Blogging Intro to Political Theory

Women in Middle Management

2010-02-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

Author BJ Gallagher, who has been a boss and worked for male and female bosses, has a list of tips she's titled, "How to Tell a Male Boss From a Female Boss." Among the helpful hints:

1· A male boss is aggressive; a female boss is pushy.
2.· A male boss is attentive to details; a female boss is picky.·
3. He knows how to follow through; she doesn't know when to quit.·
4. He's ambitious; she's driven.·
5. He loses his temper occasionally; she can't control her emotions.·
6. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks; she's mouthy.·
7. He's a man of action; she's impulsive.·
8. He controls his emotions; she's cold.·
9. He thinks before he acts; she can't make up her mind.·
10. He thinks before he speaks; she second-guesses herself.·
11. He tells it like it is; she's tactless.

The list might read like an e-mail forward that people laugh at, but considering the average American woman earns approximately 21 percent less than the average man, is there any truth to these perceptions?

"I can tell you that the exact same behavior is judged differently, depending on whether it's a male or a female doing the behavior. This is true at all levels in the organization," says Gallagher, author of "Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Other Women."

It's all about perceptions.

Vicky Oliver, author of "Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers and Other Office Idiots," says she sees the differences in how people perceive professional men and women. Oliver says leaders of both genders can show aggression and still be accepted by their employees. The problem arises for midlevel professionals.

"Yelling, berating underlings, slamming doors, throwing chairs and loud, truculent phone conversations with vendors on speakerphone that everyone can hear can sometimes be career-stallers," Oliver explains. "If a woman acts out, underlings will gossip about her, and eventually their whispers will be overheard by someone in top management. If a man in the middle behaves in the same way, sometimes underlings will strive to ally with him. They may perceive that he is powerful or protected. His behavior is still errant, but it's less likely to get him in trouble because he'll have more allies to defend him if push comes to shove."

Obviously, abrasive behavior isn't the entire problem. How people react to it is also an issue, and it carries over into other types of workplace behavior.

"Crying is the worst emotion to show at the office, and unfortunately, this is generally a female response," Oliver says. "Crying makes everyone around you feel like you're weak and out of control, and it will positively unnerve some men in the office who won't know how to react.

Crying seems to be mildly acceptable in certain circumstances (such as when a female employee is laid off); it's never acceptable as a response to a disagreement or office showdown."

Naturally, if people didn't let tears unnerve them, becoming emotional wouldn't be a problem. But the fact that we use "emotional" to describe tears -- but not screaming -- alludes to the problem, considering that they're both effects of an emotion.

Beware of the 'crazy' womanClinical social worker Irina Firstein has been a therapist for more than 20 years and has seen the problem firsthand.

"Unfortunately, it has been my experience that the workplace is more forgiving of a man than a woman," Firstein says. "A man being emotional usually means inability to control temper. A woman being emotional is being 'crazy.'"

In Firstein's opinion, the problem doesn't come only from men. She says women are more tolerant of a man's unfavorable behavior than a woman's. As a result, a strong woman is seen as competition by male and female colleagues alike, putting her in a tougher spot than her male counterparts.

Oliver suggests you try to understand the behavior. You don't have to like it, but you might be able to handle it with less bias.

"I feel that sometimes people react at the office in a similar way as they've been conditioned to in their personal lives," she says. Fits of rage could be the result of upbringing or a current household, not necessarily your performance. "If you happen to be on the receiving end of [someone's] outbursts, it's helpful to remind yourself that most over-the-top reactions are not about business ... it is personal, and it's about something in that person's life that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. The person is just venting steam."

Does that mean you have to accept what's happening? No. Learning how to deal with an angry boss is one thing; learning how to stand up for yourself is another.

Know when to speak up If you're a woman, you could find yourself in this situation more often than you'd like. Author Judy Hoffman still remembers a specific instance when she let intimidation get the best of her.

"I was the only woman on the executive team of our small chemical manufacturing company. At meetings, whenever I would voice my opinion, one male chauvinist -- the vice president of manufacturing -- would sit with his head in his hands, elbows on the table, looking down at the floor," Hoffman says. "It was very clear what he was saying: 'Why in the world would this woman be allowed to sit at the same table with us men, daring to give advice to the president of the company?'"

Hoffman hadn't received that kind of hostility while at the company for 16 years prior to his arrival, and she didn't confront him on the issue.

"To this day, I'm embarrassed that I did not deal with it better as I let it fluster me," she recalls.
"But it didn't make me stop speaking up when called for."

Even if Hoffman didn't address the VP, she didn't let him alter her behavior because she knew the problem was his and not hers. When you think about it, if an outspoken woman is going to be called mouthy and a quiet one will be labeled a pushover, what do you have to lose by being strong-willed?

Anthony Balderrama is a writer and blogger for CareerBuilder.com and its job blog, The Work Buzz. He researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/abalderrama.

On Female Genital Mutilation

2010-01-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

Our daughters should not be cut
Female genital mutilation isn't just a problem in other countries. It's happening here, and we need to face it
By Lynn Harris

Salon

FGM in the USA Some girls came back from this past winter break with Christmas loot, ski tans, still more to say about "Twilight: New Moon." But others, women's health experts suspect, came back with deep, and literal, wounds to heal. According to human rights advocates and service providers, families in the U.S. who have immigrated from countries where female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced often take their daughters home, when school is out, to be cut.

Yes, FGM is practiced -- or at least planned -- on U.S. soil, on girls in immigrant families who were born and/or raised here. Perhaps even among people you know: Not long ago, a concerned mother posted on my Brooklyn-area parenting list-serv that she believed an eight-year-old friend of her daughter's had undergone some form of the procedure in her home country in the Middle East (and appeared to be markedly traumatized). Archana Pyati, an asylum attorney for Sanctuary for Families in New York, has encountered dozens of FGM cases just in the past six months.

"The majority of our African clients have been through it, and most often, they are fighting to protect their daughters," she says. (Older relatives with "seniority" often push for the procedure.) "It is our hope that by recognizing that FGM may be occurring under our noses we will become better able to respond to it, just as we would any other form of violence against children," she says.

Right now, though, that's not happening. While numerous countries, cities, and villages on other continents have made significant strides toward prohibiting and preventing the procedure -- and while it's been outlawed by U.S. federal law since 1996 and is also illegal in 17 states -- its practice by immigrant families here is, by all anecdotal reports, only increasing. Yet there remains practically no way to address it any way other than case by brutal, heartbreaking case.

"The silence hasn't been broken here," says Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now. "It's an issue that affects thousands of [U.S.] girls, some of whom were born here, and yet no one is really paying attention."

FGM refers to several different traditional rite-of-passage practices in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East that involve the cutting of female genitals -- from a ceremonial pinprick to "clitoridectomy" to removal of part or all of the external genitalia -- for non-medical reasons such as "to reduce woman's libido and help her resist â€˜illicit' sexual acts." Health consequences include severe pain and bleeding, hemorrhaging, chronic infection, infertility, painful intercourse, post-traumatic stress, pregnancy complications possibly fatal to the baby, and death of the victim herself. FGM is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of women and girls, reflecting, as the World Health Organization puts it, a "deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and [constituting] an extreme form of discrimination against women." In her recent landmark speech on global reproductive health, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cited an estimated 70 million victims of FGM among the "intolerable" statistics of women's lives worldwide; the World Health Organization says it's as high as 150 million. In the U.S., according to Equality Now, 228,000 women and girls are estimated to have undergone or to be at risk for FGM -- a old number long said to be on the rise.

Yet only one case has been prosecuted in the United States, ever; the circumstances were so anomalous, however, that some advocates say it doesn't even really count. ("We always thought the first one would be a girl who bleeds to death, but that hasn't been the case," says Bien-Aime.) Most U.S.-based cases of FGM, or its threat, fly way under the radar -- especially when its victims travel out of the country. Reporting, even addressing it at all, is stymied by its deep cultural entrenchment and misplaced "sensitivity" by some outsiders. And, of course, the practice affects primarily girls of color, poor ones at that: pretty much as marginalized and bottom-rung as you get.

Consider New York, whose metropolitan area is considered to have the highest number of women and girls potentially affected by cutting. In the past, New York City's Administration for Children's Services has worked with Sauti Yetu Center for African Women in the Bronx to provide community forums and awareness trainings for ACS staff -- but no more. In fact, an ACS spokesperson said that "the issue of FGM has rarely if ever come across our work in New York City." Today, search for "female genital" at nyc.gov, and you get a bunch of stuff about STDs. New York state law bans FGM of minors, criminalizing both the person who performs the procedure as well as the parent or guardian who OKs it. The law also requires the state Office of Children and Family Services to establish "education, preventive and outreach" activities in communities where FGM is traditionally practiced. According to reports, however, not much of that has happened in a decade; officials confirmed that there is no particular program in place today. Versions of a bill that would require the state to report to the governor annually on its efforts to address FGM has passed the state assembly repeatedly since 1995 but has died a thousand deaths in the Senate. (Re-re-reintroduced in January 2009 by Assemblywoman Barbara Clark of Queens, the bill is currently cooling its heels in the Senate's Health subcommittee.) Likewise, according to Bien-Aime and others, little is happening at the federal level, where similar laws both criminalize the act and require outreach. (The Office of Women's Health did not return repeated calls and emails.)

Much of the work of intervention has therefore fallen to advocacy groups like Equality Now, along with community-based and service organizations such as Sauti Yetu and Sanctuary for Families (SFF). Sanctuary for Families does outreach through schools and community groups, trying to educate both girls and the adults they see -- teachers, guidance counselors -- about the risks and realities of FGM, offering (for one thing) in-school clinics that give girls the opportunity to raise the issue. "We ask if any students would like to meet with lawyers who can answer questions about immigration and then we raise the issue one-on-one if it seems relevant, based on their country of origin," explains Pyati. "We might learn that they're afraid, or that they have a classmate who is." Sanctuary asks guidance counselors to reassure students that any conversation they have with a Sanctuary lawyer will be confidential, and works to "make sure they know that FGM is a very serious form of violence," says Pyati.

While school officials are mandated reporters of child abuse, possible cases of FGM may give them -- and other adults in a position to suspect it -- pause. Is it a "cultural" practice that others somehow must respect? Is reporting it anti-Muslim? Will a child be summarily removed from her home -- from an otherwise loving family who bears no other threat of violence? Such concern are misplaced, says Pyati. For one thing, FGM is a social custom, not a religious practice. Also, reporting a suspicion of child abuse does not always or automatically result in separation of the family in question. That said, "It's a mistake to assume that FGM is a stand-alone event," she says. "FGM, a serious violation of human rights, is performed in a context of discrimination and violence against women. Where a girl's rights are so compromised that she has to undergo a painful procedure that is potentially life-threatening and carries life-long physical and psychological consequences, it can indicate that other forms of abuse may be ongoing." Physical and psychological abuse may be used to force a girl to submit to FGM; FGM may be a way of preparing a girl for a marriage against her will, to which she has no right to object. And once she is married, her family may force her to bear children, have sex and endure other gender-related violence.

Says Pyati: "We report child abuse. Why wouldn't we report a form of violence against a girl that will change her body for the rest of her life?"

The profound, centuries-old ingrainment of the practice -- some believe un-"circumcised" women are possessed by the devil, for example -- also makes it hard for large groups like Equality Now to form coalitions with local groups in immigrant communities. The people those groups represent "don't want to talk about it," Bien-Aime says. "They feel overwhelmed just by being here. They're struggling with finding jobs and sending their kids to school. They're like, â€˜Are you crazy? That's at the bottom of the list. Why are you so obsessed with my daughter's genitals?'"

And at the level of law enforcement, advocates say, bans on the procedure stateside don't go nearly far enough. There are "circumcisers" who do the job in the U.S., hush-hush, a whole series in one afternoon, says Bien-Aime. But if we're not catching them, how are we to track those who perform the procedure on U.S. girls in to their home countries? Only Georgia and Nevada's anti-FGM laws include so-called "vacation provisions," which criminalize the removal of a child from the state to subject her to FGM. Advocates say such provisions must be universal.

Even then, prosecution, or at least protection, would still be dependent on someone speaking up, someone dropping a dime. In the UK, France, and Belgium, for example, women's groups who work with refugees will call partner grassroots groups in Senegal or Mali to let them know that one of their families is heading home with their daughter. The local African group will meet that family at the airport, follow them to their village, and warn them that their daughters had better stay "intact" or their papers will be compromised. "We are light years away from that," says Bien-Aime. "No one says it's easy or not sensitive but you have to start someplace. We need to raise awareness with campaigns like those we've seen for sexual harassment or domestic violence or anti-smoking," she continues, noting that many immigrant families arrive here after spending years in refugee camps, unaware that their own countries have taken steps to end the practice. "All the relevant providers need to be in touch and know what FGM is and how to protect the girls, and where we punish those who perpetuate it. The law is a deterrent. All you need is one case to start the process."

Bien-Aime recalls the case of a 15-year-girl in New York City, forcibly married to an older man, who called Equality Now to say she'd overheard that her 9-year-old and 9-month-old cousins were being sent back to Gambia to be cut. "I scrambled to find a social worker from Gambia to go into the house and talk to the family, but I couldn't," says Bien-Aime. The 15-year-old finally warned her cousin, who went to a school counselor, who sent someone to try to intervene. That worked -- mostly. "The 9-year-old was left behind for that summer vacation, but we have every reason to believe the 9-month-old was cut," Bien-Aime says. "She was a U.S.-born child. It happens. Her cousin was just lucky."

Cat-Calling and Misogyny

2008-05-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

Racialicious

When Catcalling Isn’t Just an Annoyance
by Latoya Peterson

A while back, I wrote about how catcalling affects women, specifically saying:
When a man feels like he has the “right” to force me to stop and speak to him, it is a whole other game entirely.

Complicating matters are the risks faced by women in our society. One in six women will become the victim of a sexual assault. Most people (men and women) do not recognize what is defined as sexual assault. According to Byron Hurt’s documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes reveals more statistics: Black women are 35% more likely to be assaulted than white women. Only 7% of black women report being assaulted.

I have been sexually assaulted. The majority of my female friends have as well, running the gamut from being groped and restrained to molest to being raped at 13 years of age.

What men think is a game has completely different stakes for women.

Essential Presence writes about the terrible aftermath to some of these situations. In a post entitled “Why Bother With Calling me a Bitch When You Can Just Shoot Me?” she notes:
There was a time when if you rebuffed a stranger’s advances, if you didn’t give him your phone number he would just call you a bitch and tell you that you aren’t shit. And as his friends laughed at his witty response they would all walk or drive off.

Now, young Black women have to choose between some bug-a-boo calling their cell phone or risk getting shot. 18-year-old Mildred Beaubrun and her friends were getting gas and something to drink at a gas station after a night out when they came across a vehicle of animals who wanted a phone number.

“Hey, baby, what’s your phone number?” they called out as the cars traveled west through Orlando.

Then the banter grew more aggressive. The men threw a T-shirt, then an AA battery, at the Nissan. One of the women threw a broken cell-phone charger back. At one point, the HHR swerved into the Nissan’s lane and tried to run the car off the road.

When the Nissan turned north on John Young Parkway, the HHR followed. Then, at Princeton Street, a shot rang out. Shrapnel flew as the bullet pierced the door and struck 18-year-old Beaubrun, who was sitting in the back seat.

Now, instead of preparing to graduate from high school next month, she’s lying unconscious in an Orlando hospital where doctors aren’t sure if she’ll live, and if she does whether she’ll walk again. Mildred’s two friends, who were in the car with her, are okay…physically anyway.

But I can’t help but wonder how they will react and feel when another man asks them for their phone number. I can imagine the fear of entering social settings for fear they will attract the attention of the opposite sex. At such a young age, already jaded by the opposite sex (if they hadn’t been already). Now, instead of the possibility of coming across a violent, dangerous lover they are made to fear all men. How sad to feel fear instead of that tingle or giddiness when a guy seems interested.
[…]

[This was not a jilted ex-boyfriend] but a random guy, strangers who thought they had the right to have whatever woman they wanted. In their eyes, after all, Mildred and her friends were nothing but property; they definitely weren’t people (of equal standing and deserving of respect) able to make their own decisions about something as minute as giving out the phone number to the cell phone they pay for.

Misogyny in Armed Forces

2008-05-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know just how bad. Colonel Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army, grabbed the audience's attention at a panel called Women in the Military, hosted last month by Women Center Stage in New York City, when she said that one in three women in the military is sexually abused by her male colleagues. Ann wants to see huge signs displaying this statistic in every recruiting office, to let young women know what to expect if they sign up.

After 26 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves, Ann went on to serve in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps for fifteen years, receiving the State Department's Award for Heroism in 1997. She helped open the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2002 and then was Deputy Chief of Mission in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. But in 2003 she resigned from the Diplomatic Corps, saying, "I have served my country for almost thirty years in the some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world. However, I do not believe in the policies of this Administration," referring to the invasion of Iraq. Since then, she has advocated tirelessly for peace.

She described first hand accounts from witnesses and seeing photographs that document an atrocious rape that ended in the murder of a female US soldier in Iraq, which the military had reported as a suicide. She pointed out that even in the handful of cases resulting in court martial and conviction, few perpetrators have served any prison time.

Two other young veterans, Kelly Dougherty and Jen Hogg, described life in the military for women today.

Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, now Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and former chair of its Board of Directors, told of a veteran who calmly described killing an Iraqi while she breast-fed her baby. To Kelly, this was just one example of the incredible disconnect veterans live with and of the brutalization that everyone in the armed forces is subjected to. She noted, however, that this is new for women, since for the first time in US history so many women are participating in combat situations.

Sgt. Jennifer Hogg of IVAW and Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) explained that women are automatically excluded from the infantry because they are considered unfit to do on-the-ground fighting. Jennifer granted that while some but not all women aren't suitable for infantry service, some men aren't capable either. She declared that categorically excluding women from the infantry is not only arbitrary but another of the many visible ways that women in the military are regarded as second-class citizens, ripe for abuse.

It's not just a matter of promotions. Women are given only the basic training that everyone receives; they do not get advanced infantry training. However in the everyday reality of the Iraq occupation, women are routinely thrust into situations that require infantry skills. They then find themselves in combat situations for which they are not prepared.

However, the greatest danger that military women in Iraq and Afghanistan face is from their male peers and officers. More women there are the victims of sexual assault than of injuries from hazardous military duties. Reuters reported as far back as 1995, "Ninety percent of women under 50 who have served in the US military and who responded to a survey report being victims of sexual harassment, and nearly one-third of the respondents of all ages say they have been raped."

Blatant sexism and misogyny are at the root of this high rate of violence against these women who just want to defend their country.

Some military training actually encourages violence thus adding greatly to the inherent violence of war. Jennifer described training while "jodies" were ringing in her ears -- the cadences that sing about a soldier's trashy girlfriend having sex with a civilian who is not as good a man as he. She first heard these chants while serving as a mechanic in the New York Army National Guard from 2000-2005. The "jodies" were crafted to engender men's rage: at women, at non-military men and at "the other."

According to Jennifer, some men join the army for honor but also to belong to a group that permits them to express their aggression. She questions whether such motivations are any different than those of the young men who join gangs. So, she asked, why would we be surprised when these super-aggressive men behave brutally toward Iraqi civilians or towards women?
She says most of their male counterparts view women in the military as either "dykes," "whores," or "bitches." These women must cope with these grotesque distortions on a daily basis.

Kelly, who served as a medic and in a military police unit, says that misogyny is rampant and seldom countered from above. She described how bitter that is when a woman knows that the first duty of an officer is to care for those in her or his command. She is convinced that officers' failure to protect the women serving under them has contributed fundamentally to the serious breakdown of good military operations in Iraq. Betrayal by one's own chain of command is devastating to women, and ultimately, everyone suffers.

Kelly and Jennifer both also noted the lack of female solidarity, declaring that women simply cannot bond in that culture. (I had to remind myself that the men in this culture cannot bond with their peers to resist certain kinds of abuses either.) In August of 2006 at Camp Casey I heard such first hand accounts from returning male veterans. One watched a peer shooting Iraqi children from their vehicle, much as some boys will shoot animals. Though horrified, he says that in this environment, he was neither able to stop that marine nor could he come to the defense of a comrade who tried to stop him.

So it is not surprising that in this environment, women seldom come to one another's defense. Women who report abuse are often punished instead of helped, creating even greater fear among their peers.

Neither Jennifer nor Kelly thinks that having more women officers at higher ranks would change anything. They say the "divide to conquer" system, which begins by conquering U.S. recruits' moral values, permeates the military.

Jennifer brought up another issue; as a lesbian, she knew discrimination had started when the "don't ask, don't tell" provisions were read to her before she signed up.

Already in the Army National Guard, she was activated for duty on September 11th.

Surrounded by soldiers hugging and kissing loved ones before being deployed, Jennifer's partner was unable to support her in the same way. By then, having already been exposed to the "jodies," Jennifer became increasingly aware of the system's brutality and the many injustices it perpetrates.

In every area women are not treated as equals, not respected. "The shoes for women are of poorer quality and women's uniforms fit tightly to emphasize her body," Jennifer told us.

Since mechanics and welders are deployed as infantry, from which women are excluded, Jennifer was not deployed as a mechanic even though she was qualified. She ultimately left the service, unable to reconcile her conscience with the treatment of minorities, the injustices, and the invasion. She now works in the GI peace movement.

Like many young people from blue-collar communities, Jennifer turned to the military for
opportunities. She trained as a mechanic, a field that few women enter or consider a likely occupation for such a small, beautiful young woman.

Ann pointed out that many recruits join for the education they can get. "Almost no one joins the military because they want to kill people," she commented. Both Kelly, who went to college, and Jennifer, who learned a trade, received their educations as a result of military service.

Traditionally, the U.S. military has been good to its veterans, providing not only education but health care and good retirement. However my friends at Camp Casey decried the "economic draft" that exists today: working class young people with little future sign up disproportionately.

Ann suggests that if there were another kind of national service, many of these young people would never enlist. If the United States offered free post secondary education to qualified persons like other developed nations do, the number of young people who enlist would be greatly reduced.

All three women are proud of their military service. Though appalled at the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, they still feel very connected to the military. Kelly expressed sadness and disappointment that people who see her wearing her military jacket remark that is must belong to her boyfriend or husband. She served at great risk to her own life in Hungary, Croatia and Iraq and is now using her skills to stop the abuse of her service by the very people who should respect its integrity.

I would not have understood the pride these women feel about their service before I went to Camp Casey.

As my friend, Patrice Schexnayder of Texas Impact, an interfaith group working for justice, said:

"The military at its best is not about weapons that destroy buildings and the life within, photographed by satellite or spy plane, and totally bloodless, all in the name of aggression. It is about staying awake and on guard, while others sleep."

Kelly and Jennifer were key organizers of the Winter Soldier event in March. Their skillful negotiation made the session on gender in the military possible in spite of initial resistance by some of their male colleagues. They spoke of it as a beginning, an opening of the door. I think it is a major victory.

The three women veterans of this panel are true Warriors, horrified at the way the U.S. uses their service in Iraq and Afghanistan, but nonetheless willing to serve to protect us.

It was a privilege to hear these women tell their stories.

Contemporary Sexual Harassment

2008-05-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Culture affects how teen girls see harassment

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 15, 2008) − Teenage girls of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds still experience sexism and sexual harassment – but cultural factors may control whether they perceive sexism as an environmental problem or as evidence of their own shortcomings.

A study of 600 girls between the ages of 12 and 18, from California and Georgia, included young women who identified as Latina (49 percent), White (23 percent ), African-American (9 percent), Asian American (7.5 percent) and multi-ethnic or other (7.5 percent) was conducted by researchers Christia Brown, assistant professor, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, and Campbell Leaper, professor, Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Cruz. Participants were asked about experiences with sexual harassment and any discouraging comments they received in traditionally male-dominated areas such as math, science, computers and sports.

Ninety percent of girls reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once. Specifically, 67 percent of girls reported receiving unwanted romantic attention, 62 percent were exposed to demeaning gender-related comments, 58 percent were teased because of their appearance, 52 percent received unwanted physical contact and 25 percent were bullied or threatened with harm by a male. 52 percent of girls also reported receiving discouraging gender-based comments on the math, science and computer abilities, usually from male peers, and 76 percent of girls reported sexist comments on their athletic abilities, again predominantly from male peers.

The researchers found that girls have different levels of understanding of sexism and sexual harassment, which may affect reporting data. Older girls and those from a lower socioeconomic background reported more sexism than did their peers. Latin and Asian American girls reported less sexual harassment than did girls of other ethnic groups. Girls who had been exposed to feminist ideas, either through the media or an adult such as a mother or teacher, were more likely to identify and report sexist behavior than were girls who had no information about feminism. Girls who reported feeling pressure from their parents to conform to gender stereotypes were also more likely to perceive sexism. Girls who felt atypical for their gender and/or were unhappy with stereotypical gender roles were most likely to report sexism and harassment.

Brown and Leaper note that it is important for girls to be able to identify sexism and sexual harassment as environmental factors, lest they attribute negative experiences to their own faults and suffer erosion of self-esteem. Frequent sexual harassment may lead girls to expect and accept demeaning behaviors in heterosexual romantic relationships, and sexist remarks.
###
The full study appears in the May/June issue of Child Development, Vol. 79, Issue 3, under the title "Perceived Experiences with Sexism Among Adolescent Girls." From a UK computer or with a UK Libraries login, the publication may be accessed at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/cdev.

Amanda Marcotte, This Christmas You Can Buy Her Affection

2007-12-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

I've been happy this year to read a couple of blog posts written by men just slamming the ever-living shit out of the popular holiday commercial message, "All women are whores, just set the price." Otherwise known as ads pushing luxury goods like diamonds and cars with a fairly unmistakeable message.

These ads go far beyond just saying, "Hey, it's fun to spoil someone you love on occasion," and straight into making rather fucked up insinuations about how marriage and heterosexual relationships are transactional--her love and sex for your baubles. That women give love because they love and have sex because they desire doesn't enter the equation. There was one ad awhile back that was pretty close to explicit on this--a guy runs through the streets declaring he loves a woman. She's angry with him for his romantic and inexpensive gesture. He presents a diamond. Now she likes him again. Women's affections are a commodity, says the ad, not a normal human expression.

But I've seen a series of blog posts that take on these ads not just because they insult women, but because they insult men as well, another important point that needs to be made. Jamie at

Masculinity and Its Discontents: For some reason this one really gets to me. Scene: woman kicking back on the couch, watching the tube, as her young-architect/artist skinny, t-shirted, sandy-haired studmuffin puts the finishing touches on her pedicure, blowing gently on her toes.

He: How's it look, sweetie?
She: It looks great!
He: I dunno, I think maybe they could use one more coat.
Cut to smarmy announcer: because you're not that guy, go buy jewelry at Bob's.

You're not that guy, you're not caring, you're not patient, you're not creative, you're not gentle, y ou're not even good looking (to your woman). It makes me want to scream BE THAT GUY, MEN, once in a while, just be that guy. Stop buying the most overpriced, overvalued, falsely inflated, harvested-by-near-slave-labor stones in the history of humankind and DO something for your woman, talk to your woman, listen to your woman, pamper your woman as you'd like her to pamper her man. Don't buy her, do the damn labor! (and then maybe buy her something nice afterwards, sure. And ladies, it's your turn, buy your man some bling, show him you own him! Yes, I have a double standard, yes yes yes I do! I wanna be owned!)

Then MarkH blogs about this deeply fucked up diamond ad.

A special diamond to purchase sexual fidelity! Awesome. If any real demographic research went into this marketing, instead of just guesswork, then we have alarming evidence of the paranoid mindset of a lot of men. Between this and the ads that imply that you, the customer, are so hard up for sex from your own wife that you're desperate enough to pony up thousands of dollars, I'm forced to conclude that the marketers are just exploiting paranoia, because otherwise I'm forced to conclude that a far greater percentage of Americans live life on constant sexual intrigue than really seems possible.

Copyranter is also insulted:*
If my future wife bangs the entire roster of the Manchester United football squad a week after I give her a HOF diamond, do I get 100 times my money back?

You know, if you could sell it with a guarantee like that, there could be a lot of potential for non-monogamous couples to make some money for themselves.

Also, how many women out there are dumb enough to find it delightful to get a ring that says "Monogamy" on it? Like, is it fun to get a bauble that implies that you need to have your fidelity secured with expensive and glittery things?

Copyranter also found this one:

PZ derides these ads for making men look stupid.
I can tell you exactly what would happen if I spent a month's salary or more on jewelry (or worse, a year's income on a car). My wife would look aghast, and waver between calling the hospital for an immediate psychiatric consult and kicking me in the groin. I would spend that much on inessential frippery? Without consulting her? There sure wouldn't be any sexual arousal, unless these commercial makers easily confuse that sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach at the thought of budget-busting debt with "sexy."

I'm certainly not averse to the concept of getting enthusiastic about giving or receiving gifts. I'm a sucker for it. But when the main selling point of a gift is, "I am so expensive that it puts the recipient into an informal debt to you to be repaid with sex, monogamy, etc.", then it's not about the fun anymore and starts to get creepy.

*His entire blog is a hoot, by the way. There was exactly 0% chance that this ad could have gone the other way and shown the dolls doing it cowgirl style and then moving onto cunnilingus.

Announcement to Govt 180 Sections

2007-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a slight change of plan. I will need to administer the assessment test during the exam period. The assessment test will be the same one you took at the beginning of the semester and will be 33 questions long. Students will receive extra credit for anything over a 70%.

Ric Caric

Racism and the Right

2007-12-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

White Backlash and the Right
Submitted by David Neiwert on December 4, 2007 - 7:08pm.

Recently the New York Times carried a report on the "noose incidents" that have been occurring with rising frequency around the country, inspired seemingly by the protests over the "Jena 6" case.

The report came complete with a graphic showing where the incidents have occurred. Remarkably, it isn't just happening in the South: the incidents are also being reported in places like Minneapolis; Cicero, Ill.; Pittsburgh; Philadelphia; Newark; Baltimore; and New London, Conn.

Equally striking was the analysis from Mark Potok, the SPLC's Intelligence Project director, who wrote:

These incidents are worrying, but even more so is the social reality they reflect. The level of hate crimes in the United States is astoundingly high — more than 190,000 incidents per year, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.

And the number of hate groups, according to the annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has shot up 40 percent in recent years, from 602 groups in 2000 to 844 in 2006.

It seems that the September rally in Jena — much as it was seen by many civil rights activists as the beginning of a new social movement — signaled not a renewed march toward racial and social justice, but a surprisingly broad and deep white backlash against the gains of black America.

Indeed, as Digby observes, "The racist beast is clamoring to be set free." The old once again is new: there's a "new racism" that pretends to be daring new thinking, dashing the molds of political correctness, but really is just the same old shit recycled. And it's not even relegated strictly to the right: Witness, for the most recent example, William Saletan's sally into the rancid fields of eugenics.

That this is happening is acutely clear for African Americans, historically the chief victims of racist hate in America, as the noose episodes suggest. But it's also becoming true on a broader scale as well, with a rising tide of openly espoused ethnic bigotry manifesting itself in myriad ways, particularly on the immigration front, where Latinos are increasingly targeted by rhetoric emanating from the very highest levels of Republican leadership that manifests itself in a tide of hate crimes; and in the "war on terror," which has provided for an opening for a variety of right-wing figures to spew hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric, with similarly predictable consequences.

One kind of hate feeds another; one open expression of bigotry without significant consequence only provides permission for many more to follow, and the inherent violence of such talk inevitably gives permission for people to act it out. Thus this shifting social tide has, just as predictably, brought the broader result of a significant increase in bias crimes of all kinds across the country.

And the breadth of the tide also tells us that this is not really about blacks or Latinos or Muslims specifically, but is about the people who fear and despise them: white people. It's about defending white privilege.

And there has been one primary driver for this gravitational shift: generically, the conservative movement, and specifically, its wholly owned subsidiary, the Republican Party.

You can hear the push to defend "white culture" from nearly every sector of the right, from Bill O'Reilly:

But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right.

To Patrick Buchanan:

I think America may exist, but I'll tell you this: I do believe we're going to lose the American Southwest. I think it is almost inevitable. If we do not put a fence on that border ... you're going to have 100 million Hispanics in the country, most of them new immigrants from Mexico, which believes that belongs to them. What's going to happen to us, Sean, in my judgment, is what is happening right now: We are Balkanizing. We are dividing and separating from one another politically, morally -- on issues like abortion or Terri Schiavo -- racially and ethnically, when you get Jena and then you get Don Imus, and all of these things ripping us apart. All the things that used to pull us together and hold us together no longer do.

To Michael Savage:
But basically, if you're talking about a day like today, Martin Luther King Junior Day, and you're gonna understand what civil rights has become, the con it's become in this country. It's a whole industry; it's a racket. It's a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males' birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn't qualify for it.

This is nothing new, of course. The defense of white privilege has been a cornerstone of the GOP's electoral appeal ever since the its ardent adoption of the Southern Strategy, dating back to Goldwater and Nixon and continiuing through the Reagan and Bush years. Even Republican strategists acknowledge this to be the case.

Joseph Aistrup, in his book The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South -- a text written primarily to influence GOP politicos -- observes the following:

When a GOP presidential candidate’s campaign strategy emphasizes racially conservative appeals, he identifies not only himself but his party as the one that protects white interests. The identification of the GOP, instead of the Southern Democrats, as the protector of white interests, combined with the large infusion of blacks into the Southern Democratic parties, opens the door for Southern whites to abandon their historic ties to the Democrats.
It's critical to understand, however, that the Southern Strategy wasn't geared simply toward winning votes in the South -- it also is aimed at white suburbs and rural areas where the defense of white society remains a significant cultural issue. Its reach ran well beyond the South.

One way of seeing this clearly is by examining the history of "sundown towns". As James Loewen details (excruciatingly) in his study Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, there are literally thousands of towns across America -- relatively few of them in the South -- who for much of the 20th century forbade minorities, blacks especially, from living within their communities. Many of them placed signs at the town limits warning "Whites Only After Dark" or "Nigger, Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here" -- that all nonwhites were to be out of town by sundown. In many cases, especially suburbs, no signs were visible, but all-white covenants provided the same effect.

Most of the "sundown towns" and "sundown suburbs" that Loewen documents were in the Northeast, the Midwest and West -- the same places where we're seeing "noose incidents," as well as attempts to pass laws aimed at driving out Latinos.

These same "sundown towns" have, unsurprisingly, a history of following racial election appeals, including broad support for George Wallace in 1968, and Republican presidential candidates in the ensuing years, all of whom made use of the Southern Strategy's core appeal to white racial interests. As Loewen notes:

As a result of such leadership, Republicans have carried most sundown towns since 1968, sometimes achieving startling unaninimity. ... So the "southern strategy" turned out to be a "southern and sundown town strategy," especially in sundown suburbs. Macomb County, for example, the next county north of Detroit, voted overwhelmingly for Wallace in the 1972 Democratic primary. Wooed by Nixon, many of these voters then became "Reagan Democrats" and now are plain Republicans. The biggest single reason, according to housing attorney Alexander Polikoff, was anxiety about "blacks trapped in ghettos trying to penetrate white neighborhoods." [pp.372-373]

Take a look at where the nooses are appearing, where the anti-Latino and anti-Muslim hate crimes are occurring. If you look through the incidents, it's clear that many of them are occurring in precincts that, historically, were all-white by design.

