Every Sunday Morning, a place where various things get thrown out, shot at, cut open, and dissected. Topics of interest: psychological, and medical anthropology, privatization, globalization, excess, language, humor, hip-hop culture, jazz, brain and mind, memory, urban space development, Los Angeles, the Chicago Bulls, UCLA Bruins, FC Barcelona, and mankind.
by B.J. on 6/23/2008 11:16:00 PM
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The Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter says that hip-hop is not a vehicle for positive change, but rather a destructive force for black Americans.
Another one of those "reformed" black guys who act as a vehicle to legitimate conservative, and moderate white America's history of racism and paternalistic, third-person omniscient solutions.
I generally can't get myself to like anyone who can easily dismiss something that is important to a chunk of the population. He seems to goes out of his/her way to hate on something he doesn't really understand, kind of like a spy...or...a stalker. He reminds me of Steve Bowman's piece "You know what's stupid? Everything I don't understand!"
However, upon reading more of McWhorter's material here and listening to an NPR interview, I can't help but feel sorry for the man. I truly do.
Why? Two things: He's a stalker and he's passive-aggressive.
1) Keeping true to that identity as a stalker, he doesn't actually speak to anyone to uncover any truth.
In his main article against hip-hop, he leads with an observation about some kids at a KFC. The kids are loud and annoying in a public or quasi-public space, behavior virtually unheard of from any group or subgroup of teenagers in America. So, what's to blame?
You guessed it! The ASSUMED soundtrack of their lives. These Black kids at KFC...must be that damn Hip-hop! A-HA!
In his radio interview, he mentioned that when he speaks, everyone has been supportive and no one has bothered him. No one, except maybe "one hothead" gets riled up at his talks, probably because he bores his supporters or would-be supporters and he passively aggressively hides from those who want to call him out.
2) When explaining his avoidance of opponents and potential detractors, he calls himself a "homebody", code word for divorced-from-reality, scared, linguist.
I feel bad for him mostly because behind the flowery high-falutin' language and the degrees from Stanford and Berkeley is just a scared, passive-aggressive stalker.
Even though the writer of these books and articles is kind of pathetic in his attempts to disparage hip-hop, what he says is essentially still the same stuff that critics of hip-hop from casual to extreme haters use, so its still worth a response.
I can agree with a few things he says:
-Some of the most promoted and commercialized are those without real positive messages. But I can see where it comes from and I don't think it goes anywhere. -I agree that we could do without the sexism and violence but they'll keep saying what they want to say -People do need to adapt to their life circumstances
Where he and I differ is that he seems bent on extracting the worst elements of hip-hop and subsequently, rooting it out based on that.
It's kind of like trying to ban Christianity because you don't like the KKK or Terry McVeigh. In each case, you're trying to look for the worst elements of something you don't like without fairly weighing its good elements.
From this vantage point, this attempt to extract the worst of the genre, his argument boils down to two things:
1) According to him, Hip-hop is responsible for the destruction of the black American.
You'd think that the arrival of hip-hop caused the destruction of the 'hood.
"The rise of nihilistic rap has mirrored the breakdown of community norms among inner-city youth over the last couple of decades. It was just as gangsta rap hit its stride that neighborhood elders began really to notice that they’d lost control of young black men, who were frequently drifting into lives of gang violence and drug dealing. Well into the seventies, the ghetto was a shabby part of town, where, despite unemployment and rising illegitimacy, a healthy number of people were doing their best to “keep their heads above water,” as the theme song of the old black sitcom Good Times put it."
He seems to operate on this romanticized and historicized viewpoint that the 'hood was a rough place but still a place where this "healthy number" of people were doing their best.
Healthy numbers?
I remember a talk with the LA Times Homicide Blogger, Jill Leovy where she said that the black man murder rate has always been staggeringly high from Jim Crow until now. Her point was that there's deep a history of homicide within the black community.
In 1976, before talks of handguns, gangs, crack stuff, the black male homicide rate according to the US Justice Department was still 7x higher than those of whites. In, 1960, according to the Centers for Disease Control, death rates for black man were 14x higher, and in 1950 black male death rates were 17x higher than those of whites.
So bad things were still happening before hip-hop. I think the only difference with hip-hop in the picture is that it gives people like him to pick at and justify structural injustices and hegemonies.
2) His conclusion: hip-hop is antithetical to "helping people help themselves..."
He takes aim at those who try to spread the positive messages. Cites the Dead Prez as an example of conscious hip-hop. He mentions that they're pretty good at noting the insufficient employment opportunities. But he criticizes them for advocating civil and social rights, i.e. standing on top of Capital Hill.
