Amazing race - Part 2

The other day, I posted a quick note encouraging everyone to visit the History Colorado exhibit on “Race: Are We So Different?” I hope some of you saw it—whether with or without that bit of encouragement. Since then, I’ve come across two columns that spoke exactly to some of the points raised in “Race.” The whole experience—the exhibit, the articles—has been eye opening for me. Even though I’ve thought quite a lot about these issues, I keep encountering new ideas that stretch me.

 First, a few comments on the exhibit, then some reflections.

This was a traveling exhibit created by the American Anthropological Society—which helps explain why it’s so remarkably thoughtful and thought provoking. I was especially struck by how well it avoids the easy slippage into focusing on racial categories in favor of challenging the very concept of race itself. That’s a stretch for any of us who were raised in a culture that categorizes people by race at every turn. And to convey this idea, the exhibit has tons of interactive features and cleverly designed, concrete ways to illustrate the point. But it didn’t avoid challenging concepts in the service of simplicity.

For instance, the introductory video dismantles the notion of race as a real “thing,” explaining in straightforward terms how race doesn’t actually exist, how we have come to believe that it does, and what are the underlying dynamics (economics, power, privilege) that generated and still perpetuate the illusion of racial categories. This isn’t necessarily an easy set of concepts to introduce to an audience many of whom may have little experience in thinking deeply about race—except, perhaps, to be well aware that racial bias is problematic.

The central theme that runs through the exhibit is this: the social and economic differences that we observe today are direct results of our belief that racial categories are real. Those beliefs have fueled actions like these: generations of genocide practiced against Native residents of America, theft of their land, and “re-education” efforts to “kill the Indian and save the man”; wartime internment of Japanese citizens that required them to leave behind their businesses, homes, and possessions; “red-lining” that prevented non-white servicemen from using the GI bill to buy houses in the suburbs, when home ownership in those areas would have allowed them entry to the emerging American middle class. Over time, such differential treatment and its material and psychological toll unavoidably resulted in social and economic divisions marked by “race.”

I’ve known about this train of thought for some time, this argument that categories of people are invented rather than discovered. That once created, these categories have real, concrete impacts on people sorted into them. It’s directly related to my own academic work, so I get it, and I am convinced it’s correct. Still, once in a while, someone presents it in a way that’s especially striking. A few of these moments came up at this exhibit:

You could look at an individual from Kenya and an individual from Norway and easily believe that they represent two different races. But if you walked from Kenya to Norway, there would be no point along your route where you could say, “Here it is—the dividing line where people change from one race to another.” There is no dividing line because there are no actual categories.

Imagine sitting on a bus going to, say, Disneyland. Regardless of who the person next to you is, somewhere around 93-97% of your genes are identical to theirs. Regardless of their nationality, racial or ethnic category, or sex/gender.

We know that the human species first emerged in Africa and migrated from there through the Middle East and into Asia, Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. Only a small sample of the African population made the trip—which means that only a small slice of the full human genome made the trip. As a result, despite subsequent mixing, the largest proportion of human variation is found among Africans—which is to say, Africans have virtually all of the genes of other groups, and those other groups have just some of the genes that Africans possess.

Still, illusory though race may be, these categories have huge impacts on our lives. Some of that impact is seen in privilege, some in oppression. Some of it is overt, some more subtle. Some of it is intentional, some is non-conscious. It’s this latter sort that’s tricky: the “stuff” we all carry around that we aren’t even aware of, biases that we would in fact deny if asked our conscious beliefs. One person in a video at the exhibit called it the “smog of racism.” We all breathe it in and are damaged by it, whether or not we acknowledge it. Acknowledging it, he said, is the first step.

This is where those two recent articles come in. The first was a New York Times column, “Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions” by Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard economist. It’s a good, brief article—well worth the read, and you’ll find it right here. Mullainathan summarizes several studies that show inadvertent racial bias, and then points out that most people are unaware that they carry these biases. These attitudes are so well learned that they affect our actions even without our knowing it. Here’s a telling line from the column: “Even if, in our slow thinking, we work to avoid discrimination, it can easily creep into our fast thinking. Our snap judgments rely on all the associations we have—from fictional television shows to news reports. They use stereotypes, both the accurate and the inaccurate, both those we would want to use and ones we find repulsive.”

