Diesel Civil Trust

abbyjean: For two centuries after 1640, the official Japanese policy towards the outside world was known as sakoku (’closed country’), by which both Japanese leaving the country and foreigners entering it could expect the death penalty. Although not quite as harshly absolute as that, isolationism prevailed until American commodore Matthew Perry’s Black Fleet sailed into Uraga harbour in 1853, forcing Japan to open up, first to commerce with the US, later to trade with other western countries. This Japanese world map circa 1850, gives an impression of the country’s view of its place in the world on the verge of its forced reintegration into the international community. It is an intriguing mix of foreign knowledge and native perspective. (strange maps)

abbyjean:

For two centuries after 1640, the official Japanese policy towards the outside world was known as sakoku (’closed country’), by which both Japanese leaving the country and foreigners entering it could expect the death penalty. Although not quite as harshly absolute as that, isolationism prevailed until American commodore Matthew Perry’s Black Fleet sailed into Uraga harbour in 1853, forcing Japan to open up, first to commerce with the US, later to trade with other western countries. This Japanese world map circa 1850, gives an impression of the country’s view of its place in the world on the verge of its forced reintegration into the international community. It is an intriguing mix of foreign knowledge and native perspective. (strange maps)

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17 July 2009,08:27 Zulu

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Ohio.com - Akron police investigate teen mob attack on family

Akron police say they aren’t ready to call it a hate crime or a gang initiation.

But to Marty Marshall, his wife and two kids, it seems pretty clear.

This runs as an ugly, but equally disturbing counter–point to my article about black children being kicked out of a private, whites–only pool last week. Have we all gone mad in America? Emphasis mine.

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11 July 2009,08:42 Zulu

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Ten things wrong with the President of France’s wanting to eliminate the burqa.

coitusandcopouts:

subtlecluster:

sexismandthecity:

1. Mandating how women should dress is mandating how women should dress, whether it is a mandate to wear a burqa, or a mandate not to wear one. When a man tells a woman how to dress, it’s paternalism and subjugation one way or the other.

2. Plus, as Dori points out, a man telling a woman that too much of her body is covered, and that she needs to expose more of it to his view, is pretty weird. How much modesty is too much? How much exposed flesh is enough to satisfy Sarkozy?

3. A Christian man imposing rules of dress upon Muslim women does little to actually foster the kind of gender equality he claims to be advancing.

4. Sarkozy talks as though there is no “subjugation of women” among the non-Muslim denizens of France. As though France is a wonderland of gender equality. According to WikiGender: “Compared to other countries, France has always been rather late in adopting gender equality as a goal and designing policies to achieve it.” So why suddenly all this concern for a certain subset of French women, who just randomly happen to come from a community hated and feared by many in France?

5. What other items of clothing does Mr. Sarkozy disapprove of? Do they also happen to correspond to certain disfavored, marginalized communities?

6. Any attempt to “eliminate” burqas in France will only serve to further marginalize the women who wear them. Burqas, for some women, represent a compromise. Some individuals believe women are not supposed to be seen in public, or be looked at by men outside of the family. In this extreme view, women would be entirely confined to the house and removed from outside society unless they can put on a burqa and go out. Eliminating the burqa for these women would mean eliminating their access to the world. Better conditions for such women require a little more work than outlawing a piece of clothing.

7. Eliminating burqas in France would not mean that women’s oppression in Muslim communities would end. It would simply be a cosmetic change that would do nothing to actually work with communities and empower French Muslim women to achieve equality. It is a measure that ignores all nuance and avoids all honest work to actually tackle the heart of the problem.

8. All this “eliminate the burqa” talk fits just a little too snugly with the popular “Islam oppresses women” meme that Christian Westerners like to toss around, particularly when they are trying to frame a “War of Civilizations”.

9. Also, doesn’t this just come off as a cheap attempt at burnishing his Women’s Issues credentials while effectively only harassing a marginalized, already-persecuted minority? And doing little to nothing to further true societal equality for all women in France?

10. What real issues do French women, and French Muslim women in particular, actually face that Sarkozy is completely avoiding by diverting attention with this stunt? Why randomly target French Muslims now?

Via the czech

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29 June 2009,17:41 Zulu

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because this can’t be said often enough

robot-heart-politics:

katoleary:abbyjean:notemily:

Teaching relatively class privileged students about why poor people can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps can be extremely challenging. One of the things that they harp on is their impression that the poor spend money on frivolous things; somehow they believe that, if the poor just eschewed cable television and Nikes, they would pop up into the middle class.

I try to explain to them that being poor is like living a life of self-denial. To be poor is to be forced to deny oneself constantly. The poor must deny themselves most trappings of an adult life (your own apartment, framed pictures on the walls, matching dishes), a comfortable life (a newish mattress, a comfy couch, good shoes that aren’t worn out), a convenient life (your own car, eating out), a self-directed life (a job you care for, leisure time, hobbies, money for babysitters), a life full of small pleasures (lattes, dessert, fresh cut flowers, hot baths, wine), a healthy life (fresh fruits and vegetables, health care, time for exercise), not to mention all of the must-have consumer goods that are constantly marketed to us (mp3 players, organic food, travel, expensive clothes and accessories). And, since most poor people remain poor their whole lives, they must be prepared to deny themselves (and members of their families) these things, perhaps, for the rest of their lives.

So when my students see someone (they think is) poor walking down the street with a brand new pair of Nikes, perhaps what they are seeing is someone who decided (whether out of a moment of weakness or not) to NOT deny themselves at least one thing; perhaps they are seeing someone who is trying to hold on to some feeling of normalcy; perhaps what they are seeing is a perfectly normal person who just wants what they want for once.

