Financial Advice - Debt Reduction and College Savings

I have a question from Stilla Momma on debt reduction and college savings. OK, college savings first.

Let's start with the obvious. If you have a 0-year-old baby, you need to plan for 18 years in the future. This is tough. However, if things go really badly, we'll be fighting off cannibals and radiation sickness and won't have to worry about college, and if things go really well, we'll have an enlightened government subsidizing college in order to produce a generation of mental giants to colonize Mars... either way, college savings become obsolete. The best is to plan for a future that's much the same as today, but slightly worse.

I once used one of those calculators to look at how much it would take to fully fund sending an 18-year-old to Harvard. That was a mistake. It's not going to happen. My conservative estimate came out to $20,000 a year that you'd need to save. Unless you're at a very high income level, you should just save what you can realistically afford to save. Your child will hopefully be able to make up the difference using loans, grants and a part-time job.

One thing to guard against is inflation. If we go through a period of monster inflation just as you need to cash out the college savings, that would be a disaster. We haven't had serious inflation in a long time. Take a look at these figures:

Year	College Inflation (CB)	General Inflation (CPI)	Rate Ratio
2006	5.9%	3.23%	1.83
2005	5.94%	3.39%	1.75
2004	5.97%	2.66%	2.24
2003	5.99%	2.28%	2.63
2002	5.80%	1.58%	3.67
2001	5.48%	2.85%	1.92
...	...	...	...
1985	8.15%	3.55%	2.30
1984	8.03%	4.14%	1.94
1983	9.78%	2.44%	4.00
1982	14.35%	6.48%	OH MY GOD
1981	13.95%	10.73%	HOLY MOLY
1980	12.00%	13.22%	WHOAH
1979	9.05%	11.27%	0.80

What these numbers mean is that unless you are earning a high rate of return, the real value of your college savings will plummet, and they won't go nearly as far. If your child needs to go to college during those years, you'll take a big hit.

The easiest way to guard against this possible is to buy investments that are protected
against inflation. You may be able to do this within a 529 plan. Other ways are buying US Treasury I-bonds. These are savings bonds that are indexed to the rate of inflation, so if inflation leaps, the return on the bonds will also leap. Don't buy gold and silver. These might be OK investments in their own right, depending on supply and demand, but they don't always go up when inflation goes up.

Moving back a little bit to the basics, you should start by opening an account. It should be a combination of a 529 plan, savings bonds (like I-bonds) and maybe an IRA. Savings bonds are especially good if your household income is not super-high, because they give you a tax break that phases out after $98,000 in annual income.

Here is a chart you can use to compare college savings vehicles.

Here are some things to think about when choosing a vehicle or mix of vehicles:

1) what is the most advantageous in terms of taxes?
2) If I think we will be earning more now than in 18 years, we should try to postpone paying taxes, for example using a Traditional IRA. On the other hand, if we think we will be earning more in 18 years, we want to pay our taxes up front so we won't have to pay them later.
3) if I can't fund all of college, our child will qualify for more financial aid. To qualify for more financial aid, income should be as low as possible. We want the kind of savings that don't "count" as much according to the measures that the financial aid offices use.
4) How active are you in managing investments? Do you want a "set it and forget it" type of plan, or one where you check in several times a year and try to maximize your returns by buying and selling mutual funds and stocks?
5) What happens if your kid doesn't go to college? If you think they'll go eventually, with most vehicles, you can hang on to the money, or use it for someone else. Generally, for educational expenses the only rule is that they have to be related to you. Or you can use it for yourself.

Here's a sample savings plan that is extremely simple. It doesn't have a 529 component because these can be complicated and need lots of research.

1. Set up an internet account at TreasuryDirect. Link your bank account. Set up an automatic savings program that deducts $100 a month and buys I-bonds with it.
2. Set up an internet account with a direct investment firm such as Fidelity or Scottrade. Open a Roth or Traditional IRA, depending on your projections about income. Begin an automatic investment program for a good balanced mutual fund. I like PAXWX, which is also an SRI (Socially Responsible Investment). After buying into the fund's minimum opening requirement, set up an automatic investment program of $100 a month.

If you start off with $1000 and do this for 18 years, not upping the amount, earning a very conservative rate of 5%, you'll have $72,000 for college. Taking inflation into account, this will be enough to pay tuition at a decent state college... room and board if you're lucky and your rate is higher, or the inflation is lower.

Debt reduction: I'll just give two tips. One is to read Dave Ramsey and his latte factor. You don't have to give Dave Ramsey any more money than he already has, just read about him here and on other sites and maybe check out one of his books from the library. The latte factor means you should stop drinking lattes. Basically, examine your life for any expensive habits that don't have big payouts. This doesn't mean turn your life into a joyless desert. Just recognize that there is a vast marketing machine out there brainwashing you into believing you need things you really don't need.

Starbucks lattes are a good example. For example, I drink Starbucks maybe two or three times a month. It's not a habit; it's a fallback for when I need a coffee and I'm driving around or traveling. There are a lot of people at my office who insist on drinking Starbucks every morning, whereas I just drink the nearly-free coffee I make myself. Everything that you consume once a day or once a week, multiply it by 365 or 52 and then think about it! Expand the latte factor to include all fluids. Give yourself a fluid audit. Nobody should be drinking bottled water on a daily basis in the U.S., unless you live next to a Superfund site. If your water is clean but tastes bad, get a water filter device. Bottled water is environmentally unsound and sucks away your savings. As this reporter asks, "what is Evian spelled backwards?"

So a good way to start debt reduction is to give yourself a wasteful spending audit. Determine how much money you're wasting a month, then set up an automatic payment for that amount to be applied to your debt as a payment.

The second tip is to go easy on yourself and recognize your flaws and imperfections when it comes to money. You need to work with the flaws you can't get rid of. Here is an example. Let's say you have a $10,000 loan at 7% interest. You have the opportunity to move it to a 0% offer on a credit card. The 0% lasts for a year.

Moving it all to the 0% would be a mistake if you can't pay it all off within a year. Yes, you might find another 0% offer, but if your credit tanks in 6 months, you might not. The safest thing to do might be to transfer $3000 to the 0%, because you know you can pay that down within a year. On the other hand, this is all getting rather complicated. If you think you might screw up payments at any point, don't make the transfer at all, because the worst that could happen is messing up your credit and having the amount go up to 15% or 25%! Before you embark on payment plans, make sure you have a good banking and billpaying routine established. If you have a habit of being forgetful or putting things off, find ways to trick yourself.

Follow-Up to Frustrating Adoption Conversation

Since no one's biting on the financial advice post, I thought I'd address some comments on the post from a few days ago. I dashed off that post fairly quickly, so now I'll go back and try to explain my reaction a little bit more.

I suppose I'm using a framework of foster care adoption to look at private adoption. Removing a child from their parents is not about judging a family as grade C or D and improving the situation by placing the child in a new, grade A or B family. It's about (or should be about) removing the child from an "F" situation because it would be almost impossible for things to get worse.

I know a lot of people who grew up having less than ideal family lives... as I suspect do most people from all walks of life. For example, my stepfather grew up under the thumb of a narcissistic, abusive alcoholic. I've only met a very few who really think that being placed into a new family should definitely have been their fate.

So I'm fairly set in my belief that giving up your child should only happen in an "F" situation. This doesn't mean an "F" mother. The quintessential "F" situation is that you have a terminal illness and no trustworthy relatives. If that was the case with me, I would start making an adoption plan in a heartbeat.

I don't think it should happen if you're in a "C" or "D" scenario and just think it might get worse.
I've heard a private adoption reform slogan -- "adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" -- and it makes a lot of sense to me.

I don't want to sound too judgmental about women who relinquish children not out of massive desperation or psychological pressure. I don't agree with it, but I don't agree with a lot of things people do. Private adoption needs serious reform. But if a woman is determined to relinquish her child, then that child absolutely deserves a new and loving permanent family, not to be held in limbo for years. Replacing all private adoption with the foster care system would be a disaster (especially since the foster care system is practically a disaster anyways). I guess it's a fine line... children shouldn't have to suffer to prove a point, or to satisfy the ego of an adult, but they also shouldn't have biological connections severed out of fear of potential suffering.

