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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Mandela, reconciliation, and reparation

Yesterday, I listened to some of the coverage of the memorial/celebration service for Nelson Mandela.* From all reports, it was a moving event, with an extraordinary outpouring of grief and gratitude for this singular man. One person described him as “our moral compass.” She was referring specifically to South Africa and the deeply disappointing political landscape there in recent years, so stark against Mandela’s clarity and compassion. But she could have been referring to the world. Her words captured what I wanted to say when I first learned of his death: South Africa and the world – we all lost our moral compass.

It was with this sense of loss at Mandela’s death that I went to three events this weekend that reminded me of how easily we do that, lose our moral way. How easily we—especially those of us who are generally comfortable in the world where we live—get caught up in our own lives, forgetting that our comfort often comes not from following our “moral compass” but from ignoring the hints that we’re off course.

The first event was on Friday night, the day after Mandela’s death. It was a workshop organized by the Boulder Meeting of Friends (Quakers), and it focused on the history of Europeans’ treatment of America’s native peoples. The workshop was perfectly crafted to merge a great deal of information with a very moving bit of participant involvement. Briefly, we were all asked to stand—about 30-35 of us—on blankets spread out on the floor, pretty much filling the room. Then narrators told the history of native peoples in America, with different voices representing Indians, Europeans, government entities, and the historian. As the story progressed, groups of participants were told that they represented Indians who had died during different historical periods—from illnesses brought by the Europeans, in massacres, walking the Trail of Tears—and those people left the blankets to sit around the room. Slowly, as our numbers dwindled, the blankets were folded inward around our feet, shrinking the “land” where we stood even as the population shrank. Finally, by the end of the exercise, only five of us were left standing, and we occupied just a small patch in the middle of the room. Like the others, I stood silent, a bit stunned by what had just happened.

The informational part of the workshop focused on two doctrines: the “Doctrine of Discovery,” an actual declaration issued and then reiterated by various European leaders, secular and religious, declaring that Europeans had the right, even the obligation, to claim all lands they visited and to enslave or eliminate all the peoples they found there. The other document was the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—an internationally agreed upon document that recognizes the human rights of indigenous people everywhere and directs nations to honor them. I was dismayed to learn that the U.S. has refused to sign on to this doctrine.

It’s not hard to figure out that our nation was created by the general willingness of the colonists and then the “settlers” to abide by the Doctrine of Discovery. Now, I’ll grant people of the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, 18^th centuries … maybe even the 19^th century … the historical and cultural context that would make such behavior seem self-evidently “right.” But we are now in the 21^st century, and we should know better. Why, oh why, I asked myself, have we not signed the U.N. Declaration that would have to some degree made amends for that earlier, unconscionable decree? Then I read the U.N. Declaration, and I knew why. Let me quote two short sections:

Article 10. Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, the option of return. … States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples.

Article 28. Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that may include restitution, or, when this is not possible, just, fair, and equitable compensation for the lands, territories, and resources which they have traditionally occupied or used and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used, or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.

Of course we haven’t signed this declaration! To do so would mean we are willing to provide “redress, by means that may include restitution … or just, fair, and equitable compensation” for all the land that the Indians occupied and we took. All the blankets we stood on Friday night.

I was still thinking about this when I went on Saturday to a half-day “CU on the Weekend” class on how unconscious attitudes influence health care. More specifically, we learned about health care disparities (which, interestingly, are called “health care injustices” elsewhere in the world) and the mechanisms underlying them. Which is to say we learned why it is that people of color (poor people, queer people, old people, women … pick a marginalized group) get poorer health care and have poorer outcomes even when all the variables that should affect health care are identical.

The professor’s proposition was that this occurs because of the unconscious attitudes we all carry around with us. She was talking about implicit attitudes, which I’ve mentioned here before. Basically, even if no one intends to treat marginalized groups differently, we are all influenced, in ways we don’t even recognize, by attitudes we’ve absorbed over a lifetime and don’t even realize we have. That goes for health care professionals as well as for the rest of us. It’s also true for patients, who approach health care with their own unconscious biases. And it’s true in virtually every situation we face, to one degree or another. I won’t even try to summarize three hours in two paragraphs. So let me just set this aside for a minute and mention another event that will help bring this all together.

