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.

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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.

Really Really Local News

- There's a ball python on the loose.
- Dekalb County has changed their recycling bins from blue to orange. The new bins are going to look ugly and the reasons for the color change are unclear and the whole thing sounds very wasteful.
- Crime in our neighborhood is generally of the petty, crackheads-stealing-lawn-tools variety. Recently there was a burglary on a larger scale. The thieves pretended to be cleaners. They pressure-washed two sides of the house while they robbed it in broad daylight. We have a good neighborhood watch program, but how can you be on the alert against something like that? Damn!

Racist Bullying

I rarely read the local Sunday Paper, but I'm glad I checked it out this week. It has an article on bullying that talks a fair amount about racist bullying. The article leads with the story of an Asian adoptee who was bullied and in turn became a bully. It's extremely sad. Several Georgia counties, including the much-maligned Cobb County, are doing some good work trying to address the problem.

I wrote about my experiences with racist bullying in my "Handling Racism as a Child" post. To summarize that post, there is really no way for a child to "handle" it. It's like getting hit on the side of the head by a 2x4. For an adoptee, it's probably like getting hit on the side of the head by a 2x4 while trying to walk a tightrope.

My experiences harmed me for life, but it could have been a lot worse. When I was in college my neighbor was a young Hispanic dark-skinned woman. She told me she had gotten a lot of this type of abuse growing up and remembered a very unhappy childhood. She confessed that when she was a teenager, she used to go nightclubs, pick fights with white girls and beat them up. That was her way of working out her rage. She told me she'd gotten a lot better since then.

I'm proud (and thankful) of the fact that I don't think I ever took it out on anyone else.

I wish people would take this issue more seriously.

One thing I decided early on is that there is noooooooooooooooooooooooooo way I am going to let any child of mine go through this. At the first sign I'll go straight to the principal, find out the names of all the children and parents involved, contact them, and basically overreact in every way I can possibly imagine. And if it happens again after that, I'll pull them out of the school. I am not going to wait and see if it gets better. I am not going to tell them to "tough it out".

Bully!
Georgia schools try new ways to fight an old problem
By Diane Loupe

With most metro area schools starting classes again within the next month, a lot of parents and kids are worried about a problem as old as school itself: bullying. It's especially common in middle school and may be far more dangerous than many would think.

"James" has seen bullying from both sides of the playground.

Kids at his metro Atlanta middle school picked on the slender Asian student, calling him "Wang Chong" and other racial epithets. He tried to laugh and pretend they didn't bother him because otherwise, he says, "they would pick at you more."

James (not his real name), who is now 14, says, "It made me feel bad. They take everything you have and smash it to make themselves feel better."

James' teachers rarely got involved in his battles unless a fight broke out. As the rage boiled up inside him, James began to bully other kids, calling them names. He started picking on his younger, disabled brother.

"You bottle up emotions and feel like you're going to explode," he admits. "Sometimes you need to feel better by picking on someone else."

Eventually, the bullying led to fights, expulsions and therapy. James was hospitalized for serious mental illnesses connected with his aggression. His mother was so afraid he might harm his younger brother that she got an apartment for James and herself, leaving her younger children to live with their father.

She explains that James was bullied because of his ethnicity and because he was adopted.

"The kids told him, 'your mother threw you away,'" she says.

Both mother and son share a frustration with school administrators who didn't take the initial bullying seriously and didn't act to prevent a host of problems for the young man—problems he's still struggling to overcome.

"The bullying set off reverberations that got very distorted in his own thinking," says his mother. "It made him feel very unsafe, very alone. And he lashed out and figured he'd be on the offense. It was way out of proportion."

Bullying is as common in public schools as cafeteria mystery meat and considered by many educators and parents an unpleasant and inevitable rite of passage. In 2001, 14 percent of U.S. students ages 12 to 18 reported that they had been bullied, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Bullied kids were more likely to admit they'd carried weapons to school and gotten into fights. According to federal figures, they were also more likely to have performed poorly academically. In his 1999 book, "Real Boys' Voices," psychologist William Pollack reports that about 160,000 students skip school each year because of bullying. Some even drop out.

According to Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at Georgia State University, racism, like the kind directed at James, is often the root of bullying. Homophobia also asserts itself among students in bullying. While the behavior manifests in cafeterias and playgrounds, it may have its roots in a household where physical or verbal abuse is tolerated or is the default setting for dealing with problems.

