Institutionalized Racism “In April 2003, researchers successfully completed the Human Genome Project, under budget and more than two years ahead of schedule.” (Downloaded August 19, 2013 from: report.nih.gov/nihfactsheets/ViewFactSheet.aspx?csid=45) What is race identity politics and how does it affect you? Your government-sponsored colleges often employ people such as the author and instructor in question below, people from whom nothing good can arise. Consider what chance you have for a tolerant, rational society if you were to believe and obey the racist propaganda promoted by those persons. Whether you know it or not, you already are living with the result of some of it. Surely a more wholesome and realistic schema can be developed. What you would get for your money from the author [Karen Brodkin] and her ilk are psychotic rants, hate-mongering, historical revisionism, and other sociopathic propaganda. So-called Higher Education: For those among us who may have read my post regarding the history of Kwanzaa and have from there wondered if my anti-racist schema extends beyond picking on a particular group based on relative skin color and nationality, the answer is no. Those who are doing well socioeconomically are unlikely to care one way or the other, but like it or not rich and poor alike are affected adversely by pervasive and insidious racism. Some of us are affected more adversely as we have been punished by intolerant and delusional persons who have secured employment in a position of authority at taxpayer expense. From: Bradley Ball To: Belinda Lum Date: September 8, 2013, 10:44 PM Hello, Prof. Lum – Some of my fellow students here have expressed race schemas that are color-coded, or based on political nationality, or based on religion, and so on. But all race schemas are arbitrary assumptions about biology. And they are all wrong. As you already knew before class started, I do not share your attachment to Karen Brodkin, your favored author, and her appeals to race identity politics. In her text, she is promoting race identity politics, not reporting history of misguided bigots. There is a huge difference. Re-packaging a race identity schema as social science is pseudo-science. There is no chance you are going to agree with that statement as far as I can tell. In lecture you have encouraged students to accept Brodkin’s views and almost certainly grade down for dissent. This is an impasse, obviously, and you have the power to grade as you like according to your own beliefs. In the 20th century there were two outstanding examples of how evil arises from race identity politics, i.e., Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. There are many historical examples worldwide, but these two should be reminders that social problems caused by misguided race schemas cannot be resolved by promoting misguided race schemas. Some of the democides described in the academic site below from the University of Hawaii’s Rudolph J. Rummel, PhD., are results of what I have just noted above. This is only a tiny reference to resources for readers who are not aware of the violent history of race identity politics: hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html Below are the footnotes you neglected. Following those is my last post. It was not meant for you, but addresses some of your issues. Clearly you do not have the same vision for the University system as I have stated for another class: I view the university’s rightful place in society as a forum for intellectual discourse, a research facility (in many cases), an educational environment promoting rationality, and for some universities, a training site for certain technical skills (e.g., medicine, surgery, physical science). Knowledge changes continually and because it does, education must be a lifelong endeavor for those among us who wish to apply our intellect toward insight into the world where we evolved. ________________________________________ Notes: Anti-slavery in the modern world: * Anti-Slavery International: antislavery.org/english/ * International Labour Organization: ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm ________________________________________ * Chang, Iris. “The Rape of Nanking” (Basic Books: 1997). * Leblanc, S. and Register, K. “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Noble Savage and a Peaceful Past” (Macmillan: 2003). * Meyers, B. R. “The Cleanest Race” (Melville House: 2011); * C-Span website has video lecture by the author: c-spanvideo.org/program/292562-1 * Mock, Brentin. “Latino Gang Members in Southern California are Terrorizing and Killing Blacks.” Intelligence Report, Winter 2006,Issue Number: 124. Southern Poverty Law Center website accessed September 2, 2013: splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2006/winter/la-blackout * Rosenfeld, Michael J. (University of Chicago). “Celebration, Politics, Selective Looting and Riots: A Micro Level Study of the Bulls Riots of 1992 in Chicago.” Accessed September 2, 2013: stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Bulls%20Riot.pdf ____________________________________ From: Belinda Lum To: Bradley Ball Sent: Monday, September 9, 2013 11:47 PM “…I am not going to get into a debate on email regarding your interpretation of my position on race. Your selected footnotes and bibliography --which I did see, ignores an entire history and field of study related to race relations. As a social scientist whose expertise is in immigration and race relations I am well versed on both the history and all the various proposed theories of race, as well as a wealth of empirically based studies that inform my position. You assume I assigned Brodkins book because of her use of race* when in fact that book --which is not related to this weeks work, was selected because it relates to immigrant rights and the labor movement…” * From