And the second was another NYT column called “Privilege of ‘Arrest without Incident’,” this one by regular columnist Charles Blow—which you can read here. Blow describes an incident that happened just over a week ago in which a white woman drove around a southern city, shooting at people from her car, then leading police on a chase and even aiming her gun at an officer. The news story reports that she was “arrested without incident.” This is a good outcome, Blow agrees. But, he asks, shouldn’t everyone have the right to an “arrest without incident.” Consider the starkly different fate of black men who have done far less in recent months but have not had that right, that privilege. He notes that every case is different, and we cannot know all the relevant circumstances. Still, he writes, “Police officers are human beings making split-second decisions—often informed by fears—about when to use force and the degree of that force.” Those are the split-second decisions, the “fast thinking” that Mullainathan talks about in his column. 

Hanging out in this topic area for a few days has got me thinking about my own responses, the “fast thinking” moments when I realize that I’m not finished with my own work here, not by far. How often I try to wish away the thoughts I don’t want to have, the things I wish I’d thought to say differently, the tiny actions that reveal my unthinking biases. And how often I must miss those things, not realizing that my actions don’t always match my conscious beliefs.

But smog causes lung damage whether or not we admit it, and I’ve been breathing in racial smog for a lot of years. Acknowledging it is just the first step.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Amazing race!

I'll follow up soon with a longer discussion of this, but I wanted to pass on a quick heads up. We just returned from the History Colorado exhibit on "Race: Are We So Different?" It's an excellent exhibit, and you really want to go. Quick!

The urgency to get this posted comes from the fact that it only runs through January 4 -- that's this Sunday. So, if you get this in time and can possibly arrange it, GO! Trust me: it's well worth postponing that movie or whatever else you were sort of considering for the weekend.

For more information, visit the History Colorado site by clicking right here.

The warmth of cold-water ports

I’m writing from the last stop in our journey, a sweet hotel on the main drag in Port Jefferson, NY, a small village nestled against a harbor that opens to Long Island Sound.  

The local literature refers to Port Jefferson as a “charming village,” and the description fits on one level. Port Jeff, as the locals call it, has the requisite narrow roads, “quaint” (if huge!) Victorian houses, and lots of mom-and-pop shops (mostly catering, it appears, to tourists). It also hosts an annual Charles Dickens weekend in early December featuring a charity ball (in the local community center) and shows by assorted local artists (community theater, singing groups, arts and crafts shows, etc.). The location is far enough away from the frantic, congested world of New York City to serve as a destination for weekends away, and compared with The City, it is definitely, at 7800 residents, a “village.” But it feels a bit artificial, this studied quaintness, and the prices definitely reflect an expectation that big bucks will be spent in its charming shops. Sure enough, the chamber of commerce tells us that after the demise of the main industry, “Port Jefferson reinvented itself as a vacation spot. The ferries brought visitors, and bathhouses opened around the harbor.”

Still, it really is a lovely setting, the hotel is flat-out cool (we’re in a third-floor room with gables), breakfast at the local coffeehouse/café was excellent, I enjoyed my walk through town and along the shore, and I am absolutely content to spend a few days in the village of Port Jeff.

But enough of the travel guide. It’s my morning walk I want to write about. I took a long stroll along the harbor shore, and en route, I encountered a number of interpretive signs that sketched the history of the industry for which the town was known in the 1800s and early 1900s: they built ships here. I always love this sort of information, love imagining what life was like in that era, in this place, for folks with differing stations in the village social system. Today, one bit of information in particular jumped out at me: The shipbuilding operation really surged when the local company was recruited by the US government to build ships during WWI.

