The Student Debt Train Wreck

The Sunday NYTimes did a story on the plight of a White middle-class student who amassed a student debt of $100,000 to get a liberal arts degree from top-flight NYU. She is now living with that decision, compared to her earning capacity, and it looks grim. What the story doesn’t talk about is how minorities, with a graduation rate of nearly two-thirds that of Whites (here) (half for black men), get saddled with similar debt and no degree. That’s grim, with a side of criminal on the part of those who are suppose to be helping these kids get an education.

The article (here) describes how schools are in the ‘business’ of enrolling students, but not telling them that they will spend a near-lifetime repaying loans, similar to the way their parents paid off the 30-year home mortgage. Private banks have been too happy to step in and provide what amounts to ‘no-doc’ variable-rate loans to kids, to fill the gap of what the schools, with any conscience or financial sense, could not do. As long as the government or parents guarantee the loans everybody’s happy – but then judgment day arrives.

When you are facing 10-15 years of student loan payments that look like rent payments, the cost of a good education doesn’t look so good. Forget bankruptcy, since that loop-hole was closed a long time ago on student loans. With a growing college-educated, but yet hourly-waged, workforce, paying off this debt seems nearly impossible.

US education is in a rat-race for wearing the best brand, even when that brand is just flat-out over-priced and a bad deal. Expect it all to crash eventually. There will come a time of ‘adjustment’, where schools, government, and banks are forced to return to operating budgets and loan amounts that match what students can reasonably repay. Expect that on the way there, schools will close or shrink, banks will write down bad loans, government will rescue and make rules – and the people will complain and sober to the truth.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: The Student Debt Train Wreck, Financial Aid, Student Loans, Bankruptcy, Acting Black, Acting White

Gary Coleman: 1968 - 2010

Perhaps Mr. Coleman lived longer because of fame, but only he can say if he lived better. RIP.

James C. Collier

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#13 Blacks and the Likability Paradox

Blacks often talk about what’s in somebody’s heart, particularly White hearts. “The problem with the 1964 Civil Rights Act was that White folks didn’t feel it in their hearts”, say Black historians. So what is it with the Black need that people like them deep down? It seems as though the group is constantly looking for their Sally Field “You really like me!” moment (which BTW ain’t never coming). Frankly, I always thought being liked was overrated. Liking or disliking someone is a discretionary choice, whereas obstructing their freedom is a violation of the US Constitution. Keep your damn feelings, just give me my rights.

Now switching up the gears, for all of the demand to have Whites genuinely welcome Blacks into their hearts, Black folks also seem hell-bent on generating dislike. This is illustrated by the ‘keepin’ it real’ model of dealing with folks. If Blacks don’t like someone (and this is often) they are compelled to show it, without restraint. Out of my face! No perceived slight, however small, is ever ignored. Benefit of what doubt, you say? Don’t hide your feelings in order to feed your family, or secure your future. White folks suck it up, yes. Asians? Definitely. Black folks, they keep it real till' it all goes wrong, and then they line up at unemployment, with kids in tow. This is the likability paradox.

James C. Collier

Blogger Post Scriptum: "R, even with 500+ postings I am still learning that sometimes musings don't translate to my intention. In hindsight, "Blacks and" postings should be on light topics only (like 21" rims). It is difficult to do more serious topics their justice in so few words going into the weekend. Mea Culpa to my readers."

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Looking At Disparities Through The Lens of Race

How properly could someone assess your life by taking a glance at the clothes in your closet? Can these garments tell the significant events of your life? Do they say when you got married, had a baby, graduated from college, got promoted in your job, retired, had surgery, or became a grandparent? The answer is no. Clothes, shoes, and hats are impermanent and tell us little. From a biological perspective, our skin and its coloration suffers the same fate. It comes in many varieties, but tells us almost nothing about our underlying differences.

