only Christian way to lead a country, that to believe in democracy was literally to denegrade God. That believe seems foolish that we understand the difference between a belief in democracy and a belief in God. They are two entirely seperate beliefs. In millenia, evolution or its progeny, will still be around because it is too powerful to ignore, and too successful a tool to simply disregard. The many millions who comfortably believe in evolution as a tool and in religion as big-T truth understand that science is a tool, while religion is a life. Those who do not understand the difference between belief in God and belief in science, may never be convinced, but there numbers are dwindling, and soon they will be as outdated as monarchists and fuedelists.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Why Intelligent Design Cannot Be Science.
Intelligent deign is based upon the premise that the universe is being directed by some kind of intelligence, be it the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God or some other intelligent universal director. Intelligent Design was originally a theory put forward by some turn of the century philosophers to explain how science and religion are compatible. The basic premise, as put forward by Alfred North Whitehead, was that science describes mechanisms, and religion describes purpose. The difference between these two descriptions is the difference of the two meanings of the word "because."
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
"Because" is defined as "for the reason that" in Merriam-Websters. There are two kinds of reasons for things. One is the mechanical reason. This is the physical movement behind things. An example of mechanical reason is when a woman slaps a man, the muscle in that woman's arm twitches causing her arm to twitch, which causes her arm to flail her hand, which causes the hand to slap the man's face. That chain of events is mechanical in nature. Each causation is another step in the movement towards the slap. The other kind of reason for a thing describes purpose. The woman may have struck the man because he raped her, or because he pinched her ass, or because she remembered a man from her childhood that looked like the man. Both of these reasons are necessary to the slap. That is to say that neither of these kinds of causes are sufficient. Neither of these kinds of reasons are more or less correct or accurate than the other. However, when we are trying to figure out what caused the slap, we talk about two very different things. A biologist is needed to determine how the mechanical cause worked. A moral adjudicator (a judge, a priest, a philosopher) or social scientist of some kind is needed to determine the ultimate purpose of the slap.
Biological inquiry is ultimately an attempt to answer the question "Why does that thing work the way it does?" In the example of the woman slapping the man, biology can say, "the muscle twitched, and the arm twitched, and the hand twitched." That information is valuable for finding out which part of the arm is broken if the woman suddenly finds that she can't slap the man any longer. Biology cannot hope to answer the bigger question of why the woman decided to slap the man. The most biology can say about purpose is that the muscle twitched "because the woman told it to twitch." Similarly when someone asks why does life exist the way it does, evolution can say, "because natural selection combined with mating selection tendencies, genetic mutations" etc etc. These processes can help us understand what goes on when we have genetic diseases, cancers, or in helping Watson and Crick discover DNA. However, intelligent design theorists are attempting to answer a different kind of question. To the question "why does life exist the way it does?" they can only answer "because someone or something told it to exist." It may very well be true, but it stops the question from being asked without answering anything about the mechanics of life.
Many intelligent design theorists cite the eugenics movement as a reason why evolution is wrong. However, the eugenics movement suffered from the same flaw as intelligent design itself when it mistook mechanical cause for purpose. If science stops attempting to find mechanical cause, science ceases to be science and starts to be philosophy or religion. Biology cannot simply stop and say that "an intelligent being created that," because it would be the cessation of the act of science itself. Similarly, we philosophers, clerics, and social scientists should not allow science to hijack intelligent design because the question of what purpose lies at the root of the universe is properly ours, not the material of cold, material, mechanical scientists.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Is March a Bad Time for Relationships?
It used to be the case that every March I would get in some serious doldrums with my partner. This year I've been lucky, but that is the first time, I think, even though I've been with my current partner for the last two Marches also. I have an unsubstantiated theory that March is bad on relationships. Perhaps it's spring fever. Perhaps I'm crazy. Any thoughts?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Slumdog is About America, not India
Protests in India over Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire have puzzled some in America. At the same time that we are inspired to visit India, and maybe even take one of those “slum tours,” some in India, including major Bollywood actors and some politicians, have decried the film as “Poverty Porn.” We in America see the movie as optimistic, even great, and hail it with Golden Globe after SAG Award after Oscar.
