Why the suburbs suck

I've always hated the suburbs. What I didn't realize is that they were from the beginning designed to segregate blacks from whites, and used by the federal government as an instrument of institutional racism to economically disadvantage blacks. 

I was born in Chicago, and raised for eight years in the integrated South Side. The grandson of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan was in my second grade class. My black friends were so natural to me that I took offense, even at that young age, at racist comments I heard my family drop from time to time.  

I thought I hated Seattle when my family moved to Redmond in 1984 - the closed-in skyline, the grey weather, how people wouldn't invite you over for real. But after graduation, having a chance to explore Seattle on my own terms as an adult, I realized it wasn't Seattle I hated but the Eastside suburbs I'd grown up in. 

I never explicitly connected the problems of the suburbs to racial inbreeding before, until reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' excellent piece on reparations in June's Atlantic Monthly. Turns out the suburbs were intentionally engineered to be the racially homogenous shit holes they are. Check this out:

In Cold War America, homeownership was seen as a means of instilling patriotism, and as a civilizing and anti-radical force. "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist," claimed William Levitt, who pioneered the modern suburb with the development of the various Levittowns, his famous planned communities. "He has too much to do."

But the Levittowns were, with Levitt’s willing acquiescence, segregated throughout their early years. Daisy and Bill Myers, the first black family to move into Levittown, Pennsylvania, were greeted with protests and a burning cross. A neighbor who opposed the family said that Bill Myers was "probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house."

... As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards’ code of ethics warned that "a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood … any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values." A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesirables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters—and 'a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites.

The federal government concurred. It was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, not a private trade association, that pioneered the practice of redlining, selectively granting loans and insisting that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant—a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of the property to anyone other than whites. Millions of dollars flowed from tax coffers into segregated white neighborhoods.

http://www.theatlantic.com/…/the-case-for-reparatio…/361631/

The Case for Reparations

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

THEATLANTIC.COM

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Violence is not the answer - nor the entire problem

[To a friend who spoke against the violence in Ferguson in absolute terms]

I agree with you that a huge problem in our society is lack of action, and people speaking authoritatively without having engaged with attempting to solve things with action, or experiencing directly the injustice they want to complain about. This is a problem both in times of protest and times of relative calm, as it promotes the illusion of isolation and makes it psychologically easier to do violence to others.

However, I also see a problem we have in reducing complex problems to simple solutions. The situation in Ferguson right now is not simple, there is a lot going on that is both right and wrong, and I think it adds to the problem - and works against peace - to oversimplify, and look away from evidence and opinions that are hard to fit into the picture. When things are complex, we are called to grapple with them, sit with the discomfort of uncertainty, and grope our way toward a new vision of truth.

In my life experience - which you know some but not all of - there has been physical violence, but there also has been emotional and relational violence that did not include physicality - but was far more damaging. Studies suggest that emotional neglect of a child can be psychologically as damaging or worse than physical abuse (http://www.apa.org/.../2014/10/psychological-abuse.aspx). This is to say there are forms of violence that can't easily be seen.

That is true in my life experience, and it is what I am concerned about in Ferguson and with Black Americans in general. It is one thing to say "stop being a thug, take responsibility, get over it," but if we fail to see there are forms of non-physical violence still being perpetrated on black communities - as can be statistically seen in things like unequal policing, incarceration rates, and economic discrimination - then unfortunately we are failing to get to the root of a complex problem. We are focusing on stopping one form of obvious violence, while we look the other way from another form, which perpetuates the problem. 

I agree with you that true peace and security is the goal. But to achieve that, we must root out injustice and violence in all its forms.

Childhood Psychological Abuse as Harmful as Sexual or Physical Abuse

Children who are emotionally abused and neglected face...

APA.ORG

Why I don't take the Ferguson Grand Jury decision at face value

[A response to a question received on a facebook post]

To trust the grand jury's decision, I would have to believe that the justice system operates fairly, without bias, in the objective pursuit of equal justice for all. There is an abundance of evidence that it unfortunately does not. Both in this specific case, and in general, our justice system consistently returns results that disproportionately disadvantage people of color and privilege whites. Because of both historical and current research, and the transcripts of the witness examination and presentation of evidence in this Darren Wilson grand jury, I have to conclude that justice was once again hijacked, rather than served, in this case.

Let me state that I do not believe that Darren Wilson is guilty. I simply believe he should stand trial, and let the judge and jury decide. The grand jury was not to determine whether Wilson was guilty. It was simply to decide whether he should face a trial to determine his guilt. In a case where an unarmed person is shot by another, I  believe this deserves a full investigation and trial, and to conclude (based predominantly on the shooter’s testimony) that a trial is unnecessary, is highly suspicious to me. In addition:

- There is statistical evidence that the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict hardly ever happens. In a study of grand juries at the federal level, the grand jury failed to grant an indictment in only 0.007% of cases. (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/). 