The classic pull-by-the-bootstrapping man, he advocates a personal anecdote to a social and structural problems. He says that plenty of UPS jobs and delivery boys do not require college degrees and they can live perfectly legit middle-class existences. Guess he missed the talks about the disappearing middle-class, here, here, and here.
McWhorts then goes on to criticize those who do try to make their money in the underground economy. I would've thought that he'd think the underground is the adaptive way of making money, and would've applauded them.
Ultimately, Dr. McWhorter's prescription for his fellow black man is a whole dose of mediocrity. He offers a hellvua lot less that than the rappers from the neigbhorhood with the money and the women. He's essentially telling them to become drones of everyone else while other people get their action.
In the end, rap and hip-hop is only a medium of expression. It's a piece of marketing, but it doesn't drive any widespread violence that wasn't already endemic. If people want to destroy, that's usually a highly personal decision. I doubt that people make negative life or death decisions based on what they hear from an artist.
Hip-hop is mostly a tool for empowerment because it breeds expression. It has the potential to inspire. A tool for empowerment because this is where people can find their strength.
But ultimately, it's only a tool, it's not going to be the only thing that will make or break a segment of the population.
He definitely knew how to deliver his language, whether it was on paper or whether he was doing one of his routines. I wondered if my friend Daniel straight ripped off part of his jokes and blunt language from him. George was such a fluid comedian that I was actually concerned about whether or not he could speak so fluidly in real life.
What separated him and other comedians was that he also kinda knew what was going on in the world. He could analyze almost anything in his routines, and he didn't always have to be funny.
When I say I'm thankful and gracious for all that I have, having all 5 senses working is usually what comes to mind first.
A former co-worker of mine once posed the question if I would rather be blind or deaf.
Another co-worker and I "chose" to be deaf. The question-poser chose to be blind.
Our reasons for being deaf rather than losing our vision --- "we want to be able to see things." On a quality of life level, I would want to see if my wife is hot. I wouldn't need to hear other people's crap. But the dealbreaker for me is, on a survival level, if someone/something were to attack me, (because everyone knows of those vicious gangs of people who like to attack the deaf) well, I'd like to know where I'm going to strike or maim the punk-ass. It seems like you're less likely to be ripped off because you can be more independent.
The question-poser chose to save her hearing over her vision because she wanted to hear music. It occurred to me that even though we are a visually-inclined society, the primary way we make and establish meanings is through sound and spoken language. Me, I haven't listen to a lot of what people say, and I haven't had many systems of meaning to follow. When you hear something, you feel intensity, tone, and rhythm more intensely, and you can establish meaning from that. They say that music is the universal language...that is unless you're deaf.
When I watched a documentary about the deaf community, I saw how tightly knit a community they were. The discourse surrounding them sounded like the same discourse you'd hear/read about a minority community. They have their own language, they communicate to each other in a unique way that is not understood by the larger society. They feel disrespected, misunderstood, and most of all they hate it when someone tries to label or leave their community.
The one thing they especially hated was when parents of a deaf child would consult a doctor for cochlear implants. Parents, usually with hearing, reasoned that they wanted their children to have a "fuller experience." Deaf folks on the counterattack said that they already had a "full" experience. One of them talked about how he was the editor of the NY Times as a deaf person, managing hearing people. It appears that the parents with hearing thought that the deaf world was just lacking in meaning. And they were dead wrong.
The deaf do have their own systems of meaning, but it remained and probably still remains unacknowledged by those who have the hearing, the arbitors of meaning and communication.
If the world hates change, that means it probably doesn't expect change, and that it likes to cling to something that they think is fixed, stagnant, and stable when in fact it is moving itself.
They say that written English is a very different language than spoken Southern California English.
I am not very happy of how limiting and how fast spoken Southern California English is. It feels like a foreign language when I speak it sometimes because I can't always find the correct word to express what I mean. I don't know if I made this metaphor, but speaking the spoken word that isn't written down is like novice bowling...you aim to say one thing, you might hit the point, but sometimes it goes in an unexpected direction.
"The point of innovation is to make actual money." - says actor reading a line from IBM's marketing department.
I've had a problem with that statement for a while. I couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with it, but I know that something didn't feel right and/or true with that statement. I doubt that truly innovative people do creative things specifically for the specific purpose of making money.
I can't believe that great thinkers were motivated too much by something as temporary and transient as money.
Innovation is more spontaneous and less purposeful. It seems to be a synthesis when experiences are combined rather randomly than something people aim to do.
