Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte : Supreme Court Case Raises Larger Diversity Issues at UT-Austin

Though the UT-Austin student body is among the most diverse in the country, other related issues plague the school and its history. Photo by Eric Gay / AP / Christian Science Monitor.
Supreme Court focus on UT
student DNA masks pressing issues

The matter being debated by the Supreme Court is not apt to really address the long uneven evolution of the University of Texas toward integration.

By Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog / November 29, 2012

AUSTIN -- Several weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court once again heard a lawsuit (Fisher v. the University of Texas) challenging the admission policies of the University of Texas that take race and ethnicity into account as one of the various factors considered. At the heart of the recurring conflict over admission policy is the struggle over whether UT must become integrated -- an achievement long resisted.

In fact, like many southern universities, the institution has layers of diversity, the most evident of which are the maintenance and service staff. The transient student population is now integrated by population based on DNA count. Over half -- 26,090, 51% --of the campus student body is white. This fall there are 8,973 Latinos, 2,140 African Americans, 7,939 Asian Americans and 151 American Indians. Of these, 80% are Texas residents. UT clearly meets its mandate as a land grant institution to educate future decision-makers largely the result of admission policies.

The battle to retain a bit of intellectual diversity rages on. This month Asian-American faculty and junior administrators met to discuss the implications of what the current suit might mean to their studies center. Just last year Mexican-American students demonstrated against curriculum cutbacks in their studies center made necessary by budget shortfalls. African and African-American Studies also felt the sting of cuts.

But even more visible are a series of racist actions, the most recent and most nasty three occurring since the start of the fall semester three months ago. A UT sorority threw a “Mexican theme” party where invited guests came as gardeners, maids, or criminals -- or wore T-shirts identifying themselves as “ILLEGAL.” Others dressed as border guards mingled.

In another stunt, fraternity members threw balloons of bleach at minority students. One fraternity party, also planned around race themes, was cancelled. The press covered all of these incidents. The October 22 issue of the student Daily Texan, reported that someone carved swastikas in an off-campus dormitory door where three Jewish students live. These sorts of hate messages have a long history at UT where the statue of Martin Luther King has often been vandalized.

July 16, 2004, cover of UT student newspaper, The Daily Texan, featuring story about campus dormitory named after former law prof who was also a Ku Klux Klan leader. Creative Commons image from fretna.org.
Even the buildings reflect a racist past. In 2010, after publication of a history book by Tom Russell, a former UT Law School professor, the University, after some deliberation, changed the name of a dorm memorializing William Stuart Simkins, a Klan leader and Law School professor in the early 1900s. UT administrators named the residence hall just after the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawed segregated schools.

The least integrated of the UT human component is the faculty.

Demographics of teaching faculty (which excludes those who are deans, directors, or administrative officials) testifiy to slow integration across rank, gender, and diversity. At first glance, this does not seem to be the case: Of 3,018 of this faculty 1874 are male, 1144 are female. Within this group 80% are white.

But the ratio of full professors indicates significant skewed reality -- in 2010 (the latest posted data) just short of 800 were male, only 210 were female. Because race and ethnicity narrows the general professorial group, the ratio of minority professors to full professor whites is minute.

Some departments, including my own, have never promoted a woman or a minority to full -- although one minority woman (no longer at UT) was appointed to full,  a move that avoids the usual review and promotion committee approval -- and recently hired a woman who had earned the rank of full at another university.

Some of UT’s DNA profile records earlier years of blatant discrimination, but more recent evidence indicates a fairly tenacious hold on troubling patterns of the past. For example, three years ago UT authorized a study of the treatment of its faculty women drawing on its own statistics, pay records, and promotion experiences. That produced 170 pages that charted inequity.

The experience of minority females was not made specific because, as one equity researcher explained: “The small number of minority women faculty is not statistically significant.”

So the matter being debated by the Supreme Court is not apt to really address the long uneven evolution of the University of Texas toward integration. The suit, of course, does not consider intellectual diversity -- a component critical to the success of social integration. A legal mandate would raise both first amendment protections and academic freedom guarantees.

But the push in some quarters to do away with studies that focus on minority literature, history, sociology, and other content is short-sighted as well as anti-intellectual. And narrowing access to education contributes to these problems.

[Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte, a PhD, is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas. She currently directs a funded study -- Austin Displaced -- which explores the impact of gentrification on affected residents. Mercedes is also president of the board of the New Journalism Project, the nonprofit that publishes The Rag Blog.]

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SPORT / Mariann G. Wizard : Enter the Dragon, Jeremy Lin

Jeremy fan at the Knicks game against the Toronto Raptors, Feb. 14, 2012. Photo by Mike Cassese / Reuters.
Enter the Dragon:
NBA lucks out in New Year
with Knicks' Jeremy Lin-sanity

By Mariann G. Wizard / The Rag Blog / February 23, 2012

When professional basketball first started in the 1920s, as with other professional sports organizations, there were separate leagues for black and white teams. The U.S. then was a black-and-white country, with a black-and-white population, newspapers, and viewpoints characterizing public life. The advent of black-and-white television in the early 1950s merely reinforced a message of separation.

When professional basketball consolidated in the National Basketball Association (NBA), however, it didn't take long for the sport to become largely dominated by black players. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, many teams fielded all-black fives, even if a white guy or two sat on the bench or played a few minutes in trash time, and to some extent this limited the league's popularity. This year's All-Star starters are all black, and apparently there are some white so-called sports fans who can't get past that. Their loss.

In an era when few successful white college players seemed interested in turning pro (medicine or law being even more profitable?), the league turned to the international arena for player diversity. There have been hundreds of international players from over 60 countries in the NBA and its predecessors since Italian Hank Biasatti, the first, in 1946, but they were rare until the late 1990s.

Since the early 2000s, the league has taken on a strong international flavor. Generally acknowledged as the greatest foreign-born star was Hakeem Olajuwon, the Houston Rockets’ center who was a dominating force in the league from 1984-2002. Hakeem was the first foreign-born MVP, was a 12-time all-star and the leader of two NBA championship teams, and is now included in most short lists of the best players in the history of the game.

Other stars like Dirk Nowitzki of Germany (the first European-born MVP), Steve Nash (Canada), Manu Ginobili (Argentina), and Tony Parker (France) have helped make the game a more complete rainbow.

Not only European players like Hedo Turkoglu (Turkey), Zrydunas Ilgauskas (Lithuania, formerly Soviet Union), and Vlade Divac (SFR Yugoslavia, now Serbia), but other African stars like Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Michael Olowokandi (Nigeria), and Luol Deng (originally from Sudan, now South Sudan; now a British citizen) taught sports announcers to pronounce anything without stumbling over it, and annually added to their home countries' cred on national teams.

Several have become naturalized U.S. citizens. Quite a few teams can put five players on the floor, none of whom were born in the United States.

Add to this mix an up-and-coming generation of multi-ethnic stars -- Delonte West and Blake Griffin are but two -- and the NBA and its fan base may arguably be claimed to be the least racist or nationalistic in pro sports. Only soccer is played by more diverse peoples in more different places, but soccer fans tend to be somewhat more "emphatic" in their local or national loyalties. When conflicts in some NBA players' home countries have burst out, players have to a man been advocates for peace, or at least have kept silent.


The Knicks' Jeremy Lin, playing against the Sacramento Kings at Madison Square Garden, Feb. 15, 2012. Photo by Chris Trotman / Getty Images.

Of course the NBA's official efforts towards diversity are motivated by the bottom line. More fans in more places equals more jerseys and T-shirts sold, sold-out games in international venues (with international expansion a strong motivator) and in under-.500 team arenas, and more profits overall. Expanding global markets and an increasingly diverse U.S. population demand player diversity.

