Racism: Complex

The recent fervor over the shootings in South Carolina has crystallized a thought that I've been working on for some time.  I think people are talking about the wrong thing.  The biggest problem in this country isn't the Second Amendment, nor is it the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee.  It isn't the Republican Party, although they may well be the worst of two great evils, and their compulsion to talk nonsense about the motives of Dylann Roof has made them look really, really bad.  The biggest problem in this country isn't even racism, but rather the way racism is viewed.

Think about this:  if you believe you are superior to me because your parents were Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, that's a delusion.  It's probably a symptom of mental illness.  How come if I believe that I am superior to you because my parents were white people, that's an opinion?  It's equally nonsensical, and its underpinnings are equally implausible, if not more so.  Biologically, race does not exist--we can't say the same of Jesus and Joan with such scientific certainty.  If one is the product of an unwell mind, mustn't the other be as well?

In addition to making little sense, treating racism as an opinion is also incredibly destructive.  After all, an opinion is something that can be held without being favored by the preponderance of facts, because most of them can't be proven or disproven.  I think grape jelly tastes wonderful, and my neighbor won't touch the stuff; my neighbor thinks red motorcycles look better than black ones and I paint all of mine black in defiance.  In the end, we have to let it go because we can't prove our side.  You may think that the government is capable of solving the biggest problems in our lives today, and I may think that's the biggest load of hogwash I've heard since Backstreet Boys music, but at the end, those are opinions, which means that we're left to respect them, or, at least, acknowledge that we're each entitled to them.  Even if racism is viewed as outdated, so are 1960s Thunderbirds.  For someone who believes that the past is superior to the present (a legitimately unprovable opinion), then outdatedness is a positive quality.  At some level, we require ourselves to allow racism to persist because it falls into a category of ideas that can't be wrong all the way--even though one of its major logical underpinnings is categorically wrong, disproving the idea at its very foundation.

Not only that, but treating racism as an opinion may very well drive people with racism to want racism to persist.  In today's world, it has become increasingly taboo to hate, but opinions are the one thing we are still allowed to hate people for.  People can group others by beliefs and attack them without consequence.  "Democrat," "liberal," and "progressive" are pejoritives in some places, "Red" and "Nazi" as intense as "racist" in most.  That may sound like a good thing as applied to racism, and to read it written by someone like me, who has hated racism and racists most of his life, it definitely comes off as hypocritical to suggest otherwise, but in practical terms, there are few ideas worse than that of responding to racism with hate.  You can't use hate to change people.  Even if you do manage to change them, it won't be in the way you were hoping.  I'm now into my fourth decade of being hated because I'm weird, and yet after absorbing so much of that hatred, and spilling the rest back out onto whoever was available, I am not at all less weird.  I have more weird ideas than ever, but now with a side of misanthropy.  If one anecdote does not suffice, consider this: despite some people using "Democrat" as an insult, they are more or less as popular as their rivals.  Consider the centuries of hatred that have utterly failed to make black people look any different.  Hate may feel pretty good, (okay, fine, you got me...it does feel effing awesome) but it just doesn't work.

What can work, if done intelligently, is to change people with compassion.  The fields of religion and psychology have developed numerous experts in this pursuit.  The way to end racism is to find the people who have racism and treat them.  Do so with kindness, with respect, with professionalism, so they will keep coming back.  They need the treatment.  Nobody needs the hatred.

That's kind of awesome, if you think about it.  How many illnesses can be cured entirely by education?

People, Humans, and Animals

What makes a person a person?

The only thing that separates people from other kinds of animals is their ability to ignore their emotions.


What separates humans from other kinds of animals?

1-40% of the genome.


Can someone be human without being a person?

Absolutely.


Can someone be a person without being a human?

Theoretically.  Intelligent extraterrestrials would likely qualify.


Can someone be a person without being an animal?

Theoretically.  Intelligent extraterrestrials might qualify.


Can someone be a human without being an animal?

Nope.  I don't see how that would be possible.

Uneducated, Unsolicited Legal Opinion (part 2)

Back on May 8th, I posted the following:

Using the victim's sexual history as evidence for the defense in a rape case is like using a victim's Christmas shopping list to defend a thief.  "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the so-called 'victim' in this case has demonstrated a clear pattern of giving things to people.  It is clear that this slightly-used iPhone was a gift to my defendant, which his accuser later regretted giving away."

That dog don't hunt.

I stand by this assertion, but I would like to add to that.  Blaming a victim for a rape because she was flirting is like blaming a guy for having his bike stolen because he rode it back and forth in front of a place that the thief frequented.  I've also seen an account of a defense lawyer using a victim's sexual fantasies about men the same age as the alleged perpetrator in the defense.  That would be equivalent to saying that a thief didn't steal a bike because the victim had been considering buying a bike for somebody the same age.

