The Biggest Tribute to Trayvon is Not Forgetting

So George Zimmerman was found not guilty, despite, you know, shooting and killing an unarmed teenager who was doing nothing illegal. Predictably, as such things tend to go in a nation and criminal justice system that both have serious problems with young, Black men, it really seemed as if Trayvon was on trial much more than Zimmerman. After all, if you're going to do a toxicology report after a  murder, it makes a lot more sense to test the victim than the perpetrator, right?

But I'm not going to get into all of that, mainly because a million other people much smarter than I have written much better responses than I can come up with. Like a lot of people, I spent the better part of Sunday in shock, alternating between reading about the trial outcome and just staring off into the distance in a mixture of rage and sadness.

So I don't need to go on about how stand your ground laws are incredibly racialized in outcome (and yes, I'm well aware Zimmerman's defense team did not appeal to syg for their defense, but it's basically the same argument). I'll give you three guesses on who you can murder and claim a stand your ground defense and get away with it, but you'll only need one. Because this is the kind of thing we frankly didn't really even need the research to tell us -- we've known for years that if you want to get away with murder, you should murder a young Black man. This trial was just another sad chapter in a long, long history of Black Americans not receiving justice.

But I think the saddest thing of all is just that -- that Trayvon's death is just another young Black man being murdered. Although it's all the talk right now, this piece by Tim Wise got me thinking about how long it is until everyone else moves on. In the article (well worth your time, by the way), Wise talks about the Bernhard Goetz case from 30 years ago. Goetz famously murdered or wounded 6 young Black men in the subway just because they were young, Black men. And much like in Trayvon's case, the jury accepted that those boys having the audacity to be young and Black in public makes them justifiable targets of paranoid murder.

And yet, how many Americans alive today even remember the Goetz case? Outside of historians, lefty agitators, and people with pretty sharp memories, I'd guess very few. And once the next few national tragedies happen and everyone's attention turns elsewhere, who will remember Trayvon?

This lack of collective memory is important for so many reasons. For one, our schools certainly don't teach us these things -- I had never even heard of Emmit Till until I was a sophomore in college. Forgetting these events is what allows people to continue ridiculous narratives of race no longer being a problem in America, and to paint each of these events as an isolated incident. It's important to remember that Trayvon's murder wouldn't have even been investigated if there hadn't been such a huge public outcry. But there are many, many more like Trayvon who don't end up becoming public causes, and instead are just left dead and their families without any justice or even closure.

So like many across the nation, I'm headed out to a rally tonight to demand justice for Trayvon, and here in Minneapolis, to demand justice for Terrance Franklin, who was murdered by an actual cop instead of a wanna-be cop. And these rallies are important and necessary.

But I can't help shake the best tribute to Trayvon is to not let his memory, or the memory of the many young, Black men slaughtered because of the color of their skin, to die along with them. Maybe if we remember enough of them, we might finally all decide to do something about it...

Traveling!

While I don't have a wife and children, I will be traveling with
 a dog and a map with only the word "map" crudely written on it

No new posts this week. I've been busy packing and getting my shit in order to follow my Midwestern instincts and flee North for the summer.

So bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm packing a bunch of stuff and a lazy dog into the car to drive 16 or so hours across this great nation of ours with neither cruise control nor air conditioning.

It will not be a pleasant trip, but at least I'll get to experience the local color of America through the magic of A.M. radio...

Why I Don't Hate LeBron

Eh, not that much

The greatest thing about sports is hating. Hating people, hating teams, hating geographical locations in their entirety just because they house a team you hate just because that team beat your team that one time. Sports, and the hate they facilitate, are one of the few ways one can show how their area is superior to another.

I hate all sorts of people and places due solely to sports. I hate the Chicago White Sox, I really fucking hate the Yankees, and the list of individuals I hate due only to sporting reasons is far too long to publish. Hell, I often use Alex Rodriguez as an example in class when I describe the hypothetical existence of a douchebag scale (it makes sense in context).

So I get the desire, nay the demand, to hate. I really do. But I just can't understand why so many people so desperately hate LeBron James. Not only hate him, but think him to be the biggest cocksucker in all of sports. As far as star athletes go, he seems to be one of the least objectionable to come along in a long time. There's really only two reasons I can seem to come up with for why he draws so much ire, and they're both stupid.

The first is that he's no Michael Jordan, and to be fair, this is empirically true. But I think the people angry about this don't quite actually remember the real Jordan, but instead what they want Jordan to have been (and LeBron to currently be). There's this conception that Jordan won 6 championships by himself, and LeBron's a cheater/quitter/coward for going to team with other actual basketball players on it instead of repeatedly bashing his head against a wall in Cleveland. Even ignoring the fact that every sane person in existence would jump at the chance to move anywhere that isn't Cleveland, this also ignores that Jordan had a shitload of help, like playing with multiple Hall of Famers.

It's also weird that people are so upset about the move from Cleveland when only a few years earlier, the exact same thing happened, but was received the exact opposite way. When Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen ditched their teams to meet up with Paul Pierce in Boston, they were lauded as good team-first guys who were so unselfish they took pay cuts so they could achieve team glory. I don't remember reading any angry rants about what a traitor KG was for leaving the team that drafted him without single-handedly winning multiple championships. But when LeBron took a pay cut to team up with other talented players to win team championships, this was apparently the most cowardly move since Robert Ford shot a dude in the back while he was hanging a picture.

The only obvious decision between the two is The Decision, the idiotic hour-long special on ESPN James used to announce he was leaving Cleveland for Miami (again, remember that people are criticizing a multi-millionaire in his early 20s for wanting to move from Cleveland to Miami). And yeah, it was a stupid thing to do, but like so many things young black men are accused of being monsters for doing, it was actually conceived, engineered, and packaged by a bunch of rich white dudes who more-or-less talked LeBron into it. Again, James probably should have had the good enough sense to not do it, but come on, that's one bad public decision made by a guy who was a millionaire before he even graduated high school. I guarantee I would have done a lot more stupid shit than that if you gave me triple-figure millions before I could even legally drink.