Saturday evening, after this health care lecture, I saw the film “12 Years a Slave.” If anyone out there hasn’t seen it, do. As you all surely know, this film is based on a true story of an African American man who had been a free man and was then kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film is gripping and disturbing, all the more so for the fact that it’s a true story. So many of the horrors of slavery that we’ve heard about are lived out in this story. Watching it, I found myself wanting it to be fiction because it’s just too awful to imagine that people were actually subjected to this sort of treatment. And with no recourse. Absolutely none.

The echoes of that treatment live on in all of us, in those implicit attitudes that we have inhaled with the racism that still floats around in our world. In the attitudes that make for health care disparities and that invite the selective forgetting that lets us think genocide and slavery are history and have no relevance to today. That allow us to refuse, as a nation, to sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Over the years, demands for reparations for the mistreatment of African Americans and of Indians have come and gone in this country. Reparation would be one way to fulfill the dictates of the U.N. document … but we haven’t signed it, so we’re not obliged to adhere to it. Besides, when we consider the magnitude of the moral failings to be addressed, it’s easy to see why movements for redress meet with resistance. Partly because it’s hard to imagine how we could ever compensate either group for what this nation has taken from them. And partly because, we insist, that’s history and we weren’t personally involved, so it’s not our responsibility.

And this brings me back, full circle, to Mandela, our moral compass. It will be a great tragedy if, having lost him as a living model of the power of forgiveness, we also lose him as a moral guide, our north star. When Mandela became the first president of his new nation, he could so easily have used his position to punish those who had persecuted him and his people. But he didn’t. He chose truth and reconciliation over vengeance. That choice represented true north, and he never wavered from it, although he could have, he had the power to do so. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought exactly what the name stated: open acknowledgement of the wrongs that had been committed and sincere efforts to forge ties between people who had been at virtual war for centuries.  

This, it seems to me, is our task vis-à-vis Indians, African Americans, and all the other groups that any of us continues to marginalize and disregard. We have to—individually and collectively—confront our failure to stay on course, to find a moral path. We have to do our part, individually and collectively, to find ways to acknowledge and then work to reconcile the differences that have kept us so apart. This isn’t an easy proposition, at least not for me. But when I was standing on that blanket, I knew I was being called out. And when I heard the lecture and saw the film, I knew I was in the dock again. Much as I might wish to think of myself as having mastered these issues, I know I’m not done with my work. Not by a long shot.

The morning after Mandela died, I considered posting a blog, but changed my mind. It seemed like everything had already been said. Besides, I couldn’t find words for what I was feeling. In the process of writing it, though, I was reflecting on how Mandela represented something about who we could aspire to be as human beings. I was reminded of a quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. It seemed to capture who Mandela was in the world. And it also reminds me of my continuing task, highlighted by the weekend’s activities.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. – Abraham Lincoln, 1861

_______________________

* Initially, I used the name "Madiba" interchangeably with Mandela. I like that name. It's actually Mandela's clan name, and it's used as a term of respect and affection. But after doing a bit of reading around about it, I realized that my using it would be a form of appropriation ("I like that name. I think I'll just take it for my own use"), implying a close connection with Mandela that I did not in fact have. So, I chose not to use it. In the process, I was reminded again of how easily I can assume that I have a "right" to the cultural artifacts, names among them, of other peoples. Privilege can catch us anywhere if we're not looking. 

Spirituals Awakening

So, I’ve been AWOL since Utah. I’ll start with a brief explanation / excuse for my absence, but I don’t want to dwell because I have something better to talk about as my re-entry, re-awakening post. The spirituals.

To get right to the (first, but less important) point: I spent my free time during the last month totally changing my study. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been suffering from a bad case of cabin fever, and I finally realized that a large part of the problem was my study. First, the room is sort of small and doesn’t get much light. And then there was the issue of my desk. Because of its size and configuration, I sat with my back to the window. For someone who loves the outdoors, this is not a good thing. And with the desk filling a sizeable chunk of the middle of the room, I felt like I was trapped in a tiny corral made of heavy oak, facing the darkness and mumbling to myself. 

So I decided to change my furniture, which turned out to be a major undertaking. And that, it turns out, consumed my time, my energy, and apparently my mind for several weeks. But it paid off. I ended up with a glass desk that seems to take up no space compared to the old oak one, and its configuration has me facing the window. I believe the days of sitting in a corral with my back to the window are over. And I am ready to resume my rambling blogging ways.

