On 4 August FSJL posted the comments below in response to my blog post on July 30th entitled "Nervous (in one case) notes". I publish them (very lightly edited, first paragraph omitted) here with thanks, and of course, his permission, since they seem as good a lead in as any to my promised reflections on the remarks of conservative Catholic bishops cited in last week Friday's front page article in the New York Times. Anyone interested in his complete comments need only go to my post of July 30th.
North American racism has traditionally been deeply associated with Christianity, and relied on the Bible for justification. No surprise there, the Bible, after all, endorsed slavery and commanded slaves to obey their masters. In the aftermath of slavery in the United States, organisations which emerged to sustain white supremacy did so in the context of the prevailing ideological system, which was Christian.
Thus, every Klan Klavern in the US had a chaplain called a Kludd, who would lead the sheetheads in prayer. This was a requirement of the Klan Klonstitution. That's what it was klalled, er, called. The heartland of the Klan in its heyday was not where it was founded, down here in Georgia, but Indiana, by the way.
There have, not at all by the bye, been a couple of studies on the role of Klan women in promoting the cause of women and raising issues germane to (white) women back in the 1920s.
More germane to the link you cite. I've seen this argument for the past fifteen years or so. It's a reflection of a deep-seated fear by a significant segment of white working class and middle class and middle class men as they face competition for opportunities that had in previous decades been reserved only for them. That's seen as the fault of threatening women/Jews/blacks/Asians/Latinos who are taking away jobs/manhood. The solution is to go back to the good old days when [white] men had everything their own way [or so they thought].
As my father once said, "I'm not going to talk about 'the good old days' -- dem was neva good".
Friday, September 4, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Obama Health Plan
It's such a very small world now. You get on a plane in Miami and by the time you land in Toronto, you've ingested the germs of every passenger on board. Ditto for the subway, the city bus, country bus, the school bus. Go to church, or to the movies, the supermarket, the store or indeed the hospital (often the worst offender!) and you are in intimate contact with a world of germs. There is no homeland security, army, navy, air force or marine corps that can protect you from them. Either you hide in a sterile bubble, or you are at risk.
Your best recourse in this hazardous world of lethal microbes? A community that is in good physical and mental shape, a society whose citizens are cared for by diligent and committed professionals who continually remind it about how best to preserve its health. Folks with good health and good sanitary habits won't get sick so easily and will know how to avoid spreading their sicknesses if they do.
I am glad to be a Canadian for this reason. That is not to say that health care in Canada is perfect, but at its best it is as good as health care anywhere. Also, all of us who live in Canada have access to it, the poorest pay nothing at all for it, and what the rest of us pay is not very much and is directly related to what we earn. It is time intelligent, thoughtful citizens of the USA recognize that it's not a good thing that all Americans don't have decent health care. In fact, in these times, it is a very dangerous thing.
Seems some religious folks, some bishops of my own (Catholic) church included, have reservations about the plan Mr Obama has put forward. So let's clear up one thing. There's no dispute as to where Jesus stood on this issue. He spent the three years of his ministry feeding people, healing the sick, performing miracles to restore deformed, dysfunctional bodies, driving out demons that disturbed the mental wholeness of many. He even raised the dead. His health care policy is in the Gospels and the Acts for anyone who cares to read it.
I'm proceeding slowly on this one, taking thought before addressing what some bishops in the Catholic Church had to say, as quoted in a front page article in Friday's New York Times. Their statements had one member of our family threatening never to set foot into a Catholic Church again! So it's a matter about which people have very strong, not just opinions, but convictions.
As for abortion, which appears to be a sticking point for some - do we cut off people's hands so that they don't steal? As I've said before, I don't believe in abortion, but I understand that it is a complex issue and that if it touched me, I might find my attitude affected. Very few women take this step lightly, witness the many teenagers who continue to have babies, a choice that's easy for me to understand and one I use to help make the present argument. If we truly want women not to have abortions, what we must do is create a social, economic, and moral context that will encourage them to keep their babies. By moral I mean the morality of Jesus, he who enjoined us, in the Great Commandment of the New Law, to love our neighbours as ourselves - not threaten those whom we perceive as sinners with damnation.
