Lessons from a Fat Girl

I just read a blog post by my friend Nance about the politics of food. I found it intriguing because I had never given much thought to there being a political aspect to what we choose to eat. However, I think Nance presents a point of view that appropriately stirs up the brain cells; check it out.

I was rolling along just fine until I got to the image that Nance posted at the end as a sort of what not to look like. I know Nance, and she was merely illustrating her overall thesis about food, the environment and health. Still, give her an Afro and a really good tan and the woman in the photo could be me.

I'm fat. As y'all regulars know, I don't like the word obese; it sounds like some greasy substance you sell in a can. Weight  is a major issue for a lot of us. Most of us who are fat are uncomfortable talking publicly about weight. The first lesson that a fat girl learns from her mother is not to draw attention to herself. Don't do anything to make people look at you such as wear bright colors or laugh loudly and maybe they won't notice that there's a fat girl sitting in the corner. 

I wore a lot of pastel colors as a child. It was a faux pas to dress a child in black (the alleged slimming color), so pastels were preferred to bright reds, blues, and greens. To this day I hate anything in a pastel color; give me something in a bold magenta print with teal accents, or an animal print.

I suspect that fat boys have similar experiences but I've never been a fat boy and I write what I know. I do know that fat men appear to get away with less disparagement, at least they do in straight culture. Think of the television or film career of fat actors; they have wives (slim, pretty wives), or girlfriends. They get to have romantic scenes. They get to play the lead. It's still big news to have a fat woman play the lead in a television show. Drop Dead Diva made  the news when it debuted a year ago because the lead actress was plus size.

People who would never disparage anyone based on race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation fail to even recognize the daily insults that they and others toss at fat people.

The focus should be on maintaining a healthy weight but we live in a culture where looks are everything. Attractive people are more likely to be hired and more likely to be promoted. If you're fat, perfect strangers feel that it is appropriate to comment on your weight. If you're fat, people take pictures of you from the rear, always a fat person's worst angle, of which you are unaware and use it as a warning of what not to become.

As for fat people, we still hide in the corners, trying to avoid attention. Most of us are unwilling to bring fat prejudice out into  the light because to do so means drawing attention to ourselves. We laugh at the fat jokes and cluck disapprovingly at the image of some hapless fat person in an ad about the nation's obesity problem. We allow the image of fat people as lazy, unattractive, and willfully fat to go unchallenged. We are secretly grateful when there is someone in the room who is larger because we are able to escape the dubious distinction of being the fattest person present.

At age 55, I've gotten beyond having my feelings hurt by offensive comments about my weight. I still have my insecure days when I'm convinced that I look like a small tank, but most of the time I see myself in a more positive light. I have a standard comeback to rude comments when I feel that one is warranted, "I'm fat and you're stupid. I can always lose some weight." My friend Burmadeane came up with that one years ago.


However, most children and teenagers haven't made peace with their bodies and go through untold emotional pain as they receive a consistent message that they are worthless. Don't misunderstand, I think efforts to teach healthy eating and the joy of movement are needed. However, there is a big difference from conveying a message that being physically fit will enhance your enjoyment of life and conveying the message that being fat is akin to wearing a sign around your neck that says criticize me, emotionally batter me until I have no self esteem left and then tell me how it's for my own good.

I think that some of the animosity expressed by fat people towards healthy eating campaigns and efforts to combat childhood obesity (that word again!) masks hurt feelings and insecurities. To be fat in a culture obsessed with appearance is to be a fair target for ridicule and shame. It means being a teenage girl out with your friends and having some woman whom you have never met stop you and tell you that you are going to die young if you don't lose weight. It's having people become so obsessed with the issue of weight that they forget there is a human being in front of them and not an obesity problem.

Of Childhood Innocence and Rice Fields

I think that intensity is both my gift and my flaw. I am passionate about those things in which I believe but sometimes the passion is so intense that I forget to breathe. I think that I'm perhaps too hard on my fellow humans. I get frustrated with our disdain for the pursuit of the intellectual and angered by our obsessive selfishness. Every now and then I realize that it's time for me to stop and smell the roses, to embrace the moments of joy, to be awed by our creativity instead of appalled by our destructive impulses.