This dissonance can be explained by the fact that Slumdog Millionaire is really about America. Danny Boyle creates a fantasy land, and like all fantasy lands there are great dangers that await the heroes of Slumdog. Instead of goblins and trolls, we have religious conflicts and slavers. We in America are familiar with both. However, unlike the Revolutionary War, Slumdog’s religious conflict does not involve Christians, and unlike Jamaica, the slavers are not “white” as we understand the word “white” to be used. The problem is not that this fantasy world is pornographic. All fantasy worlds are pornographic in the way that they allow us to act on our greatest and most secret desires. Danny Boyle’s own Trainspotting, Millions, and 28 Days Later all present us with worlds filled with these same kinds of gratification fantasies. The problem with Slumdog is the fact that progressives in America have given such importance to it. Our friends call us to tell us that it is “eye opening” and reviewers (writing for no less than the New York Times) call it a lesson in “cross cultural understanding.”
For an America that is suddenly in the control of the Democrats, this movie is important because it is progressive and distinctly American. In Slumdog, the entire fantasy world is endangered, not by the Great Eye of Mordor, but by the kind of poverty that progressives rail against. And the hero in the film is the Game Show. What could be more American and hopeful than a Game Show. It’s as if Ronald McDonald himself came down in his Coca-Cola shaped rocket ship and gave everybody Wal-Mart gift certificates. And it is not just the hero that is saved by this doppelganger for American culture. The entire Indian nation seems to be caught up in the moment. India's cross cultural lesson is the Great American Myth that no matter how poor you are, if you keep trying and working hard, some day you will succeed. The myth rings hollow to an India currently hurtling up the list of the worlds largest economies while leaving behind the poorest and the most needy, but we in America are much more easily convinced.
The newly progressive leaning America loves this film because it is the satisfaction of three of our most secret and powerful desires. The first is that our economy will fix itself. We don’t need to make sacrifices, like those of us who have jobs paying higher taxes, and making deep cuts into our largest and most wasteful spending (military spending and laissez faire health care). If we give our economy a nudge and a little time, we too will soon be millionaires. Every game show and lottery in history is essentially this kind of solvency porn. The second progressive desire is that we will no longer be seen throughout the world as the malevolent and violent imperial power. In Slumdog, it is Hollywood and not the Pentagon that represents America. The American influence in Slumdog is the game show, and a couple of American tourists who wise crack “This is the real America” while giving a desperately poor orphan a $100 bill. While both of these symbols spread a powerful myth, they are doing so with money and wit instead of with bullets and body armor. This is benevolent imperialism, where we can spread the myth with kindness the way that the Catholic preachers struck out with their missions into the Heart of Darkness or the Georgian Cherokee tribes. Progressive Americans see this form of imperialism as a stark contrast to the preemptive attacks of the last eight years. But our greatest and most secret desire that is satisfied with this progressive porn romp is that everything is going to be okay for all those orphan children living in extreme poverty throughout the world. Those are the children that we had drilled into our brain every time that we didn’t finish our vegetables who were “starving in China.” This movie reassures us by showing us that the child will not starve even if we do not finish our vegetables. It shows us that the children that make our coffee in slavery conditions in Ghana will eventually grow up to own the plantation. It allows us to say that the children begging for change in the markets in Cairo are better off than those who were blinded or mutilated for the same purpose. With this knowledge, we can go out and buy the blouse made in Bangladesh with Turkmen cotton, because in the end, everything is going to turn up Bollywood.
This dissonance can be explained by the fact that Slumdog Millionaire is really about America. Danny Boyle creates a fantasy land, and like all fantasy lands there are great dangers that await the heroes of Slumdog. Instead of goblins and trolls, we have religious conflicts and slavers. We in America are familiar with both. However, unlike the Revolutionary War, Slumdog’s religious conflict does not involve Christians, and unlike Jamaica, the slavers are not “white” as we understand the word “white” to be used. The problem is not that this fantasy world is pornographic. All fantasy worlds are pornographic in the way that they allow us to act on our greatest and most secret desires. Danny Boyle’s own Trainspotting, Millions, and 28 Days Later all present us with worlds filled with these same kinds of gratification fantasies. The problem with Slumdog is the fact that progressives in America have given such importance to it. Our friends call us to tell us that it is “eye opening” and reviewers (writing for no less than the New York Times) call it a lesson in “cross cultural understanding.”
For an America that is suddenly in the control of the Democrats, this movie is important because it is progressive and distinctly American. In Slumdog, the entire fantasy world is endangered, not by the Great Eye of Mordor, but by the kind of poverty that progressives rail against. And the hero in the film is the Game Show. What could be more American and hopeful than a Game Show. It’s as if Ronald McDonald himself came down in his Coca-Cola shaped rocket ship and gave everybody Wal-Mart gift certificates. And it is not just the hero that is saved by this doppelganger for American culture. The entire Indian nation seems to be caught up in the moment. India's cross cultural lesson is the Great American Myth that no matter how poor you are, if you keep trying and working hard, some day you will succeed. The myth rings hollow to an India currently hurtling up the list of the worlds largest economies while leaving behind the poorest and the most needy, but we in America are much more easily convinced.