The reason this was so salient to me has to do with a book I’ve been reading: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Through the individual stories of a few people, this book tells the larger story of the “Great Migration” of millions of African Americans from the South to the North.

Starting in the late 19^th and continuing through the mid-20^th century, they left to escape Jim Crow and to find decent work in northern cities—especially along the east coast (Washington DC, NYC, Philadelphia), in the Midwest (Chicago, Detroit), and on the west coast (Los Angeles, Oakland). “The Great Migration,” author Isabel Wilkerson writes, “would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched.”

“Its imprint is everywhere in urban life. The configuration of the cities as we know them, the social geography of black and white neighborhoods, the spread of the housing projects as well as the rise of a well-scrubbed black middle class, along with the alternating waves of white flight and suburbanization—all of these grew, directly or indirectly, from the response of everyone touched by the Great Migration.”

A section I read just last night explains that the greatest mass movement occurred when folks had something to move to as well as something to escape from. That something was jobs, and the precipitating event was WWI. The nation badly needed workers to operate the industries that were necessary for the war effort. But the traditional source of cheap labor in the North—namely immigrants—slowed by over 90% during the war because immigration was largely halted. So companies seeking cheap labor looked to the other group who had always worked for paltry wages: African Americans. They sent recruiters south, where they (often secretly) planted the idea that jobs were plentiful in the North, workers were needed for the war effort, and “Negroes” would be welcome there. It worked.

So now you get the connection between my book and my walk. Port Jeff must have been even smaller in the early 1900s, and many local folks were likely off to war or to war-related jobs in larger cities. Who was left to build ships? Did the local shipbuilding company recruit Blacks from the South? Might Blacks have sought “a warmer sun” in this cold-water port? Would they even be drawn to a “charming village” on the north shore of Long Island? Maybe not. Most folks who moved north for jobs sought out locations where they already knew people—family or friends who had come before—and where they had connections. Chances are slim that there would be such communities in Port Jefferson. But, I thought to myself, maybe … I searched for any indication in the interpretive signs and photos, but saw no recognizable African American presence.

All of this led me to reflect, as I walked, on the distribution of people by “race,” what Wilkerson called “the social geography of black and white.” When we live apart, located in and identified with particular neighborhoods, the notion that we are different is constantly reinforced. Black people are the ones who live over there, down there, white folks think. Whites live over here, up here. Clearly, we conclude, they are different from us in ways that matter. “Race” serves to explain that difference.

While we were in Maryland last week, we went to the Smithsonian to see a new exhibit on human evolution. It was a great exhibition, really informative, with lots of hands-on elements and very accessible explanations of all sorts of stuff. The science of human evolution made such great sense as presented here. As I walked through this exhibit, I was struck by how carefully it presented and reinforced the fact that all humans are the same species, that there is no such thing as “race,” that about 99.9% of genetic material is identical in all humans. And yet, we have all learned to believe, at some level, that race is real. I belong to one race, whereas some other people belong to different races. Even if we can say that the “races” are equal, at some gut level, we still believe (because we’ve been so well taught) that race exists as a defining characteristic. And to some degree, we all enact that belief in our lives.

Not surprisingly, Blacks in the Jim Crow South wanted to escape from the daily oppression that shaped their lives. They wanted to experience, in the words of poet Richard Wright, “the warmth of other suns.” Yet, their migration didn’t end their oppression. Racism persisted, if in different forms, in the North. It was a different sun, but not necessarily a warm one. Race was still assumed to exist, and differences between races were not questioned by most folks—certainly not by the US government, which still sorted military enlistees according to “race.” If Black people came to Port Jefferson to build ships during WWI, they almost certainly wouldn’t have been welcomed into the social scene that now holds a Charles Dickens ball each December. It is likely that the established residents would have lived apart from the new ones arriving to work in the shipyards. As if they were different beings, different races. 

