I'm not sure how to make sense of this story other than to see the reactions of these New Yorkers as "racist." Anyone who knows me well also knows that I am very careful about throwing out that word. But in this case, I think I can use it freely...and without constraint.
The attached article from the New York Times is a bit long, but it's well worth the read. I'll spare the details and not pontificate about all of the things that I see in it. However, I do want to say one quick thing.
All of these people who are complaining about Asian Indians "taking over" this Queens, New York neighborhood seem to imagine that their people, the relatives who came before them some 60-80 years ago, did NOT take over that very same Queens neighborhood from some other cultural group. For you see, at some point in the not too distant past, the relatives of these Asian Indian haters who are featured in the article were the ne'er-do-well "invaders" who were destroying some other group's way of life (and I don't mean some Native American group). Their relatives were the scourge, the vermin. THEY were the ones who did not want to assimilate; THEY were the foreigners; THEY were the people who were going to ruin the flavor of what the neighborhood had become.
It's rather remarkable how we don't like to look backward...and how what comes around seems to inevitably go around.
By the way, I love the gesture of Mr. Patel, the one Indian owner, offering to sell the property to anyone who wants it--at a loss. "Okay...quiet now please."
So a buddy of mine sent me an email with a video link discussing "illegal immigrants" using health care facilities in the United States. Along with the video came some text (that he did not write). It's one of those emails that gets sent around to the ever present protesting subculture of web users. Here's the text that was in the email:
This is one small hospital in Florida...Unbelievable! PLEASE WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO. EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS. IT AFFECTS EVERY ONE OF US!!! This is why you can't afford good health care. This should offend every US tax paying citizen. This is not only happening in Florida, but every state in the U.S.
Before I make any comments, you'll need to watch the video.
So you're probably outraged that this could happen, especially if you're one of the many tens of millions of Americans who do not have health care or who are in mountains of debt because of health care bills that you can not pay. Imagine returning to your country of origin and leaving all of those bills behind -- and not even having to pay for your return flight! I'm sure you're thinking that that would be a nice option to have.
But as matters such as these go, especially things that seem so incredibly outrageous, there are always other factors to consider.
Let me discuss just one. There are over four million U.S. citizens living permanently in other countries. This doesn't include students studying abroad, nor are Americans serving at U.S. military bases on foreign part of the mix. It does include people working for multinational companies, however. So if we assume that half of this group (two million people) are simply living on their own in foreign countries and not for some company that probably provides them with health care, we probably should also assume that a large number of the remaining number of people are uninsured. Anecdotal observation on my part while spending years living abroad would lead me to conclude that there are a lot of people who just wanted to blow out of the U.S. and live somewhere else because they didn't appreciate their lives here -- like many of the nearly 700,000 Americans currently living in Canada.
Here's the hitch. A significantly large segment of these uninsured, free-wheeling expats are living in countries where they have access to government health care (e.g., Canada, UK, Mexico, among probably a hundred other places). What do you think happens when one of them who is living on the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland is suddenly stricken with pneumonia? Do you think that the locals just let them die? Absolutely not. He or she goes to the hospital and the Irish doctors and nurses take care of the problem. And when it's time to pay? Sometimes the hospital is reimbursed and other times the staff simply says "You're welcome" as our fellow countryman or woman walks back into their Irish life.
Back in the 1980s I spent three days in a hospital in Mexico City having my appendix removed. It was a crazy story -- and I mean A CRAZY STORY -- and one that I never seem to get around to telling. It was in a hospital in a particularly gritty part of town and the doctors said that an appendectomy was a simple procedure for them compared to the gun shot and knife wounds they typically dealt with. My total bill? A pint of blood. They asked me to donate a pint of blood...adding to the end of the request, "if you wouldn't mind." That's it. Here's this gringo hanging out in Mexico who eats too many jalapenos and drinks too much tequila and ends up needing an emergency appendectomy -- and the people of Mexico have to pay for it. I'm sure some investigative journalist could have done a provocative expose about the hospital beds that were being occupied by "rich Americans" while poor Mexicans were being turned away.
I'm not saying that all things are equal and that U.S. citizens should be happy and willing to pay for the health care of people who are living as undocumented laborers in this country. What I am saying is that I'd like to see someone add up the total health care costs of Americans who are living abroad that are paid by foreign tax payers. If I had to guess, I'd surmise that the total cost for foreigners who lack insurance and are living legally or illegally here in this country would be more, but only because our health care costs are inflated. Many of the million dollar charges discussed in the video are largely unreasonable, even if they are true on paper. For example, my wife had shoulder surgery last summer and her insurance company was billed twenty bucks for a small bag of ice that they got out of an ice cooler. So I imagine that if the Guatemalan man receives a few packs of ice every day for a year, that amounts to $22,000 -- and I'm sure the hospital is keeping track of every single charge hoping that they'll one day be reimbursed by somebody...anybody.
I'm also not saying that this is something about which we ought not be concerned. And it's unreasonable to think that any hospital should absorb all of the charges for the care of someone who is not even a resident of the state in which that hospital or clinic is located. However, let's keep these matters in their proper context because when we point a finger at someone else there are always three directed back at us.