It's part of the continuing defense of that status quo in those communities that engenders so much of the nation's current racial divide -- with bias crimes, as always the on-the-ground manifestation.

I know that Democrats have been tempted to try to tap into this tide to their short-term electoral advantage; witness Rahm Emanuel and Co.'s attempts to advance an immigration plan that's absurdly enforcement-heavy and reform-light.Before they take that step, they need to stop and think about the consequences. Not just the electoral calculus, considering what it would cost Democrats in terms of the votes of blacks, Latinos, and Muslims who are flocking to them now because of the GOP's increasingly inchoate bigotry, but the real-life results. They need to think about those nooses, and where they come from, and simply do what is right.

Is Feminism Dead?

2007-11-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

Is feminism dead?
Posted by Courtney E. Martin
27 November 2007

What picture pops into your mind when you read the word feminist? Is it a woman layered in petticoats with a big, swooping hat, picketing the white house for her right to vote? Is it Gloria Steinem in her aviator glasses, sleek, straight hair hanging down both sides of her pretty face?

These are the dominant images that so many people associate with feminist history, and for good reason. The first image—the suffragist—represents the so-called “first wave” of feminist history. These women, philosophizing and organizing, from the late 1800s through the 1930s, were primarily focused on legal and institutional changes that would allow women to gain more
power and autonomy.

The “second wave,” then, was most active in the 1960s and 1970s, and was concerned with social and psychological liberation (think dishes, contraception, and objectification). This era is best explained by its most effective slogan: the personal is the political. (Disclaimer: This, of course, is only a modern western history I’m referring to. Feminism has taken all kinds of triumphant and fascinating forms in other parts of the world, at other times.)

But what about now? Is feminism, as Time magazine and other short-sighted publications like to claim, dead?

Well of course not. My vibrant community of feminist friends and I are, last time I checked, breathing. Our hearts are pumping new feminist blood. Our minds—the most educated in history—are formulating visions of what feminism can and will be in the twenty-first century.
We are sometimes called “third wave,” though perhaps it could even be argued we are the fourth, after our Gen X older sisters and mentors (women like Deborah Siegel, Daisy Hernandez, Jennifer Baumgardner, Amy Richards, Sarah Jones, etc.).

My vision of feminism is defined by three major components: educated choice, genuine equality, and radical authenticity. Ask my friend Jessica or my pal Daniel and you will get slightly different answers, but you can bet that we’ll all be talking in the same general language and in the same philosophical country.

Educated choice: Both men and women need to have access to choices and, even more, they need to have the tools necessary to make good choices. It is not enough to just say that women should have access to abortions, for example. They also need to know all of their options and feel like they have a full understanding of the health risks and quality of life issues that each entails; they also need to have the economic provisions to make whichever choice fits their lives and values best.

Genuine Equality: We all deserve the same opportunities, the same access. This is a pretty straight forward concept in theory, but in practice, it is hellishly complicated. Take something like U.S. college admissions. Sure anyone can apply to Harvard, but not everyone comes from a family that can pay for an SAT tutor or has the cultural capital to encourage college. Until the U.S., and other western industrialized countries, recognize the way that networks and subtle class/race/gender dynamics influence supposedly non-discriminatory institutions, our work will not be done.

Radical authenticity: This facet of feminism gets talked about far too little in my opinion. A visionary twenty-first century feminism should aim to support both men and women to be their most authentic selves in the world, shedding prescribed gender roles and really getting in touch with their authentic desires, passions, and ethics. Feminist workplaces, for example, would nurture both men and women having present relationships with their children and fulfilling work lives. Men should be empowered to express a complex range of emotions, just as women must learn how to handle conflict healthily and assertively and take care of themselves, not just everyone else.

The most exciting thing about feminism, is that it is ultimately about leading more fulfilling, ethical, joyful lives, characterized by more healthy and genuine relationships. Who could argue with that?

What Feminism Isn't

2007-11-27T04:08:00.000-08:00

Ugly, boring and angry?
Posted by Courtney E. Martin

As I travel across the country speaking about feminist issues I like to take a quick survey of the audiences. I ask them “What are the stereotypes you’ve heard about feminists?”After a few timid moments, folks start shouting a flood of unsavory characteristics: ugly, bitchy, man-hating, boring, angry, bra-burning.

The wild thing is that whether I am in a lecture hall in Jacksonville, Illinois, or a woman’s club in suburban New Jersey, or an immigration center in Queens, New York, whether I am among 15 year-olds, or 25 year-olds, or 60 year-olds, whether the crowd of faces that I see are mostly white, or mostly of color, or a welcome mix of all—this list tends to be almost identical.

I tell those in the audiences as much, and then I ask, “So how did all of you—from such vastly different backgrounds—get the exactly same stereotypes about feminism? Why would feminism be so vilified?”And to this they usually shrug their shoulders.

I believe that feminism has attracted so many unsavory stereotypes because of its profound power and potential. It has gained such a reputation, been so inaccurately demonized, because it promises to upset one of the foundations on which this world, its corporations, its families, and its religions are based—gender roles.

If you asked diverse audiences to give you stereotypes about Protestantism, for example, you would have some groups that starred at you blank-faced and some that might have a jab or two.

If you asked about the history of civil rights, even, you would get a fairly innocuous, probably even partly accurate sense of the progress afforded by sit-ins, freedom rides, and protests. But you ask about feminism and the whole room erupts with media-manufactured myths, passed down from generation to generation. Some of these stereotypes can be traced to events or controversial figures in the women’s movement, though they are still perversions. That whole bra-burning thing came out of the 1968 Miss America protests in which feminists paraded one another around like cattle to show the dehumanizing effects of beauty pageants, but they didn’t actually burn any bras.

There have surely been some feminists who despised men and advocated for female-only spaces; others have undoubtedly resorted to an angry m.o.; there were probably even a few shabby dressers (though, I have to tell you, us third-wave gals tend to be pretty snappy).
More recently one of the most pervasive misperceptions about what feminism purports to do is actually perpetuated by strong, intelligent women; I refer to the mistaken belief that feminism is solely about achievement, competition, and death-defying acrobatics (sometimes called multitasking). I like to think of this as “shoulder-pad feminism”—the do it all, all at once circus act that so many of my friends and I witnessed growing up in households headed by superwomen.

The ugly truth about superwomen, my generation has come to realize, is that they tend to be exhausted, self-sacrificing, unsatisfied, and sometimes even self-loathing and sick. Feminism—and the progress it envisions—was never supposed to compromise women’s health. It was supposed to lead to richer, more enlightened, authentic lives characterized by a deep sense of wellness.

Feminism in its most glorious, transformative, inclusive sense, is not about man-hating, nor is it about superwomen. For what it is, come back tomorrow…

Is Pornography Harmful

2007-11-26T12:23:00.000-08:00

Is Pornography Really Harmful? By Michael Bader and Vivian Dent, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2007. In response to Robert Jensen's controversial book, Getting Off, two clinical psychologists debate the intersection of violence and sexual fantasy.

Pornography is a mirror that shows us how men see women, writes Robert Jensen in his latest book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. And with mainstream porn becoming increasingly degrading and violent toward women, looking into that mirror can be unsettling.

That's the theme running through Jensen's book, which AlterNet excerpted in late September. The excerpt, viewable here, stirred a fiery debate among readers, with dozens of commenters defending pornography as a healthy form of sexual expression and dozens more condemning it as dangerous. For all the discussion, a lot of questions remain: Can men who view violent pornography separate fantasy from reality? Do men who are aroused by this type of porn want to hurt women? What influence does porn have on the people who view it? Under what conditions can it be healthy? Harmful? In a quest to better understand these issues, AlterNet decided to ask some experts. Below, clinical psychologists Michael Bader and Vivian Dent go head-to-head on pornography and why people watch it. But first, a refresher from Jensen's book: Although few admit it, lots of people are afraid of pornography. The liberal/libertarian supporters who celebrate pornography are afraid to look honestly at what it says about our culture. The conservative opponents are afraid that pornography undermines their attempts to keep sex boxed into narrow categories. Feminist critics are afraid, too -- but for different reasons. Feminists are afraid because of what they see in the mirror, because of what pornography tells us about the world in which we live. That fear is justified. It's a sensible fear that leads many to want to change the culture. Pornography has become normalized, mainstreamed. ... As a New York Times story put it, "Pornography isn't just for dirty old men anymore." Well, it never really was just for dirty men, or old men, or dirty old men. But now that fact is out in the open. That same story quotes a magazine writer who also has written a pornography script: "People just take porn in stride these days. There's nothing dangerous about sex anymore." The editorial director of Playboy, who says that his company has "an emphasis on party," tells potential advertisers: "We're in the mainstream." There never was anything dangerous about sex, of course. The danger isn't in sex, but in a particular conception of sex in patriarchy. And the way sex is done in pornography is becoming more and more cruel and degrading, at the same time that pornography is becoming more normalized than ever. That's the paradox. The paradox of pornography First, imagine what we could call the cruelty line -- the measure of the level of overt cruelty toward, and degradation of, women in contemporary mass-marketed pornography. That line is heading up, sharply. Second, imagine the normalization line -- the measure of the acceptance of pornography in the mainstream of contemporary culture. That line also is on the way up, equally sharply. If pornography is increasingly cruel and degrading, why is it increasingly commonplace instead of more marginalized? In a society that purports to be civilized, wouldn't we expect most people to reject sexual material that becomes evermore dismissive of the humanity of women? How do we explain the simultaneous appearance of more, and increasingly more intense, ways to humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present those activities? As is often the case, this paradox can be resolved by recognizing that one of the assumptions is wrong. Here, it's the assumption that U.S. society routinely rejects cruelty and degradation. In fact, the United States is a nation that has no serious objection to cruelty and degradation. Think of the way we accept the use of brutal weapons in war that kill civilians, or the way we accept the death penalty, or the way we accept crushing economic inequality. There is no paradox in the steady mainstreaming of an intensely cruel pornography. This is a culture with a well-developed legal regime that generally protects individuals' rights and freedoms, and yet it also is a strikingly cruel culture in the way it accepts brutality and inequality. The pornographers are not a deviation from the norm. Their presence in the mainstream shouldn't be surprising, because they represent mainstream values: The logic of domination and subordination that is central to patriarchy, hyperpatriotic nationalism, white supremacy and a predatory corporate capitalism. Standing Up for Sexual Fantasy By Michael Bader, DMH Porn is not harmless. But neither is it an important cause of sexual violence or misogyny. Partisans on both sides of this debate have littered their arguments with distortions, hyperbole and cheap rhetorical tricks. We have to wade through a lot of bullshit to get to the truth. When representatives of the media conglomerates that produce $10 billion of porn each year come out and talk about the "free choice" of the women starring in their videos and the harmless "entertainment value" provided to male consumers, they're making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The actors in these films are degraded, underpaid and used up by an industry with the morals of a slaughterhouse, despite what Jenna Jameson and Nina Hartley say. The women come into the industry with the self-esteem of earthworms, histories of physical and sexual abuse, and are often plunged into alcohol and drug abuse as a way of coping with their jobs. When the apologists from the porn industry point to the "voluntary" nature of this work, they are using a legal technicality as a fig leaf to cover up the normative pathology and exploitation in this industry. Furthermore, with the near-universal availability of porn, there are now thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of men who have become addicted to it. Spending between 10 and 50 hours/week glued to their computer or TV screens looking at porn, talking dirty in chat rooms, seeking out greater and greater taboos to violate, these particular men are being victimized, their relationships betrayed, and their families and friends cheated of their presence. Such men were likely never really connected to others in healthy ways before the advent of porn, of course, nor can it be convincingly argued that the absence of this outlet would make them so, but like any addict, their compulsion makes any other options impossible, including that of getting psychotherapeutic help. The presence of a casino doesn't cause the tragedies that sometime result, but neither are casino operators morally innocent. So much for harmless porn. On the other hand, it is amazing to me how literal and concrete is the thinking of anti-porn advocates like Jensen who watch a porno, note its sordid and dehumanizing story line, and then assume that the man masturbating to it must really hate women and secretly want to dominate and devalue them. The shock value of the story line (to the extent there is one) is intended to carry the weight of an argument that is basically superficial. After all, if some guy gets off on watching 10 men ejaculate on a woman's face -- while she begs for more -- he must be either a misogynist watching his wishes come true or one in the making. Except that he's not. I've treated dozens of guys who might get aroused by such scenarios who don't hate women at all. They have decent and loving relationships with women. And most important, they are able to distinguish between a fantasy and reality, something that Jensen seems both unwilling and unable to do. What turns them on in porn scenarios depends crucially on the fact that the woman is depicted as excited. If she were depicted as primarily hurt and humiliated, these men would instantly lose their interest and erections. If there is one nearly universal common denominator in heterosexual porn it is that the women in it are generally portrayed as easily, constantly and powerfully sexually aroused, driven wild by whatever men want to do with and to them. For most men, this fact is crucial to their arousal, not because they're looking for a rationalization for their violent impulses but because they are guilty about feeling strong, selfish and masculine; feel overly responsible for and worried about women; and secretly believe that women are unhappy and relentlessly dissatisfied with men and their own lives. In the service of masturbation, these portrayals of "women in heat" momentarily reassure men against their fears, relieve their burdens and offer them a freedom they find lacking in relationships with real women. The sexual fantasies expressed in pornography, as well as those of their own private invention, are arousing to men not because women are being hurt but because they're not. Pornography is the visual enactment of a sexual fantasy. That's fantasy -- to be distinguished from reality. That's fantasy -- to be distinguished from an intention, wish or even attitude. A fantasy occurs in the imagination. The imagination is creative, capable of all sorts of tricks and distortions. Recently, for example, I had a daydream -- a fantasy -- that my brother had suddenly died. In the daydream, lots of people came to console me in my grief. Now, in reality I love my brother and don't have a shred of resentment toward him. What I did have at the time was a need for a certain kind of love and attention. The meaning of my daydream was not "you wish your brother was dead." The real meaning of my daydream was, "You're so guilty about wanting attention that you think the only way you can get it is if you suffer a terrible tragedy." The meaning of a fantasy is often the opposite of its plot; whatever the meaning, it's subjective and can't easily be inferred from its story line. Over the last 10 years I've studied sexual fantasies. I've discovered that they have a fascinating but secret logic. Imagine this scenario: A guy grows up in a family in which he feels responsible for and guilty toward his mother, who he sees as unhappy and weak. He develops an implicit or default view of women as unhappy and weak like his mother. Unfortunately, it's difficult for him -- for anyone in this situation, for that matter -- to get really excited by a woman if he experiences her as unhappy and weak. That's just the way our minds work. We can't get maximally aroused if we're worried, guilty and responsible. Fortunately, our imaginations come to our rescue, and we construct some type of fantasy or preference in which this barrier is momentarily overcome. For example, this guy in question might be attracted to strong, dominant or tough women because their energy reassures him that he can't hurt them and doesn't have to feel responsible for them. Or he might like to be on the bottom during sex or even lightly restrained for the same reason. It's easy to see in these cases that if the scenario -- really, just another type of fantasy -- involves a strong and excited woman, his unconscious worries about women are temporarily negated and he can get aroused. Lots of porn features strong women -- picture the dominatrix -- and the male viewer gets aroused for precisely this reason. But many other types of porn address these same issues but in a different way. For example, often the woman is portrayed as dominated, hurt or even degraded, but in the porno she's excited and eager. Men are doing these bad-looking things, but the women are enjoying them. Our psyches are amazing things, really. They interpret the depiction of a woman's arousal as signifying her health and happiness! And thus you find in almost all porn that women appear aroused. Their arousal subliminally says to the male viewer, "I'm not hurt ... I'm even happy!" In fact, were these male viewers confronted with a woman's real pain and fear, they would immediately extinguish their excitement. In other words, they know the difference between fantasy and reality. They don't primarily want to hurt woman. What they really want is to be strong, selfish or masculine in ways that excite women, not degrade them. Porn provides them with imaginary scenarios in which this wish is safely gratified. This fact accounts for the absence of any reliable, repeatable studies that prove that exposure to pornography increases the likelihood that the men consuming it will act badly toward women. Among the reasons for this robust finding (or lack thereof) is that the men who were studied intuitively knew the difference between fantasy and reality, between the women on the screen and their girlfriends or wives. Add to this the fact that men, themselves, often don't understand what they're feeling or why, and you have a good understanding of why porn researchers who interview men to explore the effects of porn on male attitudes cannot come up with any convincing evidence that it poses a danger. Now, Jensen is correct when he points out that there is a growing species of porn that is explicitly violent and that appears more extreme in its treatment of the women appearing in it. Know as gonzo or extreme porn, it features such things as gagging, double anal penetration, gangbangs, bukkake (in which a group of men masturbate on a woman), and face slapping. Again, despite their irrationality, the scripts almost always call for the woman to get aroused by and seek out such abuse behavior. One might fairly say that it's a sad commentary on the state of our culture and that of the male psyche that such depictions sell so well. But the reason that the commentary is so sad isn't because it reflects what men want to do to women. It's sad because men in our culture are so disconnected from themselves and women, and often feel so helpless in their efforts to make women happy, that they require these kinds of fantasies to get aroused, to masturbate, fantasies that temporarily reassure them that they're connected to women in the most selfish and aggressive way possible and that, in the end, the women are turned on and not hurt. Now, there is a subtype of these pornos that feature -- that make explicit and central -- the woman's suffering, her fear, humiliation, helplessness or some combination thereof. Some men require the actual suffering of a woman to get turned on. Such men have almost always been victims themselves of frightening and traumatic abuse as children and develop such fear and hatred of women that the only safe way they can experience pleasure is through turning the tables on their "persecutors" and doing to women what they feel was once done to them. Out of this cauldron come rapists and other men who get sexually excited by the infliction of fear and pain on women. Were snuff films to actually exist, these would be their customers. Jensen would have us believe that this category of men is huge and that its numbers are maintained and replenished by porn. I see no evidence of either of these assumptions. My research, clinical and otherwise, suggests that this type of man is rare -- dangerous, but rare. Second, there is no basis for claims that porn causes this type of sexual violence. All kinds of porn, including the gonzo variety, are found in various European countries, which have extremely low rates of sexual violence. Sexual violence has been seen in recent years in countries like Bosnia and Rwanda, where there is almost no porn. The fact that men can become sexually violent under extreme conditions is a fascinating and troubling fact, but I see no evidence that porn has ever been causally linked to such transformations. Instead, I think that other factors are much more important, including various types of deprivation, the creation of paranoid identity myths, messianic leaders and propaganda, economic competition, cultural scapegoating and ignorance. In the absence of evidence, to argue that such sexual violence, much less male violence in general (as Jensen suggests), is caused or even exacerbated by porn is simply to substitute our own fantasies for reality. Since men who watch porn don't make such a mistake, we shouldn't either. Context, Please: Internet Porn and Sexual Degradation By Vivian Dent When I hear claims that "Porn's this" or "No, it's that," I often feel a similar incredulity as when Bush begins a sentence with, "The American people demand ..." Says who? When? Why? What does it mean -- what can it possibly mean -- to discuss "pornography" or "men" or "women" or "sexuality" outside the environments where they exist? Porn today usually involves a solitary, online interaction between a man and sexual images. In this encapsulated world, porn's intensity builds steadily. More and more is available; it's accessible at any time for any length of time; and it portrays a wider and wider range of subjects, activities, and fantasies. I believe all of these changes have transformed what porn "is" and how it affects both men and women. And I'm concerned that we know far too little about the implications of these changes. To introduce my ideas, I'll begin by listing some things about people, porn, sexuality, and the web that we might be able to agree on. People Men are very different one from another. So are women. People behave differently in different physical and emotional settings. When we feel secure, effective, loving, and lovable we have a different range than we do when we feel worthless, terrified, miserable, enraged, or hopeless. Men and Porn A lot of men use porn just to get off. It has a minimal, perhaps even beneficial, impact on the whole of their lives and relationships, including their sexual relationships. Some men get seriously addicted to porn, with all the damage and pain that severe addictions bring. Some men use porn as an inspiration for, or a weapon in, efforts to hurt or degrade real women, often enough their wives and girlfriends. [By the way, I know all this can apply to men with men, or to women with women for that matter, but I'll stick to heterosexual relationships for now and let others fill in the gaps.] Women and Porn Some women like porn. Some are indifferent to it. Some are disgusted, horrified, frightened, or humiliated by it. Some women really enjoy getting into the sexually edgy scenarios that porn can inspire. But some play along, wanting the relationship, or wanting to prove themselves strong enough, sexy enough, tough enough. A lot of these women end up feeling used, damaged, and degraded by their experiences. Relationships and Sexuality Under certain circumstances, which we think of as normal, men have sex with a willing partner. Sometimes both people come out of the encounter very, very satisfied. Sometimes one or both feel bad, even awful, before, during, or after -- even though the sex was consensual. Sometimes a man knows perfectly well that he's degrading or hurting his partner; and he gets off on that. Sometimes the damage is accidental, and he'd be horrified to know it happened. Sexuality without Relationship Under certain conditions, men have violent sex with unwilling partners. In wartime, men who would never have imagined themselves hurting a woman have become rapists. Sexuality Sex lives at the intersection of love and aggression. Aggression infused into love and desire makes sex exciting. But violence and sadism can take over. Then sex becomes an expression of power, and part of its excitement is its capacity to dominate, humiliate, even destroy the other. The cultural switch that tips sexuality into violence can get thrown suddenly. Witness Rwanda, where lunatic broadcasts and a history of injustice turned citizens into mass murderers and rapists. Witness Abu Ghraib, where war, contempt, and an inexcusable lack of structure and training allowed young soldiers to become gleefully perverse torturers. The Internet The Web does not breed civility. People write things in emails they would never consider saying directly. Worse, under cover of anonymity, people insult, threaten, and genuinely menace other people's reputations and lives. Consider the posting of addresses of doctors who perform abortions, or the viciousness shown toward the parents of a teenage girl who snuck out with the family's Porsche, crashed, and died. Not everyone loses social sensitivity in the anonymity of the web. But it's a lot easier to let fly with ugly emotions online than in voice-to-voice or face-to-face encounters. The Internet and Porn Porn is available every instant of every day. It's inexhaustible; people are constantly posting new samples. It's lost its public context -- the long-outdated context of a movie theater, the more recent context of a store where you have to go in, show your face, and rent your videos. No one knows; no one sees. The only interaction is you, your mind, your body, a screen, and whatever you watch there. And, as it becomes more private, more and more porn is apparently becoming more degrading to the women involved. So: increased degradation, decreased social influence, and increased amounts of time spent with only one's fantasies for company. I'm protesting any account of porn that refuses to take this context, very carefully, into account. In the accompanying article, Michael Bader talks about men in therapy who discover that their ostensible desire to see a woman in a gangbang has to do with their need to know that women can really enjoy men, masculinity, and sexuality. OK; I'll trust his clinical experience. But I think he's missing the point that these men aren't just watching pornography alone -- they're talking about it with their therapist, a man who sees them as good and loving and who's encouraging of their sexuality. That's a social context, and a strongly supportive one at that. But I don't see that what Bader is saying necessarily applies to the legions of men who believe that the women they desire could never love or desire them, who feel demeaned, disrespected, alienated, and lost. A lot of men get angry when they feel like that; no surprise there. Does porn ever encourage any of these men to take their anger out on women? When, why, under what conditions? Again, I don't want to imply that I think those men are on their way to producing snuff flicks, or something equally absurd. I do want to say that the questions deserve real attention. In the early 1970s, Zimbardo's famous prison experiment took a group of male undergraduates, screened them carefully for psychological stability, and then randomly assigned them the roles of prisoners or guards. The experiment was designed to last two weeks, but within six days, according to the Stanford Prison Experiment Web site, "The simulation became so real, and the guards became so abusive, that the experiment had to be shut down. ... Half the prisoners were released early due to severe emotional or cognitive reactions." None of the guards quit, however. And nothing in the extensive pre-experiment personality testing predicted which guards would become abusive. Zimbardo concluded, "Abusive guard behavior appears to have been triggered by features of the situation rather than by the personality of guards." Bader claims that men watching pornography can reliably and consistently understand the difference between fantasy and reality. I have some doubts: People are not at their most grounded and realistic when it comes to sex. And, again, I believe context matters a lot, especially when cruel or degrading scenarios provoke intense excitement, both sexual and violent. On a concrete level, a lot of kids and some isolated guys do use porn as a kind of "how-to" manual for sexuality. Porn's getting more extreme could lead them into some very unfortunate blunders. Plus, there's a long and sorry history of men rationalizing the sexual abuse of women with the words, "She really wanted it;" "She was asking for it." Is there a risk, even if just for some men, even if just at some times, in reinforcing a fantasy that women really want to receive the cruelties some men imagine inflicting on them? I also suspect there are psychological consequences to seeing repeated enactments of violent sexuality, of fantasies that until recently existed pretty much exclusively in our imaginations. Sex and violence share a slippery boundary. At Abu Ghraib, young soldiers' anger and fear became sexualized violence in very short order. How much do we really know about the tipping point where emotional pain turns to satisfy itself in sexual cruelty? Bader's right that "We can't get maximally aroused if we're worried, guilty and responsible," and that feeling confident of the other's pleasure offers one source of relief from these fears. But he neglects the fact that denying the humanity of the other can stifle guilt just as effectively -- at least for some people, at least in some circumstances, at least some of the time. We've created a brave new world where porn is constantly available in steadily more intense forms, with few or no social controls limiting access. Whatever the truth about pornography 20 years ago -- and we don't seem to know much for sure -- "the situation," as Zimbardo puts it, has changed. And I think we need to pay attention. Michael's Rebuttal to Vivian Vivian speculates that there are conditions under which porn might trigger an increase in male sexual violence. These conditions include the privacy of the Internet, the increased availability of extremely degrading porn, and social conditions like Abu Ghraib and Zimbardo's prison experiment. Porn is getting worse and more ubiquitous and this is apparently provoking or reinforcing harmful male sexual behavior. Unfortunately, there's simply no evidence for this claim. At the same time the availability and alleged misogyny of porn is increasing, the incidence of sexual violence is decreasing. Societies with more porn and Internet usage than ours have much lower rates of sexual violence. And, again, despite how extensively it has been studied, there is no research that shows that exposure to porn increases the aggressiveness or sexism of a man's interaction with women in his everyday life. Now, I would agree with Vivian that a fair number of men -- and women, for that matter -- feel hostility toward each other. And some of them -- both sexes -- act this out in the bedroom. They might criticize each other's performance or attractiveness. A man might unconsciously but intentionally refuse to "read" his partner's cues about what she wants or enjoys, or he might detach the moment after he is satisfied. A woman might be consistently critical of a man's ability to satisfy her, or make him feel bad for wanting sex too often. In these cases, the hostility of one partner hurts the other one. But the fact that people can hurt each other in their myriad transactions around sex, while tragic, doesn't bear on this debate at all. My primary point was not that men don't ever feel hostility toward women but that the fact that they get aroused by porn isn't evidence of it. Men don't have a primary wish to see or participate in a gangbang at all -- in fact, doing so would horrify them. They desire pleasure and connection, like all of us do, but the conditions under which they can safely experience this involve somehow counteracting their worry and guilt about women, a condition that is satisfied in these imaginary porn scenarios. My point was that you cannot infer, as Jensen does, that a porn script reflects what the male viewer actually wants to do to women. The unconscious mind makes use of the porn script in ways that an outside social observer can't possible divine. In a sense, this brings me to another point of agreement with Vivian. It isn't clear at all what the causes or effects are of the growing incidence of rougher and more extreme scenarios in porn today. Is the essential psychology of porn the same but merely taking more dramatic forms or is this trend something qualitatively new? There does seem to be a tendency in our sexual imaginations to seek out deeper and deeper taboos to challenge or violate, provided it's safe to do so. I see no evidence that such potential for escalation in a world of fantasy poses a threat to women in the real world, but I'd be foolish to deny that it could do so in the future in ways unknown to us now. And I have been impressed with the ways that the anonymity and ubiquity of Internet sex invites certain men to retreat from social and family life. The content of porn is less important here than the private ways that it is constantly available. Perhaps, in the end, the problem lies with a society in which men are disconnected and unable to find comfort in ways other than masturbation. Vivian's Rebuttal to Michael When Michael Bader describes sexual cruelties in his response to my article, he moves directly from criminal assaults to the petty cruelties of everyday life. He skips over the area where porn concerns me most deeply -- its potential to encourage the dehumanizing of women in consensual, or quasi-consensual, sexual encounters. We know that boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, and men that women had thought or wished were boyfriends are posting explicit content without the woman's consent. What else is going on in or because of our new online world that hurts women, diminishes their agency, transforms their sexual pleasure into fodder for their humiliation? Porn doesn't just provide relief from inhibiting fantasy; it serves up inspiration for sexual games. A lot of people, men and women, enact scenarios derived from porn. A lot of people also push the limits of their sexual experiences. Depictions of violence or degradation -- particularly when the woman seems to be loving it -- encourage the fantasy, in men and women so inclined, that the games can get meaner without damage being done. A "real" woman would feel excited, not humiliated, frightened or hurt. And having porn so constantly and immediately available makes the gap between wish and action that much narrower. I'm not talking mutually enjoyable kinkiness here; I'm talking about situations where porn can nudge a man toward taking his pleasure at a woman's expense, whether in ignorance or with full intent. Michael's argument rests heavily on a lack of conclusive evidence linking pornography with mistreatment of women. Yet in studies of groups, individual differences easily cancel each other out. According to a recent New York article, we can't even prove that exercise promotes weight loss. It seems that a fair number of people work out, get hungrier, and eat more, gaining weight in the process. This finding doesn't negate the experience of all those folks who got more active and dropped a few pounds, however. They're built differently -- or they're living in contexts that successfully encourage their efforts. Perversity -- by which I mean getting aroused by degrading or dehumanizing another person -- exists. Sadism -- sexual sadism -- exists. People make tragic and terrible sexual mistakes. (Read On Chesil Beach if you have any doubts.) Michael's experience, as a clinician and I assume as a man, has led him to appreciate how greatly a man's love and desire for a woman can be underappreciated. Mine, as a fellow clinician and as a woman, has led me to recognize how very badly things can go wrong, and how devastating it can be when they do. I'm sure that Michael and I agree that none of us is born taking pleasure in another's pain and degradation. Yet in certain contexts, people -- even people who under different circumstances are loving and concerned -- get very excited in just this way. I believe that the current solitary, nonstop, and increasingly vicious realm of pornography can foster just this kind of excitement. And so I believe we owe it to ourselves, as men, women and a society, to take it seriously. See more stories tagged with: pornography, gonzo porn, violent porn, violence against women, sexual expression, sexual fantasy, robert jensen, getting off Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco. He is the author of Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies, and a forthcoming book, Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It -- And Men Don't Either. He has also written extensively on psychology and politics for Tikkun Magazine and AlterNet. Dr. Vivian Dent is a psychologist in private practice in San Francisco.

Robert Jenson, Getting Off (an excerpt)

2007-11-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, by Robert Jensen. King of the Hill The object of the children's game King of the Hill is to be the one who remains on top of the hill (or, if not an actual hill, a large pile of anything or the center of any designated area). To do that, one has to repel those who challenge the king's supremacy. The king has to push away all the other kids who charge the hill. That can be done in a friendly spirit with an understanding that a minimal amount of force will be used by all, or it can be violent and vicious, with both the king and the challengers allowed to use any means necessary. Games that start with such a friendly understanding can often turn violent and vicious. This scenario is also used in some video games, in which a player tries to control a specific area for a predetermined amount of time.

In my experience, both male and female children can, and did, play King of the Hill, but it was overwhelmingly a game of male children. It's one of the games that train male children to be men. No matter who is playing, it is a game of masculinity. King of the Hill reveals one essential characteristic of the dominant conception of masculinity: No one is ever safe, and everyone loses something.

Most obviously, this King-of-the-Hill masculinity is dangerous for women. It leads men to seek to control "their" women and define their own pleasure in that control, which leads to epidemic levels of rape and battery. But this view of masculinity is toxic for men as well.

One thing is immediately obvious about King-of-the-Hill masculinity: Not everyone can win. In fact, by definition in this conception of masculinity, there's only one real man at any given moment. In a system based on hierarchy, by definition there can be only one person at the top of the hierarchy. There's only one King of the Hill.

In this conception of masculinity, men are in constant struggle with each other for dominance. Every other man must in some way be subordinated to the king, but even the king can't feel too comfortable -- he has to be nervous about who is coming up that hill to get him. This isn't just a game, of course. A friend who once worked on Wall Street, one of the preeminent sites of masculine competition in the business world, described coming to work as like "walking into a knife fight when all the good spots along the wall were taken." Every day you faced the possibility of getting killed -- figuratively, in business terms -- and there was no spot you could stand where your back was covered. This is masculinity lived as endless competition and threat. Whatever the benefits of it, whatever power it gives one over others, it's also exhausting and, in the end, unfulfilling.

No one man created this system. Perhaps no man, if given a real choice, would choose it. But we live our lives in that system, and it deforms men, narrowing our emotional range and depth, and limiting our capacity to experience the rich connections with others -- not just with women and children, but with other men -- which require vulnerability but make life meaningful. The Man Who Would Be King is the Man Who Is Broken and Alone.

That toxic masculinity hurts men doesn't mean it's equally dangerous for men and women. As feminists have long pointed out, there's a big difference between women dealing with the constant threat of being raped, beaten, and killed by the men in their lives, and men not being able to cry. But we can see that the short-term material gains that men get in patriarchy -- the name for this system of male dominance -- are not adequate compensation for what we men give up in the long haul, which is to surrender part of our humanity to the project of dominance

This doesn't mean, of course, that in this world all men have it easy. Other systems of dominance and oppression -- white supremacy, heterosexism, predatory corporate capitalism -- mean that non-white men, gay men, poor and working-class men suffer in various ways. A feminist analysis doesn't preclude us from understanding those problems but in fact helps us see them more clearly.

What feminism is and isn't to me.

Each fall in my seminar class for first-year students at the University of Texas, I lead a discussion about gender politics that will sound familiar to many teachers. I ask the students about their opinions about various gender issues, such as equal pay, sexual harassment, men's violence, and gender roles. Most of the women and some of the men express views that would be called feminist. But when I ask how many identify as feminists, out of the 15 students in any semester, no more than three (always women) have ever claimed the label. When I ask why, the typical answers are not about the political positions of feminism but the perception that feminism is weird and that weird people are feminists.