There are a lot of examples in my own family that push me towards thinking this way... although other people from nontraditional backgrounds won't necessarily share my point of view.

My mother wasn't married when she had me. She was drifting aimlessly throughout South Asia and Africa with occasional pit stops in Europe and a later stay in Japan. My father sent some money now and then, and dropped in on us for weeks or months in periods between jobs, and my grandparents wired $20 a month. This went a long way in countries like India and Afghanistan and Kenya. She stayed with friends she met on her travels. My mother carried me on her back. I had almost nothing, just a little crocheted bear and a set of wooden blocks. As for drugs... well, she was a hippie, it was the 1970s, enough said.

I remember that time as a kind of privileged paradise. Constantly exposed to new people and places and things and food... I was happy all the time. I had one of the happiest childhoods imaginable. In fact, I don't think I knew what it meant to be unhappy until I started to go to school in Japan and then later in America. During the rough times to come, at least I could always look back and think about what a wonderful life I had lived.

I don't think the life we had was ideal for everyone. We lived in a monastery outside of New Delhi for a while, and my mother told me that Western heroin junkies washed up there like human flotsam, because the monks never turned anyone away, and a few of the junkies came with sad scrawny children.

In short, my mother lived an extremely irresponsible life. She eventually settled down and started to earn a living. But I didn't suffer for that period of irresponsibility, and I'm fact I'm extremely glad for it.

And again, there's my relative who had the baby with the (failed) crack dealer. I wish she hadn't done certain things in certain ways, yes, but today her baby is wanted, loved and well cared for.

"V" has less good sense than my mother or my relative, but at this point in her life "V" could and should pull herself together and start being a good mother instead of a mediocre-to-bad one. However, I doubt anything I say will affect whatever (probably bad) decision she will make.

Personal Finance and Investment Open Post

Since my blog has been so downbeat lately I thought I'd try something new before I embark on another post along the lines of a) adoption woes b) "what's up with these white people?" c) complaints about Atlanta's criminal justice system.

I forget I have an MBA sometimes! It's not the mightiest MBA in the world, having been obtained from an institution several steps up from the University of Phoenix but several stair flights down from Harvard Business School. However, I know a fair amount about investing and keep up to date on personal finance issues.

Does anyone have any questions about subjects like: high-yield savings, interest rates, automatic savings plans, debt reduction, socially responsible investing, establishing college funds and so on? I may be able to answer your question, and if not, I can definitely give you at least two or three of the most useful and accurate web links. There's a lot of horrible financial advice out there on the internet.

More Incompetence!

I swear this is the last post bitching about my incompetent ex-caseworker. It's getting old.

After the new review our new worker mentioned we only had 4 hours of post-class training on file. We should have 11 hours. My husband always dropped off the certificates at the office. I guess she just lost half of them.

Luckily we have copies!

Frustrating Adoption Conversation

I had an interesting talk with my mother tonight about a daughter of her friend who is considering giving her child up for adoption. I know my mother's friend well and have met this daughter before. This is from when my mother lived in another state, by the way.

I'm going to be brutally honest about my assessment of the situation. I try very hard not to hold any stereotypes about women who give up their children for adoption because I know there are so many different kinds of women and reasons and situations. This particular situation, and again I have to be brutally honest, does not reflect well on the woman.

The woman (I'll call her V) had a baby a year and half ago and is pregnant again. She's very irresponsible and my mother calls her "the most selfish person I've met in my life". The father of both children is a meth dealer. She's not on meth, or if she is, has hidden it so far. Her own mother had five children, worked hard all her life, and has taken a firm stance towards her own daughter. She tells her that V can move in permanently as long as she gets a job, any job... which V won't do. V just relies on friends and her mother and floats around with her baby.

V didn't get an abortion because "it's against her morals". I think there is some fundamentalist influence on the family, but not a huge amount. Her mother has some James Dobson books. The father is kind of a nonentity and doesn't do much of anything except sit at home and complain; her mother pretty much carries the whole family.

V is thinking about giving one or both children up for adoption. My mother said she thought this was a good idea.

I told her I thought it was an absolutely terrible idea. The idea that children are always automatically better off adopted is a strange white Christian subgroup phenomenon. My mother is not involved in that, but must have picked up the attitude from V's mother. To me, adoption should be the absolute last-ditch resort for a biological mother. I believe that V's wanting to relinquish is motivated out of pure selfishness and irresponsibility. She wants attention. She doesn't want to work for it. She really is not that bad off.

You know, I have an in-law relative who had a baby with a crack dealer and she's doing just fine! (Calling him a crack dealer is really a compliment, since he's more properly a failed crack dealer. Yes, he lost money selling crack. I've read this is quite common if you're, say, working the mean streets of Baltimore. But he lost money selling crack in small-town Georgia, which is truly, deeply stupid and pathetic, as well as a sad commentary on the math taught in our public school system.) Anyway, today she's a responsible single mother and her child is loved and thriving.

V could turn herself around. She has support. She's nowhere near rock bottom. She just wants to keep drifting. If she's really in bad trouble (and especially if she's on meth) and worried about bringing harm to her children, then I do believe she should seriously consider adoption. At least she lives in a state with an enforceable open adoption agreement.

I told my mother all my thoughts on this, stressing that I thought it was a very bad idea, that V probably did not understand the consequences, and that the family may have been exposed to certain messages that relinquishing a child was just a really positive and cool thing to do... I told her to pass it on to her friend.

I find it very frustrating to counsel dysfunctional adults, and am probably terrible at it, which is why I avoid doing it whenever possible.

Personal Update: Sticking to it for now

The senior caseworker is handling our case now. We had a meeting with her today. I think we're going to stay with our agency until the end of the year. If we still feel no progress is being made, we'll leave.

I found out the extent of the damage caused by the sluggishness of our old worker. We had been given our homestudy to read over five months ago. I made numerous corrections. Those corrections were simply never made and the erroneous version kept being submitted. Here are a few of the errors listed roughly in decreasing importance. I thought these all had been corrected 5 months ago.

Was	Should Be
0-6	0-7
"minor emotional needs"	"mild to moderate"
that my husband and I had been dating for 5 years before getting married last year	living together for 5 years
adoptive placement only, no legal risk	some legal risk OK
MPA	MBA

The caseworker has promised to update it immediately and add an addendum. The addendum will say 0-10. She said they are really going to get cracking on our case. I have a measured degree of confidence in her.

She didn't actually apologize to us on behalf of the agency, which I think should have been done. However, she did say something that made me feel better: "I know this is my job, but it's your life."

We've also been advised to attend an adoption fair in order to make ourselves visible to the caseworkers who also attend the fair. So far, we've been skipping them. Everybody hates adoption fairs. I'm not too happy about the idea, but she has a point.

My feelings right now are rather complicated. I want to take a break, but things might be heating up. Blah...

In order to make myself feel better this week I spent some time looking into a physical goal. This is tough because I'm not very physical. Every time I think about getting back into doing karate or aikido, which I used to do as a kid, I remind myself it actually involves exercising, which I hate.

Between the ages of 15-50, my father was probably in better shape than all the hosts on the Discovery Channel put together. Although for mysterious reasons he has something against running, he hiked, cross-country skied, swam, dived, rock-climbed, bicycled, and has ridden a motorcycle across the Sahara desert. In his mid-sixties he's still in excellent shape although his ankle fusion slows him down, and he's scratched a few of the activities off the list. Anyway, I have inherited none of it except swimming. I love swimming and I'm a natural open-water swimmer. My form isn't great and I'm not fast, but I can stay in the water for hours and swim miles if I'm in any kind of decent shape.

I'm too chicken to do major open-water swimming on my own, but I found the perfect adventure vacation at www.swimtrek.com:

SwimTrek is the world's only swimming holiday operator, running swimming tours to Croatia, Greece, Malta, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the British Isles. We go island or lake hopping following routes of cultural, historical and geographical significance.

I can easily handle their 5km a day average with a bit of preparation. The price of a tour includes being accompanied by a boat and put up every night.