The newly progressive leaning America loves this film because it is the satisfaction of three of our most secret and powerful desires. The first is that our economy will fix itself. We don’t need to make sacrifices, like those of us who have jobs paying higher taxes, and making deep cuts into our largest and most wasteful spending (military spending and laissez faire health care). If we give our economy a nudge and a little time, we too will soon be millionaires. Every game show and lottery in history is essentially this kind of solvency porn. The second progressive desire is that we will no longer be seen throughout the world as the malevolent and violent imperial power. In Slumdog, it is Hollywood and not the Pentagon that represents America. The American influence in Slumdog is the game show, and a couple of American tourists who wise crack “This is the real America” while giving a desperately poor orphan a $100 bill. While both of these symbols spread a powerful myth, they are doing so with money and wit instead of with bullets and body armor. This is benevolent imperialism, where we can spread the myth with kindness the way that the Catholic preachers struck out with their missions into the Heart of Darkness or the Georgian Cherokee tribes. Progressive Americans see this form of imperialism as a stark contrast to the preemptive attacks of the last eight years. But our greatest and most secret desire that is satisfied with this progressive porn romp is that everything is going to be okay for all those orphan children living in extreme poverty throughout the world. Those are the children that we had drilled into our brain every time that we didn’t finish our vegetables who were “starving in China.” This movie reassures us by showing us that the child will not starve even if we do not finish our vegetables. It shows us that the children that make our coffee in slavery conditions in Ghana will eventually grow up to own the plantation. It allows us to say that the children begging for change in the markets in Cairo are better off than those who were blinded or mutilated for the same purpose. With this knowledge, we can go out and buy the blouse made in Bangladesh with Turkmen cotton, because in the end, everything is going to turn up Bollywood.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Illegal Immigrants Are Not Criminals
It seems that there are many people out there who misunderstand the difference between illegal and criminal. The chief evidence that I have for that is the sheer number of bloggers that claim that being an "illegal immigrant" means that one is a criminal. That's like saying that driving 5mph over the speed limit is the same as being a drunk driver.
I can let you know this right now. If you have ever gone 5mph over the speed limit, your are an illegal driver. That's right. You. If you've gone 10mph over the speed limit, I'd say you're probably a very illegal driver. But speeding is not criminal. Drunk driving is criminal. When you drive drunk, you can go to jail and get probation, when you go 5mph over the speed limit, you can only be fined. It is purely an accident of history that the police arrest criminals and hand out speeding tickets. Just like a grocery store that has a pharmacy, you can get your oysters and your Viagra in the same place, but that doesn't mean that you have to have a prescription to get oysters.
Similarly, with the IRS, if Capone misunderstood which moving costs were legitimate tax credits and which moving costs were not, he would get zinged in an audit because what Capone did was illegal. However, Capone was not a criminal for misunderstanding the IRS code. If that were the case, we would all be criminals because the IRS code is about as coherent as a one legged aardvark doing the electric slide. Al Capone was a criminal because he purposefully hid income from the police. That is Tax Fraud, and that is a crime.
Many people have latched on to the word illegal in the description of people's immigration status and equated that with criminal, but they are simply wrong (or hateful, or ignorant, or stupid). They are annoyed about the fact that police can't deport people who are illegal immigrants when they are pulled over for speeding, but of course there must be restrictions on what the police can do. We can't allow police to enforce codes that are not criminal. If we did that, the next time a police officer pulled you over, he could run an audit of your taxes and demand back payment before you were allowed to leave. That same officer could hold business owners until they brought their businesses up to code. That same officer could then interrogate you on whether or not you had committed any labor violations, and then use that information to make sure that your grass is short enough in front of your house, that you don't have any cracks in any of your windows at home, and that you have cleaned up all the dog poop in your backyard. A world where illegal means criminal is called a police state. If people want to create one of those here, they are going to have to go through me first.
There are a significant amount of studies that have proved that people who are in violation of immigration laws are far less likely to commit crimes. That is probably because if you or I steal a Snickers bar, we would probably get probation, maybe serve 90 days, but if an illegal immigrant drives without his seat belt (which is a crime, not a traffic code violation in most states), he could be deported. Most of the other Nationalist Purificationist's claims are also bogus. Illegal immigrants are less likely than the general population to default on a mortgage, are more likely to be actively working, practically never collect unemployment benefits or social security, and seldom use public medical services.