Since the old black-and-white days in the U.S., the growth of the Hispanic population has been a game-changer in hundreds of ways. In NBA cities like San Antonio, Miami, LA, Dallas, Phoenix, and others with large Hispanic populations, regular promotions now cater to Spanish-speaking fans. In 2010 a 15-night league-sponsored "Noche Latina" promotion sought to raise Hispanic attendance figures.

A fair number of Spaniards, nine Puerto Ricans, and three Mexicans have made it to the NBA, along with a handful of other Hispanics, but the U.S. Hispanic population overall has been slow to warm to the sport. Now there are signs of change, as exciting homegrown players like brothers Robin and Brook Lopez, and international stars like brothers Paul and Marc Gasol, and Rudy Fernandez (all three from Spain) and J.J. Barea (Puerto Rico) show that brown men can jump.

Among the NBA's efforts at international outreach, the mixed success of Chinese players has been fascinating. Only five Chinese players have been in the league since Wang Zhizhi in 2001. Yao Ming, who came to the NBA in 2002 and retired in 2011 after persistent knee injuries, was the most ballyhooed player in the history of the game before he ever arrived.

The exceptionally tall Han Chinese, son of two Olympians, made a valiant effort to become an effective defender and to master the slippery English language, and although in many ways he never fulfilled expectations on the court, he became an effective spokesman and, in China, a household icon.

In every fan vote for All-Star players while Yao was active, his totals exceeded those of all other players combined. But enthusiasm for Yao in mainland China may not have translated into enthusiasm for the NBA and basketball as a whole, at least not yet.

Five Asian-Americans had also played in the league with no discernible national or international impact. But the arrival of undrafted Harvard economics grad Jeremy Lin on the scene in late January, as an off-the-bench and then starting point guard for the New York Knicks, has raised a new banner of Chinese basketball frenzy.

Born in LA to immigrant Taiwanese parents, Lin is as all-American as his new Knicks teammate J.R. Smith, as Magic or Bird, as Rasheed Wallace or Kevin McHale. Lin grew up playing ball in addition to all the stereotypical brainy things Asian-American kids are supposed to do. Today his brilliant court leadership, reminiscent of a younger Steve Nash, has unleashed a wave of "Lin-sanity" from coast to coast and in China and Taiwan.

For NBA owners and executives, the "Lin effect" is an unlooked-for blessing in a season that started out ugly, with a long-running labor dispute between millionaire players and billionaire owners, and that will only manage an abbreviated 62-game season by scheduling unprecedented back-to-back-to-back games and eliminating the practice of every team playing at least once on every other team's court.

Many fans barely hoped for something worth watching before the All-Star break, before Lin's hard-charging, smart, winning play set cynical old New York on fire. A stagnant dispute between Madison Square Garden, Inc. and Time-Warner Cable Television was quickly resolved, allowing Knicks home games again to be televised in the state, when irate fans deluged both companies with demands to, "Settle!" Meanwhile, in "Chinatowns" all over the country and abroad, Asian-Americans gather to watch big-screen teevees in homes, schools, auditoriums, etc., cheering a new star.

If there is still an American melting pot, it is in the school yards and gyms of the nations, where a racist or belittling remark can be effectively countered by sinking a three from beyond the arc, weaving between four bigger players to the net, or passing across court for the easy basket. In the 1980s, kids of every color, all over the world, wanted to "be like Mike." Today they're free to want to be like D-Wade, like Dirk, like Hakeem "the Dream," like Luis Scola, and at last, like Jeremy.

[Mariann G. Wizard, a Sixties radical activist and contributor to The Rag, Austin's underground newspaper from the 60s and 70s, is a poet, a professional science writer specializing in natural health therapies, and a contributing editor to The Rag Blog. Read more articles and poetry by Mariann G. Wizard at The Rag Blog.]

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Dick J. Reavis : Texas Monthly's 'Where I'm From'

Erykah Badu (right) at nine years, with her sister Nayrok, six, in Dallas in 1980. Badu contributed to Texas Monthly's special edition. Photo from Texas Monthly.
Signs of a new inclusiveness?
Texas Monthly's special edition

By Dick J. Reavis / The Rag Blog / May 25, 2010

The current issue of Texas Monthly, a “special edition” whose theme is “Where I’m From” is worth some reading, some scrutiny, and some thought.

Though the funerary photo of Laura [Eva von Braun] Bush on its cover is an eyesore, its teaser lines carry an eye-raising message. Nineteen contributors and interviewees -- mostly notables and novelists -- are named there: four of them are Mexican-American, two of them black.

With luck, the issue’s inclusiveness forecasts a new and better day at the magazine. It’s as if Texans, and all Texans, could produce a national-class magazine without heavy supervision from the non-Texans who dominate the state’s industry of words.

A few weeks ago, Mexican-American writers chastised the editors of both the Texas Observer and the Monthly for accepting slots on a panel of 11 other whites at an Observer-sponsored “Texas Writer’s Festival.” From the sidelines I assailed them for billing non-Texan whites as homefolk.

But the Monthly’s special edition would have already been at its printer -- outside of Texas -- when the controversy arose, and that might indicate that the magazine, or at least its editor, Jake Silverstein, had already turned a corner, if only for a single issue.

The significance of “Where I’m From,” however, goes beyond questions of color and regional origin. As a commercial product, this artifact is an oddity. Mass-market magazines are generally aimed at prosperous and prospering readers 25 to 40 because that’s the demographic advertisers seek.

The Monthly’s “From” issue mainly carries accounts of life in Texas before 1970, certainly before 1985. In the annals of the industry’s prized readership, anything before 1985 is history, and anything before 1970 is ancient history -- and as Henry Ford long ago told us, for Americans “history is bunk.”


If not many young people will turn the pages of this edition, their parents will, and that probably explains either its origin -- or merely its commercial convenience. The magazine’s paid pages include a 42-page advertorial from institutions of higher learning: private and public colleges alike are seeking students who pay full tuition. The issue is so fat with ad pages -- including eight advertorials, running a total of 78 pages -- that getting to its content is like fighting one’s way through the canebrakes along the lower Rio Grande.

The issue describes Texas through memories of childhood and adolescence, and that’s a relief from the usual definitions: Texas as a cluster of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or markets, and Texas as a collection of electoral districts, a la Texas Tribune. Sadly, of the 10 shorter pieces in the front of the magazine, in sections entitled “Growing Up,” and “Leaving,” six come from people in the environs of New York City. Those contributors are mainly writers who, because the project of Texas publishing was betrayed, have made their careers in the American industry’s hometown. But even expatriate accounts tell us what Texas is like.

The traditional answer to the question, “What Is Texas?,” as founding writers at the Monthly often noted, was to be found in the pages of Texas Highways: nice people doing nice things, especially in county seats. Though some of the same Pollyanna approach is evident in the “Where I’m From” issue, a few of its accounts get closer to the truth, as I see it, anyway.

My observation has been that, when they are sincere, all thoughtful Texans voice a love-hate relationship with their setting, just as people in Northern Mexico do. The state’s turbulent history and even its terrains, like those of Northern Mexico, don’t offer us much choice: Texas is not Maine or Costa Rica or California North.

By that standard, the prize contribution in the “From” issue is an as-told-to piece from Rick Perry, his recollection of his upbringing on a dry-land North Texas cotton farm. Perry told interviewer Silverstein things like:

[The area around Haskell] could be one of the most beautiful places or it could be one of the most desolate, brutal, uninviting and uninspiring places … I spent a lot of time just alone with my dog. A lot.

Perry talks about daylight darkness created by dust storms, about bathing in No. 2 tubs, and, as John Kelso has noted in an Austin American-Statesman send-up, mother-made underwear. His tale is truly worth telling as fiction -- in a novel by the likes of Cormack McCarthy.

