Neil Altman's blog

Foster Children

2011-11-21T16:07:00.000-08:00

Today's NY Times reports that foster children as a group, are prescribed anti-psychotic medications as often as children diagnosed as psychotic. Is this how we want to manage the fall out from social neglect?
Foster children represent an end point of the consequences of social neglect. Poverty and prejudice lead to hopelessness and rage: feelings not conducive to the care of children. When parent's needs are not met, we can expect many of them to have difficulties meeting the needs of their children. We can expect many of them not to have the psychic resources to meet the demands of child care, which, as we know, entails a great deal of self sacrifice and patience. In extreme cases, children end up abused and neglected to the point where they are placed in foster care. Very often they are move through a long series of foster homes, as foster parents, too, are unable to tolerate the provocative behavior of children who, understandably, have little if any trust that anyone can handle their rage and despair.
So foster children are difficult, and we as a society are not willing to put the resources into supporting families, reducing poverty and discrimination, or supporting foster parents. Enter the drug companies and the "quick fix" solution: tranquilize the children, whatever the side effects or long term consequences.
The way foster care is handled is an important barometer of the humanity of a society; today's article in the NY Times gives evidence of how we are failing.

2011-02-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the "decades old policy of multi-culturalism" has encouraged "segregated communities" where "Islamic extremism can thrive". He criticized a policy in Britain and elsewhere in Europe that "encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream". He reportedly said that the "multi-culturalism policy had failed to promote a sense of common identity centered on values of human rights, democracy, social integration, and equality before the law". (NY Times, Feb. 6, 2011 p. 6).
Cameron's remarks remind me of what a friend and colleague of mine said he heard a French person say in denying that the French are prejudiced: that the French believe "anyone can become French". It seems to me that there is an assumption here that European cultures are superior to other cultures (Europeans uphold values of "human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law"). This is the assumption that served to rationalize and justify murder and theft of peoples' land under colonialism (By the way, where were concerns about human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law under colonial domination?). Did British colonists think they needed to integrate into the "mainstream" cultures of the lands into which they intruded? Why then should people from the formerly colonized lands integrate into "mainstream" British culture?
What Cameron is calling "multiculturalism" is, in my view, actually a way in which cultures can live together with mutual respect, rather than with the implicit assumption that there is a "standard" culture from which other cultures become "deviant", or a superior culture in relation to which other cultures show up as inferior. It is this lack of respect that, in my view, fosters extremism, not the demand that everyone be "like me".

Native Americans set up office of naturalization and immigration

2010-05-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

The confederation of North American Native tribes announced today that they have set up an office of naturalization and immigration effective immediately. The chairperson of this office announced that the confederation had determined that not accepting applications for legal immigrant status from European immigrants, beginning in 1492, had been a serious error. The chairperson said "We had no sense of owning the land, if anything we felt the land owned us. Therefore, we never felt entitled to rule on whether European immigrants were here legally or illegally. It has long been abundantly clear that Europeans had no hesitation in believing that they 'owned' the land, therefore that they had the right to decide who could live here legally, or even live, period. We have determined that we must, with great reluctance, act as if we own the land (though deep down we don't believe that for a minute) and start a process by which European immigrants can apply for legal immigrant status on the land that they call "North America".
The chairperson said that there is a great deal of resentment among the people of the confederation because of how vastly they are outnumbered by possibly "illegal" European immigrants. He said "I hear all the time how we have lost our culture as a result of this uncontrolled European immigration, that it must be stopped and reversed by any means necessary". Some of the more resentful people are even advocating "racial profiling" of people with so-called "white skin", detention and possible deportation of those found to be without documentation from the confederation office of immigration and naturalization. "I believe in a more moderate policy" he declared. "We will begin accepting applications immediately and will process them as quickly as possible, seeking to avoid a long period of anxiety for those with European ancestry, and we will do everything we can to avoid breaking up families. I warn the more hot headed among my people that we will not tolerate midnight raids on the homes of people suspected of being undocumented European immigrants." The chairperson also declared that decisions would be made on a "fair" basis, having to do with respect shown to the land by the applicant for permanent residency or citizenship status. "In that respect, our criteria will be quite different from those used by Europeans" declared the chairperson. "We have concluded that what the European immigrants call "development" has led to an unsustainable situation, in which the air, water, and soil of our beloved land is being rendered unusable by future generations. This, too, lends urgency to our effort to ensure that the welfare of all, of current and future generations, is ensured by our decisions as to who will be considered "legal" custodians of the land."
The embassies of England, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and other European countries had no immediate comment. Some have speculated that given the current low birth rates in these countries, that a reverse flow of people from North American to Europe may not be unwelcome.

Let's reclaim the words "power" and "privilege"

2010-03-12T18:07:00.000-08:00

"Power" from the same root as "poder" in Spanish, or "potere" in Italian, refers simply to ability or capacity. How is it that this word has so often come to refer to a very specific kind of ability, the ability to dominate others politically and economically? It is telling that we collapse ability per se into domination, as if one were either dominant or submissive, enabled to dominate or disabled. We forget the paradox or contradiction: that the possession of political and economic power, at the expense of the "disempowered", creates the need to devote an enormous amount of time and energy to preserving and defending that power, thus disempowering the "powerful" in many ways. Anxiety about the envy and hostility of others can come to preoccupy the "powerful" to the point of obsession. On the national level, consider how quickly the fall of the Soviet Union, leading to the ascension of the US as the sole "superpower" in the world, has devolved into an obsession with national security, a preoccupation with threats from small groups of individuals who can quite easily terrorize most of the population of a "superpower" the likes of which the planet has never seen. Then again, consider the preoccupation with "communism" and "socialism", the idea that wealth might be "redistributed", or the fear of immigrants taking US jobs, that terrorizes so many citizens of the wealthiest nation on earth.