Not a week goes by that I do not read an argument by an often-professed race-realist presenting that the intelligence-related disparities we witness between Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos, et al, must be genetic in origin, via ethnicity, since intelligence is more than 50% heritable (percentage of expression of traits directly from genes). In these arguments, the inference of empirical results always trumps the lack of supporting physiological evidence. The discussion typically focuses on IQ, standard test scores, school grades, graduation, and finally, on general behavior.

We all live each day looking through the race lens, but no one is more fanatical than the race-realist. Ardent realists, dedicated students of disparity, ignore the most obvious challenges to their argument that ‘race drives differences’. They ignore that skin coloration is impermanent and by far the most genetically labile organ of the human body, meaning it quickly changes based on the environment, and absent mutation. They ignore the skin’s profound sensitivity and responsiveness to sunlight intensity, and how quickly it must lighten or darken to protect healthy reproduction. They also ignore that skin coloration is of no value in determining phylogenetic relationships (evolutionary history of an organism group) among modern human groups.

The infinitely complex brain, in the alternative, is perhaps the least labile of our organs and has evolved universally, including at least one 'leap', in homo sapiens over tens of thousands of years, and millions of years over the span of humanity (genus homo). I have yet to hear an objective argument from realists reconciling these two physiological extremes, brain versus skin, in human evolution. Minus any such reconciliation, it is scientifically unforgivable to conclude much of anything about brain genetics and race-based outcomes, as viewed through today’s ‘extremely near-sided’ lens of skin coloration.

Researchers continuously look for evidence of inter and intra-group changes in our brains. Mutations have certainly occurred, and on rare occasion have ‘stuck’ (become positively selected). In the case of Ashkenazi Jews and sphingolipid disorders, we know precisely what constitutes evidence of a physiological change that might show itself in intelligence disparity. But in no case has science proved more than a normal distribution of intelligence across the species covering the most recent 50,000 years of brain evolution and travel about the globe. Trying to deduce today’s accumulation of disparate test results through the constantly changing and impermanent lens of race is as futile as searching in a clothes closet.

Various ethnicities certainly reflect different measured intelligence, but the genetic variation/distribution driving these differences occurred, by virtue of a basic time-line analysis, most substantially while waves of advancing dark-skinned homo sapiens were migrating from Africa. Skin color, as we see it today, is an extremely limited analytical tool for looking into the past, or explaining the present.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Looking At Disparities Through The Lens of Race, Race Realist, Genetics, Bell Curve, Acting Black, Acting White

Stipple Minute: Phillip Corbin Mansion, Oak Bluffs, MA

I took a photo of this home fifteen or so years ago, before it burned (1994) in an accident. The owner, software guru Peter Norton, rebuilt it almost exactly as it was.

James C. Collier

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Rand Paul’s Right to Refuse Service to Anyone

Tea Party darling Rand Paul kicked a bit of dirt onto himself the other day when he challenged the 1964 Civil Rights Act as “too broad”. Specifically, Paul thinks that businesses should be able to discriminate in who they serve. For those too young to remember, before 1964 it was common for establishments in parts of the country to refuse to serve Blacks. Paul has since been trying the wipe the stupidity from his lips, but it ain’t gonna be easy on this one. He said it, and he believes it.

I can still remember, as a kid on our vacation to Yellowstone, my Dad telling me to keep an eye out for a Best Western Motel, because he knew they would serve Blacks. Even here in California, I periodically still see signs in the windows of businesses that say, “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone”, and I wonder ‘what the hell are they thinking?’. To be fair, the establishment is often owned by an immigrant who came to this country after 1964, and is minimally educated to the DMV code, much less the US Constitution.

I once approached the immigrant owner of one of my favorite eateries to say, in a friendly manner, that US law granted him no such ‘right’ of refusal, as his sign indicated. He was inclined to brush me off until I stated that if someone complained about his behavior as indicated by the sign, the city had the actual ‘right’ to pull his business license and close him down (here). He removed the sign.

