Social interactions in the United States between persons are always already informed by race relations, precisely because this society is and always has been made up of so many different kinds of races, nationalities, and ethnicities, and because this social mixture, unprecedented in the history of the world, takes place and is driven by a system that effectively builds wealth through conditions that reinforce political and economic inequality.
Importantly, this element in interpersonal sociobility is increasingly evident in all other parts of the world, too, including in those places that not long ago were either peacefully and somewhat obliviously harmonious (as the Chinese government would say), or largely homogenous, in which case the personal encounters with racial difference hardly occurred. So, it is not just an American thing. But the degree of attention given to race relations, the pure, universal obsession of it, seems very much to be an American thing.
Americans live with the question “What does race have to do with (fill in the blank, fill in with any social phenomenon at all)?” in the back of one’s mind all the time. How we collectively attend to that question determines much of the public discourse about race. The collective treatment breaks down into several levels of honesty and insightfulness, which do not necessarily align with political position. For example, I for one happen to believe that right wingers such South Carolina’s Joe Wilson have thought through their positions on race relations at an impressively detailed level. Indeed, the way in which Mr. Wilson walked the line by heckling President Obama through the doubly charged filter of health care reform and illegal immigration just goes to confirm the subtlety of the lout’s thought process.
The hubbub over the Wilson disgrace, now with Jimmy Carter weighing in full force, is in many ways predictable. For one thing, hasn’t Obama by now demonstrated beyond a doubt that he will not be provoked into anger by crude insults, racist caricatures, and old-fashioned epithets? As much as many on the left and especially many from his black constituency would love nothing better than a flash outburst from him, a direct confrontation and put down of the racist right, he has shown that it is simply not going to come from him. He made that clear a long time ago; he’s been called every name in the book, long, long before he ran for national office. It is simply not a game he plays.
Okay, whatever. It is a predictable progression. The Wilson intervention (which is exactly what it was), then the pundits weighing in, then President Carter openly naming the racism, then the Obama people saying those kinds of accusations are not their game.
On the question of race relations, what I am finding really interesting is the other story dominating the online headlines right now, the disappearance and murder of Yale graduate student Annie Le. One might say that this story is also following a familiar script: young woman disappears, corpse is found later, male acquaintence/workmate is identified as a suspect, the suspect is revealed as cocky and having had some problems with women in the past, loads of circumstantial evidence suggest that this is the murderer, cops close in….The only unknown to this story is whether the guy has the balls to kill himself before the heat arrive for the last time. Given picture of a loser that is emerging, I kinda doubt it. If anything, we may have another suicide chump on our hands.
But I find it fascinating, especially given the race flare-up going on in the Joe Wilson story, that there has been basically no mention of there being a racial dimension to the Annie Le story. Or at least, it hasn’t been raised directly. It is being raised indirectly; a great many of the profiles of the suspect, Raymond Clark III, make it a point to mention that his high school activities included membership in the Asian Awareness Club. Some of the shorter items even highlight this tidbit from Clark’s past. Why is this worth mentioning, if not to obliquely suggest that Clark had some (possibly pathological) interest in Asian people, and more specifically, Asian women? If this is indeed the question, then we should ask it directly, and not only of Clark. With regard to this story and the reporting of it, the question then becomes, why the oblique messaging? Is it not believable that this murder was in part or whole racially motivated? And what does ‘racially motivated’ even mean when, as anyone who knows anything about Asian American gender relations knows, white men and Asian and Asian American women meet, unavoidably, at the intersection of a long, transnational history of colonially-informed, sexually-mediated interaction?
Let’s flip it around. I think a lot more insight can be gained by thinking of Joe Wilson’s “You lie [boy]!” as an expression of white male privilege, emphasis on the male, under attack from not only the rise to power of so-called minorities, but of powerful women, in particular. As equal income-earners, as a higher educated segment of the society, as a greater proportion of the urban population, and so forth. What kind of contortions must we perform to see that Wilson’s “You lie [boy]!” was a shot across the bow of feminism, gender equality, and women’s safety? I have no doubt that Wilson would claim to be a defender of women’s honor, but that Old South canard about chivalry stands up about as well as the slaveholder’s professed love for his slave.
That leaves the Annie Le story as today’s racially-charged narrative.
And tomorrow evening, Thurs, September 10, we have a great event in Madison: Laurie Jo Reynolds! Come out and view her video work Space Ghost. I've seen it once and can say for sure, it is entertaining, sad, funny, clever, and gets us thinking about incarceration in new ways.