My sister recently told me the story of a woman who was read out of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, to which she was devoted, when she went to live with a man to whom she was not married. She had been married prior to that time, and had two children for her husband whom she was now raising alone. She was not afraid to confront the church elders. "Are you helping me with my children?" she asked them. "Are you concerned about their welfare, or about mine?"
Do we really want women not to have abortions? What if we tried supporting the women of childbearing age in our communities? Insisting that all jobs make generous provision for maternity and paternity leave? Ensuring the availability of affordable child care, good schools, free school meals? What about providing these women with quality health care? Might it make a difference? Or could it be that it's easier to condemn, to shake our fists and call down fire and brimstone? To feel righteous, better than our neighbours?
More on the statements from those Catholic bishops shortly. Meanwhile, remember those microbes!
Your best recourse in this hazardous world of lethal microbes? A community that is in good physical and mental shape, a society whose citizens are cared for by diligent and committed professionals who continually remind it about how best to preserve its health. Folks with good health and good sanitary habits won't get sick so easily and will know how to avoid spreading their sicknesses if they do.
I am glad to be a Canadian for this reason. That is not to say that health care in Canada is perfect, but at its best it is as good as health care anywhere. Also, all of us who live in Canada have access to it, the poorest pay nothing at all for it, and what the rest of us pay is not very much and is directly related to what we earn. It is time intelligent, thoughtful citizens of the USA recognize that it's not a good thing that all Americans don't have decent health care. In fact, in these times, it is a very dangerous thing.
Seems some religious folks, some bishops of my own (Catholic) church included, have reservations about the plan Mr Obama has put forward. So let's clear up one thing. There's no dispute as to where Jesus stood on this issue. He spent the three years of his ministry feeding people, healing the sick, performing miracles to restore deformed, dysfunctional bodies, driving out demons that disturbed the mental wholeness of many. He even raised the dead. His health care policy is in the Gospels and the Acts for anyone who cares to read it.
I'm proceeding slowly on this one, taking thought before addressing what some bishops in the Catholic Church had to say, as quoted in a front page article in Friday's New York Times. Their statements had one member of our family threatening never to set foot into a Catholic Church again! So it's a matter about which people have very strong, not just opinions, but convictions.
As for abortion, which appears to be a sticking point for some - do we cut off people's hands so that they don't steal? As I've said before, I don't believe in abortion, but I understand that it is a complex issue and that if it touched me, I might find my attitude affected. Very few women take this step lightly, witness the many teenagers who continue to have babies, a choice that's easy for me to understand and one I use to help make the present argument. If we truly want women not to have abortions, what we must do is create a social, economic, and moral context that will encourage them to keep their babies. By moral I mean the morality of Jesus, he who enjoined us, in the Great Commandment of the New Law, to love our neighbours as ourselves - not threaten those whom we perceive as sinners with damnation.
My sister recently told me the story of a woman who was read out of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, to which she was devoted, when she went to live with a man to whom she was not married. She had been married prior to that time, and had two children for her husband whom she was now raising alone. She was not afraid to confront the church elders. "Are you helping me with my children?" she asked them. "Are you concerned about their welfare, or about mine?"
Do we really want women not to have abortions? What if we tried supporting the women of childbearing age in our communities? Insisting that all jobs make generous provision for maternity and paternity leave? Ensuring the availability of affordable child care, good schools, free school meals? What about providing these women with quality health care? Might it make a difference? Or could it be that it's easier to condemn, to shake our fists and call down fire and brimstone? To feel righteous, better than our neighbours?
More on the statements from those Catholic bishops shortly. Meanwhile, remember those microbes!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Where's the lake? Lindsay, Ontario, and Bob Dylan and the cops
Didn't make it with a post on the weekend, and off to a likl cruise up the Trent-Severn waterway this afternoon. I don't normally do this, since pretty much everything I hang up here is drafted, edited, and so on, but time's more and more precious, so today I shall be daring.