I made my husband take some basic swimming lessons, because the first time we swam together I was quite frankly terrified he would drown. Let's just say he would not be up for this kind of tour. My mother gets too seasick. In the past, my father would swim too fast for me, but the ankle fusion would slow him down enough... I was optimistic, but he responded to my email about a swim trek by proclaiming "I'm an animal with solitary behavior".

Maybe a couple friends will be interested, but if they're not, I might go by myself for a week next summer. It's a nice long-term goal to keep in mind.

Foster Care Adoption ARRRRRRRRGH

We have a meeting with the senior caseworker/agency head on Wednesday to address our concerns.

This has been brewing for the last few weeks.

Basically, our caseworker up and quit. This is a woman I trusted, with whom I felt an emotional connection, and I told a lot of very personal things to her, including my worries about how my race would affect the placement process. I learned about her quitting from a third party. I have also been learning that she hasn't done a very good job with us. Our homestudy still says "mild emotional needs" only, and it should say mild to moderate. Basically, any not-too-violent behavior that doesn't require one full stay-at-home parent, we can handle. Our homestudy does not reflect that. It also had an inaccurate younger age range. Remember the ongoing saga Response to a Rejection and Response to a Response to a Rejection? Well, our caseworker's response was also inaccurate. I received the real response this weekend. We were out of the running not because of geography, but because of the age range and because the sibling group presented "more than minor" emotional needs. Everything else in the homestudy was fine, apparently.

I feel stabbed in the back. My normally optimistic husband is also feeling the hurt. Perhaps most of the inquiries (50+) I have sent out for the last five months have been for naught.

My negative feelings start with the fact that we're being treated poorly. No one has bothered to apologize to us yet. I've just heard "turnover is high in this field" as if that was an excuse for not sending us a simple email like "hey your caseworker is leaving". Then when I start to feel aggrieved it triggers guilt instead... it has been hinted, in not so many words, we're selfish for wanting a young (under 8) child. Thank goodness I know people who have already done this. Otherwise I would have dropped out a while back, like I suspect the majority of my class already has, because of the lack of moral support. There's only so far you can push people.

A while back, last year, I wrote a long post based around the Evan. B. Donaldson report on overcoming barriers to adoption from foster care. A lot of my thoughts on the report still apply. I ended it by saying it was important to remind myself that social workers are human beings, not almighty telepathic gatekeepers. However, I am currently in the mindset of reminding myself that social workers are human beings, not lying backstabbing incompetent scum.

I know the root problem is really the low value placed on human services in our society.

I have an online friend who thinks I should switch to the county. There would be a lot more placement opportunities. According to what I have heard locally the drawbacks of the county are: high turnover of workers, low advocacy, chaotic bureaucracy, high probability of being lied to. Since I'm already experiencing those things at my current agency, how much worse can it get? Maybe a little, maybe a lot.

In our meeting Wednesday I am going to politely but honestly lay out all our concerns, ask for an updated homestudy, to have a copy of our updated homestudy, and tell her that if we feel no progress has been made on our behalf we are going to switch to the county (or MAYBE another public agency) at the end of the year. I'm sick of the endless round of fruitless inquiries. I can't feel any positive thoughts about making a home for potential imaginary children in the middle of all this mess.

Last week was a dual anniversary. In early September 2006 my husband and I got married in the courthouse, and then went to drop off our application form at the agency. For our anniversary we celebrated by going to a great Vietnamese restaurant. I thought we would be farther along now. These events cast a shadow on our night but did not ruin it.

On the bright side, I feel confident that both of us are handling this well. I haven't broken down crying or anything; it hasn't destroyed our resolve. I know we will likely face harsher tests in future and will pass them.

I'll have an update soon!

Random Violence Sunday

Yesterday started off great, then detoured into random violence.

I went to church with my mother, then we stopped at the garden center and I bought an evergreen viburnum. I got back, cooked us all an omelette, my mother left with our dog to take him to visit his dog friends, my husband and I worked in the yard for a while, our diamond doves were diligently nesting.

A truck screeched to a halt on the intersection across the street from us. A man and a woman got out and started fighting on our neighbor's yard. At first it was just wrestling. Then he punched her in the face, hard. My husband called 911. I held the door open and tried to beckon her from across the street to come over to our door. 911 put us on hold, dammit! She was yelling and saying she just wanted her phone so she could call her aunt, and that she didn't deserve to get beaten. He punched her in the face again, got back in the car... I was hoping she would walk away, but she just got back in the car with him. They drove off too fast for me to get the license plate. However, just a minute later we saw a police car driving down the street in the other direction. My husband ran over to car, flagged them down and told the cop he might be able to catch them. We were thinking they may have pulled over at the next intersection and gotten into it again... unfortunately the cop returned after 15 minutes, said he couldn't find the car, and that was that.

I'm really angry about 911 putting us on hold. We never got anyone. Looking back on the recent times I've called 911, I've always gotten someone after a couple rings.

• Earlier this year: called 911 to report rabid raccoon blocking traffic. The situation was rather urgent because very ignorant and foolhardy people kept trying to shoo it out of the way with sticks or their feet.
• 1 year ago: called 911 to report messed-up pedestrian weaving back and forth dangerously close to traffic on the shoulder of a major highway.
• 2.5 years ago in prior residence: called 911 after man knocking on my front door threatens to sexually assault me. The police came quickly but didn't bother arresting him because after just a few minutes he convinces them it was all a misunderstanding. Within 24 hours he threatens his roommate, stabs himself and runs off into the night... thanks, lazy cops! I have to give another group of police the credit for finally and efficiently arresting him.

At least that policeman my husband flagged down made an honest effort. Overall, I believe we would all be much safer if we had more good neighborhood beat cops. This includes reacting to domestic violence. I feel very powerless after witnessing what I did today. I had about a 20-second window where I could have gone across the street and tried to stop the beating. Of course, the man could also have pulled out a gun and shot me, so I didn't.

The rest of the evening was pretty quiet. I grilled some squid on our backyard grill, and we had that for dinner with rice and salad.

Metascam!

My husband gets the best Nigerian scam emails.

They've gotten really creative recently. Earlier this year, he received one from an Army Captain in Iraq. To summarize: while looting a palace, the Captain and his merry crew had discovered three crates: one full of cocaine, another containing a tactical nuke, the third full of cash. Of course they needed my husband's help to get all of this out of Iraq. More specifically, his bank account number. I wish I still had that email.

He just got one that takes the scam to whole 'nother level. It's a metascam. Wow!

NIGERIAN FOREIGN PAYMENT INVESTIGATION AGENCY
ANTI- TERRORISM CLEARANCE/FRAUD UNIT
FALOMO OFFICE COMPLEX IKOYI


Attn: My Dear Beneficiary.

It is our duty to monitor this payment to you according to this new procedure of payment sign by the presidential senate committee to pay you directly from their paymaster through ATM CARD From HSBC London UK, Our responsibility is to lift up the battered image of this great country and not to destroy it. Please save your indulgence approach and make no further comment on our integrity, we are here to help you and not destroy.

Based on our findings in this investigation department we wish to warn you against some Miscreants, Hoodlums and Touts who go about scamming innocent people by claiming to be who they are not and thereby tarnishing the image of this wonderful country. We were informed that some Hoodlums are contacting you in respect to the collection of your fund which was long approved in your favour with the Central Bank of Nigeria. As a matter of fact we have been on this investigation assignments for some time codedly known to no one but the Presidency and some top government official who are in support of this investigation team to help stop fraudalert activities in this country and as well restore the image that has been tarnished by the above listed group of people.

we have maped every strategy to forestall and make sure that we track down the past fraudulent and impersonator's that has been the obstacle for you to receive your right funds owed to you by our government. It will interest and help us if you send further information that will help us more to hold these culprint and bring them to justice under the Nigeria Law, we already have some of them in custody for prosecuting after final investigation and evidence, if you can provide any information's to us concerning any one that has contacted you in regards to this payment, please forward it so that we will look into it and know if it is one the people already in our custody.

Note: your ATM CARD from London is here on our desk and is ready to deliver to you immediately you reconfirm your delivery Address to avoid wrong payment.