Could anyone picture great philosophers, thinkers, and truth-seekers like Ike Newton, Albert Einstein, Percy Julian, or Stephen Hawking doing what they did just to get rich?
They say "opportunity" is limited in low-income areas. This is what I wrote in many a grant proposal.
"Limited Opportunity" is code for not many decent jobs, decent schools, etc. "Decent jobs" is code for legal, stable, flexibility for promotion, and enough money to achieve a modicum of sustainable comfort. "Decent schools" is code for well-equipped, safe, undercrowded, good high school graduation rates
When we use the phrase or any variation of "limited opportunity", this is what were saying: the best paying jobs are illegal and unstable, and either that or there aren't any jobs from which you can move up, give you advantage, or which make any sense to take. The schools are terribly equipped, unsafe, overcrowded, where just as many people drop out as graduate.
Limited opportunity --- risky or undervalued and overworked jobs, terrible schools.
I found it interesting that the sherriff used "opportunity" in a different way. In the context of which he made the quote above, he was describing how he was almost jacked because he looked aloof to his surroundings. Obviously, he meant "opportunity" in the broadest way possible, "a favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances."
The robber saw an "opportunity" to take his shit because he was alone and looked aloof to all his surroundings. It wasn't random.
This made me think, people will see different opportunities all the time, given what they grow up with, their experience and their knowlege.
Plenty of white people coming from Spain, England, France, etc. saw opportunities to convert more people to their religion and make money by jacking American Indians of their land. Perhaps coming from what they considered to be crowded and restrictive places with hierarchies, combined with knowledge of farming methods, they saw an opportunity to get their own land, and make their own industries in an entirely different land.
If you see a vulnerable person, either physically and/or mentally unimposing, you're almost pre-programmed to take advantage or create opportunity for yourself, whether you're going to steal or sell something to someone. I'm not sure if that's an American-specific or mankind type of feature. But if you see this opportunity this is informed by your assumption and expectation that this person does not have the capability, physical or mental, to resist what you are doing to take his/her resource(s). This is what we see in business anywhere in America whether the corporations posing as individual people and trying to make money off of everything including the air we breathe to gang-bangers extorting money from cart vendors.
These are all opportunities seen and taken by individuals and groups of people.
So perhaps there is no lack of opportunity per se, anywhere, including low-income neighborhoods.
What we should say is not that there's any lack of opportunities, but it's a lack of positive, "legal" opportunities for folks in low-income circles. "Positive, legal opportunity" meaning not likely to lead to personal/interpersonal physical and/or mental destruction and endangerment. There's a lack of that.
I think what distinguishes "positive" from "destructive" is that positive doesn't include stepping on people (at least not as directly).
So by that logic, there's much more opportunity to do bad than do good in the hood. People do not intend to be bad when growing up, but if the opportunity is there, given what they learn in their primary environs with peers and family, they will seem to keep taking those opportunities in that direction, building their skills and knowledge in things that are not good.
If they become good at it, they've built up this expectation that they can keep exploiting these opportunities...that they have a modicum of invincibility, strength, a feeling that they've got it all figured out.
by B.J. on 4/06/2008 11:35:00 PM
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In an information overloaded age here in America where what you see on TV, radio is glitz and glam, I think what people of "minority" status whether in race, age, gender, ethnicity, etc. want for their causes is...recognition. Recognition of the obstacles still faced. Recognition of achievements. Recognition of specific in-roads and actions taken by their people. Ultimately, recognition as legit and equal powers.
The opposite of recognition is reductionism. Reduction is oversimplifying. Oversimplifying, which generally doesn't promote connective thinking and understanding. Oversimplifying, putting blood, sweat, and tears into cheap, digestable, words. Oversimplifying, to put in broad blocks without understanding the curves, grooves, and boundaries. Oversimplifying genocide. Think of how easy it is to dismiss the fact that there were over 10 million American Indians in this land before the arrival of Columbus. It's just as easy to say that Indians had it coming to them and it's their fault. What's worse is that it's easier to spread ignorance and hate than it is to think and debate.
It's easy to oversimplify the impact of slavery by saying that you never owned one. Oversimplifying the impact of years of Jim Crow Laws. Oversimplifying the effects of redlining, blockbusting, and steering, taking out the property taxes and slapping down your schools. Oversimplifying race issues to be just the black and the white. Oversimplifying the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1905, The Natonal Origins Act of 1924, the Recission Act of 1946, the Immigration Act of 1965. Oversimplifying a group of unified, diverse people to be mono-thinking because its tiring to think of them as actually having opinions.
