The United States' relationship with the nations to our South has long fascinated me. By using "America" as the universal shorthand name of our nation, we make clear how insignificant we consider the 20 nations to our south, each of which could just as easily be called "America".
America is not a country; it is a hemisphere. The United States is largely a legacy of England. France's legacy in the new world has been relegated to Quebec and isolated parts of Louisiana. Portugal's legacy lies in the rising behemoth of Brazil. But Spain's legacy in the new world dwarfs that of England, France, or Portugal. And it is growing.
It was the king and queen of Spain, after all, who financed and sponsored the European discovery of the New World. And while England founded what would become the dominant nation in the Americas (and eventually, the World), it is Spain's influence which runs deeper and wider.
Spain and England both have obvious linguistic legacies in the Western Hemisphere. Most people on our half of the world speak either Spanish or English (or both). But Spain's legacy runs deeper, and it is uniquely "American".
The tragedy of the "discovery" of the Americas was the near-extinction of Native Americans, which was accomplished by germs far more often than by guns. But in the Spanish sphere of the Americas, unlike in the English sphere, the Native Americans survived in a sense.
Most Spanish speakers in the Americas today are descendants of the offspring of European Spaniards and Native Americans, which is why most of them are not "white". Most English speakers, on the other hand, are "white".
In North America, there was relatively little mixing between Europeans and Native Americans. So when Native Americans died, they disappeared. But in the central and southern parts of the hemisphere, there was mass mixing between the cultures.
So today, in the United States, 70% of the students in my classrooms have the complexion of Native Americans and speak Spanish as a first language. There simply is no equivalent in the English spheres. Most of my Spanish-speaking students are from the Dominican Republic, on the island of Hispaniola, where Columbus landed on Spanish ships in 1492.
500 years on, it appears that the Americas are, linguistically and ethnically, far more Spanish and Native American than they are English. As time passes and demographics inexorably create a "new" reality, the Americas will be dominated by the (diluted) blood of the natives and the language of the original conquerors.
People who have a deep-seeded and passionate feeling against homosexuality will inevitable reference the Bible as the justification for their prejudice. More specifically, they cite the book of Deuteronomy, a book of codes of conduct that makes the reader want to claw his eyes out.
To use Deuteronomy to justify homophobia requires keyhole vision, since the issue of homosexuality is just one of many issues covered in Deuteronomy. Most of the other codes have to do with dietary laws, hygiene, clothing, and so forth.
The ban on homosexuality is always spoken of in isolation, because to put it into the context it was actually written in makes its ridiculousness tangible and palpable. Here are some of the jewels that are also in Deuteronomy:
If a woman enters the home while menstruating, the house must be burnt down. If a person wears clothing made of 2 types of cloth, that person must be put to death. If a person digs a hole on the Sabbath, that person will be put to death. And on and on and on.
The Bill of Rights was passed into law 219 years ago today. And just like the Old Testament, it is subjected to a keyhole vision by fanatics and idiots. The Bill of Rights is infinitely more just, humane, and relevant than the Old Testament, of course, but both are used for similar ends by similar people.
The equivalent to the homosexuality ban in the Bible is the 2nd amendment to the Constitution.
The 2nd amendment guarantees protection for a "well regulated militia". For some people, this means protection for "individuals to own handguns and assault rifles". To suggest that this code was written for a world that no longer exists is a conversation stopper in the circles of power.
If there is ONE issue that is destroying our society, it is guns. All societies have young men. All rich societies have young men with penises, alcohol, and cars. But our society alone insists on allowing guns into this equation of youth, testosterone, and recklessness that is universal among young men.
And because we insist upon our citizens having the "freedom" to buy guns, we murder 20,000 of each other each year, while less "free" countries are not free to kill each other. In this country, we slaughter each other and jealously protect our "freedom" to do so.
How out of context is this insanity? Just like Deuteronomy, context is key. With all the obsession about the 2nd amendment, we would do well to ask ourselves, "what is the 3rd amendment?"
Here it is: "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house". When was the last time this was relevant? Around the same time the 2nd amendment was, I would argue.
