Thinking about "The Help"

The movie The Help is out and stimulating discussions of issues of race and class.  Harold Pollack remembers a painful event from his childhood:

"....our family was close to our neighbors. Their children were cared for by a young black woman whose name I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten. She slept in their basement. My dad did a lot of work around the house, and happened to have some extra moveable partitions. He gave one to her, so that she could have some extra privacy.

That night, the neighbors stormed over. They informed my parents that if they had wanted her to have a partition, they would have bought her one, and that my father had made an inexcusable intrusion into their home. There were some harsh words. Our families maintained polite but frosty relations from that moment forward."

 Things have certainly changed.  But in many ways, they have not.  Millions of people still work for poverty wages.  And taken broadly as a class of worker, there are distinct disadvantages they face that are not entirely dissimilar to what was so starkly a racial matter a few decades ago.  In fact, I wonder as I type this, whether the racial differences are still as stark.  We took a vacation up the California coast this summer and witnessed many fieldworkers who were all Hispanic, as far as I could tell, and likely undocumented.  We're used to the lowest forms of labor - in status, difficulty and pay - being done by minorities.

While we can I think agree that most overt racism has all but disappeared, at least as a primary factor in employment, structural problems remain in which large sectors of society are disenfranchised and almost destined from birth to lives of poverty and desperation.  And to the extent that any of us partake in the economy, certainly when we purchase services that directly require the labor of minimum-wage employees, we are exploiting their lack of empowerment.  The notion that they are all completely free individuals who could easily have decided to go to school and become lawyers or highly skilled workers is a convenient fantasy.

Mistakes of Anger

Burning of Sodoma - Alexander Bida

Retribution is sneaky business.  It hides in the shadows, waiting for a crime vicious enough to warrant it, brazen enough to distract us momentarily so that it may rise up and plant itself in our feeble minds.

I came across a terrible case of a young girl "in special ed" who wasn't listened to by school officials when she accused a boy of raping her.

Following instructions from the school, the girl wrote an apology to the boy she accused of raping her and had to personally give it to him, according to the lawsuit. She was then expelled for the remainder of the 2008-09 school year. The school also told "juvenile authorities" that she filed a false report.
The girl returned to the middle school for the 2009-10 school year and tried to avoid the boy, according to the lawsuit. It didn't work. She was sexually assaulted again but didn't tell anyone because she was afraid of being expelled again, her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. She was allegedly raped a second time Feb. 16, 2010.
School officials were notified of the incident and allegedly doubted the girl's claim, saying they'd "already been through this," according to the lawsuit. The girl was also examined and found to have been sexually assaulted. However, she was suspended from school for "disrespectful conduct" and "public display of affection," her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

Who would be blamed for expressing outrage, disgust, and anger upon hearing of such a case.  Yet I was reminded of a grave mistake we allow ourselves to make, when I read the following commentary on the story (of which a great number of other commenters expressed approval).

"The officials responsible for the girl's plight will rot in hell. They should get a second term in hell for blaming the hapless victim -- a special ed middle school girl."

It is so important that we remember that while what these people did was (assumedly) wrong, there are very strong causal mechanisms driving people to make decisions like this.  Blaming the victim is common in rape cases, as is a likelihood of bias against those in special ed (whether cognitively or behaviorally challenged).  There is also the bias against transparency and accountability.

So, there are social and cultural power dynamics at play, as well as no doubt everything that goes into that in a persons' development that allows a person to "do the right thing" in situations where their conscience might be tested.  This could be any number of things - possibly their ability to stand up to a more dominant co-worker or boss, especially if there are gender, racial or class dynamics there, not to mention the interaction of temperamental components.

Without a more detailed investigation, we'll never know what lead the district officials to make what appears a terribly wrong-headed decision.  But from what we know about human development, culture, society and history, we can make reliable predictions about what may or may not have gone on behind closed doors.