Cognition is a way of putting something into your consciousness. Recognition implies that you have thought of something before in your consciousness and now acknowledge it. Were at a point where there's been cognition but no recognition for our communities, no acknowledgment. What makes the difference between congition and recognition is that in cognition, you don't smell, see, hear, taste, feel the process, the patterns as you've smelt, seen, heard, and felt before. What everyone outside the communities sees as patterns is the oversimplified, square clean-cut version of history and as people. The problem is that if they only recognize those patterns of oversimplified, square clean-cut history, they expect only oversimplified, square, clean-cut answers. And when they expect only oversimplified answers, they get mad that when you begin to tell your stories of complexity.
I am watching CBS now mainly because it was there when Stephen Curry held the ball for 8 seconds before passing it to some random Davidson white guy to brick a desperation 3.
CBS just finished talking about the Beijing Olympics and how their "state-run" media is firing back at "Western" media. Kind or ironic considering that CBS has an eye as its branded logo and a show called "Big Brother" is one of the linchpins to its success.
"State-run" has become a buzzword for communist. It's become the kind of adjective attached to the collective American patriotic amygdala for you to shake your head once again at a country like Venezuela or China.
But then in the report, there is room for CBS to have a bureau in that Communist state. What the hell is that? We've come to expect "state-run" meaning absolutely no-control, no-freedoms at all type of society.
What exactly does "state-run" even MEAN?
According to a wikipedia, the fact that things are state-run doesn't even have too much value anymore.
It's interesting that our media always labels countries like China or Venezuela with Communist and state-run. What's the mechanism behind that?
If they're brainwashed, then what exactly are we? How come we don't give our own outlets these adjectival labels as well? Like "conservative-controlled" FOX News or "excess-green-paper-driven" news outlets label of corporate/rich white person-run media?
I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison for a Literature class at UCSC.
They say that the book is a quest for identity, as is noted in the nicknames given to people.
"He closed his eyes and thought of the black men in Shalimar, Roanoke, Petersburg, Newport News, Danville, in the Blood bank, on Darling Street, in the pool halls, the barbershops. Their names. Names they got from yearnings, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names that bore witness. Macon Dead. Sing Byrd, Crowell Byrd, Pilate, Reba, Hagar, Magdalene, First Corinthians, Milkman, Guitar, Railroad Tommy, Hospital Tommy, Empire State (he just stood around and swayed), Small Boy, Sweet, Circe, Moon, Nero, Humpty-Dumpty, blue Boy, Scandinavia, Quack-Quack, Jericho, Spoonbread, Ice Man, Dough Belly."
I was always struck by this passage. It was something I felt even before I read it and something that rings even truer today.
Whether it was calling my little sister, "Camilleishibu" based on the All That Foreign Exchange student character or when I'm calling her "Bums" as short for a rhyming Nickname for "Bumille", which was a nickname I gave her after I got annoyed at her singing this "Banana nana fo fana" song on Nick Jr. I've also called her "Dumler" also because it rhymes but also because it came from Madden 2001 as one of the random last names generated in the NFL Draft, and now "Bumler" as a synthesis of Bumille and Dumler, and now I've started pronouncing it "Boomler", perhaps as a symbol of the explosion of her art work
OR
When I am I calling Desiree "Company Flow" over the email because she listened to them for no good reason at all at least she told me or "Big Des on the Low Low" because "Des" sounds like a football player's name and/or one of 2Pac's associates,
OR "Wibs" or "Wachi" for my friend Harlan because it was odd just saying "Harlan", and I liked saying Wibs or Wachi better and plus it reminded me of the 50s song "Mr. Sandman" and the context of post WWII and Japan and Hawaii when that song was played
OR Keith "Airplano" way back when because he reminded me of this old school Regent Forex commercial
OR Bel "Bull" cause her sister Trina or "Trinz" has a funny way of pronouncing things
OR Maria "Partner" cause she was my dancing partner for a debut
OR Cressa "the Impreza" cause it rhymes and it reminds me of her red phone, "Hane" cause she called me that one time, and I thought it was pronounced the way you pronounce "Hanes" when in reality it is pronounced HAH-NAY and now all I do is think of underwear with her
OR Chiara "Sis" because that's Cressa's sister and I'd wanted to implicate something by that
OR Daniel "'Yell" in online correspondence because it was just odd calling him by his first name, 'Yell being the nickname of former Chicago Bulls player Donyell Marshall by a poster on RealGM
OR Joel "Drums" because he played the drums and reminded me of that episode in Friends where Ross is playing the theme of Beverly Hills Cop on his keyboard to work on his music in that episode where we find out that he was supposed to take Rachel to prom
OR my mom "Brooklyn" cause she had a bit of a round belly that I once used as pretend turntables when I was imitating a remixed rap version of the Supermario Bros Theme (not the Benefit one) and the fact that she looked hip-hop when she was waving good-bye to some black kids or the "Wadelian Paradigm" as my latest nickname for her reflecting an evolution from "Oodles", Waddles, derived from an episode in Rugrats with an Oodles the dog, and the current academic discourse in which I am embroiled. In ever evolving fashion I alternate between "Brooky" and "Paradigm" nowadays.