When was the last time a "well-regulated militia" protected the United States from foreign invasion or a tyrannical government? When was the last time the government forced citizens to let soldiers live in their houses? When was the last time you burned down a house because a woman menstruated in it?
Nobody talks about repealing the 3rd amendment. Instead, we just did what we should do with the 2nd amendment: let it drift into irrelevance and die an ignored death.
The above photo is of Harry Truman during World War I. 30 years later, Truman was president, due entirely to the fact that FDR seemed to have thought himself immortal. When Truman was thrust into the presidency, he became the most awful and awesome warlord the world had ever seen, ordering cities full of human beings to be annihilated with nuclear weapons.
But when that war was over, Truman did something else. He ordered the American military to end racial segregation in its ranks. Prior to this decision, which was made after World War II but at the height of the Cold War, blacks in the military were cooks. After this decision, they became generals.
Before Truman used the power of the presidency to force integration in the military, he commissioned a study. The (white) army was interviewed, and fully 80% of America's soldiers declared that they would not serve with black Americans. The army that had just crushed Japan and Hitler was polled, and their answer was "no niggers".
Truman's response (and Truman was definately a racist by modern standards) was "too bad". He ordered integration in the face of the prevailing sentiment.
In 1948, black men were integrated into the American military. 60 years later, a black man was elected Commander in Chief. And now that man is confronted with the issue of gays in the military.
Like in Truman's time vis a vis blacks, there was a study of the military's attitude towards integrating gays. Unlike the survey regarding blacks, the survey regarding gays met with far more tolerance from the soldiers polled. This time, the majority of soldiers said they had no problem serving with open homosexuals.
Sixty years ago, the majority of our soldiers declared themselves bigots, and our President told them to get over it. Today, the majority of our soldiers declare themselves tolerant, and our President still hesitates.
Our president would do well to consider where he would be today if his predecessor had not been willing to unapologetically spit in the face of bigots.
It's fair to say that Americans are far more adept at preaching freedom than practicing it. In all manner of ways, Americans routinely surrender freedoms and liberties and expect their fellow citizens to do the same. The tired and moronic refrain is inevitably: "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide".
This refrain, of course, is a surrender to the power of the state, in that it assumes that a) the state has the right to distinguish "wrong" personal behavior, and b) the state would never do "wrong" itself and is therefore the legitimate judge of all that is "right". Two very pre-1776 assumptions.
Drug tests are a perfect case-in-point. Most people support drug testing because they think they would pass the test. Their thought stops at that point. This logic would also allow us to round up Jews, because most of us aren't Jews. But that's beside the point.
The point is that drug tests are a widely-practiced police-state measure that tramples on the 4th and 5th amendments by their very nature.
But first, we must distinguish what drug tests are. Drug tests are, for all intents and purposes, marijuana tests. Since any thinking person will admit that alcohol is by far the most dangerous drug in any and every workplace, the absurdity is obvious.
I used to work in a warehouse with forklifts and tractor-trailers whizzing by all day and all night. The "drug" policy there did not prevent men from coming to work drunk and driving industrial equipment around all night (which some men did), but it DID prevent me from smoking a joint on the weekend.
So, since drug tests focus primarily on the most benign drug in our pharmacopoeia, while completely ignoring a drug whose use could injure or kill workers in any number of ways and in any number of workplaces, the mental decrepitude of the policy is obvious.
Now, for the constitution. The 4th amendment prohibits arbitrary search and seizure. Put simply, nobody can search my person or my property without documented reasoning that I have committed a crime. You can search me if I am fleeing from the direction of a recent armed robbery, but you cannot search me if you simply dislike the way I dress.
But drug tests require no proof, no evidence, no reasoning at all. There is no supposition that the testee has committed any crime, or has ever used a drug in his life, legal or otherwise. No, the only thing that makes a drug testee "suspicious" is that he wants a job.