My point is that while Paul may be one racist idiot to many, he is not so far away from the sentiments and ignorance of many Americans – and this should give us pause and concern.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Rand Paul’s Right to Refuse Service to Anyone, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jim Crow, Discrimination, Acting Black, Acting White

#12 Blacks and Swagger, Obama too

In the first place, what is swagger? Objectively, swagger is a calculated display, and waste, of resources designed to communicate supremacy either to the competition or an object of desire. Rich guys, like billionaire Larry Ellison (Oracle), throw away money in plain sight, so that everyone knows that there is more where that came from. Ladies look like the display windows at Neiman’s, while they are buying groceries. Athletes strut to show muscle strength and readiness even when no threat or competition exist.

Different ethnicities have their versions of swagger. White guys wear their hair a certain way, Black guys do the same. But swagger starts at puberty and, I have just found, is best observed at co-ed high school track meets (including my son) where the young swaggees are wearing skimpy uniforms and embroiled in physical competition. These meets are a veritable gold mine of unadulterated swagger, White to Black, male to female, freshman to senior.

All colors of the boys have the basic swagger of walking on their toes (metatarsals), to show off their instant readiness to ‘Usain Bolt’ to some finish line into the first place spot light. The top tier girls wear tight everything, letting nature show itself off. More pronounced toe-walking and tight clothes equals speed, if you check the results. The kids add to this flair by wearing their accessories in the manner of professionals, Nike preferred.

There’s more swagger in the glamor events, the sprints. I suppose this is because running speed is the most basic of all competition. You run to get what you want, and away from that which wants you (for a meal). The boys have fancy haircuts and sunglasses, the girls get the fingernails and hair looking like they are headed to the club after the meet. The 3000m winner, a White kid, had a bit of well-earned swagger, but I think he has already seen too many swagger-less Kenyans, so he was dialing it back.

Finally, no swagger discussion is complete without recognizing Obama’s swagger. He walks like those kids. He is on his toes, like he is ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, toward or away from a threat - I’m not sure. I can’t think of an earlier POTUS, except Jack Kennedy, who had this particular physical manner of communicating readiness. BusinessWeek claimed (last week) that Wall Street is liking O-man, despite concerns, so he's still in the race even with the 'help' of FOX NEWS.

I’m not sure if it is racist to expect this from him, or to like it, or, god forbid, to have been jazzed by it at vote time. Is primal influence legitimate in this complex world? Perhaps, but it exist nonetheless.

Check out Swagger360.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: #12 Blacks and Swagger, Obama too, Usain Bolt, Track and Field, Supremacy, Acting Black, Acting White

Stipple Minute: "Girl And Cheetah"

Stipple drawing of photograph by Canadian Gregory Colbert.

James C. Collier

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Arizona Challenges Ethnic Studies

If you live in a country where ethnicity has, at times, identified individuals for legal, moral and ethical mistreatment, are citizens not allowed to educate to the history and facts of the mistreatment? Would this right not persist even though the descriptions of the mistreatment might reasonably invoke spirited discussion of the events and encourage organizations of change?

When I speak on this blog of propensities within the Black community to disproportionate violence, I do not feel good. But the propensity to violence is the truth that needs the spotlight for the benefit of all. Similarly, minorities, as well as Whites, need to learn the evidence of mistreatment of ourselves, whether by race, age, or sex, also to advance.

I may misunderstand it, but the Arizona initiative (here) banning ethnic studies education that might contribute to animus seems to ban study of factual events on the criteria that they might be painful. While this pain might include anger, fear, or resentment, it is nonetheless stemming from actual events. Should Germany ban studies of the Holocaust because of the emotion that it brings, or that students might organize in some fashion to insure that it never happens again? Pathways of ‘moving on’ do not necessarily mean dropping the discussion.