Overall, as has always been the case, illegal immigrants are some of our best citizens. The hated Chinese immigrant population of San Fransisco in the 1850's (nicknamed the yellow tide) developed the powerful California economy, while the despised Japanese immigrant population of the 1940's never once committed any act of sabotage on U.S. shores and the famous Japanese battalion on the Pacific front suffered the greatest percentage of wounded and killed soldiers of any battalion in the U.S. Army. Other immigrant populations that were the objects of scorn include the English, the German, the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Oh and lets not forget about the Africans. They were legal immigrants by American standards. The greatest irony of our nations recent anti-immigrant fervor is their theme song "God Bless America" which was written by an immigrant Jew while our borders were still so open with Russia that there were no visas or passports. In those days, the illegal immigrants were mostly from China and Japan because the U.S. put quotas on the number of immigrants that we could accept from those countries. Those illegal immigrants were the ones who brought us such American fare as fried chicken, canned salmon (and tuna) and used irrigation techniques that managed to turn the barren California landscape into what is now a huge agricultural industry.
Perhaps it is the failure of the progressive wing of this country that instead of explaining to people what illegal actually means, we chose to PC-the-whole-thing-up with the term "undocumented worker." First of all, the term is false because they are usually documented somehow. Also, the term inherently restricts those people from getting services that may put them into the documentation status. As long as they are "undocumented" workers, we are limited in arguing that they should be able to receive the same protections as documented workers, because those protections naturally require documentation. Also, the term leaves the word "illegal" in the irresponsible hands of the Nationalist Purificationist crowd that wants to criminalize those who are not. It is time to use our privilege to reclaim the word illegal. We should all refer to ourselves as illegal drivers, illegal home owners, and illegal employees. The baffled questions that follow will form the groundwork for putting illegality and criminality into proper context, because if we tell the truth, and they continue to lie, we will always be the more believable.
I can let you know this right now. If you have ever gone 5mph over the speed limit, your are an illegal driver. That's right. You. If you've gone 10mph over the speed limit, I'd say you're probably a very illegal driver. But speeding is not criminal. Drunk driving is criminal. When you drive drunk, you can go to jail and get probation, when you go 5mph over the speed limit, you can only be fined. It is purely an accident of history that the police arrest criminals and hand out speeding tickets. Just like a grocery store that has a pharmacy, you can get your oysters and your Viagra in the same place, but that doesn't mean that you have to have a prescription to get oysters.
Similarly, with the IRS, if Capone misunderstood which moving costs were legitimate tax credits and which moving costs were not, he would get zinged in an audit because what Capone did was illegal. However, Capone was not a criminal for misunderstanding the IRS code. If that were the case, we would all be criminals because the IRS code is about as coherent as a one legged aardvark doing the electric slide. Al Capone was a criminal because he purposefully hid income from the police. That is Tax Fraud, and that is a crime.
Many people have latched on to the word illegal in the description of people's immigration status and equated that with criminal, but they are simply wrong (or hateful, or ignorant, or stupid). They are annoyed about the fact that police can't deport people who are illegal immigrants when they are pulled over for speeding, but of course there must be restrictions on what the police can do. We can't allow police to enforce codes that are not criminal. If we did that, the next time a police officer pulled you over, he could run an audit of your taxes and demand back payment before you were allowed to leave. That same officer could hold business owners until they brought their businesses up to code. That same officer could then interrogate you on whether or not you had committed any labor violations, and then use that information to make sure that your grass is short enough in front of your house, that you don't have any cracks in any of your windows at home, and that you have cleaned up all the dog poop in your backyard. A world where illegal means criminal is called a police state. If people want to create one of those here, they are going to have to go through me first.
There are a significant amount of studies that have proved that people who are in violation of immigration laws are far less likely to commit crimes. That is probably because if you or I steal a Snickers bar, we would probably get probation, maybe serve 90 days, but if an illegal immigrant drives without his seat belt (which is a crime, not a traffic code violation in most states), he could be deported. Most of the other Nationalist Purificationist's claims are also bogus. Illegal immigrants are less likely than the general population to default on a mortgage, are more likely to be actively working, practically never collect unemployment benefits or social security, and seldom use public medical services.