So this is all to say I'm probably the only guy outside of Miami-Dade county who was actually kinda happy LeBron and the Heat won last night. Mostly so I don't have to listen to idiot sportscasters talking about how he's no Jordan, but also because he seems to be not that bad of a dude, or at least not nearly as deserving of all the shit he gets.

But Alex Rodriguez? Fuck that guy. Seriously.

I'm Like The Jonny Appleseed of Sociology Online

So some website has come out with their rankings of the top 30 sociology blogs, and two of them are blogs (well, one is technically a podcast, but casting a wide net I guess) that I was very involved in the creation of. For those who don't follow my career as closely as such eminence would demand, I'm specifically talking about Citings and Sightings and Office Hours, both part of the greater Society Pages family, which you should really be following anyway (though at this point I want to make it clear that I was decidedly not involved in the naming of these, and strenuously objected to what eventually became the name of all three of these).

Now, granted, this isn't exactly an honor or anything, as I'm pretty surprised there were even 30 separate sociology blogs in existence. Yet it's still pretty cool, if for nothing else than to see some things I put a lot of effort into have continued to exist long after I left.

If nothing else, it makes me at least look qualified to host the panel I put together for this year's Society for the Understanding of Social Problems meeting on the future of sociology in new media. In fact, pretty much everyone on the panel is involved with or created a blog listed in that top 30, so I feel like I should print that out and carry it around with me as proof I apparently occasionally know what I'm doing...

Race and the Criminal Justice System, Explained With Wine

Here's a good overview of something most of us have long suspected: wine descriptors and reviews are complete and utter bullshit. In every possible way. Go ahead and read it; the linked article is both short and entertaining. But the highlights are that in one study when wine experts were served the exact same glass of white wine twice in a row, with the only difference being that one was dyed red, none of them knew they were being duped, despite all the flowery language they put in to describing the two "different" wines. In another study, experts again gave dramatically different rankings to the same wine depending on whether it was served from an expensive-looking bottle or one that appeared to be generic and low-cost.

There's a lot more evidence offered in the article, but these two examples suffice to make the point -- it's clear that what these supposed wine experts are really basing their judgements on have nothing to do with the wine itself. Rather, it's obvious their judgements have everything to do with perceptions of the "class" of the wine (how expensive, and therefore, how supposedly good it is) and with various other stereotypes about what certain wines are supposed to be like.

This in and of itself isn't too shocking -- obviously people are going to be influenced by their perceptions. But where it starts to get really informative is in examples like this when their perceptions are demonstrably and empirically false, and yet still trump their actual experience. That is, in the same wine/different bottles experiment, the experts' opinions of the wine were shaped entirely by their perceptions of the wine's trappings, even when these were directly contradicted by the actual wine. In other words, what they actually experienced had far, far less impact on their pronouncements than what they (consciously or not) felt like they were supposed to be experiencing.

So what does this have to do with the criminal justice system? Well, this is exactly how race operates in our criminal justice system. It's not that there are a bunch of incredibly racist cops, prosecutors, and judges all thinking "gee, how can we fuck over people of color today?" Instead, the supposed experts of our criminal justice system are acting in the exact same manner as the supposed wine experts -- they're basing their judgements not off of any form of empirical reality (indeed, said reality often directly contradicts their judgements), but instead basing them off their socialized beliefs about how groups of people act or conduct themselves.

And it's a pretty easy process to document. Most people probably already know that a black defendant is more likely to be prosecuted and more likely to receive a harsh sentence than a white defendant, holding all other factors equal. But the fact that such decisions are strongly based on skin color becomes even more obvious when comparing the prosecution and sentencing of black men to one another; black men with very dark pigmentation get the worst sentences of all, and it proceeds up the color spectrum to the point where very light-skinned black defendants are found guilty and sentenced at rates fairly comparable to their white counterparts.

There's about a million more studies I could cite here, but the point is, whether it's judging wine or judging people, it's clear most people, even experts, base their decisions far more on their socialization than on the pertinent facts of that particular case. When that happens in wine tasting, it just leads stupid people who follow wine rankings to waste money on expensive wine. When it happens in the criminal justice system, it's a fucking travesty.

Happy Birthday and Basic Marxism

Have you ever wondered why movies and tv shows never actually have people singing the happy birthday song? Or why restaurants always make up their own incredibly stupid version of it to sing while they bring you your free fried ice cream? It's not because any of these people are interested in creating a new version of the song. Instead, like almost all explanations for the life's oddities, it comes down to a corporation well over-stepping its legal rights to quash the rights of the rest of us.

The funny thing about this is that no one really knows who wrote "Happy Birthday To You," or even when it was written.  But this hasn't stopped Warner music from claiming they have the copyright to the tune, though they can't demonstrate how they got it or why it's theirs. But fortunately for them, if anyone wants to stop them from claiming copyright on one of the most-used songs in the world, they need to have the time and resources to challenge a major corporation in court. Not a lot of people have that.

But fortunately for shitty chain restaurants everywhere, someone is finally trying to get Happy Birthday's day in court. Good Morning to You Productions (named for what many believe is the original tune happy b-day is based on) is suing Warner, arguing that even if they ever had a reasonable claim to the copyright (which is questionable enough in and of itself), it would have expired in 1921 at the latest. Good Morning to You is not only suing to end Warner's copyright claim, but to force them to pay back the millions upon millions they've collected over the years with their fraudulent copyright. While I can't believe any court will ever order Warner to pay the money back, there seems to be a pretty solid case that Warner can't claim the copyright any longer.

Really this is all just a somewhat updated version of what Marx called the primitive accumulation that preceded capitalism. While once people all more-or-less shared common spaces, eventually groups of power-hungry people decided to claim them as their own and declared they somehow now had the right to charge rents and exclude people from what was once communal property.