On the other hand, in an interview with Monthly long-timer Mimi Swartz, Democrat Bill White talks in middle-class truisms, Texas Highways style.

The view of Texas as a locale not merely of nostalgia, but also as a problem or project leaps out, too, with contributions of El Paso historian David Dorado Romo, who finds commonalities in the Texas-Mexico and Israeli-Palestinian borders, and of Erykah Badu, who reports that “…in the late eighties crack cocaine came and everything went to hell” in the South Dallas neighborhood of her childhood.

For Perry, the question “what was Texas” does not draw an idyllic answer, and for both Romo and Badu, what’s relevant is not only “what was Texas?” but “what is it becoming?” That worry should torment both the Monthly and the 25-to-40 demographic in the issues to follow “Where I’m From.”

[A native Texan, Dick J. Reavis is an award-winning journalist, educator, and author who teaches journalism at North Carolina State University. He is a former staffer at the Moore County News, The Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, the San Antonio Light, the Dallas Observer, Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the San Antonio Express-News. He also wrote for The Rag in Austin in the Sixties. His latest book is Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers.]

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Dick J. Reavis : Something Missing at Texas Writers' Festival?

"The Texican." Painting © Mike Aston /
mikeastonart.com .
Artaud and Arizona:
Tempest at Texas Observer's writers' fest

By Dick J. Reavis / The Rag Blog / May 5, 2010

This weekend a startling email come to my inbox and to those of others who are identified with journalism in Texas. Its title line read, “To Liberal Activists Who Happen to be Latina/o/s.” Though I don’t fit either the Liberal or Latino categories, being a nosy former reporter, I read what its poster, antonioartaud@grandecom.net, had to say.

“The revered journal of Texas liberal politics The Texas Observer is having a writer’s festival,” its opening blandly began. “Guess what -- they forgot to invite any Tejana /o/s and African Americans. Impossible, you say. Que fue eso? Did we forget to show our papers? How do we prove we’re Texans too?

“And to make matters worse, they’re in cahoots with Texas Monthly,” Artaud continued. “Almost all the writers invited are either the editor of Texas Monthly or former/present Texas Monthly writers. Yes, the same magazine that has ignored us for over 25 years as personas non grata in their Texas.”

The post closed with an exhortation and a warning: “Cancel your subscription, write a letter, protest the event at Scholz Biergarten, but above all, consider yourself on notice.”

I am told that the author of the post, Antonio Artaud, is a student of journalism at a college in San Antonio. His sentiment was, to use an oldster’s term an Anglo journalist friend applied: “Right on!” Artaud knows of what he speaks -- and what he pointed to is a scandal.

Monday Artaud followed with a post containing messages of support from, among others, the novelists Dagoberto Gilb of San Marcos and the all-around San Antonio wordsmith, Gregg Barrios (who also wrote for The Rag in Sixties Austin). Something was building. “Latina/o/s” were, for the moment anyway, rising to protest against business as usual in the circles of Texas journalism.

The hubbub died late Monday or early Tuesday when Artaud sent a third post, announcing that the Observer had agreed to include a Latino writers panel and issue an apology. Better late than never, I suppose. But as always in American history, it appears that no arrangement was made to include blacks.

Before the hubbub died, I did some thinking. Placing myself in the shoes of the editors of the Observer and TM, I asked what might be done to permanently integrate those publications without fundamentally altering anything.

I’d have canceled the Writers’ Festival (or “writers’ festival,” as the Observer’s announcement so graphically put it.) I’d have rescheduled it and expanded its panel to include -- two or three New York Puerto Ricans or Dominicans! After all, Nuyoriqueños are as much Latinos as Mexican-Americans, and many of them are as African-American as anybody in the United States.

If this idea doesn’t make sense, it should: the Texas nonfiction establishment has already applied the same logic to Anglo Texans.

I may get some of the facts wrong because I’ve been outside of Texas for six years, but to the best of my knowledge, the editors of the daily newspapers in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio are white non-Texans. The editors of The Texas Observer and Texas Monthly, Bob Moser and Jake Silverstein, fit the same category, even though the general report is that they’ve improved those publications.

I am less sure about the Observer, but at the Monthly, the tally is plain: the magazine has had four editors, only the first of whom was a Texan. My observations, when I was a journalist in Texas, were that at both dailies and elite magazines in Texas, only about half of the editorial staffers were Texans before they became reporters in Texas.

The Observer and the Monthly are, of course, by now “old media.” The most contemporary entry into the ranks of elite Texas journalism is the online daily, The Texas Tribune. I would note that its first and only editor, Evan Smith, is from the city of New York.

A few years ago I put together a still-unpublished statistical study of the Monthly which showed that Texans, 95 percent of the editorial staff at the magazine’s outset, became a minority during the ‘80s, and stabilized at about half during the ‘90s. The Monthly has never hired a Mexican-American staff writer and its one African-American reporter vanished within months of his engagement.

None of this should surprise anyone, I suppose. It is accepted wisdom among educated Americans today that class and regional differences don’t count for anything: we live in a placeless, classless meritocracy, people believe.

When Texas Monthly, as today, calls itself the “National Magazine of Texas” it in no way means to imply that it is the magazine of a state which sometimes imagines itself a nation. Instead, it is a magazine of national quality -- which in the publishing world, means “as good as what’s published in New York” -- that, incidentally, happens to be published in Texas.

The sensibilities of the locale mean nothing, the standard of reporting means everything. Journalism is an acultural scientific product, disconnected to land, the past, and tradition. It produces sterile news, cleansed of the smell of the dirt from which it came.

With that as the accepted wisdom, it’s clearly heresy to bring even ethnicity, as Arnaud did, into the equation. Meritocracy knows no gradations, so what difference can it make that the editor of the Tribune is from New York, the editor of the Monthly from California and the editor of the Observer from North Carolina?

I dissent from the accepted view for reasons that are as inchoate and instinctual as sometimes studied and glib. Suspicions haunt me, the latest of them because of the controversy over Mexican immigration in Arizona.

Several years ago Texas was the home to two or three border-control militias, just as Arizona was. I looked into the Texas outfits and found that even though they were led by small-time ranchers whose spreads were near the border, those ranchers -- and most of their lieutenants -- were recent arrivals from the rural Midwest.

My suspicions and speculations tell me that, Arizona being the retirement destination of the Midwest, as Florida is for New York, Arizona’s anti-Mexican hysteria is probably traceable to the state’s non-natives. In a way, it comes naturally to them: Mexico is as foreign to rural
Midwesterners as Iraq is to most Texans.

Anglo, Latino, and African-American natives of the frontera alike have traditionally regarded immigration restrictions as a joke, though in recent years they have become a real annoyance. But inlanders tend to see border walls, passport requirements, and crossing-bridge shakedowns as dignified embodiments of American law.

As reactionary as Texas may otherwise be, its last president, the Islamophobic George W. Bush, made an honest attempt at humanizing immigration law, and the state’s current governor, Rick Perry -- a lifetime member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, no less! -- has said that Arizona’s anti-Mexican ethnocentrism is not for him or his state.

I can find no other factor that uniquely explains the “progressive” character of the Bush and Perry stand except this: growing up even as Anglos in Texas, their attitudes towards Mexico and its descendants took a better-than-American form. Neither regards immigration as a merely legal or economic -- or racial -- issue, as most Americans do.

According to the theory of meritocracy common to the American empire, success and placement depend, not upon the question of national or regional origin, but instead upon one’s educational credentials. Other differences between Americans have no place in this scheme.

This is why state-supported universities, for example, conduct national talent searches for almost all faculty jobs. The same placelessness has been at bottom of the selection of editors and writers for the Monthly and the Observer and probably, the Tribune as well. If in Texas we hire editors and journalists who are often non-Texans, according to meritocratic ideology, it must be because competent writers are hard to come by in Texas; if we also wind up with editors and writers who are not Mexican-American or black, why would the same conclusion not apply? The theory that marginalizes Anglo Texans downgrades all Texans, Latinos and African-Americans as well.