Then consider the word "privilege". The root of this word come from the Latin words for "private" and "law", i.e. a law that applies to a private person. In time, this word came to mean special rights and immunities granted to a person by virtue of his or her position or office, by law. This background seems to suggest a special status that not everyone can have. In the contemporary world, the word has come to mean, narrowly, political and economic privilege, the special right to control others and to have access to material goods. But there are other possible contexts in which the word can be used. In a religious context, privilege can refer to the special access to God or to spiritual states conferred on priests. Spiritually based value systems tend to emphasize humility, charity, selflessness. But we have a hard time holding onto forms of privilege other than political and/or economic privilege. Ironically, the privilege of carrying forward the institutions built on these values sometimes becomes the springboard for a cynical disregard and undermining of those values. All too often, spiritual privilege has been perverted into the worldly sorts of privilege that allow people to exploit economically or even sexually those who are dependent on them for spiritual or religious services. Economic and political privilege, too, like power, is jealously and vigilantly guarded, with the subliminal knowledge that such privilege is always temporary and tenuous. We can see all around us that economic privilege leads to a ceaseless seeking for more, no matter how much one already has. Economic privilege can become the dubious privilege of being chained to a rat race, a ceaseless effort to keep up with the Joneses, or a step ahead of the tax man.

It is time to reclaim these words, thereby remembering that there are many things we might want to have the power to do, the privilege of doing, if we were free of insatiable and competitive acquisitiveness and the need to control others. Love and the need to control others are incompatible; we need to remember the power and privilege of love, of community, of time to reflect, of freedom from the domination of things and status and prestige. As Bob Dylan said "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose". The more you have, the more you have to lose.

Taxpayer or worker?

2010-02-14T12:14:00.000-08:00

Most people here in the US are taxpayers AND workers. Who would have thought there could be a conflict? Yet, when it comes to public employee labor unions, many people have come to see only the taxpayer perspective, i.e. they're trying to take more of my money. The other side of the story, i.e. I and my fellow workers need to be paid fairly for the work we do, is often lost. Of course, more of us are taxpayers than are public sector employees, so more of us will be taxed to pay for public employee salary and benefit upgrades than will benefit directly from them. So the logic of supporting only what benefits me and my family works against support for public employee unions. One doesn't have to extend one's horizon too far to realize that when labor unions are weakened, all workers suffer. But that point is, or can seem to be, a little less immediate. Plus people in the US have a long-standing and deep distrust of government (even as they accept Medicare and Social Security), and labor unions evoke shades of socialism, if not the dreaded "C" word. The result is that many people have a visceral feeling that government is there to take their money and regulate their lives, while corporations, which do exactly that, get a free pass.

Obama and the right wing

2010-01-29T10:53:00.001-08:00

Barack Obama began his Presidency with the wish to transcend divisive partisanship, to establish dialogues that would bring people together. Instead, his efforts to build consensus seem to have yielded only increased acrimony.
From one point of view, one might say that Obama's openness is read as weakness by those who operate with a dominant-submissive, zero-sum world view. Cheney and others in the Bush administration believed that Al Qaeda and the Taliban, for example, only understand the language of violence, and of course that belief was fully reciprocated by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In that respect, the two sides spoke each others' language.
Obama speaks the language of dialogue and mutual respect, so we have a confusion of tongues. What happens next is unpredictable and will require creativity to find a way past the impasse. If Obama plays hard ball like the right wingers, he will have become them and nothing will have changed as he meant it to. If he continues as he has been, his stance will continue to be read as weakness, and thus provocative of further bullying. Can Obama find a way to resist the invitation to join those who believe the only kind of power comes from the barrel of a gun, while finding a new way to be powerful? Stay tuned.

Evil

2009-12-15T17:29:00.001-08:00

President Obama has invoked the presence of evil, or evil people, in the world as justification for armed intervention in Afghanistan. David Brooks, in his NY Times column today, spoke of Obama's point of view in this respect as "Christian realism", in contrast to liberals who deny the presence of evil in the world, seeing people, naively, as fundamentally good.
I believe the flaw in this line of reasoning is in reifying the idea of evil. There has always been a contradiction in the Christian idea of evil. On one hand, there is the Judeo-Christian idea of people as having been created in the image of God. On the other, is the idea that there are people who are to be killed, such as the Amalekites in the Jewish Bible. In the Jewish Bible, God himself is inclined to kill people who sin, such as the people of Sodom and Gommorah, or the people of Nineveh whom Jonah tries to save from God's wrath. The idea of sin got reified in the Christian idea of Satan, the devil, and the sinners who follow him. Satan, the fallen angel, becomes the prototype of the person, made in the image of God, who defies God's will and thus deserves to die, to be killed. The idea of Satan seems to me an awkward attempt to explain how it is that people are, on one hand, made in the image of God, and on the other hand, capable of great evil. Either God him/herself includes both good and bad/evil, or there is some transformation undergone by certain people that alienates them from God, from themselves in their pristine form in the image of God.
In my view, people are seen as evil when their murderousness or sadism is taken out of context. At the moment, the Taliban in Pakistan are perpetrating suicide bombing, the killing of innocent civilians, indiscriminately, evidently in the effort to intimidate people into submitting to their control. The Taliban seem like the ultimately ruthless, brutal, violent bullies, stopping at nothing in their intimidation tactics.
The picture becomes more complicated when one remembers that the Taliban arose in response to the brutality and violence of the warlords of Afghanistan who ran roughshod, killing, plundering, and raping, after the Russians left Afghanistan. The warlords, of course, had been financed, trained and empowered by the United States as proxies for the US war on communism. The warlords seemed to be on the side of the angels as long as the Russians were devils; even Osama Bin Laden was on the side of the angels as long as the US was obsessed with the communist threat. If the brutality of the warlords gave rise to the brutality of the Taliban which then joined forces with the US-empowered Al Qaeda leadership to create the current manifestation of "evil", what are we to conclude except that violence gives rise to violence, while good and evil are defined in relation to whose violence seems opposed to our interest, and whose violence appears to advance our interest. Those interests, of course, get defined in questionable ways as well. For example, our interest currently gets defined in relation to control of oil which we want to burn at the cost of the future of the planet and the impoverished people living at sea level who will be displaced.
This why Obama's war in Afghanistan, and its rationale in terms of "evil" is so misguided. Evil shows up as part of a violent process, and we have now set in motion the next phase of that process in Afghanistan. The question "When will they ever learn" is more relevant than ever, with someone seemingly as thoughtful as President Obama holding the reins of power.