We've had a few days' break in the country, courtesy of our good friend, Steph, and have been doing a little driving about, getting to know our province better. Day before yesterday we set out, map in hand, to drive around Clear Lake and Stony Lake. Routes 6 and 56 seemed, from the map, to rim the lakes and we looked forward to some great lake views. Imagine our distress to find that, apart from a couple of glimpses (at Burleigh Falls, for instance), there was precious little lake to be seen. Vacation properties of various sizes occupy much of the perimeter, and though in many places we were separated from the water by not much distance, lake views were hidden by buildings or forest.
Nothing to be gained by complaining, but we did feel cheated. For the car-touring visitor, this is no drive to take!
Yesterday we did a short tour of a pretty city - Lindsay, Ontario. We drove through, looking at houses, enjoying the main street. It's quite flat, unlike Peterborough, which we like for its hills and valleys, and its waterways. We were in Lindsay for two hours or so - during which time we saw no more than three persons of mixed race! That was a surprise. Demographics tell all kinds of stories, don't they? Lindsay is less than two hours' drive from Toronto, a city that's now as brown as it is white, to put it crudely. But us brown folks seem to have stayed away from Lindsay. I look forward to learning more about a charming small city that has, in this respect, wittingly or no, preserved, shall we say, a certain distance.
Finally a lovely story about Bob Dylan, who managed to get himself questioned by a couple of young cops in the environs of Long Branch, New Jersey. He was, God help him, walking around looking at houses, and someone called the authorities. (Doesn't seem to have been an upscale neighbourhood either.) He identified himself, but Dylan is an old fellow, now, and so the youngsters weren't to be satisfied till they drove him along to where he said the tour buses were, and where he could be vouched for. (Dylan was waiting to perform with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in a gig later that day.) Bob was cool and went along with the cops, who, once satisfied that he was who he said he was, were happy to let him go.
Of course, there have been the inevitable comparisons with the incident with Prof Gates, and the inevitable comments about the 'correct way' to deal with cops. It would be lovely to get Dylan's view on both incidents, and I shall in due course put in my piece on this, but what certainly deserves noticing is how terrified Americans now are of their fellow citizens, even when they are old, distinguished (true in both cases) and unarmed - well, I guess Prof Gates had his cane!
Now I wonder what the reasons might be for that?
We've had a few days' break in the country, courtesy of our good friend, Steph, and have been doing a little driving about, getting to know our province better. Day before yesterday we set out, map in hand, to drive around Clear Lake and Stony Lake. Routes 6 and 56 seemed, from the map, to rim the lakes and we looked forward to some great lake views. Imagine our distress to find that, apart from a couple of glimpses (at Burleigh Falls, for instance), there was precious little lake to be seen. Vacation properties of various sizes occupy much of the perimeter, and though in many places we were separated from the water by not much distance, lake views were hidden by buildings or forest.
Nothing to be gained by complaining, but we did feel cheated. For the car-touring visitor, this is no drive to take!
Yesterday we did a short tour of a pretty city - Lindsay, Ontario. We drove through, looking at houses, enjoying the main street. It's quite flat, unlike Peterborough, which we like for its hills and valleys, and its waterways. We were in Lindsay for two hours or so - during which time we saw no more than three persons of mixed race! That was a surprise. Demographics tell all kinds of stories, don't they? Lindsay is less than two hours' drive from Toronto, a city that's now as brown as it is white, to put it crudely. But us brown folks seem to have stayed away from Lindsay. I look forward to learning more about a charming small city that has, in this respect, wittingly or no, preserved, shall we say, a certain distance.
Finally a lovely story about Bob Dylan, who managed to get himself questioned by a couple of young cops in the environs of Long Branch, New Jersey. He was, God help him, walking around looking at houses, and someone called the authorities. (Doesn't seem to have been an upscale neighbourhood either.) He identified himself, but Dylan is an old fellow, now, and so the youngsters weren't to be satisfied till they drove him along to where he said the tour buses were, and where he could be vouched for. (Dylan was waiting to perform with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in a gig later that day.) Bob was cool and went along with the cops, who, once satisfied that he was who he said he was, were happy to let him go.