The whole Happy Birthday saga operates much the same way -- the tune had been a traditional one for a long time, and then eventually someone (it's still disputed who) put the current lyrics to it. More than likely, multiple people came up with the lyrics (not hard to see how many could have switched "good morning" to "happy birthday" all on their own), so it really never belonged to anyone. That of course did not stop Warner, who more-or-less just looked around and noticed no one was claiming the copyright, so much like the explorers of old, they simply planted their flag and claimed it as theirs despite having no hand in its creation.

It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I'd lived a couple hundred years ago -- apparently, you could just claim the rights to pretty much anything and then start charging people for using the stuff they themselves invented. Pretty ingenious move, capitalist scum...

If Only The Soviets Had Been Fighting Terrorism...

So the NSA is finally getting examined for its potential for abuse, although it's obviously happening about six or seven years too late. And it will likely lead to no changes. But hey, better than a kick in the teeth, right?

It's hard to figure out what's creepiest about the whole NSA debacle; sure, they can read and listen to anything you ever do, but what might be even worse than that is how incredibly shrouded in secrecy this all is. As recent congressional hearings have demonstrated, most of the law makers who supposedly authorized PRISM and other such plans have no idea what's going on, the extent to which these things are happening, or even what they're capable of doing.

Here it's a good time to think back to grade school civics class -- what's the point of a legislative and judicial branch? In theory, they act as, say it with me kids, checks and balances on executive power. You know, so we can't have a president who grants himself the king-like power to decide who can be executed without so much as a trial. Er...bad example, but you get the idea.

So how, I wonder, are these other two branches to act as either check or balance when they don't have any idea what the executive branch is doing? This is yet another example of how insanely Orwellian our government is getting -- "This secret program is vital to your safety. So vital, in fact, that you can know nothing about it. Hell, Congress and the Supreme Court can know nothing about it. But don't worry, we won't abuse these powers we exercise in secret which will never be reviewed by anyone else ever."

But what's funniest to me is that I remember vividly as a young child learning that the Soviets had this secret force called the KGB that would spy on people and intercept their communications, even people who had broken no laws and posed no threat to anyone. This was, of course, yet another example of how they were a totalitarian society that didn't understand freedom. What kind of sick bastards would spy on their own citizens? Especially on citizens who had broken no laws but were only advocating for more transparent government and more democratic rights? How could anyone condone such terrible atrocities? That's something that would never happen in the land of the free!

For The Practical Hipster

So apparently typewriters are making a comeback, and of course, it's due to everyone's favorite group to hate/impossible group to define, hipsters. And while hipster bashing has gotten as annoying as the very nebulous category itself, sometimes you just can't help but go back to that well.

And it's mostly in situations like the comeback of the typewriter. Because there is absolutely no justification for using a typewriter in the year 2013 unless you are a doomsday prepper or you want to look like a twee li'l pixie who's just so damn quirky PLEASE NOTICE ME.

I don't even need to point out the various ways in which the personal computer is superior to typewriters, because it's superior in every fucking possible conceivable way. Any argument anyone can make for the continued use of a typewriter is really just some bullshit they're using to cover the fact that, again, they just want to look quirky and different (which is their prerogative and all power to them and all that, but it doesn't change the fact that they're fucking morons).

In fact, the only arguments I can actually see anyone attempting to make in favor of the typewriter are those weird esoteric arguments about feel and sound that again make no sense because they're not real arguments. But anyway, even those no longer hold up because you can grab a quick and easy program to make your mac sound like an old timey typewriter.

There. No need to lug around a typewriter to make yourself look neat and precious anymore. Now if I could only find some electronic functional equivalent of the bowtie, we'd be halfway to solving most of the current generation's problems...

Explaining Basic Criminology With the NSA

Loosely defined, constructionism is an old idea in criminology that basically means things are seen as good/bad/criminal/legal/deviant/etc because they're defined as such. Essentially, it's the relatively simple idea that there are no actions or behaviors which are inherently good or bad, it's just that for a wide variety of reasons, certain actions come to be seen as "good" and are encouraged, and others come to be seen as "bad" and are discouraged and/or punished.

Sometimes this happens through relatively banal or logical reasons. For instance, murder has been labeled illegal and deviant by our society, and that makes good sense, as it would make our day-to-day lives significantly more difficult if people were murdering each other nilly willy.

But often such constructions are not neutral decisions arrived at after careful, logical consideration, but are rather the result of powerful interests attempting to (consciously or otherwise) entrench and/or expand their power, typically through enshrining their behavior as legitimate and the behaviors of others as illegitimate.

A wonderful example of how power influences social constructions can be seen in the current debates over the NSA leaks. As many spineless media commentators have pointed out in their attempts to bend over backwards providing justification for the most expansive spying program the world has even seen, nothing the NSA does/did is/was technically illegal (except for obviously directly contradicting the 4th amendment, but details, details). As the ever-on-point Glenn Greenwald explained, though, this is only the case because the very people doing this also wrote the laws governing it.

This is why the NSA is such a good example of constructionism -- Edward Snowden is currently an international fugitive for doing a much, much smaller version of what the NSA is doing. It is literally the exact same behavior, only done on a much smaller scale and arguably for much more noble reasons. For the man without power, this small-scale internet surveillance means he will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, while the people with power are allowed to continue doing that same action on a much larger scale and not only not be considered criminals, but instead have the brazen gall to call themselves security experts.

Of course, this doesn't even get in to the fact that much of the the NSA is doing actually is illegal, and that the technically illegal actions of Snowden were necessitated by the fact that there is literally no other way for this information to have been made public. And that's not an abuse of the word literally; if you read the linked article, you'll learn that multiple groups have sued the US government over the NSA, often simply to learn the extent of information gathered, not even what the actual information was. And yet they can't do that because:

In dismissing the case, the court agreed with the precedent set in two other cases, which basically said that Americans don’t even have the right to sue their government over its surveillance program, unless they can prove that their communications were intercepted. Of course, that’s essentially impossible since the program is classified and you can’t use classified documents in court, even if you somehow got your hands on them.

