Ta-Nehisi Coates

Get Out the Map

Sat,04 Jul 2009 02:02:45 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

I'm off for holiday travel early tomorrow morning. But I wanted to thank all of you for reading--and writing back this week--it's been a privilege to stop by and spend some time in this wonderful community you all have going here.

Commenter Guster pointed out in an earlier thread that I'd been remiss in my duties by not doing any comics-related blogging, and he's right. Starting next week, though, I'll be posting a couple of times a week as I read my way through the three volumes of The Complete Little Orphan Annie that have been released so far by the Library of American Comics series at IDW. The place where I'll be doing that, and writing about pop culture more generally, is http://alyssarosenberg.blogspot.com/. I'd be honored if any of you wanted to come by.

Portrait of a Recession

Sat,04 Jul 2009 01:12:32 GMT

[Gautham Nagesh]

The news this week that the economy lost 467,000 jobs in June was a sobering reminder to most of the country that it's unlikely we've seen the bottom of this recession. But here in my hometown of Jackson, Michigan, people are hardly surprised to hear about the loss of manufacturing jobs. It's become a fact of life.

Jackson is in many ways the perfect place to witness first-hand the effects of the economic downturn. Located 80 miles west of Detroit on I-94, the city flourished as a railroad junction during the 1920s before the Depression took hold. Since then the economy has focused on utilities and manufacturing auto parts for the Big Three, which have been in steady decline for the past 30 years. Unemployment hit 14.1 percent in May for Jackson County, the highest figure in a quarter century. Forbes magazine even declared Jackson the worst small city in America for jobs in April, an honor that most people around here view as unnecessary piling on.

The latest blow came last month when the local manufacturer Sparton Corp. announced it would be moving its headquarters to Illinois and shuttering the Jackson plant, costing the city another 200 jobs. Local newspaper columnist Brad Flory of the Jackson Citizen Patriot told me the company was the city's biggest employer during the Depression and did a lot to help the town pull through tough times. Withington Community Stadium where my alma mater Jackson High School plays football is named after the company's original founders.

The closing of Sparton Corp, "says a lot about how 'rust belt' cities must shape new futures" Flory said. "Sparton is quite a loss in many ways, not the least of which is symbolic."

I stopped into Jackson Coney Island, a local institution located just a couple miles from the old Sparton plant, to get a sense for how locals view the plant's closure. Having grown up in the area I'm used to seeing folks respond to dire economic news with a certain Midwestern stoicism. But with two-thirds of the Big Three in bankruptcy court, people have started to see the writing on the wall.

"Sparton was a big loss- many jobs but we've also lost a part of history that we're never going to replace," said Georgia Barnhardt, a lifelong resident of Jackson who had two aunts who worked at the plant during the Depression. Barnhardt and her daughter Paula Ward are used to the job losses and plant closures, but recent events feel different to them.

"Young people are moving out because there are no jobs," said Ward, referring to her own 35-year-old son who was recently put on furlough from his job as a shift supervisor at a local manufacturing plant that supplies auto parts. Orders were too slow, she said, but they hope he will start working again in a couple weeks.

Her mention of young people leaving causes me a twinge of guilt, since I'm probably a perfect example of someone who has fled for greener pastures. While my parents still live and work here, both my sister and I have been forced to leave to find jobs after college. The same is true for the vast majority of our friends from high school. During recent trips home I have even started to notice a disappointing trend of people feeling like they to explain why they still live in Jackson. I'm always quick to tell them that given the right opportunity, I would be happy to join them.

Having had the chance to travel and live in a few different places, I can say with full honesty that I would just as soon live here in Southern Michigan as anywhere else in the world. The state has tremendous natural beauty; if you've seen those Pure Michigan commercials then you have some idea of what I'm talking about. There are two world-class universities within a half-hour drive and you can purchase a nice family home for under $100,000.

But the state's leaders have a long history of ignoring industries outside of manufacturing and the only sector Governor Jennifer Granholm has succeeded in luring to the state during her two terms (via enormous tax breaks) is the film industry. By the way, film industry subsidies are pretty much the worst type of corporate tax break there is. They amount to essentially paying the industry to film in a particular location.

The state is also bracing itself for the full impact of the recent auto bankruptcies. The thousands of former auto workers whose healthcare and retirement benefits were reduced or cut entirely will likely be forced to turn to the state, which is already facing a budget deficit of over $1 billion.

In response, the state senate is cutting a merit-based scholarship program for graduating high school students. It seems obvious that if Michigan is going to attempt to recover from this mess and rebuild its economy, cutting funding for higher education is the worst possible move to make. An excellent group of public and private universities is probably the best economic engine Michigan has at the moment.

The key issue is devising a way to keep college graduates in Michigan, as we currently lose more fresh graduates than any other state. One approach worth attempting is a program in Maine where the state issues tax credits for student loan payments to recent graduates of local universities who remain in-state after graduation. If we're every going to find a way to turn things around in Michigan, keeping our brightest young people in-state is a great place to start.

But there is no easy answer for Michigan, just as there are no easy answers for Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania or the other states dependent on manufacturing. It's hard at times for me to believe that things are as bad as they are, because life seems to continue as it always has and people here tend to make the best of things. Jackson is just one town among many, struggling to hold on to a way of life that people have enjoyed for generations. While stories like the closing of the Sparton plant seem too numerous to count these days, every one represents the loss of something that we may never get back.

Emily Dickinson #67

Sat,04 Jul 2009 00:50:50 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne'er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host

Who took the Flag today

Can tell the definition

So clear of Victory

As he defeated - dying -

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Burst agonized and clear!

Free Agency and the Myths it Creates

Sat,04 Jul 2009 00:02:31 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

For a long time I thought Joe Dumars was ahead of the curve as far NBA execs went. But his pick up of Gordon and Villanueva seem contrary to logic. Gordon is a gunner, a two guard in a point guard's body. How he will play alongside Hamilton is anyone's guess - and as I remember, Stuckey was the point guard of Detroit's future. It seems like Dumars is putting together a team of ex Huskies with the hopes of getting Geno Auriemma to come and coach them next season. Chauncey Billups looks better and better with every new move Dumars makes.