Precious

2009-12-01T18:19:00.001-08:00

The movie, "Precious" has gotten a range of reactions in the African-American community, from praise for the way it calls attention to some real and widespread problems associated with poverty and neglect, to condemnation for a one-sided, negative, portrayal of African-American life. This latter reaction seems to me to reflect shame about the severe dysfunction, abuse and neglect, portrayed in Precious' family.
The early psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi wrote about how when there is sexual abuse in a family, the victim will often feel the shame and guilt that the perpetrator disavows, in one way or another does not feel. The child-victim takes on, becomes the receptacle for, the perpetrators shame.
When and if African-Americans feel shame about a film like Precious, I suggest that they are taking on the disavowed shame and guilt of white people for the oppression of African-Americans, or collusion with such oppression, or failure to take action to stop such oppression, from slavery onwards. Why do we not hear about white people feeling shame and guilt for the conditions of life on view in the film?
As I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, negative reactions, like that of Jesse Jackson's, toward Barack Obama's call on black men to take responsibility for their children, speak to a similar shame that is taken on by black people, when whites might very well be thought to have at least as much cause for shame.

US opposition to big government

2009-09-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

Its interesting to me that some people in the US are so opposed to government interference in their lives, while subordinating themselves to corporate control of their lives. So whatever the problem is, its not that people want to be free of control by large or impersonal or insensitive external entities. Maybe its that corporations are more subtle: they convince you through advertising to part with your money voluntarily, rather than taking it coercively through taxes. Also, corporations redistribute your money to already affluent executives and stockholders (whom you may want to identify with) rather than to poor people (with whom you may want to disidentify). Maybe there's a need to subordinate ourselves to a powerful external entity, and corporations have done a brilliant job of channeling that need in their direction, to the point that they can lay you off, deny you benefits including health coverage, and generally mistreat you, and you'll take it. Meanwhile, your outrage gets channeled toward the government, even when its trying to protect you from corporate abuse.

The Folly of Belligerence

2009-09-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

History is full of examples of how two belligerent parties, by engaging in an escalating cycle of belligerence, keep playing into each others hands. Strategists on both sides hope to capitalize on the others' entrapment in belligerence and violence to provoke him to a violent response that will be self-defeating. A recent example is how Al Qaeda's attack on the US on 9/11/01 succeeded in provoking the US to attack Iraq, thus discrediting the US throughout the Muslim world, not to mention the rest of the world. The US did Al Qaeda's work for it. On the other hand, the Bush Administration seized on 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq, which it wanted to do anyway. So Al Qaeda equally played into the neo-cons hands. It did the neo-cons work for it. So both sides have gotten their way. And where are we as a result of such a rampant fulfillment of strategic goals?
Similarly, Hamas provoked Israel to a violent reaction in Gaza, as a result of which Israel lost friends and credibility throughout the world, while ensuring the production of more terrorists with nothing to lose in Gaza. But when those terrorists strike, that will justify more actions designed to consolidate control over the West Bank and block the formation of a viable Palestinian state--just what the Israeli right wing wants. And where will that leave us?
Gandhi and other practitioners of non-violence like King, Mandela, Walesa, and others understood that to be provoked to violence plays into the hands of those who want to oppress you. The discipline of non-violence can break that cycle, saving the oppressor from himself, and you from the self you would become if you gave in to the cycle of violence.