So to recap: leaking classified documents proving the highest levels of government have been routinely violating the 4th amendment in ways which violate both domestic and international law with no probable cause for the vast majority of their actions, and you're a terrorist who must like on the run. Set up and participate in the program which violates both domestic and international law, and you're a beacon of freedom, defending our nation from terrorists.

That's pretty much a textbook example of the social construction of deviance.

Man, I Have Missed Everything

So this blog has been pretty quiet of late, which I'm sure has the millions upon millions of you constantly checking it for updates in quite a sad state. I'll spare the boring details, but it turns out having a real job and all of the crap that goes along with it leaves precious little time for frivolities like blogging.

But finally the halcyon days of summer are upon us and I enter that rare time when academics have something approaching free time. While I plan to use most of that free time to drink beer in the sun, I've also made it a goal to get back into the blogging game for real and resume posting regularly. So this is all to say you can put off your impending suicide, for you have a reason to live again.

That being said, this is just a place-holder post to force myself to write something and publicly promise more regular content. So I've got nothing of substance today, though that's not really a problem, as the world seems pretty fucking intent on giving me shit to rant about. By the time I settle in tomorrow to write something, I'm assuming there will be another major documents dump showing how the CIA can now legally force exploratory enemas on US citizens as part of a routine traffic stop. And probably another mass shooting or two. Really what I'm saying is that America is awesome.

In the meantime, here's a picture of an adorable dog:

Hi! I'm adorable!

Summer Is Neither A Vacation Nor Exciting

Summer break is here. Well, it's here for students. I've already complained plenty about the perception that we on this side of the college classroom get the same breaks as those in the seats, so I guess there's not much new to add to that.

It's just that today is the first official day of summer break here at the University, and I didn't actually realize that until a few minutes ago. Because it's not a break; I got up and got to doing the same damn thing I've done every Monday for the past 16 weeks or so -- get up, convince myself I'm going to get a bunch of writing done today, sit down to get to the writing, become frustrated and overwhelmed at how little I've written and how much I need to do, then eventually convincing myself I've put in enough work for the day while procrastinating on the internet.

I Continue to Miss Minnesota, And IT Continues To Remain Cool

It's no secret here that I love Minnesota and wish I had never left (cure you, fortune of getting a good job in this economy!). But my homesickness only gets worse every time Minnesota decides to become even cooler than it was previously.

This week has been a pretty good one for people of conscience in the land o' lakes. First, earlier in the week the MN House gave the ok to the "Ban the Box" legislation, meaning it now only needs to be signed by Gov. Dayton, who has already promised to sign it. In short his bill will change employment law in Minnesota, most notably requiring public employers to wait to conduct criminal background checks until the interview stage of the process, and will not allow employers to discriminate based on crimes that have nothing to do with the job and/or for convicted persons who pose no risk to the public (that's way over-simplifying it, read the pdf attached above for details).

This is huge for many obvious reasons, but possibly the biggest is that it removes the permanent punishment many people receive for criminal convictions that happened years ago and bear no relevance to their current situation (statistically speaking, even ex-felons who have done prison stints are no more likely to offend than the general public after 7 years on the outside). It's also huge because, not too surprisingly, using criminal background checks as a filter has a strongly racialized affect. Both because of the racism of our criminal justice system (but that's an entire course, not something that fits into a blog), but also because of perceptions of criminality.

For example, here's a graph of results from Devah Pager's famous audit study of the impact of criminal records:

The graph measures how many people from the study received a call back after a job application. The only difference between the pairs of people who applied for a job was a (fictitious) criminal background; otherwise they dressed the same, answered questions the same, turned in identical resumes, etc. As you can see, not only does having a criminal record make on far, far less likely to get a call back, you can see that Black job applicants without a criminal record are less likely to get a call back than white applicants with one.

The other development is happening right now, as the MN legislature debates a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. Although the vote is yet to happen, it is widely believed there is more than enough support in the legislature, and again, Gov. Dayton has already publicly declared his willingness to sign it into law.

So in the span of one week, Minnesota will (likely) have dealt a strong blow to the dangerous ideologies of permanent punishment and homophobia.

Not too shabby, Minnesota.

Is This News Actual News?

The Sunlight Foundation recently unveiled a web tool they're calling "Churnalism," and it makes me both excited and sad.

It's a really awesome and simple concept -- if you suspect a news article sounds a bit too much like a press release, or like talking points which are a little too neatly delivered, you simply enter the url or paste the text into the churnalism machine and it quickly determines whether what you're reading is actually journalism or just some recycled pabulum.

On the one hand, this is super awesome -- if you pay attention at all, you definitely come across articles posing as news that sound suspiciously exactly like one of the people/organizations mentioned in the article would like it to sound. This gives you a quick and easy way to find out if it really is just repacked PR or is actually an independent opinion.

On the other hand, it's necessary that such a thing exist. Oh to live in a world where journalism actually means researching a subject and writing an original and informative take on it...

When Dealing Drugs Is Bad/When Dealing Drugs is Good

A recent news story has brought to light some ridiculous hypocrisy in the War on Terror. Normally, this is not a news worthy event, as the entire basis of the War on Terror is rank hypocrisy (remember, our definition of "terror" is using violence, or the threat thereof, to intimidate peoples in order to effect political outcomes. Which would also be the exact purpose of the Iraq and Afghan wars).

But sometimes the hypocrisy is so blatantly ridiculous it deserves some special attention, such as when the US literally gives bags of cash to corrupt Afghan drug lords. And I'm not abusing the word literally here; US officials actually gave large bags full of cash to Karzai and his associates in an attempt to purchase their favor (bonus level of hypocrisy: when Iran did the exact same thing, the US accused them of undermining international law by illegally bribing public officials.)

Many of the people receiving these bags of cash are known drug lords (most of the world's opium and heroin comes from Afghanistan, something the Taliban had actually curtailed to a great degree prior to the invasion). And no one in the State Department is naive or stupid enough to think for a minute that they're not directly funding large drug producers. They're just funding large drug producers in the name of Democracy, I guess. Well, to be technical about it, they're funding major drug producers in the name of establishing a proto-democratic dictatorial client state which will do our bidding in the region, but that doesn't flow off the tongue nearly as well.