Now, if you compare Dumars to Danny Ferry you see how someone behaves that wants to keep a job. In Dumar's defense, he has no Lebron James. Still, in getting Shaq, and going after Artest, Ferry is showing he's about making the Cavs champions. Though I gotta admit I like the Artest sign, if it were to happen, much better than the Shaq sign. Too bad Artest is going to the Lakers. The Cav's backcourt and the wing players didn't show up against the Magic. As much as I like Mo Williams and Delonte West, the Cavs are going to have to get a lockdown defender to guard the big threes in the league. James can't guard Pierce and Allen, or Carter and Lewis. Shaq isn't going to change that - what's worse, having Shaq will make the other holes in their lineup that much more glaring.

The Lakers though, by signing Artest, are telling the league that Kobe is gunning for another repeat. And I'm not sure if there is much to stand in their way as it is with none of the teams out West making any major moves. The Spurs added Jefferson - but they seem old. And the Nuggets - they have all the pieces, but none of the heart needed. Carmelo is going to have to own a series against a team like the Lakers for them to advance to the finals, and then he's going to have to do it again for them to win.

And while all this is going on Iverson is looking for a team, the Celtics are sending players to recruit Rasheed Wallace (why I couldn't tell you) and people are predicting the Clippers to make the playoffs.

Strange Days

Fri,03 Jul 2009 19:56:16 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

Apparently, Sarah Palin will resign the Alaska governorship in a few weeks, and her Lieutenant Governor will be inaugurated on July 25. As yet, there's no explanation for why she's doing this, which, frankly, seems plum crazy. I can't decide if it's worse for her politically if there's a real reason--a family illness, a pending indictment, whatever--or if there's none at all.

Update: Video's below. Looks like the answer is "none at all." And she looks EXTREMELY rattled.

Pure Pleasures

Fri,03 Jul 2009 16:29:03 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

Ariel Levy's portrait of Nora Ephron as a romantic and a food-lover in this week's New Yorker is great, and you should go read it (only an abstract is online, for now, or I'd link). But I don't actually want to talk about Nora Ephron. Instead, I want to say that Ariel Levy has been an insanely terrific addition to the New Yorker staff, and to talk a little bit about why. And I want to do it because in an age when bloggers are the new celebrity journalists, and when discussions about the future of print media have alternately panicked and condescending, I think it's worthwhile to spotlight folks who are doing important things in print. I say important, being fully aware that Levy spends a lot of time writing about popular culture and fashion, when she isn't, say, filleting Cindy McCain or writing about feminist history. Raffi Khatchadourian's piece on military training and the Rules of Engagement in the same issue as the Ephron profile undoubtedly taught me more about current events and morals than Levy's piece did. But I think Levy is worth watching for two reasons, other than the fact that she has a great eye for an anecdote, she understands the intense gut-level where fashion and culture hit us, and she's a beautiful writer.

First, Levy is a good example of why diversity can help a magazine. She says in her piece on lesbian separatism from this March that she doubts that Lamar Van Dyke ever would have talked to her if she wasn't gay. That might sound like an outrageous claim, but having spent some time interviewing some of the gay rights old guard, I think she's probably correct. Not every story is going to be characterized by that you'll-get-it-or-not dichotomy, but I think it's worthwhile to say aloud that journalists from certain backgrounds and perspectives will get stories others won't. That doesn't mean that journalists can't immerse themselves in cultures that aren't theirs--the work James Fallows here at The Atlantic and Peter Hessler at The New Yorker have done in China is a great example of that kind of reporting. Observers' stories are valuable, and so are the stories of participants in communities written with a critical eye. Levy's hiring is a step in the direction of having more folks at the New Yorker who can do the latter.

Second, I think Levy is a writer who may end up doing interesting things with some of the basic New Yorker forms. When I interned at The Atlantic a while ago, I was doing some research for Scott Stossel on Dr. J that basically involved going out and reading every profile of the guy I could find. That led to something of an obsession with profiles, and I went and printed out every profile the New Yorker had run over the previous two years (SO sorry about the ink and paper costs, guys. I've tried to make it up to the company in productivity ever since.). Those profiles have an extremely definitive form: a long anecdotal introduction that introduces both the subject's personality and the reason they're profile-worthy now, an abrupt break that takes the reader back in time to the subject's childhood, a terrific kicker at the end. The formula is extremely effective: even when I know it's coming, I get jolted by the switch in time in every piece, and I'm always hungry to know what that fabulous summary line is going to be. It's a form that works particularly well in print, and would work less well converted to blog posts or a series published online, because if you break it up by sections, you lose the impact of the adjustment between them, and by the time you reach the kicker, the beginning of the piece is several days away.

And Levy kind of subverted the form this week. There's no sharp break to the past, and no discussion of Ephron's school years. Almost all personal discussion is kept in tight focus on Ephron and her sisters' art: the impact of her parents' dynamic, including his father's administering a lethal dose of sleeping pills to their mother, leads directly into a discussion of their novels. Ephron's divorce from Carl Bernstein comes almost exclusively up in discussion of the cultural impact of her novel Heartburn and the movie based on it (a contentious element in their divorce was whether Bernstein would be given script approval on the movie. Levy has a kicker, but she makes a sharp turn away from it before getting there, giving a wicked capsule review of Ephron's new movie Julie and Julia that references a line from one of Ephron's own profiles, of Dorothy Schiff. The review in and of itself is great, and that decision to make the diversion into the review, ends up producing a perfect kicker. The departures aren't radical, necessarily, but they're the mark of a writer making a form her own, and it's lovely to read.