Overall, as has always been the case, illegal immigrants are some of our best citizens. The hated Chinese immigrant population of San Fransisco in the 1850's (nicknamed the yellow tide) developed the powerful California economy, while the despised Japanese immigrant population of the 1940's never once committed any act of sabotage on U.S. shores and the famous Japanese battalion on the Pacific front suffered the greatest percentage of wounded and killed soldiers of any battalion in the U.S. Army. Other immigrant populations that were the objects of scorn include the English, the German, the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Oh and lets not forget about the Africans. They were legal immigrants by American standards. The greatest irony of our nations recent anti-immigrant fervor is their theme song "God Bless America" which was written by an immigrant Jew while our borders were still so open with Russia that there were no visas or passports. In those days, the illegal immigrants were mostly from China and Japan because the U.S. put quotas on the number of immigrants that we could accept from those countries. Those illegal immigrants were the ones who brought us such American fare as fried chicken, canned salmon (and tuna) and used irrigation techniques that managed to turn the barren California landscape into what is now a huge agricultural industry.
Perhaps it is the failure of the progressive wing of this country that instead of explaining to people what illegal actually means, we chose to PC-the-whole-thing-up with the term "undocumented worker." First of all, the term is false because they are usually documented somehow. Also, the term inherently restricts those people from getting services that may put them into the documentation status. As long as they are "undocumented" workers, we are limited in arguing that they should be able to receive the same protections as documented workers, because those protections naturally require documentation. Also, the term leaves the word "illegal" in the irresponsible hands of the Nationalist Purificationist crowd that wants to criminalize those who are not. It is time to use our privilege to reclaim the word illegal. We should all refer to ourselves as illegal drivers, illegal home owners, and illegal employees. The baffled questions that follow will form the groundwork for putting illegality and criminality into proper context, because if we tell the truth, and they continue to lie, we will always be the more believable.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
2- Are sagging pants indicative of ones "disrespect for themselves?"
A new assertion has come out regarding sagging pants. Councilwoman Judy Green of the 1st District of Louisville, KY asserts that "the trend has a history in slavery, when masters wouldn't allow males to wear belts as a way to degrade them." (The quote is from the Louisville Courier-Journal 12/7/2008. The council woman is paraphrased in the quote by reporter Dan Klepal.)
The councilwoman's assertion about the history of sagging pants seems to be entirely fabricated. Pants were not often worn with belts in the U.S. until the end of the 1850's when, in 1857, a buckle was added to the back side of men's trousers in order to make the trousers taper in at the top (this information comes courtesy of Joan Nunn, the author of "Fashion in Costume" printed by A&C Black Publishers in 2000). Even that buckle however was not a belt, but merely an attachment to the gentlemen's drawstring. Images of that same time period (readily available for study at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division website) show slaves and poor whites both without belts of any kind, except some in the Irish Immigrant population who wore wide belts and were, and continue to be, caricatured for their belts (think Lucky Charms guy). For centuries people have been holding up their pants with drawstrings, and perhaps that's what she meant, but I find no record of a punishment by removing one's drawstring, and the few photos we have of slaves at work show their pants tightly cinched to their waists, probably with drawstrings. Furthermore, it would be unproductive to force slaves to work without drawstrings, as trousers in the 19th century did not stay up in any way with the drawstring, not even to the extent that sagging pants stay up today. Without further evidence, I can only conclude that, if such a punishment existed, it was rare and hardly a symbol of the degradation of black slaves at large. There were some other underclasses that wore belts to carry their gun holsters, such as trappers and soldiers. The trapping profession was not to be admired. Soldiers wore a belt across the waist and a sash across the chest to keep the belt up because of all the weight carried on the belt. These were clearly not the kinds of belts that kept up one's pants. Indeed, according to USHistory.com, the union uniforms in 1862 had a chord sewn into the trousers to keep their pants from falling despite the belt worn outside the uniform. While many military officers (both north and south) wore sashes, again they didn't keep up one's pants, and sagging would not have been a symbol of having one's sash removed. It is true that black men, even serving in the north, were not allowed to be officers (and therefore wear a sash), but they could still keep their pants as high as they wished by tightening their drawstrings. If we wanted to show how far black men have come, maybe it would be a better symbol to wear brightly colored sashes outside one's clothes, but that is not a common fashion trend today. According to Levi Strauss' website, belt loops, to hold the kind of belt that we think of today, were not added to Levi's until the 1920's. The myth that sagging pants came out of prison is difficult to prove or disprove, but much of the evidence leans against Councilwoman Green's assertion that slave owners denied slaves belts in order to demean the slaves. It baffles me that people make so many assertions about sagging pants without cite or proof. Why would so many people do that? What is Councilwoman Green attempting to get out of asserting that sagging pants are derogatory?