Just as a reminder, if you fund the sale of heroin by purchasing even a small amount, you are due for at least a year in federal prison and a fine of up to $7,000. Our nation has more people in prison for drug offenses than the entire European Union has in prison or in jail for any charge. We imprison by far the most people in the world, whether measured in raw numbers or as proportion of the population, and most of that is due to drug-related arrests.

Yet at the same time our nation has been locking up millions drug users and dealers (well, poor drug users and dealers of color; white users and dealers face a significantly lower chance of arrest), we've also been providing millions of dollars in free money to people we know are using that money to produce illegal narcotics.

It's hard to make someone as cynical as me get upset about government shenanigans, but sometimes the "it's wrong for anyone else to do, but we can do it on a far larger and much more damaging scale for reasons we never have to explain or justify" (non)logic is just a little too on the nose...

Seriously, Though, When Do We Get To Stop Coddling The South?

Not to get all Godwin's law on the subject, but I think contrasting the continued legacies of Nazi Germany and the antebellum American South is a useful exercise; both committed horrible travesties and have left future generations to figure out how to properly remember and learn from such atrocities. As I've pointed out a few times, it's pretty embarrassing (or least should be) how much our nation simply elides over the horrible things we've done. While the German response may not be perfect, at least they've more-or-less all agreed it was not a time to proud of.

But we in America have a hard time agreeing that slavery was a bad thing (because we're terrible people, I guess) and that maybe we shouldn't have memorials and whatnot to the people who launched a bloody war (bloodiest in our history, in fact) to defend their right to own human beings. Seems like a simple thing to condemn, but maybe that's just me.

This past weekend a friend and I hit up some WV historical sites, specifically Harper's Ferry (site of the famous John Brown raid) and Antietam, a place I'd never heard of before but that was apparently the site of an important civil war battle (also the bloodiest single day of fighting in the civil war, so...uh...there's that).

While I understand both of these places are technically below the Mason-Dixon line and therefore a whole different form of logic applies, I simply could not believe how much Confederate sympathizing and glorification went on there. In addition to multiple gift shops (even state-run museum gift shops!) selling "Live Free or Die" shirts emblazoned with the Stars and Bars, multiple historical markers made the war out to be one of simple disagreement over the role of the federal government, with little if any mention of the whole genocidal slavery thing.

One monument even read something to the effect of "Erected for those on both sides who were fighting for what they believed in." Except, again, I feel the need to point out what one side believed in was their right to own human beings as property. You can't really chalk that one up to "well, everyone has their views and beliefs! Who's to say which is right and which is wrong?"

Because the answer is "All human beings with a shred of decency agree one side was wrong."

Maybe it's just because I grew up secure in my little Yankee bubble, but I really had no idea how some folks still desperately cling to historical revisionist views of the civil war, and it's embarrassing as hell, both as an American and as, you know, a human being.

Simply put: can you imagine any Holocaust memorial selling swastika t-shirts and putting up monuments that say "Jews and Germans alike both fought for their beliefs" as if it were some sort of simple misunderstanding between the two?

No, because that would be fucking horrible. But I suppose "being fucking horrible" has rarely stopped America from anything...

Boston and White Privilege

On the heels of discussing how Boston reveals what we think about America exceptionalism, it also highlights the benefits of white privilege.

Tim Wise has, as always, a pretty awesome breakdown of how the two are related, but the simple and short version is that white privilege means if the person(s) who bombed the marathon is/are white, white people need fear no retaliatory attacks, have no need to go out of their way to condemn something they were in no way involved with, white students traveling around or in and out of our nation will not have to worry about being terror suspects, etc.

But because this is the internet and things only count if they're delivered in list form, here's a handy top 10 I've been saving the link to for a long time. Here's Juan Cole's Top 10 Differences Between White Terrorists and Others:

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.” 2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.
3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.
4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.
5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.
6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.
7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.
8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.
9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.
10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

Boston, Violence, and American Exceptionalism

So we've all had about a day to process the horrific explosions in Boston. Grisly pictures keep coming out, and last I saw an update, there are 3 dead and about 150 wounded, many of whom with missing limbs and other catastrophic injuries. This is a tragedy, no doubt, and of course many are already jumping to racist judgements about who is responsible (though we should all of course remember we have no idea right now who is responsible, not that it excuses such vile racism even if Islamic extremists or North Korean agents are responsible).

But that's not really what this post is about. Well, kind of. Really, this post is about American Exceptionalism, the absurd belief that America is somehow better than all other nations (even when it is demonstrably and empirically not superior) for reason largely unknown (though in most variants of the belief, it's because God has pre-ordained America for greatness). This ridiculous notion is what makes it not wrong to wage a genocidal campaign against the native population, what lets the world's largest stockpiler of, and still only user of, nuclear weapons to throw a hissy fit whenever another nation contemplates building them. And it's the kind of belief that us to ignore an untold number of violent acts committed by our government (though conveniently done so outside of our nation).

It sadly seems as if the exceptionalist ideal is damn hard to escape, even for those who recognize it to be the fallacy it is. For example, take this piece from Salon this morning by David Sirota. It's a fairly standard piece I've seen multiple variations on; essentially the point of the column is that now such random and violent attacks don't seen so unusual or out of the norm, and that's the scary thing -- that in a place like America we could come to accept the inevitability of random, potentially terroristic violence.

Now I'm pretty willing to bet most everything I have that Mr. Sirota does not subscribe to the notion of American exceptionalism, and would probably scoff at the idea that he does. But yet, even in a guy well known for his leftist writings, you still see the exceptionalist narrative pop up. Because if you take the time to read the article, the subtext is really "This kind of thing doesn't happen here." And such an argument only makes sense if there's somewhere where it does happen, where it's usual.

To take it one step further, the implicit comparison is to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other "war torn" nations around the globe. That's where stuff like this is supposed to happen. That's why, say, a huge wave of bombings across Iraq leaving over 50 dead barely gets a mention in the news, while the Boston explosions, which while tragic, have claimed significantly fewer lives but are dominating every news outlet in this nation.