- Across America there is well-documented evidence that young black males are singled out and prejudicially treated at every single step of the criminal justice process, from the initial encounter to police, to the decision to arrest, to the decision to bring charges or not, through to sentencing, etc. King County’s Director of Adult & Juvenile Detention Claudia Balducci recently went on record that this is true in King County, WA in front of the Seattle City Council (her testimony starts at about 93:00 of this video: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2391472, and go to 97:15 for the specific information on how  discrimination was measured at every step of the process.) This same racial disparity occurs all across America, and it would be naive for us to think similar bias was not at play in favor of Darren Wilson at his grand jury.

- I know that prosecutors have to work closely with the police department, and would not take eagerly the task of prosecuting a cop. It’s a touchy area. The prosecutor also has a high level of control in structuring what and how evidence is presented to the grand jury. In the case of Darren Wilson’s grand jury, some questionable things were done. People who had heard about the event 2nd- and 3rd-hand were called as “witnesses,” many of whom contradicted each other. Michael Brown’s character was called into question, while Darren Wilson’s was not. It seems reasonable to me to conclude that the prosecutorial team's interests were not simply a pursuit of justice, but perhaps avoiding something uncomfortable for them (at least). http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/26/7295595/eyewitnesses-ferguson-grand-jury/in/7041840

- I have witnessed institutional racism firsthand. This is racism that embeds itself in seemingly harmless ways into systems, and yet adds up to ongoing oppression of people of color, while helping white people avoid guilt because specific examples are hard to pinpoint. I have written about institutional racism here (http://crosscut.com/2014/10/10/rights-ethics/122239/seattle-juvenile-justice-center-central-district/), and the Ferguson justice process, including the grand jury, seems to me to have cut a wide berth for institutional racism in the form of prejudicial decision making around its police officers.

- It is difficult for white people - including myself - to take in the full scope of what racism means and entails, and given the history of our country, I approach questions of potential racism with an intentional bias that it is probably happening, even if I can’t immediately see it. A good book for helping me see familiar systems differently is The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Jim_Crow.html?id=reDzBZ3pXqsC)

Again, I don’t know that Wilson acted inappropriately, or whether there was racial motivation in his shooting of Brown. Because of many things - the habitual blinders we keep on about this stuff, and the grand jury decision - we may never know. All I’m saying is it was both extremely RARE for the grand jury not to return an indictment, and extremely PREDICTABLE in this case given the races of all involved, and I find that both sad and wrong. 

Ferguson: Riots are not the problem

To all of you condemning the riots today: if that is all you have to say, you are missing the point - and part of the problem.

It is easy to condemn the riots. But how vocal have you been on the side of justice, in the long months when Ferguson protests when on, predominantly peacefully? What do you have to say about the injustice in the fact that a killer will not stand trial, and the myriad ways Black Americans continue to suffer injustice to this day?

If you are not black, the most important question you should be asking today is, "How much have I looked the other way, or contributed to, the ongoing racism in our society? How hard have I tried to relate to the black people of Ferguson?"

MLK, known for his leadership in nonviolence, had this to say about the episodes of violence that sometimes erupt from long, unrelenting oppression:

"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/riot-is-the-language-of-the-unheard-what-mlk-would-have-said-about-the-london-riots/

He Got Game: Obama off the bench

Suddenly, this week, the president we voted for six years ago took the court.

Perhaps sensing a precious moment of opportunity before Republicans seize control of both houses of Congress, Obama issued two definitive statements this week - one on climate change, the other on net neutrality. When the president was elected, many of us expected a presidency that would be something of an extension of his campaign artistry, an implementation of his oratorical dazzle. We didn't get it. Rather, Obama has fallen short on all sorts of fronts, from immigration to the environment to racial justice issues, toeing a moderate line and selecting questionable advisors, leaving us to wonder whether he was perhaps patholigically committed to the dream of bipartisanship, or secretly in the pocket of corporate interests. 

The answer seems to be emerging this week. Tellingly timed in the wake of sweeping congressional and gubernatorial losses by democrats, the president came out swinging. First, Obama issued one of his most unambiguous policy statements while in office, taking a stand on a free and open internet, in opposition to the industry-tool FCC chairman he appointed. As reported in Democracy Now!,  Obama's statement so directly paralleled the talking points of protesters and the 4 million public commentors to the FCC (99% of whom favored net neutrality), that it signals a departure from Obama's hand-holding of corporate partners and his forced congeniality toward Republicans, and a step back into the crowds who helped elect him. With Obama's boldness in arguing that the internet belongs within Title II of the Telecommunications Act - moving it from a special classification (section 706) to on-par with public utilities (as was done with the telephone to oppose the Bell monopoly) - he summoned his talent for a visionary channeling of the founding fathers into modern context, which gave so many of us hope when electing him. (If the FCC breaks with Obama on this, one imagines a stronger, First-Amendment challenge to internet regulation on the basis that cyberspace forms a modern-day public square for the gathering of people for protest).