What we don't really know, however, is how it could have been possible for the officials not to have had their decisions determined by larger social factors as well as their own individual life histories.  In fact, I submit it is impossible to imagine how they could simply *choose* on their own to make an immoral decision; that is, to make a decision that was removed from any prior emotional or rational causality.

Thus, to suggest anything like their deserving eternal damning punishment - or even any retributive punishment at all - would be a poor trick to play on what amount to tragic individuals caught up in a web of causality that began long before their birth, gave rise to their limited consciousnesses, and caused them to take the actions they did.


It has been suggested that the original biblical story of Sodom was written not in sexual condemnation, but merely as a response to a perceived inhospitality of the inhabitants of the city.  In either case, sexual or no, would not God's wrath having rained down on the souls within, burning them alive for nothing more than rudeness  at best, sexual impropriety at worst, be a prime example of over-reaction's bloodlust being paraded as "justice"?  Maybe the better lesson ought to be that all of us continually be searching to quell our own silly desire for retribution, deserved as we might think it in the heat of the moment?

Instead, let us mourn the sad events that unfolded, let us help the victim, let us take steps to hold the officials accountable so as to maintain the integrity of their office as well to deter similar future behavior, let us chastise them with an appropriate sanction so that they may find some measure of rehabilitation in their wrong-doing.

Shaming Homphobia, P.II

A response to my original post asked whether or not it is fair to call the conviction that homosexuality is a sin "hatred", or compare it to racism. 

Let’s look at the similarities. Both involve determinations that a group of people are fundamentally flawed with zero evidence, any claims based on totally bogus, discredited pseudoscience designed to prop up prejudices. Both involve out-groups that have historically been discriminated against violently. Both contribute to continued discrimination and oppression commensurate with the degree to which they are socially accepted and practiced.


In fact, the only real difference is that religious homophobia can be claimed to be based in holy writ. We can all thank our lucky stars that other minorities weren’t libeled so brutally in religious text – although anti-semitism comes pretty darn close.

“Hey, I really do think Blacks are decent people. But they are inferior to whites, and unless they die their skin they will be living in sin.” How is that for an exact parallel?

Look, a lot of nice people were racists. They didn’t know any better. They were merely following old traditions of hatred that invaded their cognition in ways that they couldn’t have understood. But at a certain point there was simply no longer any excuse.

That time is now for homophobia. We need to call it what it is: hatred.

That is where is originally comes from, just like any other misinformed and oppressive prejudice. You can dress it up any way you like, but if you think your religious interpretation leads you to believe such horribly cruel, hurtful things, even if you’d rather not, then you need to wake up. There is no excuse for the Taliban. There is no excuse for modern Christians or anyone else.

Shaming Homophobia

Mark Kleiman reminds us just who Michele Bachmann really is.  She

thinks that loving other people of the same sex is “sexual dysfunction” and “bondage” and “slavery,” and that anyone who thinks otherwise is “part of Satan.” And of course their families aren’t really, y’know, families.

Amazing. The only thing dysfunctional, enslaving or despairing thing about it is how she and people like her treat gays. If her hateful, intolerant and ugly views didn’t exist, everyone would indeed be perfectly “gay”. Especially, no doubt, her husband.

And if I hear one more time about “love the sinner, hate the sin”, I’m going to puke. It’s nothing more than the religious codification of ancient hatreds – malevolent judgements upon a people’s fundamental existence, with no basis *whatsoever* in reality. Homophobia needs to be called out for the bigoted hatred it is, no different than racism, no matter what religious BS it gets wrapped up in. Again, and again, and again these people need to be shamed until such speech is no longer accepted in polite society.

To paraphrase the Specials: “If you have a homophobic friend, now is the time for that friendship to end.”

A Friend Request

The Pageant of Childhood - Thomas Cooper Gotch

My family and I have just returned from a family vacation up the coast.  I took them to my hometown.  I think at some point I was reminded to search again on facebook for an old childhood friend whom I haven't spoken to in 20 years.  His profile appeared in the search results.  I sent him a friend request.  I was 12 when the family moved up north to Seattle.  I soon lost touch with everyone I had known.  Leaving was the most difficult thing I'd ever done at the time.  Looking back was just too painful.