Anyone who is interested in racial and gender equity in our nation is understandably frustrated. We who wish for our society to make progress are casting blame around. Despite the fact that we have just elected the first black president, schools are more segregated now than they were when Justice Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education. Despite all the loss of life and arrests throughout the last five decades of struggle, there is still great disparity in wages between whites and all other people who self-identify as "minorities." The wealth gap between blacks and whites is even larger than the wage gap, and is getting larger, unlike the wage gap which is shrinking. In other words, blacks are getting poorer, whites are getting richer, and for all of our talk about how much has changed, very little actually has changed, and much that has change is for the worse.
Councilwoman Green wants to make more black men into success stories. She sees black men in suits, carrying briefcases, and wearing their pants at their waists as success stories, while black men in gangs and out on the streets wearing sagging pants are unsuccessful. She then tries to tie this dichotomy to the historical subjugation of black men by tying sagging pants to slavery. In doing so, she may be casting a wider net than she intends. Many black men wear sagging pants, not because they want to join a gang, or commit crimes, but because it's a fashion trend. Some black men wear the business suit in the day and then put on other clothes at night to go to the nightclub. Some black men work at the night club and hold successful careers in the entertainment industry. These black men wear sagging pants, clean jerseys, clean white pairs of kicks, and a tilted pro back Yankees caps over do rags because they don't want to look "neutral." What is neutral?
When Catherine MacKinnon insinuates that we are all either rapists, or the raped, she is trying to make a factual, not a normative statement, but because the statement is universal, we must ask ourselves, "would I rather be the rapist or the raped?" Similarly, Councilwoman Green's myth about sagging pants put us in the position of asking, "would I rather be like the slave, or like the slave master?" If those who wear their pants low are like slaves, then who are the rest of us supposed to be like? In a society where we all aspire to the American dream, aren't we really aspiring to the white American dream? When some black men wear sagging pants they are saying, "I don't believe in that American dream, I want to create a society that has a place for me and my history." Maybe those who are wearing their pants low aren't make themselves "slave-like" as Green insinuates, but they are trying to be "un-master-like." They are attempting to become successful, without becoming a part of an "American Dream" that is always already raced and gendered. By tying these people to those who are unsuccessful, the Councilwoman is undermining their efforts at equality, while at the same time she is tying equality to a vision of the successful American male that looks a little bit more "neutral," which is to say, a little bit more white.
On the other hand, many groups have been able to attain a piece of the American Dream. That is to say that we call some groups merely American, when we used to include an adjective. We can no longer fill out Irish, Italian, or Jewish on our driver's licenses. Despite the fact that Irish were once considered black and commonly demeaned with the "n"-word, they have made the transition to whiteness, and therefore they fit neatly into the neutral American Dream. Maybe black males can eventually become white just as their Irish, Italian, and German brothers did before them. Maybe, however, the closest they can get to the raced and gendered American Dream is the glass ceiling felt the most significantly by Asian Americans. Despite educational opportunities, and generations of business success, Asian Americans have not managed equality in business, or in political representation. Scholars refer to the problems involved in being the "model minority." A place of adoration, in which one has limited opportunity for greater success. Green's vision of the black male who does not sag, may be an excellent first step towards equality, but it ignores the difficulties of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans who cannot gain the equality that earlier European immigrants did. Maybe it's because our society is changed and is more exclusive that Asian Americans have hit such a substantial glass ceiling, or maybe it's simply because Asian Americans are easily identifiable and simply will never be white enough for the American Dream. In other words, maybe it is the American Dream that has to change, not the height of a man's pants.