The Practical Limits Of Knowledge

Fri,03 Jul 2009 16:15:24 GMT

The Aspen Ideas Festival begins with a few of the invited guests standing up to propose a "Idea" which they think would move the country forward. Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, was one of the guest invited to speak this year. His idea was to attack the deficit, and not pass on debt to our kids. It all sounded noble and well--Who likes the idea of passing on debt to children? But what really struck me was how ill-equipped I was to evaluate anything he was saying.

This happens all the time, to me. Someone will be opining about Israel, cap and trade, or health care, and I'll understand the arguments, but really be in no position to argue. I can smell blatant dishonesty, but the subtleties are harder for me. When I first got this gig, people would ask me to speak on a broader range of topics, and to be more aggressive in my objections. I understand the impulse. The Atl blog-roster isn't lacking for conservatives, and there's always a hunger for someone who make the Fox News pundits look stupid.

But I distrusted the whole game. Intuitively, I wonder about the honesty and proficiency of writers who opine on everything from Iran to education to drug policy to health care to cap and trade to race. Perhaps these people simply have more brains than me, but the catch-all nature of punditry, the need to speak on every policy topic as though one were an expert, is exactly what I hope to avoid.

Again, I'm a liberal in large measure because, in my time, liberals have been about the business of expanding the national consensus, of including of voices, of attempting to reconcile past wrongs. I don't think all of those attempts have been successful. But given the choice between that and an ideology that condones Willie Horton, condones Bob Jones, condones discrimination against gays, for me as a black man, there simply isn't much of a choice.

This holds for other issues outside of race--faced with a group that asks its bureaucrats to censor science, that asks its presidential candidates to deny evolution, that employs phraseologists when faced with the challenges of the environment, I know which one I'll pick. But even as I say that, I can see the limits of my own thinking--maybe if I had more than an informed layman's knowledge of the health care debate, I'd think universal health care was a terrible idea. My politics are as much based on trust as they are on actual knowledge--I simply trust liberals more.

I've been reading Drew Faust's This Republic Of Suffering, a kind of cultural history that looks into how the Civil War altered our impressions of death. Faust's book is great, and has the added advantage of doing an excellent job of including the perspectives of African-Americans. Early in the book, Faust talks about how atrocities perpetrated against black soldiers altered their perspective on killing. It occurred to me the other day that no one was ever brought up on war crimes for this fact. Faust also talks about how black soldiers, after the war, were integral to the effort to reinter the bodies of Union soldiers. It occurred to me that there is no memorial or tangible recognition of this fact. I thought back to David Blight's argument that the first Memorial Day was actually held by freed slaves, shortly after the War, and that very few people are familiar with that argument.

The fact is that, until I went on this intellectual journey, I didn't know any of this. Now, I like to think of myself as intellectually curious guy, and yet even in my chosen specialty, there are gaping holes of knowledge. But when you are black, you have a deep sense that of having been wronged. It hangs over your community, it infests the family lore, it's there when you cut on "Leave It To Beaver" and are forced to consider what your lot would have been in that time.

White people don't really have that sense, mostly because it's not foisted upon them. To the extent they understand how much white supremacy has shaped this country, it's learned, intellectual, and empathetic. I don't know that one is better than the other. Whites may, in the main, be blissfully unaware. But blacks don't really know the details of our pain. We simply seethe, and we know it goes beyond water-hoses and "Lift Every Voice." There is something deeper at work, something that we don't really know enough to name. But, again, we feel it.

There is a part of me that believes that all American citizens should be forced to study the Civil War. There is another part of me that would inveigh against white ignorance of white supremacy, that would moralize about how power affords amnesia, and skewed understanding of this country. But I am chastened by Paul Ryan. He may well be lying through his teeth, but the very idea that I can't evaluate his claims stills the moralizing tongue.

I remain deeply critical of the would-be-polymaths. I didn't even read George Will's take on Ricci, because I simply don't expect Will to be sincere or intellectually honest. But I wonder about how much we can know. It will make you crazy to understand, in any detail, the history of black people in this country. It will make you even crazier to consider how much of that history will almost certainly be forgotten. It will make you crazier, still, to consider that it isn't just being forgotten because of intense efforts to bleach history, but because of the limits of humanity, itself.

Color-blindness, Racism, and Disparate Impact

Fri,03 Jul 2009 13:23:00 GMT

[A. Serwer]

When TNC first asked me to guest-blog, I thought I was going to be doing a lot more posts on comic books and video games then I ended up doing as a result of everything that's happened this week.. I wrote this post on Wednesday but I've saved it until today because most of my posts this week have been well--dense, and I didn't want to overwhelm the blog with text, but here goes.

There was some discussion over in my previous post on Ricci over the issue of disparate impact and whether it should be considered racism, or whether the government really has any business dealing with it. Commenting on the Ricci case on Wednesday, George Will said this:

The nation shall slog on, litigating through a fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" actions that somehow are not racial discrimination because they "remedy" discrimination that no one has intended). This is the predictable price of failing to simply insist that government cannot take cognizance of race.

The problem with this kind of "colorblindness" is that some of the most pressing issues of justice and equality in this country are the result of policies that are race-neutral on their face but discriminatory in practice. Drug laws for example, including the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine are "race-neutral." You cannot prevent a black child from attending a mostly white public school, but in practice public schools are segregated by race. Laws that take away voting rights from felons do little to discourage crime, but they do disenfranchise thousands of black men. The sub-prime crisis hit minorities harder than it did whites--but loans were ostensibly given based on credit rather than race--yet we know this isn't true. Will would have the government ignore all racial disparities, and therefore shirk all efforts to rectify them through policy, as though this was what MLK had in mind when he spoke of color and character.