In his original posting, Artaud attached a copy of the Observer’s announcement of its bash. I counted 13 panelists. Perhaps because I have been away, I recognized the names of only seven of them, among them one writer from the city of New York. I wondered to myself, “how many of these Texas writers are really Texans?” I do not know the answer yet, but my guess is that it’s more than one. Were the same sort of celebration being staged in New York, I do not believe that a single paisano would be on the billing; more than one -- certainly not! Yet Texas is today more populous than New York.

The Observer, in deciding to heed Artaud’s complaint, at least in regard to Latinos, may have decided at long last to remedy its lack of sincerity and vision -- for a month or two, anyway. But the notion that the self-expression of Texas should be the affair of non-Texans is only an extension of the otherwise-hidden hegemony which skin color makes plain.

Today I was thinking that, perhaps because I’ve been called a “horse’s ass” more than once, I should feel a little bit sorry for horses as well. In the eyes of most of them, I’ll wager, all equine magazines should be written and published -- by equines, not by their riders!

Horse sense tells me that in Texas, whites are riding on the back of a culture that has always included Mexican-Americans and African-Americans, and white non-Texans are riding on the back of the cultural mix that only Texans, of any color or ethnicity, fully appreciate or understand.

[Dick J. Reavis is a former staffer at the Moore County News, The Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, the San Antonio Light, the Dallas Observer, Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the San Antonio Express-News. He also wrote for The Rag in Austin in the Sixties. He can be reached at dickjreavis@yahoo.com.]

Antonio Artaud passed along this letter, sent to The Texas Observer by UT professor Emilio Zamora:

Editors,

I published a book on Mexicans and the Texas home front with Texas A&M Press and co-edited an anthology on Latinos and Latinas in WWI with UT Press, both in 2009. I have received two awards for the first book from the Texas State Historical Association and the Institute of Texas Letters. Despite this, I was not invited to participate in your writers' festival. This is not the first time that public programs on new books have slighted me, but I have recently discovered that this time you have also overlooked other recently published authors of Latino/a descent. You may have included one of these noted authors, Belinda Acosta, but only after she pointed out the glaring problem.

I should add that Latino and Latina writers are also usually absent from the pages of The Observer and this is not necessarily due to our failure to submit materials to you. A case in point is Professor Angela Valenzuela's excellent review of Avatar which she submitted on February 5, 2010. You have not published the piece nor have you even sent her a note acknowledging her submission.

I cannot help but think that the problem of under-representation and erasure of major portions of U.S. and Texas history (women, minorities, labor, civil rights, for example) in our public school curriculum extends far beyond the Texas State Board of Education. Isn't it really a sorry shame that we should be talking like this among ourselves when major battles for equal rights (with the State Board of Education, for instance) require our undivided attention.

Emilio Zamora, Professor
Department of History
University of Texas at Austin

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Robert Jensen : Holding Ourselves Accountable

Savage Chickens. Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage.
Diversity dead-end:
Inclusiveness without accountability

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / April 20, 2010

After a recent talk on racism and other illegitimate hierarchies at a diversity conference in Dallas, I received a letter from one of the people who had attended that asked “why you feel it necessary to perpetuate and even exacerbate the divisiveness of language when addressing a group of people assembled to learn how to live better together and be more accepting of differences?” He suggested that by being so sharply critical, I was part of the problem not the solution.

Calls for diversity and inclusiveness from people with privilege (such as a white man with a professional job living in the United States) are meaningful only when we are willing to address the systems and structures of power in which inequality and discrimination are rooted. But because such a critique strikes many people as too radical, crafting a response to those who want to avoid that analysis is crucial to the struggle for progressive social change. Below is my letter to him.

Dear ____: Thanks for the note and the challenge to my presentation. It’s clear we disagree, and getting clearer about where we differ is important.

First, I disagree with your suggestion that we should not assess blame for existing patterns of racial inequality and injustice, though I would substitute the word “accountability” for “blame.” I can’t imagine how we could move forward on any question of injustice without holding those responsible for the injustice accountable, which means holding ourselves accountable. This reflects a basic moral principle -- those who inflict injuries, or turn away when they see others inflicting injuries, must be accountable for their behavior.

To recognize the injustice, as you do, but then demand that we ignore the patterns at the root of the injustice in order to reach a state of inclusiveness is counterproductive. That simply allows people in positions of power and privilege to escape accountability, which inevitably places the political and psychological burdens on those with less power and privilege. That’s simply not fair.

So, if your suggestion lets white people off the hook and puts the burden on non-white people to cope with the ongoing manifestations of white supremacy, would it not be better for those of us who are white to be accountable? Is that not the base from which real social change becomes possible? I recognize that most white people don’t like that call for accountability, just as most men don’t like the call for accountability when it comes to sexism, for example. But the core values we claim to hold -- dignity, solidarity, and equality -- require that we not avoid that kind of honesty.

If we do this, as several people suggested in the conference session, many poor and working-class white people will point out that they don’t feel particularly privileged. That’s why we have to connect the struggle against white supremacy to the struggle against economic inequality in capitalism. To raise questions about injustice in our economy isn’t to foment class warfare, as some argue, but is rather to recognize that people with a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth tend to pursue policies to protect that state of affairs. The wealthy engage in class warfare on a daily basis, and hope that those on the bottom will acquiesce.

You suggest that that I “perpetuate and even exacerbate the divisiveness” but I think that misunderstands the nature of the problem. The divisiveness comes from the injustice, not from naming the injustice. People in the United States are divided by the inequality inherent in patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Naming those systems and the inequality they produce isn’t divisive but rather an attempt to understand the systems so that we can change them. Just as we need accountability we also need analysis to make it possible to move toward justice. How can problems be solved if causes are not identified and critiqued?

None of this has anything to do with stereotyping individuals. There is a difference between identifying patterns in how wealth and power are distributed in a society and making unsupported claims about individuals. In analyzing how unconscious and institutionalized racism operate, and then asking white people to be accountable, we are talking about how systems operate. I didn’t claim that all white people are overt racists, for example, but instead talked about how our society is white supremacist in material and ideological terms. That’s an analysis of systems, not stereotyping of individuals.

Finally, I think your hope for “a softening” of my heart misses the point. I don’t have a hard heart, if by that you mean I am bitter or hateful. The work I do is grounded in love, which leads to a rejection of injustice. My heart softened long ago when I began to look honestly at the extent of that injustice and my own complicity in it. To be “part of the solution,” as you urge, demands that we be honest about that injustice. I would challenge you to think about whether by ignoring these patterns of injustice you might be part of the problem.

I do take a bit of offense at one thing you wrote, the claim that I “find great satisfaction in stirring things up,” as if this is all some kind of game that I play for my personal pleasure. I have been actively involved for the past two decades in movements for justice involving sexism, racism, economic inequality, and the barbarism of war. There isn’t a day that I don’t feel a sense of profound grief about the pain that these systems cause.

The luck of the draw left me in a position of relative privilege, which means I escape virtually all of the suffering imposed by those systems. What satisfaction I find in this world comes from trying to be part of movements that struggle for something better. In those efforts, things inevitably get stirred up. I take no particular pleasure in that and wish it could be otherwise. But none of us get to choose the world into which we are born. All we get to choose is how we respond to it.

In my experience, the position you advocate is the one that is neither constructive nor practical. We cannot ignore the systems from which injustice emerges and expect injustice magically to disappear. I agree that our goal is inclusiveness -- the recognition that we are one human family in which all have exactly the same standing -- but I disagree that we can move toward that by turning away from the painful truths about the broken world in which we live.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); and The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can also be found online here.]