This pattern is no doubt connected to the assault on feminism in the mainstream culture, captured most succinctly in the phrase "femi-nazi" made popular by right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh. One response to this by some feminists has been to find a least-common-denominator definition of the term, to reassure both men and women that feminism doesn't really aim to undermine established gender norms and isn't threatening to men. I believe that to be the wrong strategy. If feminism is to make a meaningful difference in the sex/gender crisis we face, and contribute to a broader social change so desperately needed, I believe it must be clear in its challenge to the existing order -- and that inevitably will be threatening to many men, at least at first. Feminism, then, should get more radical than ever.

In general, the term "radical" conjures up images of extremes, of danger, of people eager to tear things down. But radical has another meaning -- from the Latin, for root. Radical solutions are the ones that get to the root of the problem. When the systems in which we live are in crisis, the most honest confrontations with those systems have to be radical. At first glance, that honesty will seem frightening. Looking deeper, it is the radical ideas that offer hope, a way out of the crisis.

Because these ideas are denigrated in the dominant culture, it's important to define them. By feminist, I mean an analysis of the ways in which women are oppressed as a class in this society -- the ways in which men as a class hold more power, and how those differences in power systematically disadvantage women in the public and private spheres. Gender oppression plays out in different ways depending on social location, which makes it crucial to understand men's oppression of women in connection with other systems of oppression -- heterosexism, racism, class privilege, and histories of colonial and postcolonial domination.

By radical feminist, I mean the analysis of the ways that in this patriarchal system in which we live, one of the key sites of this oppression -- one key method of domination -- is sexuality. Two of the most well-known women who articulated a radical feminist view have been central to the feminist critique of pornography -- the writer Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, a lawyer and law professor. The feminist philosophy and politics that have shaped my thinking are most clearly articulated by those two and others with similar views.

What I also learned from this radical feminism is not just a way of critiquing men's domination of women but a broader approach to understanding systems of power and oppression. Feminism is not the only way into a broader critique of the many types of oppression, of course, but it is one important way, and was for me the first route into such a framework. My real political education started on the issue of gender and from there moved to issues of racial and economic injustice, the imperialist wars that flow out of that injustice, and the ecological crisis. Each system of power and oppression is unique in its own way, but there are certain features in common. Here's my summary:

How do we explain the fact that most people's stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of justice, equality, and the inherent dignity of all people, yet we allow violence, exploitation, and oppression to flourish? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, engaging in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and with relish. Feminism helped me understand the complex process, which tends to work like this:

The systems and structures in which we live are hierarchical.

Hierarchical systems and structures deliver to those in the dominant class certain privileges, pleasures, and material benefits.

People are typically hesitant to give up such privileges, pleasures, and benefits. But, those benefits clearly come at the expense of those in the subordinated class.

Given the widespread acceptance of basic notions of equality and human rights, the existence of hierarchy has to be justified in some way other than crass self-interest.

One of the most persuasive arguments for systems of domination and subordination is that they are "natural."

So, oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchy -- and the disparity in power and resources that flow from hierarchy -- is natural and, therefore, beyond modification.

If men are naturally smarter and stronger than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. I

f rich people are naturally smarter and harder working than poor people, then economic injustice is inevitable and justifiable. And, if human beings have special status in the universe, justified either on theological or biological grounds, then humans' right to extract from the rest of Creation whatever they like is inevitable and justifiable.

For unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them, maintaining their own naturalness is essential. Not surprisingly, people in the dominant class exercising the power gravitate easily to such a view. And because of their power to control key story-telling institutions (especially education and mass communication), those in the dominant class can fashion a story about the world that leads some portion of the people in the subordinate class to internalize the ideology.

For me, feminism gave me a way to see through not only male dominance, but all the systems of illegitimate authority. I saw the fundamental strategy they held in common, and saw that if we could more into a space in which we were true to our stated ideals, we would reject those systems as anti-human. All these systems cause suffering beyond the telling. All of them must be resisted. The connections between them must be understood. Enforcing masculinity Systems of oppression are interlocked and enmeshed; perhaps the classic example is the way in which white men identify black men as a threat to the sexual purity of white women, requiring white men to maintain control of both black people and white women. While keeping in mind those connections, we can train our attention on how each individual power system operates.

This book attempts such a focus on masculinity. The King-of-the-Hill Masculinity I have described is articulated and enforced in a variety of places in contemporary culture, most notably athletics, the military, and business, with underpinnings in the dominant monotheistic religions. We can look at all those arenas and see how masculinity-as-dominance plays out. In all those endeavors, the quality of relationships and human values become secondary to control that leads to victory, conquest, and closing the deal.

We teach our boys that to be a man is to be tough, to be acquisitive, to be competitive, to be aggressive. We congratulate them when they make a tough hit on the football field that takes out an opponent. We honor them in parades when they return from slaughtering the enemy abroad. We put them on magazine covers when they destroy business competitors and make millions by putting people out of work. In short, we train boys to be cruel, to ignore the feelings of others, to be violent.

U.S. culture's most-admired male heroes reflect those characteristics: They most often are men who take charge rather than seek consensus, seize power rather than look for ways to share it, and are willing to be violent to achieve their goals. Victory is sweet. Conquest gives a sense of power. And after closing the deal, the sweet sense of power lingers.

Look around in the contemporary United States, and masculinity is paraded in front of us, sometimes in displays that border on self-parody

George W. Bush dons a flight suit and lands on an aircraft carrier; the self-proclaimed "war president" announces victory (albeit somewhat prematurely). John Kerry, fearing a masculinity gap, serves up a hunting photo-op in the 2004 campaign to show that not only does he have combat experience that Bush lacks but still likes to fire a weapon.

Arnold Schwarzenegger moves from action-movie hero to governor of California, denigrating opponents he deems insufficiently tough as "girly men."

Donald Trump, a businessman famous mostly for being famous and attracting conventionally attractive female partners, boosts a sagging public image with "The Apprentice" television show that pits young wannabe executives against each other in cutthroat competition.

And then there is sex, where victory, conquest, and dealing come together, typically out of public view. Masculinity played out in sexual relationships, straight or gay, brings King of the Hill into our most intimate spaces. Again, this doesn't mean that every man in every sexual situation plays out this dominance, but simply that there exists a pattern. When I speak to mixed groups about these subjects, I often describe the sex-as-dominance paradigm, and then I ask the women in the room if they have any experience with men behaving in such fashion.

There is considerable rolling of the eyes and many exasperated sighs at that point. I present it in light-hearted fashion because to put it too harshly makes most mixed audiences very nervous.

And then there is pornography, where brings the private imposition of masculinity into public, putting King-of-the-Hill sex onto the screen.

Pornography's whisper to men.

We think of the call of pornography as crass, like a carnival barker's. Like the neon lights of Times Square in its pornographic heyday. Men go to buy pornography in the "red-light" district, the "combat zone." Pornography seems to shout out at us, crudely.

But in reality, pornography speaks to men in a whisper. We pretend to listen to the barker shouting about women, but that is not the draw. What brings us back, over and over, is the voice in our ears, the soft voice that says, "It's OK, you really are a man, you really can be a man, and if you come into my world, it will all be there, and it will all be easy."

Pornography knows men's weakness. It speaks to that weakness, softly. Pornography ends up being about men's domination of women and about the ugly ways that men will take pleasure. But for most men, it starts with the soft voice that speaks to our deepest fear:

That we aren't man enough.

The Noose and Racial Terrorism

2007-10-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

This is from The Curvature: A Feminist Perspective on Politics and Culture

On nooses and white reactions
I haven’t yet written about the recent string of noose incidents. I don’t have a good excuse for that.

Today, though, the Times has an article about those instances which have taken place in NY, and I’m using it as a reason to get up of my ass and open my mouth. Over the past few weeks, seven nooses have been found, left for blacks to find as obvious attempts at intimidation and threats of violence.

Three noose episodes took place on Long Island in three days. On Wednesday, two were found at a sanitation garage in the Town of Hempstead — one of them looped around the neck of a stuffed animal with its face blackened. On Thursday, a noose was discovered hanging in a Nassau County highway department yard in Baldwin. On Friday, a worker at the Green Acres shopping mall in Valley Stream found one slung over a door at a construction site.

Public officials said they were outraged, determined to catch the culprits — and stumped.

“It would diminish the seriousness of these events to call any of them copycat situations,” said Kate Murray, the supervisor of the Town of Hempstead, a sprawling township of 750,000 residents, about 15 percent of them black, where all of last week’s incidents occurred. “But I’m not a sociologist. I am surprised by it.”

. . . “I don’t know what the pattern is, if there is one,” said Thomas R. Suozzi, the county executive of Nassau County, which includes Hempstead. “Are people more hateful than they have been? I just don’t know.”

I think that the last question is a legitimate one worth considering. Are white people becoming more racist? You could be forgiven for thinking so, lately. Though institutional racism has always been there and supported by whites, it lately seems like loud, overt racism is somehow becoming more acceptable. There’s the recent string of celebrities (Paris Hilton, Michael Richards) using the N-word. There’s the overtly racist response to the Jena 6, and there are all of the blackface parties being held as a “joke” by young whites.

Though I don’t have an explanation for it, I don’t think that more white people are suddenly more racist. For the most part, I’m not really sure how unacceptable racism has been in America against groups other than African Americans. A look at our discussions over immigration tell us that prejudice against Latino/as is considered mostly okay, our discussions over terrorism tell us that prejudice against Muslims, and really people of any other ethnicity that might bear some faint resemblance in skin color to Arabs, is just fine, everyone likes to try to forget that Native Americans even exist, and when has prejudice against Asians really been taken seriously? Racism against blacks has been the main issue for whites. No, I don’t think that racism is getting worse. I think that racism has always been there, and yes, it has been this bad. I do think that somehow the white community has gotten a cue that this overt racism against blacks is acceptable again.

I can’t explain why. Yes, I do think that Jena has played a huge role. How could it not have? Nooses aren’t just suddenly popping up everywhere out of coincidence. Jena has forced many white people who try to never think about, let alone talk about, issues of race to actually do so. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, it hasn’t exactly gone well. I’m not sure that “copycat” is the right word to describe the instances, but they all seem to be committed by different individuals. And they certainly are all related. And while with each one the outrage grows, so does the level of desensitization and acceptance. It’s getting to the point where whites are saying “oh, gee, another noose?” Firstly, those words should never have to be spoken. Secondly, the apathy with which their spoken is telling.

“In the context of today, the noose means, ‘There is still a racial hierarchy in this country, and you better not overstep your bounds,’” said Carmen Van Kerckhove, the founder of a New York consulting firm, New Demographic, that specializes in workplace problems, including racial tension.

. . . Willie Warren, an equipment operator at the Nassau County Public Works yard here, was among three workers in the garage on Thursday when an employee ran in to tell them he had found a noose hanging from a fence outside. Mr. Warren, 41, who has been with the department for 20 years, filed a racial discrimination suit in 2004, producing tape recordings of a supervisor referring to him with racial epithets. He won the case, got a promotion, still works for one of the supervisors named in his suit, and considers himself unflappable on the job.

The noose shook him. “It’s hard to explain, but it made me upset the whole day,” Mr. Warren said. One white co-worker was as upset as he was, he said. Another said, “What’s the big deal? It’s only a noose.”

This attitude is not only frightening, it’s also frighteningly common. The fact is, most white people don’t get it. Many don’t even realize that hanging a noose is a concrete threat of violence. It’s extreme ignorance and extreme stupidity, it boggles the mind, but it’s true. There’s a “sticks and stones” mentality from all of those who have never had to think about race, or how they will be discriminated against today, or whether they face institutionalized violence because of their skin color.

Because as one professor points out, this is about institutions:

Rachel E. Sullivan, an assistant professor of sociology at Long Island University’s C. W. Post College, said most people do not understand what lynchings were. “They think it was a few guys coming in the night, in their hooded sheets, taking you away,” she said.

She teaches a course on African-American history, including the killings of thousands by lynching in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the end of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“But in reality these were whole, big community events,” she said. “Children and families would come to watch. Hundreds of people attended. They would watch a man being burned and mutilated before he was hung. They would pose for pictures with the body.

“If people had a grasp of what really happened at these things,” Professor Sullivan continued, “they would understand the power of the symbol of a noose.”

I don’t know if it’s true that white people don’t know this. I mean, I was certainly taught this in schools. Maybe everyone else wasn’t. Or maybe they just never paid attention enough to remember. Maybe it’s easier to dismiss if you lie about it.

But the fact that this view is held so widely needs to be acknowledged. The most striking case of this that I’ve seen comes from a post by Magniloquence about an NPR segment that she caught on the radio:

I’ve started listening to NPR in the morning, in between songs and snippets of useful information (like, say, the traffic reports) on other stations. And lo and behold, one day I hear the following: “Ignore the Nooses.”

Yes, that’s right. From the little summary at their webpage:

All Things Considered, October 16, 2007 · In light of the resurgence of nooses appearing in places like Jena, La., and Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, here’s a modest proposal: The next time somebody plants a noose, let’s just ignore it. Perhaps paying less attention to these acts will take away their racist power.

I heard that, verbatim, and then several minutes of different people commending the logic and telling us to man up and stop being so sensitive. Stop giving the bullies what they want.
This kind of groupthink from white people, though I am white, never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure that it’s really easy to “ignore” violence when you are not the one facing the threat.
For those of you who still don’t get it, think about when men don’t “get” why women/feminists get so riled up about a little old rape threat. Because it’s not like they’re actually going to rape you. They’re just trying to get a rise! Whereas we know that there a chance of the threat actually being followed through on, and we also know that rape is not a game.

Lynching is not a game, either. Nooses aren’t funny or trivial. They’re not only as bad as racial slurs, but actually a lot worse. Ignoring threats of violence is never an appropriate response.
I will admit that I have been guilty of this “ignore it and it will go away” line of thinking. One example is my reaction to Ann Coulter. I think that we’ve given her far too much attention for far too many years. I think that not only are all of the media outlets who keep giving her a microphone responsible for the hatred that she spews and that they need to stop giving her the microphone, but that covering what she says has stopped serving a point. I think that continuing to talk about her gives her exactly what she wants and will only delay her crawling back into the dark hole from which she came.

Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t know. Since she talks an awful lot of shit about white women, too, I think that I have a bit more perspective on the issue. But I could still be wrong. I could also be right. Maybe there is in fact a difference. Coulter, though she can be perceived as encouraging violence, is not actually committing a crime. Hanging nooses, thankfully, is. We’ve also tried everything else we could with Coulter. We’ve denounced her and exposed her and she’s as popular as ever.

The problem is that we haven’t tried something different with racism. We’ve been going about this “let’s not talk about it and it will go away” mentality for a long time. We’ve been doing the “black people are making a big deal out of nothing” thing for a long time. When, exactly, have we tried talking about it honestly — not in a “is racism good or bad?” sort of way, but a “why are we racist and what can we do?” sort of way — on a wide-scale? I’m struggling to remember a time.

So maybe I’m wrong about Ann Coulter. Maybe I’m not. But I do know that NPR is wrong about the noose, as is everyone else who holds the “ho-hum” point of view. They’re more than just some kind of sick and twisted fad. They’re a part of a trend. And yeah, if we don’t deal with it and talk about it, I am quite terrified of where it’s going to take us next.

Michael Medved and Conservative View of Corporations

2007-10-18T04:55:00.000-07:00

I thought students might be interested in this article in relation to the work of Karl Marx and John Locke. Students might ask themselves about the extent to which Marx would disagree or agree with Medved's views.

Corporate power blesses, not oppresses, the American people
By Michael MedvedWednesday, October 17, 2007

Why should so many Americans resent and distrust the very institutions that make possible our productivity, pleasure and opportunities? Given the fact that major corporations provide virtually every one of the commodities and comforts we consume, it makes no sense to feel hostile and contemptuous of the corporate organization of the contemporary economy.
As I write these words – and as you read them –we all rely on the products of major companies with increasingly far flung and international operations. Leave aside for a moment the obvious example of the complex combination of brilliantly designed computer hardware and software that allows me to transfer my thoughts to a word processor and broadcast them to the world. I’m also relying on a light fixture above my desk and the bulb to illuminate it and the electricity to drive it, on the books stacked on the filing cabinet behind me, printed and distributed and transported across the country, on the paper and the pens that allowed the scribbled notes and, very significantly, on the ceramic mug filled with steaming coffee based on beans brought from far corners of the globe, then roasted and packaged and finally brewed in the wonderfully efficient coffee maker beneath our kitchen sink. Though “corporation” has become a dirty word to many Americans, successful corporations made possible each of these wonders and blessings and amplifications of our personal power. Without those engines of economic energy, we’d retreat to darkness and frustration and the dead ends of poverty.

The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman used to hold up a common pencil and to ask his students at the University of Chicago to consider the labor and resources that made it possible. At one point, timber workers cut the trees sawmill workers shaped into usable milled wood, while miners drew the graphite from the earth, and others smelted and shaped it into the thin but durable pencil, then encased in the octagonal rod of wood, in turn painted and varnished and stamped, with a milled metal tip (also mined and processed and stamped) connecting it to a pink and functional eraser relying on gum from remote jungles. This miracle of technology and cooperation, in other words, relies on literally hundreds (if not thousands) of workers in different corners of the earth, but then, ultimately, makes its way into your hand at the shockingly, insanely, irrationally low price of --- about ten cents. Consider the amazing efficiency that brings you this versatile and remarkably efficient common writing implement that you take for granted every day. This deceptively simple pencil costs the typical American less than 20 seconds of his time at work. For higher income toilers, you can earn yourself a pencil for a mere second of your effort.

And yet we commonly curse the very rise of corporate power and productivity that puts such wonders into our hands. “Enlightened” commentators, politicians, academics, activists and malcontents of both left and right never tire of deriding for-profit companies as some parasitic alien life form that devours honest toil, crushes creativity, pollutes the environment, and steals power from ordinary Americans.

A few undeniable truths about corporate power in the United States can liberate every day citizens and the society at large from such sour and ungrateful folly.

1) FROM THE DAYS OF EARLIEST SETTLEMENT, AMERICA EMERGED FROM RISK-TAKING AND PROFIT-MAKING CORPORATIONS. The famous colonies at Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay (not to mention Walter Raleigh’s similarly celebrated and tragically unsuccessful settlement of Roanoke) depended on British investors who put up the considerable capital to fund the expensive business of sending “venturers” across the Ocean. Of course, some of these sponsors shared religious ideals with some of the settlers, but they all fervently cherished the (often frustrated) hope of earning a handsome return on their risky investments. Meanwhile, other corporations like the Hudson Bay Company and the British East India Company also played an outside (and sometimes heroic) role in exploring a wilderness continent and establishing a British presence in the New World.

2) THE REVOLUTION RESISTED GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE WITH FREE MARKETS, NOT THE POWER OF BIG BUSINESS. The Stamp Act Protests, the Boston Tea Party and other Colonial challenges to British authority aimed their wrath (and occasional property destruction) not at the traders or merchants who brought their products to New England, but against the government officials who insisted on telling the colonists what they could buy and how much they must pay. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson specifically condemned the king for “imposing taxes on us without our consent” and for sending his tax collectors to interfere with commerce: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.” Any contemporary American who’s faced an IRS audit can relate directly to Jefferson’s complaint. The Declaration also attacked King George for his protectionist export-import policy and “for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” The Founding Fathers never embraced anti-business attitudes because most of them were themselves ambitious and successful entrepreneurs. George Washington and John Hancock may have been the two richest men in the colonies – with Washington one of the largest land-holders (who loved speculating on frontier real estate) and Hancock the owner of America’s most formidable fleet of merchant ships. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the Founders laid out the powers of the new Congress and Government in Article 1, section 8, all of the first 8 provisions concern setting up an economic system (“power to lay and collect taxes,” “to establish…uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies,” “to coin money,” and so forth) before the document finally gets around to such relatively trivial matters as setting up courts and raising an army.

3) THE FAMOUS DEPRADATIONS OF THE SO-CALLED “ROBBER BARONS” INVOLVED GOVERNMENTAL, NOT BUSINESS, ABUSES. In his indispensable 1986 book “The Myth of the Robber Barons,” Burton W. Folsom of the University of Pittsburgh makes the important distinction between “political entrepreneurs” and “market entrepreneurs” who played very different roles in the development of the new nation and its economy. The political entrepreneurs WHO manipulated their insider influence relied upon sweetheart deals and special concessions and monopoly power granted by government, rather than their own efficiency and competitive advantages. At the same time, market entrepreneurs (like James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad) refused to entangle themselves with the political process and built their much more successful and durable corporations without favoritism from bureaucrats or officeholders. As Folsom writes of the emerging and crucial steamship industry: “Political entrepreneurship often led to price-fixing, technological stagnation, and the bribing of competitors and politicians. The market entrepreneurs were the innovators and rate-cutters. They had to be to survive against subsidized opponents.” Significantly, all of the most significant economic reform movements from the Jeffersonians at the turn of the nineteenth century up through the Progressives at the turn of twentieth, sought to disentangle government from its involvement in the free market, not to impose to new bureaucratic controls. As the great historian Forrest McDonald of the University of Alabama wrote: “The Jacksonian Democrats engaged in a great deal of anti-business rhetoric, but the results of their policies were to remove or reduce governmental interference into private economic activity, and thus to free market entrepreneurs to go about their creative work. The entire nation grew wealthy as a consequence.”

4) THE ERAS OF GREATEST CORPORATE INFLUENCE WEREN’T NIGHTMARISH PERIODS OF OPPRESSION AND RETREAT, BUT RATHER GOLDEN EPOCHS OF PROSPERITY, PROGRESS AND GROWING AMERICAN POWER. While historians and other intellectuals invariably deride the “Gilded Age” following the War Between the States, no generation in world history achieved comparable progress in rapidly raising standards of living, absorbing and assimilating unprecedented waves of immigration, settling the remotest frontier and building a dozen new states and scores of glittering new cities, while establishing the United States for the first time as a world power of the first rank. As the editors of American Heritage Magazine wrote in the introduction to their book, “The Confident Years,” about US life from 1865 to 1914: “It was a period of exuberant growth, in population, industry and world prestige. As the twentieth century opened, American political pundits were convinced that the nation was on an ascending spiral of progress that could end only in something approaching perfection. Even those who saw the inequity between the bright world of privilege and the gray fact of poverty were quite sure that a time was very near when no one would go cold or hungry of ill clothed. These were indeed the Confident Years.” An era of rampant capitalist power, in other words, that saw the emergence of giant corporations that touched the lives of every American, corresponded with the most dynamic and dazzling achievements in our history. Other eras associated with big business also brought unparalleled blessings of peace and prosperity to the nation at large and virtually all of its citizens – such as the 1920’s, where President Coolidge produced snickers from cognoscenti by saying “the business of America is business,” or the 1950’s, when Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson declared (not unreasonably) that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America."

5) THE RISE OF BIG BUSINESS NEVER IMPOVERISHED AND ALWAYS ENHANCED THE LIVING STANDARDS OF ORDINARY WORKING AMERICANS. In their 1998 book, “The History of the American Economy” Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff summarize the progress of the working class. From 1820 to 1860, wages grew at a 1.6% annual rate, while the purchasing power of an average worker’s paycheck went up between 60 [SPACE] and 90 percent (depending on the region of the country). Between 1860 and 1890 (that genuinely gilded age) real wages (adjusted for inflation) increased by a staggering 50% in America. The average work week shortened at the same time, so that the real earnings of the Average American worker increased more like 60 percent in just thirty years. As Thomas J. DiLorenzo points out in his illuminating book “How Capitalism Saved America,”: “Capitalism improves the quality of life for the working class not just because it leads to improved wages but also because it produces new, better and cheaper goods…When Henry Ford first started selling automobiles only the relatively wealthy could afford them, but soon enough working-class families were buying his cars.” The efficiency and productivity made possible by corporate organization gave typical Americans a range of choices and an economic power unimaginable for prior generations. As Federal Reserve Board economists Michael Cox and Richard Allen made clear: “A nineteenth century millionaire couldn’t grab a cold drink from the refrigerator. He couldn’t hop into a smooth-riding automobile for a 70-mile-an-hour trip down an interstate highway to the mountains or seashore. He couldn’t call up news, movies, music and sporting events by simply touching the remote control’s buttons. He couldn’t jet north to Toronto, south to Cancun, east to Boston or west to San Francisco in just a few hours. He couldn’t transmit documents to Europe, Asia, or anyplace else in seconds.

He couldn’t run over to the mall to buy auto-focus cameras, computer games, mountain bikes, or movies on videotape. He couldn’t escape the summer heat in air conditioned comfort. He couldn’t check into a hospital for a coronary bypass to cure a failing heart, get a shot of penicillin to ward off infection, or even take aspirin to relieve a headache.” In this context, jeremiads about the “horrifying” gap between rich and poor miss the point that poor people in America’s 21st century enjoy options and privileges that the wealthy couldn’t claim a hundred years ago. Far from oppressing the working class, the corporate system brought about a vast improvement in purchasing power for all Americans. The 1999 book “Myths of Rich and Poor” by Michael Cox and Richard Alm indicates that a worker in 1900 worked two hours and forty minutes to earn the cost of a three point chicken; in 1999, a mere 24 minutes of toil could buy him the bird. If anything, the growth in rewards for working only accelerated in the last fifty years. In 1950, typical workers put in more than two hours to afford 100 kilowatts of electricity; by 1999, the cost had dropped to fourteen minutes. A three minute coast-to-coast phone call cost 104 minutes of labor in 1950, but by 1999 that was down to two minutes (and it’s no doubt even less today).

6) THE INDUSTRIALIZATION THAT DRIVES PROSPERITY RESCUES RATHER THAN ENSLAVES THE WORKERS IT EMPLOYS. Adam Smith, who defined capitalism more than 200 years ago in “The Wealth of Nations,” described the essence of the system as a series of mutually beneficial agreements: “Give me that which you want, and you shall have this which you want.” This captures the essential fairness and decency of the free-market system, which relies on voluntary associations that enrich both parties. Concerning the process of industrialization, which saw millions of workers engaged in powering the mighty, productive engines of major corporations, the great economic Ludwig van Mises (cited by DiLorenzo) trenchantly observed: “The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.” The same process applies to newly opened factories throughout the developing world today, despite the efforts by “anti-globalist” and “anti-corporate” activists in the United States to obliterate the only jobs that keep suffering millions from a return to misery and destitution.

7) CORPORATIONS DON’T DESERVE BLAME FOR “PUTTING PROFITS OVER PEOPLE,” SINCE PROFITS INEVITABLY BENEFIT PEOPLE. Corporations don’t exist in order to provide welfare for workers, or cheap products for consumers, but rather to earn profits for investors and operators. If they succeed in earning such profits they can provide more jobs at higher pay, and better products at lower cost. If a company fails at bringing in those profits it will shed jobs and provide fewer products – ultimately going out of business altogether. The idea that laborers or customers somehow benefit if a corporation feels squeezed, or facing shrinking profits, remains one of the profoundly illogical legacies of discredited Marxism. In the free market system, the boss Peter can’t benefit long term at the expense of his employee, Paul. They either prosper together or fail together. Increased profitability brings increases in capital that allow increases in productivity – directly and simultaneously rewarding management and labor (not to mention the public at large). Political demagogues who rail against “immoral” or “obscene” profits need courses in remedial economics. For a corporation, only a lack of profitability counts as immoral and going out of business represents the ultimate obscenity.

8) THERE’S NO LOGICAL REASON TO FAVOR SMALL BUSINESSES OVER BIG BUSINESS. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that the public felt more approval of “small business” than of “big corporations” by a ratio of more than three to one. This makes little sense, since virtually every “big business” started out as a small operation before success brought growth, and virtually every small business dreams of getting bigger one day. Not far from my home stands the original Starbucks Coffee stand (still operating) at Seattle’s Pike Place Market: an unprepossessing shop that couldn’t accommodate more than twenty customers at a time. Did that quaint operation do a better job providing coffee to its patrons than today’s multi-billion dollar, globe-straddling colossus? Any coffee connoisseur can certify that one of the major improvements in American life over the past twenty years involves the now universal availability of strong, delicious, gourmet coffee (and innumerable exotic derivatives), as opposed to the watery, flavorless blandness of the old-fashioned “cup of Joe.” Could any sane observer honestly believe that a small business could do a better job than big international companies in providing us with the automobiles and computers and cell phones and medical supplies that do so much to enrich our lives?

9) CORRUPTION IS MORE OF A PROBLEM FOR BIG GOVERNMENT THAN BIG CORPORATIONS. Since the beginning of the 21st Century a series of tawdry and hugely destructive corporate scandals (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, many more) led the commentariat to conclude that business ethics had been hopelessly compromised and we needed to turn to government for redemption and purification. This assumption ignores the long history of hideous corruption in every endeavor of flawed humanity – including religion, education, charities and, most spectacularly, government itself. Giving government greater power over corporations increases rather than reduces the likelihood of corruption, since so many of the prior business scandals involved existing entanglements of bureaucracy with the free market. When political office holders decide winners and losers in the business world, the temptations for bribery and favoritism become more acute, not less so. Moreover, the public enjoys greater and swifter recourse against an abusive or inefficient corporation than it does against an abusive or inefficient government. The customer can always decline to patronize a business, a product or a service he dislikes, but with a dysfunctional government you’re stuck till the next election – or long after that, in this era of entrenched and immovable bureaucratic power. A determined individual can escape the reach of even the most ubiquitous corporation (yes, even our Seattle neighbors at Microsoft) but the only way to choose for yourself a different national government is to flee the country. Yes, corporate power frequently corrupts government, and government power even more frequently corrupts and warps corporations, but the best way to avoid this mutually destructive influence is to bring about less bureaucratic involvement in the free market, not to insist on more.

Despite all the shortcomings and silliness, bureaucratic bungling and bankruptcies, foreclosures and failures, conniving and corruption, the big corporations that inevitably emerge in free and fair markets continue to perform remarkably well in terms of giving the public what it wants and needs. Our daily lives bear wondrous witness to the amazing achievements and efficiencies of the system. Any honest examination of the past and the present must lead to the conclusion that major corporations in their appropriate pursuit of profit will continue to bless, not oppress, the people of the United States.

Newsweek on Black Misogyny

2007-10-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Race & Gender: We're Not Gonna Take It
One woman's case opens a dialogue about black misogyny.

By Allison Samuels
Newsweek
Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Will 2007 be remembered as the year black women said "Enough is enough"? At no small personal cost, Anucha Browne Sanders stood up and demanded an end to the kind of abuse African-American women regularly tolerate from some black men. We are not "bitches" or "ho's," to be harassed sexually or otherwise, she declared.

It was a brave thing for an African-American woman to do. Our community is reluctant to talk openly about the problem of black men mistreating black women. Our leaders will rise up in unison against Don Imus for his detestable slur against the Rutgers women's basketball team. Yet they remain silent when Isiah Thomas says it's less offensive for a black man to call a black woman "bitch" than it is for a white man. Black leaders are justifiably in an uproar over the Jena Six, yet none rushed to West Palm Beach, Fla., this summer when an African-American mother in a public housing project was gang-raped. Nor did they talk about domestic violence when self-help minister Juanita Bynum told police in August that she'd been beaten by her husband, which he denies. Even rapper R. Kelly—still awaiting trial on charges of having sex with an underage girl in 2002—gets a free pass.

"We have to say 'No more'!" says author Terry McMillan, who's made a career writing about the complicated and sometimes strained relations between African-American women and men. "No other culture disrespects their women the way our culture does, and it has to stop. Black men have to start taking responsibility for being a part of the reason black women are so disrespected in the first place." McMillan has never shied away from challenging the ways black men portray women in film, videos and rap songs, but plenty of blacks—men and women alike—are loath to point fingers publicly. (For his part, the Rev. Al Sharpton finally weighed in late last week on the Browne Sanders dispute, threatening a boycott of the Knicks until Thomas apologizes for the "bitch" comment.)

The reasons for the silence are complicated, but mostly it's about not wanting to make things tougher for black men than they already are. (For the record, this reporter is conflicted about adding to the woes.) More black men are in jail than college, they face unemployment twice that of white men and they are subjected to plenty of negative media attention. So any additional attacks from black women are seen as betrayal. "We have enough people eager to attack us that we don't need to do it to each other," says rapper and actor Ice Cube, who was publicly taken to task by the Rev. Jesse Jackson for making fun of civil-rights icon Rosa Parks in the comedy "Barbershop."

Yet without open dialogue, nothing is solved. Two years ago, when Spelman College, a historically black women's campus in Atlanta, invited rappers to discuss misogyny in hip-hop, most of the big names declined. "So where does that leave us?" asks Beverly Bond, founder of the group Black Girls Rock, a nonprofit dedicated to raising young black girls' self-esteem. "There's not been a lot of willingness to talk about this until now, with Imus. It's a shame it took that, but finally rappers—if they are honest—understand the damage."

But can a radio host's firing or a basketball legend's loss in court continue to give rise to the voices of women that the Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston once referred to as the "mules of the world"? "I was glad Imus got fired, and I was glad that a black woman won the case in New York," says 16-year-old LaTisha Johnson of Inglewood, Calif. "But I don't see that changing the boys I know or the rappers I see on TV. They don't think it's wrong, and a white man getting fired doesn't change that." But perhaps a black woman talking about it will.

Plastic Feminism

2007-09-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Has Artificial Beauty Become the New Feminism?
By Jennifer Cognard-Black, Ms. Magazine. Posted September 29, 2007.
How the pitch for cosmetic surgery co-opts feminism.
This spring, Sideways star Virginia Madsen became a spokesperson for Allergan Inc., the maker of Botox." Quoted in People magazine, Madsen asserts that she's made "a lot of choices" to keep herself "youthful and strong": "I work out. I eat good foods. And I also get injectables."

In celebrity promos such as Madsen's, the current pop-cultural acceptance of cosmetic medicine is clear -- and is borne out by the rising numbers of customers. Since 2000, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) reports a 48 percent increase in all cosmetic (elective) procedures, both surgical, such as breast augmentations, and minimally invasive, such as the injectable wrinkle-filler Botox.

Once considered clandestine and risky, cosmetic procedures are currently treated across a variety of media as if they were as benign and mundane as whitening your teeth. Advertisers, TV producers, publishers, PR personnel and even physicians themselves are touting it as an effortless, egalitarian way for women of all backgrounds to "enhance" their looks and "stay young."

Not only have cosmetic procedures become more acceptable, but they're being promoted in less sensationalized ways to whole new markets. Increasingly, reality TV's Cinderella tale of surgical transformation is being replaced with a smart woman's narrative of enlightened self-maintenance. While Extreme Makeover and its imitators shame and blame ugly-duck patients in order for prince-surgeons to rescue them and magically unlock their inner swans through "drastic plastic" (multiple surgeries), other media sources now compliment potential customers as mature women who are "smart," "talented" and "wise." Such women are supposedly savvy enough to appreciate their own wisdom -- but, then again, they should want to soften the telltale marks of how many years it took them to acquire it. "I am not using these injectables to look 25," Madsen insists. "I don't want to be 25. I just want to look like me."