Reaction to Obama, part 2: someone has to sit at the back of the bus

2009-08-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

The NY Times of August 25, on the front page, reports that Bob Collier, age 62, who had never been politically active before in his life, drove over an hour to attend a town hall meeting on health care and, to his wife's amazement, spoke up. He described how his wife had had breast cancer, received treatment, and was now in remission. He expressed anxiety that her care might be "rationed" is there were a recurrence and if health reform were enacted. He went on to say that health care reform may mean "the end of our country as we know it".
What a leap! I can certainly resonate with Mr. Collier's fear of any development that might threaten his or his wife's health or life. A chord has certainly been struck with him that any of us can resonate with. But what makes him think that health care reform makes it more, rather than less, likely that he or his wife would be unable to receive treatment? Why is he more afraid of rationed treatment under health reform as currently proposed, than he would be of his insurance company denying reimbursement? In fact, his insurance company denied coverage of his wife's radiation treatment. (the cost was written off by the medical provider). Mr. Collier acknowledges that some reform is needed, including a safety net, but he doesn't want the safety net to "catch too many people"!
This raises the question of the rationing of people to be caught in the safety net. Mr. Collier, a senior citizen, is concerned that elderly people will be at the end of the line. One wonders who he imagines would be at the front of the line, and how he would feel about the situation of those people who would be at the end of the line if elderly people weren't. He has reason to believe that there isn't enough affordable health care to go around, so someone is going to have to be at the end of the line. Are our religious leaders offering any input here about compassion and charity? Or is this just dog eat dog, musical chairs, and may the strongest and loudest voices win?
Mr. Collier goes on to explain his feeling that health reform may mean the end of the country as we know it. He refers to government involvement in the auto industry, the banking industry, worrying that government involvement will yield the "efficiency of the postal service" combined with the "compassion of the IRS".
I can resonate with that too, although I'm pretty impressed with what the postal service accomplishes day in and day out, if not with the courtesy of their employees. And I do see a difference between the mission of the IRS, and that of a health care service, (plus I haven't been impressed with the compassion of private sector insurance companies and hospitals), but point taken. So I guess we're talking about that good old American mistrust of government.
So what does Mr. Collier thinks would have happened to the privately run auto industry and banks without government "interference"? Why doesn't this point occur to him?
Might this have something to do with the government being led by a person "of color" at the moment, and with the fact that the people with whom he imagines himself competing for health care are likely to be poor people, and people of color.
Someone has to sit at the back of the bus.

The reaction to Obama's health care proposal

2009-08-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

The right wing is inflamed in the US, with a focus on Obama's health care proposal. The proposal is attacked as a violation of fundamental American values in the form of creeping socialism and government control of the lives, and deaths, of citizens. At the same time, Obama himself is portrayed as not truly "American", in concrete terms as not having been born in the US and thus an illegitimate President and Commander in Chief.
I believe these issues camouflage a deeper source of anxiety for right wing Americans, who tend to be of European lineage: the feeling that they are losing their country, that the European character of the country is being lost as the population moves inexorably toward an African-American and Latino majority. In this sense, the election of Obama symbolizes this historic shift in the US population, and makes clear that a shift in the locus of power is well under way. Once people defined as "other" having taken over, who knows what changes they will put in place? The security and predictability of life for many Euro-Americans seems to be profoundly threatened.
I think there may be a still deeper reason for this fear, even panic. This land, of course, was once inhabited by non-Europeans. It was taken from them by force of violence by people of European origin. There may be a subliminal guilt that leads to fear of retaliation, of redressing of the injury by those who were killed and disenfranchised.

The Army wants to believe that "faulty" beliefs, rather than war itself, cause depression, anxiety, suicide and homicide among soldiers

2009-08-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times reports on the front page that the Army is instituting "classes" for all soldiers to help them identify false beliefs that are believed to cause anxiety, depression, suicide and homicide among soldiers. In my view, this is the extreme application of cognitive-behavioral thinking that reveals the basic fallacy in the approach.
To my mind, anxiety and depression, if not suicide, are very understandable reactions to the conditions of war. War, of course, creates conditions in which the line between justified killing and homicide can get very blurry. War generates unthinkable experiences: killing and the ever present risk of being killed, seeing one's fellows blown to bits. The senseless discontinuity between life in the war zone and back at home in the malls and on the freeways, while one's buddies are back in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or France killing and being killed. Telling people that their breakdowns are due to their faulty beliefs is mystification and pathologization that can only generate further confusion and despair, or a false and brittle adaptation to the official expectation.
In my view, what this application of cognitive-behavioral thinking exposes is its basic grandiosity: the belief that emotions, human responses to the conditions of life, are controllable through manipulation of thoughts. The Army wants to believe that war-generated anxiety, depression, suicidal and homicidal feelings are controllable by manipulation of thought in 90 minute classes. I wish those classes were devoted to validating the sense of confusion, horror and helplessness that these soldiers feel, making room for a sense of betrayal by those who sent them to war, without undermining the feeling others may have that they have served their country, if not all of humanity, by going to war.

On my return from Israel to the United States

2009-07-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

My impression is that those Jews who want a Jewish state have concluded that Jews and Palestinians cannot live together. Thus, the separation wall, harassment and humiliation of Arabs on the West Bank and in Israel proper, killing and starvation in Gaza---all in an effort to create a space for Jews in which Jews will not be threatened by Arab resistance, violence, or population growth. There are laws in process that will make it illegal to portray Israel in negative ways, and that will make it impossible to join the Knesset if one is not willing to swear allegiance to Zionism.
I conclude that there are only two options going forward: two states, or a continuation of violent conflict. I suppose we could also have both.
My reaction to Zionist supremacism has been revulsion and shame as a Jew, but I have further concluded that as a citizen of the US, I have plenty to be ashamed about as well. I can't imagine where I could live where there wouldn't be plenty to be ashamed of and revolted by. The difference is that in Israel the ethnic cleansing is happening now, before our eyes, the blood is running in the streets. I returned to the US yesterday morning, came home in the subway. I saw no Native Americans. They are mostly dead or on reservations. I saw plenty of African-Americans, but one has to remember that their ancestors were brought here as slaves and forced to give up all things African---even their names and family members, often their lives. The end of slavery brought the kind of harassment and humiliation that Arabs are suffering now in Israel, as the price for a "one state solution" in the US. The ghettos and prisons bear witness to the continuation of this situation for many. Other Americans of African descent have bought into the capitalist dream and thus integrated themselves more or less, as some Arabs have within Israel (as long as they don't challenge Zionism).
I also remember that one state solutions haven't worked very well for Jews elsewhere: certainly not in Europe. Evidently one state solutions worked for a while in the Arab world, but not indefinitely. Post holocaust, I can understand the insistence on a place to try to feel safe. Elsa First said at the conference which I just attended: "Can we hold Warsaw and Gaza in mind together?"
The Bush administration set in motion the events that create an acute sense of danger in Israel now---leading to the ascendancy of the forces for ethnic cleansing. By simultaneously alienating Iran (by constructing an axis of evil) and empowering it (by empowering their Shiite allies in Iraq) the neo-cons set the stage for Ahmadinejad and his support for Hezbollah and Hamas (even bringing about Shiite-Sunni alliances against Israel and the US).
I believe Obama understands all this. It will be fascinating to observe how he proceeds in the effort to create two states in which Jews and Arabs, the ancient half siblings and potential allies (see Sari Nusseibeh's Once Upon a Country) can all feel safe enough.