Of course, there have been the inevitable comparisons with the incident with Prof Gates, and the inevitable comments about the 'correct way' to deal with cops. It would be lovely to get Dylan's view on both incidents, and I shall in due course put in my piece on this, but what certainly deserves noticing is how terrified Americans now are of their fellow citizens, even when they are old, distinguished (true in both cases) and unarmed - well, I guess Prof Gates had his cane!
Now I wonder what the reasons might be for that?
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Three Rhymes for Skipping Rope
Right. So we're two weeks into August, I've put nothing up since the end of July, and I've folks to reply to that I've left hanging! Wai-oh! The thing is I've been working on a big project and whenever I do that, everything else goes by the board. This is not a good thing. I can multi-task, I tell myself.
To no avail.
So, to make up for my delinquency and buy myself a little more time, here are three rhymes for skipping rope. Summer is skipping rope time, so maybe you know some young people who’ll have fun with them. All three are riffs on rhymes we skipped to as children.
(For those who don't know, the rope went faster as the condiments in "Salt, Vinegar..." got hotter.)
So, beg you hol dat fe now! With luck (plenty luck) more on the weekend.
Room for rent
Room for rent
Apply within.
When you come out
I come in.
Look how bad
you leave this place!
Trash everywhere!
It is a disgrace!
Room for rent
Apply within.
When I come out
You come in.
I don’t leave no dirt!
Not even a trace...
The floor so shine
You can see your face.
So if you want
To rent my room
You best arrive
With your mop and broom.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
Hurricane housing
I need to find
a room to rent.
I tired to live
in this hurricane tent.
I living here since
the last breeze-blow
and I long to leave
but the government slow.
If things keep on
at this drag-foot pace
I going to die
in this very same place!
So I need to find
a room to rent.
before I drop down dead
in this leaky tent.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
Salt Vinegar Mustard Pepper
Salt vinegar
mustard pepper
spin the rope
for this high stepper.
Pepper mustard
vinegar salt
slow him down
till him come to a halt.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
To no avail.
So, to make up for my delinquency and buy myself a little more time, here are three rhymes for skipping rope. Summer is skipping rope time, so maybe you know some young people who’ll have fun with them. All three are riffs on rhymes we skipped to as children.
(For those who don't know, the rope went faster as the condiments in "Salt, Vinegar..." got hotter.)
So, beg you hol dat fe now! With luck (plenty luck) more on the weekend.
Room for rent
Room for rent
Apply within.
When you come out
I come in.
Look how bad
you leave this place!
Trash everywhere!
It is a disgrace!
Room for rent
Apply within.
When I come out
You come in.
I don’t leave no dirt!
Not even a trace...
The floor so shine
You can see your face.
So if you want
To rent my room
You best arrive
With your mop and broom.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
Hurricane housing
I need to find
a room to rent.
I tired to live
in this hurricane tent.
I living here since
the last breeze-blow
and I long to leave
but the government slow.
If things keep on
at this drag-foot pace
I going to die
in this very same place!
So I need to find
a room to rent.
before I drop down dead
in this leaky tent.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
Salt Vinegar Mustard Pepper
Salt vinegar
mustard pepper
spin the rope
for this high stepper.
Pepper mustard
vinegar salt
slow him down
till him come to a halt.
© Pamela Mordecai 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Nervous (in one case) notes
Okay, following my own advice about keeping the blog going, voilà!
Concerning poetry, a couple of websites to check out, if you haven’t before.
http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html
I saw on facebook that “Rock Steady: the Roots of Reggae” has been held over at the Carlton Cinema. It was on yesterday but I don’t know if it’s on today. Klive Walker, author of Dubwise: Reasoning from the reggae underground, published by Insomniac Press http://www.insomniacpress.com/title.php?id=1-894663-96-9 recently sent me a review of the film. Perhaps he’ll agree to let me publish it or perhaps I'll be able to make the film myself.