Then, lo and behold, just as this mega-project wound down, the inspiration for my “re-awakening” blog came in the form of a conference my partner and I attended this past weekend.

The Spirituals Project is a non-profit organization founded in 1998 by a psychology professor (with a fabulous tenor voice) at the University of Denver, Dr. Arthur Jones. Over the years, the initially small program has grown in size and scope and now has an expansive mission: “the preservation and revitalization of the music and teachings (including especially the social justice teachings) of the songs commonly known as ‘spirituals,’ created and first sung by enslaved African women and men in America in the 18th and 19th centuries.” I first learned about the Spirituals Project from my partner, who had interviewed Art Jones as part of a documentary she made on heterosexual allies who took a stand against Amendment 2. She recommended Jones’ book, Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, but I let it slide from my reading list. Later, I heard the Spirituals Project choir perform, and I was reminded again that I really wanted to learn more—both about the spirituals as a musical genre and about the “wisdom” they carry. Again, I let it slip.

And then, several months ago, we learned about (and quickly signed up for) this multi-day conference on the spirituals. The promise of several days’ immersion in learning about the spirituals sounded wonderful. And it was. The weekend was full of workshops and performances, so I'll just mention a few highlights:

The first night opened with a performance by Sankofa, a small ensemble of the Spirituals Project choir. It closed with a poem sung/read by the Spirituals Project’s poet in residence, Dee Galloway. The poem, “They Slice the Air,” was a moving elegy to the spirituals and all they have meant over the centuries. Click here for a (shaky, amateur, but authentic) video of Dee Galloway performing the poem at the conference. A few lines:

As they spill from the holds of the ships …

Onto the shores of this new world

They are called to bear the burdens

To bear the lash

To bear witness

To the squalling birth of this new world …

And as they bear the burdens and bear the lash

This strong new nation bears witness …

They witness with the songs carried with them in the holds.

And again the songs shift and change

To become the sorrow songs

The sorrow songs that slice the air.

Later in the conference, Dr. Vincent Harding, an educator and a long-time leader and “encourager” of the Freedom movement (the term he prefers to the “civil rights movement”) led a remarkable workshop on the role of the spirituals in the Freedom movement. He opened the session by talking about how the spirituals, sung by generation after generation after generation of people, always share in the same energy—the wisdom, the strength, and the yearning of generations before, back to “the ancestors” who first sang them. With that framework, he then invited us to sing along, to join in the generations-long community of people who have used these songs to gain strength, to give testimony, to carry coded messages, to ease sorrow. "Wade in the water," "Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom," "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around." 

And with that framing, I found myself experiencing songs that I’ve often heard and sung before in a whole new way. I understood more deeply the power this music has carried across the years, the layers of meaning and passion it bore for people who were enslaved, yet sang "ain't no harm to keep your mind stayed on freedom." And I felt on a new level how it must have energized and sustained folks as they left community meetings in the churches in the 1960s South to face dogs, truncheons, fire hoses, and jail—or worse. When we all stood to sing “We Shall Overcome,” crossing arms to hold hands, as is the tradition with this song, I doubt there was a dry eye in the room. Most of these folks have probably sung this song scores of times before. But in this setting, with Dr. Harding’s guidance, I, at least, sang it with a new level of consciousness.  

The last event of the conference featured a talk and poetry reading—including a poem written for the conference—by Nikki Giovani, a brilliant and wonderfully irreverent poet and activist. And then the conference closed, fittingly, with music by members of the Spirituals Project choir. I left feeling re-awakened.

I realize it has been nearly two decades since my partner first talked to me about Art Jones’ book. I’ve decided not to let it slide from my list again. I’ve asked to borrow her copy to take along for reading material during breaks in my astrophysics course in New York next week.

Stay tuned for more on the wisdom of the spirituals per Dr. Art Jones and on the origins of the universe per Dr. Michelle Thaller.

Cows?

You may wonder why I’m starting a blog with a (small, dark, somewhat blurry) picture of cows at sunset. Sure, the sunset is beautiful, but couldn’t I have picked a better foreground scene? Or a better picture? Well, as it turns out, I was actually thinking about cows as I drove past this little herd this evening, so it seemed a perfect opening shot. Here’s why:

I’m taking an amazing class from an amazing woman at CU. The class is “The American West,” and it’s being taught by Patty Limerick, arguably the smartest and funniest cultural historian of the American West on the planet. CU has this great “Senior Auditors” program that lets any old person sit in on virtually any class, as long as it’s not full of tuition-paying students. I got lucky and squeezed into this one.