My nearly 19 month old great nephew is the joy of my life. I entertain him by blowing bubbles; he lets me know when he wants more bubble blowing by walking over, placing a small hand on each of my knees and announcing, "Bub." He never tires of trying to capture those spheres of soap and water, and I never tire of blowing them.

When he's at my house, he likes to follow me around whenever I leave the room. Generally the trip is to the kitchen in response to his announcement, "Eat, eat," his shorthand for, "I'm hungry." He makes me laugh at the way he walks close to the open refrigerator and peers inside as if seeking hidden treasure. His new favorite thing is to drink out of my cup, a blue and white 28 oz monster cup. My job is to hold the cup as he sips out of my straw. Most of the time, it contains water, but once it was a bit of mango juice. His face lit up and he did a little jig as he tasted it.

I hope that he will be creative. His grandfather Bob, my sister's husband, is a talented musician, so he's got creative genes.

The creative impulse may be humankind's saving grace. We make grand wars but we also make grand music and art. We paint masterpieces on ceilings and walls. We write operas with music so sweetly beautiful that it makes us weep with joy.

I saw an interesting story on the CBS evening news about rice art in Japan. Artists create images that are transferred onto computer generated grids and enlarged on a massive scale. Then the entire town comes together to plant the images in rice.  How wonderfully awesome that hundreds of people work to create these transistory works of art. The rice is eventually harvested, but before the harvest tens of thousands of visitors come to town, boosting the local economy, as they view the rice fields in all their glory.

Inakadate Village, where this creative endeavor began has a population of 8,400. Last year there were 170,000 visitors to the village's rice field. Other rural areas of Japan have also created their own rice art.

I felt uplifted by this story. It seems that I may be wrong about humankind. Perhaps there is hope for a better us, a hope born out of the innocence of childhood and rice fields.

Shirley Sherrod and the Myth of Reverse Racism

As shameful as the firing of Shirley Sherrod based on false allegations was, it is also shameful how quick folks are to blame the Obama administration. Black folks who play in the white arena have always had to bend over backwards to combat accusations of reverse racism. The NAACP and the Obama administration acted quickly to refute any support of what appeared to be blatantly discriminatory statements by a federal employee; if it had turned out to be an accurate assessment and the NAACP and the administration had not swiftly condemned what much of white America is quick to call "reverse racism," then the condemnation of Obama and the NAACP would have been loudly proclaimed. Like it or not, it boils down to race. Being black in this society is a constant balancing act.

The Obama administration and the NAACP have publicly apologized to Ms. Sherrod. The Agricultural Department has offered Sherrod a new job. However, Andrew Breitbart, the imitation Glenn Beck, and the poster of the heavily edited video that made it appear that Sherrod was a supporter of racial discrimination, hasn't apolgized. In his appearance on Nightline Wednesday night,  Breitbart relished the tempest that he stirred up with the selective clip of Sherrod's speech, a speech that rather than promoting racism was about racial reconciliation. Sherrod used her initial reaction to a white farmer's request for assistance 24 years ago when she worked for a nonprofit that assisted farmers to make her point that race should not be the issue and that the significant divide was haves and have nots, regardless of race. The white farmer and his wife, Roger and Eloise Spooner, were among the first to speak in defense of Sherrod, crediting her efforts 24 years ago with saving their farm.

However, Andrew Breitbart is not interested in truth but sensationalism and controversey. Appearing on Good Morning America after the entire video speech had been widely released, Breitbart appeared delighted with the hornet's nest that he intentionally stirred up, particularly the discomfort that it caused the Obama administration and the NAACP. Of course, he may have cause for delight. Instead of widely condemning Breitbart and later Fox News for choosing to release the highly edited clip, the attention has been on chastising the Obama administration for reacting too quickly to the video clip.