Go to the website, anyway. That alone is worth the visit.
http://www.rocksteadyrootsofreggae.com/rocksteady.html
Finally (the scariest for the last), on a website advertising itself as “Christian Assemblies International,” I commenced reading an article called “Multiculturalism – The Canadian Experience”. Nazi, Proto-Nazi and race hate websites I know about, but this took me aback. Have a read for yourself. These people speak about "the White World!" No! They do not mean the Arctic and Antarctic! No! Their tongues are not in their cheeks! I really think Jesus had better come soon, and set things straight himself. For one thing, they may stunned to learn that he's a Jew. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of saying that I’m a follower of Jesus in future. No wonder so many people despise “Christians”! Here's the website. Keep your righteous cool! Selah!
http://www.cai.org/bible-studies/multiculturalism-canadian-experience
Perhaps a note about the garbage strike tomorrow, when we hope and pray it will truly have come to an end.
Concerning poetry, a couple of websites to check out, if you haven’t before.
http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html
I saw on facebook that “Rock Steady: the Roots of Reggae” has been held over at the Carlton Cinema. It was on yesterday but I don’t know if it’s on today. Klive Walker, author of Dubwise: Reasoning from the reggae underground, published by Insomniac Press http://www.insomniacpress.com/title.php?id=1-894663-96-9 recently sent me a review of the film. Perhaps he’ll agree to let me publish it or perhaps I'll be able to make the film myself.
Go to the website, anyway. That alone is worth the visit.
http://www.rocksteadyrootsofreggae.com/rocksteady.html
Finally (the scariest for the last), on a website advertising itself as “Christian Assemblies International,” I commenced reading an article called “Multiculturalism – The Canadian Experience”. Nazi, Proto-Nazi and race hate websites I know about, but this took me aback. Have a read for yourself. These people speak about "the White World!" No! They do not mean the Arctic and Antarctic! No! Their tongues are not in their cheeks! I really think Jesus had better come soon, and set things straight himself. For one thing, they may stunned to learn that he's a Jew. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of saying that I’m a follower of Jesus in future. No wonder so many people despise “Christians”! Here's the website. Keep your righteous cool! Selah!
http://www.cai.org/bible-studies/multiculturalism-canadian-experience
Perhaps a note about the garbage strike tomorrow, when we hope and pray it will truly have come to an end.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
More on the Arrest of Professor Gates
There’s been lots of comment about Professor Gates's arrest in the media, which, as far as I'm concerned, is all to the good. I can't think why anyone would want to dampen down the discussion. It's fine to have a black man in the White House, an important positive development, as I've said, but that doesn't change the facts, one, for instance, being that black and Hispanic men make up almost 60% of the jail population in the USA. And it's not because they are born wicked. I’m not suggesting that some of them don't deserve to be there (though some of them don't), but that disproportionate presence is one symptom of a lot that's amiss where matters of race in North America are concerned, especially matters that impact black men.
And not talking about it, or ratcheting down the discussion isn't going to make that set of problems go away, by any means.
It's interesting to note, in the comments that have been made on many of the articles online, that ordinary folks repeatedly say that they need to be deferential with the police, a deference that clearly arises out of fear. I learned too that a great many police officers “demand respect”, especially when they are in uniform. More on that in a bit.
A couple points have emerged to fill out our picture of the incident. Seems Sergeant James Crowley, the arresting officer, felt threatened. He mentioned being aware of having to protect himself because his wife and children needed him. I can absolutely appreciate that. But it's fair to point out that Professor Gates is an older man who uses a cane, and that he had just come back, ill, from a long and tiring trip. So, a strong, armed young man was facing an older, sick man, who uses a cane and has done for a long time. Hmmmn. There’s a picture online of Professor Gates in hand cuffs. Worth a thousand words!
Where respect is concerned, I have two observations.
I was a teacher in another life. It's my experience that respect is not to be demanded, it's to be deserved. It was my business to earn my students' respect: by my own demeanour, by how I treated them, by my insisting that the circumstance in which we all learned reflected the fact of this mutual respect – a clean classroom, no rowdy behaviour, everyone having a chance to speak and be heard, etc., etc. The person with the authority is the one who sets the tone, calibrates the nature of the interactions.