On Populist Rage

2009-03-23T07:57:00.001-07:00

Many people in the US are evidently enraged to hear about huge bonuses paid to financial industry executives held responsible for the recent economic collapse. In some quarters, as in this last Sunday's New York Times' Week in Review Section, this rage is held to be a "distraction" from the work of rebuilding the world economy. Thomas Friedman, among others, believes that while this anger is understandable, the job at hand is to recapitalize banks and financial firms so they can once again begin lend money to businesses and get the wheels of capitalism moving again.
There is a way of looking at the populist anger as more than a distraction, a venting of frustration in vengeful rage at people held responsible for peoples' economic suffering. What if we saw this rage as the leading edge of discontent with the inequities that characterize unregulated capitalism. During the last two elections, liberals often wondered why working class Americans would vote for an administration that had a track record of favoring policies that increased inequity, making the rich richer. It seemed to me that working class Americans often tend to identify with the rich, regarding taxes and "big government" as the source of oppression, rather than a system that leaves the spoils to the winners. This is a moment when President Obama could educate people about systemic inequity, thus putting the bonuses in a larger perspective that would validate people's rage while taking the focus off individuals and onto a system that urgently requires reform and regulation to address the inequities that flourished under recent decades of Republican government.

On privilege

2009-03-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

Discussions of "white privilege", it seems to me, often do not reflect on the nature of privilege. It is often taken for granted that "privilege" means economic and political privilege, power and money.
Obviously, it is true that there is value to having power and money. Or, perhaps it would be better to say that there are disadvantages to not having power and money, or to being systematically deprived of power and money. But I think it is often overlooked that there are other forms of privilege besides the economic and political, spiritual and emotional privilege, for example, and that these forms of privilege can be at variance with economic and political privilege. Indeed, I think that the unreflective equation of privilege with money and power may be one of the more subtle and insidious forms in which the values of colonialism and capitalism get internalized.
The word "power" itself needs to be unpacked. In the most basic sense (as in Spanish "poder") power means the ability to do things. In English, the word has gotten to imply a dominating sort of power, the ability to impose one's will on others, as if power were a zero sum game. When the context of power is domination and submission, violence and power become close cousins. But if we go back to the basic sense of being able to do things, perhaps we can imagine my power and your power not being in conflict, or even being mutually enabling. Power in a dominant-submissive context is the kind of power that corrupts, ultimately absolutely, and thus is at variance with spiritual privilege and the privilege of being emotionally connected with others.
Some of this was brought home to me recently when I realized that the people who contributed to the current economic collapse by over-reaching for profits from subprime mortgages, securities derivatives, etc. were people who already had unimaginable sums of money. This was not a case of a system being brought down by poor people stealing from the rich, or poor people killing the rich, but by rich people trying to get richer. Ultimately, they may make off like bandits (many already have) as essential bail outs go into their pockets. In which case, the downfall of the system will be only more prolonged.
But what kind of privilege is it when having money leads to the need for more of it (even when one already has more than one could possibly spend), ultimately at the cost of more deprivation and suffering for those who were already poor at home and abroad. I suggest that the pursuit of ever more money and power is in response to a sense of deprivation and loss that accompanies a rupture with our fellow human beings, with their experience and their suffering. But that gap cannot be filled with more money and power, to the contrary. In that sense, power and money in a zero sum context lead to a treadmill of running after illusory substitutes for the true privilege of love and caring.