The topic called to me because the West is my home. I’ve lived here all my life, with the exception of graduate school and one other sojourn around the country. I feel like I have a soul-deep relationship with the West. I’ve explored huge swaths of it by car, on foot, on skis, on snowshoes, by bike, by camper, and by canoe. Still, in the first few weeks of this class, I’ve learned more about the West than I even knew. By far. Besides, Patty’s humor and broad knowledge make every class (and even the handouts) a total kick. Recently, she challenged the students to support the argument that CU should have the cow instead of the bison as its mascot … which is why I was thinking about cows driving home.

Lots of what I’m learning goes beyond sheer content, slipping into what some folks have called “revisionist history” or “critical history.” Instead of just a review of people and events, this approach really examines the deeper meanings of what was going on and listens to the voices of people who usually aren’t heard (i.e., voices other than White men being politicians and soldiers). It also challenges long-held assumptions about the nature of the West and its popular portrayals.

Even though only three weeks have passed, I couldn’t begin to list all the mind-bending things I’ve encountered. Let me just highlight a few themes. 

• Question on day 1: What counts as “the West” anyhow? Is it defined by geography? Is Los Angeles part of the West? Is Hawaii? Is it defined by culture? Is Texas more West than, say, Oregon? What makes the West different from other sections of the country? Wilderness? Water (or lack thereof)? Open spaces? Cowboys? Buffalo? Sparse population? If it’s any of those, is it still the West if water is piped in, the Buffalo disappear (or exist only in captivity), open spaces are filled with developments and traversed by highways, and the only “cowboys” are country western singers? Or is it simply the nation’s dumping ground—for people (Indian reservations) and nuclear wastes (Yucca Mountain). And whatever your response to these questions, why? 

• The West has always represented two very different visions, two urges: the longing for wilderness, adventure, unbounded freedom … and the striving to conquer that wilderness. That was true during the westward movement. The “frontier” was wild and dangerous, until it became valuable, and then the cowboys and gunslingers, gold miners and settlers, ranchers, cattle barons, and farmers moved in. The standard story line of Westerns—peaceful little town saved from villainous thugs by the noble lawman—reflects the real-life battle between those who wanted freedom and adventure (gunslingers, cowboys) and those who wanted law and order (towns folks). Some people wanted open range (freedom) others wanted fences, farming, and towns (wilderness conquered). And the conflict persists today. We crave open space, remote wilderness where we can “escape from it all.” But recently, even that remaining remote wilderness has been increasingly paved and developed and populated. Partly by people (still) wanting to “get away from it all”—to find “wilderness” among the manicured lawns and paved walking paths. But mostly by economic interests who found something valuable in the land to conquer. 

• A very huge portion of land in the West (but not in the East) is federally owned. Much of the land that’s farmed, much of the land where cattle are raised, much of the land where minerals are extracted is federal land. Those economic activities take precedence over recreation, over environmental concerns, even over social and cultural values. The ones that make the biggest bucks (mining) take precedence over the less profitable ones (farming, ranching). Put those together, and you have a West that is rapidly being eaten up by energy interests and the cities that support those interests. And the highways and railroads that connect those cities. So now what counts as “the West”? 

• Familiar portrayals in “Western” movies and books notwithstanding, the West was (and still is) an extremely politicized place. Lots of what we “learned” about the West happened right around the Civil War, though you’d never know it, and the history of the West was deeply shaped by that war. Jesse James and his gang, for instance, were outlaws regarded as heroes because they were seen as standing up for the dying South and against the corporate, industrializing North. The other major conflict was between the West, with its frontier mentality, and the Northeast, with its industrializing, corporate frame of mind. Train/bank robbers were seen by some as heroes because they challenged the “incorporation” of the West and by others as villains because they interfered with the imposition of the new industrialized social order. 