"It's never just one thing," says Gallagher. "But, for example, if you have a kid who has older brothers who beat him up and who is shut down anytime he says something, so he constantly retreats to his room where there is no shortage of violent video games and other media, what do you think he is learning?"

Long-term consequences of unchecked bullying can be seen in the adult social context in civic meetings, government bodies and other groups that feature hierarchies and the potential use of power. Those who shout down others in public meetings or officials who refuse to allow those who disagree with them to speak out may have been bullies when they were kids. Or they may have been bullied themselves.

"We see those who typically don't have power—and when they get it, how do they use it?" Gallagher asks.

A dangerous rite of passage

But there are worse reactions to having been bullied than being the local zoning board tyrant: If nobody steps in to change the behavior of bullies when they're in sixth through eighth grade, 60 percent will have criminal records by the age of 24, according to research cited by the International Bullying Prevention Association.

Gallagher points to the Columbine High School massacre and the more recent tragedy at Virginia Tech and the factors that led to the suicidal gunmen's attacks. Though there is absolutely no excuse for such actions, there is an easily recognizable set of circumstances that can have a particularly damaging impact on someone who, like the gunman at VT, has a mental illness or develops one: feeling like an outsider and experiencing severe isolation that includes being shunned.

With such incidents in mind, Joel Meyers, director of Georgia State's Center for School Safety, is studying conditions that foster aggressive behavior to support development of violence-free schools. He acknowledges how much the effect of bullying is underestimated by parents and teachers.

"There is a tendency in society to dismiss bullying as 'kids will be kids,' just a natural part of growing up," he says.

Society often recognizes and rewards bullies. Donald Trump, Ann Coulter, Rosie O'Donnell, Michael Moore, Donald Rumsfeld and Bobby Knight all owe their fame in part to behavior that could be called bullying.

Michael R. Carpenter, a bullying prevention trainer with the Cobb County school system, says many school administrators and teachers use forms of intimidation to manage teachers and students.

"Some administrators like having an upper hand, they like using bullying behavior," says Carpenter, pointing out that some sports teams, police departments and military groups have famously used bullying. He suggests that if a parent walks into a school and finds that the front office "treats you like dirt," it might be fair to suspect a climate of bullying. Teachers can bully students by being sarcastic, picking favorites and letting kids choose teams in P.E. It's also true that kids can bully teachers.

Besides hitting, kicking, pushing, pulling hair or other physical abuse, bullies can wield psychological weapons, such as mean nicknames and social isolation. Students also use the Internet to harass or intimidate others.

Although bullying was once considered a male-dominated behavior, girls now bully as much as boys, tending to use gossip, rumors and social isolation to express their dominance, says Carpenter. Bullying peaks in the older elementary grades and drops off during high school. Hot spots for bullies vary from school to school, but bullies thrive in arenas with limited adult supervision, such as the playground, lunchroom and hallways. Even a substitute teacher can be a license to bully for some kids.

Self-esteem, Carpenter adds, isn't a problem for most bullies, who tend to feel good about themselves and have plenty of friends.

But, like James, some bullies are also victims, as Georgia State's Meyers notes. In GSU's bully prevention programs, researchers work with victims on strategies to cope with bullies.

Since bullies enjoy an audience, bystanders are taught to take actions that interrupt bullying, he says. Simply saying "stop" is better than implying approval by keeping silent.

What schools are doing

Some Georgia schools have started standing up to the bullies. Twenty-three schools in Cobb County have implemented a bully prevention program developed by Scandinavian researcher Dan Olweus, widely considered the world's leading expert on the subject.

In the program, which is also used in Forsyth, Cherokee and Henry Counties, educators learn how to identify and address coercive or bullying behavior, and schools adopt anti-bullying rules and encourage consistent positive and negative consequences for behavior. Additionally, teachers meet regularly to discuss bullying issues. Educators work with students who are bullies as well as victims—and their parents.

In Cobb County, the results have been dramatic. Five of its schools have cut their incidence of bullying by half. Pine Mountain Middle saw a 55 percent drop in bullying, according to surveys of all students taken both before and after the program was implemented. Kemp Elementary saw a 45 percent drop; bullying was also halved at Tapp Middle and Lewis Middle. Milford Elementary reported a 43 percent drop. Schools are also noticing fewer fights and disciplinary referrals.

"If we intervene early, we could reduce kids going to prison," says Carpenter, who helps stage the International Bullying Conference, scheduled for this fall in Florida.