Having watched Shoah, Sophie's Choice, The Counterfeiters

2009-02-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

My goal was to have some contact with the experience of the holocaust, since my family was not in Europe during the Nazi era, although going back a couple of generations, my ancestors undoubtedly had experience of pogroms in Russian and Eastern Europe. I worried that it was too easy for me to attribute the cycle of violence in the Middle East to a vicious circle, to which Israelis contribute at least as much as Palestinians. I worried that I was dismissively psychologizing Israeli actions, attributing Israeli violence against Palestinians to “post traumatic” reactions in the wake of the holocaust, perhaps missing aspects of the experience of those with roots in the holocaust that might make them more, rather than less, attuned to current realities. I did not expect to stop feeling critical of Israeli government violence, but I hoped to earn my opposition with a respectful recognition of the experiences people have had that form a backdrop to violence. I felt that I accorded that kind of recognition to Palestinian experiences leading to Palestinian violence against Israelis, while somehow failing to accord that recognition to Jewish and Israeli experiences. I had thought that this imbalance reflected my sense of shame as a Jew about Israeli government violence against innocent people, and about what seemed to me to be disproportionate violence considering the nature of the provocation in some cases---shame that I did not feel, as a non-Palestinian, about Palestinian actions. I also seemed to be expecting more of Jews than of Palestinians, perhaps in a way that is denigrating of Palestinians. I had always of thought of the Jewish people as especially committed to ethical action, to sympathy with the oppressed, I thought that an understandable commitment to “never again” be helplessly victimized had led to a rigid and misguided equation of violence with power. I did not expect to change these understandings in a fundamental way, and I will not give up being horrified by violence and its justification, but I did want to take seriously the possibility that I had defensively avoided an awareness of Jewish suffering that might make me more understanding of how Israelis, and many of my fellow American Jews, see the world. My strategy seemed to be to take equal account of experiences of victimization suffered by those who perpetrate violence on both sides. The choice of this strategy now seems perhaps revealing in itself:
Perpetrator-victim-perpetrator-victim-------victim?- Perpetrator?- Victim?-----victim! -Perpetrator! -Victim!
Each moment in the cycle seems sufficient unto itself, yet each seems inexorably (but for Gandhi, who really struggled with this problem) to lead into the other. (Gandhi’s struggle seems the prerogative of the “powerless”).
Trying to get out of being trapped by each term of the cycle, in terms of a cycle, is an effort to escape the confine of each term as sufficient unto itself, yet ultimately the cycle itself seems confining.
So what would it be like not to be confined by this cycle, at least in thought?
So here is one reaction to watching these three movies: some people who lived through the holocaust, having witnessed an unthinkable human capacity (unfeelingly to destroy feeling beings) sometimes can’t stop seeing that side of humanity somewhere, out there. While those of us who have not suffered this fate can’t stop hoping that side of humanity can be avoided, if not mastered.
I’ll stop, for the moment.

Israel and Gaza

2009-01-03T05:01:00.000-08:00

In this posting, I will restrict myself to raising some questions growing out of Israel's attacks on Gaza, without attempting to answer them. This is not because I don't have strong feelings on the subject, but because I have so many, and mixed, feelings, and because conversations on this topic so rapidly degenerate into heated impasses. Of course, my own views will be manifest in the way I pose questions, but the format may nonetheless promote thoughtfulness, in myself and others, better than a point-counterpoint format. I also believe that there is value in disentangling some of these questions from each other, because I believe they get conflated in many discussions/arguments. In future postings I will set forth some of my views more explicitly.
1. Does Israel have a right to exist? Subsidiary questions: in what form and at what cost? Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state, even if Jews were to be outnumbered by non-Jews? What does Israel have a right to do to ensure that Jews are the majority within its boundaries? What, if any, are the limits to Israel's right to use violence to address immediate or long term threats to its existence?
2. Do the Jewish people have a right to exist? Is the existence of a Jewish state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Jewish people?
3. Do the Palestinian people exist? Do they have a right to exist? Is a Palestinian state the best or only way to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people?
4. How does one reconcile the commandment not to murder, with war? Is there an exception for self-defense? Who decides what is self-defense, and what is unjustifiable murder? Can these always be distinguished? What if they can't be?
5. How does one value a Jewish life in relation to the value of a Palestinian life, and vice versa? 6. Is it ever justified to respond to the murder of a single person, or a small group of people, by killing a large number of people? Is it ever justifiable to kill innocent people as "collateral damage"?
7. Do Jews in the diaspora have the right to criticize, or second guess, the Israeli government?
8. Is it desirable to make public space to think about such questions? Does thinking about such questions disable the capacity to take action as needed?

The attacks in India

2008-11-27T00:10:00.000-08:00

These attacks of November 26, 2008 hit home, occurring in places I know well and visited in the recent past with my family. I can vividly imagine the horror, as with 9/11. Also, like 9/11, this bears all the marks of Al Qaeda. The skillful exploitation of holes in security, the focus on U.S. (and British, in this case) citizens as well as Jews, the choice of target for dramatic effect and to exploit media attention. The choice of the Taj Mahal hotel as the centerpiece of the attacks, rather than an American-owned hotel, indicates that the focus is on the Indian elite, and Indian collaboration with the United States as evidenced in the recent U.S.-Indian nuclear deal. Although the killing is indiscriminate, the attack itself is a precisely condensed dramatic statement. These attacks also show the limits of Al Qaeda power at a particular moment. The attack was not on US or British soil, it did not involve weapons of mass destruction.

Barack Obama needs to go beyond expressions of outrage, horror, and sympathy for the victims to indicate quickly that he understands that this was an attack on the United States, on whomever else it may have also have been an attack. He needs to pre-empt a neo-conservative seizing on the attack to justify the fear mongering that has characterized the last eight years, and that the people of the United States so recently refused to be stampeded by.

What I'm still worrying about

2008-11-06T05:59:00.000-08:00

I'm still worrying about poor people. Obama, like all politicians these days, talks about "working people", to signal he's concerned about people who aren't rich. But what about the unemployed, especially those who've been to prison, rightly or wrongly?
What about the backlash against gay and lesbian people? I'm troubled by the movement against gay marriage, and the outrageous proposition that passed in Arkansas to deny gay couples the right to adopt or take in foster children.
I'm sure there are other issues as well that we will need to keep on the front burner. There is a danger that Obama's election will lead to complacency among white, well off people, a feeling that race, especially as it intersects with poverty, is now no longer an issue. The successes of the Civil Rights movement, while real and valuable, had the same side effect of allowing some people to think that we no longer need to be vigilant or address racial discrimination and prejudice. I'm afraid that poverty as an issue in particular may suffer collateral damage from this election. I don't mean we shouldn't be celebrating, but that we must be realistic about the potential limitations of an Obama administration as well, and the need to keep advocating.