Sure, part of that is because this happened "here" as opposed to "over there" (although what's happening "over there" is directly attributable to the political decisions made "here"). But the bigger reason for the discrepancy is because things like this aren't supposed to happen here. They are supposed to happen over there, to those people. People who, by virtue of where they live, apparently have it coming and therefore are not nearly as worthy of our concern and sympathy as are the good people who did the correct thing by living in God's America.

Turns out violence exists in the world. And it unfortunately turns out that believing you're magically immune for some murky set of reasons about how you're better than everyone else doesn't insulate you from it. This should neither be a surprise nor a cause for hysteria.

It's So Close I Can Taste It...

May 26th, peoples. May 26th...

Check out other AD album covers here.

Teaching Sociology: Privilege Is Often The Little Things (Part something in a never-ending pop-pedagogical series)

My closet, more-or-less

Privilege comes in many forms; there's male privilege, white privilege, straight privilege, the list could go on and on. As a straight, white, middle-class (finally!), Christian male in the United States of America, I benefit from most all of 'em (if it weren't for my giant Semitic nose, I think I'd have them all).

Yet for how ubiquitous it is, it's a tricky concept to teach. Actually, scratch that, because it's so ubiquitous, it's a tricky concept to teach. Mostly because people who have it don't want to acknowledge they have it, and people who don't have it don't want to make a big deal out of it because it makes things really awkward for them when those with privilege throw their privileged hissy fits (which almost inevitably happens).

Privilege operates in some pretty impactful ways in society -- women make 77 cents on the dollar for the same work as men, in an increasing number of states women can't control their own reproductive systems, etc. Those are very big and important issues, and many people much smarter and more eloquent than I have covered them in-depth elsewhere.

But one thing I've found that has helped get the concept across to the skeptical is to save the giant, society-shaping ways privilege operates for a later date and instead focus on the tiny, micro-level ways privilege affects our day-to-day existance.

I was thinking about it this morning as I got dressed to go to campus. Today is a teaching day for me (tuesday/thursday teaching schedule ftw!), so I put on a collared shirt to show students I'm a Serious Academic™. But I really only have about 6 presentable shirts that make it look like I at least tried to put some effort into my appearance. Not wanting to wear the same one repeatedly, I've come up with a tried and true method for varying my dressy wardrobe: I keep all 6 shirts in order in my closet. Each day I need to wear one, I take it from the front of the line, and at the end of the day, put it at the back of the line, assuring I'll wear the other 5 shirts before I wear that one again.

It's an awesome system that both keeps me from looking like the weirdo who wears the same shirt every class and keeps me from having to put any through whatsoever into what I'm wearing.

It's also a system that is pretty much only possible because I'm a man.

It's hopefully no surprise to anyone reading this that women are held to a different and much more extensively proscribed appearance expectations than are their male counterparts. While women are excoriated for not putting enough effort into their appearance, men are criticized for putting too much thought into their appearance (well, not so much criticized as subjected to homophobic taunts, but sic of one, half-dozen of the other). While this is undoubtedly harmful to men who do take pride in the appearance, it works out quite well for the fellas like me.

Most women I know, even the crunchy hippies and angry punx and all other variety of kooky lefties I know, put in a fair amount of time on their appearance. Not necessarily because they want to, but because they know they'll be harshly judged for not doing so. Whereas I am not only not judged harshly for spending a total of 15 seconds getting ready for the day, if anything that makes me even more in line with the gendered expectations for men (not giving a fuck about anything is a high ideal for men).

So all-in-all, not a big, earth-shattering deal by any means, but the fact that I can spend no time on my appearance and rarely if ever get criticized for it (as opposed to being force to spend a great deal of time on my appearance and still likely being criticized for it) is a clear and measurable form of privilege...

Some Famous Lady Died

Sorry for the long break in posts -- international travel, busy time of the semester, etc.

Anyway, as you're hopefully already aware, Margaret Thatcher died yesterday (to be honest, I was pretty surprised to learn that she hadn't died a decade ago). A lot of people have wasted a lot of ink discussing her death and her legacy. And a lot of people had street parties celebrating her death. In poor taste? Maybe, but few people's death inspire street parties that didn't deserve them.

I really don't have anything terribly erudite to add to the conversation. Anyone who's spent more than a minute reading this blog could pretty accurately predict how I feel about her politics, and though I subscribe to the notion that death doesn't make one immune from criticism (here's Gleen Greenwald explaining the point beautifully in regards to Christopher Hitchen's death), I don't have any particularly meaningful or witty put downs too add to the chorus.

Though I will repeat that there have been reports of dozens of street parties across Britain (and more scattered across Europe and the States), and again note that regardless of the particulars, you have to be a pretty shitty person for so many people to be so overjoyed at news of your death.

Really though, I think nothing sums up the wretchedness of Thatcher more than the fact that "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" shot up to number 27 on the UK iTunes chart within a day.

Again, maybe tasteless, but pretty damn telling...

Remember, she said Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.
You know, because he didn't agree with fucking Apartheid.
Anyway, here's her and Reagan with devil horns. Also, this is a kick-ass album.

10 Years And A Million Dead And I Didn't Even Get A Lousy T-Shirt

So today marks the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. There's been a lot written about it today, some of which has been really good, but I'm assuming anyone reading this has already seen most of the good stuff. The saddest/funniest, though, would be this collection of cheerleading quotes from media and Bush administration officials in the first few months after the war when everything was going to be roses, "flowers and sweets*," and sunshine everywhere.

Of course, none of that happened. Basically every prediction the Left had for the war came out correct, a fact I pointed out over 8 years ago, and in fact, these arguments have only become more correct over those intervening years (quagmire, anyone?).

But just because we were right that the war was a terrible idea, would be meet with fierce resistance, and would not accomplish anything, doesn't make this a time to gloat. You know, because of those million or so dead people.