True, my life may not have been on the line (not at that time, anyway), but a cop is like a soldier, and threats to life and limb are part of the territory. It's a hazardous job, and those who take it on know that up front. That defusing of bad situations is a cop skill as much as a teacher skill. (Malcolm Gladwell has written insightfully about this.)
Secondly, those who are likely to confront the police with “disrespectful” behaviour are often the people who most need their protection. They are people who are old folks with dementia; they are people who are mentally or physically ill, or temporarily off-balance, or inebriated, or high on dope. (Yes, drunks and dope heads are citizens too, and deserve protection.) Nor are the police without recourse. They have Mylar vests, guns, billies, tasers – the latter having, in too many cases, turned out to be lethal weapons in their hands.
Sadly, the instances of police shootings of innocent people are far too many. FSJL mentions a truly alarming one in his comments on our last post. Here in Toronto, the Asian man who was mentally ill and who was shot to death on a trolley downtown, his weapon a small hammer in his hand, comes to mind. So also does the case of the African-Canadian man, clad in colourful regalia and brandishing a wooden sword, who was shot to death by police on St Clair Avenue. Both were non compos mentis; neither posed a credible threat to anyone, least of all the police, at any time. And, more recently, there is the case of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski tasered to death just 24 seconds after being confronted by police in Vancouver International Airport.
It’s not that I’m without sympathy for the job that policemen do. As a young man, my father worked in Tower Street Prison. But there’s a reason that policemen carry guns, and we trust them to do so. And that’s precisely why it’s fair to expect them to be the ones who always keep their cool: if they lose it, the results may be irreversible. Nor does respect inhere in “Yes, officer. No, officer.” That respect is transient and superficial. The real respect is a community’s continuing trust in and support of their law officers.
Unless of course we are to degenerate into a Wild West in which we are all armed and dangerous…
And not talking about it, or ratcheting down the discussion isn't going to make that set of problems go away, by any means.
It's interesting to note, in the comments that have been made on many of the articles online, that ordinary folks repeatedly say that they need to be deferential with the police, a deference that clearly arises out of fear. I learned too that a great many police officers “demand respect”, especially when they are in uniform. More on that in a bit.
A couple points have emerged to fill out our picture of the incident. Seems Sergeant James Crowley, the arresting officer, felt threatened. He mentioned being aware of having to protect himself because his wife and children needed him. I can absolutely appreciate that. But it's fair to point out that Professor Gates is an older man who uses a cane, and that he had just come back, ill, from a long and tiring trip. So, a strong, armed young man was facing an older, sick man, who uses a cane and has done for a long time. Hmmmn. There’s a picture online of Professor Gates in hand cuffs. Worth a thousand words!
Where respect is concerned, I have two observations.
I was a teacher in another life. It's my experience that respect is not to be demanded, it's to be deserved. It was my business to earn my students' respect: by my own demeanour, by how I treated them, by my insisting that the circumstance in which we all learned reflected the fact of this mutual respect – a clean classroom, no rowdy behaviour, everyone having a chance to speak and be heard, etc., etc. The person with the authority is the one who sets the tone, calibrates the nature of the interactions.
True, my life may not have been on the line (not at that time, anyway), but a cop is like a soldier, and threats to life and limb are part of the territory. It's a hazardous job, and those who take it on know that up front. That defusing of bad situations is a cop skill as much as a teacher skill. (Malcolm Gladwell has written insightfully about this.)
Secondly, those who are likely to confront the police with “disrespectful” behaviour are often the people who most need their protection. They are people who are old folks with dementia; they are people who are mentally or physically ill, or temporarily off-balance, or inebriated, or high on dope. (Yes, drunks and dope heads are citizens too, and deserve protection.) Nor are the police without recourse. They have Mylar vests, guns, billies, tasers – the latter having, in too many cases, turned out to be lethal weapons in their hands.
Sadly, the instances of police shootings of innocent people are far too many. FSJL mentions a truly alarming one in his comments on our last post. Here in Toronto, the Asian man who was mentally ill and who was shot to death on a trolley downtown, his weapon a small hammer in his hand, comes to mind. So also does the case of the African-Canadian man, clad in colourful regalia and brandishing a wooden sword, who was shot to death by police on St Clair Avenue. Both were non compos mentis; neither posed a credible threat to anyone, least of all the police, at any time. And, more recently, there is the case of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski tasered to death just 24 seconds after being confronted by police in Vancouver International Airport.