We applogise on behalf of the President and the people of Nigeria for any dealy and lost this must have coursed you in any way and promise that such thing will not occure again in the furture and should incase you are currently dealing with any one of them regarding your fund ( ATM CARD ), we urge you to stop further contact with them as you are taking a very big risk and it might interest you to know that you will never get your fund from them as they have nothing to offer.The hoodlums will continue coming up with expences and thereby requesting for money from you untill you go Bankrupt. Hence, your ATM CARD get to you, Note that we are duly inter-switched and you can make withdrawal in any location of the ATM Center of your choice/nearest to you.

Finally, we are expecting to hear from you immediately unfailingly so as to enable us serve you better and you get your FUND THROUGH ATM CARD to your door step without any delay again. Remember to reconfirm your delivery Address to avoid wrong payment.
Belowi is the info:

1) Your full name.....................................
2) Your phone and fax number..........................
3) Your full mailing address..........................
4) Your complete Age..................................

Thank you very much for your anticipated co-operation and understanding while we wait for your urgent response to this Email address (ONLY) : chairmanribadunuhu_efcc@yahoo.co.uk

Yours sincerely,

MICHAEL.B AMADI/SUPPORTER RIBADU NUHU.
Economic and financial crimes commission (EFCC)

Here is the real Nigerian EFCC.

"At Least You Know Where You Stand"

This is a post about racism and segregation in the South. It's not really a "turning over a rock" post because it's too rambling.

I'm usually very South-positive on this blog. The New South, racial diversity, Atlanta has everything, etcetera. A series of stories just reminded me I need to temper myself a bit.

I heard a story on NPR the other day about support for the Iraq war from the town of Pontotoc, Mississippi. It sounded very unbalanced to me. Every single person interviewed about the dead soldiers of Pontotoc expressed unwavering support for Bush and hope that the war would continue.

The unbalanced part was that everyone sounded white.

I remember earlier this year sitting in the airport with my husband. It was around the time of the surge and there was a lot of troop movement. We were sitting in the rotunda when a large group of soldiers lined up on the balcony. Everyone in the rotunda began clapping for them. Well, not everyone. I took a quick look around. Everyone who was clapping was white. All the black people just looked sort of downcast and uncomfortable.

The reaction I felt was shame. If I was truly a courageous person I would have yelled "please don't go!" at the soldiers. How can you "clap for the surge" if you're antiwar? It would be like clapping at a group of young people about to go jump off a cliff just because a morally-challenged idiot told them it was the right thing to do. Some of those soldiers who were on the balcony that day are probably horribly wounded or dead now... damn, this stupid war needs to end.

Anyway, if the NPR reporter had interviewed some black residents of Pontotoc I doubt there would have been the same positive response to the war. But they didn't, and the typical liberal NPR viewer will have their stereotypes of Mississippi and the South confirmed. Here are some demographics of Mississippi:

Race	Mississipi	USA
White persons, percent, 2005 (a)	61.2%	80.2%
Black persons, percent, 2005 (a)	36.9%	12.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2005 (a)	0.4%	1.0%
Asian persons, percent, 2005 (a)	0.7%	4.3%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2005 (a)	0.0%	0.2%
Persons reporting two or more races, percent, 2005	0.6%	1.5%
Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin, percent, 2005 (b)	1.7%	14.4%
White persons not Hispanic, percent, 2005	59.7%	66.9%

And the growth trend, which for some reason doesn't include Hispanic/Latino:

% Growth 2000-2005
	White	Black	Asian
2000 (total population)	62.37%	36.66%	0.82%
2005 (total population)	61.72%	37.24%	0.91%
Growth 2000-2005 (total population)	1.62%	4.33%	13.67%

The interview, with its overwhelming white focus in a state where white people are actually much less numerous than average, was probably not very representative of Mississippi attitudes.

I was talking about this with my husband and he asked me if I wanted to go live in Mississippi, to which my response was a big "heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell noooooooo."

I need to step back and be fair. Maybe the interview was representative of Pontotoc. There are many small towns like that that are almost completely monoracial due to the history of segregation. Even where towns are multiracial the legacy persists. I lived for almost a year in a small town in the mountains in Virginia and only once visited the small "black side" of town. The thing that really freaked me out was that I noticed the black residents pronounced the name of the town in a totally different way than the white residents. They pronounced it more the way it was spelled whereas the white people had an odd vowel change. Their lives were so separate they weren't even living in the same town, even though they lived in the same town... it was a kind of deep linguistic/metaphysical segregation.

One point I'm touching on is that the South can be a very hostile environment for non-white people, more specifically black people but also including other people of color when they happen to become more visible. I just read a terrifying story called "Do You Understand Where You Are" about some black people getting shot at just for stepping across a line. Impersonal institutionalized racism sucks, but the rarer, up-close-and-personal racism is what really brings the pain, terror and violence.

There are still many people who prefer to live in the South. Even people who don't have deep cultural ties to the region. I've heard this statement a fair number of times when discussing why... "at least you know where you stand".

What does this really mean? On an obvious level, a hostile racist in the South is easier to spot. Not everyone with a confederate flag on their pickup truck is a hostile racist but the chance of them being one goes way, way up.

On a deeper level, I think it means that people who say they are not racist are more likely to not be racist, or be less racist.

It's easy for someone who lives in a small town in Connecticut to say something like "I don't have anything against those people". Their only contact with "those people" is rare, fleeting or confined to television.

A white person in the South has probably grown up among narratives of racism, prejudice and segregation. They've also probably had more contact with real live non-white human beings.

If you're a person of color with a decent degree of social mobility, you're faced with a lot of interesting choices about where you want to live, and how much and what kind of hostility you can handle. A place where there are already many of you, with a long history, but you're informally segregated into a lower rung of society? A place where you're an exotic stranger, highly visible, social status uncertain? A place where you're a hated newcomer? A place where everyone insists these types of social demarcations don't exist, even when you can see them plain as day? A sterile exurban spot where you don't have to worry about any of this stuff because there's no community at all, but which is also terribly isolating?

Personal note: someone like me, with no hometown, a strange accent, always assumed to be the foreigner... wherever I go, I try to understand where it is I'm standing. It's tiring. I find it much easier when people just straight up tell me, or else I know for certain that they don't really care. Maybe this is one reason why I never felt uncomfortable during my stays in Mexico. The stares and the questions felt more honest, even though a lot of people expressed doubt that I was really from the United States. I was sort of a gringa, not a güera, definitely a "china" and unambiguously a foreigner.

Parent Practice

Today was superbusy! I spent the afternoon doing respite care for a new adoptive mother. She needed a little bit of babysitting to attend a special event. My husband had to work the whole day and couldn't be around.

During the morning I ran some errands, cleaned the house and drafted my mother. The boy is 18 months old and I needed backup. I actually have some experience with toddlers -- in fact, I spent a summer when I was young as an au pair for a toddler -- but at 18 months, they're more like a very heavy baby than a toddler, and the task seemed intimidating.

My mother and I had an amusing conversation while installing electrical outlet protectors.

- "When I was taking care of you we never bothered with anything like this! You never stuck anything in an outlet."
- "Actually mom, I stuck a fork in an outlet once. To see what would happen. It was a long time ago but I remember it quite vividly because it was so painful."
- "What?!?! You never told me! Was this in America?"
- "Yep."
- "Then you must have been six or seven. By that age there's no device guaranteed to protect children from the consequences of their own stupidity!"
- "True."

The baby was cute as a button. He napped, woke up, ate his meal and had a diaper change, and was very sad. He had such a worried expression on his little face and kept making hiccupy sobs. I tried everything I could. We played with his toys, read his books and rocked him and so on. Then I noticed he was watching cars out the window. I took him outside, sat him on my lap on the front doorstep and gave him a flower to play with while he watched cars and buses go by. This really cheered him up! Then I watered some plants with him and sat on the doorstep some more. When his mother drove up, he jumped into her arms and turned into the happiest baby in the world, laughing and talking up a storm.