Alex Kuczynski, a New York Times reporter and author of Beauty Junkies (Doubleday, 2006) calls these latest appeals "the new feminism, an activism of aesthetics." That ignores the work of feminists from Susan Faludi to Susan Bordo, who have argued for years against the global beauty industry and its misogynistic practices. Yet the cosmetic-surgery industry is doing exactly what the beauty industry has done for years: It's co-opting, repackaging and reselling the feminist call to empower women into what may be dubbed "consumer feminism." Under the dual slogans of possibility and choice, producers, promoters and providers are selling elective surgery as self-determination.

Moreover, much of the media covering cosmetic surgery centers on the idea of choice. Parallel to Madsen's insistence that using Botox is just another lifestyle choice with little difference from working out and eating well, Cosmetic Surgery for Dummies (For Dummies, 2005) promises that the reader will discover how to "decide whether surgery is right for you," "find a qualified surgeon," "set realistic expectations," "evaluate the cons," "make the surgical environment safe" and ultimately "make an informed choice." The word "choice" obviously plays on reproductive-rights connotations, so that consumers will trust that they are maintaining autonomy over their bodies. Yet one choice goes completely unmentioned: The choice not to consider cosmetic surgery at all.

These days, with consumers able to "choose" from among a dizzying array of procedures and providers, even the most minute areas of the female body are potential sites of worry and "intervention." Surgical procedures have been developed to reduce "bra fat," to make over belly-buttons, to "rejuvenate" vaginas after childbirth or to achieve the "Sex and the City effect" -- foot surgeries to shorten or even remove a toe in order for women to squeeze their feet into pointy shoes.

Few seem immune to the sell, no matter what their income. In fact, according to an ASPS-commissioned study, more than two-thirds of those who underwent cosmetic surgery in 2005 made $60,000 or less. Easy access to credit and the declining cost of procedures has brought even the working class into the market.

The most graphic consequences of these trends are the stretched, alien, expressionless faces worn by certain celebrities and increasing numbers of "everyday" women. There are also the disfigurements and deaths that can result from surgeries gone wrong.

At the end of Beauty Junkies, Kuczynski asserts that "looks are the new feminism." Yet it's feminists who have led the fight against silicone breast implants when research suggested they were dangerous. It's feminists who have pointed out that a branch of medicine formed to fix or replace broken, burned and diseased body parts has since become an industry serving often-misogynistic interests. And it's feminists who have emphatically and persistently shown that cosmetic medicine exists because sexism is powerfully linked with capitalism -- keeping a woman worried about her looks in order to stay attractive, keep a job or retain self-worth. To say that a preoccupation with looks is "feminist" is a cynical misreading; feminists must instead insist that a furrowed, "wise" brow -- minus the fillers -- is the empowered feminist face, both old and new.

This article is excerpted from a longer piece in Ms. Magazine. To get the whole story, pick up Ms. magazine on newsstands now.

Notes on the Jena-6

2007-09-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

By Eliott C. McLaughlinCNN

JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- The convoy of buses pulled onto the shoulder Thursday morning, about 25 miles from Jena. Niele Anderson, the Los Angeles DJ and newspaper editor who made last-minute arrangements to get me on the bus, motioned to follow her, "C'mon, let's get out."

JoAnna Scales took her kids out of school to make the trip from Los Angeles, California, to Jena, Louisiana.

Passengers trickled out of the dozen buses in front of us and also from the line of buses that stretched over the hill behind us.

Word that the police weren't letting us proceed to Jena came through the grapevine a couple of minutes before the friendly Louisiana trooper ambled over.

"The town is locked up," said the officer, E.E. Andrus. "We can't get 'em into town. People don't realize Jena's about as big as from here to that hill over there," he said, pointing to the buses disappearing over the highway horizon a half-mile away.

The protesters pleaded to let us pass, but the officer explained it wasn't going to happen: "I'm taking 'em right now. I'm sending an escort with 'em -- five buses every 12 minutes and that's the best we can do. Otherwise, we're gonna sit there."

The crowd was disappointed, but remained calm despite the news that we were now projected to reach Jena well after the rallies and marches began. Watch protesters stalled 25 miles out of Jena »

Anderson told me she was going to encourage everyone to get off the buses lining the highway. Why? "We're gonna walk to Jena," she said.

People began congregating on U.S. Highway 165. Some of them brought their "Free Jena Six" signs. Many wore T-shirts proclaiming the same. Confused commuters peered at us as they crept through the crowd.

Reluctantly, I hopped back on the bus to grab my equipment, two bags weighing about 50 pounds -- not to mention the notebooks and camcorder jammed in the cargo pockets of my shorts.

When I got off the bus, Anderson said never mind. The police were now saying we would be allowed through. Had they found a new route? Or more room for buses in Jena? "It's 'cuz the CNN man's with us," said one protester. I quickly denied it. No one explained the turn of events, but I have to admit, I was pleased we weren't about to hike 25 miles.

At that point, I had been on the bus about two hours -- nothing to complain about when you consider that Anderson and more than 100 fellow protesters had been on a pair of buses for two days.

That they took such a journey -- and that they were ready to hoof it when that journey was cut short -- is testament to the passion and empathy the plight of the Jena 6 ignites.

JoAnna Scales is a 39-year-old mother of three who took her three teenagers out of school for four days to make the trip from Los Angeles, California, to Jena and back. She said a few days in tight quarters is nothing compared with the decades behind bars that she thinks the Jena 6 are unjustly facing.

"It's been trying, but one love," she said of the bus trip. "You gotta work it out because if this could happen to [the Jena 6], it could happen to anyone."

It was a common refrain Thursday. After arriving at 4 a.m. in Alexandria, Louisiana, at the Alexandria Coliseum, where hundreds of people sleepily met about 30 buses for the hourlong ride to Jena, I met students and lawyers, grandmothers, mothers, fathers and aunts -- even members of motorcycle groups. They all said they couldn't bear to turn a blind eye to what they said is a bastard brand of justice.

It's not that the young black men were justified in the December beating and stomping of their white classmate, not at all. It's that five of the Jena 6 were charged as adults, the attempted murder allegations were excessive and the bonds were set higher than the price of most homes in Jena, the protesters said.

Also, they said, too little was made of the nooses hung from the "white tree" at Jena High School last September. Had that matter been handled appropriately, nothing would've gotten out of hand, said some.

Emily Calloway, on the bus from Los Angeles, said she thinks it's a racist area, regardless of the nooses, and she thinks the police were being racist when they stopped the buses on Highway 165. Pressing on to Jena, she said, will "make an effective statement to the authorities and to the judge" in the Jena 6 case.

"I think that it was a tactic to humiliate the effort and to humiliate the cause," she said of the temporary roadblock. "I think it's an outrageous travesty of justice and further act of discrimination and racism."

Cathryn Shabazz, sitting across the aisle from Calloway, agreed the stop was suspicious, but said she thinks the problem is larger than central Louisiana, and that's why she got on the bus.

"You can go north, south, east or west," she said, "and find the same degree of racism." E-mail to a friend

The Starter Husband

2007-09-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Starter Husband
You'd never buy a car without test-driving it first right? So why settle into a lifelong marriage before trying one on for size?By Gretchen Voss

I'm just really not ready to be committed like this." That's what Andi said to Tucker, her husband of 11 months, after she came home from a crazy day at work two years ago with an overwhelming urge to quit her marriage. Today. Right now. "This just isn't for me."

She spoke stoically — no tears, no histrionics. She had been imagining this moment since she moved out of their condo a few months earlier, but she wanted to ease him into the inevitable — to somehow tiptoe her way through the minefield of Tucker's emotions. But now, having scored a direct hit with those crushing words, she watched Tucker crumple against the dining-room table. "I don't understand," he said, over and over. "We're married."

"Look, we can do this now, or we can do this five years from now when it's a lot messier," Andi said, softening her voice but not her position. "I want a divorce." The guy didn't really do anything to deserve this, she thought, looking at Tucker's ashen face. He must think I'm a monster. Watching her husband shuffle to the door of her temporary apartment, Andi felt awful.

But mostly, she felt unbelievably relieved.

"I was married for like, two seconds." That's what Andi says to me today, her enormous kohl-rimmed blue eyes crinkling as she recounts her drive-through union. "It was literally an entry-level marriage." We're sitting in a cafe in a funky Boston neighborhood known for its liberal attitudes and alternative lifestyles — this is where gay couples raise their children — and yet women are actually swiveling in their seats, doing indiscreet 180s to get a look at the impeccably coiffed, blonde-haired woman saying such things.

Hearing her words, I flinch slightly. We're talking about an event that's supposed to be a turning point in life, and she sounds so cavalier. And yet, Andi is only articulating what the one in five women under age 30 who get divorced every year must think.

After graduating from college, Andi jetted off to culinary school in Paris, then switched to journalism, where she climbed the ranks, moving from one semi-glamorous job to the next — all the while hooking up, dating, dumping, and moving on. She's a perfectly modern gal, a gorgeous mess of neuroses and contradictions — the kind who never pictured herself married by 27, divorced by 28, and remarried with two toddlers at 35.

But along the way, she met Tucker. "He was what I was supposed to marry. He was what everybody else in my life wanted for me and what the world tells you you're supposed to want," she says. "I got sucked into the idea. I was in my 20s, and I felt like there was so much pressure from my family to find the perfect person. I just felt like, God, I'd be stupid if I didn't do this."
Within months of promising to love and honor and cherish Tucker forever, she knew she had made a huge mistake. The problem? He was boring. "Wholly uncomplicated," as she puts it. The kind of guy who reads Tom Clancy books on the couch and watches Adam Sandler movies while dreaming of white-picket fences. Going to depressing French movies, leapfrogging over the less ambitious on the company ladder — those were the things that excited Andi. "The idea of spending my life with someone like that seemed stifling," she says. "It finally just got to me that he was so . . . sunny."

I hoist my drink in that you-go-girl kind of way, but I'm struck by her casual disregard for the institution. Marriage used to be a big deal. How could she slip in and out of it so easily? She'd plodded along for nearly 12 months, passive-aggressively avoiding her relationship by consuming herself with the restaurant openings and black-tie benefits that were part of her job. But then Tucker started talking about having children. "To me, once you have kids, you can't get out," she says. "When he began asking about a family, I felt like that was too final of a commitment. That's when I had to say, 'OK, I've got to fish or cut bait here.'"

Her own parents split up when she was 3, and she didn't want to condemn another generation to that hell. Andi and Tucker got divorced almost a year to the day after they had vowed to be together forever.

"Oh, my God, it was so easy," she says, exhaling loudly. "I realized, I can get out of this, and he can get out of this, and we can get on with our lives." They sold the condo and split the profits, and that was that. She felt bad about hurting his feelings, but she never doubted her decision. I raise an eyebrow. "Never," she repeats.

Andi takes a throaty slug of her second raspberry martini, picks at her fish taco, then sits back in her chair. "I think marriage is the new dating and having kids is the new marriage," she proclaims loudly, as yet another woman dining with her partner turns to stare. "It's true. I wouldn't have married him if I didn't think I could get out of it."

how it sounds, Andi is not a first-class bit**. She's the type who will hunt down the most perfectly thoughtful baby gift or whisk you off to a much-needed mani-pedi after your boss goes nuclear on you. But when it comes to relationships, her attitude is pure pragmatism: Clearly she'd screwed up — best to press delete. And I bet there isn't a married woman out there, if she's really honest, who hasn't flirted with the thought of doing the same. I know there have been days in my own five-year marriage when I've dreamed of reclaiming my freedom. Not many, but a few. But then I wake up, not just because I love the guy — and I'm damned lucky to have him — but because I'm married. That is supposed to mean something.

Andi was my introduction to the concept of an icebreaker marriage but certainly not my last. Burning through a starter husband is almost becoming a rite of passage: While newly-marrieds everywhere fear the one-in-two-marriages-fail statistic, the more relevant stat is that while the median age at which a woman first marries is 25, the median age at which she first divorces is 29. In fact, 20 percent of marriages fail within five years, and of those, one in four end within two years. So much for until death do us part.

I don't have to look far in my own life to find human faces that bear out the numbers: One of my best friends from college barely scratched out a two-year union following her six-figure Hawaiian wedding; my brother managed to eke out almost 29 months before he and his betrothed packed it up for Splitsville. Their divorces were good things, believe me. Still, I was miffed that they got married in the first place. These relationships were never the stuff of happily ever after.

Of course, our generation can afford to chuck the Cinderella story when the glass slipper doesn't fit. While our grandmothers were forced to remain shackled to unhappy unions for monetary reasons, most women today have the financial wherewithal to cry uncle and bolt whenever we get uncomfortable.

For some, a starter husband is like a starter home — a semi-commitment where you're willing to do some of the surface work, like painting the walls, but not the heavy lifting, like gutting the whole foundation; he's just not a long-term investment. Others compare a starter husband to a first job, where you learn some skills and polish your resume before going after the position you really want.

In our everyday life — one where we're encouraged to pursue the bigger, better anything (witness the average college grad who now burns through seven jobs before turning 30) — how can you commit to something, or someone, forever? "That's a huge promise. We live in an incredibly fast-paced consumerist culture," says Pamela Paul, author of the book The Starter Marriage, who herself was divorced less than a year after taking her vows at age 27. "Ours is an H&M culture, where you go out and buy 10 cheap items for the season, then toss them, rather than investing in one beautiful coat you'll wear for another 10 seasons. More and more women have that throwaway mentality with their first marriage — the 'I want it now' attitude." Until, of course, you don't.

And that's just our prerogative, says Generation Me, fingers poised above the do-over button. We can pick and choose among limitless possibilities seemingly unattached to consequence because today's 20-somethings are living out an extended adolescence in a manner unlike any generation before them. We're still knocking around and figuring it out, often on our parents' dime.

"Simply put, my 20s were freaking me out," says 29-year-old Elisa Albert, a wavy-haired brunette and adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. "I felt unqualified to be barreling into adulthood alone — I felt at loose ends in regards to my career, my ability to support myself, even my post-college social identity. I was lonely and scared. At the same time, I'm watching Sex and the City and going, OK, so should I spend the next 20 years getting my heart broken and pretending that it's all in good fun? Or should I marry this dude I'm dating, have a gorgeous party, and make my parents really, really happy?"

She chose wrong.

It all started over a steaming cup of coffee in a New York City diner. Elisa's mother suggested she give a family friend a call in the wake of his sibling's death (Elisa's own brother had died a few years back).

"We talked about our brothers, which was intense, and then somehow we went from there to falling in love and having this 100-mile-an-hour courtship," Elisa says. "We were talking about naming our unborn children after our dead brothers. It was totally crazy."

From an outsider's perspective, you could see trouble ahead: They crashed between breakup and make-up like a game of pinball. But during one warm-and-fuzzy reconciliation, they decided to get hitched.

Suddenly, the relationship snowballed into something bigger: getting married.

"I totally bought into the wedding-industry machine," admits Elisa, who spent more time obsessively planning every detail of her nuptials for 300 at a Malibu estate than she did working on her master's thesis. From the five-star vegan menu to the Japanese lanterns to the playlist, Elisa's focus was all wedding, no marriage.

"I had a totally misguided notion of what a wedding was about," she says. "You work toward this giant event, have an enormous party, then an hour after you get married, reality sets in. I was like, Oh, sh** — that didn't really solve anything."

You can almost forgive a girl for focusing on the party and forgetting about the hangover. After all, it seems that we don't have a clue what the heck marriage is anymore. Like a fat promotion to the corner office, we aspire to it — the sparkler on my finger means I'm a success, receiving the final rose means I win — but what is the prize again? For that cluelessness, apparently, we can thank our single moms and alimony dads. "We are the children of parents who divorced in the '70s and '80s," says Paul. "Divorce is out there as a familiar possibility."

My own parents' bitter divorce — many, many years in the making — played out right around the time of my engagement. I knew all too well what the seamy underbelly of marriage looked like, and it had made me incredibly cautious about commitment — it took me seven years of dating my husband before I could consider the concept of "forever."

Still, it's a legacy that cuts deep. "We were both like, We're going to do this right! Divorce is for losers," Elisa says of her and her ex's attitude toward their own parents' divorces. But she knew in the back of her mind that there was a plan B, that marriage was not necessarily a binding contract. And when she realized that she didn't even have a clue what a good marriage looked like, let alone what one felt like, she didn't hesitate to produce her Get Out of Jail Free card. "It was a constantly pitched, keyed-up hell," she says. Their downstairs neighbors left a note on their door: "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you people, but you need to stop screaming at each other."

Pulling the trigger was easy; dealing with the fallout was not. "Every time I ran into somebody I knew, I wanted to die," Elisa says. She briefly moved back to her childhood home in L.A. to regroup. "Even if they were nice, I just felt this pity from them, like, 'Oh, my God, you fu**ed up big. Wow, that sucks.'" Looking for guidance, she joined a divorce support group out in the Valley. It was an eye-opener. "It was full of women in their 50s with kids and mortgages," Elisa remembers. "They knew their marriages were doomed straight out of the gate but stayed shackled to them for 20 years."

Confronted with that alternative, Elisa's confidence in her decision was restored. Today, three years later, she considers her first husband the perfect warm-up for the real deal. "I could not be more grateful for that experience," she says. "I'm in a really good relationship right now, knock on wood, and I would never have been capable of that without my first marriage — learning how relationships work."

It's easy to write these women off as callous or self-absorbed. And yet on some level, they just might be pioneers: Why stay put in an empty shell of a marriage — an arrangement on paper only — instead of calling it what it is? "This generation is reinventing marriage," says Paul.

"I think women our age are like, We're either going to fix this, or we're going to end it, and that's for the better," says Kay Moffett, coauthor of Not Your Mother's Divorce. She married her own starter husband in a funky, flamingo-filled Florida wedding at 27, then divorced him four years later after realizing she could never make the real commitment of having children with him. But don't call her divorce a failure; in this enlightened world, it was simply a relationship that ran its course. "I think maybe we're moving more toward a serial-marriage society — maybe you have three marriages in your life and several different careers. That's where I'm heading," she says.

Still, even unapologetic Andi admits that the process is not always easy. "On the one hand, I felt empowered, like, Woo-hoo, I have the rest of my life in front of me. But there were moments of, Oh, my God, I'm a divorcee — does that mean I'm all washed up?" she says. It's why, she suggests, she turned to drinking heavily for several months after her breakup, trying to reconcile those thoughts — and perhaps, I suspect, dull some of the pain she's so sure she never felt.

Then she met David. He was supposed to be her rebound relationship. Three years later, she realized that she wanted to have kids with him — and that was the clincher.

Andi lifts her 2-month-old daughter up to her breast in the middle of the café. I ask if her second husband is The One, since they have kids and all. "I'm happy, but I try not to think about it," she says. "It's like, if I thought I had to have my hair the same way for the rest of my life, I'd freak out."

Seeking Trophy Wife

2007-05-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

Seeking Trophy Wife: M.R.S. Degree Required
By Mike S. AdamsMonday, May 7, 2007

I have a friend who’s going through a rough time in his marriage. Recently, his wife told him she was moving out and getting an apartment for six months so she could “find herself.” In typical feminist fashion she asked him for some money to help pay for her lease, power, and cable deposits. One of her main criticisms of him was that he offered her unsolicited financial advice. Had she listened to her husband she wouldn’t be in such a fix. So I told my friend to give her a copy of the book Catch-22 instead of writing her a check. Maybe she could “find herself” in a twelve dollar novel by Joseph Heller.

Of course, when I hear of married women making idiotic statements like “I need to go find myself,” “I need to learn how to be me,” and “My husband and I should be equals in every respect of the marriage” I’m forced to make one of two conclusions. First, the woman is not taking the medication her psychiatrist prescribed for her. That can be cured by simply telling her to take her damned medication.

But the other conclusion - that she is just a bad wife because she got a bad education while she was in college – calls for a more complicated cure. That is why today I’m asking colleges across America to put an end to the jokes about M.R.S. degrees by actually starting M.R.S. degree programs nationwide. With all the talk about sexual diversity it’s high time we started to celebrate nuptial diversity without all this useless banter about gay marriage.

No reasonable person could be opposed to M.R.S. degrees for women who aspire to be “nothing more” than a wife and mother. The most important job any woman can ever hold is that of a mother. Important people like teachers can have an effect on thousands of students, but no teacher can have that much of an effect on a child she only knows for one year. Mothers, on the other hand, will influence their own children for about fifty years.

Last week, Fox News ran a story saying that if housewives were paid they would make about $138,000 a year. This number demonstrates that there is a great deal that goes into being a stay-at-home mom. But is the average college graduate prepared to handle these responsibilities? Not without an M.R.S. degree.

A student who chooses to pursue a bachelor’s degree in M.R.S. would receive a true liberal arts degree. She would take classes in general areas such as history, English, and science, just so she can educate her children. She should take child development classes, educational psychology, first aid, and accounting, too. Culinary classes, sewing, interior design, day care management, safe driving classes and communication classes would also be required.

Of course, like any other major, the college would need to set up some new classes distinct to the M.R.S. major. I have several suggestions below:

MRS 101 - Why Ovaries Matter. Recently, a female student at Ohio University was attacked for saying she would want a male, rather than a female, firefighter to save her if she ever got caught in a blaze. Those who criticized her were under the impression that gender differences are simply socially constructed. That isn’t true. Men have testicles and women have ovaries. And both of these facts have consequences.

MRS 102 - Sexual Activity and Reproductive Choice. If a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion, she certainly has a constitutional right to be a slut, too. But there is no constitutional right to exercise a constitutional right without consequences. A woman needs to know how being a slut in college will affect her self-image and how that will, in turn, affect her marriage or marriages later in life. And she also needs to know how sleeping with a lot of women affects the psychological make-up of her future spouse. “Equality” is not the only reason we need to do away with double-standards on pre-marital sex.

MRS 210 - Sex after Marriage. A woman has an obligation to keep herself trim and attractive after she gets married. She also has a right not to have a fat slob for a husband. That’s why married couples should work out together. That will do a lot to keep their sex lives interesting but they’ll need more than just physical fitness. That’s what this class will be all about.

MRS 220 - Spousal Communication. Some women who are married think it’s alright to talk to their mothers each and every single day on the telephone. That’s okay, unless, of course, she’s talking to her mommy about a marital problem her husband does not even know about. It’s not rational or adult to expect the man to figure out the problems you conceal. It’s far healthier to learn to communicate with your spouse directly even if it means there will be an occasional argument. And, for the sake of fairness and balance, there will be plenty of time in this class to talk about the consequences of marrying a momma’s boy.

Cait Jacob and Becky Banks join my wife and mother-in-law as some of the prettiest red-heads you’ll ever see. I thank them for giving me the inspiration to write this column. Because we need more women just like them, we need M.R.S. degree programs now. Our young men need good wives more than anyone needs another degree program teaching women how to become lesbians, feminists, and man-haters for life.

Dr. Mike S. Adams would like to apologize for the redundancy in the final sentence of this column.

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor.

The Many Man-Loves of Chris Matthews

2007-05-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

The Many Man-Crushes of Chris Matthews
Eric Alterman

Chris Matthews is not known as a particularly right-wing television talk-show host nor, by the standards of the profession, a particularly foolish one. NBC considers him to be such an asset, it gave him his own Sunday program, in addition to the nightly cable shoutfest Hardball.

Within MSNBC, Matthews represents the "center" between the right-wing Tucker Carlson and the taken-for-a-liberal Keith Olbermann. It's worth taking a closer look, therefore, at just what passes for classy, centrist and sane in today's Fox-driven cable cosmos.

Like anyone who spends much time on live TV, Chris Matthews tends to say a lot of silly things. (I did too during the two years I was so employed.) But patterns and passions tell a tale, and those exhibited by Matthews are revealing. Like Elvis, Matthews can't help falling in love. And also like the King--who developed a thing for both Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover late in life--the object of Matthews's affection is invariably a tough-talking, self-styled Republican macho-man. And when he gets going on one of these guys, his style of punditry owes more to, say, Tiger Beat or Teen People than the Trilateral Commission.

Going back to 9/11, Matthews found himself blown away not by Bush's political or military response but by his ability to throw a baseball. He compared the man to--I kid you not--Ernest Hemingway. "There are some things you can't fake," he explained breathlessly. "Either you can throw a strike from sixty feet or you can't. Either you can rise to the occasion on the mound at Yankee Stadium with 56,000 people watching or you can't. On Tuesday night, George W. Bush hit the strike zone in the House that Ruth Built.... This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it--and then doing it. It's about that 'grace under pressure' that Hemingway gave as his very definition of courage."

And remember that now-infamous Mission Accomplished moment? True, Matthews did not join his guest G. Gordon Liddy in admiring--still not kidding--the President's pretend penis, but he was no less focused on Bush's fashion statements. "He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West," he cooed. "We're proud of our President. Americans love having a guy as President, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton.... Women like a guy who's President. Check it out."

Matthews's man-crush on Bush continued longer than that of most of the mainstream media, leading him, for instance, to assert that "everybody sort of likes the President, except for the real whack-jobs," at a moment when the percentage of Americans telling New York Times/CBS pollsters that they "liked" Bush had fallen to 37 percent.

But nobody, save Fred Barnes, thinks Bush is cool anymore, and so Matthews has had to go cruising for a new crush. For a while it looked as if he and John McCain would hook up. "A lot of people," he explained coyly, naming no names, "like the cut of John McCain's jib, his independence, his maverick reputation." This led Matthews to declare the election all but over, announcing that as far as he was concerned, McCain "deserves the presidency."

This was just a warmup, however, for Chris's latest flame: the "perfect candidate"--the one who "looks like a President," who "acts and talks like a President," who "rises to the occasion" and is "the one tough cop who was standing on the beat when we got hit last time and stood up and took it," and who, to top it all off, got "that pee smell out of that subway." Say one thing about Chris Matthews, once he switches loyalties, he's really loyal. He got so mad at that meanie Hillary Clinton for wanting to be President against his new love, Rudy G, he gave a big fat warning to her homies about her husband. Again, I promise I'm not kidding. When Hillary staffer Ann Lewis showed up on Hardball, she was instructed three times by its host that Bill Clinton had "better watch it." And when former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe came on to promote his book, Matthews told him six times that Clinton had better "behave himself," lest his "social life" become a "distraction."

Just what so worried Matthews could only be inferred, as he was, like, too shy to say what he really meant. It's possible his concern was sartorial in nature, as the candidates' clothing has proven a Matthews obsession in presidential elections past. In 1999, for instance, he grew obsessed with Al Gore's suit buttons. "What could that possibly be saying to women voters, three buttons?" he asked a guest. "Is there some hidden Freudian deal here or what? I don't know, I mean, Navy guys used to have buttons on their pants." Indeed, Matthews thought the button development so significant, he returned to it five nights in a row.

Certainly Matthews couldn't have meant Bill Clinton's sex life. First off, it's Hillary who's running this time. And when it comes to screwing around while in office, well, the ex-President is the proverbial pisher compared with Mr. Pee Smell Out of the Subway. While serving as Mayor of New York, Rudy moved in with a couple of gay guys to facilitate cheating on his wife, and let the mother of his children know he wanted a divorce by holding a press conference. This led Mrs. Giuliani (Donna Hanover) to complain about yet another affair he'd apparently conducted with a member of his staff and to seek a restraining order to keep his new girlfriend (now wife) out of Gracie Mansion.

One would think, as my colleague at Media Matters Jamison Foser has so sagely noted, "On the distraction scale, that would have to rate pretty darn high."

Can this romance be saved? Too early to tell, but perhaps Rudy shouldn't be picking out silverware patterns just yet. The race is still wide open. Newt's got that handsome head of hair, and Fred Thompson, well, the guy is practically George Clooney--for a Republican. And hey, let's not forget Mitt Romney. He may not be a credible conservative or even (really) a Christian, but according to Chris, "He's got a great chin, I've noticed."

Sitting Still, The Uber Skill

2007-05-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

What is the Use of College?
Jim Johnson

A friend just brought to my attention this column Barbara Ehrenreich has written for Alternet entitled "Higher Education Conformity" on why companies insist that entry level emplyees have a college degree. Here is the punch-line:"It seems to me that a two-year course in math and writing skills should be more than sufficient to prepare someone for a career in banking, marketing, or management. Most of what you need to know you're going to learn on the job anyway.

But in the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket. A resume without a college degree is never going to get past the computer programs that screen applications. Why? Certainly it's not because most corporate employers possess a deep affinity for the life of the mind. In fact in his book Executive Blues G. J. Meyers warned of the "academic stench" that can sink a career: That master's degree in English? Better not mention it.

My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you'll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end -- whether in library carrels or office cubicles -- does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned -- although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-"team-player." You will do anything. You will grovel."Since I am implicated in the "college racket" (both as a professor and soon as a tuition paying parent) this line of argument strikes close to home. Ehrenreich concedes that a College can be enlightening and provocative. And she neglects (here at least) to ask why jobs have to be so thoroughly boring and controlled. That, of course, is another, very big question. But the symbiosis between colleges and corporations on this dimension seems difficult to ignore.___________

PS: You will likely recognize Ehrenreich's argument as a variation on a theme articulated with resepct to elementary/secondary schooling long ago by Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis.

Racial Bias among NBA Referees?

2007-05-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Bad Calls: Race Bias on the Basketball Court?

By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: May 2, 2007

An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.

Commissioner David Stern says a league study demonstrates “there is no bias.”
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”

N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview that the league saw a draft copy of the paper last year, and was moved to do its own study this March using its own database of foul calls, which specifies which official called which foul.

“We think our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and demonstrates that there is no bias,” Mr. Stern said.

Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound. The N.B.A. denied a request for its underlying data, even with names of officials and players removed, because it feared that the league’s confidentiality agreement with referees could be violated if the identities were determined through box scores.

The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer review before publication in an economic journal, but several prominent academic economists said it would contribute to the growing literature regarding subconscious racism in the workplace and elsewhere, such as in searches by the police.

The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the N.B.A.’s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of “Pervasive Prejudice?” and an expert in testing for how subtle racial bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the author of “The Wages of Wins,” which analyzes sports issues using statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
“I would be more surprised if it didn’t exist,” Mr. Ayres said of an implicit association bias in the N.B.A. “There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.”

Mr. Berri added: “It’s not about basketball — it’s about what happens in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you have an evaluation team that’s so different from those being evaluated. Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe you should have more African-American referees — for the same reason that you don’t want mostly white police forces in primarily black neighborhoods.”

To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.

But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew.

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of his league’s officiating, said in a telephone interview after reading the paper: “We’re all human. We all have our own prejudice. That’s the point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this application, as in a thousand others.”

Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, “No comment.”

Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers, each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.

“If that’s going on, then it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” James said. “But I’ve never seen it.”

Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the paper’s claims. Rod Thorn, the president of the New Jersey Nets and formerly the N.B.A.’s executive vice president for basketball operations, said: “I don’t believe it. I think officials get the vast majority of calls right. They don’t get them all right. The vast majority of our players are black.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating factors.

For the 1991-92 through 2003-4 seasons, the authors analyzed every player’s box-score performance — minutes played, rebounds, shots made and missed, fouls and the like — in the context of the racial composition of the three-person crew refereeing that game. (The N.B.A. did not release its record of calls by specific officials to either Mr. Wolfers, Mr. Price or The Times, claiming it is kept for referee training purposes only.)

Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that information to predict how an official would view the player. About a dozen players could reasonably be placed in either category, but Mr. Wolfers said the classification of those players did not materially change the study’s findings.

During the 13-season period studied, black players played 83 percent of the minutes on the floor. With 68 percent of officials being white, three-person crews were either entirely white (30 percent of the time), had two white officials (47 percent), had two black officials (20 percent) or were entirely black (3 percent).

Mr. Stern said that the race of referees had never been considered when assembling crews for games.

With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined whether otherwise similar black and white players had fouls-per-minute rates that varied with the racial makeup of the refereeing crew.
“Across all of these specifications,” they write, “we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price also report a statistically significant correlation with decreases in points, rebounds and assists, and a rise in turnovers, when players performed before primarily opposite-race officials.

“Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees,” they write. The paper later notes no change in free-throw percentage. “We emphasize this result because this is the one on-court behavior that we expect to be unaffected by referee behavior.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their
results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.

“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.

The N.B.A.’s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league’s study was less formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007), and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul.

The N.B.A. study reported no significant differences in how often white and black referees collectively called fouls on white and black players. Mr. Stern said he was therefore convinced “that there’s no demonstration of any bias here — based upon more robust and more data that was available to us because we keep that data.”

Added Joel Litvin, the league’s president for basketball operations, “I think the analysis that we did can stand on its own, so I don’t think our view of some of the things in Wolfers’s paper and some questions we have actually matter as much as the analysis we did.”

Mr. Litvin explained the N.B.A.’s refusal to release its underlying data for independent examination by saying: “Even our teams don’t know the data we collect as to a particular referee’s call tendencies on certain types of calls. There are good reasons for this. It’s proprietary. It’s personnel data at the end of the day.”

The percentage of black officials in the N.B.A. has increased in the past several years, to 38 percent of 60 officials this season from 34 percent of 58 officials two years ago. Mr. Stern and Mr. Litvin said that the rise was coincidental because the league does not consider race in the hiring process.

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal peer review before consideration by an economic journal.

Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other parts of American society.

“There’s bias on the basketball court,” Mr. Wolfers said, “but less than when you’re trying to hail a cab at midnight.”

Harvey Mansfield on Strong Executives

2007-05-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Case for the Strong Executive Under some circumstances, the rule of law must yield to the need for energy. BY HARVEY C. MANSFIELD Wednesday, May 2, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Complaints against the "imperial presidency" are back in vogue. With a view to President Bush, the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. expanded and reissued the book of the same name he wrote against Richard Nixon, and Bush critics have taken up the phrase in a chorus. In response John Yoo and Richard Posner (and others) have defended the war powers of the president.

This is not the first time that a strong executive has been attacked and defended, and it will not be the last. Our Constitution, as long as it continues, will suffer this debate--I would say, give rise to it, preside over and encourage it. Though I want to defend the strong executive, I mainly intend to step back from that defense to show why the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law, is necessary, good and--under the Constitution--never-ending.

In other circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law. Americans are fortunate to have a Constitution that accommodates different circumstances. Its flexibility keeps it in its original form and spirit a "living constitution," ready for change, and open to new necessities and opportunities. The "living constitution" conceived by the Progressives actually makes it a prisoner of ongoing events and perceived trends. To explain the constitutional debate between the strong executive and the rule of law I will concentrate on its sources in political philosophy and, for greater clarity, ignore the constitutional law emerging from it.

The case for a strong executive should begin from a study, on this occasion a quick survey, of the American republic. The American republic was the first to have a strong executive that was intended to be republican as well as strong, and the success, or long life, of America's Constitution qualifies it as a possible model for other countries. Modern political science beginning from Machiavelli abandoned the best regime featured by classical political science because the best regime was utopian or imaginary. Modern political scientists wanted a practical solution, and by the time of Locke, followed by Montesquieu, they learned to substitute a model regime for the best regime; and this was the government of England. The model regime would not be applicable everywhere, no doubt, because it was not intended to be a lowest common denominator. But it would show what could be done in the best circumstances.