Here's the event mailer copy:
Please Join the WI Network for Peace & Justice & WI Books to Prisoners
for the kickoff to the Fall Film Series on Prison Issues
Date: Thursday September 10, 2009
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: 1111 Humanities - UW Campus
Film: Space Ghost
with special guest and Film Maker of Space Ghost, Laurie Jo Reynolds
Space Ghost Synopsis
Space Ghost compares the experiences of astronauts and prisoners, using popular depictions of space travel to illustrate the physical and existential aspects of incarceration: sensory deprivation, the perception of time as chaotic and indistinguishable, the displacement of losing face-to-face contact, and the sense of existing in a different but parallel universe with family and loved-ones.Physical comparisons such as the close living quarters, the intensity of the immediate environment, and sensory deprivation soon give way to psychological ones: the isolation, the changing sense of time, and the experience of earth as distant, inaccessible and desirable. The analogy extends to media representations that hold astronauts and prisoners in an inverse relationship: the super citizen vs. the super-predator. Astronauts, ceaselessly publicized, are frozen in time and memory whereas prisoners, anonymous and ignored, age without being remembered.
Space Ghost is an experimental video constructed with juxtapositions and non-linear narrative. It is about isolation, mediation, separation; being de-linked from the world of touch, and time, and dailiness, and human contact. It's about the attempts in face of that disconnection to read mystical connection into any links you can find. It's about the craziness of isolation, about not being able, literally, to move; about living in virtual not real space, and about disappearing there. It's about a sister and a brother communicating only by telephone; it's about not having pancakes, but seeing pictures of pancakes.
More info at http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?SPACEGHOST <http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$tapedetail?SPACEGHOST>
Biography of Laurie Jo Reynolds:
Laurie Jo Reynolds develops and coordinates projects that combine art, activism, and research. Her current endeavors, with Tamms Year Ten, the Tamms Poetry Committee and Chicago County Fair, focus on prisoners, ex-offenders and the costs of human warehousing. She teaches in Chicago at Columbia College and Loyola University.More info?
please email me at sarah@wnpj.org <mailto:sarah@wnpj.org>Hope to see you there!
My father-in-law, Richard Van Orman, who served many years in the Army, specializing in different aspects of logistics and suppy, sent out a letter to his personal email list. With his permission I post it here. His deep concern for what the extreme deregulation led by Republicans has done to our country is matched by a sterling personal record of commitment to the American military. Not sure about the 'slave labor in China' item–that leaves the impression that all labor in China is slave-like, which of course is not true. But anyway, it's good reading, and another valid criticism of the conservative agenda.
Hi:
Wanted to share this.As a life member of the Reserve Officers Association (result of 40 years combined active and reserve service) I receive study papers from time to time. Most of my military time was spent in logistics and procurement, and I saw this one coming many years ago–About the time I went into a bunker and was told 45 cal. ammunition was in short supply because the shipments had not arrived–from the then Czechoslovakia!!!!!
I wish I could forward this article, but I will give you its essence. It is titled "Diminishing Manufacturing and Material Shortages: U. S. Industrial Base in Peril" by Co. Michael J. Cole USAF, dated September 2009. It is from a DoD (Department of Defense) study group.
"As 2008 ended Supply Management reported that manufacturing activity in the US reached its lowest level in 28 years..." resulting in "diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) and their strategic effect on the sustainment of weapons systems. The article goes on for several pages to describe to situations:
1. That many major components of significant weapons systems are not made in the U. S. (including from China) nor are we any longer capable of making the components. The factory may be built but the production expertise is gone.
2. The closing or moving off shore of major industries (particularly automotive) has caused the loss of sources for maintenance parts.
"In many cases the United States is already unable to manufacture the equipment and technology used to fight and win a war."
In 1941, Congress passed the Berry Amendment requiring DoD to give preference to domestic manufacturers for procurement. Actually some of this went clear back to Civil War times and included other government agencies such as forest service, etc. The intent of this was to protect the industrial base, "during periods of adversity and war." Many American industries ranging from makers of shirts to advanced electrical systems, continued to exist in this country, despite foreign competition using cheap labor (even slave labor in China) and no environmental constraints, because it had this built-in floor from government procurement. Of course it also meant that shirts were made in the US for civilians as well. You may thank the "great savior of the capitalist economic system" Ronald Reagan for doing away with the domestic procurement requirement for government. That put us on this course.
My bottom line belief is you can not have "free trade" between unequal partners. I have NO PROBLEM with a total open border with Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc. (you get the idea), but not with virtual slave states with no safety standard for workers, and who are destroying the environment for all of us, and are at the same time a realistic military threat to us.
I want to live in a country that leads the world in education, health care, standard of living, for all its people and supports other nations with similar goals. This is NOW called un-American, "liberal idealist", even un-Christian, etc. by the so called conservatives! Give me a break.
Have a great day in spite of me,
Richard L. Van Orman
The night we returned from China, our mischieveous, murderous cat Messy tore up a small animal. I think it was a young rabbit. Or maybe a large mouse. He had a rabbit cornered in my office a couple months ago, so I know it's a possibility. I wasn't much for poking the carcass too many times to figure it out. There wasn't much of a face or even a head left. There was what appeared to be one whole eyeball in with the scattered remains. Thank you, Messy.
How this cat that is so attached to us and so docile with us can be such a brute death machine is always a head trip.
Mike Wolf did the dirty work. Messy bloodied up the carpet in my workspace. I had to steam clean it the next day.