There's something going down right now, an external thing that is affecting our matching process. Even though I keep this blog anonymous I don't feel free to talk about it. It's negative. However it's not causing me huge anxiety because I'm developing multiple avenues of information on the situation. Yesterday I was very confused and angry but today I feel more confident. I hate to get all cloak and dagger like this, but maybe I can explain some more of it in a few weeks. I've semi-evangelized foster care adoption in this blog and on some forums... but I love to be honest, and I have to say it can be exhausting, frustrating and just plain bizarre.

Belated Katrina Anniversary Post

I forgot to do a Katrina anniversary post yesterday.

There's an interesting post and discussion over at poplicks.com. In short, everyone is still screwed.

Two years ago I was absolutely horrified and shaken to the core while watching scenes of the aftermath. I could not believe how badly America was failing.

I was able to help some evacuees in a small way. Many of them poured into Atlanta. Some had friends or relatives in Georgia, others just kept driving until their gas and money ran out. We held a donation drive at work. I volunteered with the Red Cross over the weekend to "process" evacuees and get them food, shelter and $300 debit cards. I vividly remember the faces as I sat across the table interviewing them and filling in their applications. They had to wait for a long time, but we didn't deny anyone. A couple scam artists must have made off with a card, but so what... the elderly, gaunt-looking people with nothing in their pockets except change and a few scraps of paper got the immediate help they needed with the minimum of humiliation and heartache.

The levees still aren't fixed. The whole thing could happen all over again next month.

White Guilt, White Resentment

Here's a post for the "Turning over a rock" series. These are longer posts where I try to look at difficult and highly emotional topics in a rational but creative way. I've been thinking about this particular racial topic for a while, and a recent discussion over at Racialicious gave me the impetus to set it all down.

------

My mother is white. My husband is white. About 80% of my life and 95% of my adult life has been spent in predominantly white environments. I'm a former student of the topic of racial hybridity, but recently I'm most interested in the study of whiteness and white people.

This is an absolutely fantastic book on the topic: White Like Me by Tim Wise. He's also a southerner and the book has a lot to say about white male identity in the south, and since I've lived most of my life down here I found it very relevant and accurate.

How do white people think about race? How do they think about their own whiteness? White people often give very confusing and contradictory answers to these questions.

I can try and answer the questions myself. Doing so means trying to think like a white person. This should be easy, given my long and intimate experience with whiteness, but it's not. In fact it's sort of weird and painful.

I came up with this idea of white guilt and white resentment earlier this year. I've been thinking about it and applying it to people's actions and arguments and seeing if it fits. So far it has.

I started off by thinking about a difference I've noticed between several different types of white people and their psychological development. I don't want to generalize. Some white people grow up in an environment where they're a minority; for example, a white girl I knew who grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn. They tend to develop a refreshingly pragmatic attitude about race. Others from that kind of environment react in the opposite way by closing ranks with other white people and establishing firm prejudices. On a different path, white people who grow up in monocultural white environments tend to exist in blissful racial ignorance until they go off to college, then go through a racial identity shakeout period.

When white people first seriously start thinking about race they're in danger of falling into the guilt/resentment trap.

A white person starts feeling guilty. "My ancestors may have caused the suffering of this other (almost always black) person," they think. The non-white person is a victim! The next step: being a victim means being a loser or a saint. This has nothing to do with race, it's actually a much deeper cultural tendency and runs deep through various religions.

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed in the rule of Fortune. Many thought that those who were lowest on Fortune's wheel, such as slaves or the chronically unlucky, should be socially avoided. Their suffering was contagious and could drag down those higher on the wheel. But Christianity stresses the redemptive value of suffering: the meek shall inherit the earth.

The guilty white person believes that suffering has ennobled the black person to a near mystical degree. This is the origin of all those silly Magic Negro fictional characters. The glorification of the proud-in-the-face-of-certain-defeat and conveniently-located-in-the-far-past Native American warrior is another example of the nobility of suffering theme.

But suffering doesn't really make people any more noble in their real-life actions. In fact, it often makes them stressed, depressed, apathetic and mean. Overcoming suffering builds character, but suffering on its own tends to limit people horribly.

The guilty white person puts the non-white person on a pedestal and expects them to act nobly. Disappointment always results! In fact, non-white people are stupid, lazy, materialistic, weak-minded, petty, cowardly and vicious in about the same proportion as white people are stupid, lazy, materialistic, weak-minded, petty, cowardly and vicious. Cultural differences exist, but the basic flawed nature of humanity cannot be denied.

The guilty white person now begins to feel not so guilty. They get mad. After all, they went out of their way to form a positive impression of the non-white person. They raised up the non-white and in turn lowered the estimation of their own self. But instead of being congratulated or thanked, the other people didn't really care! The pedestal crumbles. Resentment begins. "I gave those people a chance. They didn't take it." The pendulum swings into full-blown resentment.

Now, any further criticism of whiteness or racism can potentially trigger the guilt/resentment dynamic. For example, a simple criticism of institutionalized racism.

"Those people say I am benefiting from a system. This system was established by white people. I am supposed to feel GUILTY because of the actions of white people in the past. Well I RESENT their attempt to make me feel GUILTY. White people aren't the only oppressors after all..." They begin a rambling unnecessary series of defensive maneuvers.

(The most regressive white people don't even go through a guilt phase, because they see non-white people as victims totally deserving of their victimhood due to innate, biological flaws).

The healthy and pragmatic approach is to not feel guilty in the first place, or else work through and move past the guilt/resentment dynamic.

I'm not holding myself out as some kind of squeaky clean saint but I can honestly say I have never experienced this dynamic, and I'm thankful for that. I have two great-grandfathers who were almost certainly members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their ancestors fought on the wrong side in the Civil War. And then I have Japanese ancestors who fought on the wrong side in WWII. I don't feel guilty about any of it. What's the point? I feel a sense of responsibility as a citizen and human being to fix the mistakes of the past, but no sense that I have blood on my hands.

I feel sorry for white people who feel guilty, and I also worry about them. The white people who loudly proclaim that they don't feel guilty I worry about even more. They're generally the angriest, most resentful and claim that anyone who talks about race is trying to personally attack them.

Guilt is not a useless emotion. If you wrong another person, and you feel guilty, you're motivated to change your actions, to apologize and make things right again. But feeling guilty about something someone else did in the past is a completely useless emotion, unless you have a time machine of course. Consider the repercussions of the past on the present, but we all need to move forward together. In America this advice is especially relevant for white people, but I think everyone, everywhere, should try to live by it.

Response to a Response to a Rejection (sort of)

Our worker got back to us fairly quickly after I sent the response email. I had cc:ed her on it. The reason she gave was simple: geography.

I thanked her, and that's about it. I have some doubts as to whether they actually told her that or she just made it up as a nice, plausible neutral answer. There's no point in pushing on it. I don't have high expectations for her at this point. I just want her to send inquiries when I ask, and she's been sending them.

I don't think they're really going to bat for us right now. We don't have enough seniority. We're five months in, and I think once we get nine months in they'll really start shopping us around. Mr. Perfect Single Guy was an exception, partly because I know he actively sent out a lot of inquiries. I want to do the same thing... push on the inquiries, but not obnoxiously.

I'll be doing some respite care this weekend on a referral from the agency. This is awesome. An adoptive mother needs a bit of time in the afternoon to go to a special event, so it's really more babysitting than respite. I'm excited about meeting the little kiddie and also getting the respite brownie points.

Thanks to everyone who shared their comments on the earlier post. This is one of the great things about blogging, sharing knowledge and experience. I'm always glad to hear stories from people who've done it before.

Response to a Rejection

Here's my response to a rare rejection for a sibling group application. The rejection email was short and very polite.

I'm thankful for being told we were not selected; only a few states bother to communicate this. The children were very young with almost no special needs and I doubted we would be selected. I still felt terrible for a few seconds but I'm resolved to try and turn this into a positive. I'm on my virtual knees begging for feedback.

Hello,

I appreciate your notifying us of this decision and hope that __ and __ will soon have a great permanent family.

If you would be so kind, could you please let me know what factors took us out of the running, or where you felt other homestudies were more fitting? For example, the fact that we are not experienced parents? If you could possibly spare a few minutes for a reply, I would be extremely grateful. It would really help us in determining what other children in the photolistings to apply for.