The American Founders had the ambition to make America the model regime, taking over from England. This is why they showed surprising respect for English government, the regime they had just rebelled against. America would not only make a republic for itself, but teach the world how to make a successful republic and thus improve republicanism and save the reputation of republics. For previous republics had suffered disastrous failure, alternating between anarchy and tyranny, seeming to force the conclusion that orderly government could come only from monarchy, the enemy of republics. Previous republics had put their faith in the rule of law as the best way to foil one-man rule. The rule of law would keep power in the hands of many, or at least a few, which was safer than in the hands of one. As the way to ensure the rule of law, Locke and Montesquieu fixed on the separation of powers. They were too realistic to put their faith in any sort of higher law; the rule of law would be maintained by a legislative process of institutions that both cooperated and competed.

Now the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule. The first is that law is always imperfect by being universal, thus an average solution even in the best case, that is inferior to the living intelligence of a wise man on the spot, who can judge particular circumstances. This defect is discussed by Aristotle in the well-known passage in his "Politics" where he considers "whether it is more advantageous to be ruled by the best man or the best laws."

The other defect is that the law does not know how to make itself obeyed. Law assumes obedience, and as such seems oblivious to resistance to the law by the "governed," as if it were enough to require criminals to turn themselves in. No, the law must be "enforced," as we say. There must be police, and the rulers over the police must use energy (Alexander Hamilton's term) in addition to reason. It is a delusion to believe that governments can have energy without ever resorting to the use of force.

The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best source of reason--one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli's expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are talking about Machiavelli's prince, the man whom in apparently unguarded moments he called a tyrant.

The American Founders heeded both criticisms of the rule of law when they created the presidency. The president would be the source of energy in government, that is, in the administration of government, energy being a neutral term that might include Aristotle's discretionary virtue and Machiavelli's tyranny--in which only partisans could discern the difference. The founders of course accepted the principle of the rule of law, as being required by the republican genius of the American people. Under this principle, the wise man or prince becomes and is called an "executive," one who carries out the will and instruction of others, of the legislature that makes the law, of the people who instruct or inspire the legislature. In this weak sense, the dictionary definition of "executive," the executive forbears to rule in his own name as one man. This means that neither one-man wisdom nor tyranny is admitted into the Constitution as such; if there is need for either, the need is subordinated to, or if you will, covered over by, the republican principle of the rule of law.

Yet the executive subordinated to the rule of law is in danger of being subordinate to the legislature. This was the fault in previous republics. When the separation of powers was invented in 17th-century England, the purpose was to keep the executive subordinate; but the trouble was the weakness of a subordinate executive. He could not do his job, or he could do his job only by overthrowing or cowing the legislature, as Oliver Cromwell had done. John Locke took the task in hand, and made a strong executive in a manner that was adopted by the American Founders.

Locke was a careful writer, so careful that he did not care if he appeared to be a confused writer. In his "Second Treatise of Government" he announces the supremacy of the legislature, which was the slogan of the parliamentary side in the English Civil War, as the principle that should govern a well-made constitution. But as the argument proceeds, Locke gradually "fortifies" (to use James Madison's term) the executive. Locke adds other related powers to the subordinate power of executing the laws: the federative power dealing with foreign affairs, which he presents as conceptually distinct from the power of executing laws but naturally allied; the veto, a legislative function; the power to convoke the legislature and to correct its representation should it become corrupt; and above all, the prerogative, defined as "the power of doing public good without a rule." Without a rule! Even more: "sometimes too against the direct letter of the law." This is the very opposite of law and the rule of law--and "prerogative" was the slogan of the king's party in the same war.

Thus Locke combined the extraconstitutional with the constitutional in a contradiction; besides saying that the legislature is "the supreme power" of the commonwealth, he speaks of "the supreme executive power." Locke, one could say, was acting as a good citizen, bringing peace to his country by giving both sides in the Civil War a place in the constitution. In doing so he ensured that the war would continue, but it would be peaceful because he also ensured that, there being reason and force on both sides, neither side could win conclusively.

The American Constitution adopted this fine idea and improved it. The American Founders helped to settle Locke's deliberate confusion of supremacy by writing it into a document and ratifying it by the people rather than merely scattering it in the treatise of a philosopher. By being formalized the Constitution could become a law itself, but a law above ordinary law and thus a law above the rule of law in the ordinary sense of laws passed by the legislature. Thus some notion of prerogative--though the word "prerogative" was much too royal for American sensibilities--could be pronounced legal inasmuch as it was constitutional. This strong sense of executive power would be opposed, within the Constitution, to the rule of law in the usual, old-republican meaning, as represented by the two rule-of-law powers in the Constitution, the Congress which makes law and the judiciary which judges by the law.

The American Constitution signifies that it has fortified the executive by vesting the president with "the executive power," complete and undiluted in Article II, as opposed to the Congress in Article I, which receives only certain delegated and enumerated legislative powers. The president takes an oath "to execute the Office of President" of which only one function is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the military, makes treaties (with the Senate), and receives ambassadors. He has the power of pardon, a power with more than a whiff of prerogative for the sake of a public good that cannot be achieved, indeed that is endangered, by executing the laws. In the Federalist, as already noted, the executive represents the need for energy in government, energy to complement the need for stability, satisfied mainly in the Senate and the judiciary.

Energy and stability are necessary in every form of government, but in their previous, sorry history, republics had failed to meet these necessities. Republican government cannot survive, as we would say, by ideology alone. The republican genius is dominant in America, where there has never been much support for anything like an ancien régime, but support for republicanism is not enough to make a viable republic. The republican spirit can actually cause trouble for republics if it makes people think that to be republican it is enough merely to oppose monarchy. Such an attitude tempts a republican people to republicanize everything so as to make government resemble a monarchy as little as possible.

Although the Federalist made a point of distinguishing a republic from a democracy (by which it meant a so-called pure, nonrepresentative democracy), the urge today to democratize everything has similar bad effects. To counter this reactionary republican (or democratic, in today's language) belief characteristic of shortsighted partisans, the Federalist made a point of holding the new, the novel, American republic to the test of good government as opposed merely to that of republican government.

The test of good government was what was necessary to all government. Necessity was put to the fore. In the first papers of the Federalist, necessity took the form of calling attention to the present crisis in America, caused by the incompetence of the republic established by the Articles of Confederation. The crisis was both foreign and domestic, and it was a crisis because it was urgent. The face of necessity, the manner in which it first appears and is most impressive, is urgency--in Machiavelli's words, la necessità che non da tempo (the necessity that allows no time). And what must be the character of a government's response to an urgent crisis? Energy. And where do we find energy in the government? In the executive. Actually, the Federalist introduces the need for energy in government considerably before it associates energy with the executive. To soothe republican partisans, the strong executive must be introduced by stages.
One should not believe that a strong executive is needed only for quick action in emergencies, though that is the function mentioned first. A strong executive is requisite to oppose majority faction produced by temporary delusions in the people. For the Federalist, a strong executive must exercise his strength especially against the people, not showing them "servile pliancy." Tocqueville shared this view. Today we think that a strong president is one who leads the people, that is, one who takes them where they want to go, like Andrew Jackson. But Tocqueville contemptuously regarded Jackson as weak for having been "the slave of the majority." Again according to the Federalist, the American president will likely have the virtue of responsibility, a new political virtue, now heard so often that it seems to be the only virtue, but first expounded in that work.

"Responsibility" is not mere responsiveness to the people; it means doing what the people would want done if they were apprised of the circumstances. Responsibility requires "personal firmness" in one's character, and it enables those who love fame--"the ruling passion of the noblest minds"--to undertake "extensive and arduous enterprises."

Only a strong president can be a great president. Americans are a republican people but they admire their great presidents. Those great presidents--I dare not give a complete list--are not only those who excelled in the emergency of war but those, like Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who also deliberately planned and executed enterprises for shaping or reshaping the entire politics of their country.

This admiration for presidents extends beyond politics into society, in which Americans, as republicans, tolerate, and appreciate, an amazing amount of one-man rule. The CEO (chief executive officer) is found at the summit of every corporation including universities. I suspect that appreciation for private executives in democratic society was taught by the success of the Constitution's invention of a strong executive in republican politics.

The case for a strong executive begins from urgent necessity and extends to necessity in the sense of efficacy and even greatness. It is necessary not merely to respond to circumstances but also in a comprehensive way to seek to anticipate and form them. "Necessary to" the survival of a society expands to become "necessary for" the good life there, and indeed we look for signs in the way a government acts in emergencies for what it thinks to be good after the emergency has passed. A free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away. Yet despite the expansion inherent in necessity, the distinction between urgent crises and quiet times remains. Machiavelli called the latter tempi pacifici, and he thought that governments could not take them for granted. What works for quiet times is not appropriate in stormy times. John Locke and the American Founders showed a similar understanding to Machiavelli's when they argued for and fashioned a strong executive.

In our time, however, an opinion has sprung up in liberal circles particularly that civil liberties must always be kept intact regardless of circumstances. This opinion assumes that civil liberties have the status of natural liberties, and are inalienable. This means that the Constitution has the status of what was called in the 17th-century natural public law; it is an order as natural as the state of nature from which it emerges. In this view liberty has just one set of laws and institutions that must be kept inviolate, lest it be lost.

But Locke was a wiser liberal. His institutions were "constituted," less by creation than by modification of existing institutions in England, but not deduced as invariable consequences of disorder in the state of nature. He retained the difference, and so did the Americans, between natural liberties, inalienable but insecure, and civil liberties, more secure but changeable. Because civil liberties are subject to circumstances, a free constitution needs an institution responsive to circumstances, an executive able to be strong when necessary.

The lesson for us should be that circumstances are much more important for free government than we often believe. Civil liberties are for majorities as well as minorities, and no one should be considered to have rights against society whose exercise would bring society to ruin. The usual danger in a republic is tyranny of the majority, because the majority is the only legitimate dominant force. But in time of war the greater danger may be to the majority from a minority, and the government will be a greater friend than enemy to liberty. Vigilant citizens must be able to adjust their view of the source of danger, and change front if necessary. "Civil liberties" belong to all, not only to the less powerful or less esteemed, and the true balance of liberty and security cannot be taken as given without regard to the threat. Nor is it true that free societies should be judged solely by what they do in quiet times; they should also be judged by the efficacy, and the honorableness, of what they do in war in order to return to peace.

The American Constitution is a formal law that establishes an actual contention among its three separated powers. Its formality represents the rule of law, and the actuality arises from which branch better promotes the common good in the event, or in the opinion of the people. In quiet times the rule of law will come to the fore, and the executive can be weak. In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong. In judging the circumstances of a free society, two parties come to be formed around these two outlooks. These outlooks may not coincide with party principles because they often depend on which branch a party holds and feels obliged to defend: Democrats today would be friendlier to executive power if they held the presidency--and Republicans would discover virtue in the rule of law if they held Congress.

The terms of the disagreement over a strong executive go back to the classic debate between Hamilton (as Pacificus) and Madison (as Helvidius) in 1793-94. Hamilton argued that the executive power, representing the whole country with the energy necessary to defend it, cannot be limited or exhausted. Madison replied that the executive power does not represent the whole country but is determined by its place in the structure of government, which is executing the laws. If carrying on war goes beyond executing the laws, that is all the more reason why the war power should be construed narrowly. Today Republicans and Democrats repeat these arguments when the former declare that we are at war with terrorists and the latter respond that the danger is essentially a matter of law enforcement.

As to the contention that a strong executive prompts a policy of imperialism, I would admit the possibility, and I promise to think carefully and prayerfully about returning Texas to Mexico. In its best moments, America wants to be a model for the world, but no more. In its less good moments, America becomes disgusted with the rest of the world for its failure to imitate our example and follow our advice. I believe that America is more likely to err with isolationism than with imperialism, and that if America is an empire, it is the first empire that always wants an exit strategy. I believe too that the difficulties of the war in Iraq arise from having wished to leave too much to the Iraqis, thus from a sense of inhibition rather than imperial ambition.

Mr. Mansfield is William R. Kenan Professor of Government at Harvard.

Glenn Greenwald on Harvey Mansfield's Presidential Dictator

2007-05-02T15:20:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald
The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"

The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."

The article bears this headline: The Case for the Strong Executive -- Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need for Energy. And it is the most explicit argument I have seen yet for vesting in the President the power to override and ignore the rule of law in order to recieve the glories of what Mansfield calls "one-man rule."

That such an argument comes from Mansfield is unsurprising. He has long been a folk hero to the what used to be the most extremist right-wing fringe but is now the core of the Republican Party. He devoted earlier parts of his career to warning of the dangers of homosexuality, particularly its effeminizing effect on our culture.

He has a career-long obsession with the glories of tyrannical power as embodied by Machiavelli's Prince, which is his model for how America ought to be governed. And last year, he wrote a book called Manliness in which "he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness" -- which means that "women are the weaker sex," "women's bodies are made to attract and to please men" and "now that women are equal, they should be able to accept being told that they aren't, quite." Publisher's Weekly called it a "juvenile screed."

I'll leave it to Bob Altemeyer and others to dig though all of that to analyze what motivates Mansfield and his decades-long craving for strong, powerful, unchallengeable one-man masculine rule -- though it's more self-evident than anything else.

But reading Mansfield has real value for understanding the dominant right-wing movement in this country. Because he is an academic, and a quite intelligent one, he makes intellectually honest arguments, by which I mean that he does not disguise what he thinks in politically palatable slogans, but instead really describes the actual premises on which political beliefs are based.

And that is Mansfield's value; he is a clear and honest embodiment of what the Bush movement is. In particular, he makes crystal clear that the so-called devotion to a "strong executive" by the Bush administration and the movement which supports it is nothing more than a belief that the Leader has the power to disregard, violate, and remain above the rule of law. And that is clear because Mansfied explicitly says that. And that is not just Mansfield's idiosyncratic belief. He is simply stating -- honestly and clearly -- the necessary premises of the model of the Omnipotent Presidency which has taken root under the Bush presidency.

This is not the first time Mansfield has expressly called for the subordination of the rule of law to the Power of the President. In January of 2006 -- in the immediate aftermath of revelations that President Bush had been breaking the law for years by spying on the telephone conversations of Americans without warrants -- Mansfield went to The Weekly Standard and authored a truly amazing article, which I wrote about here (see item 2).

Unlike dishonest Bush followers who ludicrously claimed that Bush's eavesdropping was not illegal, Mansfield embraced reality and candidly argued that President Bush possesses the power to break the law in order to fight The Terrorists. The headline of that article presented the same mutually exclusive choice as the WSJ article today: The Law and the President -- in a national emergency, who you gonna call?

In that article, Mansfield claimed, among other things, that our "enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force"; that the "Office of President" is "larger than the law"; that "the rule of law is not enough to run a government"; that "ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion"; that "with one person in charge we can have both secrecy and responsibility"; and most of all:
Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law to the fore and forgets to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply. "Law does not apply" -- that is Mansfield's belief, and the belief of the Bush movement. I didn't think it was possible, but Mansfield, with today's article in The Wall St. Journal, actually goes even further in advocating pure lawlessness and tyranny than he did in that remarkable Weekly Standard screed. He begins by describing "the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law." He then says: "In some circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law," but "the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule."
The rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule. That is what is on the Op-Ed page of The Wall St. Journal this morning. The article is then filled with one paragraph after the next paying homage to the need for a Great Leader who stomps on the rule of law when he chooses -- literally:

The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best source of reason--one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli's expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are talking about Machiavelli's prince, the man whom in apparently unguarded moments he called a tyrant. . .

The president takes an oath "to execute the Office of President" of which only one function is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the military, makes treaties (with the Senate), and receives ambassadors. He has the power of pardon, a power with more than a whiff of prerogative for the sake of a public good that cannot be achieved, indeed that is endangered, by executing the laws. . . .

In quiet times the rule of law will come to the fore, and the executive can be weak. In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong. In the course of explaining how the rule of law applies only in "quiet times," Mansfield also argues that "civil liberties are subject to circumstances," not inalienable, and that "in time of war the greater dangers may be to the majority from a minority." Thus, he explains -- in what might be my favorite sentence -- "A free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away."

I'm not going to spend much time rebutting the notion that the American President has the power to act as a Prince and override the rule of law when circumstances supposedly justify that. For one thing, given that this belief has governed our country since the 9/11 attacks, I've made the argument many times before, including here and here, as well as in my book.

But more so, one would hope that no response is really necessary, since most Americans -- outside of the authoritarian cult that has followed George W. Bush as Infallible War Leader -- instinctively understand that America does not recognize such a thing as a political official with the power of "one-man rule" that overrides the rule of law. That we are a nation of laws, not men, is so basic to our political identity that it should need no defense.

And for those with any lingering doubts about how repugnant Mansfield's vision is to the defining American political principle, I would simply turn the floor over to the great American revolutionary Thomas Paine (.pdf), writing in Common Sense: The point here is not to spend much time arguing that Mansfield's authoritarian cravings are repugnant to our political traditions. The real point is that Mansfield's mindset is the mindset of the Bush movement, of the right-wing extremists who have taken over the Republican Party and governed our country completely outside of the rule of law for the last six years. Mansfield makes these arguments more honestly and more explicitly, but there is nothing unusual or uncommon about him. He is simply expounding the belief in tyrannical lawlessness on which the Bush movement (soon to be led by someone else, but otherwise unchanged) is fundamentally based.

This is why he is published in The Weekly Standard and The Wall St. Journal -- the two most influential organs for so-called "conservative" political thought. All sorts of the most political influential people in our country -- from Dick Cheney to Richard Posner to John Yoo and The Weekly Standard -- believe and have argued for exactly this vision of government. They literally do not believe in our constitutional framework and our most defining political values. They have declared a literally endless War which, they claim, not only justifies but compels the vesting of unlimited power in the President -- "unlimited" by Congress, the courts, American public opinion and the rule of law.

That continues to be the central political crisis we have in this country. It is an encouraging development that Congress is exercising aggressive oversight and investigative powers, but the administration is stonewalling completely, and will continue to, because they do not recognize any duty to respond, to answer questions, to be subject to scrutiny or accountability. We live in stormy times, and thus, as Mansfield says: "In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong."

That is why -- as jarring as it is -- it is actually necessary to ask presidential candidates whether they intend to exercise the power to imprison American citizens with no charges of any kind. The dominant political movement in this country believes in that power and has defended and exercised it. Mansfield's beliefs may be twisted and tyrannical and radical and profoundly un-American. But they are also the beliefs that have propelled our government for the last six years and -- absent some serious change -- very well may continue to propel it into the future.

A Voice on the Right Wonders About a Coup

2007-05-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

Don’t Get Weak: Random thoughts on the passing scene.
By Thomas Sowell

Sometimes it seems as if everybody is trying to rip off his own little piece of America, until we are all torn apart.

A reader writes: “Liberals hold us individually responsible for nothing but collectively responsible for everything.”

The last time I saw a Republican express outrage was 1991, when Clarence Thomas told the Senators what he thought of the smear tactics used against him. Before that, it was Ronald Reagan saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Before that, it was probably Teddy Roosevelt.

Too many people in positions of responsibility act as if these are just positions of opportunity — for themselves. The ones who simply steal money probably do less harm than teachers who propagandize their students, media who slant the news, or politicians who sell out their country’s interests in order to get reelected.

A reader wrote: “Have you ever noticed that opinion polls ask the opinions of people who have no expertise in the subject on which they are being polled and publish these opinions as if they were gospel truth instead of group ignorance?”

Judging by the polls, Republican voters’ memories do not seem to be as short as Senator John McCain may have thought. Judging by press coverage, the media’s memory does not seem to have been as long as he may have thought when he played to that gallery.

A sign of the times: A full-page ad for an Alaska cruise in the left-wing New York Review of Books says, “See Alaska’s Glaciers Before They’re Gone!” Shipmates listed include Ralph Nader and the editor of The Nation magazine.

The people who are scariest to me are the people who don’t even know enough to realize how little they know.A reader sent the following message, quoting his nephew: “Calling an illegal alien an ‘undocumented worker’ is like calling a drug dealer an ‘unlicensed pharmacist.’“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

Our education system, our media, and our intelligentsia have all been unrelentingly undermining the values, the traditions, and the unity of this country for generations and, at the same time, portraying as “understandable” all kinds of deviance, from prostitution to drugs to riots.

The home run records that made Babe Ruth famous have been broken but one of his records will probably never be broken — pitching the longest shutout in World Series history, 14 innings. Few pitchers go even nine innings these days.

“Global warming” seems to be joining “diversity,” “gun control,” “open space,” and a growing list of other subjects where rational discussion has become impossible — and where you are considered a bad person even for wanting to discuss it rationally.

Is your employer poorer by the amount of money he pays you? Probably not, or you would never have been hired. Why then should we assume that a corporation or its customers are poorer by the amount paid to its chief-executive officer?

A review of one of the many environmentalist books says that even if you can’t do all you would like toward “living green,” you can at least “congratulate yourself on taking small steps to improve the planet.” That is what environmentalism — and much else on the political Left’s agenda — is really all about, self congratulation.

Just watching Suze Orman for a few moments while channel surfing is enough to make me feel exhausted.

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

In his book Income and Wealth, economist Alan Reynolds says that people often form “strong opinions” based on “weak statistics.” Unfortunately, that is also true of a wide range of other issues, from “global warming” to “gender bias.” I am so old that I can remember a Democrat, at his inauguration as president, say of our enemies: “We dare not tempt them with weakness.”

Minorities and Traffic Stops

2007-05-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Study: Minorities fare worse in traffic stops

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested, a federal study found.

Police were much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere, according to the Justice Department.

The study, released Sunday by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, covered police contacts with the public during 2005 and was based on interviews by the Census Bureau with nearly 64,000 people age 16 or over. (Read the full report)

"The numbers are very consistent" with those found in a similar study of police-public contacts in 2002, bureau statistician Matthew R. Durose, the report's co-author, said in an interview.

"There's some stability in the findings over these three years."

Traffic stops have become a politically volatile issue. Minority groups have complained that many stops and searches are based on race rather than on legitimate suspicions. Blacks in particular have complained of being pulled over for simply "driving while black."

"The available data is sketchy but deeply concerning," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau. The civil rights organization has done its own surveys of traffic stops, and he said the racial disparities grow larger, the deeper the studies delve.

A call for more data
"It's very important to look at the hit rates for searches -- the number that actually result in finding a crime," Shelton said. "There's a great deal of racial disparity there." He called for federal legislation that would collect uniform data by race on stops, arrests, use of force, searches and hit rates.

"This report shows there are still disturbing disparities in terms of what happens to people of color after the stop," said Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's racial justice project.

He also said better reporting is needed.

Like the 2002 report, this one contained a warning that the racial disparities uncovered "do not constitute proof that police treat people differently along demographic lines" because the differences could be explained by circumstances not analyzed by the survey.

The 2002 report said such circumstances might include driver conduct or whether drugs were in plain view.

Traffic stops are the most frequent way police interact with the public, accounting for 41 percent of all contacts. An estimated 17.8 million drivers were stopped in 2005.

Black, Hispanic and white motorists were equally likely to be pulled over by police -- between 8 percent and 9 percent of each group. The slight decline in blacks pulled over -- from 9.2 percent in 2002 to 8.1 percent in 2005 -- was not statistically significant, Durose said, and could be the result of random differences.

The raw numbers
The racial disparities showed up after that point:

Blacks (9.5 percent) and Hispanics (8.8 percent) were much more likely to be searched than whites (3.6 percent). There were slight but statistically insignificant declines compared with the 2002 report in the percentages of blacks and Hispanics searched.

Blacks (4.5 percent) were more than twice as likely as whites (2.1 percent) to be arrested. Hispanic drivers were arrested 3.1 percent of the time.

Among all police-public contacts, force was used 1.6 percent of the time. But blacks (4.4 percent) and Hispanics (2.3 percent) were more likely than whites (1.2 percent) to be subjected to force or the threat of force by police officers.

People interviewed described police hitting, kicking, pushing, grabbing, pointing a gun or spraying pepper spray at them or threatening to do so. More than four of five felt the force used was excessive, but there were no statistically significant racial disparities among the people who felt that way.

Two years ago, the Bush administration's handling of the 2002 report and its finding of racial disparities generated considerable controversy.

Departing from normal practice, the earlier report was simply posted on the statistics bureau's Web site without any press release announcing it.

The bureau's director at the time, Lawrence A. Greenfeld, appointed by President Bush in 2001,
wanted to publicize the racial disparities, but his superiors disagreed, according to a statistics bureau employee.

Greenfeld told his staff he was being moved to a new job following the dispute, according to this employee, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

This time there was a press release.

Dante Condemns Moderation

2007-05-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago, we had a conversation about "moderation" vs "the extremes" which reminded me of this passage from Dante's Inferno. Generally, we value "moderation" in the United States, but Dante has a different view.

Inferno: Canto III
"Through me the way is to the city dolent; Through me the way is to eternal dole; Through me the way among the people lost.

Justice incited my sublime Creator; Created me divine Omnipotence, The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.

Before me there were no created things, Only eterne, and I eternal last. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"

These words in sombre colour I beheld Written upon the summit of a gate; Whence I: "Their sense is, Master, hard to me!"

And he to me, as one experienced: "Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, All cowardice must needs be here extinct.

We to the place have come, where I have told thee Thou shalt behold the people dolorous Who have foregone the good of intellect."

And after he had laid his hand on mine With joyful mien, whence I was comforted, He led me in among the secret things.

There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud Resounded through the air without a star, Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat.

Languages diverse, horrible dialects, Accents of anger, words of agony, And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,

Made up a tumult that goes whirling on For ever in that air for ever black, Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes.

And I, who had my head with horror bound, Said: "Master, what is this which now I hear? What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?"

And he to me: "This miserable mode Maintain the melancholy souls of those Who lived
withouten infamy or praise.

Commingled are they with that caitiff choir Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.

The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair; Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, For glory none the damned would have from them."

And I: "O Master, what so grievous is To these, that maketh them lament so sore?" He answered: "I will tell thee very briefly.

These have no longer any hope of death; And this blind life of theirs is so debased, They envious are of every other fate.

No fame of them the world permits to be; Misericord and Justice both disdain them. Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass."

And I, who looked again, beheld a banner, Which, whirling round, ran on so rapidly, That of all pause it seemed to me indignant;

And after it there came so long a train Of people, that I ne'er would have believed That ever Death so many had undone.

When some among them I had recognised, I looked, and I beheld the shade of him Who made through cowardice the great refusal.

Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain, That this the sect was of the caitiff wretches Hateful to God and to his enemies.

These miscreants, who never were alive, Were naked, and were stung exceedingly By gadflies and by hornets that were there.

These did their faces irrigate with blood, Which, with their tears commingled, at their feet By the disgusting worms was gathered up.

And when to gazing farther I betook me. People I saw on a great river's bank; Whence said I: "Master, now vouchsafe to me,

Surrendering to Hillary?

2007-05-01T05:46:00.000-07:00

Bruce Bartlett,
TownHall.com

As each day passes, it becomes increasingly clear that the Democrats will win the White House next year. It’s not quite 1932, but it’s getting close to a sure thing. All the energy is on their side, they are raising more money from more contributors, and there is little if any enthusiasm for any of the Republican candidates—even among Republicans.

Of course, one can never rule out the ability of the Democrats to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. But sometimes the trend in one party’s direction is so strong that even the grossest incompetence can’t keep it from winning. I think 2008 is shaping up as that kind of year for the Democrats.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a question during a breakfast gathering at the home of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie, Tuesday, April 3, 2007, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa home. (AP Photo/Steve Pope)

If I am right, conservatives are going to have to make an important decision at some point. Do they go down with the sinking Republican ship or do they try and have some meaningful influence on the next president by becoming involved in the Democratic race?

I’m sure that the first reaction of most conservatives will be to say that any involvement in the Democratic Party is unthinkable. Many view it as the party of treason and socialism. They could no more involve themselves in Democratic politics than a God-fearing Christian would consider working with Satan just because it looked like he was going to win.

For those of you who feel this way, stop reading. There is nothing more in this column for you. But for those conservatives who don’t see the 2008 election as a race between good and evil, but merely a contest between rivals within the same league, I think there is a good case for participating in the Democratic nominating process.

Here’s why. Although all the Democratic candidates are more liberal than all of the Republicans, they are not all equally liberal. Among the Democrats, some are more to the right and others more to the left. It is a grave mistake to assume, as most conservatives do, that they are all equally bad and that it makes no difference whatsoever which one is elected.

To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative. John Edwards is the most liberal and Barack Obama is somewhere in between.

The hard-core right-wingers who kept reading past the point I told them to stop probably all think I’ve lost my mind by now. But remember, I am talking about the politics within the Democratic Party, not the nation as a whole. Moreover, at this stage of the nominating process, all of the candidates in both parties are appealing mainly to their bases. These are well to the left of the country among Democrats and well to the right among Republicans.

It is in this context that one must evaluate Sen. Clinton’s position. Given the views of the Democratic base and the enormous unpopularity of the Iraq War, it is a real act of courage for her to steadfastly refuse to say her vote for the war was wrong. Of course, like all Democrats and most Americans she opposes the war today and favors a rapid pull-out.

That is why the easy thing for Sen. Clinton to do would be to just thrown in the towel, admit her vote was wrong, and move on. And that’s why it is an act of courage for her to refuse to do so. If conservatives weren’t so blinded by their hatred for her, this would be obvious.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a question during a breakfast gathering at the home of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie, Tuesday, April 3, 2007, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa home.

On economics, it is reasonable to assume that Sen. Clinton’s policies would not be altogether different from Bill Clinton’s. This is not a bad thing. On trade, his record was outstanding and on the budget was far better than George W. Bush’s. While Clinton raised taxes in 1993, it should be remembered that he cut them in 1997, including a cut in the capital gains tax. On regulatory policy, Clinton was no worse than the current administration and probably better on net.
Democrats know all this, which is why our most liberal pundits, like Bob Kuttner, are attacking Sen. Clinton for being a clone of her husband on economics and attacking her support for “Rubinomics,” named after former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin. Its essential elements are a commitment to deficit reduction and globalization—which are both anathema to the Democratic Party’s liberal base. It wants a hard-line against imports to save jobs and an expansive fiscal policy to pay for a wide range of new social programs.

At some point, politically sophisticated conservatives will have to recognize that no Republican can win in 2008 and that their only choice is to support the most conservative Democrat for the nomination. Call me crazy, but I think that person is Hillary Clinton.

Bruce Bartlett is a former senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis of Dallas, Texas. Bartlett is a prolific author, having published over 900 articles in national publications, and prominent magazines and published four books, including Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action.

Ultra Sound and Abortion, Part II

2007-05-01T05:38:00.000-07:00

Will Saletan informs us that the sky is blue, water is wet, and those are fetuses that get aborted
Filed under: Reproductive Rights, Stupidity, Law, Assholes — zuzu @ 3:38 pm

I really wonder sometimes if Will Saletan is my father’s long-lost bastard child. Because he’s got the exact same talent Dad had for telling you what you already knew in a manner that made it clear that he thought he was a genius and you were benighted and in dire need of his instruction. Even where he is hopelessly, utterly wrong — or at the very least, just not getting it in the name of being “contrarian.”

I have noted this similarity once before, comparing Will’s stunning revelation that greater access to contraception will tend to decrease abortion (not to mention his belief that he just thought of this all by himself) to my father’s being full of advice about the use of the microwave that everyone else in the house had already been using for 10 years before he deigned to figure out how to turn it on.

Will’s latest offering from the “No shit, Sherlock” files reminds me very much of my father’s solemnly informing me that there are nine Justices on the Supreme Court. Mind you, I was in college at the time. Poli Sci. I kinda knew that. But Dad was a white guy, and that made him an Expert.

What’s the latest pearl of wisdom from Lord Saletan? Women just don’t know that they’re aborting fetuses, and we have to make sure they know this!

(Saletan) "In its April 18 ruling, the court treated abortion like an obscenity—something that could be done, but not out in the open. Partial-birth abortions, the court reasoned, could be banned because they occur outside the woman’s body. Other abortions need not be outlawed, since the womb conceals them.

Ultrasound dissolves this distinction. It offers to make every fetus and every abortion visible. It forces the court to renounce either the partial-birth ban or the right to abortion."

Oh, my god! Who knew that these were human fetuses that were getting aborted??? Sweet gibbering Jesus, were it not for ultrasound technology, we would never, ever know what goes on within the black box of a woman’s body!

(Saletan) It’s hard to accept if you see abortion as a woman’s right. But it’s even harder to accept if you see abortion as the taking of a human life. That’s one reason why pro-lifers are turning their attention from partial-birth abortion to ultrasound, from the fetus outside the body to the fetus within. They’re trying to open, in their words, a “window to the womb.”Pro-lifers are often caricatured as stupid creationists who just want to put women back in their place. Science and free inquiry are supposed to help them get over their “love affair with the fetus.” But science hasn’t cooperated. Ultrasound has exposed the life in the womb to those of us who didn’t want to see what abortion kills. The fetus is squirming, and so are we. Around the country, ultrasound bills are all the rage. Most of them require clinics to offer each woman an ultrasound view of her fetus. Mississippi enacted a law on March 22. Idaho followed April 3. Georgia’s legislature passed a bill a week ago; South Carolina’s is about to do the same."

Quick! Better lobby your state legislature for an ultrasound bill! All the cool kids are doing it. It’s all techno.

Plus, you don’t want to be a pussy, do you?

(Saletan) Critics complain that these bills seek to “bias,” “coerce,” and “guilt-trip” women. Come on. Women aren’t too weak to face the truth. If you don’t want to look at the video, you don’t have to. But you should look at it, and so should the guy who got you pregnant, because the decision you’re about to make is as grave as it gets. Are ultrasound pushers trying to bias your decision? Of course. But of all the things they do to “inform” your decision, this is the least twisted. Look at the Senate’s “Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act.” It would order your doctor to deliver a 193-word script full of bogus congressional findings about your “pain-capable unborn child.” Ultrasound cuts through that kind of garbage. The image on the monitor may look like a blob, a baby, or neither. It certainly won’t follow some senator’s script. All it will show you is the truth.

Look at the pretty pictures!

You know, that little line about “the truth” reminds me of that scene in A Few Good Men where Tom Cruise has Jack Nicholson on the stand: “I want the truth!” demands Tom. “You can’t handle the truth,” sneers Jack.

Now, why would I think of a Tom Cruise movie when reading an article about ultrasounds?
I just love how Saletan decides that women don’t know “the truth” about abortion, and that ultrasounds are just the ticket for telling them that they have a human life in their wombs. That fetuses MOVE!