I don't see the virtue in simply disregarding these effects in the name of "color-blindness." An ostensibly race-neutral policy that has the same purpose or effect as a flagrantly racist one should be scrutinized, and quite frankly the race neutral veneer on some of these policies is quite easily penetrated. What color-blindness offers is an opportunity to ignore racial disparities while perpetuating the policies that produce them. I agree that racial disparities alone, while important enough to raise an eyebrow, don't necessarily mandate a change in policy. But what happened in the Ricci case was not merely that the written test resulted in racial disparities, but that the city was out of touch with almost two-thirds of other municipalities which use other forms of evaluation that don't result in similar problems and evaluate firefighters more effectively. Likewise, I would argue that the problem with the racial disparity in crack/powder cocaine sentencing isn't just that the law clearly adversely affects blacks and may have been designed to do so, it's that in practice it's swelled the ranks of the incarcerated without providing any tangible benefit to the communities it's meant to protect.

Will's "color-blindness," then, isn't so much blind to race as it is to justice. His preoccupation with the Ricci case alone--I'm hard pressed to think of a time when Will found a modern instance of racial discrimination not directed at white men offensive--implicates Will's tribal sensibilities. Will certainly wanted the court to take into account Ricci's case in order to conclude that he had been discriminated against because he's white, because he gloats about it in his Op-Ed, quoting the relevant portion of Kennedy's opinion in italics.

Also, I'd just like to point out that the impact of affirmative action has been pretty minimal. Black folks are still underrepresented everywhere, the fact that affirmative action based on race (rather than say gender) is of such single minded focus for people like Will undermines claims of "color-blindness."

Moreover, Will's colorblind platitudes would be more convincing if they weren't removed from all historical context. Legalized slavery and segregation were the law in this country for most of its existence, and the latter was strenuously supported by Will's ideological cohorts and predecessors. One can argue that America's obligation, even to people it once exploited, begins and ends with granting them the opportunities it once denied--but it isn't meeting that obligation if it continues to utilize ostensibly "race-neutral" policies that have the same effect as nakedly racist ones. While racial disparities may not be the intended outcome, the decision to actively support such policies, or to turn one's back regardless of the results, is a conscious decision that belies any claim to "color-blindness".

Now, that doesn't mean that all solutions to racial disparities need be race conscious to the level that affirmative action is. I think that there's a strong case to be made for shifting to a class-based system of AA for college admissions, less so for employment or government contracts. Most notably, President Obama has sought to rhetorically frame black issues as "American issues", which is distinct from conservative color-blindness in that it uses advocacy for ostensibly race-neutral policies (universal health care, public teacher accountability) to rectify racial disparities, rather than perpetuate them or turn a blind eye to their perpetuation. (Obama confirmed this in an interview with the AP yesterday.)

There is an important argument to be had over what degree policies meant to rectifiy historical inequalities ought to be race-neutral. There may be much better and more effective ways of dealing with racial disparities that don't offend so many sensibilities, and the erosion of things like affirmative action may force policy makers to think more creatively in this area. But to argue that, for example, the government has no business noticing that 1 in 15 black men is in prison or viewing that as a serious problem after centuries of legalized racial bias isn't--and shouldn't be called--colorblindness. It's racism. It's also the kind of utopian nonsense conservatives usually make fun of liberals for having--as long as the government is run by human beings, it will be subject to prevailing cultural biases. What Will is really saying is he has no problem with that.

Lost in the City. Trapped in the public school reform debate.

Thu,02 Jul 2009 21:05:28 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

Two months into my first real job teaching poetry at a middle school in Southeast D.C. the English teacher whose class I took over once a week got hit in the eye while breaking up a fight. Two weeks later, after the student who'd struck her hadn't been expelled, she decided not to return. This was a seventh grade English class, first quarter of the school year. So early that the kids sneakers were still uncreased, the chalk still at the edges of the blackboard. I hadn't yet learned every child's name. The end of this story? The school never hired another teacher - I watched a rotating cycle of substitutes come in and hand out worksheets to students that ran the gamut from on grade level to barely reading.

If you read this in a major newspaper the headline likely would read: school overrun by violence. Teaching at the school has taught me that it's more complicated than that, but I've also learned that the struggles to maintain a sense of normalcy in the classroom push good teachers away. One of the best young teachers I worked with is off to Kipp, and most of the other good young teachers in public schools across the city are finding reason after reason to go work in charter schools or private schools - even when it means working more hours and longer school years.

This is where James Forman Jr.'s essay "No Ordinary Success" comes in. In "No Ordinary Success" Forman looks at two models of school reform, Geoffrey Canada's Promise Academy based in New York and the Kipp Charter Schools that are in 19 states across the country as he tries to answer his own question: How much can schools improve the life prospects of children growing up in poor neighborhoods? I highly recommend the article, which you can find here.

As a starting point, Forman talks about Richard Rothstein's 2004 book Class and Schools. I mention it for the same reason Forman does. Rothstein concluded that "the challenges facing low-income students meant that they would always do worse, on average, than their higher-income peers." It reminds me of the Boston Review article by Patrick Sharkey in which he asserts that "almost three out of four black families living in today's poorest, most segregated neighborhoods are the same families that lived in the ghettos of the 1970s." His article, The Inherited Ghetto, can be found here.

The point is, of course, that anyone jumping into school reform has a fight on their hands and if what Rothstein says is true, and what Sharkey says is true....

There's no real reason for me to rehash the details of the article, except to say this: Canada's model looks to transform an entire neighborhood. That is to say that he started Harlem's Children Zone (HCZ) a complex network of parenting classes, health centers and tutoring spots to serve about a 100 square foot are of Harlem. Initially, Canada used the HCZ to aid the schools, and he had people in schools to support the public schools. He found the public school's didn't support his efforts, and that his efforts weren't producing the expected results. So he started Promise Academy. Canada makes a point to take all students, no matter their reading levels, no matter how problematic their behavior is, and looks to transform lives. Canada does this, too.

Kipp's model is a little different. David Levin and Michael Feinberg began working in the Houston schools with teach for america and when they weren't getting the support they expected - and after a few disturbing incidents that you can read in the article - they began Kipp. Kipp relies on rigorous standards and teachers who are willing to work longer hours and students who are in school for longer hours over longer periods of time and commit to two hours of homework each night. Kipp has been able to sustain achievement over the 19 states and 66 schools.