OR Joy "Joybif" as short for Joybifida, which means absolutely nothing, but "bifida" I got from imitating the beat from the song "The Life" by Mystic and Goapele which she gave me on a CD
OR Charlyne "TChar" because she sounds like she closes her glottis when she talks
OR Jade "tee" because she's my tee.
OR my dad, TATAY in an exaggerated Filipino voice because he's got lots of grey matter and he tends to be old school, but then he's an artist.
OR Phil "Full" because of the brusque and ironic ways he speaks or "Banks" referring to Phillip Banks on the Fresh Prince of Bel-horizoche-iz-air
Some people I just shorten their names as if they were acronyms. Perhaps this is just a microcosm of a trend where we live in a society of signs and signals. Like Dom for Dominique, like Pens, like B, like A, like Jel, like Bats. I was about to call a friend that is a girl AJ, "Tits" because her last name is Titong, but that wouldn't have been quite right. Sometimes I feel the need to extend past that acronym stage and call them something else. "Domfather", "D-O-M", Lups for Dom. I've been thinking of using Human Highlight Film or HHF, but that doesn't sound quite right, HHF sounds like he he has some kind of disease. I call "Jel" "Gelatinous Jel" or "Jail" as if I was a black dude pronouncing her nickname.
Some nicknames have gone awry. Like "Bats" for Batungbakal which was just a shortened version of his name and got him kind of mad, K-Pop for Kay-Anne because she had a facebook picture where she was turned to one side and it looked like her head snapped to which she ignored, Boocs or Boo-key for Sharlene because her last name is Bucasas to which she told my friend in confidence that she didn't like.
Some people I have nicknames for and they don't even know it because I never call them it. Like "Bucktator" for Christian Bonifacio because his last name is Bonifacio and the Native Guns said something about Bonifacio Bucktating in their one and only album.
Then there are people I don't even call by ANY name EVER. It would be absolutely weird if I called them by their first names, but I don't have enough of a quirky relationship to call them a nickname though did try. Like Carolyn, like Shelly, like Beverly though she wanted to be called Bev, but I know a few Bevs, and "Bev" wouldn't adequately describe her at all.
I almost never call friends and family by their first name. It's just weird.
I think that nicknames are just a way of remembering someone. It's nothing more than coding.
However, for me, nicknames (and even the absence of one combined with the refusal to call you by your first name) give the life to life; it means that you are something more than what is written in a paper document that witness your birth. They say more about you than your institutional name. They give witness to the fact that you LIVED and you've floated around in my consciousness.
YES on the Homeowners Protection Act (HPA), Proposition 99
NO to California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act (CPOFA), Proposition 98
I think it's critical to know the difference between the two eminent domain reforms that will be in California's June ballot.
The simplest act, Homeowners Protection Act, Proposition 99 is best and relatively straightforward. Vote Yes on it.
However, the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act, Proposition 98 is under the guise of eminent domain reform, but actually not...otherwise it would be the Homeowners Protection Act. Vote No on it.
With the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act (CPOFPA) Proposition 98, what they're trying to do is two main things:
1) Move towards the elimination of rent control and mobile home destruction.
2) Erode Environmental Protections for public water use.
Essentially what they try to do is capitalize on the hate for eminent domain going towards private development to say that: poor people are actually "private" entities and that the go
Before the actual initiative is introduced on their website this is was they say about private use:
"Private property may not be taken by eminent domain for private use under any circumstances (i.e. to build a shopping center, auto mall or industrial park)."
Focus on the word "private use."
They want you to think that this is all about protecting your house from being taken over by the government to be given to private developers.
In the actual document they are very smart to use the phrase "private use" only about twice in the entire document, but this is the key phrase.
"Private property may not be taken or damaged for private use."
And these are two key ways they define "private use"
"(ii) transfer of ownership, occupancy or use of private property or associated property rights to a public agency for the consumption of natural resources"
(iii) regulation of the ownership, occupancy or use of privately owned real property or associated property rights in order to transfer an economic benefit to one or more private persons at the expense of the property owner."