#notallmen

One Man's Response to the back-and-forth between #yesallwomen and #notallmen:

Aside from this short personal screed, you won't ever see me use the hashtag #notallmen (though you won't see me use the hashtag #yesallwomen either, for the obvious reason).  But I get where it comes from.  Really, I do.  As a man who could quite reasonably use that hashtag if he pleased, I suspect that most men like me read #yesallwomen in two ways: as an attempt to chip away at their privilege, and as an accusation.  The privilege may not be fair, but it's quite human to like having privileges.  And even for a perfectly well-meaning man, the knee-jerk reaction to #yesallwomen can be defensive.  The movement states that harassment and assault is a universal experience.  If we're not on the receiving end, then we must, by implication, be perpetrators.

Now, obviously, that's not what #yesallwomen is actually about.  Even if it were, though, #notallmen would miss the point, because #yesallwomen marks narratives of things that, in a just world, would never happen to any women at all.  Ultimately, the issue here is a lot bigger than men's affront at a perceived accusation.

At the same time, big issues need wide support.  It's an unfortunate fact that simply telling the truth isn't enough.  To inspire change, it's necessary to tailor a truthful message in such a way that appeals to a wide audience.  So, even though it seems a little silly to thank people for doing what everyone should do, I will do it anyway.  On behalf of nobody but myself, thank you, #notallmen, for not being part of the problem.  Thank you for not doing anything to women that merits accusation.

With that said, even if you are not deserving of accusations, you may be in need of a wakeup call.  Instead of simply being among the many who are not part of the problem, why not join the much smaller number who are part of the solution?  Instead of simply refraining from harassing or assaulting women, why not remind your family or friends not to do it?  You could even show true courage by denouncing this behavior when you see it happen in public (and while #notallmen have done it, #yesallmen have seen it take place.  Admit it).

My response, as a man, to #notallmen:  yes, not all of them, but too many.

Unsolicited, Uneducated Legal Opinion

Using the victim's sexual history as evidence for the defense in a rape case is like using a victim's Christmas shopping list to defend a thief.  "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the so-called 'victim' in this case has demonstrated a clear pattern of giving things to people.  It is clear that this slightly-used iPhone was a gift to my defendant, which his accuser later regretted giving away."

That dog don't hunt.

The Few, the Crowd, and the Priest

An old man traced by step by step

Long life behind and life still left

Through dusty streets bespecked with crowds,

Most bowed and humble. Fewer, proud,

Of colors bold and raiment new

Stopped to talk. Others could not pass through.

Others milled about. At last,

The old man found his own way past.

He bumped a proud man. Once he'd gone first,

Some followed. The people blocked had half dispersed

When the proud man drawled, “well, excuse me.”

His tone threatened, if sarcastically,

The, pretense dropped, “what's wrong with you.”

Said the oldster, “others needed through.”

Said the proud, “and I should mind the last, the least?”

Then he saw the oldster's clothes. “A priest?

You think you're above me, holy man?

My need for labor feeds this land.

My money's real. False, futile platitudes

Would leave this city unbathed, nude,

Unsheltered on unmaintained streets,

But I should mind to you, the least,

The fool who would make peasants king.

Your words lack both in legs and wings.”

The priest said, “I'm just tired, old.

You our labor, not our lives control.

In want of home, in want of rest,

We seek return to each our nests,

and in the moment, I brushed past.

Those few inches ope'd a way at last.

None of our best moments, I'd admit.

I'm half-ready to be done with it.”

“Well, I'm not,” said the merchant next.”

“I want you whipped for disrespect,”

He ordered the re-gath'ring throng.

Their murmured cry: “let him go on.”

Go on he did, though not away.

“I'm tired, yes, most tired of the way

Your kind use money as a leash

and tell us that it makes us free.

Without it, we would work to live.

Instead, we work for what you give.

We could be free, could be unlead.

Instead, we just pull you ahead.

You feed us, in the strictest sense,

A barest pittance, recompense

For years of work which you do not–

Then we're judged by what we've got.

How much time would we regain

If work was free, from coin unchained?”

The crowed, enrapt at hearing this,

Cried “burn this man! This man's a witch!”

Why I Write, Part y+2: Holding Onto a Dream

For almost half of my life, I held onto the dream of being a writer.  I wasn't born with the dream.  When I was four, I thought I was going to be a major league pitcher.  When I was six, I thought I was going to be a policeman.  At seven, eight and nine, I was a future quarterback; future fullback was my fallback.  When I was ten, though, at least part of me knew I was going to be a writer.

It started, as I assume the aspirations of many writers do, with a school assignment.  I was assigned to write a short story that took place in the American colonies during the period between the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War.  I ended up coming back to the teacher with a ten-page monstrosity of a thing that I have since lost.  If someone were to find it, I would not admit to being its author.  At the time, though, I loved it.  I may not be a natural storyteller, but I certainly had a natural urge to tell stories.

I assumed that everybody would write a lot.  Who wouldn't want to tell more story?  I was shocked when all of my classmates returned to the teacher with one-page stories.  Some of them might have been better.  Some of them were certainly more polished -- the ten-year-old version of me was simply not capable of adequately proofreading a ten-page story in a night or two.  Nevertheless, that story stood out in my mind for a long time.  I'm sure every one of that class's twenty-three protagonists had more story, and I was the only protagonist whose author would have bothered to tell it, given an extension on his due date.