Uh, they know that already, Will. That’s why they’re getting abortions. Because they know that if the embryo or fetus is left there, chances are it will be a baby after nine months, the responsibility of someone who doesn’t want to have a baby. They don’t need to look at an ultrasound to know that. Of course, anti-choicers remain convinced otherwise:

(Saletan) To pro-lifers, ultrasound is a test of pro-choice sincerity. “The same people who scream that women must always be told ‘all their options,’ including abortion, balk at allowing women to see whom it is whose life they are about to take,” says Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC’s state legislative director. “They are petrified that women will change their minds after seeing their babies.”

So, uh, you gonna pay for this, Mary? Because requiring ultrasounds — which are not cheap — is going to raise the price of abortions and force even more late-term procedures as women have to get the money together. Which, of course, is the point here: throw up as many roadblocks as possible, raise the costs, make it as difficult as possible to obtain an abortion, and maybe a few of those sluts will change their minds. And if they don’t want to look at the video, they’re weak and can’t handle the truth.

Actually, given how many obstacles are put into womens’ paths, particularly in Bible-belt states, it’s a wonder anyone goes through with abortion at all. I’ve never had one, but if I ever needed one, I live in a state with incredibly liberal abortion laws. I can’t even imagine scraping together the money, traveling to a distant clinic, going through mandatory waiting periods, having to sit through bullshit disclosures about the procedure, running the gantlet of the protesters outside (not to mention all the security inside due to the terrorism directed at women’s clinics), and then having one more goddamn thing thrown at you: “Look! It’s your baby!”

That so many women do make it through this whole procedure is a real testament to the fact that they know the truth already and they will do what they need to do. Which is something that needs to be added to the list of things Saletan Just Doesn’t Get. Because this is how he closes his piece:

To trust the ultrasound, you have to trust the woman.

If you trusted the woman in the first place, you wouldn’t force her to view an ultrasound.

Ultra-Sound and Abortion

2007-05-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Sex, Life, and VideotapeUltrasound and the future of abortion.
By William Saletan

Last week, pro-lifers won their biggest victory in 40 years: a Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. This week, they announced their next target. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, concluded that the court's ruling "should give encouragement to the legislators who are pursuing other types of regulation," particularly bills that "require the abortionist to offer the woman an opportunity to view an ultrasound" of her fetus.

For pro-lifers, this segue is logical. For the court, it means trouble. It threatens to unravel the latest judicial compromise and, with it, Roe v. Wade. In its April 18 ruling, the court treated abortion like an obscenity—something that could be done, but not out in the open. Partial-birth abortions, the court reasoned, could be banned because they occur outside the woman's body. Other abortions need not be outlawed, since the womb conceals them.

Ultrasound dissolves this distinction. It offers to make every fetus and every abortion visible. It forces the court to renounce either the partial-birth ban or the right to abortion.

For 34 years, the court allowed states to regulate but not ban pre-viability abortions. That era ended April 18. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, ruled that the partial-birth ban was compatible with Roe because abortions other than the partial-birth kind would remain legal.
Kennedy's colleague, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ridiculed this distinction. The partial-birth ban, she pointed out, "saves not a single fetus," since it allowed the doctor to tear apart the fetus inside the womb instead of pulling it partway out before killing it. "[T]he notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures … is more akin to infanticide than the other, or that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one but not the other, is simply irrational," she wrote.

Kennedy replied that the selective ban was rational because partial-birth abortion, unlike internal dismemberment, "occurs when the fetus is partially outside the mother" and therefore had a "disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant." This similarity, he argued, gave Congress reason to believe that the partial-birth procedure uniquely "undermines the public's perception" of medical ethics and would "coarsen society to the humanity" of innocent life.
In other words, it's rational and constitutional to ban abortions based on how they look, not what they are. Inside the womb, a fetus bears just as much similarity to an infant as it does outside. But killing the fetus inside is OK, because the public won't perceive and be "coarsened" by what's being done.

That's a pretty cynical distinction. It's hard to accept if you see abortion as a woman's right. But it's even harder to accept if you see abortion as the taking of a human life. That's one reason why pro-lifers are turning their attention from partial-birth abortion to ultrasound, from the fetus outside the body to the fetus within. They're trying to open, in their words, a "window to the womb."

Pro-lifers are often caricatured as stupid creationists who just want to put women back in their place. Science and free inquiry are supposed to help them get over their "love affair with the fetus." But science hasn't cooperated. Ultrasound has exposed the life in the womb to those of us who didn't want to see what abortion kills. The fetus is squirming, and so are we.

Around the country, ultrasound bills are all the rage. Most of them require clinics to offer each woman an ultrasound view of her fetus. Mississippi enacted a law on March 22. Idaho followed April 3. Georgia's legislature passed a bill a week ago; South Carolina's is about to do the same.
Critics complain that these bills seek to "bias," "coerce," and "guilt-trip" women. Come on. Women aren't too weak to face the truth. If you don't want to look at the video, you don't have to. But you should look at it, and so should the guy who got you pregnant, because the decision you're about to make is as grave as it gets.

Are ultrasound pushers trying to bias your decision? Of course. But of all the things they do to "inform" your decision, this is the least twisted. Look at the Senate's "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act." It would order your doctor to deliver a 193-word script full of bogus congressional findings about your "pain-capable unborn child." Ultrasound cuts through that kind of garbage. The image on the monitor may look like a blob, a baby, or neither. It certainly won't follow some senator's script. All it will show you is the truth.

If I were a legislator, I'd offer four amendments to any ultrasound bill. First, the government should pick up the tab. Second, the woman should also be offered a six-hour videotape of a screaming 1-year-old. Third, any juror deliberating whether to issue a death sentence should be offered the chance to view an execution. Fourth, anyone buying meat should be offered the chance to watch video from a slaughterhouse. If my first amendment passed but the others failed, I'd still vote for the bill.

To pro-lifers, ultrasound is a test of pro-choice sincerity. "The same people who scream that women must always be told 'all their options,' including abortion, balk at allowing women to see whom it is whose life they are about to take," says Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC's state legislative director. "They are petrified that women will change their minds after seeing their babies."

Maybe. But pro-lifers seem equally petrified that women won't change their minds. They rigged Mississippi's ultrasound law with a clause that would ban nearly all abortions if Roe is overturned. Now the Supreme Court has echoed that equivocation, ruling that one way to "inform" women of the evil of partial-birth abortion is to criminalize it. But the clash between ultrasound and the partial-birth ban is ultimately a choice between information and prohibition. To trust the ultrasound, you have to trust the woman.

A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.

Conservatives on Abortion Decision

2007-04-19T08:00:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Conservatives Celebrate Ban on Abortion Procedure
Posted by: Matt Lewis at 5:16 PM
It's fair for the conservative movement deserves a lot of credit for today's Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion. We worked to elect a president who would make good Supreme Court picks -- and he did.

Here's what the Washington Post has to say:

The dramatic decision delivered to abortion opponents the promise of a more conservative court as reconstituted by Bush, who praised the majority's rejection of what he called an "abhorrent procedure" and suggested that he would continue working for greater restrictions on abortion.

The ruling marked the first time that the court has upheld a ban on a specific abortion procedure. It also marked a departure from the Supreme Court's past practice of requiring a "health exception" in laws governing abortion to allow the procedure when a woman's health would otherwise be at risk.

Granted, he needed our help to avoid Harriet Miers (yes, I opposed her nomination from the beginning). Of course, we cannot say, for sure, how she would have voted on upholding the partial-birth abortion ban. But I, for one, feel a lot safer with Roberts and Alito -- don't you?

And we can definitely use something positive to celebrate right now. Here's what Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote today:

After three very dark days for our nation, those who cherish life rejoice in the news that the Supreme Court no longer endorses the senseless killing of innocent, partially-born babies.

In a week where the effects of violence have been so keenly felt, we applaud the U.S. Supreme Court's decision today upholding Congress's statute that ends the bloodshed of the unborn by the horrific partial-birth abortion procedure.

I've been saying for a long time now, that conservative bloggers and activists deserve credit for our current Supreme Court. Here's what a liberal blog, Save the Court, wrote back in January of '06:

In what he calls an underreported story, Matt Lewis, author of a guidebook for effectively communicating with GOP voters, writes in Human Events that “Conservative bloggers, pundits, and activists stopped the Harriet Meirs nomination,” and if Alito is confirmed “much of the credit will rightfully belong to the conservative movement.” Calling this “truly an historic accomplishment,” Lewis also claims credit for doing “the President a huge favor by saving him the embarrassment of a disastrous confirmation hearing” by opposing Harriet Miers.

Tonight, we rightly celebrate the ruling. After all, imagine what would have happened today if we hadn't worked hard to get good judges on the bench ...

The Partial-Birth Abortion Decision

2007-04-19T07:52:00.000-07:00

Slate
Father Knows Best. Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women.
By Dahlia Lithwick

The key to comprehending the Supreme Court's ruling today in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal partial-birth abortion ban is a mastery not of constitutional law but of a literary type. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion is less about the scope of abortion regulation than an announcement of an astonishing new test: Hereinafter, on the morally and legally thorny question of abortion, the proposed rule should be weighed against the gauzy sensitivities of that iconic literary creature: the Inconstant Female.

Kennedy invokes The Woman Who Changed Her Mind not once, but twice today. His opinion is a love song to all women who regret their abortions after the fact, and it is in the service of these women that he justifies upholding the ban. Today's holding is a strange reworking of Taming of the Shrew, with Kennedy playing an all-knowing Baptista to a nation of fickle Biancas.
As a matter of law, the majority opinion today should have focused exclusively on what has changed since the high court's 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart. Stenberg struck down a Nebraska ban that was almost identical to the federal ban upheld today. That's why every court to review the ban found the federal law, passed in 2003, unconstitutional. What really changed in the intervening years was the composition of the court: Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted to strike down the ban in 2000, is gone. Samuel Alito, who votes today to uphold it, is here.

What hasn't changed is that Anthony Kennedy finds partial-birth abortion really disgusting. We saw that in his dissent in Stenberg. That's what animates and drives his decision. His opinion blossoms from the premise that if all women were as sensitive as he is about the fundamental awfulness of this procedure, they'd all refuse to undergo it. Since they aren't, he'll decide for them.

Kennedy halfheartedly attempts to distinguish Stenberg from Gonzales. Sparing us his usual lofty opening sonnet to freedom and liberty and truth and good lighting, he opens with the terse insistence that this case is not Stenberg: The act is both "more specific" and "more precise" than its Nebraskan precursor. The court can uphold it without revisiting Stenberg. That's nice for Kennedy, since he is one of the authors of the famous peaen to precedent in Casey that was the basis, in that 1992 case, for upholding Roe v. Wade.

Rather than admitting that his opinion today is at odds with Stenberg, Kennedy walks his reader through the horrors of the intact dilation and extraction procedure Congress has banned. This discussion goes on for five pages, and includes, for balance, an "abortion doctor's clinical description" of the abortion at issue, and that of a nurse who witnessed the procedure being "performed on a 26 1/2 week fetus." (The nurse's version: "the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head and the baby's arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he think's he's going to fall.")

Kennedy contends Congress fixed the problems with the Nebraska ban in two vital ways: by making factual findings, and by narrowing the definition of the procedure such that doctors of "ordinary intelligence" know which operations will be illegal and which will not.

And then Kennedy quickly returns to the business of grossing us out. With a stirring haiku about how "respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," the justice interpolates himself between every one of those mothers and every child she might ever bear. Without regard for the women who feel they made the right decision in terminating a pregnancy, he frets for those who changed their minds. ("It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.") (The "infant," not the "fetus.") As both the dissenters and my colleague Emily Bazelon have pointed out, this portrayal of a rampant epidemic of regretful women may or may not be scientifically accurate. (The American Psychological Association doesn't think so.) But even if the numbers of women who would truly choose differently if they could choose again are larger than most of the medical literature indicates, one might question whether such women should be the pole star of national abortion policy.

Nobody disputes that whether or not they decide to go through with an abortion, women face a heart-wrenching choice. But for Kennedy only those women who regret the decision to abort illuminate some deeper truth. And Kennedy's solution for these flip-flopping women is elegant. Protect them from the truth. "Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details," he concedes. "It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the state." In Kennedy's view, if pregnant women only knew how abhorrent the procedure was, they'd always opt to avoid it. But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in dissent, Kennedy doesn't propose giving women more information about partial-birth abortion procedures. He says it's up to the Congress and the courts to substitute their judgment and ban the procedures altogether. ("I'm sorry Bianca, there is a procedure out there that may be safer for you, but some day, you will thank me for sparing you from it.")

Then Kennedy sorrowfully returns to the Indecisive Women. "It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound, when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form."

One core proposition that's held true from Roe v. Wade to Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg was that abortion regulations, in order to be constitutional, required an exception if the mother's health was in danger. For the first time today, Kennedy determines that a court's factual determination about whether some procedure may be necessary to protect the mother's health can just evaporate in the face of "medical uncertainty." That turns both Casey and Stenberg on their heads. After today, "medical uncertainty does not foreclose the exercise of legislative power." And even where some of the building blocks of that "uncertainty" are patently untrue. Henceforth if there is uncertainty about the health consequences of the ban, the tie will go to the banners.

Kennedy devotes the remainder of his opinion to taking cover under standing doctrine. "Standing" to bring suit is the Roberts court's trapdoor to keep pesky litigants away from the courthouse. On this front, too, Kennedy turns Casey and Stenberg on their heads with nary a backward glance. His opinion pretty much unfurls a roadmap for states seeking to enact broader bans on abortion. As Ginsburg points out in her dissent, the court's rationale for upholding the ban on intact D&Es would support a ban on the (far more common) nonintact D&E as well.
It's hard to fathom why Kennedy has so much more sympathy for the women who changed their minds about abortions than for those who did not. His concern for Inconstant Females might be patronizing in any other jurist. Coming from him, it's brilliantly ironic. Kennedy is, after all, America's Hamlet. The man who famously worried that "sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line," will long be remembered as the living incarnation of agony and indecision, And today he seamlessly rewrites his Stenberg dissent as a majority opinion that blasts his earlier Casey vote to its core.
I'm no psychologist but in light of today's Gonzales opinion one has to wonder: Is all of Kennedy's tender concern over those flip-flopping women really just some kind of weird misplaced justification for his flip-flopping self?

A Short Note On Women in the Sciences

2007-04-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

Alex Tabarok at Marginal Revolution

The Patriarchy at Work
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor after controlling for demographic, family, employer and productivity covariates and that in many cases, there is no gender difference in promotion to tenure or full professor even without controlling for covariates. However, family characteristics have different impacts on women's and men's promotion probabilities. Single women do better at each stage than single men, although this might be due to selection. Children make it less likely that women in science will advance up the academic job ladder beyond their early post-doctorate years, while both marriage and children increase men's likelihood of advancing.

You can see the whole paper by clicking through Marginal Revolution

Jackie Robinson and the Re-Written Check

2007-04-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

The media world is buzzing over the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first appearance in a Major League baseball game. According to Ian O'Connor of Fox Sports, Robinson's first game was "the most important event in the history of American sports."

And it was.

There is a strong argument that the two most important events in American history have been emancipation from slavery and the overturning of racial segregation. Like Brown v Board of Education, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Riders, the Poor People's March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Robinson's first game as a Dodger is tremendously significant because it was a signal event in the overcoming of racial segregation.

But why is the overturning of segregation so important to American history?

First, overcoming legal segregation made life better for millions of black people in the United States. Most fundamentally, the basic rights of African-Americans to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and exercise free speech and freedom of assembly were recognized. Likewise, black people were integrated into business, education, and civic institutions and a large black middle class came into existence. Because baseball was a prominent civic institution, the integration of baseball helped advance the cause of integration in other spheres as well.

Second, overcoming segregation began a long process of redeeming American society from its legacy of white supremacy. One of the important things about the celebration of Jackie Robinson's baseball career is that all Americans now identify with Robinson's triumphs over racism--against the initial rejection from some of his teammates, the taunting from baseball racists like Phillie manager Ben Chapman, and the abuse from hostile fans. In much the same way that Martin Luther King became an icon for all Americans, Jackie Robinson has become everyone's hero while his racist antagonists are seen as being so un-American that it's like they came from another country.

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther King claimed that:

"[W]e have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

King underestimated the significance of his actions. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was indeed a check, but a check that guaranteed "the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" only for white men. Jefferson and Madison did not recognize inalienable rights for black people any more than Roger Taney would in the Dred Scott decision of 1857. What King and other civil rights figures did was "rewrite" the founding documents to guaranteed rights for all rather than rights for white people. In doing so, King was retrospectively redeeming the American Revolution and the Constitution from the legacy of white supremacy. King created a Constitution for us all and then pushed the country to cash in on that promise.

Jackie Robinson was one of the first figures to cash in fully on the promise of an integrated society in the African-American rewriting of the American promise. In doing so, he paved the way for all of us.

Interracial Marriage: 40 Years After

2007-04-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

40 years after ruling, interracial marriage flourishing
By David Crary
Associated Press
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NEW YORK -- The charisma king of the 2008 presidential field. The world's best golfer. The captain of the New York Yankees. Besides superstardom, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter have another common bond: Each is the child of an interracial marriage.

For most of U.S. history, in most communities, such unions were taboo.

It was only 40 years ago — on June 12, 1967 — that the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. The decision also overturned similar bans in 15 other states.

Since that landmark Loving v. Virginia ruling, the number of interracial marriages has soared; for example, black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005, according to Census Bureau figures. Factoring in all racial combinations, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld calculates that more than 7 percent of America's 59 million married couples in 2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2 percent in 1970.

Coupled with a steady flow of immigrants from all parts of the world, the surge of interracial marriages and multiracial children is producing a 21st century America more diverse than ever, with the potential to become less stratified by race.

``The racial divide in the U.S. is a fundamental divide. ... but when you have the 'other' in your own family, it's hard to think of them as 'other' anymore,'' Rosenfeld said. ``We see a blurring of the old lines, and that has to be a good thing, because the lines were artificial in the first place.''

The boundaries were still distinct in 1967, a year when the Sidney Poitier film ``Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'' — a comedy built around parents' acceptance of an interracial couple — was considered groundbreaking. The Supreme Court ruled that Virginia could not criminalize the marriage that Richard Loving, a white, and his black wife, Mildred, entered into nine years earlier in Washington, D.C.

But what once seemed so radical to many Americans is now commonplace.

Many prominent blacks — including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, civil rights leader Julian Bond and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun — have married whites. Well-known whites who have married blacks include former Defense Secretary William Cohen and actor Robert DeNiro.

Last year, the Salvation Army installed Israel Gaither as the first black leader of its U.S. operations. He and his wife, Eva, who is white, wed in 1967 — the first interracial marriage between Salvation Army officers in the United States.

Opinion polls show overwhelming popular support, especially among younger people, for interracial marriage.

That's not to say acceptance has been universal. Interviews with interracial couples from around the country reveal varied challenges, and opposition has lingered in some quarters.

Bob Jones University in South Carolina only dropped its ban on interracial dating in 2000; a year later 40 percent of the voters objected when Alabama became the last state to remove a no-longer-enforceable ban on interracial marriages from its constitution.

Taunts and threats, including cross burnings, still occur sporadically. In Cleveland, two white men were sentenced to prison earlier this year for harassment of an interracial couple that included spreading liquid mercury around their house.

More often, though, the difficulties are more nuanced, such as those faced by Kim and Al Stamps during 13 years as an interracial couple in Jackson, Miss.

Kim, a white woman raised on Cape Cod, met Al, who is black, in 1993 after she came to Jackson's Tougaloo College to study history. Together, they run Cool Al's — a popular hamburger restaurant — while raising a 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter in the state with the nation's lowest percentage (0.7) of multiracial residents.

The children are homeschooled, Kim said, because Jackson's schools are largely divided along racial lines and might not be comfortable for biracial children. She said their family triggered a wave of ``white flight'' when they moved into a mostly white neighborhood four years ago — ``People were saying to my kids, 'What are you doing here?'''

``Making friends here has been really, really tough,'' Kim said. ``I'll go five years at a time with no white friends at all.''

Yet some of the worst friction has been with her black in-laws. Kim said they accused her of scheming to take over the family business, and there's been virtually no contact for more than a year.

``Everything was race,'' Kim said. ``I was called 'the white devil.'''

Her own parents in Massachusetts have been supportive, Kim said, but she credited her mother with foresight.

``She told me, 'Your life is going to be harder because of this road you've chosen — it's going to be harder for your kids,''' Kim said. ``She was absolutely right.''

Al Stamps said he is less sensitive to disapproval than his wife, and tries to be philosophical.

``I'm always cordial,'' he said. ``I'll wait to see how people react to us. If I'm not wanted, I'll move on.''

It's been easier, if not always smooth, for other couples.

Major Cox, a black Alabamian, and his white wife, Cincinnati-born Margaret Meier, have lived on the Cox family homestead in Smut Eye, Ala., for more than 20 years, building a large circle of black and white friends while encountering relatively few hassles.

``I don't feel it, I don't see it,'' said Cox, 66, when asked about racist hostility. ``I live a wonderful life as a nonracial person.''

Meier says she occasionally detects some expressions of disapproval of their marriage, ``but flagrant, in-your-face racism is pretty rare now.''

Cox — an Army veteran and former private detective who now joins his wife in raising quarter horses — longs for a day when racial lines in America break down.

``We are sitting on a powder keg of racism that's institutionalized in our attitudes, our churches and our culture,'' he said, ``that's going to destroy us if we don't undo it.''

In many cases, interracial families embody a mix of nationalities as well as races. Michelle Cadeau, born in Sweden, and her husband, James, born in Haiti, are raising their two sons as Americans in racially diverse West Orange, N.J., while teaching them about all three cultures.

``I think the children of families like ours will be able to make a difference in the world, and do things we weren't able to do,'' Michelle Cadeau said. ``It's really important to put all their cultures together, to be aware of their roots, so they grow up not just as Swedish or Haitian or American, but as global citizens.''

Meanwhile, though, there are frustrations — such as school forms for 5-year-old Justin that provide no option for him to be identified as multiracial.

``I'm aware there are going to be challenges,'' Michelle said. ``There's stuff that's been working for a very long time in this country that is not going to work anymore.''

The boom in interracial marriages forced the federal government to change its procedures for the 2000 census, allowing Americans for the first time to identify themselves by more than one racial category.

About 6.8 million described themselves as multiracial — 2.4 percent of the population — adding statistical fuel to the ongoing debate over what race really means.

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, is the daughter of a black father and white mother, and says she is asked almost daily how she identifies herself.

The surge in interracial marriage comes at ``a very awkward moment'' in America's long struggle with racism, she says.

``We all want deeply and sincerely to be beyond race, to live in a world where race doesn't matter, but we continue to see deep racial disparities,'' Rockquemore said. ``For interracial families, the great challenge is when the kids are going to leave home and face a world that is still very racialized.''

The stresses on interracial couples can take a toll. The National Center for Health Statistics says their chances of a breakup within 10 years are 41 percent, compared to 31 percent for a couple of the same race.

In some categories of interracial marriage, there are distinct gender-related trends. More than twice as many black men marry white women as vice versa, and about three-fourths of white-Asian marriages involve white men and Asian women.

C.N. Le, a Vietnamese-American who teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts, says the pattern has created some friction in Asian-American communities.

``Some of the men view the women marrying whites as sellouts, and a lot of Asian women say, 'Well, we would want to date you more, but a lot of you are sexist or patriarchal,''' said Le, who attributes the friction in part to gender stereotypes of Asians that have been perpetuated by American films and TV shows.

Kelley Kenney, a professor at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, is among those who have bucked the black-white gender trend. A black woman, she has been married since 1988 to a fellow academic of Irish-Italian descent, and they have jointly offered programs for the American Counseling Association about interracial couples.

Kenney recalled some tense moments in 1993 when, soon after they moved to Kutztown, a harasser shattered their car window and placed chocolate milk cartons on their lawn. ``It was very powerful to see how the community rallied around us,'' she said.

Kenney is well aware that some blacks view interracial marriage as a potential threat to black identity, and she knows her two daughters, now 15 and 11, will face questions on how they identify themselves.

``For older folks in the black community,'' she said ``it's a feeling of not wanting people to forget where they came from.''

Yet some black intellectuals embrace the surge in interracial marriages and multiracial families; among them is Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, who addressed the topic in his latest book, ``Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption.''

``Malignant racial biases can and do reside in interracial liaisons,'' Kennedy wrote. ``But against the tragic backdrop of American history, the flowering of multiracial intimacy is a profoundly moving and encouraging development.''

The Specter of Violence for Feminist Bloggers

2007-04-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

In order to argue effectively against the blogger code of conduct, it’s imperative to say that bitches are crazy

Published by Amanda Marcotte April 12th, 2007 in Interblog

Markos doesn’t think death threats are real. Granted, they are a lot less common in my experience than rape threats, but I don’t imagine he thinks those are real, either.

Noteworthy: Markos is not a woman.

When I first started blogging here, I had a hell of a time running around deleting my home address out of the comments of the blog here. That is a death/rape threat. Very rarely do people threaten to kill you outright, but they simply imply it. Your address in your comments=”I know where you live.” My boyfriend at the time certainly picked up on the implied threat that other people would pretend they don’t get and talked about getting a large dog. He didn’t have an interest, I guess, in pushing the idea that women who complain about sexism online are just being hysterical.

But I suppose a woman’s word is not proof, of course, or even evidence. And hey, maybe it’s rare! Or it was just that one time.

I dunno, we deleted this one from comments yesterday, aimed at a blogger that isn’t me but is, as you can imagine, female:

I am a regular reader of this blog, and would like to float a question by you and your readers. We are toying with the Idea of offering rape insurance here at Allstate in Cananda. We offer home owners insuracnce that covers other crimes, we are thinking of exanding Our home owners along with indidual rape policies.

Do you think this would be something that might interest any of you?

He signed it Thomas J. Wilson, who is the president of All State, but that’s clearly not who he is. His IP is 199.158.161.187. I suppose that’s not “proof” or even evidence, since we deleted the comment, but what can I say? I don’t let dickwads threaten my friends in comments. I suppose you could say that it’s not a threat to suggest that someone get insured against rape. Which is basically why men like this threaten like this, through implication, with a coat of plausible deniability. But the message is there and it is received by its intended audience for what it is. Surely liberal bloggers who know all about dog whistles in politics can admit they are there in other communications. And sliding in, harassing a woman, and sliding out is SOP for sexist pigs—you pinch when no one’s looking, because you know she won’t be believed if she complains. You scream at the woman from the car driving by so that she can’t catch your face and know who you are. You make sure at all times to take advantage of the “bitches are crazy and flatter themselves” stereotype.

You could say that Kathy Sierra is overreacting, and you might have a case there. I tend to assume that the vast majority of asswipes won’t follow through on their unhinged emails that either are threatening or mostly just the clear products of the minds of men who probably would rape if they had a chance. No telling. I don’t know the whole story, but she may have reason to think the threats are real. She does work in a male-dominated industry, and attempts to harass and assault women until they give up is pretty standard in these situations. But she might be overreacting. If you’re under an onslaught of abuse from threatened men, it can sometimes be a tad overwhelming and makes it hard for you to see that most of them are basement dwellers too scared to leave the house to follow you.

Even assuming that 99% of the wacked-out misogynists spilling violent fantasies at real women online don’t have the wherewithal to follow through, there’s always that 1%. Once glance at the statistics involving terrorism against doctors who perform abortions should put to rest doubts that some men are so invested in preserving male dominance they’ll gladly resort to terrorism. It does well to remember that for a lot of men, hating women is all they have.

The truth of the matter is that law enforcement does have reason to believe that these kinds of guys can turn dangerous. It does well to remember that John Hinckley was obsessed like this and did manage to go so far as to shoot the President. Not that I blame Jodie Foster or anyone for that, but once in awhile men with these obsessions do go off the deep end and it isn’t always easy to tell who it’s going to be.

I and several feminists were harassed and threatened by a man from England a few years ago. This man had sent me a death threat via e-mail. He said he was going to “slit my fucking throat”. He also annoyed me with his repeated messages that he thought were anonymous, but I was able to track down his real identity with a few Google searches. I never felt threatened by him because I live in Massachusetts and he lived in London. Plus I get annoying and sometimes harassing comments on my blog and in e-mail all the time. I have a high tolerance for tripe. However, other feminists who were at the receiving end of his messages did feel threatened. He had also posted anonymously to comments on my blog and on other feminist’s blogs. Several feminists who felt threatened reported him to Scotland Yard. I was contacted by Scotland Yard to inform detectives of what this man had sent to me. It turned out that he was about 18 years old and lived with his mother. He had a history of mental problems. I know he was convicted of communications harassment, but I don’t remember how he was sentenced.

Not to say that the criticism about the blogger code of conduct is wrong, of course. I think that it’s naive to think that’s going to work, but again, the tech blogging crowd may be old hat at this. But you can engage in a criticism of that without trotting out the tired stereotype that women are hysterical and paranoid.

More on Imus

2007-04-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

The Wit and Wisdom of Don ImusA guide for Washington's power crowd.
By Timothy Noah

Don Imus' long-standing acceptance by the political establishment is a contemporary illustration of 1940s socialite Perle Mesta's famous advice about how to draw Washington's power set to a soiree: "Hang a lamb chop in the window." Politicians like John McCain and Barack Obama, and famous TV journalists like Tim Russert and Cokie Roberts, are no more standoffish than their predecessors; the only difference is that the lamb chop has been replaced by a microphone. For some years now, the broadcast industry has conducted, via talk radio and reality TV, a series of experiments to gauge precisely how much personal humiliation the species Homo sapiens will consent to endure. The most surprising finding is that even people with constant access to the media will make themselves available to interviewer-comedians like Sacha Baron "Ali G." Cohen or Steven Colbert—performers whose sole aim is to get laughs at these celebrities' expense. If there's an outer boundary to what a famous journalist or politician will put up with, science has yet to find it.

In the direct-humiliation department, Imus falls well short of Colbert or Ali G. Imus in the Morning is a variation on the experiment, wherein the belittling is indirect. Here, the research question is how long respectable journalists and politicians will associate themselves with a radio host who spews continual invective based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Without exception, every political and journalistic celebrity who appears on Imus' show is diminished. Yet they keep coming back. Is it because they don't know what Imus says when they aren't around? That's what they tend to claim. "I don't listen to the show," McCain told journalist Philip Nobile in June 2000. In an April 9 appearance, Tom Oliphant told Imus, "Solidarity forever," but later covered his ass by saying, "I don't know beans about hip-hop culture or trash-talking or, what do you call those things where you run on forever? Riffs." One person who can't claim ignorance about Imus is Evan Thomas, who on April 9 told the New York Times' David Carr that it would be "posturing" for him to refuse to go on Imus' show after Imus got dinged for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Thomas puffed Imus in a 1999 Newsweek cover profile ("The Ringmaster"). "With his quick takes and sense of the absurd," he wrote, "Imus is the perfect voice for an age that prizes irony over solemnity." The Newsweek piece made only glancing reference to Imus' penchant for uttering racial and ethnic slurs on the air, overlooking, for instance, the shock jock's admission the previous year on CBS News' 60 Minutes that he'd once told a colleague he hired producer Bernard McGuirk to tell "nigger" jokes. ("That was an off-the-record conversation," Imus protested to Mike Wallace.)
In the unlikely event that McCain, Oliphant, and others don't know who they're dealing with, let's review some of Imus' remarks (if you prefer, riffs) from the past. This stuff isn't hard to find. Many thanks to the Web sites Media Matters for America, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and TomPaine.com (where Nobile tracked Imus' show) for the quotes that appear below.

On blacks:
"William Cohen, the Mandingo deal." (Former Defense Secretary Cohen's wife is African-American.)

"Wasn't in a woodpile, was he?" (Responding to news that former black militant H. Rap Brown, subsequently known as Abdullah Al-Amin, was found hiding in a shed in Alabama after exchanging gunfire with police. Imus is here alluding to the expression "nigger in the woodpile.")

"Knuckle-dragging moron." (Description of basketball player Patrick Ewing.)

"We all have 12-inch penises." (After being asked what he has in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell from the New York Knicks, and Al Sharpton.)

"Chest-thumping pimps." (Description of the New York Knicks.)

"A cleaning lady." (Reference to journalist Gwen Ifill, possibly out of pique that she wouldn't appear on his show. "I certainly don't know any black journalists who will," she wrote in the April 10 New York Times. The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page used to appear, but after he made Imus pledge not to make offensive comments in the future, he was never asked back.)

On Jews:
"I remember when I first had [the Blind Boys of Alabama] on a few years ago, how the Jewish management at whatever, whoever we work for, CBS, or whatever it is, were bitching at me about it. […] I tried to put it in terms that these money-grubbing bastards could understand."
"Boner-nosed … beanie-wearing Jewboy." (Description of Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, a frequent guest.)

On women:
"That buck-tooth witch Satan, Hillary Clinton." […] "I never admitted it when I went down there and got in all that big jam, insulting Bill Clinton and his fat ugly wife, Satan. Did I? Did I ever say I was sorry for that?"

On Native Americans:
"The guy from F-Troop, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell." (This is a reference to the zany Indian characters on the 1960s TV sitcom F-Troop. They had names like "Roaring Chicken," "Crazy Cat," and "Chief Wild Eagle.")

On Japanese:
"Old Kabuki's in a coma and the market's going up. […] How old is the boy? The battery's running down on that boy." (Reference to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died the following week.)

On gays:
"I didn't know that Allan Bloom was coming in from the back end." (The homosexuality of the author of The Closing of the American Mind became widely known when Saul Bellow published Ravelstein, a novel whose protagonist was based on Bloom, who by then was deceased.)

"The enormously attractive [NBC political correspondent] Chip Reid, I can say without being accused of being some limp-wristed 'mo."

On the handicapped:
"Janet Reno's having a press conference. Ms. Reno, of course, has Parkinson's disease, has a noticeable tremor. […] I don't know how she gets that lipstick on (laughter) looking like a rodeo clown."

Every one of these statements came directly out of Imus' mouth on his program. That's striking because Imus usually leaves it to other show regulars (especially McGuirk, the aforementioned point man on "nigger" jokes) to say the most offensive stuff, with Imus feeding them straight lines. It's safer that way.

Don Imus and Racial Stereotypes

2007-04-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

MSNBC drops Imus for 2 weeks amid Rutgers flap

NEW YORK -- MSNBC will suspend its television simulcast of radio shock-jock Don Imus' morning talk show for two weeks after the host called members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team "a bunch of nappy-headed hos," the network announced Monday.
Despite apologies from Imus on Friday and Monday, the suspension will start April 16, the network said in a written statement.

"Don Imus has expressed profound regret and embarrassment and has made a commitment to listen to all of those who have raised legitimate expressions of outrage," it said.

"In addition, his dedication -- in his words -- to change the discourse on his program moving forward, has confirmed for us that this action is appropriate. Our future relationship with Imus is contingent on his ability to live up to his word."

Two of the nation's biggest media companies -- CBS Corp. and NBC Universal -- will ultimately decide the fate of Imus' daily program.

After a career of cranky insults, Imus was fighting for his job following one joke that by his own admission went "way too far."