I'd normally go on a rant about how fucked up the run-up to war was, and how obvious it was the Bush administration was blatantly lying to get the war they wanted. But I won't, both because that has gone from accusation to widely-accepted fact, but mostly because I now know far too many Iraqis and Americans who have lost loved ones to that fucking lie.

Rather, I think it's best to leave it to uncle Kurt, who wrote one of the best passages on how I feel about remembering such military campaigns. You should really go read the whole of Cat's Cradle for the full speech (and because it'll be one of the best books you've ever read), but the relevant part is this:

“Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.” 

Today I really feel like rolling in the mud and grunting like a pig...



*Funny story about that phrase -- remember how Cheney and Rumsfeld used it repeatedly to sell the war? That many Iraqis had assured them they would be greeted with "flowers and sweets?" Well, after spending a god deal of time in Iraq, I've learned this is actually a common Iraqi saying that's basically like saying "it was nice to meet you." One of the main justifications for this whole fucking bullshit war was that Bush administration officials couldn't tell the difference between a nicety and a policy statement. That about sums up the whole thing for me.

When The Germans Are More Thoughtful Than You, You Got Yourself A Problem

To paraphrase Community: "All this time, we thought the Germans were the Germans, but it turns out we're the Germans."

So background: both America and the Axis of WWII have committed genocides. America has actually committed two, but let's just focus on the one we're more "proud" of. And I use the term pride there intentionally, because I'm talking about slavery and the continued "pride" of certain segments of society in the Confederacy.

These two cases give us a very interesting contrast on how to respond to your country doing something really, really fucked up. The former Axis nations, for instance, have pretty much banned all things associated with the Nazi/Mussolini regimes, outside of historical education. For instance, there was a midfielder in Greece recently given a lifetime ban from the Greek futbol association for throwing up a Heil Hitler salute after scoring a goal.

This is a debatable punishment in its extent (though I for one have no problem with it), but it's at least a clear rejoinder to folks who express Nazi ideology. And that clear rejoinder is this: "Hey asshole, we tried that and it went really, really fucking wrong. Knock that shit off." It seems as if the former fascist genocidal nations have realized that genocide is something to be remorseful about. Seems simple enough.

Now contrast that with how America remembers one of our genocides (we just ignore/erase from history the other one). In plenty of places, school children are taught there was never really a genocide and that the South and North were fighting over how big the Federal government should be. We have plenty of people who still fly the flag of the genocidal regime under the aegis of "pride." Fuck, the state fucking capitol in South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag. What's the message here? Well, it sure looks like it's "Remorse? Fuck you, we ain't remorseful about genocide. in fact, we're fucking proud of it."

Now this is the point where a Confederate genocide defender will say the South was about much more than slavery, and while slavery was maybe regretful, there's still so much to celebrate.

Fuck you, if you're trying to make that argument.

Because let's apply that logic to Germany. Sure, the whole Holocaust thing was bad, but there was so much to celebrate in Nazi Germany. After all, it's not celebrating the Holocaust, it's merely taking pride in the past! That's why we still fly the flag of the Third Reich over the capitol building; it has nothing to do with racism and how dare you imply that!

Sound pretty horrible? Good, you've passed the test of being a human being. If you think it's unfair to compare the two cases, my condolences, for you've failed the test of being a human being.

Baseball Jurisprudence Strikes Again!

Previously I brought you the very important story of the judiciary officially recognizing the Twins and Sox as rivals. But now comes news of a baseball-related legal settlement that warms my heart even more: the Yankees had to take to court to defend the fact that they are, indeed, baseball's evil empire.

The gist of the story is that some guy tried to start a website called something like "Baseball's Evil Empire" and the Yankees sued for copyright infringement, arguing that in relation to baseball, there is no one more evil or more like a terrible, oppressive empire. In fact, in the judges' ruling they explicitly noted "the record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees."

I mean...damn. Not content with purchasing championships, ruining the free agency market for the vast majority of other teams, being arrogant assholes, having some of the most corrupt (and mob-affiliated!) owners in the league. Nope. The Yankees will not be happy until they own literally everything even vaguely baseball-related, even if it's an insult leveled against them.

Bringing Criminals To Trial? What A Novel Idea!

Just a quick post at the end of the work week -- at her first Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Elizabeth Warren had a simple question: when's the last time a Wall Street banker had to face trial?

Unsurprisingly, the answer was a stammering "Um...sometime...I'm sure we've...uh...I'll have to get back to you."

While the full answer to why this happens in somewhat complex, the short answer is that we have two criminal justice systems; one for the poor, in which increasingly harsh laws are justified as the only response capable of stemming criminality, and one for the rich, in which token fines and regulatory discussions suddenly become the preferred method.

But really, the easiest way to see these two tracks in operation is to look at two crimes, both of which can have incredibly destructive effects on individuals and communities: drug use and all possible forms of crime on Wall Street (and the larger financial industry). 

Drug use, the crime available to (though not at all exclusive to) the poor, generates an incredibly harsh response. In the year 2011 alone, an estimated 1, 513, 251 people were arrested for drug-related crimes. And maybe this seems appropriate to you; after all, drugs are bad and harmful and can destroy entire communities, so they need a big response.

But let's contrast that with all financial crimes. Unless you have been living in a cave on mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, you may recall how shady financial practices over the last few years kind of tanked the American economy (and really, most of the world economy), putting millions out of work, erasing the retirement funds of millions, and leading to all sorts of horrible problems too myriad to list here. And how many people were arrested for financial crimes in 2011? Well, it's hard to say, because the data are not kept in the same way. However, according to the FBI, there were  241 convictions and 726 potentially criminal cases pending an outcome. So, roughly 1,000 criminal cases were pursued. Expanding back a few years with the same data, the entire financial collapse of America resulted in less than 10,000 criminal cases being pursued in the financial sector (though of course pursued does not mean any criminal charges or even arrests came of it).

So by even the most generous of definitions, there were well over 151 times as many people arrested for drug charges in one year than there were cases even pursued against the financial industry over a 7 year span. And again, as bad as drug use may be, I don't recall it tanking the entire world's economy.