But returning with my family - I hadn't been to the place in 10 years - jarred loose a desire to regain contact that had never left.  So many years have passed.  I'm so much different today than I was back then.  Or am I really?  How much does one change.  I've been through a lot in my life.  I've made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot of lessons.  Loved, lost, loved again.  For Christs' sake I almost died there for a minute.

My friend accepted my friend request.  I scanned his profile more deeply, but there wasn't much to go on.  His face is older, of course, but it's the face I recognize.  He has a beautiful wife and lovely daughter.  He's handsome and fit.  He's apparently interested in riding his mountain bike.  But there isn't much else to gather. 

I began to write him a note, hoping to get his number and speak with him over the phone.  Trepidation but intrigue.  What is it like to talk to someone with whom you were once so close, but only as children, so long ago?  As I filled in the vagaries of my adult life, I began to go into greater detail, offering up insights into my own self-perception, trying to imagine what I might look like from a great distance.  And yet, in some ways a distance who knows how close?  The following is what I wrote:

Hey - looks like things have turned out well for you. Your wife is pretty and your daughter is adorable. Man, so many years. Almost another lifetime. But I still recognize that friendly face. Well, give me a call. My number is (xxx)-xxx-xxx. I'd like to hear what's gone on in your world for the last 20 years. We just got back from a trip up to Santa Cruz.

Maybe that's why I searched your name again - I hadn't found you before. Years ago I spoke with our old friend on the phone - I was in Portland, OR - and we were supposed to meet up but I... I may have been too depressed. He called me early in the morning and I never picked up the phone. I felt bad about it.

I'm sure you and the rest of our friends have gone somewhat separate ways, to varying degrees. But for me I think you're all sort of time-capsulized in a hazy, nostalgic vision of the "Santa Cruz" part of my life. It seems strange to reckon that with who you might be now. I'm sure you think of me similarly!

Anyway, yeah, give me a call. I have two gorgeous girls and an amazing wife. I have struggled these 20 years with growing pain/depression from that neck injury I got at Pleasure Point. I was really into skating but had to stop and am pretty limited to simple, low-impact movement. The pain is chronic and dull. Its been a beast that drove me to depression and suicide in 2005 - a few months after my first daughter was born. I was caring for her while my wife taught. She was colicky and there might have been some post-partum stuff going on. But I've recovered well and have made a reasonable piece with it.

We live out here in the Coachella Valley. We've just finished doing a huge addition on our house - God, it took forever! But we're very fortunate. I teach at a continuation high school. The students are really screwed up. But I really want to help them. I've basically been doing social services work since I graduated high school. People with AIDS, brain injuries, schizophrenia - now childhoods of poverty and substance abuse. I was in college for ten years and finally got my degrees in social sciences and education.

I learned to play guitar and sing. I wrote indie acoustic songs and made little albums. I made a ridiculous rap album under the "alias" Brim Venereal. I'm interested in politics, philosophy, science, education and social justice. I write about it on my blog: http://supervidoqo.blogspot.com/. (I think I'll post this there. I hope you don't mind. Like many of my creative endeavors, it has been epic, although mainly in my own mind; relatively few people read it.)

I'm a cranky, rational person with a wry sense of humor and an inner silliness trying to escape. I wonder if that is how you remember me? My biggest regret thus far in life is maybe my lack of forming more lasting friendships (ironic, writing to you!). But I've moved around a lot. That explains some of it. We were in Pennsylvania - Amish country - for two years before moving here, six years ago. A courageous but bone-headed move, it turned out to be. We were more isolated than ever there.

And yet meeting people in the desert has been slow-going. I suppose it doesn't help that we've had kids. I'm sure you can understand how much that changes things. We love doing things together. Speaking of which, my daughter (4) is asking to play Zelda with me so I'd better go!