Imus apologized Monday, both on his show and on a syndicated radio program hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is among several black leaders demanding his ouster.

Imus could be in real danger if the outcry causes advertisers to shy away from him, said Tom Taylor, editor of the trade publication Inside Radio.

"Everyone is on tenterhooks waiting to see whether it grows and whether the protest gets picked up more broadly," Taylor said.

Imus isn't the most popular radio talk show host -- the trade publication Talkers ranks him the 14th most influential -- but his audience is heavy on the political and media elite that advertisers pay a premium to reach. Authors, journalists and politicians are frequent guests -- and targets for insults.

He has urged critics to recognize that his show is a comedy that spreads insults broadly. Imus or his cast have called Colin Powell a "sniffling weasel," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson a "fat sissy" and referred to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, an American Indian, as "the guy from `F Troop."' He and his colleagues also called the New York Knicks a group of "chest-thumping pimps."

Imus: We went way too far

On Sharpton's program Monday, Imus said that "our agenda is to be funny and sometimes we go too far. And this time we went way too far."

The Rutgers comment has struck a chord, in part, because it was aimed at a group of young women at the pinnacle of athletic success. It also came in a different public atmosphere following the Michael Richards and Mel Gibson incidents, said Eric Deggans, columnist for the St. Petersburg Times and chairman of the media monitoring committee of the National Association of Black Journalists, which also wants Imus canned.

"This may be the first time where he's done something like this in the YouTube era," Deggans said. Viewers can quickly see clips of Imus' remarks, not allowing him to redefine their context, he said.

On his show Monday, Imus called himself "a good person" who made a bad mistake.

"Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it," he said. "And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean that it has to be that way for the next five years or whatever because that has to change, and I understand that."

Imus' radio show originates from WFAN in New York City and is syndicated nationally by Westwood One, both of which are managed by CBS. CBS Radio just replaced chief executive Joel Hollander with Dan Mason. With Imus' radio show reaching an estimated 2.5 million people a week, his future could conceivably be decided by CBS chief Leslie Moonves.

CBS has denounced Imus' remarks and said it will monitor his show for content.

The show is simulcast daily on MSNBC, where it reached an estimated 361,000 viewers in the first three months of the year, up 39 percent from last year.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and about 50 people marched Monday outside Chicago's NBC tower to protest Imus' comments. He said MSNBC should abandon Imus and MSNBC should hire more black pundits.

Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP board of directors, said it is "past time his employers took him off the air."

"As long as an audience is attracted to his bigotry and politicians and pundits tolerate his racism and chauvinism to promote themselves, Don Imus will continue to be a serial apologist for prejudice," Bond said.

Imus was mostly contrite in his appearance with Sharpton, although the activist did not change his opinion that Imus should lose his job. At one point Imus seemed incredulous at Sharpton's suggestion that he might walk away from the incident unscathed.

"Unscathed?" Imus said. "How do you think I'm unscathed by this? Don't you think I'm humiliated?"

Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

Singing Black

2007-04-07T04:19:00.000-07:00

Over at the L.A. Times, the great music critic Ann Powers has written an interesting examination of the ways that Joss Stone has been criticized for her "black" style of singing. For those of you who don't know, Stone was born in Dover, England, is 19, white, and sings like the second coming of Gladys Knight. After two albums of slavishly faithful attempts to re-create the sound and vibe of classic soul, Stone's new album, "Introducing Joss Stone," was meant to herald the arrival of "the real" Joss Stone, as she took a more hands-on approach to writing and recording the music. The so-so album sounds a lot like her older work (a funny thing to say about someone so young), but it's already on the verge of being deemed a failure in England due to it's low chart placing. As the always insightful Powers explains, part of the album's problem is the way that, even on an album designed to represent her, Stone seems incapable of transcending the soul tradition she's so strongly influenced by: "If there's one fault on 'Introducing,'" writes Powers, "it's that Stone's comfort level with that tradition remains too high. Throughout the album, she sings in a voice she learned from those soul albums; the lilt of coastal England never surfaces."

Powers goes on to write that Stone's "refusal to see [her] identity as artificial" has singled her out for criticism regarding the "right to sing in a black style." It's a great point: Stone's unwillingness to pay fealty to the idea that she's some sort of cultural culprit makes her a target for certain critics -- some of whom have even gone so far as to label her a "freakshow." But isn't the argument that only certain types of people have the "right" to sing certain types of music hopelessly reductive? Should only poor white people play punk music? Do Northern-born blacks have less purchase on the blues than those born in the South? Can someone from California honestly play bluegrass? The truth may be distasteful, but scholars and critics like Nick Tosches, Eric Lott and Greil Marcus have shown that, for better or worse (and I firmly say it's the former), popular culture is one long story of cultural alchemy. Call it exchange, call it theft, call it what you will, but without the interplay between cultures, our world would be radically different.

This kind of cultural appropriation conversation gets kicked up every couple of years -- Eminem and "The White Rapper Show" being recent examples -- but it never seems to come closer to a resolution. As Powers points out, the facts of white privilege and the unequal economy of cultural exchange will always render Stone's blatantly appropriative style of music-making an intellectually and emotionally fraught proposition. I'm just not sure how the right-to-sing conversation can ever be resolved in a constructive or satisfactory way. Am I being too glib or pessimistic? Let me know your take on Stone specifically and cultural appropriation more generally. Post your answers in the comments section.

-- David Marchese

The Soul of Popular Conservativism

2007-03-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

TPM's Greg Sargent wonders "Why, Why, Why" conservatives would be so eager to hear Ann Coulter at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference. In fact, the depth of Ann Coulter's appeal to the right-wing is hard for people on the left to understand.

So, I'm going to take my shot at explaining Coulter's appeal here.

In fact, Ann Coulter is the soul of popular conservatism. To understand Coulter's appeal, it is important to emphasize that right-wingers think they're morally and intellectually superior to white liberals and minority advocates. Conservatives believe that their morality of taboo breaking on race, gender, and sexuality is superior to liberal "goodness" on these issues. Right-wingers also think they're smarter, more rational (as opposed to emotional), and tougher than liberals. This is why Ann Coulter is idolized by the right. She represents the superiority of conservativism in the minds of conservatives.

Coulter gained this status because she is the grand priestess of a particular right-wing rhetorical game in relation to "political correctness." From the right-wing point of view, making racist, sexist, and homophobic statements is a demonstration of moral and intellectual superior. The idea of bigoted talk about "lawn jockeys," "ragheads," "faggots," etc., is to defy norms of political correctness and then laugh at the "outrage" with which liberals respond. Dick Cheney was playing this kind of rhetorical game when he told John Kerry to "fuck yourself." In this context, the "morality" is in the defiance of social convention while the "intelligence" is in manipulating liberal emotions. The right-wing short-hand for this rhetorical game is "driving liberals crazy" and right-wingers derive enormous satisfaction from playing it.

Now, it should be obvious where Ann Coulter fits. Having surpassed Limbaugh as a high-wire artist of calculated bigotry, fencing "outraged" liberals, and laughing all the way to the bank, Coulter is fervently admired because she captures the core of right-wing morality in a way that's extremely pleasing to conservatives. If Martin Luther King was the lens through which Americans were able to see the ugliness of segregation and racism, Coulter is the lens through which conservatives can view their bigotries as a sign of their intellectual and moral goodness.

From the conservative point of view, that's invaluable.

The Double Shift

2007-03-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

Single women 'do less housework'
By Clare Davidson Business reporter, BBC News

Women do more housework than men even when both workLiving alone can be tediously predictable, especially as far as housework is concerned.

If you haven't cleaned the bath, then the chance of someone else unexpectedly doing so is close to nil.

But if you assume that moving in with a loved one will improve this, then think again - especially if you are female.

A new study has found that employed women living with their employed partner actually spend more time doing housework than single women.

HOURS OF HOUSEWORK
Single women in Britain spend 10 hours on average a week
Single men in Britain spend 7 hours on average a week
Women living in a couple spend 15 hours on chores
Men living in a couple spend 5 hours on chores

The men, on the other hand see the hours they commit to housework decline once they begin living as a couple.

The findings come from analysis by labour economist Helene Couprie of Toulouse University.

Her research, based on data from the British Household Panel Survey looked at working women - single or living with a partner, both with and without children.

Much as we might like to legislate against men for not doing housework, it is not an option
Ruth Lister, social policy professor, Loughborough University

And by examining information on more than 2,000 people, she concluded that on average, an employed woman does 15 hours a week of housework when she lives with her employed partner, up from 10 hours when single.

Lazy men

Meanwhile the men, who do seven hours while living alone, do only five when they co-habit.

The findings are partly, Ms Couprie suggests, due to influences that people have grown up with - where traditionally women have taken on the lion's share of domestic tasks.

She says that as long as children see their parents stick to certain tasks, such trends become hard to change.

Ultimately, she adds, "it is the work of social evolution".

And evolution takes time, she insists - perhaps another 20 years for the situation to really
change in terms of the division of labour.

Man Yee Kan, a sociologist at Oxford University's Time Use Research Unit says the reason men are doing a greater proportion than they did, is largely because women spend more time in paid work, therefore a smaller proportion of time doing housework.

Meanwhile Ruth Lister, a professor in social policy at Loughborough University says that whatever the reason for the stark differences, things must change.

"As much as we might like to legislate against men for not doing housework, it is not an option," laughs Ms Lister, adding that cultural expectations die hard.

Equality at work

Ms Couprie says that her findings of inequality in the home reflected those in the workplace.

While the wage gap is shrinking, it is still pronounced.

In 1970, women earned on average 29% less per hour than men.

According to the Equal Opportunities Commission, in 2006 the differential was 17%.
And women are still largely absent in the top jobs at UK firms, the commission recently found. Only 10% of directors of the UK's top FTSE 100 firms were female.

Ms Couprie concludes that that gender inequalities at home have a "significant influence on gender inequalities in the workplace - and vice versa", reinforcing other findings on the topic.
"The quickest way to improve the situation at home would be for women to gain equality at work in terms of pay and opportunities," she says.

"We need to get more women into the same types of jobs as men, as well as get pay parity between sectors," says Ms Couprie.

While Ms Couprie's focus is on economic measures, she admits equal pay - though crucial - is only one step to ensure a fairer division of labour at home.

"Cultural changes are far harder to overcome than the pure economic wage gap," she says.

Obama's Slippery Blackness

2007-02-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

Obama's Identity: Where Do We Start?
By Patricia Williams, The Nation.

Posted February 16, 2007.

Barack Obama's pursuit of the presidency has caused the media to obsess over exactly how black he is, bringing into debate America's slippery notions of race, culture and ethnicity.

I mean, you got the first sort of mainstream African-American who's articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man. -- Senator Joseph Biden, in faint but unfettered praise of Senator Barack Obama

Recently the New-York Historical Society and the Studio Museum of Harlem curated "Legacies," a fascinating show at N-YHS in which contemporary artists reflected on slavery. One of the commissioned pieces that accompanied the display was a short film by artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry. It featured McCallum, who is white, and Tarry, who is black, configured as a "twinning doll" -- a nineteenth-century toy that has two heads, one at each end of a common torso. At the doll's waist is attached a long skirt or a cloak. Held vertically, the skirt falls and obscures one head. Flipped one way, it becomes a white doll. Turned upside down, the skirt falls the other way and suddenly it's a black doll.

In the film, McCallum and Tarry, joined at the waist by some feat of pixilated trickery and dressed in nineteenth-century clothing, flip head over head down a long dark marble corridor, first a white head, then a black head, first a white man, then a black woman, first a Thomas Jefferson, then a Sally Hemings. As they describe it, "the races are joined head to toe ... continuously revealing and concealing one another." Such an interesting metaphor for the state of our union.

When I inquired further, McCallum told me that there was an old children's song about the dolls: "Turn you up/Turn you back./First you're white/Then you're black." I tried Googling those words in hopes of finding a recording. Instead I turned up a satirical piece by rocker Lou Reed, "I Wanna Be Black," in which a (presumably hypothetical) "I" desires "to be black" as an escape from a neurosis of whiteness. Actually, the word "white" is never used in the song. It's alluded to in the chorus -- obliquely but with crystal clarity nonetheless: "I don't wanna be a fucked-up middle-class college student any more." According to these lyrics, whiteness is a dull preserve defined by respectable class status, college education and world-class angst; black people have ever so much more fun, what with having "natural rhythm," "a big prick," a "stable of foxy whores" and "get myself shot in the spring" "like Martin Luther King."

The jolly entertainment of switching identity from white to black and back again is not the exclusive province of frat boys slumming around as pretenders to ghetto life. "Jungle parties" are still good clean fun at country clubs, at Halloween parties down at the precinct and in the unfortunate confusion that is Kevin Federline. The inverse -- switching from black to white and black again -- is more freighted. Blacks who present themselves as clean and articulate and sober and important risk being viewed as false, elitist or duplicitous. "Acting white" has all these connotations. Whites "acting black," on the other hand -- i.e., any coded masquerade of down and dirty -- tend to be read as cool or maybe disaffected or, at worst, stuck in some stage of rebellious adolescence.

Frankly, what I found most unforgivable about Senator Biden's recent remarks was his utter failure to learn from a past in which he was intimately implicated. He was, after all, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee when our spectacularly inarticulate President's father nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. As every last minority graduate of Yale -- whew, ten or fifteen at least -- came forward to weigh in about whether Thomas or Anita Hill was more believable, media forces expressed shock and awe that there were -- gasp -- just so many black people who could string a whole sentence together! Astonishing sequences of subject-verb-object! A few years later, it was Colin Powell who was perceived as shockingly articulate; then Condoleezza Rice.

The persistence of this narrative is not limited to Biden. On MSNBC's Chris Matthews Show, Matthews hosted a discussion of Obama's decision to run for President. "No history of Jim Crow, no history of anger, no history of slavery," Matthews opined. "All the bad stuff in our history ain't there with this guy." Not true, I thought. The "bad stuff in our history" rests heavily upon each and every one of us. It shapes us all, whether me, Matthews, Obama, Biden -- or Amadou Diallo, the decent, hard-working Guinean immigrant without any American racial "history," who died in a hail of bullets fired by New York City police officers because he looked like what the officers, groaning with racial "baggage," imagined to be a criminal. Some parts of our racial experience are nothing more or less than particular to our accidental location in the geography of a culture.

If, for example, I migrated to South Africa and were greeted as an exciting, exotic black American prophet (we "articulate" blacks are inescapably "exotic" when we travel abroad), I'd be no less implicated in the complexities of that country's racial struggles -- even if I were entirely ignorant of those struggles. At a more complex level, however, American identity is defined by the experience of the willing diaspora, the break by choice that is the heart of the immigrant myth. It is that narrative of chosen migration that has exiled most African-Americans from a substantial part of the American narrative -- and it is precisely his place in that narrative that makes Obama so attractive, so intriguing and yet so strange.

Obama's family history is an assemblage of elements of the American dream. His late father migrated from Kenya to the United States; his mother was from Kansas. Before him, the archetypal narrative of immigrant odyssey had been an almost exclusively white and European one. I suspect that Obama's aura stems not just from a Tiger Woods-ishly fashionable taste for "biracialism" but from the fact that he's managed to fuse the immigrant myth of meteoric upward mobility onto the figure of a black man.

Back on Chris Matthews, Cynthia Tucker, a black woman who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, responded, "He truly does seem to transcend race because his mother, after all, let's not forget, was white." Matthews agreed: "His grandmother he went to visit in Hawaii is white. Yeah." This, to me, was a baffling exchange. Obama's mother's being white is supposedly what allows him to transcend this thing called race? He looks black but he really isn't? Is blackness really only defined by Jim Crow, anger and slavery? If American-ness, at least in this equation, is defined by patronymic immigrant hope, is racial transcendence then to be defined by maternity, relation to whiteness, biology? "Transcendence" implies rising above something, cutting through, being liberated from. What would it reveal about the hidden valuations of race if one were to invert the equation by positing that Barack Obama "transcended" whiteness because his father was black?

Senator Obama has many attractive attributes -- he's smart, a great writer and speaker, a skilled tactician, full of fresh vision, youthful, with a good-looking Kennedy-esque appeal. Yet there are many people to whom his appeal rests not on what he is but on what they imagine he isn't. He's not a whiner; he's not angry. He doesn't hate white people. He doesn't wear his hair like Al Sharpton. He is not the whole list of negatives that people like Chris Matthews or Joe Biden or a whole generation of fucked-up middle-class college students identify as "blackness." Indeed, part of the reason I am anxious about the trustworthiness of Obama's widespread appeal is this unacknowledged value placed on his ability to perform "unexpected" aspects of both whiteness (as in, proud immigrant stock) and blackness (as in, his remarkable ability to discern that the sterling fish knife is not a shoe horn).

This is not just about the dualism of black and white, of course. Obama's family raised him in diverse locales -- Hawaii, Indonesia, the world. Does the perception of his identity change if we think of him as our first Hawaiian presidential candidate? To paraphrase, is he the first mainstream Hawaiian-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy who wouldn't be caught dead in a grass skirt holding a ukulele? Or the first mainstream Indonesian-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy who had the interesting experience of going to a Roman Catholic school in a largely Muslim country, which might provide lots of useful cultural insights for a President to have in this time and place? No, unfortunately, as there are those at Fox News who can't tell a Roman Catholic school from a madrassa.

Worse yet, a lot of the analysis of Biden's comment has skimmed over his patronizing of Obama's substance. Rather, it has focused on whether the comments destroyed Biden's chances to run for President. Who, after all, even knew Biden had his hat in the ring?

But back to Senator Obama, a presidential candidate of profound decency, extraordinary smarts and great eloquence. He was president of the Harvard Law Review, a position that requires not just the highest grades in the entire universe but also the unanimous acclaim of a band of viciously competitive students and a famously divided faculty. Those who make Law Review are immediate stars, and fabulously fast-tracked. Those who have served on the Law Review include a stunning and stellar array of familiar names: Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John Roberts; Dean Acheson, Alger Hiss, Archibald MacLeish, Judge Richard Posner, Michael Chertoff and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. It is, in the secretly assigned world of global power, an even better ticket to the top than being sealed in a coffin at Skull and Bones. It was acknowledged as such when Jews first joined the Law Review, when Democratic political pundit Susan Estrich became the first woman president of the Law Review in 1976 and when Obama became its first black president. It is a position whose credentializing power has never been questioned as far as anyone knows -- at least till a few weeks ago, when the New York Times published an article in which Ron Klain, informal adviser to Biden's presidential bid, wondered if being president of the Law Review really and truly required the same skill set as being President of the United States. As a cabdriver recently expressed it to me: "Maybe the mirage in the desert is no more than a benchmark constantly being moved out of reach." (He too was articulate, and quite poetic, that cabbie. Made me wonder what benchmarks had been moved beyond his reach to leave him ferrying me around at midnight.)

Of course, the crown of the Law Review presidency is not the only aspect of Senator Obama's "authenticity" that's being refigured as a mess of thorns. If no one doubts his blackness when it comes to the uniqueness of his accomplishments while on the Law Review, he's apparently not "black enough" in other contexts. In another article in the Times, perpetual contrarians like Stanley Crouch, Debra Dickerson and Carol Swain were quoted as questioning whether he truly was a brother beneath the skin. It is surely ironic that Obama -- one of the very few Americans of any stripe who has actual first-degree relatives in Africa -- is being figured in some quarters as an imposter of African-American-ness.

At the same time, Obama's identity reveals the complex blindness and slipperiness of American conceptions of race, culture and ethnicity. There's a lovely quote from Saidiya Hartman's remarkable new book Lose Your Mother: As she wends her way through Ghana on a Fulbright Fellowship, she notes, "I was the stranger in the village, a wandering seed bereft of the possibility of taking root. Behind my back people whispered, dua ho mmire: a mushroom that grows on the tree has no deep soil. Everyone avoided the word 'slave,' but we all knew who was who. As a 'slave baby,' I represented what most chose to avoid: the catastrophe that was our past ... and what was forbidden to discuss: the matter of someone's origins."

As I read Hartman's words, I wondered how familiar that sentiment felt to me, or to the many African-Americans -- whether they've never left our shores or traveled the world -- so relentlessly in search of "home." I wondered how familiar that passage must feel to recent arrivals to our peculiarly dubbed "homeland." Just today I met a Swedish woman who is phenotypically "Asian." When she was a student at the University of California, she went to the hospital with stomach pains -- and was almost committed as insane before she ever got to see a doctor, because the administrative gatekeepers simply could not reconcile her appearance with her assertion that she was a Swedish citizen.

And in this moment of unprecedented diaspora, I wonder how familiar all these sentiments must feel to Barack Obama just now. Flipped endlessly down a hall of mirrored images of blackness and whiteness, he is no less celebrated than Frederick Douglass was as one whose entire identity is mired in the exhausted exceptionalism of the "surprisingly" hyperarticulate African phenotype; yet simultaneously embraced as one who has transcended the embodiment of a troublesome past and emerged on the other side -- bright as a newly minted coin, "cleansed" of baggage, of roots, of the unacknowledged rupture that is, paradoxically, our greatest national bond.

Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University and a member of the State Bar of California, writes The Nation column "Diary of a Mad Law Professor."

Sorority Committed to Old-Time Femininity

2007-02-25T06:20:00.000-08:00

Sorority Evictions Raise Messy Issue of Looks and Bias
New York Times

'The national officers of the Delta Zeta sorority told 23 members at DePauw University to leave, including every woman who was overweight.');

By SAM DILLON
Published: February 25, 2007

GREENCASTLE, Ind. — When a psychology professor at DePauw University here surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men — conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.“I sensed the disrespect with which this was to be carried out and got fed up,” Ms. Holloway added. “I didn’t have room in my life for these women to come in and tell my sisters of three years that they weren’t needed.”

Ms. Holloway is not the only angry one. The reorganization has left a messy aftermath of recrimination and tears on this rural campus of 2,400 students, 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis.The mass eviction battered the self-esteem of many of the former sorority members, and some withdrew from classes in depression. There have been student protests, outraged letters from alumni and parents, and a faculty petition calling the sorority’s action unethical.

DePauw’s president, Robert G. Bottoms, issued a two-page letter of reprimand to the sorority.

In an interview in his office, Dr. Bottoms said he had been stunned by the sorority’s insensitivity.“I had no hint they were going to disrupt the chapter with a membership reduction of this proportion in the middle of the year,” he said. “It’s been very upsetting.”

The president of Delta Zeta, which has its headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, and its other national officers declined to be interviewed. Responding by e-mail to questions, Cynthia Winslow Menges, the executive director, said the sorority had not evicted the 23 women, even though the national officers sent those women form letters that said: “The membership review team has recommended you for alumna status. Chapter members receiving alumnae status should plan to relocate from the chapter house no later than Jan. 29, 2007.”

Ms. Menges asserted that the women themselves had, in effect, made their own decisions to leave by demonstrating a lack of commitment to meet recruitment goals. The sorority paid each woman who left $300 to cover the difference between sorority and campus housing.The sorority “is saddened that the isolated incident at DePauw has been mischaracterized,” Ms. Menges wrote. Asked for clarification, the sorority’s public relations representative e-mailed a statement saying its actions were aimed at the “enrichment of student life at DePauw.”

This is not the first time that the DePauw chapter of Delta Zeta has stirred controversy. In 1982, it attracted national attention when a black student was not allowed to join, provoking accusations of racial discrimination.Earlier this month, an Alabama lawyer and several other DePauw alumni who graduated in 1970 described in a letter to The DePauw, the student newspaper, how Delta Zeta’s national leadership had tried unsuccessfully to block a young woman with a black father and a white mother from joining its DePauw chapter in 1967.

Despite those incidents, the chapter appears to have been home to a diverse community over the years, partly because it has attracted brainy women, including many science and math majors, as well as talented disabled women, without focusing as exclusively as some sororities on potential recruits’ sex appeal, former sorority members said.“I had a sister I could go to a bar with if I had boy problems,” said Erin Swisshelm, a junior biochemistry major who withdrew from the sorority in October. “I had a sister I could talk about religion with. I had a sister I could be nerdy about science with. That’s why I liked Delta Zeta, because I had all these amazing women around me.”

But over the years DePauw students had attached a negative stereotype to the chapter, as evidenced by the survey that Pam Propsom, a psychology professor, conducts each year in her class. That image had hurt recruitment, and the national officers had repeatedly warned the chapter that unless its membership increased, the chapter could close.

At the start of the fall term the national office was especially determined to raise recruitment because 2009 is the 100th anniversary of the DePauw chapter’s founding. In September, Ms. Menges and Kathi Heatherly, a national vice president of the sorority, visited the chapter to announce a reorganization plan they said would include an interview with each woman about her commitment. The women were urged to look their best for the interviews.T

he tone left four women so unsettled that they withdrew from the chapter almost immediately.

Robin Lamkin, a junior who is an editor at The DePauw and was one of the 23 women evicted, said many of her sisters bought new outfits and modeled them for each other before the interviews. Many women declared their willingness to recruit diligently, Ms. Lamkin said.

A few days after the interviews, national representatives took over the house to hold a recruiting event. They asked most members to stay upstairs in their rooms. To welcome freshmen downstairs, they assembled a team that included several of the women eventually asked to stay in the sorority, along with some slender women invited from the sorority’s chapter at Indiana University, Ms. Holloway said.“They had these unassuming freshman girls downstairs with these plastic women from Indiana University, and 25 of my sisters hiding upstairs,” she said. “It was so fake, so completely dehumanized. I said, ‘This calls for a little joke.’ ”Ms. Holloway put on a wig and some John Lennon rose-colored glasses, burst through the front door and skipped around singing, “Ooooh! Delta Zeta!” and other chants.

The face of one of the national representatives, she recalled, “was like I’d run over her puppy with my car.”The national representatives announced their decisions in the form letters, delivered on Dec. 2, which said that Delta Zeta intended to increase membership to 95 by the 2009 anniversary, and that it would recruit using a “core group of women.”Elizabeth Haneline, a senior computer science major who was among those evicted, returned to the house that afternoon and found some women in tears. Even the chapter’s president had been kicked out, Ms. Haneline said, while “other women who had done almost nothing for the chapter were asked to stay.”

Six of the 12 women who were asked to stay left the sorority, including Joanna Kieschnick, a sophomore majoring in English literature. “They said, ‘You’re not good enough’ to so many people who have put their heart and soul into this chapter that I can’t stay,” she said.

In the months since, Cynthia Babington, DePauw’s dean of students, has fielded angry calls from parents, she said. Robert Hershberger, chairman of the modern languages department, circulated the faculty petition; 55 professors signed it.“We were especially troubled that the women they expelled were less about image and more about academic achievement and social service,” Dr. Hershberger said.

During rush activities this month, 11 first-year students accepted invitations to join Delta Zeta, but only three have sought membership.

On Feb. 2, Rachel Pappas, a junior who is the chapter’s former secretary, printed 200 posters calling on students to gather that afternoon at the student union. About 50 students showed up and heard Ms. Pappas say the sorority’s national leaders had misrepresented the truth when they asserted they had evicted women for lack of commitment.“The injustice of the lies,” she said, “is contemptible.”

Chastity Belts for Malaysian Women?

2007-02-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

Khaleej Times Online >> News >> THE WORLD

Women should wear chastity belts to prevent sex crimes
(AP)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Women should wear chastity belts to prevent rape, incest and other sex crimes, a prominent Islamic cleric in northern Malaysia was quoted as saying Friday.

Abu Hassan Din Al Hafiz, speaking in the northern state of Terengganu, said chastity belts could protect women from a growing number of sex crimes in Malaysia, The Star newspaper reported.

The best way to avert sex perpetrators is to wear protection,’ Abu Hassan told a crowd of followers. My intention is not to offend women but to safeguard them from sex maniacs.’

The cleric said sex crimes had increased in the region of late. We have even come across a number of unusual sex cases where even senior citizens and children are not spared,’ he said.

Figures on sexual assaults in the northern state were not immediately available.

Religious leaders in Malaysia’s conservative north have in the past blamed sexual attacks on women wearing provocative clothing and make up. Local Islamic women’s groups and other organizations have routinely criticized those views.

Abu Hassan was not immediately reachable for comment.

Muslims make up about 60 percent of Malaysia’s population. The remaining 40 percent are Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and a small minority of indigenous people who practice animism.

Gayness vs Homoerotic Heterosexuality

2007-02-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

Slate Magazine

The Loneliness of the Gay Basketball Player. John Amaechi's Man in the Middle, the memoir of an NBA misfit.

By Kevin Arnovitz

NBA journeyman John Amaechi's coming out has already spawned hundreds of rote conversations about homophobia and sports. Beat writers have probed players about how they'd deal with a gay teammate, producing few revelations other than that Shavlik Randolph probably hasn't attended many LGBT barbecues. Whether it's a mark of progress or the triumph of collective cynicism, Amaechi's confession has mostly been seen as either an attempt to sell his memoir, Man in the Middle, or an irrelevant, self-indulgent gesture. Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel, for one, squawked that Amaechi's coming out was "so '90s"—a response that might've been appropriate if a former NBA player had proclaimed his love for MTV's Real World-Road Rules tandem. Then, on Wednesday, former NBA star Tim Hardaway finally cut to the chase. "I hate gay people," he told radio host Dan Le Betard. "I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

Amaechi responded by calling Hardaway's rant bigoted. "But it is honest," he continued. "And it illustrates the problem better than any of the fuzzy language other people have used so far." Hardaway's loud-and-proud prejudice is also a reminder that beat writers needn't bother asking straight players how they'd respond to a gay teammate. The more interesting question, and the one Man in the Middle tries to answer, is: How would a gay man react to a teammate like Hardaway?

Most of the time, Man in the Middle reads like a conventional sports memoir. An awkward, fat, working-class kid finds refuge in basketball. After learning the fundamentals, he emerges from his shell. With the encouragement of his courageous single mother, Amaechi makes it big and sees the world.

In the latter half of the book, Amaechi tentatively delves into his own sexuality. Early in his career, the closest he comes to announcing he's gay is introducing his Orlando teammates to the wonders of Earl Grey tea. Little by little, he affords himself allowances in, of all places, Salt Lake City. During his final season with the Jazz, he invites queeny friends to the family room at the Delta Center and starts hanging out in the town's gay enclave. This leads to one of the book's most affirming moments, when young Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko urges Amaechi to attend a party at his home: "You are welcome to bring your partner, if you have one, someone special to you."

Amaechi doesn't soft-pedal the NBA's homophobia, but he believes it's more "a convention of a particular brand of masculinity than a genuine prejudice." A team bus ride past a billboard reading "SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS GAY," for example, launches a "cacophony of shock and horror." Rather than rant about his teammates, Amaechi points out the locker room's sexual ironies. "They checked out each other's cocks. They primped in front of the mirror. … They tried on each other's $10,000 suits and shoes. … And I'm the gay one. Hah!" While cocks were being checked out, Amaechi says, he "stood in the corner in baggy clothes or wrapped in an oversized towel."

That scene—Amaechi, standing alone, as his hetero teammates engage in homosocial behavior—is the book's lasting image. Unlike, say, Juiced—Jose Canseco's homoerotic steroids homage—Man in the Middle doesn't revel in titillating erotica. Other than a few anonymous encounters with a volleyballer in the locker room at Penn State and a short relationship when he played in the British Basketball League, he seems to have led one of the most celibate existences of any athlete since A.C. Green. (Amaechi self-deprecatingly ascribes this to personal incompetence as much as intolerance.)

Amaechi doesn't speculate what percentage of the league is gay, and he doesn't name any names. One gets the sense that this is partly by design—innuendo just isn't his style—and partly a consequence of the distance he keeps from his fellow jocks. Amaechi's alientation from the culture of the NBA was not merely sexual. Surprisingly, his disaffection seems to be as much a product of his literacy as of his homosexuality. In Man in the Middle, Amaechi comes out as an intellectual—a creature almost as alien in the NBA as a gay man. He frequents art galleries on his off days, loves poetry, and is one of the first pro athletes to author a blog. The guy is smart enough that he can make something as dull as a fondness for Twinkies—"I loved their spongy richness and I devoured them by the dozen"—into a thoughtful disquisition.

Twinkies are just one of many things that Amaechi loves more than basketball. He writes with the most zeal—and at the most length—about mentoring, a passion that culminated in his official adoption of two teenagers in Orlando. (In passing, he reminds us that it's illegal for gays and lesbians to adopt in the state of Florida.) The more involved he gets with his off-court charity work, the less he cares about hoops. "Nobody could make me love something I picked up more or less because I was tall," he says.

The most interesting revelation in Man in the Middle has nothing to do with homosexuality. The profoundly isolated Amaechi says he finds common cause with other players on at least one matter: seeing sports as a means to an end. He writes that the pros play the game for a lot of reasons—money, fame, groupies, self-esteem—but that very few NBA players love basketball.

"The fan sitting at home … wants us to love the game like he does," he writes. "If he knew why we really play the game, for the most part, he might not love the game. He might not even watch it." The average fan, gay or straight, will probably find that contention more troubling than a former player's homosexuality.

Blood on the Tracks?

2007-02-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

Is this Village Voice cover illustration racist?
by Carmen Van Kerckhove

What do you think of this image? (for image click this link)

It’s supposed to be Bob Dylan mowing down Kyp Malone from the band TV on the Radio. Martín Perna, who’s associated with the band, wrote a long letter to the Voice criticizing the image.

Reactions to the letter that I’ve seen on other blogs are typical:

This is bullshit… if that was a picture of Dylan running over a member of the Artic Monkeys or some other white band no one would give a shit, they would be raving on how witty it was.
and my favorite:

Only a Rascist would find that Rascist!

But here’s Perna’s letter. Interesting parallel he draws to the ghetto party phenomenon:
Looking at this week’s cover of the Voice, I see a caricature of Bob Dylan in an electric mobility scooter, running over Kyp Malone, guitarist/vocalist of the band TV on the Radio. The drawing, I imagine, was supposed to comically illustrate Dylan’s new record edging out TVOTR’s “Return to Cookie Mountain,” in the paper’s 34th Annual Pazz & Jop poll [February 7–13]. This drawing is racist, unfunny, mean-spirited, and inaccurate.

Even in the post-Chappelle era of it being hip and edgy to discuss and portray ideas about race, there are still wrong, tasteless ways and this was one of them. Nowhere in the consciousness of Voice editors or illustrator David O’Keefe can we find memories of James Byrd, a black man who was dragged behind a truck to his death by white racists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998, or Arthur “J.R.” Warren, who was run over four times and killed for being black and gay in West Virginia in 2000, and all the other lynchings that happened in the U.S. before and since. These events are still fresh in the minds of black people, as well as in the hearts and minds of the rest of us who may not be directly victimized by these particular lynchings but who are nonetheless endangered by racism and committed to social justice and healing America of its sick racist condition.