Now is this a post-racial society?

2008-11-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

Well, yes and no. Did the election of Obama reflect an already-existing post-racial situation, or did the election itself create a new reality? I believe the reality is somewhere in the middle. The election of Obama, which we owe to some extent to non-racial factors like his intelligence and articulateness, the incompetence and arrogance of the Bush administration, and the timing of the economic meltdown, is one of those things that potentiates a situation that is latent and ready to crystallize given the right constellation of events. The election of Obama shows that in this country white people, at least a good number of them, are ready to be led by an upper middle class black person. It also shows that lower social class blacks will identify with, and have their hopes and aspirations stimulated by, an upper middle class black person. Finally, I think it shows that for younger white people, race may not be as salient in the choice of a leader as it is and has been for their elders.
I was in North Philadelphia over the weekend and on election day. This is almost entirely an impoverished African-American community. The volunteers were young white people from all over, and mostly local black people, including children and adolescents and whole families. I walked through the neighborhood canvassing, and here are some of the things I saw:
A group of three black men sitting on a stoop, all of them with the bloodshot eyes, I guessed, of alcoholism. one of them said "Its our turn now" with a big smile that revealed both pleasure and the fact that there were almost no teeth in his mouth.
Many people who said hello to me, wished me God's blessing, and so on. Numbers of people sitting on stoops or folding chairs on the sidewalk who volunteered that so and so was not home, had already voted, was too sick to answer the door, etc. Much more welcoming, and a much stronger feeling of community, than in the white or mixed suburban neighborhoods where I had done canvassing in the past.
Leaving North Philly last Friday, passing through Center City, where there were 2 million people, I'd say 99% white, who were celebrating the Philly's baseball championship. Drunk people were scattered around the sidewalks.
My first partner in canvassing said, when I noticed a beautiful mural on the wall of a school, that he had contributed to making the grid for the mural when he was in prison. Now he's an HIV counselor with Americorps.
Children answering the door. A parent responding from some back room to my shouted questions: "I'm from the Obama campaign. Have you voted?" One child, asked by his mother, "who is it?" said "Barack Obama"!

On Calls for Personal Responsibility

2008-10-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

I wrote this shortly after Obama's "Father's Day Speech"

Recent statements by Barack Obama and Bill Cosby, calling on African-American men to take responsibility for their children (see,for example, USA Today, July 15, 2008, "Obama to NAACP: Blacks Must Seize Responsibility") raise some questions that are crucial to sort out at this moment in our history. It is easy to confuse talk of holding people accountable with blaming them. Calling on a father to acknowledge his responsibility to his children is not the same as blaming him. It is asking him, going forward, to think about the consequences of his actions and how to deal with problems that he inherited from his own family of origin and from a social history of oppression and disadvantage. Blame is backward looking; it entails accusing a person of a misdeed without taking account of the problems he was born into and that shaped his circumstances. If one wants to think in terms of guilt for various social problems, there is usually more than enough to go around. It is more productive, and ultimately empowering, to encourage the individual to think about responsibility going forward than to blame. Blaming is shaming, and shame is counter-productive if what we want is change.

There is a history of blaming the victim in this country, and especially of racist blaming of African-Americans, so it is understandable that people would be sensitive to this possibility. By the same token, it is crucial to clarify that Senator Obama and Dr. Cosby are not asking people to forget about historical and ongoing suffering and oppression. They are asking that we contemplate what to do going forward. They are asking that men take account of what they can contribute as fathers, and to think about the consequences of not taking on that responsibility.

Calls for personal responsibility and efforts to remedy systemic problems are not mutually exclusive. Senator Obama, in his speech on race, and Dr. Cosby at numerous points, have recognized the history and persistence of systemic racism in the United States. As Senator Obama points out, his assumption of the burdens and risks of running for President flows from his recognition of the need for political change. Further, a major reason that he and Dr. Cosby call on fathers to be present for their children is that they recognize that sons of absent fathers are more likely to become absent fathers to their own children. In this way, they do not dismiss the fact that there are historical forces in the culture and in the family that contribute to our social problems. This recognition only strengthens their determination to hold each generation accountable for the consequences of their behavior. We can only hope that the history of poor fathering will not rule out the sense of possibility, in future generations, that the cycle can be broken. Senator Obama and Dr. Cosby themselves are both examples of men who took responsibility for blazing a new trail in their personal lives. To promote personal responsibility is not to negate that there is much social and political change that needs to occur to support families. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, the best kind of social change is
produced by those who try to live the change they, and we, want to see in the world around us.

It might be tempting for white people in the United States to assume that this conversation is happening among African Americans because that is the only place it needs to happen. White people, however, should not assume that calls to responsibility are not needed in the white community as well. All Americans can learn from the way African-American people are facing up to the problems in their community. White people should be inspired by the strength being shown to acknowledge shortcomings and to address them, rather than, in self-congratulatory fashion, choosing to see therein only evidence of African-American family pathology. Rather than African-Americans feeling only shame about their dirty laundry being washed in public, there is an opportunity to feel a sense of pride in leading the way for all Americans in productive self-examination. Whatever our backgrounds, Americans need much more of the kind of self-reflection and willingness to challenge oneself shown by Senator Obama, Dr. Cosby and others who call for renewal through courageous and honest self reflection.