• The (mis)treatment of the West and Westerners—especially ranchers and farmers—at the hands of the East and Easterners, both in the “old West” and more recently, has been equated by some to the treatment of the Indians by White settlers moving west. In each case, the people who were on the land were summarily moved off, their lands confiscated, and their lives discounted in the name of “progress.” In the case of White Westerners in the recent past, it has been in the name of energy development. Some Westerners who have been treated this way comment that now they know what the Indians felt like. (Not entirely, I’d say—genocide is hardly the same as losing the farm—but it's an interesting parallel.) The players are different, but the dynamic is the same—as is the direction from which the oppression has come. You begin to get an idea of why Westerners often feel like Easterners don’t understand the West—not the land and not the people.

 All of this has been thought provoking and even moving. But I think the most poignant piece I’ve read so far was the prologue of a book co-written by Colorado’s former Governor Richard Lamm. A few lines from that piece:

There was something special about the West in the 1950s and 1960s.

It was a unique and wondrous place for those who loved the outdoors, who cared about the land. Its air had an unbelievable quality. It literally sparkled. In the mornings, the mountains and desert and farmland stood out in crystal clarity. And the sun shone with a special brilliance, a counterpoint to the coolness of the mountain air.

Not many years ago, you could still catch a native trout. Float a lonesome river. You could escape the regimentation and restrictions of the civilized world.

We took it for granted drinking from a running brook … being able to camp at random, safely and in privacy … the chill feeling of space, infinity, at a mountain dawn.

We saw the West change before our eyes, but the images, the memories still linger.

This was our West.

And it is dying.

A new Manifest Destiny has overtaken America. The economic imperative has forever changed the spiritual refuge that was the West.

We know the West will never be the same again.

We understand.

But still we anguish. For the West we loved and lost.

                       

                        The Angry West: A Vulnerable Land and its Future. (1982)

by Richard D. Lamm & Michael McCarthy. Houghton Mifflin

Now, I can be about as nostalgic and anyone I know. And the West that Lamm and McCarthy write about is a version of the West I know, well. And miss. A lot.

Still, I realize, now, that there is so much more to the West, so much more to understand. And I realize how lucky I am to be taking this class.

BTW: I’m also taking part II of my Spanish class. Estoy mucho aprendiendo, pero aún no hablo español. Stay tuned ...

Cultured

OK, I am now totally cultured. It took two days, two museums, the Hard Rock Café, a bookstore, a piano/flute concert, a slide show about the Civil Rights movement, and a stop at the hat shop … but the result is undeniable. I am cultured.

It’s rare for my partner and me to take a full day off from our various regular pursuits to play. But on Friday, that’s just what we did. She hadn’t seen the da Vinci exhibit, and although I had seen it twice before (the first time alone, chronicled here, and again with a friend who read my rave review here), I was totally game to go again. So after breakfast (our first trip to Snooze. Try it!), we spent Friday morning with Leonardo. This time, I got to see the whole movie, along with some short videos designed for our co-visitors, middle schoolers with ADHD. Their reactions were entertaining—especially their serious discomfort with full-screen shots of da Vinci’s famous “Vitruvian man” (Slip into your 11-year-old sensitivity and take a look). The movie was great. It added layers of historical information that gave an additional dimension to da Vinci’s inventions and his art. We wondered (leave it to two psychologists) whether his extraordinary perspective, his ability to draw physical renditions of ideas that others hadn't envisioned, had to do with some distinctive neurological characteristic. Guess we’ll never know, but it’s interesting to speculate.

Leonardo’s show was less than a block from the Hard Rock Café, so, given my partner’s enthusiasm about all things musical (remember the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?), lunch just had to be there. In addition to the ceiling-to-floor rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, the café had a continuous video of various rock performances. As good fortune would have it, the loop during our lunch included Bruce Springsteen singing my partner’s currently favorite-in-the-world song, “We Are Alive” from the Boss’s latest album. If you’re into message music, give a listen. (Think symbolically when you get to the part about worms and such.)

Then we were off to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for the Pompeii exhibit. I had been keeping an eye on this, thinking I’d go for some Wednesday outing. But I’d failed to notice that it was about to close—like, it’s now gone (sorry). My partner was interested, too, so we braved the sinking temperatures and promise of snow to see the last days of Pompeii. The exhibit was really well done, drawing visitors into the daily lives of these folks before that morning in 79 A.D. when Vesuvius came alive and buried Pompeii (and several other towns) in ash and stones. Arguably the most powerful part of the exhibit was the casts of people and animals frozen in the positions they held when the ash and fumes overcame them. I’d seen pictures of these before, but being close the their life-sized reality was another experience entirely.