The Rag Blog

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Textbooks in Texas : Rehabilitating Joe McCarthy?

Sen. Joseph McCarthy displays one of his many reports on Communists he found in the woodwork. Photo from Wisconsin History.
What did you learn in school today?
Efforts to vindicate commie-hunting senator

By Justin Elliott / January 15, 2010

See 'Who stays and who goes? Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin,' Below.

When we last checked in on the U.S. history textbooks standards setting process in Texas, the conservative-dominated State Board of Education was mulling one-sided requirements to teach high school students about Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.

Now, in the home stretch of a process that will set the state's nationally influential standards, a liberal watchdog group is worried that the State Board of Education will try to push through changes to claim that communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy has been vindicated by history, among other right-wing pet issues.

The Republican-dominated board is meeting in Austin to vote on amendments to the current draft standards.

"The social conservative bloc is pressing for the standards to turn Joseph McCarthy into an American hero," says Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that aims to "counter the religious right."

The conservative effort to turn public opinion in McCarthy's favor began way back in 1954 -- while the Wisconsin senator was still in office -- with the publication of William F. Buckley's McCarthy And His Enemies.

If such an amendment is proposed, Quinn expects it to come from outspoken conservative board member Don McLeroy, who has been talking up the idea. In a note to curriculum writers last fall, McLeroy encouraged them to "read the latest on McCarthy -- he was basically vindicated."

We last encountered McLeroy in September when he argued that minority groups should be thankful to the majority for granting them rights. ("For instance, the women's right to vote. ... The men passed it for the women.")

A requirement to teach America's "Christian or Biblical heritage" is one of the other clauses conservatives may try to get into the standards, Quinn says.

What's at stake here is not just what Texas students learn in high school. Because the state represents one of two largest markets in the country, publishers tailor their books to the Texas standards. Those same textbooks are then sold in smaller states around the country.

The current standards draft (.pdf) has lost some of the biased requirements that had raised the ire of liberal groups. Back in October, a curriculum writing team made up of educators jettisoned the requirements that students be able to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals," including the Moral Majority and Gingrich. Schlafly remains on a list (see page 54) of political leaders, but she is alongside figures like Thurgood Marshall and Hillary Clinton.

But at this stage, the curriculum writing team as well as an expert review board are out of the picture. Now, the board members will have to vote on amendments proposed by their colleagues. The final vote will come in March.

It was at this same point in the '08-'09 science textbook standards process that conservative members began to offer technical amendments about purported gaps in the fossil record, and the impossibility of natural selection, Quinn says. Members who were in favor of teaching evolution became confused in some cases about what they were voting on.

While amendments to the history standards may be easier to understand, McLeroy and the rest of the conservative bloc are at least as passionate about leaving their mark this time around.

He told the Washington Monthly (in a lengthy feature very much worth reading):

"The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation. But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan -- he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last 20 years because he lowered taxes."

Source / TPM Muckraker

Former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary: He's out.
Who stays and who goes?
Texas Board of Education meeting in Austin

AUSTIN – Early efforts by social conservatives on the State Board of Education to give more emphasis to religion in the teaching of U.S. history came up short Thursday as a majority of board members opted for a more traditional approach to the subject.

Among the proposals shot down by a majority of board members was a requirement to include "religious revivals" as among the major events leading up to the American Revolution.

That proposal, offered by board member Terri Leo, R-Spring, would have called on fifth-graders to study religious revivals alongside the Boston Tea Party.

Only members of the social conservative bloc -- all Republicans -- supported the idea, while other Republicans and Democrats opted to stay with the recommendation of a writing team of Texas teachers and academics on the topic.

The divided vote came as the board on Thursday considered scores of amendments to proposed curriculum standards for social studies, spelling out what students should be taught in history, government, geography and other social studies classes from elementary grades through high school.

The board worked late into the night, concentrating on curriculum standards for elementary and middle schools, before adjourning. It will take up high school standards -- expected to generate the most debate -- today.

Much of the discussion Thursday night was over which historical figures should be covered in history classes and textbooks, as board members added several new people while deleting others who were recommended by curriculum writing teams last year.

Among those dropped from the elementary school standards were former San Antonio Mayor and Clinton Cabinet member Henry Cisneros and labor leader Delores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. Also deleted was the first female governor of Texas, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson.

Board critics said the three were not worthy of inclusion in the standards. Huerta was cited by one board member for her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.

On the other hand, board members added former Texas Supreme Court Justice Raul Gonzalez, the first Hispanic elected to the high court.
[....]
Social conservatives on the board have called for the new standards to reflect the major role of religion in U.S. history, and they were expected to offer several other amendments to achieve that.

But various groups have cautioned against the board including any requirement that could jeopardize the religious freedom rights of students.

The social studies requirements will remain in place for the next decade, dictating what is taught in government, history and other social studies classes in all elementary and secondary schools.

-- Terrence Stutz / Dallas Morning News / Jan. 15, 2010

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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UT's InCite : Documenting a Diverse Community

Patience and attention to detail go into producing a fine quilt. See story about Austin's Blackland Quilting Group, below. Photo by Priscilla Villarreal / InCite.
InCite into Austin:
Online publication kicks UT journalism up a notch

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / December 23, 2009

See 'Binding the community: Austin's Blackland Quilting Group,' by Patricia Villarreal, Below.

If you have had the misfortune to be exposed to University of Texas student journalism on a daily basis -- as I was during my 17 years at UT -- you probably learned to downsize your level of expectation. Day in, day out, Daily Texan editorials and Letters to the Editor -- the editors and the readers -- locked horns in spirited competition to achieve new depths of banality, and the university spends mega-bucks on a slick 48-page four-color magazine called burntORANGE in which to showcase student writers offering advice on "the best place to catch a nap on campus" or "how not to look like a freshman."

Is this what Walter Cronkite means when he says about UT: "What starts here changes the world?"

Therefore it is an unexpected surprise to find that UT students are indeed capable of producing thoughtful, mature, and probing reporting and then packaging it in a compelling and highly readable format. Students of Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte's Alternative Journalism (J349) class currently are putting the finishing touches on the second issue of InCite, an exceptional web publication researched, written, and produced by students.

Below the website's masthead is a short mission statement stating: "InCite seeks to provide another dimension to news by exploring the complexities of events. To do so, InCite draws across perspective and upon intellectual diversity for contextualization while anchored within independent thought."

The course syllabus further describes J349 as an "interdisciplinary survey course for graduate and undergraduate students" exploring "the journalistic, sociological and historical role of the alternative press." Students are challenged to bring to the publication of InCite the same kind of intellectual diversity which drives the truth-seeking traditions of The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive, Mother Jones and other similar independent publications.

Obviously the concept of "intellectual diversity" is important here, and the work featured in the two issues of InCite so far produced indicates a maturity and depth of understanding that transcends various "diversities du jour" occupying so much discussion in academic and governmental circles these days.

In addition to The Rag Blog's featuring of Priscilla Villareal's extraordinary photo essay about a group of elderly East Austin quiltmakers, the current issue of InCite has Mary Tuma's well-researched and sensitively written report of the social effect of a digital inequality separating gender, race, and class demographics in Austin; a timely piece by Jazmine Ulloa on how credit card companies prey on students; Gregory Brandt's in-depth report on the May 2 Global Marijuana March in Austin; and DC Tedrow's gripping narrative of Iraq and Afghan veterans reliving the horrors of war.

Both issues of InCite can be found here.

Friendship and caring were part and parcel of the quilting process for this circle of friends. Photo by Priscilla Villarreal / InCite.