I wish that the administration had waited and gathered more facts. I wish that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had given Sherrod the opportunity to explain. It appears that CNN the Atlanta-Journal Constitution used good old fashioned journalism and interviewed Sherrod and the Spooners. Evidently, Breitbart knows about as much about real journalism as I do about building a space shuttle.

I don't believe that the Obama administration is above reproach in all of this. I want this administration to stop letting Beck, Breitbart, and the Tea Party play the tune and call the steps and I think that it is important that we send a clear message that we actively support soundly kicking purveyors of lies and half-truths in their yellow journalism keyboards. However, at the same time, we must stop allowing these rabid, lying, rabble rousing wingnut lunatics to perpetrate their faux news, then sit back and laugh while progressives eat their young.

The Obama administration acted rashly based on intentionally misleading information and the apology offered to Ms. Sherrod was absolutely necessary. However, progressives need to turn our attention to the real culprits, Andrew Breitbart and Fox News. Divide and conquer is an old adage but it still applies unless we refuse to be distracted by lies and distortions from the real issues.

Oh Hell, I'm Talking About Race Again!

"There are two kinds of white people, John Brown's and all the rest of them are clowns." -Malcom X



A Facebook friend posted the above observation from Malcolm on her wall and it generated quite a few comments. Many of them were along these lines: "Malcolm X owed an apology to every white Union Soldier that died in the Civil War." The topic of reparations was brought up and a friend queried, "do I get "reparations" for my ancestor from the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment who was killed by the Confederate Army?"


Then there was the following observation from a white male whom I don't know: "I get frustrated as well with every white person being blamed... slavery was due just as much to black Africans as white Americans... and not all white Americans past or present accepted or believed/supported slavery/racism... my family and self being one of those... don't slap those who are supporting you."


I have some empathy for the frustration and confusion expressed by people regarding Malcolm's words. Most people have never engaged in any honest dialogue about race and race relations in this country. We avoid the topic as much as possible even though the history of race permeates all aspects of American culture. It's why we have a president born of a white mother and a black father who is identified as black. Trust me, I'm happy to claim Obama as black, but he is no more black than he is white, but in these United States of America, the one-drop rule still holds true.

Every time I write about race in America, I promise myself it will be the last time. I never keep that promise. I am so weary of trying to explain what seems perfectly clear to me; yet, I cannot simply let the moment pass when maybe there will be a moment of pure communication where someone nods their head in understanding and we make a meaningful connection. So here I go again.


Slavery was an abominaton but it may be argued that it was based on a system of economics; however, after the Civil War, there was the Jim Crow era (link to detailed PBS historical overview of Jim Crow). That takes a lot more explaining. The intense discrimination that followed slavery is the real shame of America. I don't blame every white person as having individual responsibility for slavery but in my opinion, white America benefited as a whole from the institution of slavery. The subsequent spread of Jim Crow, the legalized, systemic oppression of black people based solely on skin color was not supported by every white person either, but again the benefit of such a system accrued to white people, not blacks (examples of Jim Crow laws).The concept is called "white privilege" and until white people understand and acknowledge the very real benefits of white privilege in a society that made discrimination based on race not just a practice but the law of the land, then I don't think that an honest dialogue about race is possible.


One Facebook comment dwelled on the unfairness of affirmative action to white males. He asserted that he has worked hard for all that he has achieved. I don't doubt that he has. So have I. So have most people, regardless of race, but there are obstacles on that "level playing field" for people of color that aren't there for whites.


Affirmative action does not negate white privilege; it affirms it. (What Is White Privilege?) If not for the legalized discrimination of Jim Crow, there would have been no need for affirmative action. If the playing field had been meaningfully and permanently leveled post Civil War, then the freed slaves would have been able to fully participate in the society and eventually compete with white America. Instead, after a brief period of Reconstruction when blacks were becoming educated (remember, it was a crime punishable by death to teach slaves to read), being elected to public office, developing businesses and integrating themselves into the larger society, white America began to implement laws to take away the newly realized rights of blacks. Not just in the South, the North had its own issues of legalized discrimination as well.