O’Keefe and his colleagues may not have meant to intentionally be racist. They probably meant to be funny, like the University of Texas law students, Clemson University undergrads, or white college students nationwide who plan and publicize their blackface or “ghetto parties,” then act surprised that people find their actions offensive and unacceptable. That this picture could be drawn and not questioned or vetoed by any of the people who saw it prior to publication shows the level of ignorance and racism that persists in leftist institutions like the Voice that continue to posture as hip and progressive. It reveals that among decision-makers at the paper there is not one single person with any sort of racial consciousness or sensitivity who had the power or courage to send that picture back to the drawing board.

Racism aside, the drawing is snarky and simpleminded. Where is the love? Why such a nasty way to portray two fantastic musical entities who made award-winning records last year? Why only portray Kyp, when TV on the Radio is composed of four other equally talented core members plus a small army of extended family (including myself) who have contributed to the indescribably ecstatic sound of TVOTR onstage and on record. We struggle defiantly to collaborate and work in non-hierarchical, positive environments and this portrayal of one of our people strikes a blow against our collective dignity.

Every time our likenesses are used outside of our control—especially in stupid ways like this—it fosters false perceptions of who we are. We struggle on a daily basis (those of us with high media exposure much more than others) to be our true selves and not what the media creates of us. Inevitably, Kyp will have to respond to an endless stream of questions about this cover from scores of journalists over the next week when he’d probably rather be doing something else.
Intentionally or not, this cover sends the all-too-familiar message to people of color: Make something too unique, make something outside of your assigned place-role, and get run over by a white man. I could go on about it, about how wrong it is to create false competition between musicians; the headline “Blood on the Tracks!” gives the very false impression that there is serious beef with Dylan and TVOTR. I could complain about how you drew Kyp outfitted like the Nutty Professor rather than his true fly stylish self. All other criticism, however, would draw attention away from the more serious and sinister latent racism present that makes this cover possible to begin with. I pray that you will wise up and check yourself and get some people with some sense and sensitivity among your editorial staff.

Martín Perna
Baritone saxophone, flutes
Antibalas/TV on the Radio
Austin, Texas, and Brooklyn

Fifty Ways to Be a Racist

2007-01-27T12:40:00.001-08:00

Fifty Ways to Be a Racist
Ric Caric (Re-Posted from Red State Impressions blog)

The debate doesn't quite rage over whether Sen. George Allen is a racist? For John Dickerson of Slate, Allen is more of a boob; according to Rich Lowry of National Review Online, Allen just has a mean streak. There's also an undercurrent that Allen isn't all that bright even though Allen graduated near the top of his law school class at UVA.

Generally, the mainstream media isn't sure whether you're a racist or not unless you're a Klan member, or are a white guy using the n-word all the time. That's part of the reason why the media needs to get out of the Beltway more.

Here in Kentucky, there are plenty of signs that someone is a racist--There's always the threatening letter to the black people who just moved into your county, neighborhood, school or dorm threatening to kill, bomb, or burn them out;

Add Confederate flags on your bumper sticker, Confederate flag hats, Confederate flag shirts, and Confederate flags in the back yard. Guys get into Confederate flag paraphernalia as a way to announce that they "don't give a shit about what people think," are proud to be "rednecks," "hillbillies," or "crackers," or think it's a funny way to be an asshole. They do it as a way to stick it to their parents, their teachers, church, and town elite as well as city people and the North. Oh yeah, and black people too;

Thinking that every black male you see in a city is going to rob you or not going to the cities because there are too many blacks; not going to State U because there are too many blacks or because you might be assigned a black roommate;

Dismissing hip hop, rock, jazz, and other musical styles as "n--music," dismissing Beethoven because he was a mulatto;

Loving NASCAR because it's all-white, worshipping the screaming white coach of your State U basketball team and assuming that the players need to be screamed at; disparaging State U's opponents in racial terms; disparaging professional sports in general and the NBA in particular as too black;

Telling blacks to "get over it," that "everybody is oppressed" and that "stereotypes (about blacks) are real;"

Bragging about how Southerner whites know blacks better than anybody else or how well everybody in the South got along before the "outside agitators" or "activist judges" came in or the "turmoil" of the Civil Rights Movement got started.

Claiming that Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and other blacks you like aren't "really" black; really hating Spike Lee and other race conscious blacks because they're "so" black.

Arguing that anybody who complains about racism is a "racist" and that blacks who complain about racism are worst racists than the whites of the segregation era.

Special Contributions from Prof. N'Diaye

You have ever dismissed the wholesale slaughter, torture, and cultural decimation of an entire race of people as "the slavery thing; "

Said that those left to perish after Hurricane Katrina should have just"gotten out" before the storm hit;

Clutch your wallet or purse in a elevator when an african american (male or female)enters

Defend the country's founders and their institutionalization and justification of enslavement as "just products of their time;"

Believe the struggle for civil rights began and ended with Martin LutherKing, Jr.

You think it merely coincidental that blacks (especially black males) are incarcerated at rates nearly nine times higher than that of whites (or worse, that you think all blacks in prison are there because the committed crimes and 'deserve' to be there);

Justify gentrification as community improvement while people who've lived in a neighborhood their entire lives suddenly cannot afford to live there any more.

The Attack on Contraception

2007-01-27T12:38:00.001-08:00

The Attack on Contraception
Where the Rubber Meets RoeThe pro-life case for contraception.
By William Saletan
Slate Magazine

The issue that never changes is finally changing.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who don't like abortion but also don't like the idea of banning it, good news is on the way. In the last three weeks, two bills have been filed in the House of Representatives. Without banning a single procedure, they aim to significantly lower the rate of abortions performed in this country. Voluntary reduction, not criminalization or moral silence, is the new approach.

How do you stop abortions without restricting them? One way is to persuade women to complete their pregnancies instead of terminating them. The other is to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place. And there's the rub—or, in this case, the rubber. The two House bills used to be one proposal, backed by an alliance of pro-life lawmakers and organizations. The alliance split because one faction wanted to fund contraception and the other didn't.

In short, the good news is that we no longer have to fight about abortion. The bad news is that we're now fighting about contraception. The old question was abortion as birth control. The new question is abortion or birth control. To lower the abortion rate, we need more contraception. And that means confronting politicians who stand in the way.

In the last two years, Hillary Clinton, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and many pro-choice House Democrats have conceded that abortion is tragic and that its frequency must be reduced. Third Way, a progressive think tank, has pushed hard in this direction.

Meanwhile, Democrats for Life of America, which has eight members of Congress on its advisory board and works with 30 more, has devised a plan to cut the abortion rate by 95 percent "by helping and supporting pregnant women." Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, was set to lead the charge.
Then Ryan looked at the data and realized that to get anywhere near their target, he and his pro-life colleagues would have to provide more birth control. That's when the squirming began.
Some of Ryan's allies worried that morning-after pills might prevent embryos from implanting, so he omitted such pills from his bill. They opposed requiring private insurers to offer contraceptive coverage, so he took that out, too. They complained that other pregnancy-prevention bills hadn't emphasized abortion reduction, so he put abortion reduction in the title. They wanted sex education programs to emphasize abstinence; they got it. The only troublesome thing left in the bill was birth control.

It broke the deal. Democrats for Life abandoned Ryan and launched a contraceptive-free alternative. With it went Americans United for Life, the National Association of Evangelicals, and 13 pro-life House Democrats, led by Rep. James Oberstar, the Democratic co-chairman of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus. Ryan added his name to their bill, but they refused to add their names to his. Focus on the Family, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Rush Limbaugh, and Rep. Chris Smith, the Republican co-chairman of the Pro-life Caucus, excoriated Ryan's bill. The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, based in Ryan's district, sent him a letter asking him to withdraw it.

The objectors make several arguments. They point out that birth-control pills, like morning-after pills, can block implantation of an embryo. But there's no evidence that this has ever happened. The risk is theoretical, and breast-feeding poses the same risk, so you'd have to stamp that out, too. Critics also note that many birth-control methods can fail. That's true, but it's an argument for using two methods, not zero.

Third, they protest that federal family-planning money supports Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions. In fact, however, only 14 percent of this money goes to Planned Parenthood, and fewer than 9 percent of Planned Parenthood clients go there for abortions. So, even if Planned Parenthood diverted family-planning funds to abortion—which would be illegal—we're talking about a tiny fraction of the money.

Above all, the critics insist that contraception will backfire. As the Youngstown Diocese puts it, "Promotion of contraception leads to more extra-marital sexual intercourse, which leads to more unwanted pregnancies, which leads to more abortions."

There's a thread of logic to this argument. It's facile to assert, as some liberals do, that contraceptives don't cause sex any more than umbrellas cause rain. The belief that you're protected does make it easier to say yes. But denying that contraceptives reduce your risk of pregnancy is as crazy as denying that an umbrella reduces your risk of getting wet.
Does the increased risk from more sex outweigh the decreased risk from more protection? Do the math. On average, contraception lowers your odds of pregnancy by a factor of seven. If you're capable of having seven times as much sex, congratulations. The rest of us will get pregnant less often, not more.

And that's what the data show. Ryan's bill targets women with family incomes below 200 percent of the poverty rate, since they have higher rates of unintended pregnancy and more difficulty finding or affording contraception. Among these women, the percentage using contraception declined from 1995 to 2002. As predicted by contraception opponents, the rate of sexual activity also declined, though only slightly. Even better, from a pro-life standpoint, when these women got pregnant unintentionally, the percentage who chose abortion fell.
Less contraception, less sex, more women choosing life. So, the abortion rate among these women went down, right?

Wrong. It went up. The decline in contraception overwhelmed the decline in sexual activity, resulting in a higher rate of unintended pregnancy. And the increase in unintended pregnancy overwhelmed the increase in women choosing life, resulting in more abortions. From a pro-life standpoint, trading contraception for abstinence and a "culture of life" was a net loss.
That's why Ryan insists on birth control. He's tired of pious slogans and symbolic bills crafted to save more congressional seats than babies. He's had enough of the debate between life and choice. He wants a new abortion debate. "You're either for reducing the number, or you're not," he says. He's made his decision. Now make yours.

A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.

The Effect of Sexism

2007-01-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Slate Magazine Positions of Power: How female ambition is shaped.
By J.D. Nordell

Ask a band of 8-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up, and chances are you'll hear the word famous. According to psychiatrist Anna Fels, author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives, developmental studies of boys and girls show that as children, both sexes have remarkably similar desires for achievement. Both wish for accomplishment requiring work or skill; both desire recognition and honor. But fast-forward 20 or more years, and the reality looks different than the expectations. According to the October issue of Fortune, which highlights "The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business," women account for 35 percent of MBAs but only 2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women now make up 16 percent of congressional seats—and 0 percent of U.S. presidents. So, what happens to the grand ambitions of girlhood? There are three possible answers. The first is that innate differences between the sexes mean that women either don't seek high-risk jobs or don't perform as well at them as men do; many conservatives, for example, have seized on social science studies that suggest women demonstrate an aversion to risk-taking.

The second is that conscious discrimination still exists—that sexism is alive and well in the workplace. In 1998, for example, Mitsubishi paid $34 million to female workers who claimed the company had allowed employees and managers to sexually harass them at its plant in Normal, Ill. The third is that, even though formal barriers to women's workplace advancement have been dismantled, unconscious bias continues to interfere, influencing, for example, awards and honors. Recently, the transsexual neuroscientist Ben Barres, who has worked as both a woman and a man in science, noted that he is treated with more respect and interrupted less frequently now that he is a man. (After one talk, a faculty member was overheard saying, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's.") And, of course, unconscious bias may be what accounts for the fact that women still do the majority of housework and child-rearing, making it harder for them to complete effectively in the workplace. Whatever the reality of innate gender differences may prove to be—and we still don't understand very much about it—the presence of unconscious bias has been amply demonstrated. One widely cited study showed that when applying for a research grant, women need to be 2.5 times more productive than men to be judged equally competent. The famous "McKay" study asked subjects to rank comparable academic papers by John T. McKay or Joan T. McKay; the "Joan" papers were ranked about one point lower on a five-point scale than the papers by "John." And since the arrival of "blind" orchestra auditions, in which candidates are evaluated from behind a screen, the percentage of women hired by the top five U.S. orchestras has risen from less than 5 percent to 34 percent. What is pernicious about unconscious bias is not only that it creates specific career obstacles—say, being passed over for a promotion or losing out on a fellowship—but that it has subtler and more far-reaching consequences: It erodes the foundation upon which achievement is built—ambition itself. Ambition depends on a host of factors: confidence, actual skill, and the fuel of external recognition. Studies increasingly show that bias corrupts each of these in turn. In doing so, it doesn't just bar a woman from the corner office, it causes her to take herself out of the running. By the time girls become adults, their ambitions have changed—because they have changed. Ambition is a complex internal drive, and it relies heavily on a belief in one's own potential. "In order to have high aspirations, you have to have a sense of your own competence," says Shelley Correll, a sociologist at Cornell who studies the development of aspirations. Correll has found that, in the presence of a stereotype that men are better, women tend to underrate their own performance, while men overrate their own, regardless of demonstrated ability. "We find that if you compare boys and girls, or men and women, with the same grades in math classes, and the exact same scores on standardized math tests, boys think they are better than girls," she notes. To better understand this phenomenon, Correll devised a study in which male and female undergraduates were told they were "pre-testing" a new set of graduate admissions exams. Half the subjects were told that males had more ability on this test; half were told there was no relationship between gender and ability. (The test was devised in such a way that it was impossible to arrive at the correct answers.) All subjects were given the same score. Correll found that men exposed to the belief that males were superior rated their abilities as higher and expressed greater goals for future related activities; women in this group rated their ability as lower and expressed lower goals. Thus, exposure to a generalization about one's group changes the way one interprets one's own ability—and in turn shapes one's goals for the future. These effects, says Correll, "cumulate over women's lives and result in dramatically different outcomes for men and women." (Caric Note: the psychologist Ronald Steele has found the same affect with racial generalizations) Bias is also shown to shape ability itself. Robert Rosenthal, a sociologist at UCLA, randomly assigned children to different classes, and then told half the classrooms' teachers they had gifted classes and the other half that their students were average. At the end of the year, the "gifted" students scored higher on IQ tests. In other words, if others perceive you as talented, you become more talented. If you are perceived as less able, your ability shrinks. Meanwhile, studies of what psychologists call "stereotype threat" demonstrate that awareness of negative stereotypes about one's group diminishes performance. Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of Arizona, conducted a study in which undergraduates were asked to memorize words while doing math; one group was told this was a problem-solving exercise, the other, that this was a test comparing men and women. Women's performance suffered only when they believed they were being compared to men—this prompted the stereotype that men are better in math. Another study examined how stereotype threat affected Asian-American women's performance on math tasks. When subjects were asked questions related to Asian identity before taking the test (prompting the stereotype that Asians are good at math), their performance went up. When asked questions related to gender (prompting the stereotype that women are bad at math), their performance went down. Ambition also depends on recognition. While we like to think of ourselves as unaffected by others' assessments, anyone who's experienced the boosting effect of a sincere compliment knows this isn't true. Notes Fels in Necessary Dreams, studies by psychologists such as Jerome Kagan, Carol Dweck, and Howard Gardner have shown that being recognized enhances learning, motivation, productivity, and self-esteem. As Fels notes, "we sustain effort on projects that maximize present or future affirmation." Recognition, then, is its own perpetual-motion device: It increases drive, which increases achievement, which leads to more recognition. But if, as the study cited above shows, a woman must be 2.5 times as productive to be judged equally competent, she receives that much less recognition for equal productivity—leaving her out of the cycle of recognition and reward. Like an immune disorder, bias attacks from the inside, compromising self-perception and actual ability. It also attacks from the outside, isolating the individual from proper rewards. There are, however, a few silver linings. First, according to Fels, given the right encouragement, ambition can blossom at any time. When individuals experience a burst of achievement or recognition later in life, the full force of childhood ambition seems to return. Second, many of these studies suggest that bias' effects on performance and self-perception are, like a stain, fairly responsive to spot treatment. In Schmader's word-memorization study, a third group was told that exposure to stereotypes might lead women to underperform. In this group, the women and men scored equally well, suggesting that awareness of bias may mitigate its effect. Correll recommends that institutions acknowledge that while bias may exist "out there," this particular organization is a safe place, and provide messages about all individuals' potential—"from the top down." Transparency helps, too: Where there are clear methods of evaluation, women do well. The October issue of Fortune looks at three large American companies with many women at the top and finds that each relies on measurable results to determine advancement, including "empirical standards, clear goals, and frequent reviews." Empirical standards, frequent reviews—sound familiar? Schools do the same thing. In counties around the country, women now account for the majority of valedictorians.

Glenn Loury Changes His Mind About Race

2006-09-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

Glenn Loury's About Face
By ADAM SHATZ

One Sunday evening early in the fall, Glenn C. Loury arrived at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., where a group of distinguished black intellectuals, including Cornel West, Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., was gathering to discuss the Sept. 11 attacks. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the keynote speaker, had flown in to talk about possible shuttle diplomacy with the Taliban. Loury, an economist at Boston University who first achieved prominence as one of the nation's leading black conservatives in the Reagan years, was there on a diplomatic mission of his own: to mend the rift that has long separated him from liberal blacks like Jackson. He knew he might elicit more than a few hostile glances. ''I've been trying to figure out who you were for the longest time,'' one woman said coldly when they were introduced, according to Loury. But he decided to brave it.

Shortly before the meeting, Loury walked into a conference room where Jackson was chatting with Gates. As Loury shook hands with Jackson -- a man he had taken to task in print throughout the 1980's -- Gates effusively praised Loury's book ''The Anatomy of Racial Inequality,'' which will be published early next month by Harvard University Press. In it, Loury makes a striking departure from the self-help themes of his earlier work, defending affirmative action and denouncing ''colorblindness'' as a euphemism for indifference to the fate of black Americans.

Jackson said to Gates: ''This man is smart. Whatever his politics, he's always been smart.'' When the conversation turned to the Middle East, Loury sheepishly reminded Jackson of an article he wrote more than 15 years ago in Commentary attacking him for embracing Yasir Arafat.

''You probably don't remember the piece,'' Loury said.

''Oh, yes I do,'' Jackson fired back.''I looked him in the eye,'' Loury recalled a couple of weeks later, ''and said: 'I really wish I hadn't written that. It was a mistake, and I really regret it.'

Jackson didn't say anything directly in response to it, but during his formal presentation he made a point of singling me out. He said:

'To say that Glenn Loury isn't black because he disagrees with me, well that's just stupid. We can't afford to leave brilliant minds like that by the wayside.''

'''That meeting was the defining moment for Glenn,'' his friend Orlando Patterson, a Harvardsociologist, later said. Or, as another scholar put it to me, ''Glenn is finally able to walk into a room full of black people who don't all hate him.''

Glenn Loury beamed as he told me this story in the backyard of his Brookline, Mass., home, where he lives with his wife, Linda, a labor economist at Tufts, and their two young sons. It was a crisp New England afternoon in early October; the leaves had turned a brilliant red and yellow. Loury's house -- listed, he notes casually, in The National Registry of Historic Places -- is a large Federal-style structure built in 1854 by Amos Adams Lawrence, a wealthy abolitionist.

Loury, 53, is a tall, stocky man with a high forehead and a graying goatee that seems to add little age to a face that will probably always look youthful. On this afternoon, he was wearing a sweatshirt that said ''Professor Man'' -- a superhero he invented to amuse his sons. At once polished and insecure, he rarely misses a chance to mention when someone important has found him ''brilliant'' or ''smart.''

The quality of Loury's mind has never been in question. What his critics have expressed doubts about is his judgment. His career as a public intellectual has been a long and occasionally reckless journey of self-discovery and reinvention, a dizzying series of political transformations and personal crises that have left him with more ex-friends than friends. He is both a genuine maverick thinker and a shrewd political operator, and therefore a source of fascination and bewilderment, even to himself.

Loury was reared by working-class parents on the South Side of Chicago, where the color line was an inescapable fact of life. He vividly remembers being chased by a group of white kids when he rode his bike across that line. Loury fathered two children out of wedlock while he was still a teenager, and he dropped out of college and got a job at a printing plant. But before his eight-hour night shift he took courses at Southeast Junior College, and from there he won a scholarship to Northwestern University, where he studied mathematics and economics. He did his graduate work in economics at M.I.T., under the supervision of the Nobel laureate Robert M. Solow . . .

As America's inner cities fell prey to a scourge of violence, drug addiction and out-of-wedlock births in the late 1970's, Loury came to believe that the greatest threat to racial equality was no longer the ''enemy without'' -- white racism -- but rather the ''enemy within'': problems inherent in the black community. Unless this ''enemy'' was confronted head-on, he argued, blacks would fail to achieve lasting social and economic equality. This was not his only pointed challenge to what he called the civil rights orthodoxy; Loury was also a critic of affirmative action and an outspoken supply-sider, promoting solutions to ghetto poverty rooted in entrepreneurialism rather than government aid.

In 1982, at the age of 33, Loury became the first tenured black professor in the Harvard economics department. Despite his sterling qualifications, he immediately began worrying about what his colleagues -- his white colleagues -- really thought of him. Did they know how smart he was? Or did they think he was a token? Before long, he was on the verge of what he calls a ''psychological breakdown.'' As he remembers: ''I did not carry that burden well. One wants to feel that one is standing there on one's own. One does not want to feel one is being patronized.'' In 1984, he moved over to the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which had been assiduously courting him almost from the moment he arrived.''

Glenn had no doubt that he was smart,'' Patterson says. ''But I think he was always doubtful as to whether the economics department had hired him because of his Afro-American connections. It was that anxiety about what his colleagues really thought that led him to doubt the value of affirmative action.'' His criticisms of affirmative action reflected these insecurities, emphasizing the stigma it imposed on people like himself.

Loury seemed to relish his chosen role as a thorn in the side of the civil rights establishment. In 1984, he delivered a paper in Washington at a meeting of the National Urban Coalition. The room, Loury recalls, was full of movement veterans, including Coretta Scott King; John Jacob, the National Urban League president; and Walter Fauntroy, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. In a speech calculated to provoke his audience, Loury began by declaring, ''The civil rights movement is over.'' Blacks, he argued, were at risk of being dragged down by problems that could not simply be laid at the door of white racism. The spread of a vast underclass, the poor performance of black students, the explosion of early unwed pregnancies among blacks and the alarming rates of black-on-black crime -- here was evidence, he said, of failures in black society itself. It was time, he said, for blacks to assume responsibility for their own problems; blaming racism for their ills might be emotionally gratifying, but it was also morally obtuse.

When he was finished, Loury recalls, Coretta Scott King wept.

Word of the brilliant, contrarian black economist from the South Side of Chicago traveled fast. Conservative magazines solicited articles from him; The New Republic published his thoughts on race under the title ''A New American Dilemma.'' He befriended William Bennett and William Kristol, his colleague at the Kennedy School. He sat at President Reagan's table at a White House dinner, and he socialized with Clarence Thomas. (Although the two no longer speak, Loury still keeps a picture in his office of himself with Thomas.) While his liberal colleagues were boycotting South Africa, Loury traveled there in 1986 on a trip financed by the white diamond magnate Harry Oppenheimer.

Loury's alliance with the right was rooted in part in his deep aversion to the intellectual conformity he felt the left imposed on black intellectuals; the right offered not only prestige, resources and acceptance but also, it seemed, the freedom to speak his mind. (He was also partly motivated, like many rebels, by seething class resentment: he says that as the son of a low-level civil servant, he felt ''contempt'' for middle-class civil rights leaders.) But during this period, Loury says, he continued to see himself as ''a race man.'' Unlike some other black conservatives, he never called for abolishing the welfare state, and he rejected the idea that America had finished paying its debts to its black citizens.Loury says he wanted to forge an intellectual middle ground, but his willingness -- indeed, his eagerness -- to assail black leaders like Jackson and to align himself with the Reagan administration made him persona non grata in liberal black circles. He was called an Uncle Tom, a ''black David Stockman'' and a ''pathetic mascot of the right.''''It seemed like a classic sellout case to me,'' remembers Patterson, who went 10 years without seeing Loury. Loury's Uncle Alfred -- a proud race man, a steelworker and the patriarch of the family -- thought I was basically selling out to the white man,'' Loury recalls.

The hostility of fellow blacks would eventually take its toll, but at the time Loury took pride in their scorn. While enjoying considerable patronage in the form of corporate consulting fees and grants from conservative foundations, he cast himself -- and was portrayed by his white conservative patrons -- as a brave dissident who rejected the ''loyalty trap'' of reflexive racial solidarity.And yet in his personal life, Loury continued to feel the pull of race. At the same time as he was lunching with fellows from the American Enterprise Institute, he began to immerse himself in a black urban world much like the neighborhood in which he grew up. He started playing pickup chess on tabletops in Dudley Square, an African-American commercial district in Boston. There, his views on social policy were unknown, and he was welcomed, not ostracized, by working-class black men -- the kinds of men he had known on the South Side, the kind of man he nearly became while working at the printing plant. ''There was a feeling for me that I was really blacker than a lot of these liberal black intellectuals who were denouncing me as a traitor to my race,'' he remembers.

As a black critic of racial liberalism, Loury rose rapidly in Republican public-policy circles. In March 1987, he was offered a position as under secretary of education to William Bennett. On June 1, 1987, however, Loury's life veered off-track. He withdrew his nomination, citing ''personal reasons''; three days later, those personal reasons became public: Loury's mistress, a 23-year-old Smith College graduate who had been living, at his expense, in what Boston papers called a ''love nest,'' brought assault charges against him. (She later dropped all charges.)Loury's meltdown had just begun. After the scandal, his trips to Dudley Square became all-nighters. He was staying out on the street until 2 a.m. and venturing into ''some really rough spaces.'' He began freebasing cocaine and picking up women, spending much of his time in public housing projects. ''It was pathological,'' he says. ''I was castigating the moral failings of African-American life even as I was deeply caught up in it.'' All the while, he managed to maintain appearances at Harvard -- according to colleagues, he was lecturing more brilliantly than ever -- and to keep his other life a secret from his wife.''I was bridging the extremities of two worlds,'' he recalls. ''Nobody at the Kennedy School could have known about this other world, and nobody in that world where I was a familiar character because I came regularly with a pocketful of money could have imagined the sophistication and power of the society of which I was a part. So you achieve a kind of uniqueness moving back and forth between those worlds. It was fun. There was a sense of power. There was a real rush. You weren't just breaking the rules. Rules didn't have anything to do with you. This was new territory.''

In late November 1987, Loury was arrested on charges of cocaine possession. After spending several months in the hospital and in a halfway house, he was released, and in January 1989, his wife gave birth to the first of their two sons. Loury's Harvard colleagues implored him to stay, but the scandal haunted him. In 1991, he left for Boston University, which offered him a tenured position and a salary Harvard couldn't match. For the next year, he devoted himself to his research in theoretical economics, which had languished for years, and ''got out of the race business.''Loury's conservative friends stood by him, and Loury remained loyal. During the Anita Hill hearings, he prayed over the phone with Clarence Thomas. In 1995, he founded the Center for New Black Leadership with a group of conservative black intellectuals that included his friend Shelby Steele, the essayist.''We were fellow travelers, Shelby and I,'' Loury recalls wistfully. ''We were partners in an enterprise. We fancied ourselves men of ideas who had found our way to this position out of our willingness to break ranks. It's a lonely business, this black conservative stuff.''

In the wake of his arrest, however, Loury had experienced a personal transformation that was to have far-reaching intellectual consequences. Five months after beating his cocaine addiction, Loury was dipped into a pool of water at a ceremony in Dorchester, Mass., and was born again. He started going to church regularly and was, he says, ''getting caught up in the rapture of these services where people were falling out onto the floor.'' The people who forgave him his sins -- his family, his fellow churchgoers and his wife -- were black, and Loury did not fail to notice this.According to Patterson, ''Religion was Glenn's entry back into the black community.''''The experience did nothing to my politics,'' Loury insists, but the ''processing of my own frailties'' that it engendered, that did have an effect. Now that he was among ''the fallen,'' he found it difficult to keep telling people -- his people -- to ''just straighten up, for crying out loud,'' as he had been for years. It struck him, he says, as ''unbelievably shallow, spiritually, and politically problematic.'' In one of the more revealing passages of his new book, he criticizes the way successful blacks sometimes develop an ''antipathy'' toward the black poor: ''If only THEY would get their acts together, then people like ME wouldn't have such a problem.'''After his brush with the law, Loury became increasingly alarmed by the right's punitive rhetoric on issues ranging from racial profiling to the criminal justice system and wary of the ways in which, as a black man, he was being used as a screen for an antiblack agenda. He was horrified by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's 1994 book, ''The Bell Curve,'' a social Darwinist tract arguing that black poverty was rooted in inferior intelligence. He was even more appalled by ''The End of Racism,'' the lurid assault on ''black failure'' written by Dinesh D'Souza when hewas a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute . . .In a column called ''What's Wrong With the Right,'' published in the January-February 1996 issue of The American Enterprise journal, Loury wrote that while ''liberal methods'' on questions of race were certainly flawed, ''liberals sought to heal the rift in our body politic engendered by the institution of chattel slavery, and their goal of securing racial justice in America was, and is, a noble one. I cannot say with confidence that conservatism as a movement is much concerned to pursue that goal.''

''The thing about Glenn is that he was always a race man,'' says Anthony Appiah, a Harvard professor of philosophy and Afro-American studies. ''I suspect that the Reaganites he was consorting with never really knew that.''Loury's break with the right became final in the fall of 1996 during the battle over the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209 . . . . Writing in The New Republic on the eve of the referendum's passage, Loury declared that it was ''flawed both in letter and spirit,'' and went on to excoriate ''colorblind absolutists'' and to argue that ''some 'discrimination' against whites'' may well be ''the inevitable -- and defensible -- consequence of measures to identify and limit discrimination against blacks.''

''There came a point when I couldn't look my own people in the face,'' Loury says, explaining his evolution. ''Everyone else had a place to go. Some would go to Jerusalem. Others would go to Dublin. You see the metaphor. Where would I go? I came back to Chicago and talked to my uncle about what I was doing. There was a reproachful look in his eyes, a sadness. He said to me, 'We could only send one, and we sent you, and I don't see us in anything you do.' Eventually I realized I couldn't live like that.''So where did Loury end up? Not -- and this is what makes him distinctive -- as a traditional liberal. Despite his new appreciation of racial solidarity, Loury remains fiercely independent. His outlook today is an unclassifiable, pragmatic blend of entrepreneurialism, black nationalism, Christian faith and social egalitarianism. Though he has relaxed his opposition to affirmative action, he quibbles with the way it is practiced, recommending instead what he calls developmental affirmative action -- programs intended to improve minority performance while upholding common standards of evaluation. It's a lonely position that infuriates his former allies on the right without endearing him to black liberals like Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, who recently threatened to resign from Harvard if Lawrence H. Summers, the school's new president, failed to issue a sweeping defense of affirmative action. The private Loury is as hard to pin down as the public intellectual: an affluent homeowner in a largely white suburb who retains a deep respect for the Nation of Islam; a churchgoer who jogs while listening to gangsta rap on his Walkman.''The Anatomy of Racial Inequality,'' based on lectures he gave in 2000 at the Dubois Institute at Harvard, offers a bracing philosophical defense of his new views. Returning to an argument he first presented in his dissertation, Loury argues that blacks are no longer held back by ''discrimination in contract'' -- discrimination in the job market -- but rather by ''discrimination in contact,'' informal and entirely legal patterns of socializing and networking that tend to exclude blacks and thereby perpetuate racial inequality. At the root of this unofficial discrimination, he says, is ''stigma,'' a subtle yet pervasive form of antiblack bias. According to Loury, stigma explains why many white Americans, as well as some blacks, view the imprisonment of 1.2 million African-American men as a ''communal disgrace'' rather than as ''an American tragedy.''Of course, Loury himself once perceived the plight of the underclass in similar terms. As he wrote in 1985, ''Whatever fault may be placed upon racism in America, the responsibility for the behavior of black youngsters lies squarely on the shoulders of the black community itself.'' In his new book, by contrast, Loury asserts that the miseries of the ghetto can ''only be seen as a domestic product . . . for which the entire nation bears a responsibility.''. . . Loury's embrace of his black identity is striking and, to some of his black friends, a touch overeager. ''Glenn is into sports now,'' says Patterson, who formed a close friendship with Loury again in the mid-90's. ''He's into basketball. He's developed a sort of pride in things black, and a sensitivity about any negative comments made about the group. I became a little concerned when Glenn started listening to gangsta rap. I thought there was a little overcompensation involved.''It's hard not to conclude that Loury's intellectual positions today reflect shifting personal needs as much as shifting intellectual convictions. As Patterson points out, ''Glenn had argued so powerfully against affirmative action that the shift in position struck me more as a signal to the black community that he wanted back in, rather than a strongly intellectual change of heart.''Loury, for his part, doesn't disagree: ''I don't know if I want to concede the point to Orlando, that there's no intellectual substance to the change of mind. But I think that's a pretty astute observation on his part.'' Still, he says, ''as long as I can give a more-or-less cogent account of what the current position is, I don't worry about the insincerity problem.'' When I asked him why he constantly changes his mind, he fell silent, pounding his fist on his desk. Leaning back in his chair, he stared quietly at the ceiling. Nearly a minute passed. This was the first time I had seen him at a loss for words. ''There may be something in my personality that doesn't feel comfortable getting along,'' he finally said -- an answer that nicely omits his equally strongdesire to belong.The question of belonging, of course, is one that all public intellectuals face, but it weighs especially heavily on black intellectuals who write about race. If you're a white college professor, you can float half-formed ideas and say controversial things; that's what you're paid to do. To be a black intellectual in the race debate is to have an audience with expectations, even demands; an audience anxious to know which side you're on.You might imagine that the ambiguities of the post-civil-rights era -- in which the problems may be clear but the solutions are not -- would reduce the pressures toward intellectual conformity, but Loury's career suggests that the opposite is true. Debates over affirmative action and reparations are often so polarized as to leave little room for iconoclasts. To dissent, on either side, means you may find yourself in a lonely place, your loyalty -- even your blackness -- in question.Throughout our conversations, I had the odd sense that both Loury and I were after the same thing: an understanding of Glenn Loury -- or, more precisely, how the old Loury became the new Loury. He often talks about his past self as if he were someone else, as if the only thing the two Lourys had in common were a body. Loury has been through therapy, and he often talks like a classic analysand, putting himself on the couch and registering genuine bafflement at how he got there. ''Friends of mine sometimes have joked to me that the old Loury and the new Loury should have a conversation,'' he says, chuckling ruefully.When you spend time with Loury, you feel that he's still sorting out his past, still trying to figure out what has led him away from and toward the embrace of his race. He is incredibly self-conscious, and yet all his introspection has failed to yield any answers that satisfy him. The day after I interviewed him for the first time, we were walking along Commonwealth Avenue, just outside his office. ''I feel like I spilled my guts yesterday,'' he confessed. ''But you know, what I said was something of a revelation to me too. Because parts of my life are still a blur to me. I don't have a coherent narrative yet.''

Adam Shatz is a writer who lives in New York City.