| Number 96 | December 1, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, My apologies for the language in this week's essay "Henpecked Sissies and Welfare Reform" that some may find offensive. At least, I hope you find it offensive. I quote this man, Irving Kristol, at length because he is a well-known spokesperson for the reactionary right in this country. He is employed by the American Enterprise Institute, an influential "think" tank, and these ignorant and hateful remarks appeared in the Wall Street Journal, America's largest daily paper. Ideas like his are on the ascendance in this country, and we are ill-advised to ignore them. This will be my last comment on welfare for a while; I couldn't resist. Last week I said that "In many cases, Minnesota is at or near the top in the U.S. in terms of economic and social performance among states." A glaring exception to this general truth is in the virulence and effects of racism is this state, where there is quite a bit of evidence to show that Minnesota ranks among the worst in the nation. This reality is somewhat "hidden" (from those who don't want to see it), by the fact that the numbers of people of color in Minnesota are rather low, at less than 8% of the total population. That's one of the reasons why I try to talk about it here in Nygaard Notes. This week, for example, I give a couple of examples from the local media and attempt to show how revealing they are to those concerned with undoing racism. I think I'll do some more next week, although I am not promising anything since who knows what might come up in the meantime. I've learned that my "next week" promises are barely credible, so I try to refrain from making them. ‘Til next week, Nygaard |
- From an article on the front page of the November 17th New York Times, reporting on the recently settled racial bias lawsuit against Coca Cola: Editor's note: "In the company's defense"?!? |
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As I write this, I am biting my tongue to keep from going on about the never ending presidential election lunacy. There is such a volume of information out there on the subject that I feel I must refrain from adding even one more drop to the flood. However, even though many people seem to be following this thing for no other reason than entertainment, there are nonetheless some things going on here that are worth knowing about. How to find some of these things? I suggest that you turn off the TV and radio and click on this link: www.igc.org/igc/gateway/pn/election.html. At this site, which is a subsite of the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), you will find a collection of articles that will be of interest to anyone with a progressive, or left-wing, or liberal, or forward-looking bent. (You catch my drift.) Actually, much on this site should be of interest to folks of any political stripe. There are links there to everything from the National Council of La Raza to ABC News to Human Rights Watch to AlterNet to the NAACP to Mother Jones to who-knows-what. The Human Rights Watch link takes you to a really good article on felony disenfranchisement, an important issue which I mentioned in Nygaard Notes #94. While you are at the IGC site, why not check out other parts of the site? IGC is sort of the mother of all progressive Internet addresses, having been started ‘way back in 1986, when the project was called "PeaceNet." Now IGC is much bigger, having over 15,000 members and a site that claims to list 1872 progressive links for you to choose from. The project now includes not only PeaceNet, at www.igc.org/igc/gt/PeaceNet/ , but also EcoNet: www.igc.org/igc/gt/EcoNet/ , WomensNet: www.igc.org/igc/gt/WomensNet/ , LaborNet at www.labornet.org/ , and Anti-Racism.Net: www.igc.org/igc/gateway/arnindex.html. |
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In just over a month the trial of Sara Jane Olson will begin in California. For those who are not aware of Sara's case, she is the woman who was arrested last year in St. Paul and charged with attempting to murder a police officer while she was allegedly a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in California in the 1970s. I don't know if she was a member of the SLA or not, nor do I know anything else about that time of her life, despite being a friend of hers back in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. I do know, however, that many people have already made up their minds about the Olson case, and that some see it as no more than an individual who is trying to escape responsibility for her youthful indiscretions. This case is much more complex and important than that. The Los Angeles Police Department wants to make it a show trial, conducted in the context of an increasingly repressive U.S. political culture and motivated by the desire of the LAPD for some positive publicity to balance out the wave of scandal and corruption news that has plagued them recently. They need a PR victory badly. In these days when authorities are trying to make any sort of dissent illegal, it might be worth your while to attend one of the upcoming fundraising events at which members of the Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee will be speaking about the case and placing it in a broader context, a context without which it is very easy to misread the Olson case. Twin Cities residents can attend one of two events. The first one will be held at the MayDay Café at 35th and Bloomington Avenues in Minneapolis on December 9th at 1 pm. The second one will be on December 13th at Ruminator Books (the former Hungry Mind) in St. Paul. Sara will be signing copies of her book, "Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes." My own comments on Sara's case can be found on the Nygaard Notes website, issue #38. Other details can be had at the website of the Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee at www.saraolsondefense.com/main.html. Or call the Committee at (612) 822-1637. |
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Perhaps the biggest actual story to be found in the blizzard of coverage on the recent (ongoing?) election is the disturbing pattern of reports of voting rights violations against African Americans. We're hearing mostly about Florida, but the problem is hardly unique to that state. The effects of racism impact elections all over the country, ranging from racist law enforcement patterns that result in disproportionate numbers of African Americans being disenfranchised, to racial gerrymandering, to problems with transportation, registration, and voter access that impact poor communities where a disproportionate number of people of color still reside. You can find good reports on the racist shenanigans in Florida elsewhere. As for the publication that you are currently reading, I take the opportunity presented by the current controversy to bring your attention to a few non-election stories in the news recently that illustrate how race affects the news, and thus our understanding of "what is going on" in the world. "Minnesota Nice" = Heads in the Sand "Insurers Said to Continue