White Male History

Note:"White" in this blog is referencing to people with northern European ancestry, and weighted heavily toward Christians. I also wasn't sure about capitalization of "white" so I vary it up a bit.

First I read, then come questions. What is the male equivalent of this "Off the Path" game? Why does a white-male game that teaches a similar moral not get the same attention? Or if it does, why it is often framed as "Christian". These questions come on the back of another racial discussion currently in the news.

Looking at the Sotomayor hearings, I have heard her questioned on her comments framed as "wise Latina" v. "white male". I thought nothing of this as a comparison comment; I was struck that she would dare to comment that white males have an unexamined history. No one likes to be told they live an unconscious life. History has over represented European contributions and at the same time has not really been kind to white males.

White culture has dominated history by claiming to be universal. This is changing with the expansion and appreciation of minority history. I must note that this appreciation is not at competition with the antiquated version of history most of my generation and others was taught. It is complementarity. Again, some people think that pointing out how something is unexamined means it is competition. Not the case.

This still begs the question of why is there not more attention to white male history. This attention would not be a glossing of others' history in an effort to be universal. I would like to see a critical look at white male history intended as white male history. It should also be taught from the perspective that it is not competing with other history, and should be oppressive to others.

I really had this idea click when an archeology professor talked about taking students from Pocatello to Europe to dig up Vikings. In America there is a hostility towards White anthropologists digging up the ancestors of the first Americans. It comes from the destructive habits of the past. Today anthropologists are more conscious in doing no harm to other groups, but still curious about where we are today. For those of us with a northern European history we are away from our biological relatives and so we want to see what is where we are. My professor wanted to take white kids and have them dig up white kids, or even more balanced is first American kids digging up northern Europeans. Scientifically, bringing the diversity of backgrounds is most likely to generate the most innovation.

But I wonder, where is white history. Is it really so much the trees that I cannot see it? I can just imagine the conversation with my 76-year-old dad when we sit down and I ask him to explain what it is to be "White" with me. Geeze, I'd settle if he could explain what it is to be Irish-German-Dutch with a family history of both Mormon and whatever those religions his mom and him tried. As a white male, if he can't explain white male history to me, then I only more understand and appreciate Sotomayor's comments. I can explain my female, lesbian history experience to him so I hope I could make a wiser conscious decision.

clipped from www.npr.org All Things Considered, July 15, 2009 · The classic story of Little Red Riding Hood is a warning to girls about the dangers of strangers — particularly male strangers. The video game The Path begins with a warning, too: When you're going to grandmother's house, it says, best stay on the path. But that warning's a ruse. "In some ways, the girls are all one girl," observes Auriea Harvey, The Path's other co-designer. "Or one girl at different stages of her life. In some ways, this [game] is about the various stages of life a girl has to go through in order to become a woman."

Money and Justice

Yet another Grapes of Wrath Reference...

When I read this, the first thing I thought was..., well, I thought about the NPR story I had just heard on the news. The story was about undocumented workers and their cost to the California budget. The story says "Legislative Analyst Dan Carson says California now spends about $4.6 billion yearly to provide services for — or to incarcerate — illegal immigrants."

Also, there was a story from yesterday that says about California's budget problems that "The prison population has grown from 25,000 to 175,000 since the early 1990s, not because of an increase in crime, Sullivan says, but because of the "tough-on-crime, three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws. But the growing population isn't the only prison-related challenge facing the state."

But then I asked other questions...How did we deal with homelessness in the past? Those Hoovervilles of the past are now not in the country, they are in the city. Has there ever been a solution? Hoovervilles ended when people found jobs in munitions plants. But today, our Hoovervilles are not just filled with unemployed, but the unemployable. In the past families could take more care of the mentally ill. Population growth, and the new industrialization has misplaced so many of our fellow citizens. Housing seems to be the least we could offer, and save money in the process.

On the topic of criminalizing homelessness, there are already problems and pressures in the justice system. Do we really need to argue this is an economic issue? What value is there to framing the justice system issues, like the problems now that put innocent people in jail, into an economic framework? I think justice really is outside of an economic framework, but it is harder to argue with people how human beings should be valued than the economics of the situation. Well, not harder, but they are less likely to listen to the emotional argument. I wonder in the advocacy work being done for those in the system, what styles of talking about justice there are. And are the framings of the issues leading towards change?. I'm not familiar with a lot of it. I took "race, class, and gender' in college so I have some sociology of crime and punishment knowledge. What should I know if I am going to have a conversation with someone who supports 'tough on crime" or, I would say, who is afraid of being victimized...

And what role does the fear of victimization play in the attitude of people when they would oppose changes to the justice system?

I'm very curious and interested in what changes are being suggested and more of the details from law enforcement about how we got to where we are.

I'm familiar with Foucault's Birth of the Modern Prision on the history of how we culturally got to the modern system, but what were the small pieces of evidence (popular fokelore) that are pushing things as they are?

I also have friends who are very good about posting stories need to be told, but I've never found one that is compelling for me to repost...what is it about this in my own attitude/experience that has me not pushing toward a new culture more consciously.

My Blog, My rules, My questions. Something for me to chew on.

clipped from www.npr.org Urban Panning: The 10 Meanest Cities In America? Without further ado, the groups' Top 10 Meanest U.S. Cities are: 1. Los Angeles 2. St. Petersburg, Fla. 3. Orlando, Fla. 4. Atlanta 5. Gainesville, Fla. 6. Kalamazoo, Mich. 7. San Francisco 8. Honolulu 9. Bradenton, Fla. 10. Berkeley, Calif. It's tempting to look at other, less serious ways cities might be ranked among the most mean. Largest number of quick-changing yellow traffic lights, for instance. Or least garbage pickups per month. A great city, Aristotle said a while back, is not to be confused with a populous one. In other words: Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Just make sure they don't huddle and mass in public places.

Adendum to "Robots' Rights Now!" or Just A Crusafix in a Jar of Pee?

I never thought I would get so much pleasure from these three words...The Summer Movie. If you have read my "Robots' Rights Now!" blog from a few weeks ago, you may understand how I have been personally transformed by Transformers. But after reading this article about Transformers as an art film, I have had a much different experience with the film. Please read this article.

clipped from io9.com Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me. this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.

My Wo"Man In The Mirror".

I'll add my remarks to this later. I should be getting back to work.

clipped from www.commondreams.org In celebrity culture we destroy what we worship. The commercial exploitation of Michael Jackson’s death was orchestrated by the corporate forces that rendered Jackson insane. Jackson, robbed of his childhood and surrounded by vultures that preyed on his fears and weaknesses, was so consumed by self-loathing he carved his African-American face into an ever changing Caucasian death mask and hid his apparent pedophilia behind a Peter Pan illusion of eternal childhood. The stories we like best are “real life” stories—early fame, wild success and then a long, bizarre and macabre emotional train wreck. O.J Simpson offered a tamer version of the same plot. So does Britney Spears.