Thank you,
___

Sick of Vick

The Michael Vick story has so much local and national attention right now. The coverage is inescapable. I have to say, I don't have a feel for sports culture at all, although I do vaguely feel it's important because so many other Americans are involved in it.

His supporters get on my nerves. "Dogfighting isn't as bad as killing humans" is their refrain. It's a point that is true, but stupid. Celebrities lose (and make) their careers for all kinds of reasons that aren't as bad as killing humans.

Let's say a video surfaced on Youtube of Michael Vick pooping on the American flag while swearing allegiance to Osama Bin Laden. I don't think that's illegal. Nevertheless, it would instantly destroy his career. Even if his PR team vigorously argued that it wasn't really him, it was his twin brother that looked just like him, he would still be judged guilty in the court of public opinion.

Some of his detractors are irritating, too. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but they seem to have unrealistic standards for sports stars. Agents and owners and fans have been throwing money at these stars for their whole adult lives. When they go to college they have teams of people doing their schoolwork for them. Their ethics are naturally going to be screwed-up. And the commenters saying "well race is not a factor in this"... another half-true-but-half-stupid statement. If he was white he would be in trouble too, perhaps not as much trouble, although I can't really analyze sports racism as I would miss all the subtleties. The stupid part of the statement is that if you're not white, race is always a factor in how you're perceived.

As far as I can tell, where you are on the Vick scale -- "skin him alive" at 0 to "he deserves a second chance" at 100 -- seems to align pretty closely with these factors:

Love dogs: -80
African-American: +20
Love the Falcons: +60

And to me that last factor is the weirdest. I can't remember where I read this, but I heard about a study that asked a pool of ardent sports fans whether they would do something to sabotage a player on the opposing team if they could get away with it. There was a detailed scenario involved. What they would do would mess up the opposing player just enough so that their home team was guaranteed to win, but they would never be caught for it or face any kind of risk. A scary percentage of them said they would do it.

Full disclosure: I'm not a vegetarian, I love my little dog very much, I hate dogfighting and I'm obviously not very respectful of sports. Oddly enough, all the men in my family are the same way. If we have a sports-loving kid I'm just going to have to grin and bear it!

Personal Update - Lazy Coconut No More!

This weekend has been eventful and decisive! First of all, my mother hurt her foot. It appears to have been just a muscle spasm, and she's fine now. Thank goodness, because she doesn't have health insurance. She's waiting it out for Medicare, because the last private insurance quote she got was just ridiculous, as in $1000 a month.

I spent much of Saturday hanging around with my mother and a friend of hers. My father was also in town (he flew out yesterday). It was quite a change to have him visiting in a fully mobile state. We were used to the noise of his knee walker, a steady "whirrr ka-THUNK ka-THUNK whirrr" on the hardwood floor of our house. Now we can't hear him coming.

He's healed well from the ankle fusion and is still extremely active, although he made one concession: he's given up motorcycle riding. Your mid-sixties is probably a good age to give up motorcycle riding.

I bought a camcorder this weekend and I'm going to use it to make home movies and document our family history. I have a little background in film production... enough to know I'm a terrible director, worse actor but passable editor. We'll see how it goes.

The camcorder is going to be the last large purchase for a long time. My husband and I made a major financial decision: we're going to buy a house. The neighborhood around the corner from us is sort of depressed, but the houses are fantastic brick bungalows, much like ours, and we're located close enough to the center of the city that I'm not worried about a real estate crash. Prices there may drop in the short-term, but they won't get much lower.

I want to get a cheap house in that neighborhood, do basic renovations, rent it out and hold on to it as a long-term investment.

Where I think many landlords go wrong is in renting too much out of desperation and greed. Trying to squeeze the highest price in the shortest amount of time, they rent to sketchy people.

I remember a particularly nasty situation back in Miami. My friend and I were living together in a three-bedroom rental and needed another roommate ASAP. Our landlady recommended a guy. The guy moved in with us. It turned the guy was our landlady's ex-boyfriend. She had decided to get back together with her ex-husband, and couldn't kick out her ex-boyfriend until she found another place for him to stay, so she unloaded him on us! He turned out to be a thieving massive cokehead and there was a lot of stress getting him to leave after we figured that out.

My plan is to rent at a low price, and really look very carefully at rental applications, do credit checks and take time to choose the absolute most responsible and stable people. We will probably not make a profit off the rental for a while.

To get the down payment I've established a very ambitious six-month savings goal. I may need to get a part-time job. I'm looking into adjunct teaching in business or English. I hate the stress of teaching for money. I'd rather do some sort of food prep job, but although those jobs in themselves are less stressful, the social environment is risky... two out of three times you end up with Mussolini bosses and I can't deal with that anymore. Mini-anecdote: the last time I had a Mussolini boss I was working in an Atlanta cafe bussing tables. The manager picked up a crumb from the floor and flourished it in my face with an angry look. Later she apologized, but said her reaction to the crumb was unpreventable because she "came from fine dining".

Soon is the best time to buy real estate. It's turning into a buyer's market.

I need to plan for our future. I've been to a lot of interesting places already; I don't plan on sacrificing myself to the grind for the rest of my life, but at this stage I really need to create a secure base for my family, which includes my parents as well as my future children. The good job I have now has gotten us part of the way there and is as secure as corporate jobs get... which isn't all that secure. If I worked for the government or in a union job I wouldn't feel as apprehensive.

I'm also reducing the percentage of my charitable contributions. I'm going to make up for it by volunteering more. I'm excited about this plan and feel positive about making the savings goal by the end of February.

Joe is Japanese

I just read about this at Racialicious. It's an upcoming web animation called "Joe is Japanese", based on life stories from a hapa in Japan.



I've sometimes wondered what my life would be like had I stayed in Japan instead of going to America after kindergarten. I also have a very un-Japanese name! I don't think my life would have been impossible, but it would have been very, very hard.

Here's what Joe says:

The show is based on (mostly) true events from my life. It wasn’t easy growing up a half-breed. No one culture will ever be yours to embrace. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really be Japanese, and as I got older I realized that I might have overcompensated and became too Japanese. You’d have to be Japanese to understand what I mean by that one... :-P

... I get to tell random stories like that. Stories that made up my life… they made me into what I am today, (mostly) Japanese.

Food and Racism: The Snapping Point

It's been a while since I made a substantive post. Here's a draft I've had kicking around for a while. Unlike my other food and racism anecdote post, it doesn't reflect so well on me.

--

This is an anecdote from my experiences waitressing in Miami during college in the early 90s. Since I'm Asian and there are so few Asians in Miami, I had an uncommon perspective on Miami's race and class hierarchy; as a US citizen and college student, albeit non-"Anglo", I was a relatively privileged outsider with an average amount of social mobility.

For about six months I worked at a trendy café in a tourist district. The cooks were Cuban-American. Cooks are a fairly high status position in restaurants. The other servers were a tightly-knit bunch of young illegal Swedish immigrants. Other part-time Anglo servers floated in and out, but the Swedes were willing to put up with more abuse because of their immigration status.

Everywhere I worked, cleaning positions in Miami were held by immigrants with the lowest economic and social capital. This generally meant non-Cuban Caribbeans and Hispanics. The full-time busser responsible for all major cleaning duties at the small café space was a recently arrived Jamaican. She was a very short and powerfully built woman, looking to be in her 50s, who always kept her eyes downcast and rarely spoke. We were both smokers, and I sometimes chatted with her during smoke breaks. She told me she had several children and grandchildren, not all of them in America. Our most memorable conversation was when something unknown triggered a quiet rant about African-Americans; in her opinion they were all violent drug-addicted thieves and could not be trusted.

The owner was an abrasive and dictatorial Italian. He once called a special staff meeting only to alternately glare and scream at us for 15 minutes straight. I remember him yelling "WORKING WITH YOU PEOPLE IS A NIGHTMARE, I TELL YOU, IT'S A NIGHTMARE". A few months into my tenure he stopped spending time at the restaurant and hired a French assistant manager to take over duties. The Frenchman's name was Philippe, and he was a truly miserable specimen of humanity. Because we were short-staffed, 90% of his job duties consisted of serving and cleaning and cashiering, so he didn't have nearly as much time to boss people around as he obviously wanted.