So that was the birth of my dream of being a writer, born ten years after I was.  The dream came of age about when I started to.  That was the first time I decided what novel I dreamed of writing.  It was a science fiction novel, in my imagination, and in the beginning.  In my imagination, it grew into an epic science fiction novel, and then a three-novel saga.  Eventually, it became a very long, physical outline, which I finished and then promptly burned.  I wanted to get it out of my head, to make room for new ideas that weren't the cathartic fantasies of a twelve-year-old who grew up watching Star Wars, reading Animorphs, and skimming through the occasional Redwall novel for a change of pace.

The plan worked, eventually.  But there was something more important than an adolescent plotline that I needed to get rid of.  It was, oddly enough, the dream.  In junior high, I dreamed of being published by high school.  In high school, I dreamed of writing five novels by twenty-five.  Out of high school, I dreamed about being a professional writer.  In all of that time, I wrote a handful of song lyrics, a couple of short stories, some unsorted, disjointed chapters of a novel, a few introductory chapters of a second novel, and a very long outline.  I didn't sell any of it; I didn't try to.  Little of it ever left my own possession.  All totaled, it was not a lot of writing.  I probably wrote more for school in that time.

Of course, I was doing exactly what society tells us to do with dreams, which is nothing.  Hold onto them, like a four leaf clover.  Put them somewhere, but for goodness sake, don't take them out and do anything with them.  There are more important, unrelated, material ends to work toward.  The dream stays put away, thought of when one needs comfort after working ever longer and harder toward the world's material ends.  The dream becomes two dreams: it is the dream itself, and the hope that it will still be there when retirement rolls around.

When I was twenty-three, giving college the ol' college try (again), a switch in me flipped.  By that time, I knew rationally that I was a failure when it came to writing novels.  I had never even finished writing one, not for real.  Yet there was still some irrational part of me that dreamed that I was a novelist.

As much as I still wanted to be a writer, I absolutely did not want to be the guy who was completely deluded about his own abilities.  So when a professor assigned me to write an original poem, I latched onto that.  I enjoyed it.  I was, at least by the standards of undergraduate literature classes, reasonably good at it.  And unlike the novels, I finished mine on the first try.  I had to proofread it, and I wanted to make a few stylistic changes, but revision is part of the process; so is finishing, and in poetry, I could do both.

At that point, I latched onto the poetry, and I gave up my dream.  I told myself, "Jon, so far, you have no evidence that you can be, or ever will be, a great novelist.  On the other hand, if you keep writing, you can be a poet who really enjoys his writing, and doesn't have to beat himself up over a low word count.  Eventually, you could even write a lot of poetry.  If you decide to keep writing.  You could also keep dreaming of being a novelist, but where has that gotten you?"

I decided that it was better to be some kind of writer than dream about being more.

I got somewhere with the poetry.  I got much further and faster than I expected.  I started off pretty slowly, with a poem here, a poem there, maybe a few a week.  But I was actually writing, and now that I was writing, I continued to enjoy it, and I got better and better at generating and developing ideas.  Pretty soon, I was writing a lot.  A few people told me I was wasting my time.  More were supportive.  I didn't care, because I was too busy actually writing.

Once I started approaching, and once exceeded, one hundred poems in a month, I thought about the sheer word count I was producing.  At that rate, finishing a novel was feasible.  But what would I write?  Having disposed of the dream of being a novelist, I had no urgent need to answer that question, only an insatiable appetite to generate and develop ideas. As long as I didn't run out of ideas, I could afford to be patient.

My patience paid off.  Eventually, I had the right idea.  It was big enough to take up two hundred pages, and also limited enough in scope that it wouldn't spin out of control on me.  It had an ending, like my poetry, which seemed important.  I knew enough about the material that I wouldn't get bogged down in indecision or doubt or research.

Now all I needed was time and a deadline.  Starting in June,  I gave myself the last two hours of every day, guaranteed it to myself, and made an agreement (again, with myself) to finish by the end of the summer.  After writing the first two chapters, most of the ending, and an outline for the entire middle part, I revised the goal to sixty days.

Then, I wrote.  I lived for those two hours every night.  I looked forward to them while the sun was up.  I savored them when the evening came.  Most of all, I made them count.  I did what I had to do.  I kept doing it.  I would not be denied.  Some people told me I ought to be doing other things in the evening.  Others told me it was a waste of time.  I told them to shut up; I had a novel to write.

I wrote it.

I missed my deadline.  It took me 65 days to write my first novel.  I decided I was okay failing with a 95%.  It was a big step up from the nine years it took to not write the other novel.

I finished my second novel less than eleven months later.  I'm no longer a guy with dreams of being a novelist.  I'm a guy who writes what he wants to write.  Some people still tell me it's a waste of my time.  There are people who tell me that I spend too much time and energy on something that isn't making me any money, or that I don't plan to market.  They say it's no way to get ahead.  Some people tell me it's antisocial to spend so much time on a solitary, occasionally isolating, pursuit.  They say that I need to come back and live in the real world with everyone else.

I tell those people to shut up.  I have a novel to write.