The greatest reason for ethnic studies is the propensity for the majority, in any place, to paint history in biased colors. What is often left out of the curriculum is that which is painful to remember, particularly for the historical majority. If that history, based on current events, encourages a call-to-action for change, then all the more reason to avoid it, or not, depending on your stance. Prohibiting the teaching of history because of the way it might be interpreted is a violation of our fundamental freedom.

I look forward to the day when ethnic studies will not need a separate status. However, until we can embrace it’s teaching, pain and all, along with all of our history, it will merit extraordinary support.

James C. Collier

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Lena Horne: 1917 - 2010

James C. Collier

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Ann Arbor’s Blacks-only Field Trip vs. Outrage

The reason that the job of a leader is lonely is because a leader must not play favorites, less the disfavored rise up and spite him. Our constitution does a good job in demanding that the citizens of these United States get treated equally. Over the years, more work has gone into seeing that White men following these laws of our land, and now we can add Ann Arbor’s Dicken Elementary School Principal Mike Madison to that list, with a twist.

It seems that Madison is Black, and recently authorized a Blacks-only field trip, for a science class to hear a speech by a rocket scientist, who (you guessed it) happens to be Black. White class members were excluded from the trip, on the basis of their race. Madison’s goal was to expose the Black children to new possibilities for their futures. He may have done this, but he also exposed himself as a racist idiot.

Who is he, as the chief-educator for the entire school, to suggest that there was not mutual benefit available and responsibility to all the kids who might hear the inspiring words of a rocket scientist? Who is he to direct that resources, provided for the benefit of all the students, should be directed to educational programs for a select group? What kind of strategy for closing the achievement gap for Black kids includes limiting educational support for non-Blacks?

This is simple. If, in seeking more White players in the NBA, a White principal made a Whites-only field trip to meet Phoenix Sun’s star basketball player, Steve Nash, who is White, Blacks would not hesitate to express their outrage. So put me on the record for some Black outrage at Principal Knucklehead. If my kid were in that school, Madison would need to explain to the school board why he should get to keep his job. Period. Story (here).

James C. Collier

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Growing Up White

When I saw this I immediately thought I should start my own stuff-black-people-would-like-to-do-but-can't blog. I can just imagine what my parents would say if I had ever decided to disrupt a pro baseball game by running around the field like a kid who just downed his first half-a-beer. But in this case, there was a rotund taser-toting Philly cop with his own ideas.

Rather than continuing to chase the seventeen year old in circles, the chubby cop took aim with the electrodes and dropped him (here). This was prior to needing to call in his own ‘dunkin-donut-code-blue’, or worse, having to self-tase his big butt back to life. In fairness to the cop, who was reviewed and cleared of using excessive force, recent of these joy-runners have proved themselves armed and dangerous toward on-field personnel.

What’s kinda’ funny, besides seeing the kid crash and burn from the shock, is to consider that prior to hopping the barrier to the field, the youngster called his dad and asked permission for the stunt. The dad curiously said, “I don’t think you should.” Now, my pops would have said something a little stronger like, “I’m gonna’ whip your ass for even thinking about doing something so asinine”. But hey, my old man was old-school.

Furthermore, if my folks came to bail me out, after such a stunt, I would suggest that it’d be safer for me to stay on ‘ice’ for a few days until dad’s BP (blood pressure) came down to triple digits.” In contrast, the offender’s father wasn’t too bothered, except for the tasing, saying his son was ‘just a teenager having fun’. I guess growing up White still has a few advantages.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Growing Up White, Phillies, Baseball, Taser, Acting Black, Acting White

Harvard Law Student Kicks Up Racial Ruckus

Third-year Harvard law student, and Law Review editor, Stephanie Grace, has caused a poop-storm of controversy by putting in writing her views that state, “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent”.

It seems that she spoke out six months ago in an email follow-up to a private dinner conversation. One of the email recipients - Yelena Shagall - recently decided, for yet known reasons, to ‘out’ Ms. Grace. In any event, there’s a whole lot of damage control going on from all sides, including the law school Dean, Martha Minow, who is under consideration by Obama for the high court.