this comment the reader can be sure that Ms. Lum believes that there exists race. I personally am sure that Ms. Lum selected the text in question because it promotes what is known as race identity politics, a view that Ms. Lum was promoting in her class without regard to its irrational character and demonstrable adverse effects on human welfare. ____________________________________ Karen Brodkin “Making democracy matter: identity and activism in Los Angeles” (Rutgers University Press: 2007) After having read some of the this mandatory class text I want to introduce some relevant facts I have encountered that run contrary to the author’s belief system regarding human variation and behavior. I want to note these factors up-front because I do not want in any way to associate my name with misinformation regarding so-called race. I met my wife on Cal State Dominguez campus in 1992 around the time of the so-called Rodney King race riots. It just so happens that my wife and I have visible phenotypic differences that Ms. Brodkin refers to as black and white race. We also have offspring. I and my family must live with the outcome of political race rhetoric such as Ms. Brodkin favors while she in turn derives profit from it. The results are neither benign nor desirable for us and many others; I have received more than enough antisocial commentary and treatment arising from such beliefs, as have my wife and child. Ms. Brodkin in her text repeatedly and consistently invokes a color-coded race schema for which there is no warrant other than it is a culturally acquired dogma she favors, using the following categories among others, for example, without working definitions: • Asians: Asia is the largest continent and the most populous, with a wide variety of cultures and ethnic groups, many languages, and varied history; there is no Asian race or generalized Asian ethnicity, nor is there universal tolerance among Asians. • Black people: In Los Angeles, the focus of interest for Ms. Brodkin, black tells you nothing of a person’s national origin, their ancestors, or their socioeconomic status. There are many so-called blacks here that are natives of African states, from Caribbean nations, from South America, and others whose families have been here for several hundred years. • People of color: Whatever that means. The term remains undefined. • White people: This, too, includes a vast range of ethnicities. The author appears to be a so-called white person, but so do many Arabs, French, Russians, Spanish, Mexicans, Persians, and Hungarians, to name a few possibilities among people I know or have known. The only terms I know so far that she does define are as follows: “ “Chicana/o” refers to a Mexican-American. “Latina/o” refers more generally to people of Latin-American ancestry.” (Notes, p. 193) The terms in question are not universally accepted and typically mean different things to different users. An associate of mine, as white as any other so-called white person, claimed she was not white but rather Latina because her parents, from New Mexico, had Spanish ancestors and she could speak Spanish. Further, she claimed that Spanish persons in Europe are not white people. Obviously her usage of these terms is at variance with Ms. Brodkin’s schema, and in fact such variance is common. Typical race schemas are based on arbitrary points of similarity and dissimilarity in visible phenotype. There are also race schemas based on culturally acquired ethnicity, e.g., native language or religious affiliation. Some race schemas are a combination of both. In any case, they are all ultimately ill-conceived and of no biological significance. Human beings are not a mixture of pure races. Since the discovery of the molecular basis of inheritance it has been shown that human beings are all the same species. Ms. Brodkin clearly disagrees. A small sample of excerpts from her text below show that she believes that human beings occupy arbitrary categories of race. Note that Ms. Brodkin differentiates race—an assumption about biology—from ethnicity (italics added for emphasis): • “. . . cross-ethnic and racial contact at work differ from those in neighborhoods.” (Brodkin 22) • “. . . activist climate that began to link class, race, and human-rights issues.” (Brodkin 26) • “. . . students and faculty across the race and gender spectrum.” (Brodkin 29) • “. . . to meet and talk across racial and ethnic lines . . .” (Brodkin 30) • “. . . friendships and political networks across race and ethnicity.” (Brodkin 33) • “. . . an independent multiracial slate led to conflict . . .” (Brodkin 34) • “. . . movements across the ethnic and racial spectrum in Los Angeles.” (Brodkin 44) Ms. Brodkin’s appeal to ethnocentric thinking and race identity denotes strongly held opinions regarding the nature of human variation and behavior—opinions that are far outside the realm of the current state of knowledge of human evolutionary biology, not to mention ethics. Ms. Brodkin almost certainly invoked her schema because her personal perception is that it seemed to appeal politically to certain ethnocentric individuals who are her target audience. I do not know from what source Ms. Brodkin derives her peculiar race schema, but whether that source is her imagination, the U.S. Census Bureau, or simply an agreement among a small group of like-minded friends, it is completely arbitrary. In my opinion there is never justification to promote defunct race schemas, no matter how noble the cause or how sincere the supporters of the cause. Once people are convinced that there exists race, they tend to also erroneously ascribe attributes to arbitrary racial categories, as does Ms. Brodkin. Typical of Ms. Brodkin’s use of her race schema is the following example of a straw-man fallacy: “The ideological mainstream in the United States tends to stereotype all