It’s not that I’m without sympathy for the job that policemen do. As a young man, my father worked in Tower Street Prison. But there’s a reason that policemen carry guns, and we trust them to do so. And that’s precisely why it’s fair to expect them to be the ones who always keep their cool: if they lose it, the results may be irreversible. Nor does respect inhere in “Yes, officer. No, officer.” That respect is transient and superficial. The real respect is a community’s continuing trust in and support of their law officers.
Unless of course we are to degenerate into a Wild West in which we are all armed and dangerous…
Friday, July 24, 2009
Henry Louis Gates Jr and Nightmare America
You’ve got to be grateful for the young Americans in Grant Park. You’ve got to believe in their upturned, eager faces. You’ve got to engage with their hope. Why? Because they are hitching their wagon to a faltering star – and I’m not talking about Barack Obama. It’s a star of longing that an America will emerge at some time in the not too distant future in which presidents, police, politicians, monarchs of the marketplace, all those who wield power will behave with basic human decency. I don’t say ‘common’ for it ain’t common no more, as the matter I am about to raise will amply demonstrate.
Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine, offers this comment on the arrest of black American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in an opinion piece carried in today’s GLOBE AND MAIL entitled “Why you never, ever get righteous on a street cop.”
You don't talk back to the police. You don't question them. And you certainly don't call them racist, even if you think they're profiling you. (And they most likely are.)
Because you will lose. It doesn't matter whether you're a prominent black Harvard prof, a white kid on his way to attend graduate school or a Hispanic high-school dropout.
True it is that Mr Mechanic bases his opinion on his own encounters with police, white though he is. What alarms me is that he should feel free to offer such an opinion, and that the GLOBE AND MAIL should elect to retail it. That, in many respects, is more shocking than the incident of Professor Gates’s arrest itself.
Let’s face it. We live – have been living for quite a while – in an age in which people with guns and knives and other lethal instruments can wreak havoc on anyone at any time they choose. We are very equal in that respect – or lack of it. John Kennedy and Emmett Till, equally dead: one was a filthy rich white President of the most powerful country on earth, the other a poor black teenager, a citizen of the same country. They were both mortal and somebody decided to let them know it.
But when anything of this kind happens we are normally outraged. We mourn the deaths, not only of the murdered but of the values, courtesies and right behaviours that would have secured the lives of the victims, had they been observed. We affirm the most basic value: that human life is precious, that each human person is unique and irreplaceable and that every one of us deserves to be treated by every other one of us in a way that demonstrates that understanding.
The police in a country that purports to be democratic aren’t supposed to be arbitrary wielders of power. They aren’t a militia. They aren’t armed thugs. They aren’t guerillas waging war in support of any cause they privately support. They are, like the Pope, servants of the servants of God, in other words, us common folks. Paid with our tax dollars, they are meant to work for us and protect us. We are not supposed to be deadly afraid of tangling with them on account of what they might choose to do to us.
That is what is chilling about Mr Mechanic’s opinion piece. It tells me – I’d be very happy to be reading him wrong – that I need to adopt just such a cowering attitude when I encounter a cop, because otherwise I “am going to lose”. I infer that what I will lose is my intactness of person or my freedom or my life, or in the worst case, all of the above. This is the wisdom, gleaned from his own experience, that he offers his readers. This is the wisdom that he chastens Professor Gates for not having. (Poor soul: the Professor thought he was a free man in a free state.)
Mr Mechanic doesn’t say this is a terrible state of affairs. He doesn’t rant and rave about things gone awry. He does not complain that it’s a sign that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket when ostensible keepers of the peace can’t find a smooth way through an incident like this one and arrive at a win-win conclusion. I put it this way because, never mind how Professor Gates may or may not have behaved, I agree with Mr Mechanic in one regard: in a situation like this one, it is the police who have the upper hand. I conclude from this that the greater onus is therefore on them.