Binding the community:
Austin's Blackland Quilting Group

By Priscilla Villarreal

The eight women who spend their Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Blackland Neighborhood Center enter full of purpose. One flips on the CD player that produces the familiar tunes of gospel artists Kirk Franklin and Chester D.T. Baldwin. Up goes the large quilting frame to hold the coverlet they work on together. Another relaxing session begins.

The Center at 2005 Salina Street in East Austin serves a number of community purposes. Neighborhood residents turn there for food, transportation services, employment information and even entertainment such as bingo.

But the quilters -- Martha Coleman, Bessie Futrell, Willie Mercer, Carrie Henderson, Royce Pryor, Annie Watrous, Patsy Dearborn and Hazel Weathersby -- are steady Center participants, ranging in age from 62 to 104, who have outgrown the back room space where they meet. They crowd into the room already jammed with boxes of fans, stacks of chairs, and filing cabinets. A full bookcase clings to one wall. Located next to the food pantry, the room also stores surplus food. The women can barely gather around the frame which is supported by two carpenter horses.

To ease the crush, volunteers are renovating the Stewart House, a nearby dwelling that will serve as a center annex. The quilters expect to move into it later this year. Carrie Henderson, one of the younger women says they don't really want to go, but will if they must. She worried about handicap access to the "rescued" home. But Bo McCarver, organizer of the non-profit Blackland Neighborhood Group, said that the house will definitely be outfitted for use by the disabled. Neighborhood activites, he added, now need more space.

The women work steadily while workers stop by to chat or to tease.

"Oh is that the drunkards' path?" asks Sandra Taylor Harris, an administrative assistant at the Center, while she sneaks a peek at Henderson's sheet of patterns. "Yeah I know that pattern," she jokes. Harris likes to tease them saying that the reason their quilts are completed so quickly is because she comes in after they've left and sews for them -- like the shoemaker's elves in the classic Grimm Brothers' fairy tale.

She admires the quilters efforts. "You really have to have patience to do that, and these women have patience," she says.

Binding the community: Austin's Blackland Quilting Group at work (and play). Photo by Priscilla Villarreal.
At lunchtime, they share food from home. These women enjoy each other's company, never running out of conversation or jokes. They know each other well -- five are related either by blood or marriage.

Sometimes, concentration on the quilt brings periods of silence before they return to discussing current news, church events, family happenings, and even pop culture, like who was eliminated the night before from American Idol. When they begin to "roll" (folding the completed outer portions of the coverlet and working closer to the quilt’s middle ) laughter erupts if someone lets the frame fall.

These gatherings provide gratifying pastime and the comfort of community. Watrous, one of the newest members, says it's the best thing that has happened to her, because everyone is so congenial. "It's nice to have somewhere to go and to be around such pleasant people," she says. Watrous is one of two in the group who is not related to any of the other members, but that does not mean she is an outsider. She says she has made pretty good friends and they "treat her like a relative." Like Watrous, Weathersby says the other quilters have also "adopted" her into their family.

The ladies don’t sell their quilts, but give them to family members and old friends. Watrous gave one of the most recently completed works to a church friend.

The quilts also go to a select few organizations, like the George Washington Carver Museum, which once exhibited the ladies’ collection. The museum's biannual exhibit, "By Bits and Pieces," showcases African-American quilters. It displayed these women's quilts from October to December 2006. Bernadette Phifer, Carver Museum curator, contacted them and collected their patchworks. Faith Weaver, former exhibit coordinator for the museum, says they chose them because "they demonstrated the functionality, creativity, and the ability to serve to record family history that quilts were in the black community."

Weathersby, another newcomer to the group, says that quilts were used during the times of the Underground Railroad in coded ways that gave directions to those who fled. Henderson even made one on display at the museum that told the story of Railroad’s escape system.

Not only did the community enjoy seeing these coverlets, but Weaver believes the women got something else out of it. "It was an intimate celebration and self-appreciation of their work," she says.

The exhibit also brought some unwanted commercial attention. "After the exhibit ended, people came by the Center and had lists of requests to make quilts and would ask how much," says Pryor.

Bob Jones, the current exhibit coordinator for the Carver Museum, said they are thinking of displaying the ladies’ handiwork again next fall.

The women have set guidelines for quilt requests. The person who wants a quilt made must bring the top (pattern), batting (cotton filling), lining (bottom sheet of quilt), needles and thread. When that's done, the effort becomes one of community building. They invite the petitioner to stay to help make the quilt -- and then to agree to stay long enough to help others with theirs.

Five years ago, Center workers asked if they could display the quilts for Juneteenth. Since, they cheerfully drape their quilts around their workspaces.

Susie McDonald, Georgia Medlock, Rena Martin Leonard, and Henrietta Jackson were among the group’s organizers during the Civil Rights era. Martha Coleman, who turned 104 in July, is McDonald’s sister, and joined the group in 1971 after their mother passed away.

Once the Blackland Neighborhood Center opened in 1984, Pryor, Coleman, and two of her sisters joined the group. Henderson estimates that since 1971 they have steadily made two quilts per week, or almost 4,000 quilts total.

"Anyone is invited to come and sew with us," said Royce, "it just happened that it's the same ones that stick with us.”

Source / InCite / Volume I, Issue 2

Go here for photo gallery.

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Star Trek and the 'Prime Directive' : We're Still Meddling

Star Trek's post-cold war, multi-ethnic, multi-gender and multi-specie crew: early imperialist warriors or noble seekers?
Aboard the Imperial Star Ship Ameriprise...
Heading for the Final Frontier

By William Astore / March 27, 2009

I grew up in the 1970s on reruns of the original Star Trek with Captain James Tiberius Kirk at the helm, backed by that ever logical Vulcan, Mr. Spock, Dr. "Bones" McCoy, and the rest of the intrepid, space-faring crew of the USS Enterprise. During the tumultuous 1960s, that sci-fi series -- before being canceled -- had pointed to a more promising future in which humanity would be united. Star Trek, after all, offered a vision of a post-racial society in which blacks and Asian-Americans would serve alongside whites as equals, and a post-nationalistic society in which Russian-accented Ensign Chekov could loyally follow a WASPy captain from Iowa.

Even as the Enterprise cruised the distant reaches of our galaxy, the show was distinctly a creature of its moment, of the tensions released by the rise of the civil rights movement and by the Cold War superpower standoff. Minorities were still struggling for equal rights when the first Star Trek aired in 1966, while the U.S. government was just putting the finishing touches on a nuclear command center buried under 2,000 feet of granite that was meant to ride out a possible apocalyptic Russian sneak attack. So, having a black female officer like Lieutenant Uhura and a Russian one like Chekov on the starship's bridge certainly seemed like one small leap for mankind.

In a way, the Enterprise and its multi-national, alien-inclusive crew was the ultimate American melting pot (and, if you happened to be an aficionado of war films, the ultimate "lost patrol" as well). It was also "a wagon train to the stars." At least that was how its creator here on Earth, Gene Roddenberry, pitched the series concept to TV network executives at the time. In the early 1960s, remember, such execs were accustomed to green-lighting Westerns like Gunsmoke or Bonanza with lily-white casts, not a sci-fi series set elsewhere in the galaxy with a multi-racial line-up.

Not surprisingly then, Roddenberry re-imagined space as the "final frontier" and sent Kirk and crew off each week, like so many American pioneers of earlier centuries, to "boldly go where no man has gone before." They were to ride their high-tech wagon into the unknown in search of "new life and new civilizations." Of course, exploring that final frontier could be dangerous, whether in the American West of the 1800s or hundreds of years later among the stars and planets of the Milky Way.

Accordingly, the Enterprise space wagon was heavily armed with phasers and photon torpedoes: precision weapons that, on rare occasions, may have missed their targets, but in the emptiness of space never left behind embarrassing collateral damage. Besides, wherever our heroic crew journeyed, the Prime Directive of the United Federation of Planets went with them. Peaceful exploration was the singular goal of the Federation, and General Order No. 1 precluded interference, even for humanitarian reasons, in the lives of any developing alien cultures that might be discovered.