nonwhite cultures as adhering to “traditional”—macho and patriarchal—gender ideologies and practices against which it celebrates an American modernity of gender egalitarianism.” (Brodkin 89) Ms. Brodkin provides no evidence that the claim above represents the norm; it is certainly not my view nor that of my wife and child. Many of us outside of her clique have never shared her perception that the population of the United States is composed exclusively of white and “nonwhite” persons. That is not to say that she could not find someone who fits the mold if she looked around, but just that the first place for her to look would be in a mirror or at the faces of her associates. Among Ms. Brodkin and her followers the human world is indeed categorized using the undefined term people of color -- which probably includes anything but native speakers of English who happen to be fair skinned: “I could . . . have more chance as a person of color to help kind of push and change unions to organize Asian-Americans and other people of color.” (attributed to Joann Lo; Brodkin, Brodkin 31) Ironically, Ms. Brodkin appears to be a so-called white person occupying a relatively privileged and protected socioeconomic status for her entire career. When the text at issue was published she had been teaching at UCLA for some years and is due to retire in 2013. UCLA is part of a university system for which I am taxed but to which I have never had access due to my own relatively low socioeconomic status. Likewise the activists whom she enthusiastically promotes in her book, much like commercial media promotes professional celebrities and politicians, constitute a small sample of convenience selected largely from her former students. Clearly they, like Ms. Brodkin, had advantageous access to UCLA or other schools due to relatively high socioeconomic status of access to financial resources, i.e., they were, and probably still are, economically privileged. For example: “Tori Taehui Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1978 when she was six years old. She grew up in Colorado, and attended college and law school at Harvard University. After graduating from college in 1993, Tori lived in Korea for a year and a half, seeking to reconnect with her Korean roots and learn about the social and political movements that had dominated the country after her emigration. Upon returning to the United States, Tori began work with Korean immigrant Workers Alliance in Los Angeles, where she served as a staff attorney…” (Brodkin xvi) Such luxuries do not come cheaply and are beyond the financial resources of many if not most of the rest of us. Most of us cannot attend elite universities or travel the world, but that is not because most of us are stupid or lazy. It is due to our socioeconomic status within a system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is interesting to note that Ms. Kim left directly after the 1992 Los Angeles race riots wherein Korean immigrant store owners in South Central Los Angeles were being targeted as neo-colonial exploiters of the African-American community. Promoting a race schema without proof simply as a matter of cultural and political dogma is unwarranted. There is a great difference between proving that some individuals are racist and proving that race exists. That is a point that Ms. Brodkin completely missed. Anthropology is supposed to be science, not political propaganda. Ms. Brodkin in regard to so-called race apparently disagrees. I am sure that Ms. Brodkin was around when the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 and after. She has had ample opportunity to educate herself better in regard to human biology and genetics but has not. No amount of political or race rhetoric can make up for that intellectually fatal lack of interest. There are other active anthropologists who are far better educated in these matters than Ms. Brodkin. This is explained succinctly below: “. . . there are numerous physical anthropologists who argue that race is a meaningless concept when applied to humans. Race is seen as an outdated creation of the human mind that attempts to simplify biological complexity by organizing it into categories. Thus, human races are a product of the human tendency to superimpose order on complex natural phenomena. While classification may have been an acceptable approach some 150 years ago, it is no longer valid given the current state of genetic and evolutionary science.” -- “Introduction to Physical Anthropology 10th edition” by Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, and Wanda Trevathan (Wadsworth: 2006); page 400. Ms. Brodkin has built an elaborate political worldview based almost entirely on a race schema. In this world no matter what you are, there is someone who hates you for it. Ms. Brodkin has added to that unfortunate state of affairs. Ethnocentrism is a global phenomenon and has occurred throughout world history. But just because there are racists among us is not a valid reason to promote more of the same. Ms. Brodkin, I am sure, does not appreciate or share my view. She has consistently and erroneously categorized human beings by an arbitrary race schema and has assigned collective responsibility and personas according to the same schema. Dhamma claims that all there is of good and evil arises from mind, and that there are three strong roots of evil: greed, hatred, and delusion. Dhamma claims that there are two kinds of health, namely, physical health and mental health. Many people enjoy good physical health even into old age. But relatively few people enjoy good mental health unless they are vigilant and relentless in rooting out delusional thinking, alleviating ignorance via insight and rational inquiry.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 22:47:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015