So why the discrepancy? Well, again, there are a fair number of factors involved, but the biggest one would be that one of these crimes is the kind that can be committed by poor people and one is the kind that can only be committed by the wealthy...

Woah,You Guys! It Tuns Out College Athletics May Not Be The Pure, Scholarly Endeavor We Imagine It To Be

A recent study from the Delta Cost Project reveals a shocking truth only known to those with eyes who have been paying a minimal amount of attention: Universities spend way more money on athletics than is justified.

Though big-revenue sports like collegiate football and basketball like to justify their existence by claiming to bring money into the institution (something the Knight Commission has conclusively and repeatedly demonstrated that this only true for the top 5-10 earners in football, and even fewer basketball programs), even if this was true, the disparities are still pretty insane.

For instance, in the football-crazed SEC, the average school spends a whopping median of $163, 931 per athlete. For those who are too far removed from their high school stats class, median means half of all spending is higher than this number, half below. I'll let you take a wild guess as to which side is populated by the football team and which by the women's rowing team.

Not only is this expenditure insane in-and-of-itself, it also represents 12.2 times as much money as these Universities spend on their students. You know, the people who are supposedly the reason the University exists in the first place.

What makes this even sadder is that the median spending on athletes vs the general student body is still over 3:1 in the FCS schools (formerly the I-AA). Because the other justification always given for this runaway spending is that a successful football/basketball program brings more students to the university. And maybe (and that's a strong maybe) this is true for the storied and legendary programs like Alabama or Notre Dame, but no one, and I mean no one, can even begin to make that claim for FCS schools. As someone who attended one, I can note that of the approximately 12,000 students at the University I attended for undergrad, a full 10-20 of them may have been fans of the school team.

And, of course, this is to say nothing of how all this money is spent without a single cent of it going to the athletes themselves. But this is America, and building multi-billion dollar institutions on the back of free labor provided by a mostly-Black workforce is one of our proudest national traditions...

I've Become Everything I Hate

Pictured: Me

I've written before about how I'm ambivalent about giving money to public radio (tl;dr: they say they're ad free, but they have ads all the time, just read by the DJs rather than voice actors). But on the other hand, I've listened to The Current fairly regularly for the better part of 8 years now, and never once contributed anything (other than my ears for the ads they read on air, which is technically paying for it, since that's the entire purpose of radio ads).

Mostly I resolved the situation by remembering I was a broke grad student, and as much as I like the Current, they have plenty of money and I had basically none. So it made the decision easier.

But now that I'm gone away from the Twin Cities, I've been spending a lot of time listening online, both because all the radio stations here suck immensely, and because I'm home sick.

So I became a public radio supporter for the first time in my life. I get a neat-o t-shirt for my troubles (hey! this shirt only costs $120!), and the warm feeling of the self-satisfied liberal...

Bordieu and Cold Ears

So I haven't blogged in a long time, which is extra funny considering all the time I waste on the internet pretending to work. Maybe it's because when I'm online I'm trying to avoid work and writing is too close to work for comfort. Who knows?

Or maybe it's just one of the many growing pains of moving halfway across the country to start a new job in a town in which I knew literally no one before moving here. It's been a lot more adjustment than I initially thought it would be; I've been in similar situations before (moving away to a new town where I know no one), but it's always been different. Moving to grad school I ended up somewhere new with no friends, but I was also surrounded daily by people in my age range who were in the same situation I was. Or when I moved to Iraq, I really knew no one, but I had counted on feeling weird and alone, and besides, it was just temporary anyway.

But this move was a whole new bag of worms. And one of the biggest changes has been adjusting to a new habitus I find myself in. Coined by (or at least developed by, I'm not going to bother to check) the French sociologist Pierre Bordieu, habitus essentially refers your life world; the things you implicitly understand and are used to, like language, general social customs, how to comport yourself in the various situations in which you find yourself, etc. Of course, that's a gross over-simplification, but basically (I think) the idea.

Not too surprisingly, folks south of the ol' Mason-Dixon line occupy a fairly different habitus than I was used to in Minnesota. And while this manifests itself in a variety of ways, one of the most obvious in reaction to the weather. For instance, a good 2 inches of snow seems to completely shut this city down (I get it, there's a bunch of steep, windy mountain roads, but come on, people...).

But my own reaction to the weather here has been just as ridiculous as the local's is to me. Because for some reason I can't get it through my head that the cold here is just as cold as it is back home. Part of it is that I'm now technically in the South. So even though I'm only about 15 miles from the Pennsylvania border, mentally I just can't shake the feeling that it doesn't get cold in the South. And to be fair, it doesn't get nearly as cold; as friends back home are whining about negative 50 windchills, the lowest it's gotten here in the low teens.

Now this time of year in Minnesota, the low teens are relatively warm, as opposed to the coldest it ever gets. But, you know, temperatures in the low teens are still objectively cold to human beings. But I can't get out of the habit of looking at the weather, seeing a high for the day of 20 and thinking some variation of "dang, that's pretty warm for February."

Which in and of itself is not really a big deal, but means I almost always forget to grab a hat or mittens or any of the kind of cold weather gear you should probably wear when it's that cold. Because in Minneapolis, I would have already been wearing hat and gloves every day for weeks at this point, so I would just be doing it out of habit. But for most of my first two weeks here, it was often so warm I didn't even need a jacket. So when the rare cold day does come, somehow it doesn't register as something I should worry about, and then I find myself walking home from campus freezing my ass off wondering why I didn't feel the need for a hat or gloves.

So why I don't I feel the need for cold-weather gear? Well, it's obviously partly because I'm an idiot who has very little ability to plan for the future. But it's also because I'm still operating on a habitus developed over 30 years of living in freezing climates. And since habitus is not something that changes over night, I'll probably be making the same mistake repeatedly this winter.

At least it give me something to look forward to, I guess -- maybe by next winter I'll have figured out that cold weather feels the same in Morgantown as it does in Minneapolis. Maybe...