Not that that stopped Captain Kirk and crew. They often found themselves in situations where, Prime Directive or not, they were forced to meddle in an alien society's development. In the Star Trek universe, these attempts at social engineering -- in our time they would be termed "humanitarian interventions" or "nation building" -- usually yielded promising results. They certainly didn't lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or the displacement of millions. Indeed, we rarely saw such dire results on the show precisely because, unlike American ground troops stationed on other "frontiers," whether in the 1960s in Vietnam or today in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Enterprise and its crew could always head off at warp speed from ill-judged experiments in social and cultural engineering.

And this being an American vision of the future, even in space the Enterprise never lacked conflict with evildoers. The ship was almost constantly confronted by aggressively hostile aliens, most commonly the militaristic Romulans and Klingons. (In later versions of the series, created on Earth as the Cold War wound down and ended, the Klingons would eventually ally with the Federation and come on board the Enterprise.)

On Board the USS Ameriprise

Looking back at Star Trek, more than four decades after Roddenberry's vision entered our homes, what's remarkable is how much it captured a still extant American optimism and an American cultural smugness. The optimism today has been muted, but the smugness -- not so much. After all, official American "expeditionary forces" continue to travel the "final frontiers" of our own planet, if not the galaxy, armed to the teeth with our own versions of phasers and photon torpedoes. At the same time, most of us continue to see ourselves as a peace-loving, Federation-like crew, a force for progress, for international cooperation, and above all for good.

Yes, our acts may -- these days, more than occasionally -- misfire (or quagmire), but our intentions are benevolent, motivated primarily by a desire to serve a higher purpose, even as we seek to enlarge our peaceful federation of allied nations. Unfortunately, like the Star Trek crew, Americans are meddlers. We want to help others even when they don't want our help, even when our "help" is counterproductive to the normal development of other cultures and countries.

Worse yet: Despite our aspirations, the American spaceship of state -- let's call it the USS Ameriprise -- not only resembles the USS Enterprise of the (mostly well-meaning but distinctly meddlesome) Federation, but also, on too many occasions, the Enterprise from a barbarous parallel universe pictured in "Mirror, Mirror," an episode from the show's second season.

In it, thanks to a "transporter" accident, four members of the Star Trek crew, including Captain Kirk, switch places with their evil twins and find themselves aboard the Imperial Star Ship (ISS) Enterprise. Among the ISS crew, might makes right. Alien cultures that refuse to provide scarce energy sources (the dilithium crystals that power the starship, not mundane oil as on this planet) are massacred and their resources stolen. Perceived mistakes by crewmembers are punished with "agonizers," Taser-like miniature zappers applied to the chest just above the heart. Disloyal crewmembers are tortured to extract confessions, or simply slowly tortured to death, by being placed in "the agony booth." The booth is the ultimate "stress position," without all the inconvenience of shackles or the messiness of waterboarding. Officers advance in rank by assassination, with Kirk possessing the choicest precision weapon: a device in his quarters capable of killing any person on board with just the touch of a button.

Let's recap: Alien cultures shocked, awed, and bludgeoned into submission in order to gain control over scarce energy resources; torture used liberally to extract information; precision weapons capable of decapitating the enemy and controlled from a distance via the push of a button.

It's disturbing how closely the recent journeys of our Ameriprise have come to resemble those of that imperial Enterprise. Yet we've hardly seemed to notice, convinced as we were that our ship of state is still the good Enterprise, spreading democracy and freedom, even if meddling in other cultures as well. Perhaps we've forgotten that another way to express the wisdom contained in the Prime Directive is: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

But let's rejoin Kirk on the ISS Enterprise. Aghast to find himself surrounded by such barbarity, he adapts just enough to survive until he is able to rejoin the "good" universe. The question is: Can we, like Kirk, recognize and reject the barbarity around us, even as we resist the temptation to interfere in the lives of others, unless they well and truly ask for, and really need, our help?

Early signs are not good when it comes to the latest Obama-led Ameriprise. Our spaceship of state still seems remarkably addicted to phasers and photon torpedoes, an addiction we refuse to own up to, even as we send one variety of our own spaceships, which we call unmanned aerial drones, over the tribal lands of Pakistan and Afghanistan armed with Hellfire missiles. We also refuse to admit that we're an imperial power, even as we build new military bases along the final frontiers of our planet, while our military seeks "full spectrum dominance" from the deepest oceans to "the shining stars and beyond" (as one U.S. Air Force advertisement recently put it). We demonize our enemies, turning them into so many Romulans, aliens who are incapable of understanding anything but the blunt, unsparing use of force.

When we look in the mirror, we want to see a peace-loving Federation member staring back at us, not a barbarian from the ISS Enterprise. I certainly do. But even the far friendlier visage of the benevolent Kirk and the logical Spock needs to be considered seriously and critically. For if the Captain and the Vulcan no more saw themselves as imperial meddlers than we normally do, they often found themselves fighting to expand the boundaries of their friendly Federation -- and so do we.

In the long run, we may well be able to reject naked barbarity and lust for power. But can we resist the power of our own illusions, of the notion that, despite missteps, mishaps, and mistakes, we're always a force for good in the world? Can we affirm our own Prime Directive -- a reversal of our Monroe Doctrine that defined our boundaries in a different age and time -- and vow not to meddle in the affairs of others? For our Ameriprise has its limits, as well as its own pressing problems to solve.

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), taught for six years at the Air Force Academy. A TomDispatch regular, he currently teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and is the author of Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac Press, 2005), among other works. He may be reached at wastore@pct.edu.]

Copyright 2009 William Astore

Source / TomDispatch

Thanks to Tom Cleaver / The Rag Blog

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Ethnic Media : Important Voice Seriously at Risk

The danger of losing the ethnic media

With their ability to tap into the communities they serve, the ethnic media contribute context, history, and perspectives found nowhere else.

By Sally Lehrman / March 5, 2009

AsianWeek, San Francisco's English-language weekly for Asian Americans, and San Francisco Bay View, which has served the black community there for three decades, both have dumped their print editions. Siglo21, a Spanish-language paper published in Lawrence, is returning to publishing weekly after three months as a daily due to declining advertising. Ming Pao Daily in New York will shut down entirely, while Hoy New York abandoned print at the end of last year. At the venerable Ebony and Jet in Chicago, all employees must reapply for their jobs - that is, the jobs that remain.

With the ever-deepening cuts across the news business, these losses may seem worth no more than a shrug. AsianWeek, after all, employs only 11 staffers. But the harm goes deep. Ethnic media play a vital role in the communities they serve and do a great deal of unrecognized work for journalism.

Ethnic media, like other news media, recognize that an informed populace will help keep government accountable. Armed with knowledge of current events and issues, the public can become wise participants in societal decision-making. Ethnic media also cultivate democracy in ways that the mainstream seems to have abandoned. Univision, for instance, has led bipartisan citizenship and voter registration drives during the past two presidential elections. This involvement in the democratic process might appear unseemly to some traditionalists. But at least according to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, this is the US news media's fundamental role: to further democracy.

Day after day, the various branches of the ethnic media follow some of the most important and contentious issues, ones that grab the attention of the mainstream only sporadically. Take immigration. A reader might find a story now and then on CNN or the Associated Press. But Impremedia, which owns eight Spanish-language print outlets including Hoy New York, features as many as 10 immigration stories on its website every day.