Here's an analogy: imagine that you have worn a chain attached to a heavy weight around your ankles all of your life. Finally someone removes the chain and the weight and tells you can now participate in a 10K race and if you win, you get a prize. All of the other runners have been racing for years and have never worn the weight. Some of them participated in placing the weight around your ankles in the past but some of them did not. You have never run before, your muscles have atrophied, but hell, they are letting you run so it's an allegedly fair race. Affirmative action was the scooter provided to black people after generations of being denied the right to even particpate in the race. Those who didn't actively oppress black people, nonetheless benefitted from being allowed to freely participate in the race without the encumbrances that were imposed on black people. If there had never been the chains of oppression, then affirmative action would have never been a necessity.


In addition, it's a self-serving lie that makes some white folks comfortable to believe that affirmative action has placed unqualified black people ahead of qualified white people in jobs, promotions, and admissions to schools. It is just another variation on racism to assume that black people are less qualified than their white counterparts. As for preference, it's an American thing. When I attended the University of NC at Chapel Hill, I was the first person in my family to do so. My parents didn't have the option; no colored were allowed. Plenty of my classmates were "legacy" admissions. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents had all attended UNC. I don't hear a lot of concern about that variation of affirmative action.


Some of the comments on FB have accused black people of dwelling in the past. First of all, racism isn't dead. Secondly, although the 1960s brought some end to Jim Crow laws, we were still fighting for equal rights in the 1970s. I went to segregated schools until 1971. It's easy to dismiss the past when it isn't yours. If I or any black person actually dwelled on the past then we would become obsessed not with reparations but retribution.


Slavery was well before my time but I grew up under Jim Crow. I try to be a reasonable person, but legal discrimination is not ancient history; it is my life. Where I could shop, where I could sit down and have a meal, where I could receive medical care, where I could attend school, and where I could live was all dictated based on my skin color. The jobs available to my parents were restricted because there were some jobs that black people were not allowed to do.

Personally, I'm not much interested in reparations, although I respect those who consider reparations to be appropriate. However, I think that the failure of this nation to acknowledge and apologize for the subjugation of a race of people is long overdue and that true healing cannot begin without it. I don't expect that white people should shoulder any guilt for having benefitted from white privilege but I do expect that you acknowledge its existence and that you have benefitted from it. Then we can talk.

Oh Dear, the Sky Is Falling!

My dear friend, Mrs. Little, is somewhat paranoid and has warranted some negative attention over the years for her premature shouts of, "The sky is falling." However, I feel the need to apologize to Chickie, as her friends call her, for assuming that her warnings were always without substance.


Every time that I read the daily newspaper or watch the evening news, I get a sinking feeling that I need to go out and purchase a hard hat. Wars on two fronts, oil filling up the Gulf, and economic disaster lurking around the corner has become the norm. Congress thoughtfully provided a tax break for the über wealthy by allowing the estate tax to lapse for the year 2010; former President G. W. Bush signed the bill allowing the lapse into law into 2001. The Democrats failed to get their ducks in a row and repeal it by the end of 2009 and it took effect January 1, 2010. According to the New York Times, billionaire Dan L. Duncan (net worth according to Forbes is $9 billion), who died in March, gets to pass on his estate tax free to his heirs. I'm not cold hearted and I certainly have sympathy for the Duncan family, but given the financial crisis that this country is in, it just seems--I don't know--stupid to let the estate tax lapse for a year.


Yesterday's news declared that the ranks of the unemployed were going to rise as the temporary census jobs are now ending, adding millions to those needing the assistance of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. Of course, the Senate doesn't believe that UI needs to be extended. It seems that a lot of unemployed people are really enjoying themselves and refusing to work because they are receiving those huge weekly checks. I've got to wonder what some of these people have been smoking. I've been on unemployment and it pays a fraction of the salary that you earned while working. It's better than nothing, but not much better.