Racial Bias" read the headline in the July 18th New York Times ("All The News That's Fit To Print"). This story, which was also reported in the Wall Street Journal ("They Don't Have A Slogan Nygaard Can Make Fun Of"), tells of investigations into ongoing insurance companies that charge black customers more than white ones for the same policies. Insurance regulators in Florida and Georgia have "issued cease and desist orders to 28 insurers, directing them to stop collecting higher premiums from blacks based on their race." In a separate development that month, the two largest American life insurance companies – MetLife and Prudential – were accused in separate class-action suits of the same practice. Insurance regulators aren't sure how many companies are still guilty of racist overcharging, but suspect there may be a lot. This news will surprise few people of color, but will likely "shock" a lot of so-called "white" folks (who like to think the civil rights movement took care of all this kind of stuff). The unwillingness to consider this sort of reality on the part of white folks is very dangerous, as it helps the privileged majority to continue to avoid dealing with the business at hand, that business being the institutionalized racism that permeates every aspect of American life. That's why it's very important for the major media in a predominantly "white" state like Minnesota to give a scandal like this a very prominent place in the news; it helps "white" people see the reality that we like to deny. So how did the local dailies do on covering this story? Neither the St. Paul nor the Minneapolis papers published a single word about it. On a related note, the front page of the New York Times of November 17th carried a story entitled "Coca Cola Settles Racial Bias Case." This historic lawsuit "accused Coke of erecting a corporate hierarchy in which black employees were clustered at the bottom of the pay scale, averaging $26,000 a year less than white workers." That's a lot of dough. In the settlement, in which "Coke did not have to acknowledge a history of bias," the company agreed to pay more than $156 million to shut people up. Oops, I mean to settle the suit. That's REALLY a lot of dough, at least to those of us who are not corporations. For those who are corporations, the Times points out that $156 million is "a negligible amount for a company with about $20 billion in sales last year." Even more importantly, Coke agreed to give an outside panel a voice in company personnel policy, something that the average mega-multinational is usually quite reluctant to do, as it threatens to make them just a little bit accountable to the community beyond the stock market (What?! There's a community beyond the stock market?) Note that I am purposely avoiding comment on the fact that the world's people are spending $20 billion on sugar water every year; I just don't want to get started on that subject. Despite the growing African American population in Minnesota, our local paper the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) still doesn't seem to understand the importance of news like this to that population, let alone the importance of news like this for the entire community. They buried their 8-paragraph AP article on this historic settlement, devoid of any quotes or analysis, on the 3rd page of the business section. |
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Every now and then I am put in mind of my junior high school days, when occasionally a boy would express some emotion other than anger or contempt or macho-icity (which may not be a real word, but you know what I mean). This was sure to invite the most powerful insult a boy could receive: to be compared to "a girl." I was naive enough at the time to wonder "What's wrong with being like a girl?" and I'm still wondering, but the fear of being a sissy continues to pack enough of a wallop to have a real impact on public policy, as a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Two Welfare States" indicates. The October 19th editorial in the nation's largest-circulation daily paper, by Irving Kristol, was based on the premise that "An older, paternalistic version of the welfare state is fighting a guerrilla war against a newer and firmly established feminine-maternalistic conception of the welfare state." Ignore for a moment that the "guerrilla war" Mr. Kristol talks about is more like a carpet bombing, and listen closely as he disparages that "feminine-maternalistic" welfare state: "[T]he key term in the feminization of social policy [is] ‘compassion.' Adam Smith talked easily about the importance of ‘sympathy,' but that term lacks the erotic warmth of ‘compassion.'...Men can (and do) sympathize with those who are down on their luck, but it needs a woman to feel a deep compassion, shot through with free-floating indignation, for the human suffering of those who have been victimized by the ravages of ill fortune – or even by their own misdeeds." The modern welfare system is based on a compassion that "has no limits," according to Kristol, and "was not a response to any visible popular demand." So why are we stuck with it, readers of the Journal may wonder. Kristol tells us that the "feminine, maternal version of the welfare state" is now firmly established because "there are large numbers of working women loyal to this state – and men, too, who are loyal to these women." In Kristol's fantasy world, there has been some backsliding in Europe, where the sissy welfare state "is doing its best to emasculate the spirit of nationalist patriotism in all nations of Europe." But, fortunately, in the good old U.S. of A. the inevitable showdown between the girls and the boys will naturally be won by the boys, since "even a casual TV viewer can see that our military is still highly popular..." And poor people, he would have us understand, are not. Kristol hopes for a move in the United States "toward a more paternalistic (i.e. limited) version of the welfare state." [Ed. note: That "i.e. limited" phrase was in the original] Although this idea has already had some victories, "most notably in the case of welfare reform," he predicts a victory for the boys on a massive scale once the boom times in the U.S. economy end and we will all have to choose between the sissy type of spending that we call "welfare" and the manly type of spending that we call "defense." Even the submissive men who are too "loyal to these women" surely agree that "the U.S. cannot opt out of world affairs," because our "superpower responsibilities" are too important, says Kristol. It seems to me that the real world is far less compassionate than reactionaries like Kristol fear but, wrong-headed though his arguments may be, Kristol's Institute and others like it have been at work for years attempting to dismantle what little social safety net remains in the United States. The only response to such thinking is to join together with the women and their sissy friends who are organizing around a different – dare I say "compassionate" – vision. For ideas on how to do that, harken back to last week's Nygaard Notes. |