I was also stuck by some uncomfortable indications of the Roman class system on display in Pompeii. For example, I learned that wealthy folks sent their clothing to the “dry cleaner’s” to get it cleaned and bleached. The bleaching part was done by slaves, who walked on the clothing in pools of urine (collected from passersby and from animals), which served as a natural bleaching agent. And then there was the cast of one person who didn’t escape from the city (only about 1,000 of 20,000 citizens didn’t escape). You could tell he was a slave or a prisoner because the shackles were still on  his ankles. On the other hand, there was the apparent consciousness conveyed by a mosaic that hung in someone’s dining room. It represented death, portrayed as a skull, as the great equalizer that cancels out differences based on wealth and class. The mosaic depicts a level with a plumb line hanging from it; the weight is a skull. Hanging from the two arms of the level, balanced by death, are symbols of wealth and of poverty. I guess it is true that death comes to us all regardless of wealth. But it’s also true that the man with the shackles had no chance to escape, while most of Pompeii did. Well, for the time being. I guess they're all equally dead now.

Death as the great equalizer. Mosaic from a Pompeii home.

 After we left Pompeii, at once fascinated and stunned by the exhibit, we slopped through the falling snow to a coffee/reading break at the Tattered Cover, still Denver’s premier independent bookstore. That stop warmed and settled us enough to move on to our evening engagement: a piano / flute concert. Long ago, I wrote about a lovely evening spent with two women who have used their retirement to pursue their true callings: painting for one and music for the other. The music woman was the pianist at this concert, and she was joined by a flautist who also plays for the joy of it (neither of them was paid for this free concert). Their music was wonderful, and it seemed like it rounded out the day nicely, smoothing the ragged edges from Pompeii and taking me back (musically) to the time of Leonardo, where we started the day. Well, not all of the music was from that era, but the parallel is too good to pass up.

Finally, for a very different sort of cultural experience, on Saturday, we went to a presentation/discussion about a 1965 Civil Rights march in Birmingham. This march followed the famous “Bloody Sunday” confrontation when marchers first tried to walk from Selma to Montgomery and met with violence instead. The march we were there to hear about moved from the African-American section of Birmingham to the state capitol building in that city. A number of folks from Denver and Boulder joined the march, and this event featured their snapshots, turned into slides, and a narration preserved by the Carnegie Library in Boulder. Several folks who had walked that day were at this event, and they added their own recollections and reactions.

Seeing the pictures and hearing the participants’ commentary—in person and in archived form—gave an immediacy to the whole event that I think would have been missing if it had been just a lecture. Imagine marching through falling rain out of the muddy, unpaved streets and meager homes of the African-American section of town into the paved streets and well-heeled business district near the capitol. Imagine being “protected” by Alabama National Guardsmen with confederate flags on their uniforms. Imagine being unsure how (or whether) you could get from the end of the march back to the airport safely. Imagine your relief as you returned to Colorado just 24 hours later—aware, as one of the white marchers said, that your own fear ended when the plane you got home, whereas Birmingham’s Black residents lived with that fear all day, every day.

What more could you ask of a two-day experience of cultural immersion? Let’s see: painting, sketching, and invention wrapped in historical context; rock ‘n’ roll music, complete with nostalgic memorabilia; Roman elegance and death as the great equalizer; leisurely reading with good coffee; classical music performed in a soaring cathedral; and a trip back to a historical moment within my own lifetime.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot the hat story. My partner has been craving a type of hat that I recently learned is called a “Donegal” hat. She found it between the Hard Rock Café and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Just to cap off the day.

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.

Thanksgiving: Turkeys, treaties, and truth

I’m writing from a coffee shop in Hollywood, Maryland. (Really. Or maybe this is across the town line into California, MD. Really.) My partner and I are midway in a “road trip,” bookended by two professional gigs. It’s a couple of days after Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a deeply meaningful holiday in this country. Depending on your perspective, it may be the most wonderful of holidays or the most fraught. It may be “loaded” with warm memories of family gatherings and lovely fall days (or with fantasies of those things). Or it may be loaded with uncomfortable memories and uncomfortable interactions. For me, it’s loaded with complicated feelings and troubling historical and political meanings.