Lisa at Sociological Images: Poverty, Self-Denial, and New Nikes

Thank you.

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15 June 2009,22:10 Zulu

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In Georgia, Segregation Endures on Prom Night - NYTimes.com

About now, high-school seniors everywhere slip into a glorious sort of limbo. Waiting out the final weeks of the school year, they begin rightfully to revel in the shared thrill of moving on. It is no different in south-central Georgia’s Montgomery County, made up of a few small towns set between fields of wire grass and sweet onion. The music is turned up. Homework languishes. The future looms large. But for the 54 students in the class of 2009 at Montgomery County High School, so, too, does the past. On May 1 — a balmy Friday evening — the white students held their senior prom. And the following night — a balmy Saturday — the black students had theirs.

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31 May 2009,18:42 Zulu

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Translation of La Raza

azspot:

Many people incorrectly translate our name, “La Raza,” as “the race.” While it is true that one meaning of “raza” in Spanish is indeed “race,” in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings. As noted in several online dictionaries, “La Raza” means “the people” or “the community.” Translating our name as “the race” is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect. “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race. As anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.

The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people” or, according to some scholars, as “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.

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29 May 2009,16:10 Zulu

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Gender, sex, and “suppressing natural urges”

squashed:

Miss-R has linked to this remarkable article defending the antics of the Australian Rugby League. The argument is, essentially, that “boys will be boys.” In this case “being boys” involves violence, drunkenness, pubic urination, and (allegations of) gang rape. Her claim (which others, including John Eldridge, have made) is that feminism is trying to stamp out any sort of gender differentiation and leave some sort of homogenous, androgynous muddle. Or, as she puts it:

But decades of androgynous feminism have stamped on chivalry, deriding men who opened doors or stood back for women as being sexist and patronising.


I have no problem with opening doors (for anybody)—though if you’re opening a door because you think somebody is too weak to open it themselves, that might be a bit patronizing. Similarly, if I refuse to walk through a door a woman holds open for me, I need to get over my sexist self already. In the same role, I don’t have a problem with men doing “manly” things if they’re not hurting other or being pressured into them for fear of looking emasculated. In the same note, if a man wants to knit something I see no reason to deny him. Why not throw open a whole spectrum of activities to everybody rather than insisting that somebody was born one sex and thus must enjoy a certain set of things.

I digress. Coupled with the “men will be men” argument, we often see “men do horrible things they would not do if you’d just let them be men.” The claim is that things like rape and domestic violenc happen when men are expected to suppress their masculinity and they bottle up so much masculinity that it explodes out of them in particularly violent ways. We can’t blame the wife-beater. He was just denied a healthy outlet for these energies. Look what happened!

I probably shouldn’t focus on the “let men be men” people. Some people on the other end of the spectrum have used the same sort of flawed argument to level a sort of neo-Freudian critique of people promoting abstinence or of celibacy within the Catholic church. The argument is that suppressing the sex drive leads to the same sort of mind-deranging pressure that suddenly explodes in an uncontrollable manner. It’s a common trope in not-so-great movies (Clerks II). The Good Christian Kid has bottled his sex drive for so long that he gets a bit twitchy and once he or she finally lets go (so, maybe, one beer) he or she becomes insatiable.

The whole thing reminds me of old humoral theory where diseases and disorders were caused by an imbalance in various bodily humors and that the way to cure them involved purging one or the other. It’s an interesting historical artifact—but a terrible pseudoscience to base contemporary policy on.

Generally, things work the other way. If I cut my diet in half, I’m going to be quite hungry for a little while—then my body will adapt. If I stop showering on a backpacking trip, I’ll feel quite dirty for a few days, then I’ll get used to it. If I stop exercising (or, maybe in my case, start exercising) I’ll feel very energetic (or maybe very tired) for a few days and then get used to it. If I go to a much higher elevation, I might be bothered by the lack of oxygen for a while—but I’ll adjust. Similarly, if I make a habit of violence, I’m more likely to behave violently. We do a very good job at setting habits and adapting to our environments.

This is not to imply that all impulses can or should be ignored or that everybody is constructed the same way. You may be able to adapt to a larger or smaller diet—but you need to eat something. And we get screwy results when we try to both feed and suppress an impulse (say, by putting teenagers in a sexually saturated environment and then telling them they shouldn’t have sex). But it is wholly misguided to suggest that men need drunkenness, violent, and sexually aggressive in the same way people need food and water. Rather than forcing men into some constructed notion of masculinity, let them be themselves. And when men do inexcusable things, don’t excuse it on the grounds that boys will be boys.

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21 May 2009,10:25 Zulu

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abbyjean: There is a gulf of difference between being rich and wealthy as wealth symbolizes the transmission of advantage, privilege, and (it almost goes without saying) capital of all kinds that serve as shield to the effects of crises like the one we are experiencing now. Take home ownership as one example of the difference: a PEW study show that “as of 2008, 74.9% of whites owned homes, compared with 59.1% of Asians, 48.9% of Hispanics and 47.5% of blacks.” (socialsciencelite)

abbyjean:

There is a gulf of difference between being rich and wealthy as wealth symbolizes the transmission of advantage, privilege, and (it almost goes without saying) capital of all kinds that serve as shield to the effects of crises like the one we are experiencing now. Take home ownership as one example of the difference: a PEW study show that “as of 2008, 74.9% of whites owned homes, compared with 59.1% of Asians, 48.9% of Hispanics and 47.5% of blacks.” (socialsciencelite)

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08:18 Zulu

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