Sunday, June 5th 2005
Commencement: Final Edition
Last one, I promise. But these are just so good that I have to post…
The last batch of commencement speeches are up on Berkeley NewsCenter. They feature our old friends Barber, Beatty, and Danner, and a bunch more that we’ve overloked.
African American Studies
Farai Chideya, political commentatorWhat is blackness? Is blackness the SPF of sunscreen you wear? Is blackness genetic? Is blackness cultural? Is Eminem blacker than Colin Powell? What are we really talking about here?
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I think right now the crossroads in blackness is to really decide how we operate using blackness as a set of ethical values, as opposed to something that somebody dumped on us when they look at us.
How about the idea that your skin color has absolutely no bearing on how you should act? Is that such a radical belief?
School of Journalism
Maureen Dowd, New York Times opinion columnistAnd now that summer is coming, we can look forward to Brian Williams’ reports on killer sharks, killer bees, and killer bears. Those repetitive stories about hundreds of people in Iraq dying and losing limbs every week in car bombings because Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz didn’t armor up the Humvees properly don’t get the ratings of a good runaway-bride update.
Ahh, journalists… trying to stay relevant in this modern age: “A January poll conducted by Harris Interactive found that Americans do not trust the press by almost a 3-to-1 ratio. Sixty-two percent said they distrust the national media—a slightly more negative rating than Congress and the federal government.”
Department of Geography
David Loeb, Publisher/Editor-in-chief,Bay Nature magazineI have to wonder what it does to us as a species to have our craving for beauty met by packaging and advertising; to have our need to be connected to the planet and other people on it replaced by an anonymous supply chain that links us, but only sort of, and certainly not in a humane way, to a factory worker in China or Honduras and then later to a landfill God knows where polluting goodness knows how many wetlands.
Yes, damn you Chinese and Hondurans. You should be living in poverty so first-world tree-huggers who publish nature magazines can feel good about themselves. And I’m sure each and every one of those magazines have been dutifully recycled to save a tree…
Department of Anthropology
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Professor of Anthropology, UC BerkeleyThe new pope … is a critic of cultural relativism. In a much-cited homily the former Cardinal Ratzinger held forth against the tyranny of “relativism,” which he described as letting oneself be “swept along by every will-o-the-wisp idea or teaching.”
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I hope the new pope … comes to understand that cultural relativism is neither about moral indifference nor modern egoism, but to the contrary is about approaching others … with intellectual and emotional generosity, recognizing in them our shared humanity despite our inhabiting “many different mansions,” or cultures, each representing a different way of being good, moral, and intelligent.
Pope bashing! Definitely commencement material… I suppose cannibalism and slavery and culturally sanctioned rape and murder are all “different ways of being good, moral, and intelligent.”
Department of Ethnic Studies
Christopher Edley, Dean, Boalt Hall School of LawI was bemoaning the lack of substantial progress on issues of racial and ethnic justice over the past generation… America does not move forward in a progressive vision of racial and ethnic justice on automatic pilot. That progress has to come because people will shoulder the burden of carrying us forward….What will be your struggle? What burden will you shoulder? What lives will you lift?
Can someone tell me what exactly is left to be done in the “racial and ethnic justice” area? If he means roll back Prop. 209 then count me out. But what exactly are we aiming for here? I think this country is pretty damn just on these issues already (even going a little too far if we take into account the loss of private freedom of association caused by anti-discrimination laws ). Seriously, go concentrate on something worthwhile. That is if a degree in Ethnic Studies can land you a decent job…
http://www.pollingreport.com/media.htm#News
http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2005/06/06/
Comment by HB — 6/6/2005 @ 12:11 am
Patrick: Regarding your comments about the lack of “freedom of association” that we are suffering from based on our “anti-discrimination laws”, I was curious if you were referring to the right to associate based on racial grounds.
[My assumption would be that you were, seeing as how you made the comment as part of your comments on “racial and ethnic justice”. Although since I don’t run into many people pining for the good old days when people had the right to discrimminate based on race, I was hoping you could clarify your comments.]
Comment by Andy R. — 6/6/2005 @ 2:33 am
The right to discriminate based on race is implicit in a right of free association. Whether you think someone should exercise that right or not, actively trying to remove that right is an attack on the right of free association.