The village publicity is silent on the question of African Americans’ presence at any point. Yet census data cited in Wikipedia’s discussion of Port Jefferson indicate that 18.7% of the population was African American in 2000. When did they come and why? And where are they in this apparently white village? What is the geography of black and white here, and when was it established? On the other hand, data from the “city data” site on Port Jeff show a much lower proportion: 1.5% African Americans. No wonder they seem scarce. But why this discrepancy? Inquiring minds want to know!

It’s an odd confluence of experiences: the book, the story of local shipbuilding during WWI, and the Smithsonian exhibit. Combine these with my recent posting about the meaning of Thanksgiving, and you have a raft of convoluted reflections floating through my mind on this cloudy day in this sweet hotel in the charming village of Port Jefferson.

Ah, life is so complex.

Thoughts from the think tank

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself immersed in a virtual progressive think tank. Well, not exactly. In a think tank, you’re supposed to contribute something novel to the tank. Mostly, I’ve just been soaking up other people’s ideas and letting them swirl around in my brain. I guess that makes me a think tank lurker. This may seem like a bit of a rant. But there you have it: my lurking mind in overdrive.

Most recently, I spent several days at the national conference of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which, happily, met in Denver this year. My partner and I refer this group as “the radical sociologists.” My kind of people! I attended a bunch of sessions that renewed my hope that progressivism lives on in up-and-coming scholars and that academics can also be activists (and be proud of it … at least in this circle of like-minded academics). Among other topics, I dipped into discussions of the meaning of the concept of “social problems,” the subtle meanings conveyed by chat room conversations among butch- and femme-identified queer folks, the meaning of community recovery following a deadly mudslide in the Philippines, and changing meanings of “acceptance” of LGBTQ folks in religious settings (the last was our own work, presented by a couple of students we’ve been working with). A meaning-full several days, for sure.

The conference found me already in a reflective mood about things sociological, since I had spent considerable time over recent weeks hanging out with such topics here in Boulder. The focus of this year’s “One Book, One Boulder” program is Chief Niwot, also known as Chief Left Hand. The book, Chief Left Hand, is a biography of this Arapaho peace chief and the story of white people’s theft of Indian land in Colorado. In recent weeks, I attended two events in the “One Book, One Boulder” program series, and also visited the Boulder History Museum’s exhibit on the same topic. My first foray into this program a few weeks ago was the multi-media performance, “Rocks, Karma, Arrows.” I left that performance slightly stunned. I’ve known about how badly white “settlers” (a.k.a., invaders) treated the Indians living on the continent as we claimed (a.k.a., stole) more and more land and resources. But the explicit deception and cruelty of that period of history was sort of pinned to a bulletin board in my brain. During this performance, it was pulled down and examined in detail and with an immediacy I’ve rarely experienced.

Then, with that performance as a backdrop, I saw two segments of the film “Race: The Power of an Illusion.” This movie details how “race” became an identity category, which it hadn’t been one before we invented it (“constructed it,” as the scholars say). And then, how the stereotypes and degradations visited on non-white people were systematically shifted from one group to another as we (white folks) decided we wanted the land, the cheap labor, and/or the resources of yet another group. First, we wanted free labor from African slaves, so we created, step by step, a story that made them not just different in skin color but also deficient in mental and moral status. Using the wonders of newly emerging science, we even created (and I do mean created) biological proof of their inferiority. Then, the very same arguments were used to prove that other groups—Indians and women, Eastern European, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese immigrants, among others—were inferior. Funny … these arguments were pulled out just when each of these groups had something whites wanted or risked taking something only white men had.

Maybe the most powerful point in this movie for me was this suggestion: White people could have just acknowledged that we wanted free labor from African slaves and their descendants (or land from the Indians and cheap labor from other groups) and that we had the power to demand it. But we had this problem: the Declaration of Independence says, “all men are created equal.” Now, obviously, this excludes women (one of the battles of the 20^th century), but it should include all these non-white men. So, the trick was to justify their unequal treatment. To do that, we created a story about these groups, one that made them less than fully human. That way, they were not really included in “all men,” so we weren't required to treat them as equals.