Then there's the NRA and its expanded agenda. It seems that now that the United States Supreme Court has twice ruled (DC and Chicago cases) that the 2nd amendment guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the NRA has had the time and resources to expand its reach into other issues that don't appear to have anything to do with the 2nd amendment. Funny how the NRA tends to only partially quote the 2nd amendment; the full text reads: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There is another version with identical language but with a comma inserted after the word militia.


The NRA worked with Senator Harry Reid (say it ain't so Harry!) to insert a provision in the Health Care Bill that prohibits insurance companies from charging higher premiums to people with guns in their homes. Of course, the insurance may charge higher premiums to people who smoke and people who are fat. Too bad there isn't an amendment saying that we have the right to smoke and be fat. The NRA was also the force behind adding a rider on a bill to restrict anti-consumer practices by credit card lenders that permits people to carry loaded guns in national parks. In another demonstration of its considerable power, the NRA also managed to get istelf exempt from the Disclose Act (sic; that's what they call it). The Act requires contributors to political candidates and campaigns to disclose their identity, but carves out an exemption that precisely fits some donors, including the NRA.


I'm beginning to think that Chickie has been right all along and that the sky is really falling. Maybe instead of a hard hat, I need to start on an underground shelter. Polls indicate that the Republicans, aka, the party of no, may win big in November. It may be time to start laying in provisions for a long siege on civil liberties and social justice. Think that I'll get a bulletproof vest as well.

We Are the Government; So if Government Sucks...

I've read several posts in the past few weeks about the BP disaster and inevitably, they address the issue of blame. The catchall statement is that we are all guilty for BP's swath of environmental destruction because of our dependency on oil.


I understand the rejection of the mantle of guilt by those who have favored environmental policies and who have never supported deregulation of the oil drilling industry, but I have been disturbed by the trend to disavow any responsibility and blame it all on the failings of government. The litany goes something like this: the government has failed to promote the development of economically priced electric cars, or other environmentally sound vehicles; I would buy such a car if it were available at a reasonable price.

I have been intrigued for decades by this tendency to speak of government as if it were some autonomous beast, making decisions to control our existence. We are the government. We may not always get the people that we choose into office but nonetheless we are responsible for government. We decide how much we want to be involved and overall, we do a pretty sorry job of it. Voting is a precious right that more of us choose not to exercise in any given election than those of us who do. Campaigning is hard work and takes a massive number of volunteers, but most of us have never worked on a local or national campaign for any candidate. Every citizen has a right to lobby elected officials but most of us have never lobbied state or federal elected officials on any issue. However, we are far too willing to insist that big bad government is the source of all societal ills. The right insists that it is too much government that is the problem, and the left expresses that the government fails to take the lead in promoting the common good.


Are all of us guilty for the oil spill? I don't think so but do we share the responsibility? Oh yes. We share a collective responsibility for the common good; it is our refusal to step up to the plate and accept this responsibility that leaves us constantly bemoaning the failures of government. We can't fix anything because it's not our fault; it's the government's fault, " I drive a small car that gets good mileage so I'm not responsible for our over dependence on oil." Poppycock!


Our biggest failure is our inability to accept individual responsibility to do all that we possibly can to promote the common good. Who is responsible for fixing all of these problems if we sit on our collective asses denying responsibility for the arc of ills that bedevil us because we personally didn't vote for GWB or some other incompetent leader? It's not about what you didn't do, the question to ask yourself is what have I done, and what am I willing to do to improve this world that I share with the rest of creation?
Merely sitting back and shaking your head in disgust and dismay is not a solution. Announcing which candidates you didn't support is not a solution. Declaring that you personally recycle and drive a small car is not a solution. If you aren't actively and consistently taking steps to effect change, then you're useless and all of your disgust with the status quo is self-indulgent.


Get involved! Join organizations that advocate for change and become an activist. Know who your federal and state legislators are. Call, write, email and let them know what you support and what you are against. Collect signatures and send petitions from voters who agree with you. Make certain to be informed on all issues in elections and vote! Volunteer to pass out information, drive people to the polls, get the word out about the issues. Effecting change is hard work but nothing has ever been changed by declaring your lack of personal responsibility and bemoaning the inadequacies of government.