Just a use of the word "private use" already packs so much meaning for those with a hand in drafting the act, but such ambiguity to make it seem non-confrontational and thus appealing to an average voter.
The clause numbered "(ii)" is an attempt to make it difficult for government agencies to acquire land for public water projects such as reservioirs and other public water storage projects. Essentially, private property may not be taken or damaged so that public agencies can "consume" natural resources. "Consume" is another ambiguous word because that can encompass a lot of things.
This seems like the type of thing that will just open and strangle public water projects in litigation, all the while indirectly opening the market even wider for private companies "to come to the rescue" and start showing how efficient they are at privatizing water and profitting off your basic needs.
The clause numbered "(iii)" is the attempt to savage rent control and open mobile home projects.
Despite their compensations for being rent controlled properties, they're saying that the government putting regulations on how much they charge equates to the government basically using their property. No one told these people that they had to own land. It's not like these people with the power don't have a choice.
What this act is saying is that the government cannot regulate what property owners such as landlords and mobile park owners do in charging rent. If that were suddenly the case, it is likely that they'll work, jack and pump up those prices more than a 13-year old boy on summer vacation at home with a stack of material not meant for reading. All the folks who take on the lowly-paid jobs would be pushed the hell out of cities where the jobs are. Pushed out because there's no space to live anywhere.
At this point, if you're not sure about the act and it's always best to actually know what it is you're voting for, take a brief look at who else supports this act.
California Federation of Republican Women California Republican Party Riverside County Libertarian Party California Republican Taxpayers Association
Aren't these the groups that traditionally run against humanistic interests such as affordable housing and environmental protections?
Are these groups more tied with selfish, business and privatization interests?
Any tenants rights' organizations?
Any water agencies?
Are there any environmental groups you see?
According to California for Democracy:
"Wealthy apartment and mobile home park owners spent close to $2 million to qualify their deceptive rent control rollback proposition for the June 2008 ballot. The landlords are going to try to trick voters into believing their measure is about eminent domain."
They definitely paid people to make their bullshit hard to detect, so of course the language will all seem agreeable.
Everything that they write about seems to be good on the surface, but their game is, (and has been since some folks from Europa took land from indigenous people) about creating bullshit laws and finding loopholes to exploit till people take action to stop it, and/or till they can find more loopholes to create.
Are they going to come out and say "we seek the abolishment of rent control" or "we really don't give a shit about what we do to the environment just as long as we get money?"
It's not so much about what they do say, it's about what they don't say.
From my environmental e-subscription, this is what they wrote verbatim:
" Asian Cockroaches Could Aid Texas Growers (January 7, 2008) -- Most people see cockroaches as a terrible pest--with no redeeming qualities or benefit whatsoever. But to cotton farmers in south Texas, an exotic cockroach from Asia could be a highly beneficial insect for biological control. For several years, entomologists has been studying predators that feed on the eggs of lepidopteran pests of annual crops. ... > full story"
I love how they're called "Asian" cockroaches as if they could possibly be related to my cousins Piboy and Jun-Jun (and only my cousins Piboy and Jun-Jun).
To counterbalance their use of "Asian cockroaches", why don't say "most people see American cockroaches as a terrible pest---with no redeeming qualities or benefit whatsoever." Emphasis American.
Scientific discourse (or at least the one from sciencedaily) is just a mirror of real human relations.
"but it is never 'just' talk. you simply cannot separate such words from the historical context that has shaped the way in which they are being used. africa (i lived in africa for six years) was once an exceptionally wealthy continent, few africans (or people of african descent) need to be reminded how and why that is no longer the case. you cannot just brush this off as 'history' that should be forgotten because thousands continue to benefit from this history, and millions continue to suffer as a direct result - it is not history, it is current events."
- evil allan of big soccer, FC Barcelona forum on the chanting of "negro" when Toure Yaya left the field.
"a diverse global society needs to learn and accept the multitude of realities, not opinions. some opinions don't need to be accepted, and should not be accepted." - same poster
by B.J. on 12/10/2007 09:32:00 AM
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I don't think I read too much into things, but I can get a sense of what people feel are based on a number of things. Most of communication is nonverbal. Of course sometimes, I may misread nonverbal signs and have it lead to other problems.
I especially love those moments where people think they are superior and smarter than me.
Yesterday, I was speaking to the mother of a fellow Loyola, UCLA, University of Chicagoan, and Harvardian who has now become a Doctor.
She asked me if I graduated.
I said yes. Just a while ago, but yes.
Then she asked me where from.
She said"...UC...?"
