Personal Musings category archive

Have you noticed how many Wall Streeters’ rationales for their rapacity boils down to “I’m rich; that proves my actions are virtuous”?

At Psychology Today, Steve Baskin agonizes over “What hath Zuckerberg wrought”? A nugget:

. . . learning how to connect with other humans requires experience with the multitudinous aspects of non-verbal communication. Communicating well is actually an acquired skill that requires practice.

Tweeting, texting and emailing do not provide such practice. Not only are they devoid of the tone and body language necessary for clear communication, but they also lead (I fear) to the pruning of these skills.

As my two or three regular readers know, I am not a fan of Facebook or Twitter. They turn their users into commodities for sale to marketers, while propagating useless idiocy with the same ease with which they propagate useful idiocy–er, information.

Nevertheless, I cannot shake the feeling that, 600 years ago, Baskin would have been agonizing over “What hath Gutenberg wrought.”

White folks, including me, aren’t very good at talking about race with not-white folks. I know that one way I tried to deal with it in the earlier days of desegregation was to ignore ignore it–that is, to be silent.

I have learned that that amounts to ignoring history and reality.

I never pretended that I was somehow “colorblind”; being colorblind does not follow from growing up in a Jim Crow world. Rather, I didn’t know how to bring the subject up in personal terms (though I must say that, thanks to some of my friends, I’m getting better at it).

I have, indeed, been troubled by those who claim that they are “colorblind,” especially when they support policies that clearly are not. For example, persons will claim that they are against affirmative action* because they are “being colorblind,” in the face of the truism that perpetuating existing inequities created through discrimination is ipso facto discriminatory, because it lets the effects of discrimination live on.

At Psychology Today, Monnica Williams attacks the myth of racial and ethnic “colorblindness.” A nugget:

Let’s break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = “People of color — we don’t see you (at least not that bad ‘colored’ part).” As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don’t want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn’t talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can’t talk about it, you can’t understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.

Whites tend to view colorblindness as helpful to people of color by asserting that race does not matter (Tarca, 2005). But in America, most underrepresented minorities will explain that race does matter, as it affects opportunities, perceptions, income, and so much more. When race-related problems arise, colorblindness tends to individualize conflicts and shortcomings, rather than examining the larger picture with cultural differences, stereotypes, and values placed into context. Instead of resulting from an enlightened (albeit well-meaning) position, colorblindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness (Tarca, 2005). White people can guiltlessly subscribe to colorblindness because they are largely unaware of how race affects people of color and American society as a whole.

Be careful when you hear someone espouse “colorblind” policies. It’s more of the code. It means they don’t want discrimination to go away.

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*The EEO enforcement folks where I used to work were adamant that “affirmative action” does not mean selecting the unqualified over the qualified; it means, after the unqualified are weeded out, giving preference to a member of a protected class.

Where I have seen affirmative action improperly implemented–and I have seen that often–it has happened out of managerial misunderstanding or, much more common, incompetence.

As a result of the Penn State pederasty case, the past few weeks seems to have produced a rush of persons admitting that they were sexually abused as children.

Jennifer Marsh, hotline director at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said she had had to add more counselors to handle the growing call load. Online text contacts, which guarantee more anonymity, have rocketed 54 percent.

Many callers mention Penn State and Syracuse and they often seek advice on how to report potential molesters or stop abuse, Marsh said.

“We haven’t seen anything like this before in terms of response on the hotlines,” she said.

Calls to the Childhelp national child sexual abuse hotline are up about 20 percent since charges were filed against Sandusky at the start of November, said Michelle Fingerman, the hotline’s director.

Calls by adults who were victimized as children are up by almost a third, she said.

“We’re just picking up the phone more often, and the calls are longer. They are really more intense,” Fingerman said.

Americans attitudes’ about sex are seriously bent. We are unable to talk about “it,” while at the same time we make celebrities of persons (think Paris Hilton) simply for being able to do “it,” as if no one else ever has or will.

These attitudes help keep victims silent and abet victimizers (and their attorneys), who play on them to keep victims cowed and docile. In a recent column, Monica Yant Kinney described how predators (and their attorneys) use shame to exact silence.

Evil flourishes, not in the locker room showers or in the vestries, but in the silence.

The energies expended over two centuries to change a gospel of love into a canon of hate are most impressive.

On the second night of winter, it is not right to be opening windows at midnight because the house is too warm.

Also, climate change is obviously a hoax.

I’ve been walking around outside in short sleeves.

I’m not trying to prove anything. I’ve been around too long to care about proving anything.

It’s because it’s short-sleeve weather.

This is not a right thing to be able to do in mid-December in these parts.

. . . and a small newt is an eft.

Therefore, if there is a newt about, you have already been efted.

H/T Susan for the thought.

(Misplet word corrected.)

I pay attention to current events, more or less.

I inherited the habit from my news junkie father.

So where was I when the punditry decided that Newt the Gingrinch has a rep for being an intellectual?

As I read this press release (pdf), which someone forwarded to me, it occurred to me that it is notable that so many of wingnut outfits explicitly describe themselves as “Patriot” in their names.

Perhaps it is because, if one considers what they advocate, one would never know . . .

It’s checks and balances when you get what you want, bureaucracy when you don’t.

The sincerity with which someone believes something stupid does not make the stupid any less stupid.

Everyone needs vegetables.

Perhaps the best way to honor the troops would be to stop sending them to die for lies.

Wingnuts’ tolerance of and willingness to justify Herman Cain’s amorous–er–tactics is completely consistent with their view of women’s place in the back seat society.

I used to think that Joe Paterno was one of the few class acts left in big-time college sports.

Not any more.

The office pool has been replaced by a cesspool.

Via Atrios, who has a supplementary comment here.

I date the decline of American business to the time when products (and persons) stopped being “products” (and persons) and became “brands.”

A dream with a YouTube video in it. Weird.

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daniel Daegler reviews the history of All Hallows’ Eve; it’s quite interesting:

It was believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its most transparent at Samhain; spirits of the departed and inhabitants of the “fairy realm” walked abroad in the world and interacted with the living. At Samhain, one was never sure whether a stranger encountered on the road was a person or something else. It was thus in one’s self-interest to show hospitality to anyone knocking on the door after nightfall.

. . . while another little story presages the future of Thanksgiving. Interesting it’s not. Indeed, it’s rather vile, in a filthy mammon kind of way:

Macy’s Inc. says it will open all of its namesake stores at midnight following Thanksgiving for the first time as the department store operator becomes the latest retailer to expand hours on the traditional kickoff to the holiday season.

Aside:

And pfui on the whole zombie thing.

Fox News is eating enough brains already.

My ancestors wore the gray.

I can honor their memory without honoring (or repeating) their errors.

Via Contradict Me.