Government is only as good as we make it. So what have you done lately to contribute to the common good?

Empathy, Community, and the Nature of Evil

I was leaving a comment on a blog post by my friend Nance, Mature Landscaping, when I realized that my comment was getting a bit long. Thanks, Nance for the inspiration for my own post.

I don't recall when it was that I first realized that there was a lot of meanness in the world. I do know that by the time that I read The Diary of Anne Frank, that I suspected that she was wrong, and that people were not really good at heart.  I think that I was 12 years old when I first read Anne's diary.

Sometime during my twenties, I became absolutely certain that people are not essentially good at heart. I don't think that I'm a cynic, just a realist, and it's a realism born of experience.

Neither do I believe that we are essentially evil. I think that we are neutral until we choose to act on the specifics of our experiences and/or circumstances. Life is all about choices yet far too many of us consistently make those choices based on misinformation, prejudicial beliefs, and self-interests.

I think that we confuse aging with maturity, and make the fallacious assumption that empathy is an innate quality that develops as we mature. As children, we are all motivated by self-interests, by instant gratification. Small children are adorable but they are also inadvertently cruel in their actions. If you don't believe me, spend some time with a group of two-year-olds. Each wants whatever he or she wants when they want it. There's crying, biting, a blow here and there, and a lot of run by toy snatching. As we age, left unchecked, those desires continue to predominate. Empathy has to be taught and it has to be taught by example.

Empathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.

Listen to the tea partiers, they are obsessed with making certain that undeserving people do not receive a free ride. Who's undeserving? Anyone whom they deem to be so. Of course, that translates into anyone who doesn't look like them, or who speaks with a foreign accent. A free ride includes basic necessities like medical care. One of the biggest objections to the Health Care Reform Act was the belief that illegal immigrants would receive free health care at taxpayers expense. Even the terminology indicates the distancing from any identification with the perceived "other." Typically, the language refers to illegal "aliens," not people but creatures from another planet, inherently different and dangerous.

The recent anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona is further progeny of the empathy deficit. Angry supporters of the law insist that it is fair, secure in the knowledge that they will not be the ones stopped and challenged as to their legal right to be here. In their minds, the fallout from this law is not their problem.

The slide from disinterest in the well being of others into outright evil is accelerated by the fear mongers that appear in every generation. The Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs who nurture the fear and feed the hate. These people make conscious choices to ramp things up, to stir up a frenzy among the masses. They are not unique; history is full of these depraved folks who for profit and egoism disseminate malicious lies and half-truths designed to fuel the anger of those who believe that they have an entitlement that separates them from those they have designated as other.

I don't believe that there is some essential goodness in humankind that will simply win out. I'm not a total pessimist; to the contrary, I think that we have the ability to teach people to make more humane, informed choices. However, it means that we have to continually reiterate the need for change. We can't simply live locally and hope that the global issues will resolve if we build a sense of local community. Humankind is interconnected and we are global, regardless of what we may want to be. I understand the desire to withdraw from the larger world and to focus on one's community, but we do not live in isolation. There are no walls that can be built that are high enough to keep out the rest of the troubled world. Our local community is global.

Fundamentals of the Social Contract: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong

According to aspiring legislator, Rand Paul, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far in prohibiting racial discrimination by private businesses. All the while asserting that he would have voted yes for the Civil Rights Act, Rand nonetheless believes that private businesses should be allowed to refuse goods or services to black people, at least that's what he told Rachel Maddow in an interview. His words have thrown the GOP into something of a frenzy as they try to distance themselves from his remarks and yet reap the benefits of his popularity with the tea party contingency.

I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.

Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)


Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.


The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.


However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.


P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.

Thinking of Mama

Our mother died suddenly on September 15, 2008. There was no warning, no lingering illness, just a phone call while I was at work from Bobby, my sister's husband, telling me as gently as he could that mama was gone. I say our mother because it seems selfish to claim her as mine alone. My sister Rhonda, and my brother Jimmy, and I lost our mother.