Our new Attorney General, Eric Holder, has found himself in hot water with some comments that he made on Wednesday: "In things racial we have always been, and I believe continue to be in too many ways, essentially, a nation of cowards." Pundits, particularly those on the right, have called these words "reprehensible" and "inflammatory." While he actually said nothing new, it seems to be the fact that he used the word "coward" that has people upset. But which people? White people? Black people? Brown people?
Beyond this single statement, listen to this portion of his speech and try to find something that is outlandish.
What he said, in a nutshell, is that Americans are afraid to discuss race. What is wrong with making that claim? Is he off-base about that? He didn't single out any group. Or are some folks assuming that he implied that only white people are the cowards? How would this be received if this was George Bush saying this? Or Bill Clinton?
Lots of people are saying that fifty million cowards seemed to have gotten beyond their fear and put an African American in power who would then appoint Holder as the Attorney General. However, he's not discussing any singular act of racism or anti-racism or racial preference but, rather, the way we live our lives -- which is to tolerate other races in our work lives but maintain very segregated personal lives. By the way, the data pretty clearly support him on this.
The overarching problem with Holder's words is that white people don't know how to interpret them--and so they return to the old script: "It's a black guy speaking about race. So he must be critiquing us."
Another element of the old script is that most any statement made about race from one group is going to offend another group. That's exactly what Holder is talking about. So if we're not a nation of cowards, we would just allow him his critique and keep talking to each other, don't you think?
The killing of Oscar Grant III, an African American, by a white Oakland police officer is startling in many respects. For one, the question of responsibility in the vast majority of such killings is murky at best, and never has there been video that so clearly captures and validates the claim that is made by so many people of color, especially black people -- that police regularly mistreat people of color and sometimes kill people in cold blood (and then receive immunity for their actions). Even the case of Amadou Diallo had some gray shadings in the middle of the facts -- the police thought that he was reaching for a gun when he was reaching for his wallet. In Oakland by contrast, it certainly seems to me that there was virtually no possibility that the police officer could have imagined that Grant was a danger to anyone, not even himself. In fact, the video makes it look like an open and shut case of cold-blooded murder.
Let's comment on this -- but do so in light of the following six statements:
1. The only police officers in this country who are NOT appalled by Grant's killing (aka: "murder") are likely those who are members of some underground white supremacist organization for cops or the police officers who are just plain psychotic. So don't t say something like "the police are racist" unless you are also willing to stand behind some other stereotype such as "Mexicans are lazy" or "Irish are drunks."
2. The vast majority of murders of young black and brown men in the United States are committed by other young black and brown men and NOT the police. That many of these murders are committed for inane reasons (e.g., "he called me out") seems to me to be an excellent reason to riot in the streets and call for and end to the violence.
3. Racism allows people to act toward people from other groups in ways that they would not otherwise act -- and we have to imagine that the officer did not see Mr. Grant as one of his own people (i.e., his nephew, his brother, or even a version of himself).
4. It's not easy being a police officer in neighborhoods where large numbers of people hate you until they need you (and therefore call 911 and expect you to help them in some way). It's a very stressful job and one that operates on fear and suspicion. It's not a reason to commit cold blooded murder -- but it is a point to reckon with and one that few people ever take the time to entertain, until they become a cop.
5. This killing happened three weeks before the swearing into office of the first "black" U.S. President.
6. Because you rarely hear about violence committed by the police it doesn't mean that this is an isolated case. Watch this if you don't believe me:
So what do you think? What do you make of these two killings? And why haven't we heard more about the second shooting at the hands of the New Orleans Police Department? How many more egregious acts of violence and hate do law enforcement personnel commit against innocent people that never make the news?
If your first response is "I can't believe that this could happen in the U.S.," then what do you think actually does happen out there on the streets? I mean, what do you think is REALLY going on? What might you not be seeing?
I generally have a low tolerance for people who want to make a big deal out of isolated incidents when it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia and what are generally intolerant actions and attitudes. And so with that in mind, I'm a bit reluctant to discuss what appears to be a spike in intolerance among some segments of the U.S. populace as a result of our recent election.
Nonetheless, I'd be remiss for not examining what may be an issue upon which the "everything is better crowd" needs to reflect. None of this is surprising, of course, but it might be happening under the radar of our major media outlets because there is more important news to cover--like the end days of the global capitalist empire. Just a small story that merits a few weeks of saturating coverage.
Check out this article about Obama and white supremacists. No, the movement is not dead; it was not driven into obscurity by the groundswell of populist racial solidarity that seems to have swept through the country last fall. But when was the last time you read a story or watched a TV feature about some off the hook neo-Nazi or KKK family? If you're under thirty, and even if you've been paying attention to the popular media feature stories in recent years, I'll wager that you've probably never heard of the Aryan Nations, David Duke, W.A.R., Posse Comitatus, and the A.N.P. That last acronym, by the way, stands for the American Nazi Party.