James' mother advises other parents to speak to administrators if they suspect their child is being bullied. Experts agree that getting teachers and administrators involved is of the utmost importance. If students tell one teacher who does nothing about the situation, they should tell another teacher, or an administrator.

James, at least, knows what has prompted his behavior.

"Being bullied makes you feel like you can't live any more," he says. But when you bully someone else, "it feels kinda good." And, like anything that feels good, "It's hard to stop. You're so used to feeling good again." SP

A New Foster Care Blog

Lawrence Adams, author of Lost Son? A Bastard Child's Journey of Hope, Search, Discovery and Healing, now has a blog called "Reflections of a Foster Youth". I've seen his posts on message boards before, and he has an amazing life story and a lot of insight into the foster care system. Check out this introduction post and this post on foster parents.

Foster Care Adoption, Capitalism and the failure of Charity

There's an interesting dialog started by Claudia from the Adopt America Network. It's a very obvious foster care adoption question. Why do counties and agencies keep recruiting families who are interested in adopting young children? Why do they keep perpetuating a system where a healthy 5-year-old has 100 families interested in adopting, and a 17-year-old has no one, and ages out of the system?

Claudia takes the question in a certain direction.

One of my missions is to recruit families who are willing to life through the horrors to end up to be resilient people of faith who will take on the harder things. As Bart said, quoting Jaiya John this morning, "what we currently have in our country is not a "child welfare" system, but a "help parents get the child they want" system, when it comes to adoption."

[...]

If we were looking at the issue of waiting children in foster care, we would be recruiting families for teens with on probation with an array of mental illnesses. We would be looking for families willing to take large sibling groups. We would be looking for parents willing to parent children with FASD or RAD or sexual acting out or the dreaded "fire-setters."

FosterAbba has already responded with a personal analysis of how her family both can and can't answer the call. I'd like to take it in a different direction, and use a cold, hard, cynical "follow the money" approach. Please don't take this as an attack on anyone involved in the system trying to do good work, but rather a critical examination of the system itself.

I don't think the current system is really geared towards adoptive parents. It's geared towards saving the government money. An adoptive placement costs the government less than a foster placement over the life of the child. An adoptive parent will agree to take over much of the cost and labor of raising a child. Why? What reward do they get? Do they do it out of love? Altruism? Selfishness? It doesn't matter from a cost perspective.

Economically speaking, adoptive parents are not really clients of the government, but neither do they actually work for the government. They're a cross between an intern and a volunteer. They're willing to work for very little material reward, as long as they get some intangible benefits. Foster parents are not full-time workers either; they're more like a cross between interns and temps. Some do it mainly for the money, others do it mainly for the intangible benefits.

You have to keep adoptive and foster parents a little bit happy so that they'll continue to work for you or absorb some of your costs. The children are not as important a priority. They can't go on strike or quit. But if you behave really badly to them, child welfare advocates will sue you, so there are limits. You also have indirect accountability to "client" families. Bad and incompetent behavior might result in unwelcome media attention, lawsuits and bureaucratic shakeups.

I need to detour here and talk about the problems of voluntary charity. I'll disclose that I'm a leftist with an MBA, and I don't like charity but I donate to it… I don't find any of this be contradictory, but I realize it might be confusing to some readers.

The problem with charity is that it relies too much on appeals to the emotions. Successful charitable appeals involve three characteristics: 1) cuteness 2) visibility 3) ego. People are more likely to give money to something cute. Pandas get a lot more attention than beetles. Young children are cuter than older children. Children are cute, but they're often made invisible. Visible problems are easier to address than hidden problems. Issues hidden behind closed doors or looming in the future get less attention, and less money. And then there's ego, which is kind of obvious, what with all the charitable foundations named after rich people.

My family used to sponsor a child when I was young, but I decided I don't agree with sponsoring anymore. I just give money directly to Save the Children. Why do I need a thank you letter from a child for my donation? It makes me feel better for a few minutes, but it's really just feeding my ego. The few cents it took to mail me that letter could have gone to more useful purposes.

For me, an ideal wealth distribution system wouldn't involve charity. It would look more like taxes. An equal percentage is taken off the top of your paycheck then distributed by experts -- accountable experts -- to where it does the most good. This system has plenty of potential problems, of course. However, it's the only system where hidden, non-cute, ungrateful sorts of problems have any chance at all of being addressed.