It does not seem to upset Mr Mechanic that, as he offers us counsel, he characterizes citizen and police as combatants, fighting on opposing sides.
All of which suggests to me that he might as well have been describing any old totalitarian country, any old banana republic, any old Cold War Communist state.
Let Mr Mechanic not therefore, in future, speak of the United States of America in the same breath as he speaks of democracy, or rights, or freedoms, or the pursuit of any kind of happiness. Let him always keep his feet firmly on the ground, and tell it like it is. This is an America in which the citizen who has his wits about him had better be scared of the very people who are supposed to protect him. This is bizarre, ghoulish, monstrous, Nightmare America.
Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine, offers this comment on the arrest of black American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in an opinion piece carried in today’s GLOBE AND MAIL entitled “Why you never, ever get righteous on a street cop.”
You don't talk back to the police. You don't question them. And you certainly don't call them racist, even if you think they're profiling you. (And they most likely are.)
Because you will lose. It doesn't matter whether you're a prominent black Harvard prof, a white kid on his way to attend graduate school or a Hispanic high-school dropout.
True it is that Mr Mechanic bases his opinion on his own encounters with police, white though he is. What alarms me is that he should feel free to offer such an opinion, and that the GLOBE AND MAIL should elect to retail it. That, in many respects, is more shocking than the incident of Professor Gates’s arrest itself.
Let’s face it. We live – have been living for quite a while – in an age in which people with guns and knives and other lethal instruments can wreak havoc on anyone at any time they choose. We are very equal in that respect – or lack of it. John Kennedy and Emmett Till, equally dead: one was a filthy rich white President of the most powerful country on earth, the other a poor black teenager, a citizen of the same country. They were both mortal and somebody decided to let them know it.
But when anything of this kind happens we are normally outraged. We mourn the deaths, not only of the murdered but of the values, courtesies and right behaviours that would have secured the lives of the victims, had they been observed. We affirm the most basic value: that human life is precious, that each human person is unique and irreplaceable and that every one of us deserves to be treated by every other one of us in a way that demonstrates that understanding.
The police in a country that purports to be democratic aren’t supposed to be arbitrary wielders of power. They aren’t a militia. They aren’t armed thugs. They aren’t guerillas waging war in support of any cause they privately support. They are, like the Pope, servants of the servants of God, in other words, us common folks. Paid with our tax dollars, they are meant to work for us and protect us. We are not supposed to be deadly afraid of tangling with them on account of what they might choose to do to us.
That is what is chilling about Mr Mechanic’s opinion piece. It tells me – I’d be very happy to be reading him wrong – that I need to adopt just such a cowering attitude when I encounter a cop, because otherwise I “am going to lose”. I infer that what I will lose is my intactness of person or my freedom or my life, or in the worst case, all of the above. This is the wisdom, gleaned from his own experience, that he offers his readers. This is the wisdom that he chastens Professor Gates for not having. (Poor soul: the Professor thought he was a free man in a free state.)
Mr Mechanic doesn’t say this is a terrible state of affairs. He doesn’t rant and rave about things gone awry. He does not complain that it’s a sign that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket when ostensible keepers of the peace can’t find a smooth way through an incident like this one and arrive at a win-win conclusion. I put it this way because, never mind how Professor Gates may or may not have behaved, I agree with Mr Mechanic in one regard: in a situation like this one, it is the police who have the upper hand. I conclude from this that the greater onus is therefore on them.
It does not seem to upset Mr Mechanic that, as he offers us counsel, he characterizes citizen and police as combatants, fighting on opposing sides.
All of which suggests to me that he might as well have been describing any old totalitarian country, any old banana republic, any old Cold War Communist state.
Let Mr Mechanic not therefore, in future, speak of the United States of America in the same breath as he speaks of democracy, or rights, or freedoms, or the pursuit of any kind of happiness. Let him always keep his feet firmly on the ground, and tell it like it is. This is an America in which the citizen who has his wits about him had better be scared of the very people who are supposed to protect him. This is bizarre, ghoulish, monstrous, Nightmare America.
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