I can assure you that such stories were commonplace in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. There was talk of the entire state of Idaho being taken over by white supremacists--and some people argued that we should let it happen in order to "just get rid of this country's rogue elements." You could hardly turn on the daytime television without surfing past a story about a family that thinks Satan lives on earth disguised as a Jew or that black people "rose out of the mud." The news of marches and beatings and secret societies captured the public imagination back in those years. And while these groups never went away, they've certainly not captured the interest of mainstream media outlets for well over a decade.
But they're back. The skinheads, the Nazis, and the Bruders Scheweigen--they're all back and they have some things to say to everyone who is not a convert. They want to talk about this Barack Hussein Obama guy. They have some things to discuss about Mexicans and gays and lesbians...and this country's future. And if we are to believe the following article, pretty soon we're all going to once again start finding their recruiting leaflets on our windshields when we return to our cars after a fun day of search for blue light specials at K-Mart. I'd like to imagine that we've moved beyond such polarized thinking, but I'm afraid that that has not happened. And so we are probably in for some rather interesting 20/20 episodes--"Are there Nazis working somewhere in the White House?" On the bright side, the return to the limelight of these nefarious characters will surely keep Jerry Springer on the air for another four years.
Being an iconoclast and a humorist, I find that I am often amused by irreverence. This is especially true when the impious behavior is directed toward poking fun at the rich and powerful, regardless of their race, ethnicity, sex/gender, or sexual orientation. And yes, in my own attempts to juxtapose disparate ideas or simply get a laugh, I have certainly stepped over that ever shifting and often unrecognizable line between being clever and being offensive. I never try to offend, I should add, but when pushing into new territories of thinking, sometimes it just happens.
Recently I have been struck by some pieces of humor directed toward Barack Obama and I have been trying ascertain whether the creators have crossed a line. The first one, the photo with the watermelons (above), is titled something like "No, children, there will be no Easter Egg hunt at the White House this year." Playing directly on the stereotype that black people lose themselves in the presence of watermelon, any of us would have a difficult time maintaining that the photo was created in the spirit of a good, healthy laugh.
But why would it be seen as offensive? First, when someone says that something is "offensive," that person is actually saying that he or she feels attacked--and that the attack hurts. Second, feeling attacked in this way stems from sensing that the attacker believes that there is some degree of truth to their offensive statement, video, photo, etc. I've always thought that "offense" is the wrong way to describe such a feeling, but it's the one that we're stuck with for the time being.
While I find myself saying that people can too easily toss around the "I'm offended at that" statement, particularly because when asked many cannot say exactly what they are offended by, I do recognize that the essential feeling of not wanting to be judged is what is at the core of the feeling--and how many of us mind if others compare us to people who are like us in some identifiable way (e.g., from our nuclear family) but then engage in some immoral or improper behavior (e.g., walk around town naked while proclaiming the gospel of L. Ron Hubbard)?
I've heard people argue that joking that black people like watermelon is much like joking that Japanese like sushi or that Koreans like kimchi or that Mexicans like hot peppers. Sure not all do, but by and large those foods are extremely popular in those three cultures and so the generalization works. The difference, and hence why the White House watermelon image is offensive, is that blacks have been historically portrayed as hapless, stupid and apelike while eating watermelon. In other words, the watermelon has been used as a prop to drive home the point that black people are inferior.
So last year someone produced a CD with a number of songs on it and passed it around in (mostly) conservative circles--after Rush Limbaugh hawked it on his radio show. Most of the songs simply poke fun at liberals and hypocrisy (e.g., John Edwards Poverty Tour"), but others were written to provoke. One was called "Barack the Magic Negro" (the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" with lyrics about Obama). My first question to myself was, Is this how Republicans are hoping to recapture the black vote? In fact, one of the men who was vying for leadership of the Republican National Committee, Chip Saltsman, sent it to his supporters. That's pretty dumb. Forget about political correctness for a moment, and whether free speech should be curtailed. Just ask this question: Would you want a guy leading YOUR political organization who thought it was okay to send such a song out to people who are already considered by many to be oblivious to race concerns--if not outright racist? Oh yeah, THAT GUY will surely revive the Republican Party.
Listen for yourself:
"Barack the Magic Negro"
Here's another song making light of Latinos who are perceived to not want to assimilate into the United States and who, it is thought by many, want to turn this country from one that is English speaking to another that is Spanish speaking. So imagine that you are like the majority of Mexican Americans in this country and have taken residency in the United States, speak English, and swear allegiance to the stars and stripes. Along comes a song that tells others around you--your barber, your electrician, your boss, your child's teacher--that Mexicans don't want to be Americans and have fealty first and foremost to Mexico. The negative repercussions could be enormous, like the Latino residents who have recently been killed by angry youths on the streets of NYC who simply wanted to beat down an immigrant. Clearly someone or some thing helped these youth to cross over some line between humor and offense--and the shift had grave consequences for those who died. (One, by the way, was from a tiny town in the Ecuadorian Andes where I spent several weeks working with the local priest, and so the story did hit home with me.)
Listen to this song:
"Star Spanglish Banner"
What do you think? Do YOU know how Mexicans feel? With how many Mexicans have you spoken about this issue? What do you know about how such sentiments positively or negatively affect their lives? How would you feel about Mexican neighbors or co-workers or roommates or playmates for your child AFTER listening to this song?