It is not so much what Ms. Grace said, but rather that she was so evidently having a conversation that is not allowed. To correct her, what is absolute is that we are not allowed to talk, in any forum, about the possible origins of an intelligence gap that seems to influence/explain the performance gap we experience, between White and Black.

The fact that Blacks score, on average, one standard deviation below Whites on IQ test and under perform on a myriad of standard empirical measures, across all education levels, establishes a basis, however incomplete, for Ms. Grace’s statement. This incomplete basis stands, and will remain as the ‘best case’ line of reasoning in the censored mouths of all, until the point which it is openly and critically debated. For this debate to happen, people like Ms. Grace must not be crucified.

Factors of intelligence are genetic, indeed, but not in the negative manner implied by this layman banter of terms. Good science to-date provides that nothing about having black skin genetically predisposes anyone to less intelligence. However, the correlation of black skin and lower measured intelligence does indicate that normal human distributions of intelligence could reasonably pre-date ethnicity, in expression. That these differences may be expediently visible through today's lens of race, while having other origins, is the missing piece of the puzzle, blocked by not encouraging open scientific dialog.

Differences of race, at and beneath the surface, have occurred in concert with other key events in recent human evolution (last 10,000 years). The proper assignment of cause and effect demand a critical analysis of event time lines, particular with respect to evolving homo sapien brain physiology, and including what evidence we have of recent brain mutations (genetic disorders) that might explain the pronounced disparities we see, or errantly think we see.

James C. Collier

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#11 Blacks and Wheels

Whatever the trip is with Blacks and big rims must be the analog to Whites and big tires. I have been watching White boys put big tires on trucks since 1975 (when I was a boy!). The big rim thing is relatively new, but deserves its look, with history in mind. In fact, as the picture shows, the mechanics of these urban rigs do not look much different than their 4x4 backwoods cousins.

I believe fat tires came into being to give stability to tall set-ups looking for greater clearance over rural obstacles, stumps, log, swamps, alligators, lawn furniture, abandoned refrigerators, and such. Big rims are an equal testosterone injection for the urban dweller. And just like the cowgirls, the hooptie-girls heat up around this bigness.

So I guess it’s all about sex. I have a friend who even calls the Dodge Ram Truck, the Dodge “Penis”. She claims that this is how the truck looks, so why not call it by the same? For the record, it’s not a Black-thing to have tires/rims that are worth more than the car itself, either. Guys have been upgrading wheels and tires ever since Mags and Ansons first came out to improve performance, a half-century ago.

No discussion would be complete without mention of the hydraulics that our Latino friends add to the mix. I have seen YouTube’s of cars hopping (here) many feet off the ground like an English boxer. When it comes to chest thumpin’ stupidity and automobiles, race don’t matter.

James C. Collier

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Bullock’s Blind Side Black Baby

Truth follows fiction, follows truth? Or so it would seem. Sandra Bullock, who won an Oscar for portraying a White mother who takes in a homeless Black youth as her son, has recently announced that she is adopting a newborn male infant, who happens to be Black. So what’s going on here?

Is Bullock some kind of Angelina Jolie-wannabe, bringing the plight of the unfortunate into the public eye? Or is this another case of exotic-baby-as-pet to a Hollywood celebrity? Is the baby a hapless pawn, destined for a tortured life? How should Black people feel? Should her marital problems influence the situation?

Assuming she gets her pick of roles, I suspect that the same underlying emotional attraction that drew Bullock to Blind Side is showing itself in her adoption choice. Whatever one thinks, she gets high marks for consistency. Unlike Americans who go far and wide to adopt, I applaud her willingness to drop the gloves and buy (adopt) US, particularly a Black baby. She knows, intuitively, that she will have to share her son with the Black community and critical commentary is only a headline away.