Glad to see your face. Take care,
Super Vidoqo

A Reason to Riot

People are asking what is driving the London riots.  A point contrary to the notion that it is mainly mainly about poverty, is that apparently many of the looters were middle or upper class.

But what percentage are we talking about here? Certainly the location of the riots puts them squarely in working class neighborhoods.


I don’t want to jump to conclusions either, but riots in the US have been about race with a strong helping of class. I work with poor, troubled teens and there is nothing many of them would enjoy more than getting in on the action of a riot. As it stands, one of their main entertainments is getting drunk/high and looking for trouble out in the streets. Why is this?

Roughly, many of them have poor role models at home, for a variety of reasons. Single parents struggling to maintain control. Parents whose work hours leave them unattended for much of the day. No hobbies – no sense of purposeful behavior. Substance abuse and anger management problems in the family. Little education among parents and a sense of frustration at perceived life-options available. Nihilism about their role in larger society and its institutions.

This is a lot to untangle. Every case is different, yet themes emerge. But I’ve been incredibly frustrated by the language that some in the conservative British government have used to frame the riots.

David Cameron: “if you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment.”
Home Secretary Theresa May: “This is sheer criminality, and let’s make no bones about it.”
London Mayor Boris Johnson: “It is time that people who are engaged in looting and violence stopped hearing economic and social justification for what happened.”

I understand the frustration, and the need to reiterate the rule of law. But “sheer criminality” is not an explanation; pretending it is one is an excuse to not do the reflection that social problems require. We don’t need to pretend we know the exact cause of the problem. But we do need to discuss it. We need to form hypotheses and debate their validity. When we resort to explanations that are nothing more than descriptions of behavior, we learn nothing about ourselves and our society, and we miss an opportunity to avoid such problems in the future.

The Flat Tax Society

I wish I could claim credit for the title of this post.  That goes (as far as I can tell) to Michael Kinsley, writing about the phenomenon in the New Yorker in 1995.  As true then as it is now, conservatives embraced the concept of cutting taxes for the rich, for corporations - in the name of "fairness".  I suppose what has changed since then is the degree to which the Republican party has shifted even further right.  But when House Majority leader Dick Armey drafted flat tax legislation in 1995, this very right-wing idea was front and center.

Today people are talking about Mitt Romney's statement that "corporations are people too".  Jonathan Chait points out that a favorable interpretation would be that he is actually correct.  While there is a legal implication for corporate personhood,

That is not the point Romney was making.  Romney was saying that taxes on corporations are in fact borne by people. Romney probably wouldn't admit that these are people who partially or completely own corporations, and thus far richer in the aggregate than the general public. But the fact is that they are people. Raising taxes on corporations is simply raising taxes on a certain category of people.

It was further pointed out to me that a significant portion of corporate shareholders are indeed middle class pensioners, 401k holders, etc., and that taxes on corporations come at the expense of these people, not the "fat cats" we tend to think of when we think of the wealthy CEOs, managers and large individual stockholders.

The original heckled response was that corporations ought to be taxed to pay our bills.  And Romney put his foot in his mouth before he was even able to make the inevitable supply-side case that not only should we not tax corporations, but that we shouldn't be taxing anyone.  By which of course, he means the rich - the "job creators", etc.  This is now the standard Republican answer to every problem.

Because taxes are no longer an important civic responsibility, to be shared especially by those who most can afford to.  Teachers, police, medicare and social security are expenses that a decent society is willing to pay.  It does so through taxes.  The regressive, "flat tax" idea assumes these expenses will be paid for by because we'll get enough revenue from the increased growth unleashed by having flattened our tax base.

We did a slight form of this with the Bush tax cuts 10 years ago, and the growth never appeared.  There never has been evidence of this so called supply-side miracle.  Yet people still call for cutting taxes on the rich.  Like members of the Flat Earth Society, they continue to deny evidence in favor of ideological fantasy.  Either that, or they cynically promise that growth will pay our bills, while secretly knowing that a future collapse is inevitable.