But this is the trouble with this manner of school reform - only a limited number of students have access to these kinds of programs. What of the other students? When Forman brings this question of pockets of success to Jay Mathews, author of Work Hard. Be Nice., a book about Kipp's history, contends that a school like Kipp proves the idea that kids from low income neighborhoods can't achieve success is a lie. The assumption behind his statement is that the underlying reason money, resources and time aren't put into public school systems is because the larger society sees them as hopeless. I tend to think a large number of the public, especially the educated public, believe this. It might very well be a false assumption but it seems the American myth of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps infects many minds, to the point that Mathews would even assert that there is a need to "prove" students from low-income neighborhoods can succeed. But that's the narrative of the underdog - do it to prove you can do it is what people are sold again and again when the evidence says that the solution goes way beyond a lack of work ethic.

In the end, Forman believes that Kipp and the Promise Academy should be seen as viable models, but not the only model. He argues that they work, in part, because of the hyper dedicated people they bring around them. Specifically citing Kipp's HR department's ability to attract talent. Forman doesn't really answer his question directly. He gives us more than enough examples to show that it's possible to improve the life prospects of young kids in poor neighborhoods - but it seems that finding the answer he sought, led him to reveal to us a more troubling problem: How do we create environments where average teachers, even just good teachers, can excel in a school system that provides a quality education - if we aren't going to acknowledge all of the complex needs and issues that are part and parcel with a student's success and independent of homework?

Even tackling that question will keep us from arguing about the need or lack thereof for charter schools that, by their nature, can only provide services for a limited number of kids in any community.

Scarlett & Jo

Thu,02 Jul 2009 19:50:18 GMT

[Alyssa Rosenberg]

Since it's apparently Lincoln Day here on the blog, I thought I'd dive into the Civil War fray, but from a somewhat different perspective. There's no question that racism is the primary social issue at stake in the war and Reconstruction, but the abolitionism also laid the groundwork for the campaign to give women the right to vote, and the war was, like World War II, profoundly disruptive to women's social roles. It's no accident that two of the greatest portraits of women in modern literature come from Civil War novels. Gone With The Wind's Scarlett O'Hara and Little Women's Jo March live on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line, come from different backgrounds, and their personalities evolve in different directions. I'm not sure they would have liked each other very much. But I love them both, and re-reading both novels in recent weeks, I've been struck by how much they have in common.

At the beginning of the Civil War, Scarlett is a privileged planter's daughter whose main talents for are manipulating men and, in a nice bit of foreshadowing, for mathematics. Jo is the second-oldest of four daughters in a once-comfortable family left poor by their father's poor financial decisions, and without a reliable income when he decides to join the Union Army as a chaplain. Gone With the Wind is much more explicitly a novel of the Civil War than Little Women is, and as such, Scarlett has direct contact with combat and an enemy army, while Jo lives her life far from the front lines in Massachusetts. But in both novels, economic survival comes into direct conflict with both Northern and Southern expectations of femininity, and Jo and Scarlett both forge solutions that make them semi-kindred spirits.

When the war threatens their families, both Scarlett and Jo sacrifice their physical beauty to protect the people they love. When the Union Army takes Atlanta, Scarlett makes a terrifying and physically exhausting flight to her family home in a wooden cart, pulled by a dying horse, that carries her son, a slave named Prissy, her sister-in-law who has almost died in childbirth, and her infant son.

"She had never in her life been out in the sunshine without a hat or veils, never handled reins without gloves to protect the white skin of her dimpled hands," Margaret Mitchell writes of Scarlett. "Yet here she was exposed to the sun in a broken-down wagon with a broken-down horse, dirty, sweaty, hungry, helpless to do anything but plod along at a snail's pace through a deserted land."

Scarlett's hands become a symbol of her shifting worldview throughout the immediate post-Civil War period of Gone With the Wind. On her arrival home, Mammy, the slave who helped raise her, expresses shock at the blood clots and callouses on her hands from driving a balky horse for almost an entire day. That concern represents, to Scarlett, Mammy's inability to see that their circumstances have changed forever: "In another moment, [Mammy] would be saying that young Misses with blistered hands and freckles most generally don't never catch husbands." For a woman who has been raised with the sole skill of catching men, Scarlett's abandonment of that ideal is a significant reversal.

In Little Women, the scene of Jo's sacrifice provides a comedic break in a sad and tense section of the novel. The girls' father is wounded, and their mother must go to Washington, D.C. to visit him in an Army hospital. She sends Jo to borrow the money she needs to make the trip from Aunt March, a wealthy relative who thinks (semi-correctly) that her brother has little sense and is responsible for his family's poverty. Jo works as Aunt March's companion. But when she's faced with the humiliating prospect of begging from the older, Jo, a confirmed tomboy, sells her hair to a wigmaker to earn the money instead. When she comes home with a shorn head and $25, one of her sisters cries "Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty." It's kind of funny, but Jo's desperation is real, as is some of her humiliation: she had to convince the wigmaker to take her hair even though he didn't think it was pretty or fashionable enough to sell.

Those steps away from feminine ideals of beauty are the first that Jo and Scarlett take as they venture into male-dominated working worlds. It's a transition that is easier for Jo than for Scarlett: Lizzie Skurnick had a great post at Jezebel last week in which she argued that the value of work is at the core of both the March family's and the novel's values. In contrast, the fact that Scarlett's mother taught her nothing whatsoever about work makes her incredibly angry, and is one of the main reasons she ends up rejecting her mother's entire set of values, throwing out a lot of good things in the process. "'Nothing, no, nothing she taught me is of any help t me! What good will kindness do to me now?" Scarlett thinks as she prepares to try to save her family's plantation. "What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!"