As for the wellness of the baby, race is a social construct that means everything to some and nearly nothing to others. Bullock has the resources to mitigate the challenges. Whether she has the common sense remains an open question, but also one of nobody else’s business. The challenges of being a superstar celebrity parent will far outweigh race differences, and are much more likely to detract from her parenting - ask Michael Douglas.

I don’t expect a rush of adoptions of Black orphans because of Bullock's profile. More people might consider adopting outside of their race, and I think this is a okay, but adopting is too difficult and expensive to ever to become a fad of the masses. As for Black opinion, I think the Black Psychology Association finally shut-up about being against interracial adoption – not a minute too soon. The related cross-racial issues with an adopted family are preferred, in any sensible opinion, to the truckload of issues that Black orphans suffer at the hands of this country’s foster care system.

Lastly, Bullock announced her impending divorce. This is a non-issue. She committed to the adoption prior to her split, and has bonded with the baby. Those who don’t agree with single parenthood are ignoring that current wedlock and divorce rates are, in part, a significant function of enduring bad marriages and the resulting dysfunctional parenting that follows.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Bullock’s Blind Side Black Baby, Adoption, Interracial, Angelina Jolie, Acting Black, Acting White

Black vs. White and Other Tales from the Toaster

If the planet’s age, at 4.5 billion years, were put into terms of a 24 hour clock, all of human (homo sapien) existence has occurred roughly in the last 2.88 seconds. In other words, figure that the earth’s ‘party’ started at 12:00:00 AM, we arrived late at 11:57:05 PM that same day, and in those nearly three seconds we have infested the joint and set the course, as I see it, for humanity’s natural exit. This makes us no better, or worse, than 99.99% of all other living creatures that have come and gone in 4.5 billion years.

Humans conflict by nature. Some might say that conflict is the essence of our advancement and to-be short-lived dominion. All the while, we search for leverage to dismantle our tendency to fight with each other. 'Do this, do that, shut your mouth, get out of my face!' But, we continue to lose the war for peace. North fights south, black fights white, Jew fights Muslim, male fights female, young fights old, and so on. Perhaps the fighting is inevitable.

The conflict goes farther than just with humanity. We conflict outside ourselves, with nature. We conflict inside ourselves, about who we are and why we are here. Finally, we conflict with the unseen, the God that we believe created us. We assert and immediately defy Godly rules. Challenging our natural tendency, or need, to conflict is our ultimate battle, and if we ever win, it just might be our unique undoing. But we won’t win, and our status quo undoing is our back-up plan.

To err is certainly human, and forgiveness may be divine, but conflict floats our boat. Without it we are toast. With it, we are also toast. So I guess what I’m saying is that the earth will live on, until the universe un-big-bang’s itself, but humanity is toast. Personally, I’m agnostic about toast. So, you live the moment in the toaster, with your favorite spreadable waiting, knowing that when it’s gone, it’s gone. And that will be OK.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled conflicts…

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: Black vs. White and Other Tales from the Toaster, Conflict, Nature, Evolution, Acting Black, Acting White

Arizona Secedes

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution directs, in part, that all US citizens are due equal protection, including that no state may abridge this protection. This amendment exists as the ‘teeth’ to the Jeffersonian declarative ideal of ‘all men being created equal’, in the eyes of the law. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and was a hypocrite, but that’s a different conversation.

Arizona legislators and voters have seen fit to thumb their noses at the constitution, by instructing its authorities, via SB1070, to require residents of that state to prove, upon demand, that they are in this country legally. The selection criterion is as vague as the individual’s appearance, in the eyes of authorities. So, to look like you are from Mexico is cause for detention and questioning. SB1070 makes no distinction between legal residents who originated, by ancestry, in Mexico, and those in the US illegally.