It’s an amazing paradox. If we didn’t have this wonderful doctrine, "... all men are created equal," we wouldn’t have had to invent these stories of inferiority to cover up our sins against the founding documents. 

But given our supposed allegiance to this doctrine, we had to somehow paper over two conflicting realities: (1) we believe in equality and (2) our actions are rife with inequality. We pulled this off by simply declaring some people less than fully human.

     

And now, we live with the awful legacy of that process: even when the overt racism/sexism/classism waned (e.g., after slaves were freed, when the Indians were granted sovereignty in their “own” lands, when women got the vote, when labor unions gained equal treatment), those old stories about sub-humanity remained. We could free the slaves, but we still “knew” that they were inherently inferior to white people. We could give women the vote, but we still “knew” that they were inferior to men. The task we’re left with now is to figure out how to erase those old stories when the culture is steeped in them, and we’ve all taken them in with the air we breathe since childhood.

After all this, a visit to the Chief Left Hand exhibit at the Boulder History Museum closed the circle. It reminded me of the deep Colorado connection to this story of race. The the ease with which we've denied the humanity of whole groups of humans—and of their leaders, even those who, like Left Hand, craved, worked for, pleaded for peace. We’re walking on the land we stole from them as if it were our own.

This immersion in the reminder that racism isn’t “long ago and far away” but right here, in my town, in my time—in my self—was unsettling. But it was also energizing, a reminder of my own work yet to be done. Folks who live near Boulder still have a chance to join in this remarkable learning process. The museum exhibit is still open, the book is still available, and more “One Boulder” events are coming up.

Check them out here and jump on in. This think tank can always use more folks who believe in community activism—or simply in personal growth. 

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” … including aurochs and a six-year-old

Last weekend’s movie extravaganza, part two: In my last post, I mentioned seeing a bunch of movies last weekend. One of them was the Sundance prize-winning film, “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” To get right to the point, you really want to see this movie!

Hush Puppy is a six-year-old girl who lives in an impoverished and idyllic community (which is her whole universe… she’s six!) at the end of the end of a Louisiana bayou. This is the story of the universe through her eyes. Which is to say, it’s the story of the universe as understood/imagined by a six-year-old mind, with all its egocentrism and certainty, and its confusion of reality and fantasy. The gift to those of us watching is that we get to listen in on her six-year-old musings as she both contemplates and creates her universe. Hush Puppy is, at least in her imagination, a “beast” of sorts, proudly proclaiming, with her father’s encouragement as she flexes her muscles, “I am the man!”

Aurochs in Lascaux Cave, France 

The other beast in this southern wild is the legendary aurochs, an extinct relative of modern cattle famously shown in prehistoric cave paintings. Actually, the aurochs in this case is a beast of Hush Puppy’s imagination, so it doesn’t have to be true to science. And it's not. It looks like a cross between the prehistoric bull and the huge hogs that live in her yard, consuming everything in sight. That’s the license given by a six-year-old mind. So is Hush Puppy’s certainty that her history and that of her community will be the topic of future scientific discoveries.


Hush Puppy’s universe, real and imaginary, is threatened by nature, human intrusion, and human frailty. And it is sustained by her own imagination and the resilience and support of her father and their community. This isn’t your everyday “feel good” film, but it is delightful and uplifting, even as it’s realistically sad and hard. My own feeling on leaving the film was lingering curiosity: What happened next? Who did Hush Puppy grow up to be? What happened to her community? What—or who—will be the next aurochs in her life?

So go. You’ll love it. If you have any doubts, read this New York Times review.

Go ahead … enter the mythic, real world of a six-year-old child confronting the mythic, real beasts of her southern wild universe.