Then there's the problem of charitable volunteers. Anyone who has worked for a non-profit knows that volunteer burnout is a major issue. A volunteer who works for a living can't have their volunteer job as their highest priority. If their family member gets sick, or their paying job is in danger, guess where they have to cut back. On the other hand, if your volunteers are all well-off people who have the resources to put volunteering as their number one priority, your organization starts reflecting a narrower, upper-class set of values and stops being representative of the general population.

For Claudia and the Adopt America Network to succeed in recruiting more parents for hard-to-place children, they need to find people with the right combination of altruism, insight and resources. I think altruism is the easiest part. That's where I stop being cynical… I think almost every human being (except for the true sociopath) has the capacity for altruism. It may not be expressed very strongly, but it's there and it can be stirred up with the right appeal. The insight is much harder. Can you stifle your own impulse to feel protective not just to children who are small, soft and helpless, but also those who are tall, looming and hard-faced? Force yourself to see and even jump into problems that used to be invisible? Know how much you can really handle, without believing you are weak, or a superwoman?

The resource portion makes the goal incredibly difficult. Looking back over my blog you can see how many times I have bitched about the fact that we only have one bedroom for children which means the sibling group would have to be two boys or two girls. I'm not a good example, really, because we're pretty well-off for a middle-class urban couple. But our house that we own is 1050 square feet with a third of an acre yard. If I earned the same amount of money and lived in New York City, we'd probably live in a 500-square foot studio and spend 60% of our income on rent. How can people like us adopt or foster large sibling groups? That's a very literal question. Special housing loan programs would be one partial solution.

Housing becomes much easier if you live in the country, but then you run into the representativeness problem then. For example, given that a) African-American children are disproportionately represented in the system b) African-American parents live disproportionately in urban areas then focusing more on rural placements increases cultural dislocation.

Many people who have the insight and understanding may not have the resources. Our economic system does not place a high value on human services. Elementary school teachers, social workers, foster parents… all professions that are culturally coded as female and low-paying. They're jobs that certain people find very fulfilling. And since they're so fulfilling, we don't need to pay them very much. It's nice to be nice. But if you really want to get ahead in life, be a lawyer or a CEO. That's the general attitude.

Foster care adoption is a dysfunctional system located inside a dysfunctional culture. That's kind of an obvious statement. Kids wouldn't enter foster care, much less need to exit it, if things were better all around.

To get more foster and adoptive parents where they're needed, and to get them to perform better, what are some practical measures that can be taken? By practical, I mean things that don't involve massive changes to society as we know it.

Telling them they need to be more altruistic isn't sufficient. If they answer the call as altruistic volunteers, they'll have high burn-out rates just like altruistic volunteers.

Religion is not sufficient. This is according to what I heard from a plainspoken, very religious woman at an orientation meeting. She said she kept a close eye on the parents who told her that God told them to take the hardest cases. Too often, they would call her up in the middle of the night and say "I can't handle this child, take them back." She joked she would ask them, "Now where is your 'patience of Job?'"

Paying them more money would help a lot. It would also make foster and adoptive parents more representative of the general population. On the other hand, you might get people who do it for the money and not the passion, so more money needs to come with stringent controls and training requirements.

More education would help; not just top-down training, but horizontal information sharing. There are a lot of foster parents blogging and communicating on the web, but I don't trust the internet to be truly representative of the general public.

Stop moving kids around so much. If a child is reunified with their family, but the reunification effort is uncertain, pay the foster carer to reserve the bed. If they are removed again, they go back to the same foster carer. If the child has to be shuttled back and forth, at least it should be back and forth between the same two homes. This would help children and keep foster parent morale higher.

How about a special union? Once you get your foster license and join, you have access to a credit union and special housing loans. The union encourages information sharing and sponsors training events along with the government. It sponsors a youth club "Future Child Welfare Workers of America". The military has ROTC! Encourage the ideal of pride in service. Wear special hats in parades. Offer AA, BA and MA degrees in therapeutic foster care drawing on fields of psychology and child development. Pay people who have those degrees higher wages.

I've heard foster parents complain they have the image of "those people in the neighborhood with too many kids running around a messy yard". Change that image to "the people who have the great union and job security and high standards and fun social events and I want to be one when I grow up." I hear PSAs on college radio that say "you don't have to be perfect to adopt a teen from foster care". It's a good PSA for now. But in the future, it would be nice if the message could evolve into "can you meet a high standard of excellence in child welfare?" from the current "we're desperate, do you have a pulse?"

Of course all these ideas require vast amounts of money which are currently being spent on more important things like the war in Iraq. Sigh... I wish I could end on a more positive note.