I recall hearing someone say that Thanksgiving is the most wonderful holiday because it’s not tied to any particular religious beliefs. It’s inclusive, they said, it’s celebrated by all of us, collectively. Here’s where the complications start. “All of us” presumes that we see ourselves as Americans (because no other nation is celebrating our Thanksgiving) … er, rather, as a United States-ians (because other countries in the Americas don’t celebrate Thanksgiving with us). So it’s not totally inclusive, but it’s at least inclusive of those of us who identify as US-ian. Well, unless we’re the original inhabitants of the land we now claim as US-ians. If you are among those people whose ancestors were actually here prior to the European invasion, this “holiday” may be a day of mourning.

Last time, I wrote about the then-upcoming “Sweet Land - Choices of Dignity” concert/event, which was performed by Sound Circle, Resonance, and others last week to celebrate the end of the election and the promise of four more years of (generally) progressive leadership. That, and to challenge us to make choices of dignity, to claim our own responsibility for the direction of our communities, large and small. During that performance (which I hope many of you heard), Sound Circle did a rendition of the old patriotic favorite, “America.” Kirsten Wilson, the “vision holder” for OneAction, One Boulder, had reframed the familiar song in minor but profound ways. (Recall that the project One Action, One Boulder undertook was to encourage conversations about and reflection on racism in our own communities). With Thanksgiving approaching, this change in particular caught my attention: The usual lyrics:

“Oh beautiful, for Pilgrims’ dreams

That see beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears.

… became …

Oh beautiful, for Pilgrims’ … [pause]

for Indians … [pause]

for genocide …

Some years ago, when we were living in Massachusetts, my partner and I spent two Thanksgiving days in Plymouth, MA, land of the “Pilgrims’ pride.” We spent those days participating in the counter-Thanksgiving conducted by local descendents of the Indian tribes who lived in this area in the 1600s. The tribes who were there when the Pilgrims moved in, claimed the land, killed rebellious Indians, displayed the head of one recalcitrant chief on a post in the center of town, and left it there for years as a reminder. We both had qualms about the meaning of Thanksgiving before, but after this experience, the holiday could mean only one thing: a celebration of genocide. In Caesar’s words, we (and “we” has to include us, as beneficiaries of this genocide) came, we saw, we conquered. And then we moved across the continent, seeing, conquering, claiming land that was not ours, eliminating the uncooperative native peoples along the way and assimilating the rest to our “superior” way of life.

Among the “One Action, One Boulder” events I attended during the year was a performance of “Rocks,Karma, Arrows,” a performance piece that sketched the history of the relationship between Boulder-area tribes and the settlers arriving in Colorado. I carried a number of messages away from that event, but the one that keeps coming to mind is this: “We are walking on stolen land.” A treaty with the United States gave the land where Boulder sits—in fact, the land all along the front range and well into the mountains—to the Northern Arapahoe in perpetuity. That means forever. That treaty was never renegotiated. But it was violated over and over by the “settlers” and their armies … by our government. That means that every day, I walk on, hold (illegal) claim to property on, enjoy the beauty of, and damage at will land that is not mine.

I mention this partly because of the obvious link to the Thanksgiving story. On this day dedicated to giving thanks, we celebrate a legendary event that amounted to the launching party for a campaign of continent-wide genocide. And I benefit from that every day. No, I wasn’t personally there. I didn’t kill any Indians or personally push them from their land. But I am responsible for recognizing that I benefit from that campaign. And when I allow myself to realize that, celebrating it feels so painfully inappropriate.

The other reason I mention this is that I just had an up-close-and-personal reminder of how easily I judge other people’s failure to acknowledge the privilege they gain from the oppression of others—even as I so easily forget my own. This past week, we were on a college campus in the South. The hotel where we stayed is built and decorated to evoke the old South—southern hospitality, southern elegance. But as we walked around, I couldn’t help but be reminded of southern plantations—the “big house” with its columns, porches, and elegant furnishings. It’s a lovely scene—until you consider the whiffs of slavery and unquestioned racism, the people who lived in the slave quarters just down the hill from the big house. Later, we walked around campus, learning bits of history from our friend and guide. Many of the buildings were very old, pre-civil war structures—which means that they were most likely the handiwork of slaves. I couldn’t help but ask, silently, to myself, “Have you never thought about who built these buildings?”