Conference on World Affairs

I’ve been spending a good bit of time this week at the Conference on World Affairs (or CWA) at CU-Boulder. I go as much as I can every year. If you live near Boulder, you really should check it out. What a great way to rev up your brain after the winter doldrums! Besides, I always think that spending time on a college campus is good for anyone. It reminds us that the conveyor belt of life is in working order. There are folks coming along behind us, eager to start their adult lives. But about CWA …


Since 1948, the CU-Boulder campus has hosted the annual Conference on World Affairs. It began as a conference on international affairs (which makes great sense: it was shortly after the end of WW II). But it has since expanded to include sessions on the arts, the media, science, technology, ethics, the environment, politics, business, human rights, etc., etc. To quote Roger Ebert, who participated in CWA for decades, it’s the “conference on everything conceivable.”  Conference planners bring in about 100 scholars, performers, academics, business and government people, and assorted folks with something to say. These folks come at their own expense and without getting paid. All day, every day, for a whole week they gather in auditoriums and rooms around campus to explore every conceivable topic in plenary sessions, panels, and performances—more than 200 sessions in all.


The really astonishing thing about this conference is that all of these events are free and open to the public. Imagine that! A week of free mind-expanding continuing education with some brilliant thinkers, artists, politicians, and wannabes, all without needing to register for anything or pay a cent! Not surprisingly, a huge proportion of the audience is made up of community folks, many with gray or white hair. This is another of the gifts of retirement: the freedom to hang out with ideas in the middle of the day for a whole week!

CWA folks are easy to spot. We're the ones clogging the walkways between sessions, wearing walking shoes for our day on campus. We're carrying a satchel with an umbrella and the conference program peeking out, or we're sitting on a bench and perusing the schedule while we down a snack or some water. We pretty much fill the cafeteria at lunch time. I keep thinking that the cafeteria staff must be warned in advance about this because they are so easy going about all these folks who don’t know quite know how the food court works or where to pay.

The other main group of folks attending CWA sessions is made up of college students. Of course, the location is handy for them, and they also are often encouraged (or required) to attend. The result is a great cross-generational learning opportunity. Think about it. In how many settings do we sit side by side with people 50 or 60 or 70 years our junior (or senior) and share a moment of intellectual challenge?  How often do we get to listen to the questions that college students ask about politics, morality, technological change … and how often do they get to hear ours? There’s just so much to be learned from this.

So that’s how the world looks to a 22 year-old majoring in political science!

Wow! There are actually college students who have never heard of McCarthyism.

Do they really think that the 1960s were “a long time ago”? (answer: yes.) 


Am I hearing this right? The social construction of race, a "fringe" idea in my day, is now taken for granted. Wow. 

Ah! She didn’t understand the point because “before the pill” doesn’t mean anything to her. She never knew a time when contraception wasn’t available.

I can only imagine what thoughts the students have as folks of my generation rise to speak. I hope they find it equally intriguing.

So, I’ve attended about half a dozen sessions so far this week. Of these, I found one (a plenary) pretty boring. But still, I came away with some murmuring thoughts despite not being too enthralled. Another session (also a plenary), I found entertaining, informative, and thought provoking. However, I can’t recall being moved to think about it much. Maybe that’s because I agreed with the speaker so much I just nodded at his points and laughed at this jokes. Both of these were basically on the current crisis of national political polarization. 

The rest of the sessions I’ve attended have been panels: ethics and the new genetics, disability pride, same-sex marriage, and parallels/differences between the Tea Party and the Occupy movements. Three of these four were great! I learned a lot and got stretched a bunch in each of them. But one (same-sex marriage) was extremely frustrating. Probably because I know a fair amount about this (my partner knows a ton, and I absorb a lot from her), and the self-described “experts” on the panel didn’t. But they thought they did.

This is one of the challenging (sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating) things about CWA. The panelists are given only a title for their session—no description, no guidance about what they should say. The titles are pretty vague, sometimes provocative, sometimes obscure. Some panelists take their role really seriously; they think about the topic a lot in advance, read up on the issues, prepare remarks. Others just wing it, sometimes saying something like, “I don’t really know anything about this, but here’s what I think.” It’s sort of pot luck, so I count my experience of three excellent panels out of four as a very tasty outcome. And I haven't had many chances recently to share a tasty potluck with college students.