Ethnic media can help steer the mainstream away from short-sighted and shallow reporting on communities and the ways in which race and ethnicity operate in all of our lives. When the New Yorker and National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr declared that Barack Obama's campaign signaled a new, "post-racial" era, the rest of the mainstream took up the theme. We do all get along, the story went, and Obama's success proved it. The black media, however, were quick to point out that one black president might create dramatic change, but could not transform a history of institutionalized inequities.

When the New Yorker ran its infamous caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama, the mainstream news interviewed comedians who worried about making fun of a black president. But Eric Easter of Ebony/Jet offered more insight. He wrote about the powerful impact of grotesque, racialized cartoons, from political propaganda of the Nazi era to family fare of recent decades, that "still find their ways . . . into the backs of our minds." The New Yorker cover did not affront because the joke failed, but because it harkened back to the dehumanizing imagery that takes up residence in our reactive minds.

Ethnic media see their role as primarily to give voice to the community, strengthen cohesion, and chronicle community life. They also consider it important to correct misperceptions promulgated by the rest of the news. They report about the community from the inside out, sometimes quite literally. When inmates of the Reeves County Detention Center protested poor medical care at the privately run Texas facility, most outlets highlighted the damage to buildings. Telemundo's station in Midland/Odessa, Texas, also described the plight of hundreds of inmates - detained there on immigration violations - who slept outside in makeshift tents despite the freezing weather.

More than 42 percent of print newsrooms across the country employ no black, Asian American, Latino, or American Indian journalists at all. According to even the most generous analyses, they consult white sources at least two-thirds of the time. With their ability to tap into the communities they serve, the ethnic media contribute context, history, and perspectives found nowhere else.

[Sally Lehrman holds the Knight Ridder/San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair for Journalism in the Public Interest at Santa Clara University.]

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Source / Boston Globe

Thanks to Media Reform Daily / The Rag Blog

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Oscars 2009 : Sean Penn: 'You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns...'

Sean Penn Wins for "Milk" -- Acceptance Speech

Sean Penn: 'For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame...'

By Chad Rubel / February 23, 2009

See Video of Penelope Cruz' acceptance speech, mostly in Spanish, Below.

It felt like the Oscars got the memo that the U.S. embracing of the world will be much improved under an Obama Administration.

The Oscars last night had a wide-ranging international feel. An British film set in India, "Slumdog Millionaire," won 8 Oscars. Acting awards went to a Brit (Kate Winslet, Best Actress), a Spaniard (Penelope Cruz, Best Supporting Actress), and an Australian (the late Heath Ledger, Best Supporting Actor). The host was a fellow Australian, Hugh Jackman.

Cruz, whose performance consisted of speaking mostly in a foreign language in winning the Academy Award, summed up that international feeling last night in her acceptance speech:

... this ceremony was a moment of unity for the world because art, in any form, is and has been and will always be our universal language and we should do everything we can, everything we can, to protect its survival.

The night was also about embracing those different from most of us on domestic soil as well. "Milk" picked up two awards: Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black).

From Penn's acceptance speech:

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the great shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support," Penn said. "We've got to have equal rights for everyone."

From Black's acceptance speech:

Referring to "gay and lesbian kids," Black said: "No matter what everyone tells you, God does love you ... very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."

The Academy is considered a conservative organization. For those who felt that "Brokeback Mountain" deserved more Oscars, there was a concern that the conservative Academy wasn't ready for a film where two gay men were at the center. Last night might have proven that they are a little more ready than they were before.

Source / BuzzFlash

'You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns...'

From Advocate.com:

"You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns,” Sean Penn said to laughs as he took to the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in the biopic Milk at Sunday's Academy Awards.

The outspoken activist won for playing an outspoken activist and, true to form, quickly changed his tone and took the opportunity to make a political statement in support of marriage equality.

Penelope Cruz gana el OSCAR a la Mejor Actriz de Reparto



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Cyndi Lauper on Obama's Brand of Hope : One Size Fits All

'We as a society, LGBT or straight, can show that civil rights are important and discrimination is wrong across the board through our vote.'
By Cyndi Lauper / August 24, 2008

As I toured all over the country this summer with True Colors, I saw something in the eyes of the audience I have not seen in a very long time, it was hope. Each night as I talked about the power of voting, it was evident through their reactions that the crowd wanted to change how this country is run. That is the one good thing that President Bush has done in the past seven years, he has created a movement within the country to change how things are done in Washington DC. But, what mattered to me the most is that everyone cared enough about their own lives and the future to register and vote.

I believe we are at a crossroads and the next ten years will determine the future of this country. Like I said from the stage, this is not voting for the American Idol, it is much more important, this is voting for the American President. And now that I'm home again, and off stage, I wonder, will we become the country that respects the diversity that is our backbone or will we continue down this path of the few ruling the many? I wonder to myself are we gonna make that change in a big way and when I think about it I believe that the change can happen in the form of Senator Barack Obama.

Because, America is a quilt of many fabulous fabrics and we have a sorted history that has not always respected that. And because, for far too long groups of people have been singled out and discriminated against simply because of such things as the color of their skin, their religious beliefs or whom they love. And, that these very acts undermine the basic principles this country was founded on, the time has come to finally break down the barriers that keep America from fulfilling its destiny.

In particular, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is closer than ever to gaining full equality. We are teetering back and forth right now, and we need to act together to push us in the right direction. What we are asking for is only fair and right. We as a society, LGBT or straight, can show that civil rights are important and discrimination is wrong across the board through our vote. I believe by voting for Barack Obama we will do just that.

Like Obama, I grew up with a loving, hard-working single mom, in a neighborhood mixed with all races and different backgrounds. And like Obama, I knew that was our strength and not our weakness.

I see in Barack Obama a real fighter for fairness and inclusion, a person who overcame every obstacle growing up to achieve an education and to become the leader he is today. He battles against discrimination of all kinds, from race and gender to sexual orientation and gender identity. He is the most inclusive candidate who has a real chance at the White House that we ever have had. He is a true American who commands respect and more importantly respects Americans - all of us.

I believe that a President Obama would deliver on the promises that have been made to the LGBT community for so long, like inclusive workplace non-discrimination legislation, the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and finally the passage of hate crimes legislation that includes everyone, not just some. It saddens me in ways I cannot begin to describe just to know that hate crimes still occur in our society. Under President Obama, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act will finally become law.

When I talk to young people I believe the time has come. It reminds me of my generation in the 1960's who made a promise to make the world better. The young people today have dedicated themselves as well to this goal and have truly embraced change. They are working harder than ever to elect Barack Obama President because he is a voice of a new and more imaginative generation. They are hungry for new ways of thinking, and to put away old labels, fears, prejudices and bigotries. They believe you can change the world one person at a time. And so do I.

Simply look around, and talk to every young voter you meet, and then vote because you care what happens to them and you care what happens to the world and this country. We all deserve better.

Lastly, I implore you to share your lives with the people you love and care about. Your vote is powerful, but the work cannot end there. Americans are mostly fair-minded people, but are disconnected from the everyday struggles of your life. We are one society and if we are disconnected we fall, but connected we stand tall. If you want people to understand the reality of being LGBT in society today, you need to share your story.

If you are LGBT, share with them the discrimination you still face in America, and if you are a straight ally, share with them the discrimination you have seen inflicted upon your friends and family. Explain that discrimination not only affects the one it is directed towards, but it affects us all. Show through your example what LGBT people truly are like and break down the misconceptions and stereotypes that fuel the prejudices that have plagued our community and society for far too long.

I am an example of what can happen when you share your story. When my sister Elen came out to me and told me about her life, my eyes were opened to the fact that I needed to be a part of changing this country for the LGBT community and have taken that responsibility very seriously.

So, the time has come to stand up and use your voice. It is time that we push ourselves over the edge towards full equality. It is time that we have a President who will work for us and not against us.

All my best,
Cyndi Lauper

Source / The Huffington Post

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