I was aware that this (rather judgmental) response came partly from an earlier visit to a campus in the south where we were told that the buildings were indeed constructed by slaves. In that case, the stewards of that campus had embarked on a project to make amends for that egregious mistreatment of other human beings. But I saw none of that in the people we met on this college campus. In fact, my attempts to raise this issue—noting how uncomfortable the “southern charm” made me feel—evoked no response from people I met, except, perhaps, a slightly uncomfortable change of topic. I was feeling pretty righteous about this (“Don’t they see their responsibility to address this?”), when my partner reminded me that Kirsten Wilson and One Action, One Boulder spent an entire year trying to get folks to see the same dynamic of avoidance and denial in our own back yard. … “I am walking on land that belongs to someone else.”

We are all responsible for recognizing and acknowledging our own privilege, recognizing ways in which we have—literally and figuratively—stolen our well-being from others. The point is not that we should feel guilty about this, but that we are responsible for what we do about it. Simply celebrating “Thanksgiving” without reflecting on, talking about, questioning the meaning of the holiday now seems irresponsible to me.

And yet, two days ago, I sat down to “Thanksgiving” dinner among people with whom I did not have this conversation. Nothing in the day or in the conversation even hinted at the holiday’s origin. Indeed, these folks, like many other people I know, would likely argue that the point of Thanksgiving is really to bring family together. They might also say that the point of the day is to remind us to be grateful for our many blessings. Still, “Thanksgiving” as we know it is built on a legend. In retrospect, it’s clear that the legend made super-human heroes of people most US-ians have historically identified with—European “settlers.” And it made sub-human demons of the people who have historically been unlike most of us—indigenous people of color, American Indians.

If we want a thanksgiving holiday that celebrates community and gratitude, then let’s do that, instead of deluding ourselves into thinking that these things capture the real meaning of our current “Thanksgiving” holiday. For me personally, the “Sweet Land” concert was as fine a celebration of community as I can imagine. I left it feeling uplifted, connected to community, and challenged to make choices of dignity.

And in that spirit, my partner and I have agreed that we won’t spend future Thanksgiving days in celebration (or avoidance) of the holiday’s legendary origins. Instead, we’ll find ways to explore the historical meaning of the day and honor the people at whose expense we enjoy such great privilege. Here are some of the ideas we’ve discussed: We can make a donation to the Native American Rights Fund, which does great work on behalf of American Indians (including work on those violated treaties). We can spend time with friends watching and discussing the video version of “Rocks, Karma, Arrows.” We can join with friends in a common reading and then share a meal discussing what we’ve read. And we can make a commitment to speak up, whenever possible, when we hear the legend with its distortion of what actually happened in New England in the early 1620s … and beyond.



 

Indian summer

When we’re really lucky, one of the great weather pleasures of Colorado comes around this time of year. Often, after a brief interlude that looks a lot like winter, we return to this lovely, crisp, clear weather when the remaining fall leaves hang on for a few more days or weeks, the sky is bluer than blue, days are balmy and mornings and evenings are cool. And you wish it could last forever.

I grew up calling this “Indian Summer,” which seemes like a lovely name for a lovely time. But each time it comes around, I think about stories of the origin of the term, and I’m reminded of how our prejudices melt into our language.

Here are some of those tales about the roots of the term “Indian summer.” Some are simply descriptive: it’s said to come from the colors of the season—the reds, golds, and rusty colors that are often associated with Southwestern Indians, or the copper colored skin that distinguishes Indians from Europeans. But others aren’t as benign. Some writers have said that the term came from colonial days, when it referred to a period when lingering good weather allowed the Indians to renew their attacks on the European invaders. Others have suggested that it referred to the warm weather caused by fires set by raiding Indians. Some linguists have pointed out that “Indian” has often been used to mean “false” (as in “Indian giver” and “Indian burn”). So this “false summer,” one that follows a glimpse of winter and that will surely be followed by more, is referred to as Indian summer because it’s fake, it will be stolen away.

Likely, the term Indian summer has carried all these meanings at certain times and in certain places. And likely, I will continue to wonder (and worry) about this each time I have the pleasure of walking on a day like today. And accompanying my wondering, if I’m lucky, will be scenes like these.

       

                                                                                                           

  

  

Indian summer: the luscious, lovely, warm, crisp, colorful moment between fall and winter.