Obama's speech on the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin verdict.

Race relations in the U.S. have often been characterized by what psychoanalysts call "splitting." The very notion of "black" and "white" is a prime illustration of splitting, which occurs when "never the twain shall meet."  In fact, black people and white people form a continuum, both in terms of color and genetically, but we categorize them in black-white fashion so we can believe that there is an absolute separation between "us" and "them".  Politics, especially in a two-party system, tend also to be characterized by splitting: Democrats vs. Republicans, Tea Party Republicans vs. Old Guard Republicans, and so on.

Psychoanalysts speak of a process by which these splits are overcome, as it is recognized that the complexity of anything in life cannot be captured in a simple binary.  Yet, these binaries are essential as well: they simplify an overwhelming reality for us; binaries allow for taking positions, emotional and/or political.  It is hard to talk about anything without invoking binaries, language is full of them.  We need to use a lot more words to be true to the complexity of things than to put them into widely used baskets. When we do try to bring binaries together into a more complex view of reality that recognizes opposing views and feelings, psychoanalysts speak of the process as "containing".

So when Obama talks about race and the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, his starting point is splitting on two levels.  Race is split into black and white, and his listeners tend to be split into pro and con on the verdict.  Obama's goal, politically, is to bring pro and con together into a "more perfect union".  In terms of race relations, his goal is to bring black and white together by presenting how many black people, including himself, feel about the verdict, without reinforcing splitting (and damaging himself politically) by alienating too many white people.  (Note how I am using the words "black" and "white" reflexively, and to save words.)  He is seeking to "contain" both intellectually and politically.

Obama seeks to accomplish this goal by a strategic use of vagueness, and by countering most of his assertions of a "black" point of view with a qualification, wording that moderates his position.  For example, Obama said:

"Now this isn't to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they're disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It is not to make excuses for that fact---although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history."

Obama gives a nod here to a range of feelings that are often set in opposition.  "African-American" is a less polarizing term than "black" and "white".  Black people are African and American. Violent crime is often a black on black problem (giving a nod to a wish on the part of some whites to disassociate themselves from the problem of U.S. violence).  He gives a nod to the idea that to look at the historical context, or roots, of that problem in white racism is seen as making "excuses", by some people, white and black.  He then invokes an "historical context" for violence in "poor" black neighborhoods, consisting of a "violent past".  Here is the vagueness.  He does not say explicitly that the violent past to which he alludes consists of white racist violence against black people.  He goes on to "trace" the "poverty and dysfunction" in poor black neighborhoods to this "very difficult history".  Obama thus manages to acknowledge a white defensiveness that aims to disassociate whites from collective responsibility for racially based violence, AND to connect black on black violence to an earlier history of white on black violence.  Again, he does so without calling white on black violence by its right name, and so he does not put white collective responsibility in whites' faces.  He avoids language that could have been taken as  blaming whites.  In fact, he does not blame whites.  He blames no one, in that he "traces", he makes a connection without implying simple or direct causation.  In this way, Obama offers an alternative to "poor black" internalization of a violent self-image, to self-blame, without blaming whites.  To have done so would have been to initiate a cycle of accusation and defensiveness that would have been damaging both politically, and to his own goal of containing the feelings of a wide range of white and black people.  He would have reinforced, rather than undermined, splitting. The politically astute statement, and the containing statement, coincide.

Nonetheless, Obama does not shrink from exposing an underlying racial bias in those who would defend the acquittal of George Zimmerman while denying that race was a factor.  He asks: "---if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?"  This last "he" is ambiguous grammatically.  It could refer to either Zimmerman or Martin.  And that is precisely the point.

I suspect that behind Obama's question is a thought that is familiar to most African-Americans, but that would take aback most Euro-Americans (I include myself here) who stopped long enough to think about it.  Barack Obama, has once again created a mental space capacious enough to include the racial sensitivities and biases on all sides that few Euro-Americans want to admit still deeply divide this nation.

From Dharamsala India, reflections on attachment

From Dharamsala India, after a three day class given by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

The Buddhist message seems to me to convey that human suffering arises from attachment to transient things in life as if they were permanent.  Chief among such things is the individual self.  Attachment to a certain form of self, shaped in all sorts of ways by gender, cultural, racial, social class, and familial norms guarantees a great deal of agitation, anxiety, unnecessary self scrutiny as one tries to live up to one's own standards, or judges oneself for failing to do so.

His Holiness (HH) seemed to me to return to this theme repeatedly, while the audience members listened respectfully and intently.  However, I noticed a great deal of jostling, planning and scheming to have a favored position from which to watch HH, to be close to him when group photos were taken at the end of the class, and so on.  There seemed to be a great deal of attachment to having some sort of favored position in a class on non-attachment, and a great deal of attachment to the person of HH.

Surely he must be aware of how his presence stimulates this sort of intense attachment.  I wonder what he thinks of it, or whether he would think that what I am describing reflects an attachment to the teaching rather than to his person, or whether he would conceive of it in some way I can't presently imagine.

I remember a book called "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" by a Buddhist scholar whose name, I believe, was Chogyam Rinpoche. He pointed out that spiritual pursuits inevitably give rise, paradoxically, to new forms of narcissism and self-attachment.  We take pride or shame in our spiritual status, or compete as to who is more spiritually advanced than whom, for example.

The wily ways of attachment and narcissism the way it eludes all efforts to diminish or extinguish it, should not surprise us.  Here is one of the lessons I have learned from contemporary psychoanalysis.  Psychoanalysis teaches us that personal growth does not elude obstacles; rather, it works with those obstacles (what analysts call "resistance", or what more relational analysts now call "enactments").  Such obstacles are reframed as opportunities to learn and grow, but never reaching an end point or resting place.  The self, narcissistic attachment, denial of death, all of these are inherent in the human condition, yet we can struggle with them and grow, as long as we don't expect to complete the struggle successfully.  The idea of the fully enlightened spiritual seeker, like the fully analyzed person, only reflects a new, more insidious, level of attachment.

Foster Children

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.

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

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"

"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?

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.