The councilwoman's assertion about the history of sagging pants seems to be entirely fabricated. Pants were not often worn with belts in the U.S. until the end of the 1850's when, in 1857, a buckle was added to the back side of men's trousers in order to make the trousers taper in at the top (this information comes courtesy of Joan Nunn, the author of "Fashion in Costume" printed by A&C Black Publishers in 2000). Even that buckle however was not a belt, but merely an attachment to the gentlemen's drawstring. Images of that same time period (readily available for study at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division website) show slaves and poor whites both without belts of any kind, except some in the Irish Immigrant population who wore wide belts and were, and continue to be, caricatured for their belts (think Lucky Charms guy). For centuries people have been holding up their pants with drawstrings, and perhaps that's what she meant, but I find no record of a punishment by removing one's drawstring, and the few photos we have of slaves at work show their pants tightly cinched to their waists, probably with drawstrings. Furthermore, it would be unproductive to force slaves to work without drawstrings, as trousers in the 19th century did not stay up in any way with the drawstring, not even to the extent that sagging pants stay up today. Without further evidence, I can only conclude that, if such a punishment existed, it was rare and hardly a symbol of the degradation of black slaves at large. There were some other underclasses that wore belts to carry their gun holsters, such as trappers and soldiers. The trapping profession was not to be admired. Soldiers wore a belt across the waist and a sash across the chest to keep the belt up because of all the weight carried on the belt. These were clearly not the kinds of belts that kept up one's pants. Indeed, according to USHistory.com, the union uniforms in 1862 had a chord sewn into the trousers to keep their pants from falling despite the belt worn outside the uniform. While many military officers (both north and south) wore sashes, again they didn't keep up one's pants, and sagging would not have been a symbol of having one's sash removed. It is true that black men, even serving in the north, were not allowed to be officers (and therefore wear a sash), but they could still keep their pants as high as they wished by tightening their drawstrings. If we wanted to show how far black men have come, maybe it would be a better symbol to wear brightly colored sashes outside one's clothes, but that is not a common fashion trend today. According to Levi Strauss' website, belt loops, to hold the kind of belt that we think of today, were not added to Levi's until the 1920's. The myth that sagging pants came out of prison is difficult to prove or disprove, but much of the evidence leans against Councilwoman Green's assertion that slave owners denied slaves belts in order to demean the slaves. It baffles me that people make so many assertions about sagging pants without cite or proof. Why would so many people do that? What is Councilwoman Green attempting to get out of asserting that sagging pants are derogatory?
Anyone who is interested in racial and gender equity in our nation is understandably frustrated. We who wish for our society to make progress are casting blame around. Despite the fact that we have just elected the first black president, schools are more segregated now than they were when Justice Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education. Despite all the loss of life and arrests throughout the last five decades of struggle, there is still great disparity in wages between whites and all other people who self-identify as "minorities." The wealth gap between blacks and whites is even larger than the wage gap, and is getting larger, unlike the wage gap which is shrinking. In other words, blacks are getting poorer, whites are getting richer, and for all of our talk about how much has changed, very little actually has changed, and much that has change is for the worse.
Councilwoman Green wants to make more black men into success stories. She sees black men in suits, carrying briefcases, and wearing their pants at their waists as success stories, while black men in gangs and out on the streets wearing sagging pants are unsuccessful. She then tries to tie this dichotomy to the historical subjugation of black men by tying sagging pants to slavery. In doing so, she may be casting a wider net than she intends. Many black men wear sagging pants, not because they want to join a gang, or commit crimes, but because it's a fashion trend. Some black men wear the business suit in the day and then put on other clothes at night to go to the nightclub. Some black men work at the night club and hold successful careers in the entertainment industry. These black men wear sagging pants, clean jerseys, clean white pairs of kicks, and a tilted pro back Yankees caps over do rags because they don't want to look "neutral." What is neutral?
When Catherine MacKinnon insinuates that we are all either rapists, or the raped, she is trying to make a factual, not a normative statement, but because the statement is universal, we must ask ourselves, "would I rather be the rapist or the raped?" Similarly, Councilwoman Green's myth about sagging pants put us in the position of asking, "would I rather be like the slave, or like the slave master?" If those who wear their pants low are like slaves, then who are the rest of us supposed to be like? In a society where we all aspire to the American dream, aren't we really aspiring to the white American dream? When some black men wear sagging pants they are saying, "I don't believe in that American dream, I want to create a society that has a place for me and my history." Maybe those who are wearing their pants low aren't make themselves "slave-like" as Green insinuates, but they are trying to be "un-master-like." They are attempting to become successful, without becoming a part of an "American Dream" that is always already raced and gendered. By tying these people to those who are unsuccessful, the Councilwoman is undermining their efforts at equality, while at the same time she is tying equality to a vision of the successful American male that looks a little bit more "neutral," which is to say, a little bit more white.