So, if you want a job in this country, you have to prove that you have not violated the state's (idiotic and ignorant) drug policies. Wanting a job is probable cause. And all of a sudden, citizens have no rights and it is incumbent upon them to prove that they have not done something "wrong" rather than it being incumbent upon the state to prove that they have done something "wrong".
And here is where all the proto-fascists chime in: "well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about", and its insidious cousin, "well, if you're under suspicion, you must have done something wrong".
And what of the 5th amendment? The 5th amendment, among other things, tells us that no citizen can be forced to provide evidence against themselves. Drug testing shreds this amendment just as surely as it does the 4th.
Requiring a drug test of a job applicant means that a business is forcing that person to provide evidence against themselves. Even if that person has done nothing "wrong", they are forced to submit to a search and forced to provide evidence proving they have done nothing "wrong".
This is not just a problem for stoners, and not only scumbags have reason to fear it. It is just a piece of the architecture that American government and corporations have erected together, making most workplaces into places where the constitution simply does not apply.
It is all part of an edifice of intimidation that has been erected to deprive the American worker of his dignity and his self-worth. You want a job at Wal-Mart? That's fine, just promise you'll never form a union, you'll work unpaid overtime, you'll skip breaks, and you'll pee into a cup upon our request.
There used to be a time in this country when workers had a sense of their rights and were utterly and entirely unapologetic about telling management to piss off. I'll smoke to that.
Being a substitute teacher in so-called "Level 1" schools is to be on the front lines of a disintegrating society. "Level 1" is shorthand for the worst of the worst. If the name makes no sense, perhaps we can assume it was coined by a product of these very schools.
Even a lifetime of living in "Level 1" neighborhoods and having "Level 1" neighbors cannot prepare a person for the reality of inner-city schools in 2010 America. By this I mean that I have lived and worked next to "Level 1" people my whole life, but even that could not prepare me for what I see every day in our public schools.
To be a 31-year old man returning to urban public schools for the first time since attending them in my youth is to be instantly morphed into an 80-year old Republican. I have been meanly and swiftly reduced to waxing reminiscent and nostalgic about a simpler, more civilized time. By which I mean 1993.
The amazing thing is not that students fight, or swear, or show a lack of innate interest in learning. The amazing thing is that these behaviors have been completely mainstreamed. What used to result in immediate suspension now, in the very same schools, barely registers as a disruption.
It used to be that fighting, for example, or calling a teacher a faggot or a bitch or something far, far worse would result in immediate suspension. Now, in the very same schools, this behavior is simply the cost of doing business, an annoyance rather than a red line.
What has changed? Certainly music and movies have become more coarse and explicit. But that is not the fundamental issue. When I was in these schools, the n-word was just as prevalent in rap music as it is today, but it was not a word that was heard spoken in the hallways. Now, it is a word I hear as often as I hear the word "the".
This word, and others equally vulgar, are common currency now. So are all other types of behavior that simply would not have been tolerated in the good old days, if there ever is such a thing.
The fundamental problem is two-fold. Firstly, adults (parents, guardians, and teachers) have tolerated this behavior. It doesn't take a doctorate in child psychology to know that if there is no consequence to calling an adult a bitch-ass motherfucker, then that behavior will occur far more often than it otherwise would.
Secondly, and most importantly, kids today are entirely incapable of dividing their identities. All of us today live atomized lives and are required to assume several different "identities" in any given day. It is possible to be a father, a son, a husband, a teacher, a shopper, a driver, and a friend in the course of a single day, for example.
What today's children lack is any understanding that different identities require different conduct. People my age understand that the language you use around your friends in a casual setting is very different from the language you would use towards your mother, or during a job interview, or when seated in a restaurant.
Those dividing lines are not acknowledged by youth today. To them, there is no sense that school is a different realm from home with an entirely different set of conduct, communication, and behavior. The sullen and hostile glares from students who are told they may not listen to headphones during class attests to this.
One hypothetical I use to (vainly) attempt to illustrate this for students is Jay-Z. When Jay-Z walked into a boardroom to negotiate the purchase of an NBA franchise, do we think he sagged his pants? Do we think he smoked or drank during the meeting? Do we think he referred to his prospective colleagues as "niggas"?