A deft political move to be sure, but this was only a warm-up. However much we may have fantasized about what Obama's basketball moves might look like played out in the political arena, the truth has been he's spent most of his presidency effectively on the bench. That changed this week, when he revealed he's been developing a trick play away from cameras with the Chinese, which they dunked on the Republicans by unveiling mutually binding climate targets contextualized into each country's reality, which require zero congressional approval as they draw entirely on existing law. With action steps focused on accelerating positive innovation, rather than enforcing punitive restrictions on American consumption habits, Obama simultaneously took the visionary reins back from environmental leaders, and preemptively siphoned the gas out of Republicans' messaging SUV. Whereas the clarion call of environmentalists has been that climate change is the consequence of America's irresponsible lifestyle choices - feeding into Republicans' defense of the American way of life - Obama reversed this polarity by linking responsible climate change action with American innovation and economic prosperity, as first sketched during his campaign with the green jobs playbook Van Jones had run.

Let’s hope the president's moves this week were just the beginning, and that he continues to drive the hoop with the same strategic timing and misdirection now that he's 1-on-1 with a Republican congress -- and leaves us scratching our heads wondering, ‘Who was that masked man?'

The poor

I've recently revised my approach to the poor a little bit. 

Instead of all my charity going through organizations, I bought a batch of $25 subway gift cards from Amazon to give out when I see people on the street who need it. 

This weekend I had the cool opportunity to help a couple of guys from another country in a broken down car fix it, and got to know them for a few hours working on the car together.

Sometimes when I glimpse the potential or evidence of  talent and a different past in people on the street, like the guy in this video, I am reminded that not much separates me from a situation like that. I hope to treat people how I might want to be treated if that ever happened.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=765131930179807&id=102313626475894

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152679412184416&id=203460429415

Cooking with power tools: Green Curry

You've probably resigned yourself to the fact that as a single guy living alone, cooking doesn't make much sense. This isn't a gender thing so much as economics: unless you're working to pinch pennies and willing to eat the same thing four times a week, it costs as much or more to buy the ingredients to prepare a meal as it does to order out.

However, every once in a while you may get inspiration. Or you may have roommates, or company coming over. In this case, you will likely discover the Second Truth about single guys in the kitchen: you don't have - or maybe don't even recognize - most of the kitchen tools mentioned in recipes. Like a "cuisinart." When a recipe calls for that, you may try chopping everything with your dull knives, or fashion one of those mortal and pesters, but unless you have a barrel and a baseball bat, hand-mashing everything needed for a curry paste from scratch will take approximately 3.4 days.

This is where some guy genius comes in.

If you're a guy attempting to cook, you're probably one of those purist overachievers, so when a recipe gives you the option to "buy 20 rare ingredients and chop them all up, or just use store-bought curry paste," you're going to choose the former. It looks something like this:






So to properly cook a meal you must nourish yourself throughout. Therefore, don't forget:




Start chopping things and put them in bowls:




At this point, realize how long chopping things takes, especially things you've never seen before and that are strangely resistant to knives, like this:



Now that part in the recipe about "food processor" that you thought you were too hunter-gatherer for starts to make sense. So, next step in the recipe (modified for guys) is to go to the thrift store and find yourself something that looks like it might be called a food processor:



Being a guy, you will be very proud not only that you knew what to get, but that it's in good shape and that now you have one. Being a guy, however, you may have also forgotten something like the motor that such contraptions are supposed to connect to to make them spin.

Given that you started this entire process late on a Sunday afternoon, it is now quite late and your stomach expecting dinner sometime is getting quite hungry.



However, being a guy, you are not one to admit defeat. And you are definitely not going to spend hundreds of dollars on a new food processor, much less return to value village twice in the course of making one meal. These fresh ingredients are in mortal danger of wilting or spoiling if a solution is not found.

Some real guy genius is now called for.

Rinse and repeat. Voila.

Cook up your tofu (here's a real cooking tip: After draining and chopping the tofu, boil the pieces for 10 minutes, strain the water off, then toss them in sesame oil, soy sauce, and furikake (seaweed flakes). Broil in the oven until golden brown and turn once to get a second side golden. The tofu will be crispy on the outside but light and fluffy on the inside).

That's pretty much it. You'll be so exhausted and starved by the end, you'll forget to take a picture of the final product, but the real magic is on the record. Remember guys, there's very little done in the kitchen that can't be done just as well with something from your tool bag.