I said "UC..LA."
Then she said, "oh but you went somewhere else first right?"
"Yes, UC-Santa Cruz."
Why the fuck do you feel the need to ask where I came from? Isn't it the same degree as the one achieved by your precious little result from fucking? Isn't it about the ends that matter?
I don't recall there being a big red stamp on my diploma or transcripts saying "TRANSFER".
It's not that I'm ashamed that I came from Santa Cruz (I still carry my SC lanyard everywhere), but I felt like the fact that I went there was used to undermine what I feel like was an achievement.
I wasn't someone who made it in initially, like the test-taking machine you call your son, but I guess I'm a late bloomer, and not less intelligent (though I think a measurable degree of intelligence is all bunk).
I know I have remnants of an inferiority Napoleonic complex, but it's just comments like that which make me want to peer in and explode their preconceptions and show up their stupid kids...without being such a prick about it to others.
I like to think of myself as bringing and catalyzing folks to be up with me if not higher.
My eye doctor is pretty good-looking, which has nothing to do with anything, but has reference just in case she wanted to accidentally slip her hands on to my crotch and start massaging it.
One thing I picked up on and didn't appreciate however was a simple one-line question she made.
Somehow in our conversation while she was checking my eyes out, I told her I graduated just this past June.
She asked in a stunningly innocent yet incisively inquisitive voice, "a local college, right?"
Yeah, I guess you could say that.
"Local" college as if it was a community college or a third tier college. Now, there isn't anything wrong with going to a community college or any other college. Indeed, there are tons of points of brilliant folks saving tons of money at those colleges, getting the same education, learning the same things I learned.
But in this particular conversation, there was a tone of condescension. A tone of condescension where it seemed like she generally didn't think our family was up to great things. Otherwise, why would she say "local?" Why couldn't she assume a "cosmopolitan", a "worldly" school?
Perhaps she could ask or a more open question such as "was it at a college around here?"
But nope, she said...you come from a LOCAL college, right? Because that's what most of us brown Filipino people do. We like to go to LOCAL colleges. Local colleges that are near you, accessible, UNWORLDLY, which is how I ended up at the LOCAL optometrist.
Classic case of the making an ass of you and me, if you know what I mean.
Maybe the way she asked the question also had something to do with me saying just "college," instead of inflaming the conversation with unnecessary bragging.
No one can be as smart YOU, Ms. (kinda-hot-but-probably-has-more-marks-on-her-private-parts-than-Mao-Zedong) Optometrist.
Screw her.
And I would.
Just like any other localized illiterate the world has to offer.
by B.J. on 11/04/2007 05:57:00 PM
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Usually to prevent or buffer the tension after racial, ethnic, cultural incidents, employees undergo something called "sensitivity training."
I have a problem with this phrase for this activity. Why can't they call it something more rough and appealing like Getting-your-dumbass-educated Sessions?
I've never been through one of these trainings, but the name saps its importance and immediately attracts criticism by the same crowd who cries about the increasing "political correctness."
The phrase "sensitivity training" doesn't exactly inspire anyone to change their point of view because it doesn't sound very powerful or particularly enlightening. Makes it seem as if they're going to be at a park picnic table with flowers, over a cup of tea, talk, and learn the art of flowery ways of speaking. They're not going to have any important realizations, they are just going to be trained.
It's a triply tough pill for the hyper-testosterone politically incorrect-yelling rebels to swallow.
First the training itself, tells them to stop being dumbasses. Given what passes for news, I'm not sure regular people are ready to give up their right to be ignorant in public.
Secondly, the word "sensitivity" invokes feelings of softness. It's associated with femininity, which is associated with powerlessness. People are not going to want to or learn anything when they feel powerless or disempowered. In fact I think some people would be even emboldened to continue their ignorance or "insensitivity" after a "sensitivity training." It's their way to say fuck you to a training that in their minds practically threatens to chop off their politically incorrect kid holders. Males in general, don't really like listening to females. Males who hate political correctness definitely don't want to play what they think is a gender role associated with females.
Thirdly, the "training" part of the phrase exacerbates the problem. It's as if it's a rote activity to remember in case there's a test. It implies that you're only learning actions instead of substantial reasons behind the actions. The training implies you're not going to make any new revelations, which is probably what it would take to actually stop a way of thinking.
Taken together, "sensitivity training" implies a number of things. You will learn how to act, even though you still feel a certain way. On a deeper level you are being drilled on how to and what to feel. I'd imagine a self-proclaimed politically incorect person's instant response to a phrase like "sensitivity training" is that they're going to feel however they want to feel. In that sense they are right: You can never argue with yours or anyones' feelings. People will come in with a mindset already thinking that the way they feel about race, ethnicity, and other cultures is what it is and it's not going to be changed.