The One Thing No One Can Say---

2008-10-04T04:58:00.000-07:00

in this election campaign is we've done something(s) awful, damaging and destroying people, for no good reason. Full stop. Then, having let that sink in, maybe we were deluded, we didn't know, we were careless, we meant well, we've done good things too---all that matters as well, but it doesn't undo anything.
How burdensome is it not to be able to say and mean you're sorry?
How would you like to be married to someone who can't say and mean (s)he is sorry, or trapped in a personality that can't?
Unable, then, to get to the tragic part---

Free Market Ideology Must Be Dead----

2008-09-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

if the free market votes for government intervention in the free market

What I wish Obama had said last night, and why.

2008-09-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

John, I'm so glad you've given me the opportunity to elaborate on what I meant when I said I'd talk to Iran with no preconditions. What I was trying to get at was I think we need to try to find a way to get out of the vicious circle of belligerence we've been caught up in the last eight years. Belligerence breeds belligerence, in foreign affairs and in presidential campaigns. I'm doing my best to avoid belligerence between us, and I can see how its not easy. Of course, its understandable that when we're threatened, or when ourselves or our loved ones are hurt or killed, we want to attack. Sometimes its justified too. But we need to avoid knee-jerk belligerence, we need to be able to think, to be smart, about our reactions to provocation. If we react impulsively, we're often playing into our adversaries hands. That's a big part of how we got into Iraq after 9/11, and why we're now more hated around the world than ever before, and how we squandered the good will we had after 9/11. We were overwhelmed with anger and sorrow, and we didn't make enough space to think so we could be smart as well.
When I said talks should be without preconditions, I should have said that the only precondition is that all parties to the talks commit themselves to listening to the others carefully and with respect. That doesn't mean accepting everything the others say. Threatening to wipe anybody off the face of the earth means complete lack of respect, and my preconditions would rule that out.
And, Jim, when you asked what I would cut to fund the 700 billion dollars that might be committed in the financial "rescue", of course I can't be too specific right now, but let me say this: we're going to have to give up the fantasy of the "new American century" in which we aim to establish supreme power over the whole world. Its unmanageably expensive to be the supreme power of the whole world, not to mention impossible except in video games. We need to find a way to have moral leadership in the world without being infinitely powerful, and, believe me, its a lot less expensive to exert moral leadership than it is to have supreme power.

Why do I wish Obama had said these things, aside from the fact that I wish he agreed with everything I believe? Because I think he's not naturally a belligerent person, but he seems to have felt he had to compete with McCain to sound tough. Since that's not his strength nor his inclination, he sounded lame, to my ears. But his thoughtfulness should have sounded like strength, not of the belligerent kind, but of the intelligent and smart kind. That would have come from speaking from his heart, as he said things that were true to what he feels and believes. Are the majority of the American people ready to hear that there's no bright line between evil and good in the world ,with us on the good side, and that unlimited power doesn't flow from being good and tough? Can the American people hear that we have a better chance of being a force for good in the world if we're ready to acknowledge our mistakes and have some humility? I don't know, but I wish they were presented with a good and strong case (perhaps citing the bible) to think about.

Is this a post-racial society?

2008-09-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

White prejudice often shows up in the United States as white people speaking from their particular perspective as if it were universal, treating non-whites as if they were invisible or non-existent. With this point in mind, recent statements by white people in the context of the Obama candidacy that we live in a "post racial" society could mean just the opposite; when this view is held mainly by white people it could be evidence that race and racism are quite alive and operative, and that the form taken by racism and prejudice is predominantly of the insidious kind. We will live in a post-racial society, paradoxically enough, when people make explicit the group perspective from which they are viewing the world.

A case in point: In the September 14th issue of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Matt Bai argues that identity politics are a minor factor in this year's presidential race. He claims that for younger voters issues of race and gender are minor: "It turns out that the biggest deal about racial and gender identity is that, especially to younger Americans who live and work in a vastly changed country, it isn't such a very big deal after all". (p. 10)

I wonder which younger voters Bai is referring to; it seems to me that, given the overwhelming percentage of black voters of all age groups who, according to polls, plan to vote for Obama, he must be referring to white voters. I suppose it is possible that 97% of black voters think Obama is the better candidate based on factors having nothing to do with race, while less than half of white voters think so. But I think it is more likely that black voters of all ages have in mind, not only the history of systematic denial of opportunity and rights to black citizens in the United States, but also the hope that Barack Obama will pay more attention to the specific challenges faced by black people and families, as well as the ongoing race-based inequities in this country.

Consider that while blacks make up 13% of the US population, as of 1995 according to Human Rights Watch, they made up 30% of those arrested, 44% of those in jail, and 49% of those serving longer terms in prison. About 1/3 of black men aged 20-29 were in jail or prison, or on probation or parole in that year, and 13% of black adult males had lost the right to vote because of a felony conviction. In 2002, 5% of black men were incarcerated, compared to .6% of white men. As of mid-1999 there were nearly 800,000 black men in prison, or 4.6%, 11.3% of black men aged 20-34, as well as 68000 black women.

It seems to me that one can claim that we live in a post-racial society only by ignoring figures such as these, and others like them having to do with racial disparities in infant mortality, poverty, substandard housing, and the like. It is to be expected that blacks will be aware of and concerned about these inequities, since they affect black communities disproportionately. But if we were indeed a post-racial society, that is, if we were indeed one country, under God, indivisible, then whites could not be rested comfortably unaware of such suffering among the people of one sub-group. I imagine that one of the reasons why black people favor Obama in such overwhelming numbers is that they hope that as a black man, those 868,000 black men and women in prison, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, are more likely to show up on his radar screen. If the fact that Obama is running for President allows white people to believe that racially based inequities are behind us, his candidacy in that particular way will have contributed, ironically, to setting us back in the effort to become a post-racial society.