Two things are clear when I ask students to think about that scenario. Firstly, they are intrigued. Secondly, any serious consideration of the merits of the point I raise lasts about 5 seconds.
"Know thyself" is an old adage. In this day and age, however, that can be crippling, especially if the "self" you define yourself as is the "self" you are with no adults around. The costs of defining yourself that way are crippling. What students need to do today is to be able to incorporate different identities. They need to know thyselves.
There are certain islands of American life and culture into which black folks were accepted even while most walks of life were closed to them.
The first, cynically enough, was the military. There is, I think, something cynical about a nation that would pride itself on "allowing" black folks to die for the flag well before those very folks were allowed to vote.
Around the the time the military was fully integrated in 1946, two more realms of our culture were opened gradually to blacks: music and sports. Music and sports, however gradually they were opened to black participation on equal terms, remain the twin loci of ghetto youth to this day.
Again, this can be said to be a bit cynical, since the dynamic remains that the best a poor black child can hope to do is to one day amuse and entertain everyone else. However, a bit of this angst is surely assuaged by the fact that young black men can now make tens of millions of dollars for doing nothing more than entertain white people.
Another realm which was opened up to blacks relatively early was TV and movies, but at first it was only a specific genre that welcomed blacks. In the 40', 50's, 60's, and onwards, blacks were rarely featured in any remotely empowering roles in TV or movies. The exception was science fiction.
Blacks, and minorities in general, were feature far more often and far more prominently in science fiction movies and TV shows far before more mainstream and more "realistic"fare.
Watch any old sci-fi movie or TV show, from Star Trek to Star Wars, from Planet of the Apes to Alien, and you will see black astronauts, female generals, and everything in between. They literally jump off the screen when compared to other mainstream movies and shows of the same eras, which are dominated exclusively by white men.
While I have never been interested in Star Trek per se, I can't help but notice that a black woman and a (gay) Asian man were officers on the spaceship when the show premiered in 1966. Vintage sci-fi has endless examples of empowered minorities of all stripes in a time when all other genres conspicuously lacked melanin and estrogen.
This speaks to the reason that sci-fi appeals to so many people. Sci-fi is about the future, so the authors can project aspirations that don't seem "realistic" to the audience. Flying cars. Talking computers. Black presidents. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
By planting the seed in the audience's consciousness, could sci-fi material have played a part in the growing tolerance and inclusiveness in our culture? Perhaps. Or I suppose it could have been done simply for shock value. But I'm inclined to feel that it was indicative of an open-mindedness that was ahead of its time.
I recall the first time I ever saw a movie with a black president. It was Deep Impact, about an asteroid headed to destroy the earth. Morgan Freeman was the president. The most interesting thing about the film was that the asteroid actually hit earth and killed most people on the planet. No bottom-of-the-ninth Bruce Willis heroics to be found.
What was also interesting was that the president was black. This film was made at a time when the idea of a black president had been made at least plausible by recent speculation that Colin Powell would run in 1996.
In retrospect, it was a master-stroke by the writers; it appealed to liberals by portraying a black president as entirely realistic. And it appealed to everyone else by making it clear that the first black president would be the last, and hey, at least it was Morgan Freeman.
I have been convinced that tolerance for diversity is not inevitable; it takes pushing. It takes confrontation. These confrontations need not be overt, however. Sometimes they are accomplished passively, artfully, by the kids who got picked on in high school. Sometimes it takes a Trekkie.
The President of the United States, 48 years ago this week, explaining why it's so important to vote in the midterm elections:
"75 percent of Republicans voted against my higher education bill, 84 percent of Republican senators opposed extended unemployment benefits, 81 percent and 95 percent of house Republicans voted against the redevelopment and public housing bills, respectively, and 80 percent of house Republicans resisted increasing the minimum wage."
"On a bill to provide medical care for our older citizens, 7/8 of the Republican senators voted No, just as their fathers before them had voted 90 percent against Social Security in the 1930's."
John F. Kennedy, October, 1962