But she emerges from that despair an almost terrifyingly competent businesswoman, much to the consternation of her second husband, Frank, who finds after their marriage that "her voice was brisk and decisive and she made up her mind instantly and with no girlish shilly-shallying. She knew what she wanted and she went after it by the shortest route, like a man, not by the hidden and circuitous routes peculiar to women." She borrows money to buy a mill and ends up with a thriving lumber business, and after Frank's death in a Ku Klux Klan raid (Scarlett is undeniably racist throughout the book, but she's not particularly attached to slavery as a concept, thinking it's not worth the war, and she takes the consistent stance that the Klan is impractical and stupid.) she runs his store far more competently than he did.

Jo, on the other hand, has always been prepared to work. One of the earliest scenes in the book is of her heading off to Aunt March's as her older sister, Meg, heads off to her governess gig for an unhappy wealthy family. The girls all mend, cook, clean, etc., though not all with overwhelming competence. But after the war, Jo begins to take on a significant part of the financial burden for her family. She starts selling occasional short works of fiction, and after two serious personal disappointments, moves to New York City, where she takes a job as a governess (acceptable female employment) and starts writing thrilling and macabre adventure tales for the gloriously-titled Weekly Volcano (decidedly not acceptable female employment, though Louisa May Alcott wrote thrilling newspaper tales herself). Unlike Scarlett, who came close to starvation, and is driven beyond all conventional bounds of propriety by the need for security that experience gave her, Jo isn't necessarily writing to keep food on the table. But she is writing for her sister's life: Jo's fiction buys a winter coat for her dying sister, and a trip to the seaside that she hopes will save her.

Work is really the point at which Scarlett and Jo's lives begin to move in opposite directions. Scarlett's work makes her an outcast because she isn't willing to work within feminine ideals. While other Atlanta women do acceptable things to make money, whether painting ugly china or baking pies to sell to the occupying union army, Scarlett refuses to play within acceptable boundaries. Not only does she work within rough industries, but she chooses deliberately unacceptable methods, hiring convicts to work in her mills, and letting one of her supervisors kill several men in the name of profitability. It's a neat character sketch: Scarlett is considered coarsened partially because of absurd societal expectations for women and their proper roles, but her character is also really damaged by what she decides she can do for money.

Jo, on the other hand, finds a path through writing and work to be the kind of woman she found it so difficult to be in the earlier sections of the novel. Her friend and eventual husband encourages her to write a sensitive memoir instead of trashy fiction. When Aunt March leaves Jo her grand house, Jo founds a school for boys (and the occasional girl), which is the subject of Little Men, a setting that gives her the opportunity to be a mother figure, but also to encourage her female students to be strong, and her male students to be something other than macho archetypes.

Lest this get TOO dour, both books have hilarious sections about gender and expectations. In Gone With The Wind, when Rhett Butler saves the lives of the Atlanta men who are in the Klan by sneaking them through Belle Watling's whorehouse, one of the men, the highly respectable Dr. Meade, is shocked to find out his wife wants to know what the whorehouse looks like:

"Are there cut-glass chandeliers? And red plush curtains and dozens of full-length gilt mirrors? And were the girls--were they unclothed?"

"Good God!' cried the doctor, thunderstruck, for it had never occurred to him that the curiosity of a chaste woman concerning her unchaste sisters was so devouring. 'How can you ask such immodest questions? You are not yourself. I will mix you a sedative."

"I don't want a sedative. I want to know. Oh, dear, this is my only chance to know what a bad house looks like and now you are mean enough not to tell me!'"

And in Little Women, Jo gets into a terrible comedic snit over the fact that her friend Laurie's tutor has stolen one of her sister Meg's gloves in what she believes is a piece of steroetypically lover-like behavior. The descriptions of the girl's attempts to play out exaggerated male and female roles in the plays they put on in their living room and attic are amusingly subversive, too.

I don't know that either novel is exactly feminist. Margaret Mitchell has a very, nasty funny crack in a section on Scarlett's drinking about women "who were insane or divorced, or believed, with Miss Susan B. Anthony, that women should have the vote." The fact that the sublime sexual experience of Scarlett's life is an instance of marital rape is horrifying. Scarlett is deeply dependent on the attention of men, and to say she's a repeat girl-on-girl crime offender is an understatement for a woman who marries her own sister's fiancee and lusts after the husband of the woman who she belatedly admits is her best friend and her moral compass. There's a required repression of emotion in Little Women that is troubling--as Lizzie points out, Jo isn't even really allowed to be angry when her younger sister burns her novel. All of the sisters who live end up married and living out fairly conventionally female lives.

But Jo and Scarlett remain vibrant, viable characters decades after they first appeared on the page because they transcended the boundaries laid for women of their times. Scarlett's fierce will to survive and prosper are compelling in any period, even when her 16-inch waist and apple-green afternoon dresses became anachronisms. Jo's struggles with her temper, her intellectual passion, and her writing are not tied to any age, even if the expectations of what she would do with them are. The Civil War created the opportunity, and the need, for both Scarlett and Jo to defy convention, and the literary world is a richer place for them.

Andrew On Blogging

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:45:03 GMT

I've done two panels since I've been here at Aspen. One was interviewing Andrew, and the other was interviewing Larry Wilmore. I'll get you guys video, as soon as possible. It's funny because I spend so much time arguing here, but I'm actually much more comfortable asking questions. Here's a clip of Andrew discussing his time as a blogger.

The Lincoln Connection

Thu,02 Jul 2009 16:42:12 GMT

There's a lot to think about in Adam's post below. I think his invocation of Lincoln is especially powerful--Battle Cry Of Freedom caused me to back off of a lot of my rather simplistic impressions of Lincoln. Likewise, I've done my best to give Obama lee-way to be exactly what he is--a politician. The fact is that idealism and the business of politics often don't work well together. That said, for a writer like me, there is as much risk of falling into a trap of petty criticism as there is of simply excusing some of Obama's more erroneous stances as "politics."