As a result, the content to be taken in during a "sensitivity training" comes off as something trivial and pointless, something people of many races can just get over to the convenience of the politically incorrect.
If this phrase weren't so disarmingly namby pamby, I'd bet you'd open up half the population to being more open minded about the training. If they framed it in terms of an education, I'd bet more I'd see more people advocating on its behalf.
I'd call it Seminars for highly evolved human beings.
by B.J. on 11/04/2007 03:41:00 PM
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In school, the works cited page was the afterthought after the essay. It's a two-word somewhat informal way of saying "bibliography".
But even though it's somewhat informal, these are words that just disconnect people from other people.
People put a lot of time, effort, and energy into their books, articles. Some of it are widely acknowledged, some not, but I think I get something from everything I read. For me, works cited/works referenced/bibliography is just a way of formally thanking people and using their time, effort, and energy to form your own creation. Thanking people for their thoughts.
It's also hooking people up with thoughts you valued enough to put in your creation. Some people acknowledge this and use the phrase "For Further Reading." But that sounds pretty disorienting as well. Makes it seem as if you need to walk an extra mile or something to get it. And who says you need to read something to get your information? What if you get someone to read it out loud, tape record it, while you listen to it?
So taking this all into account and to full represent what I think about works cited/works referenced/bibliography page, my works cited/works referenced/bibliography page would be called "Thank you to these articles, books, and journals for supplying the supporting thoughts to my own thoughts"
But obviously calling the works cited/works referenced/bibliography a "thank you note" wouldn't fly in these parts. Unless they're family (of course, provided that you're a straight guy), sounds too mushy for today's hyper-testosterone, pro-scientific, standardized written English language. Especially since you're just getting material from some other piece of text.
It must be "works" as if you were on the assembly line or had a hammer in hand.
BTW, I'd like to thank George Carlin for the inspiration to investigate language.
I mean that's all there is to it right ? If you're just "in a relationship", what the hell does that mean ? Are you actually in love, or is this just some kind of bullshit process that comes with being in a relation that you're in love with and all you do is fuck ?
That brings me to a self-interested musing.
Who's the special one to reverse that for me ? Or is it really just fuckinships ?
Who will be there to lift me out of this orneri ? State of hate and logic.
This is a book that lays in my bathroom ready to be read when you're doing the number 2.
What is it ?
It is a collection of random histories and rough details of how things work like the history of a pencil or why moths eat wool. . .for kids ! They give a rough description in 3/4 of a page for each of those topics telling these kids the whole truth and nothing but in storybook, don't-question-my-authoritay tone.
Children's literature is always interesting because it is usually an embodiment of the "safest" or least controversial/undisputed knowledge of the time and place it is written in. This book was written in 3 volumes in 1965 by some playwright named Arkady Leokum and just republished in 2004 by Barnes. Apparently, he's good as there are many versions of his book online actually still selling. I picked up my 3-in-1 volume for $9.95 at Barnes as part of my annual Christmas rampage for books.
I don't know how good he/she is at describing those mundane things like when food canning started or what makes the stars shine (seems good though), but I do know when it comes to world history. . .
His/her language. . .
Wow. . .
Just read this:
Description of who the Aztecs were : "They had developed a way of life ALMOST" the equal of many of the European peoples.
Almost, but not quite at the level of Europeans, right ?
"The Aztecs, however, had also risen to power through military abilities, and warfare was often carried on for the purpose of capturing enemies for sacrifice to their war god. The custom of sacrificing human life was shocking to the Europeans, but this developed NATURALLY among the aztecs because they combined religion and warfare"
God and the military. I bet the drive-backwards pick-up truck red staters who lambast Islam nowadays read this book as children while not realizing their own parallels.
Description of the who the Incas were: "The people had no personal freedom: the Inca decided what clothes they wore, what food they ate, what work they did.
Description of who the Vikings were: "They were strong and sturdy, often with blue eyes and fair hair."
"The Northmen had a good system of law based on fairness and sportsmanship. It is believed that the jury system we have today can be traced back to the Ancient Northmen."
Do we mention how they made their living by raiding other people's shit ? No it was more like the "Vikings saw opportunities" (like how the whiteboys "saw opportunities" . . .to steal land from Natives) and established a great law system that we used today. My how they were so advanced that we still have those kind of people today.
The way we tell history in some of these books in print today is still pretty bad.
Add me to your reading list.
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