Philippe believed he was at the very top of the caste system. He wanted everyone else to believe it too. He was short and pudgy and had a complex about it. The Swedes were fellow white Europeans, so they were perhaps his closest threat, and he always reinforced their subordinate status by making nasty little jokes at them. His behavior towards everyone else was less subtle. We were scum.

The Cubans were skilled workers who probably had better job security than Philippe, so they didn't bother taking him too seriously. One cook pretended he couldn't pronounce the French "Fee-LEEP" and kept saying the Spanish "Felipe" or "Feh-LEE-Peh" instead. This would send Philippe into paroxysms. Of course, the Swedes and I all began to copy this passive resistance.

Me: "Felipe, we're out of napkins."
"My name is Philippe. Philippe! Why can't you pronounce my name correctly? Are you an idiot? It's not hard. My name is FRENCH. Not Spanish. Philippe! Not Felipe. Philippe!"
Me: "Sorry, Felipe."

His worst abuse was reserved for the Jamaican woman, and for reasons of his own he reserved it for when I wasn't around. Of course, as a normal day to day routine, he would tell her she was wrong and slow, as he did to the other workers... but the Swedes told me that they were starting to hear him say flat-out racist insults, introduced with "you people" statements.

At this point readers may be wondering what the hell I was doing staying at this job. I'd simply developed a high tolerance for racist and sexist digs... some of it directly towards myself, some of it towards others. I was very young and I figured it was just the price you had to pay to work in the restaurant industry. I knew it was wrong, and I spoke up sometimes, but not when it would endanger my jobs. Back then, I didn't think I had a choice. Looking back, I had more choice than others did. I'm also incredibly thankful I have a lot more choice now than I did back then.

One day I walked into a hushed café. The Swedes and Cubans dished the dirt. Last night, as the Jamaican woman was mopping along the length of floor, Philippe had followed right behind her, leaning over her shoulder, keeping up a steady stream of monotonous invective. "You people are so stupid. So slow. The black people. Why are you so stupid."

She snapped! Drawing on the strength of rage, she turned around, picked him up off his feet and hurled him over the counter. He skidded over the counter, landed on top of the glass cake display stand and threw out his back. She was gone, he was in the hospital. No charges were pressed. We were awestruck and wished we could have given her a medal.

Philippe returned to work a much more subdued assistant manager.

I was fired shortly thereafter because the Italian owner's wife saw me one day and didn't like the way I was wiping off the tables, or something like that.

Holy Hell It's Hot!

About now, like all other Georgia bloggers, I simply must remark on the weather.

Triple digits today, tomorrow and Thursday. And it's not a dry heat. My poor plants!

Creflo Dollar's Transracial Adoption

I checked my stats recently, and noticed a search for "creflo dollar adopt white boy" resulting in a click-through to my my short post about the prosperity gospel. It confused me as much as the "racist Doraemon" search earlier this year. So I went ahead and ran the search in Google to see if Creflo Dollar has, in fact, adopted a white boy. Yep!

Which Master Do You Follow? The Father of the 'Prosperity Gospel' Talks About Fatherhood
By Angela Bronner, AOL Black Voices,Posted: 2006-06-27 17:04:40

Why did you choose to have a family before marriage and why adopt white children when there are so many black children languishing in foster care?

I asked the same question -- it was God's solution for my racist attitude (laughs). I grew up in a household where we had a problem with white folks. And when the spirit of God told me to [adopt], he said I'm going to resolve some of your past issues and at the same time, use it as an example to really break the spirit of racism; not only in your life, but in the lives of other people. I've had an opportunity since then to be able to teach a lot of people for how to overcome a spirit of racism, which is really a spirit of division. But then later on, we went ahead and adopted a black kid too. Now the boys that I've adopted are planning to adopt one kid themselves, because of what happened to them.

That was a piece of Creflo Dollar trivia I did not know. I did know that his given name is actually Creflo Dollar, and his father was also named Creflo Dollar, although the father held a much more honest profession than his televangelist son.

I don't want to analyze his stated reasons for adoption, although they're open to criticism on several fronts. I'll just note that for non-white adoptive parents, intraracial adoption can be as politically charged as transracial adoption.

A Good Week for my Congressman, Hank Johnson

Hank Johnson is shaping up to be a legislator with some backbone.

I liked Cynthia McKinney's uncompromising positions and wasn't sure what to think about her opponent. McKinney had lost her effectiveness, though, and wasn't doing us much good.

Last week, according to his blog, Hank Johnson worked on or helped pass:

• the Ensuring Military Readiness through Stability and Predictability Deployment Policy Act of 2007. This bipartisan bill strengthens our military by mandating minimum periods of rest and recuperation for military service personnel between deployments. [...]
  
• the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act (CHAMP Act), which reauthorizes and expands the S-CHIP children’s health insurance program, including Georgia’s PeachCare. [...]
• The National Commission on Detainee Treatment Act of 2007 [...] This bill would commission a thorough review of our detainee treatment practices so Congress can craft an ethical and effective policy.
• the Ethics Reform bill [...]
  
• a bill I introduced in July with Sen. Russ Feingold, the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007, which would protect consumers and employees against being forced into arbitration when their disputes deserve a jury trial. This week I attracted an additional four cosponsors for a total of twelve.

Here's Hank Johnson defending healthcare for Georgia's uninsured children. Go Hank!

An Outline of the Prosperity Gospel

I usually don't post on religious topics, but a local news item got me irritated about the prosperity gospel con artists who happen to infest our region.

There many good churches in Atlanta that are doing effective charity work with their money while fulfilling spiritual needs. And there are some other really bad ones. I feel so sorry for the people who get sucked into the prosperity gospel game. They will get bled dry. If you have a friend or relative who is associated, warn them to get out!

If you don't know anything about the prosperity gospel, here's an outline of how to follow it. It's not very complicated.

A. Use selective vision to ignore everything the Bible really says about wealth and poverty
B. Follow three-step plan:
     1. Give prosperity gospel preacher at least 10% of your income
     2. ??
     3. Achieve prosperity!
C. Use selective vision to ignore prosperity gospel preacher's luxury car and lavish lifestyle
D. (bonus step) Blame gays.

Here's the news item:

Eddie Long angling for MLK mantle?
August 8th, 2007 by Scott Henry in Hot Off The Press

Eddie Long, the self-proclaimed “bishop” of the 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist megachurch in Lithonia, has the largest congregation in Georgia. He’s also got a $350,000 Bentley; a 20-acre, $1.4-million estate; and a heavenly bank balance.

But it appears he also wants to be the spiritual kingpin of metro Atlanta. Last year, he officiated at the funeral of Coretta Scott King and, just this week, the DeKalb County School System used his church as its official meeting hall for teachers — a controversial choice given Long’s long history of anti-gay sermonizing.

Now, Long, a proponent of the gospel of prosperity who puts his followers’ money where his mouth is, is gearing up for a blowout gala Aug. 17 to celebrate his 20 years at the helm of New Birth. We’re guessing the guest list of 1,200 for the black-tie affair at the Georgia World Congress Center doesn’t include many of the poor and needy types mentioned in the New Testament.

It does, however, include a roster of movers and shakers, most prominently Mayor Shirley Franklin and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young. A highlight of the event will be a “special presentation” by MLK’s youngest daughter, Bernice King, purportedly on behalf of her late mother. It seems to us that Long is hoping to claim the spiritual mantle of the slain Civil Rights leader. Will Atlanta let him succeed?

Here's Bishop Bentley, looking rich and smug.


Here's the even more corrupt Creflo Dollar, who has TWO Rolls Royces plus a private jet.

Frustrations of State Pre-Adoption: Timeline of an Inquiry

Some inquiries have been straightforward and organized, and all I have to do is call up and ask our previously filed homestudy to be associated with the file. Others are vague and confusing, and it feels like our caseworker might as well attach our homestudy to a balloon and release it, because we'll never get any kind of receipt confirmation. And some are an awful slog, slog, slog, like the one I'm describing below.