I have no doubt that there are many others who on Mother's Day think of loss, memories, and wishes. I hope that you also find comfort in your remembrances.

When we were children, my mother listened to the radio and sang along. My own love of music and my eclectic tastes in artists is linked directly to her. She listened to Aretha and Patsy, taught me to appreciate James Brown and Johnny Cash.

In the summer, when the days were long and hot, we liked to go outside late in the evening, in that lull before dark when the fireflies were just barely visible and the evening breeze had begun to blow a little coolness into the air. My mother would chat with our next door neighbor and my sister and I, and one of our playmates would inevitably form a line and pretend that we were the Supremes, or Martha and the Vandellas, or any one of the myriad girl groups that were a part of popular culture. I wrote the following poem years ago. Thank you mama for giving me a soundtrack to my life.

To Martha, Aretha et. al.
On warm nights my sister and I

danced the streets,

toe tapping,

hip swinging,
finger popping—

do whopping up and down the block.

Singing “stop” and

   “stay” and

       “ooh baby love”—

doing a slow soul strut under a summer moon

as the night breathed fire in the step.

The Marvelettes performing "Mr. Postman." Please hit the pause button on the player in the left column prior to watching the video. This is still one of my favorite sing-a-long songs.

Ignorance & Arrogance: The American Legend

With all of the things in the news from oil spills to bombs in Times Square, I really thought that I was done writing about those tea party folks. However, it's like when you're a kid and can't help but pick at that scab on your knee. A friend posted this March video from a tea party protest of the health care reform bill, which prompted another friend to comment, "I'm so over America." This in turn prompted me to think about my own feelings about this country.

I've never been one for love of country. I know that this upsets a lot of people, heaven knows Michelle Obama got all kinds of flack for suggesting that she hadn't always been proud of this country. I just find it somewhat absurd to love things. I love my friends and my family, but I don't love my car or my table lamps. Besides, love of country leads to patriotism which segues into nationalism, which I think of as akin to patriotism on PCP.

I don't think that we are the worst country in the world but neither do I think that we are as great as we have deluded ourselves into believing. This is a country founded in blood, built on taking over the land and forcing the native population off of their land. We made laws to justify this usurpation of property (the Discovery Doctrine), declaring that the Indians had never owned the land but merely occupied it until it was discovered by Europeans. It was the Europeans,who cultivated the land and fenced it in, that created ownership. The Supreme Court case, Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, L. Ed 681, 8 Wheat. 543 (1823), espousing this view is standard reading in every first year property law class. Then there's the whole slavery thing, building a country on the backs of a kidnapped and enslaved people. Emancipation of those slaves was followed by 100 years of Jim Crow--legalized, government sanctioned discrimination based on skin color that denied basic rights of citizenship to Americans having or perceived as having "one drop of black blood."  There's the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, robbing people of their property and their dignity. Reparations finally were paid for the property but how do you provide reparations for stripping people of their dignity? Another question to ponder is why there was no such internment for German Americans, also our enemy in WWII? Then there is the new Arizona state law, that legalizes racial profiling. Arizona is a single state but at least seven other states have already announced that they are considering following Arizona's lead.


The tea partiers are the culmination of generations of Americans reinforcing a belief in the superiority of America simply by virtue of its existence. There is really nothing surprising about the birth and growth of the tea party; it is the expected progeny of a country that feeds ignorance to its youth and revises history to fit our notions of who we think we are with no regard for the truth of the past.


I think that the biggest problem with the tea partiers is that they reflect the pervasive ignorance and arrogance that characterizes this country. As a whole, we can be a pretty narrow minded and provincial lot. We have no sense of history, we view ourselves as morally superior to all other nations. Because we choose not to remember the past, we don't understand our present. In our minds we have always been great, always on the side of right, always behaved in a noble fashion. Every other nation pales in comparison. America is a legend in its own mind.  Like most legends, there is some truth in ours but our delusions of grandeur are mostly the result of smoke and mirrors. Nonetheless, we cling to the legend and meet any attempt to disavow us of that legend with anger and self-righteous indignation.