On the other hand, many groups have been able to attain a piece of the American Dream. That is to say that we call some groups merely American, when we used to include an adjective. We can no longer fill out Irish, Italian, or Jewish on our driver's licenses. Despite the fact that Irish were once considered black and commonly demeaned with the "n"-word, they have made the transition to whiteness, and therefore they fit neatly into the neutral American Dream. Maybe black males can eventually become white just as their Irish, Italian, and German brothers did before them. Maybe, however, the closest they can get to the raced and gendered American Dream is the glass ceiling felt the most significantly by Asian Americans. Despite educational opportunities, and generations of business success, Asian Americans have not managed equality in business, or in political representation. Scholars refer to the problems involved in being the "model minority." A place of adoration, in which one has limited opportunity for greater success. Green's vision of the black male who does not sag, may be an excellent first step towards equality, but it ignores the difficulties of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans who cannot gain the equality that earlier European immigrants did. Maybe it's because our society is changed and is more exclusive that Asian Americans have hit such a substantial glass ceiling, or maybe it's simply because Asian Americans are easily identifiable and simply will never be white enough for the American Dream. In other words, maybe it is the American Dream that has to change, not the height of a man's pants.
Friday, December 5, 2008
1- What do Sagging Pants Signify and Why Do We Care?
Why are people so determined to end a fashion trend, however fickle or even "shocking?" I have some ideas, and would like to explore them here:
Sagging Pants = Criminality.
Of course the big myth is that people who sag their pants do so because they have been to prison where people cannot wear belts because the prisoners are on suicide watch. Prisoners aren't the only people who don't wear belts. Psychiatric patients, people who don't own belts, plumbers, and many other people have sagging pants. If the prison myth is true, it is because prisons give ill fitting clothes to their prisoners. In that respect, sagging pants is a nod to the carelessness with which we treat our prisoners. Some say that we should be careless with prisoners because they deserve it. That is to say, that it is just that we treat prisoners with the same disregard that they treated society when they committed whatever crime it was that put them in prison in the first place. Is that our reason for keeping people in prison? If we are going to spend some $30,000 a year to keep each individual in prison, we are going to have to eventually let them out and back into society. I think most people agree that most prisoners should eventually be released. There aren't too many people outside of the Taliban who argue for life or death for marijuana consumption. If we do have to release prisoners, don't we wish that our money were being spent wisely, not carelessly. Are sagging pants a reminder of that carelessness, and because we live in a republican society, is that a reminder of our own carelessness? Many people who wear sagging pants have never been to prison, and there is absolutely no hard link of any kind connecting sagging pants to prison, except in the minds of those who insist that sagging pants have in fact derived from prisons. However, many have linked sagging pants and prison. That link would be disturbing if it were an indicator to those people in society that our justice system is in tatters. The fact that young men (and women) purposefully emulate prisoners tells us something about our society that we hate to admit. It tells us that there are many who prefer to look and act like the ostracized, rather than partake willingly as full fledged citizens in our society. Is our prison system so pleasant, or is it that our justice system is so unjust that young people attempt to cast off its legitimacy by invoking the lowest victims of that justice system? More to come.
Sagging Pants = Criminality.
Of course the big myth is that people who sag their pants do so because they have been to prison where people cannot wear belts because the prisoners are on suicide watch. Prisoners aren't the only people who don't wear belts. Psychiatric patients, people who don't own belts, plumbers, and many other people have sagging pants. If the prison myth is true, it is because prisons give ill fitting clothes to their prisoners. In that respect, sagging pants is a nod to the carelessness with which we treat our prisoners. Some say that we should be careless with prisoners because they deserve it. That is to say, that it is just that we treat prisoners with the same disregard that they treated society when they committed whatever crime it was that put them in prison in the first place. Is that our reason for keeping people in prison? If we are going to spend some $30,000 a year to keep each individual in prison, we are going to have to eventually let them out and back into society. I think most people agree that most prisoners should eventually be released. There aren't too many people outside of the Taliban who argue for life or death for marijuana consumption. If we do have to release prisoners, don't we wish that our money were being spent wisely, not carelessly. Are sagging pants a reminder of that carelessness, and because we live in a republican society, is that a reminder of our own carelessness? Many people who wear sagging pants have never been to prison, and there is absolutely no hard link of any kind connecting sagging pants to prison, except in the minds of those who insist that sagging pants have in fact derived from prisons. However, many have linked sagging pants and prison. That link would be disturbing if it were an indicator to those people in society that our justice system is in tatters. The fact that young men (and women) purposefully emulate prisoners tells us something about our society that we hate to admit. It tells us that there are many who prefer to look and act like the ostracized, rather than partake willingly as full fledged citizens in our society. Is our prison system so pleasant, or is it that our justice system is so unjust that young people attempt to cast off its legitimacy by invoking the lowest victims of that justice system? More to come.
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