I will stick with what I know. There's an argument that his invocation of black homophobia, is good for gay rights, and ultimately doesn't hurt black people much. There's an argument that his pose as the Host of Soul Train while wagging the moral finger, and then his pose as president of All America when asked about policy questions is, in fact, good for black America. (Please bear with me on the clumsiness of that sentence. I'm still working out my thinking.) Booker T. Washington would often go before white patrons, invoke the alleged cultural inferiority of blacks, and then proceed to make darkie jokes about the very people he claimed to be trying to help. As Adam says, Lincoln was not above peppering his speech with niggers.

But what can we say? Tuskeegee stands proud and strong, to this day. Once they were in the field, Lincoln stood for black soldiers, to the point of sacrificing the lives of Union POWs, in the name of their dignity. His assassination has haunted the country ever since. Obama is a truly, truly gifted politician. Who knows what he may ultimately do? And should the lives of black people be better when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will), should gay Americans enjoy more rights when he leaves office than when he stepped in (as I suspect they will) than what do the critiques of a couple minor-league bloggers really matter?
I think it's worth going back to Lincoln and the Civil War. One of my favorite stories about the formation of the USCT is reported in A Nation Under Our Feet. A black slave escapes his master's Virginia plantation, flees for Union lines, and insists on being signed up to fight. This is within the first year of the war, and so the slave is infomed by a Union general that the War Between The States, is "a white man's war." The slave looks at the general and says, "It will be a black man's war before it's done." The slave leaves the camp, becomes a sailor and goes to Cuba and England. He returns to the States a few years later and finds that, indeed, it has become a black man's war. He enlists in the 55th Mass. and is promptly sent down South to fulfill his prophecy.

That slave's vision was a radical one. At the onset of the Civil War, the notion that the war was about slavery, and the idea of fielding black troops were radical ideas, dismissed by "serious" politicians, and pragmatists. And not without reason--both sides really believed that it would be a short war. The idea that it would become a remaking of the national citizenry, and that it would ultimately require the black troops, was a notion embraced only by slaves and silly radicals who deigned to speak on their behalf.

Politicians are essential. But they're caught up in the grinding work, if they're good politicians, of building consensus and keeping shit moving. The politician is practicing the art of the possible. People like me are trying to expand the very nature of the possible. Baraka Obama was catapulted to the U.S. presidency by his stance on the Iraq War. It's often noted that he took pains to distinguish himself from the usual anti-war crowd. But the fact is that it was that crowd which organized the rally where he made his famous speech. They expanded the possible.

I can't speak for other bloggers, but my work here is principally about coaxing people, indeed coaxing myself, toward respecting humanity. The black homophobia boogieman is anathema to that work, not simply because it is a lie, but because it is rooted in an ugly history of loading the sins of this country on to the backs of its least popular minority. Black America has historically functioned as this country's moral sewer. Indeed, there is a direct line from temperance reformers in the late 19th century blaming their failures on the ill-conceived votes of ignorant niggers, to drug reformers in the early 20th century and the notion of the "cocaine-crazed Negro brain," to Reagan's invocation of shiftless welfare queens, right up through the idea that 7 percent of California's population is the real reason we don't have gay marriage.

Progressive and conservative America has a long ugly, history of insisting that the problems of the majority, are mainly the problems of the minority. My work in "expanding the possible," is concerned with destroying the politics of black pathology. To the extent that Obama participates in that tradition, I have to speak up. It does not mean that I'm pushing a third party. It just means that I think he's wrong.

WaPo Salons Sell Access to Lobbyists

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:28:17 GMT

[Gautham Nagesh]

I'm rarely shocked by the news these days, but this story in Politico today did the trick:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" -- Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it's a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer -- which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters -- is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

Unsurprisingly the WaPo had no comment, though sources told Politico that the marketing flier "may be getting ahead of what the newsroom is prepared to deliver". According to this email sent to the newsroom staff today, that seems accurate:

Colleagues,

A flyer was distributed this week offering an "underwriting opportunity" for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate.
The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation.

We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.

There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values.

I genuinely believe that the newsroom staff could not have known that the marketing department was out promising lobbyists access to them in exchange for cash. I also have no idea why any White House officials would allow themselves to be used for such a purpose. If there aren't already laws forbidding high-ranking officials from taking part in something like this, there should be.

The attempt to pass this off as a conference is disingenuous. It is true that news organizations have had to turn to hosting events and creating other revenue streams as advertising dollars have dried up. But those events are generally open to the public, on the record and relatively transparent. Most events charge an entrance fee, but there is vast difference between charging someone $150 to attend a public event as opposed to $25,000 for a private, off-the-record chat over cocktails in Katherine Weymouth's sitting room. The very fact the event is off the record is telling. What kind of news organization would stage an off-the-record event and require its editorial staff to attend? The concept is completely at odds with our mission as journalists.

I'm sure in the coming days we will find out that this was the brainchild of Weymouth or one of the other suits that have little if anything to do with the daily news operation. But that's what makes it so reckless and irresponsible. With one poorly-worded flier they have left their editorial staff vulnerable to questioning as to whether sponsors will have an influence on their reporting, questions that no reporter who is simply doing their job should ever have to face. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Post's editorial department and I applaud their response. But someone upstairs should have to answer for this, preferably before the first Washington Post Salon on July 21st.

Update: That was quick. The Post has canceled plans for the Salons:

"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."
Moments earlier, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a separate interview that he was "appalled" by the plan, and he insisted before the cancellation that the newsroom would not participate.
"It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase," Brauchli said. The proposal "promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post."

Brauchli was the author of the email I posted above. This is good new but my sense is the damage from this incident will be more directed towards the business side of the Post rather than editorial. It just reeks of desperation, which is not exactly the best message for a newspaper to be sending at a time like this.

For the Fathers Work that We Forget

Thu,02 Jul 2009 15:00:31 GMT

{Dwayne Betts}

There are poems that last because they sound good, and then there are poems that last because they say something that we need to hear. I've always been a fan of Robert Hayden - but this poem in particular reminds me of the importance of fatherhood. Just say the last two lines to yourself again and again, and though it's about fathers - the lines apply fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, lovers. Read it. Then read it again.