Comment by B.A.D. — 6/6/2005 @ 11:24 am
I can’t help but get the idea that you’re taking pot shots at things you (apparently) know little about. Race having absolutely no bearing on how you act is NOT a radical belief, but it IS outdated. If you want intelligent debate on this matter you’ll have to accept that American growth up until now has NOT completely alleviated racial injustice. For most of the other comments, you appear to be just making witty remarks. All in good fun, but not much argumentatively.
Comment by Conservative 771 — 6/6/2005 @ 11:24 am
why not just leave them with their opinion on race, nothing will be fixed otherwise. both extremes promote segregation…the only difference is the method
Comment by HB — 6/6/2005 @ 11:50 am
You can’t just “leave” them with their opinion on race. And Farai Chideya does not hold an extreme view, nor does that view promote segregation. An extreme view, opposite white supremacy, but much smaller in potential harmful magnitude is black supremacy. In this case segregation might be promoted, however, it’s irrelevant in the status quo. Rarely do professors and leaders push for Black supremacy, more often it is Black Power. Further more, this cannot be compared to white power as I originally wanted to do. White and Black power/supremacy do not hold the same connotations across racial lines. Second, Black Power calls for Black progression while supremacy suggests a Black ruling class.
Also, I disagree that the only difference is the method. It’s more than that. I’m no expert in the field, but I’m aware of more input than just the end method. Like historical social and economic interactions.
So, coming to a close after an essayish comment, you need to take into account more than just the method to fix the existing problem.
Comment by Conservative 771 — 6/6/2005 @ 1:21 pm
Andy: I think private individuals and organizations have the right to decide who they want to associate with. And the basis of this decision can be anything from race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever. So if a private golf club or the Boy Scouts wants to be exclusive in their membership, then that’s their right. We also have every right to make a big fuss over their policies if we think that they’re wrong. Of course the government is a totally different story, since we demand that the government treat everyone equally.
I personally subscribe to Ward Connerly’s vision of a colorblind society. Judge people on an individual basis rather than their skin color (or other characteristic). This should be how society operates. Unfortunately, there are also a few bigots on all sides who reject this vision.
But I also like to believe that we have escaped our past. If we repealed all these anti-discrimination laws tomorrow, would the country erupt in racial violence? Are laws the only thing holding back this seething racial hatred? For the most part, our actions are guided not by the law, but by our morality. So let’s err on the side of freedom and put our faith back in the goodness of people.
For a more scholarly look at the subject, check out this book I read a while ago: You Can’t Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws by David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy. It details some of the non-bigoted reasons for allowing discrimination in association and, more importantly, how these laws get in the way of another fundamental freedom: free speech. And for a fun take on the subect, watch that South Park episode on the Boy Scouts.
Comment by patr — 6/6/2005 @ 3:05 pm
Conservative 771: “Race having absolutely no bearing on how you act is NOT a radical belief, but it IS outdated.” So let’s take an abstract situation. Is there a “white” way of approaching the problem? Black way? Asian? Or should we accept that people will act in accordance with their own individual beliefs, and that individual members of a certain racial group are not guaranteed to share the same beliefs?
I think that your belief that “Race Matters” is the outdated one. But if you think that my opinion is outdated, then in what era would my thinking be mainstream thought? Also, by branding my opinion of “Race doesn’t Matter” as outdated, are you saying that you want a future where “Race Matters” indefinitely?
I really can’t understand why people continually want to make race an issue when it shouldn’t be. Both liberals and conservatives (assuming that you are a conservative, Conservative 771). I certainly don’t wake up in the morning, look at myself in the mirror and wonder how my skin color will determine the actions of my day. Am I in the minority here?
Comment by patr — 6/6/2005 @ 3:30 pm
I’m wholly replying to patr. Acknowledging that a few of Andy’s points are clearly in my direction I’m not responding to them because I only have enough space and time for one response. Maybe I’ll be able to get back at this tomorrow.
Anyway, to patr. My basic premise is that people will act with in accordance with their own individual beliefs. However, this is getting away from the main issue at hand.
So, here’s why I say your idea is outdated. Early in American history race mattered because it determined your socio econoic status (i.e. indentured servitude, or slave for life). This is not the view I hold. The 60’s brought about Martin Luther King, jr. who espoused the view that race shouldn’t matter whatsoever–that we should evaluate people on a completely individual basis. I believe this is the view that you hold. The new–and radical–view is that which tries to evaluate people on an individual basis, but also takes into account historical social and economic interactions that resulted from racism early on. These historical events, such as slavery and, after that, sharecropping directly influenced the general economic situations of, in this case, African Americans. It is being mindful of events like these and the way they shaped the racial structure in the United States that brings you this next element in the radical view that I espouse. That of moving towards racial equilibrium and actively pursuing strategies that raise up some groups from their previously, averaged, lower station in life.