Now everyone knows that a lesser number Blacks commit a disproportion of crime, but our laws protect the greater number of remaining law abiding Blacks from the suspicion of law breaking, except for evidence beyond simply being Black. Why Arizona would choose to deny their Latino citizens equal protection is beyond me, except that they want to secede, and rid themselves of the Constitution. If SB1070 is allowed to stand, then our laws are not worth the paper upon which they are written.

When the southern states, prior to 1963, refused equal protection for Blacks, the government ultimately sent in the troops to enforce laws. This situation in Arizona is no different, today. The first time SB1070 is enforced should be the last time. Federal funds? - see ya! Tee-up the Supremes, the troops, and let's party. States that knowingly defy the constitution and its process should be crushed, period.

This is not to say that Arizona does not have the right, or responsibility to make state laws, police its borders, or verify citizenship. Rather, they must carry out this responsibility in an objective manner that protects US citizens from assumed guilt, and unlawful detainment. Giving authorities the right to ‘eyeball’ the application of equal protection based on ethnicity is stupid, lazy, and unconstitutional. Bad Arizona.

James C. Collier

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The Nigger Show

When racism masquerades as something else
Don't let the virulent hatred of Obama's presidency - veiled in "policy differences" - fool you. Just ask someone raised around bigotry.

'The nigger show."

I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was not surprised to hear such a phrase.

I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in "black and white."

The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don't hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else.

More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel - racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era - were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy.

That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy's national newspapers detailed the experience of a Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus.

But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president.

Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner, that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush administration), presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: "Obama brings antiracist book to Rome."

Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama's presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as "racist" what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration's policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama.

The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are, because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest.

Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing "the race card." But I know what members of my family mean when they say - as so many said during the town hall meetings in August - that they "want their country back." They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person. They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country.

During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama's election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama's election, "the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won't even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don't know what we're going to do with 'em."

My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old - roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird - I recall knowing that I didn't agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist.

My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life - virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming.

However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language.

Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance, the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail.

It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.

by Carlos Dews, author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome.

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This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundation Italy.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: The Nigger Show, Obama, Racism, Hatred, Policy, Acting White

Dorothy Height: 1912-2010

James C. Collier

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America’s Grand Failure: The College Track

The Bureau of Labor says that, in 2008, 68.9% of all HS graduates enrolled in a four-year college. Forty percent will eventually drop out, with even higher numbers for Blacks and Latinos. Reasons for dropping out include, financial, mismatched expectations, poor motivation, preparation, and study skills.

The idea that every child in America should go to college is flawed. This is different than the notion that young people, who are ready, willing, and able, should not get help. We need to acknowledge that we are failing all the kids who should have another choice. This isn’t just the kids who fail, but also those destined to under perform due to misplacement.

Also, the alternative which kids need is not to simply go to community college, on a remedial academic track, to make up for not being able to make the cut into a four-year college. They need real alternatives that develop them, accepting the need to serve/contribute to society, in a more manual/service orientation, and less intellectual manner.

Following this, America needs communities where people, who do not go to college, can live well, against a more elastic version of the American dream. That dream might not only include a suburban home with a 2-car garage, but also allow for more down-sized home ownership, not just ghetto squalor or fixer-uppers. Large complexes that wed tenants to extended renting, minus the pride and benefits of ownership, are not the answer.

School systems, across all economic levels, need to facilitate placing students in the most appropriate development scenario. At minimum we need service-tech and vocational-tech school tracks that capture kids, and their imaginations, at the end of middle school. This is the best opportunity for reducing first on-set high school drop-out rates, which only fuel unemployment, bad attitudes, and crime.

Pushing kids into college fuels higher-education bloat, and saddles these dropouts with large debts, no degree, and limited job prospects. So, good education is not about promoting more kids against a bad standard. Rather, it is our educators, and their system, that need to become responsive to real need – and more responsible to this country's future.

James C. Collier

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Technorati Tags: America’s Grand Failure: The College Track, Drop-Out, Vocation, Debt, Graduation, Acting White