I am used to this sort of thing by now, so it doesn't bother me. I thought I'd remark on it so others in the process know what they're getting into!

Timeline of an Inquiry

• mid May: find state photolisting of sibling group. Call contact number to find out caseworker contact info. Referred to wrong number. Keep calling to try to find right number.
• early June: finally reach someone on phone. They give me a detailed description of the siblings and their needs and even why they are in care! This surprises me because usually such information is kept very private. I am given a fax number to send in our homestudy. I ask our caseworker to fax it in.
• July: nothing. Leave a few messages to try and get a receipt confirmation, but no one calls back.
  
• early August: receive a phone call asking us if we would like to a submit homestudy on a sibling group. "Due to privacy reasons nothing further can be communicated, even names" until homestudy receipt. Ha, of course I immediately remember the names from the mention of the two ages. Person confirms the names are correct. They must have lost our homestudy but remembered my phone number. I ask our worker to fax the homestudy again, this time to a different person at a different fax number. Next stage: confirming receipt.
  

Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing

Well, I'd thought today would be a day free of complaining about racism. Sadly, this is not to be.

I was reading this short post about the Hiroshima anniversary. I clicked through to one of the video clips, but I couldn't watch it because I got too distracted by some of the nasty comments. Why are Youtube video comments such disgusting cesspools? That's a rhetorical question... it seems like any audiovisual type of communication with semi-anonymous comments always ends up that way. As a side note, I'm very interested, from an internet anthropology perspective, as to why that happens.

I am not going to reproduce any of the comments but it's quite typical stuff as to how "the japs" deserved it.

For what it's worth, I feel very ambiguous about the historical necessity of the bombing of Hiroshima. My father suffered from a terrible infection around that time, and he told us that the only thing that saved him was antibiotics his parents bought on the black market, and the antibiotics originated from American troops. Given the dire wartime circumstances, if Japan had not been defeated so rapidly, he would almost certainly have died. So by a certain twist of fate I would not be alive today if it weren't for the bomb.

What I am not ambiguous about... the bombing was a terrible atrocity. It should never happen again, anywhere, to any country. It makes me so sad to know there are people out there like those commenters -- many people -- who would deny humanity to the bombing victims, both the ones that died that day and the ones who slowly withered away from the aftereffects over decades.

Racism encourages the belief that something inherent in Japanese blood and culture that caused their ferocity in World War II. In reality, it's something that could have happened to any group of people infected by fascism. Japan is a complicated country with a complicated history. A hundred years ago it was very different, and a hundred years from now it will be very different. It is not some unchanging ahistorical bizarro-world created to evoke alternating awe and revulsion by credulous Americans.

There's a great interview between two master novelists - Kazuo Ishiguro, British nikkei, and Kenzaburo Oe, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner, that really encapsulates the complexity I'm trying to portray. Like my father, Oe grew up in a rural Japan that has almost vanished. Oe talks in great detail about what it means to be Japanese, not by claiming that his vision of Japan is superior, but by saying that he speaks from the margins, and still has as much right as those who claim to speak from the center. Ishiguro talks about how his Japanese identity slipped away, and how he became a "homeless writer", not Japanese and not fully English either.

Here's a passage from a different interview with Oe, about Hiroshima.

Finding a Voice in Tragedy

The birth of your son was the turning point in finding your voice as a writer. You have written that "Twenty-five years ago, my first son was born with brain damage. This was a blow, to say the least. Yet as a writer, I must acknowledge the fact that the central theme of my work throughout much of my career has been the way my family has managed to live with this handicapped child."

Yes, precisely. I wrote it.

When I was twenty-eight years old, my son was born. When I was twenty-eight years old I was a writer, a rather famous writer on the Japanese scene and I was a student of French literature. And I was talking in the voice of Jean-Paul Sartre or [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty. I was always speaking about everything of this work. But when my son was born with very big damage in his brain, I found out one night, I wanted to find encouragement, so I wanted to read my book -- that was the first time I read my book, [the only] book that [I'd] written up to that date -- and I found out a few days later that I cannot encourage myself through my book; [therefore] no one can be [encouraged] by my work. book cover So I thought, "I am nothing and my book is nothing." So I was depressed very strongly; then I was asked by a journalist who was editing a political magazine in Japan to go to Hiroshima, the place the atomic bomb [had been] dropped. There in Hiroshima, in that year the peace movement -- the anti-atomic bomb movement -- was meeting, and in those assemblies there was big fight between the Chinese group and the Russian group. And I was the only independent journalist there. So I criticized both of them.

I found the hospital of the Hiroshima survivors and there I found the very great Dr. [Fumio] Shigeto. In conversation with Shigeto and the patients in the hospital, I gradually found that there is something that encouraged me, so I wanted to follow this sense that there is something. So I returned to Tokyo and went to the hospital where my [newborn] son was, and talked to the doctors about rescuing my son. Then I began to write about Hiroshima, and this was the turning point of my life. A kind of rebirth of myself.

So there was an interplay between what you saw in the victims of Hiroshima and also very importantly what you saw in observing the doctors who were treating the victims. What you observed somehow moved you to another plane in dealing with your own personal tragedy?

Yes. Shigeto said to me, "We cannot do anything for the survivors. Even today we don't know anything about the nature of the illness of the survivors. Even today, so shortly after the bombing, we don't know anything, but we did what we could do. Every day a thousand people dead. But amidst the dead bodies, I continued. So, Kenzaburo, what can I do except that, when they need our aid? Now your son needs you. You must find out that no one on this planet needs you except your son." Then I understood. I returned to Tokyo and began to do something for my son, for myself, and for my wife.

Your novel about the birth of your handicapped son is called A Personal Matter, and your writings on Hiroshima are collected in Hiroshima Notes. You write in the latter: "When the Hiroshima doctors pursue the A-bomb calamity in their imaginations, they are trying to see more deeply and more clearly the depth of the hell into which they too are caught. There is a pathos in this dual concern for self and others; yet it only adds to the sincerity and the authenticity that we sense...." You are saying that in seeing this duality in the doctor, you were helped to see the complexity of the dilemma of Bird, the protagonist in your novel.

Yes. Until then, my little theme was a duality or ambiguity of human beings. [This concept] came from existentialism in France. I think I found out the true duality and how I can be so-called "authentic." But the word "authenticity" must not be so frozen in my case. I used the word from Jean-Paul Sartre. Today I would use another word. It is very simple. I wanted to be strictly an upright man. The Irish poet Yeats said in his poem, "The young man who stands straight." Straightforwardness. Erect. This kind of young man that I wanted to be, but then I used the word "authentic."

Lionel Trilling wrote that confessing to your feelings is one of the most courageous and valuable things a writer could do. That's what you did in A Personal Matter.

Yes. I wanted to do so. At the time I didn't think of the value of being an upright man. I [felt I] must write about myself. Why not? I cannot be reborn and my son cannot be reborn, I felt, [if I don't]. So when I was by the sea [I decided that] I must rescue myself and I must rescue my son. So I wrote that book, I think.

South Georgia Coast Visit

I've lived in Atlanta for ten years now, and I've never been to the Georgia coast. This weekend we finally made it out there. We left on Friday at 6pm, made it to Jekyll Island by 11pm, visited there and St. Simons and Fort Frederica and then spent a bit of time in downtown Savannah on the way back.

It's beautiful down there! My favorite part of the trip was our visit to a sea turtle rehabilitation center. My husband and I both love sea turtles so we always head straight for a sea turtle center anytime we go on vacation.

This was a much-needed mini-vacation.

Email to Universal Studios

Responding to a notice from Reappropriate and Angry Asian Man about yellowface in the new movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. (Yes, I know Rob Schneider is a quarter Filipino, but that is no excuse whatsoever).

I may send this as a letter too, if I can find the right address.

Contact Form for Universal Studios
I have been notified that your new movie, "Chuck and Larry", contains multiple racist and insulting depictions of Asians.

Universal Studios obviously believes that depicting Asian men as clowns and Asian women as whores is supposed to be humorous.

Not only will I not see the movie, I will warn everyone I know not to see it, and also leave negative reviews warning others of these racist depictions on popular reviewing sites such as Netflix and IMDB.