Before I go on, let me explain why it’s important to keep those historical events in mind. While these events are not remembered by every person in the particular race that an event hindered or affected, they are a part of history that occurred in large part because of racism. Saying that we should “leave this in the past” is the moral equivalent of breaking someone’s leg and asking them to forget about the wrong you did to them years later because it’s “in the past”. While they can still achieve some success they have been very much hindered in being able to do so.
So, acknowledging that, my radical view moves to help those groups that were previously harmed in our (our being the United States) history.
Going on to answer your last question–No, I don’t wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and question how my skin color will determine my day. While I can’t speak for anyone but me, I believe this is a majority opinion. However, even if you don’t consciously think about race, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor somewhere. Like the history that delivered a family to the small apartment in Chicago. Or the reason that numerous low-income jobs are held by Mexicans in a certain part of california. Think of anti-discrimination law as legislation that is reversing the harmful effects of past discrimation up until, and going no further than, when discrimination began to derail ALL racial groups from their rightful (but equal) share of power.
Comment by Conservative 771 — 6/6/2005 @ 6:07 pm
Patr: I’m not entirely familiar with discrimmination laws. When you say you support the right to segregate for “private individuals and organizations” what exactly is a private organization? Does a restaurant count? Golf course? YMCA? UC Berkeley club?
Secondly, which South Park Boy Scout episode are you talking about? I’ve seen episodes that have the boyscouts in them, but I’m not sure if it’s the one you’re talking about.
thanks
Comment by Andy R. — 6/6/2005 @ 8:03 pm
Slavery, sharecropping, etc. affected individuals. Yeah, a lot of individuals who shared characteristics that were directly responsible for that impact, but still individuals. Not every black in America is a descendant of a slave. Groups aren’t people. If you hurt a dude who looks like me, I’m not necessarily hurt. (that’s the broken leg example)
Comment by B.A.D. — 6/6/2005 @ 9:17 pm
Andy: Yeah, restaurants and golf courses owned by private entities should be allowed to choose who they wish to associate with. Whether it be in hiring employees or serving customers. If they have a sign that says “We have the right to refuse service” then they should really have that right and not have the government get in their way. Of course if a company decides not to hire Asians or serve blacks, they would be very deserving of a boycott.
Clubs on public school campuses are a tricky issue. Some religious clubs may choose to be restrictive in their membership. I read an article about this somewhere. I’d say that as long as they don’t receive school funding, we give them some leeway.
But the rule of thumb is if they’re private funded, they have the right to discriminate, if not, then they don’t. I think it probably hurts your bottom line and your public image if you choose to exercise these rights. However, freedom is a double-edged sword and taking the bad along with the good is the price.
I looked up the South Park episode, and it’s entitled “Cripple Fight.” Here’s a synopsis, but watching it is way more fun. And educational.
Comment by patr — 6/6/2005 @ 10:34 pm
“theme” housing
Comment by HB — 6/7/2005 @ 1:13 am
http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/12/04/
segregation of thought, my lefty friend
Comment by HB — 6/7/2005 @ 1:17 am
B.A.D.: “Not every black in America is a descendant of a slave”, true. I admit an anti-discrimination policy falls through in numerous places and that not every person can be associated with a particular group. That’s a problem, but is it so big a problem that it overrules the initial problem? I guess the question is, does the creation of that problem create a bigger problem than the one it’s trying to fix? Hmm. I’d like to say no, but I don’t have too much evidence on me right now.
To interject into the idea of theme housing–segregation of thought as HB put it–that is curious. More meaningfully, doesn’t that trend of segregation of thought reach a lot deeper? Dorms like Bowles and Stern. Better yet, “liberal” and “conservative.” If you don’t fit in one or the other people sometimes go blank on you, summoning up questions like “What do you believe in?” And you’re thinking “Lots of things, dumbass, it’s just that I’m not a goddamn sheep.” Anyway, that’s pretty broad, but I guess you were specifically referring to groups that choose to do believe one thing or another. Everywhere as well.
Comment by Conservative 771 — 6/9/2005 @ 1:58 am