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT E. HAYDEN

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

Obama, Lincoln, and Gay Rights

Thu,02 Jul 2009 11:33:43 GMT

[A. Serwer]

Sean Wilentz's lengthy book review of several Lincoln biographies isn't up on The New Republic's website yet, [actually it is, my bad] but his criticism of several books on Lincoln--and his general objection to the "two Lincolns" narrative that rejects the fact that Lincoln was anti-slavery to begin with, may offer some insight into President Obama's perplexing stances on gay rights.

Wilentz objects to an academic trend he sees as priviledging radicals over politicians, which he feels fails to take into account the exigencies of politics and what brilliant politicians are able to accomplish. More specifically, in one part of the review, he takes Skip Gates to task for taking Lincoln's words at face value only when it suits his preconcieved narrative of who Lincoln was:

He takes Lincoln's words at face value when it suits his own arguments--such as his remarks to the Chicago ministers in September 1862 about black military incompetence--but he is unable to see Lincoln for what his finest biographers have shown he was: a shrewd leader who could give misleading and even false impressions when he wanted to do so, and made no public commitments until the moment was ripe.

Lincoln made a number of statements, that, viewed out of context, would cause us to question his commitment to ending slavery, most notably his statement, responding to liberal Republican editor Horace Greeley that he was determined to save the Union whether it meant freeing all of the slaves or freeing none of them. Wilentz points out that this statement was meant to shore up Lincoln's right flank during the election, but did not actually contradict his anti-slavery views or goals--Lincoln had already secretly begun drafting the Emancipation Proclaimation.

What Obama "privately believes" about gay rights has been the subject of great speculation, and I think there's reason for that. We are, I think, if only by virtue of greater access to information, far more scrutinizing of what politicians say. So it's worth noting again that Obama's position on gay marriage, which TNC parsed the other day, doesn't actually preclude Obama eventually supporting marriage equality:

I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.

This is at least as noncomittal about the extension of secular marriage rights to gays as Lincoln's statement was about emancipation. And yet it gives the impression that Obama is opposed, which may be precisely what it is meant to do.

It's possible that I am parsing out of wishful thinking, so I'm going to quote from Obama's speech the other night:

So this story, this struggle, continues today -- for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot -- and will not -- put aside issues of basic equality. (Applause.) We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination based on who you are or who you love.

And I know that many in this room don't believe that progress has come fast enough, and I understand that. It's not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.

Like Lincoln's statements on slavery, these statements give contradictory impressions, but they are not, in matter of fact, contradictory. Obama's invocation of black rights and "basic equality" cannot be read as anything other than a rhetorical endorsement of full rights for the LGBT community.

It's worth noting that Lincoln was, as Wilentz writes, pretty adept with the racist joke or occasional n-bomb on the campaign trail. It was a different time, and Lincoln could use bigotry to maneuver himself into a favorable position in a way in which Obama can't or shouldn't. Likewise, it's possible for us to divine in hindsight that Lincoln's anti-slavery ambitions preceded his presidency, and that they were in fact sincere, because of how much he accomplished. Obama really hasn't done anything yet to where his cautiousness on gay rights can be read as part of a larger political strategy. That administration's frustrating foot-dragging on DADT in defiance of public opinion may have to do with internal administration politics, or it may be an indication that everything I am reading into his stance is wrong. At the same time, his incremental moves--extension of federal benefits to same sex couples, appointing John Berry to the Office of Personnel Management--mirror Lincon's baby steps towards emancipation and recruitment of black soldiers.

But I think it's possible, indeed probable, that Obama's slow progress on gay rights may be the kind of political maneuvering Lincoln displayed prior to the Emancipation Proclaimation or the recruitment of black soldiers. Earlier, TNC wrote this:

I've heard it said, many times, on this board that Obama is actually pro-gay marriage, but that he can't come out all the way. If that's the case, then we must conclude that he is lying about his stance. Moreover, he's invoking his relationship with religion, and his God, in that lie. Perhaps worse, he isn't being fully honest with the very audiences he wants credit for addressing--the very audiences, that by his logic, would most benefit from that honesty.

Wilentz writes that current trends in history privilege "idealists who they imagine were unblemished by expedience and compromise" rather than the "scheming, self-aggrandizing political professionals" who are decisive in "the achievement of America's greatest advances."

I think he has a point. We love radicals because they can afford to be honest, they can afford not to compromise. Preferring the radicals over the schemers makes us feel better about ourselves, but if we're being honest we'll admit that there is more of the schemer in our radical heroes than we would like to believe, MLK was not merely an idealist. But honesty is not necessarily a virtue in a schemer or a politician, except when it can be used in pursuit of a larger goal. It is the job of public voices and radicals to be honest--it is the job of politicians to create favorable political circumstances by all available, appropriate means and seize the opportune moment.

Now maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe Obama is merely two-faced, and there is no skillful maneuvering here. I'm certainly not arguing that advocacy organizations should cease pressuring him. I just think it's not that far fetched that Obama, like his hero, sees himself as carefully laying the groundwork for full equality and that he genuinely believes that someday, we will judge him favorably "not by words, not by promises I've made, but by the promises that my administration keeps."

UPDATE: I should acknowledge, that at the end of his essay, Wilentz spends a great deal of time explaining how Obama isn't Lincoln. I think this is basically a straw man--I'm not arguing above that Obama is "like" Lincoln but rather that he may be imitating some of his methods. What's really ironic, I suppose, is that Wilenz attacks Obama for disdaining politics during his campaign in the same manner as academic historians, while practicing the same dirty politics all along, in order to achieve his goal of winning the primary. Forgive me, but isn't that the exact kind of thing Wilentz argues effective politicians do and why it makes them able to accomplish great things? If anyone has failed to misunderstand politics in the manner Wilentz describes, it isn't Obama.

Also, isn't it about time to get over Hillary Clinton losing?