Fear on the Street

I got into a small Twitter conversation last night about "walking etiquette:"

👍🏾👏🎉 This is super considerate. We don't want to keep glancing behind us. We know it's awkward. 

@leeflower When I find myself walking in the same direction as a woman alone on the street, I will deliberately pass her. (1/2)

— Annalee (@leeflower) June 5, 2016

Thinking about that reminds me of something that happened over five years ago - one of those little moments that make a lifelong impression. I was in an unfamiliar city with a group of friends for a few days and during one of the nights, ended up walking back to where we were staying with three of them - another man and two women.

For whatever reason, the street was a little crowded that night with several men (maybe 30-40% full), all of whom were minding their own business, but our little group stuck out and I noticed that. The other guy got separated from us a little (I think he was walking more slowly), and I also noticed the women pick up the pace slightly, obviously a little uncomfortable, but nothing was out of the ordinary.

Then my two friends asked me - in short & nervous whisper - to hold them.

Now, I've had my share of walking around with my arm around a girlfriend's waist or over her shoulder, and with reacting to sketchy situations on the street, but this was different. My platonic friends leaned in, more comfortable with strange intimacy than walking on their own, and I found myself suddenly cast as tall male protector. I put my arms around each of them and continued down the street, comprehending fear through their body language; we got to our destination without incident.

These two women are some of the strongest people I've known. They can each hold their own in a bar, on the field, and in the spotlight; I'm sure they will each achieve respect and admiration in their chosen profession. Some people like to seek security in others, but not these two, and so their reaction took me by surprise. We weren't equal at that moment; they created a power imbalance via their body language so that anyone wanting to speak to them would be speaking to me. I was the leader, the guardian, and my arms were the security blanket.

That gap - between my expectation of that street and the reality of walking up it - seared the moment into memory. I felt both immensely honored by my two amazing friends, and also troubled that I had understood the situation so differently than them. So ever since then, when I walk down the street and see someone or something that might make someone feel unsafe, I try to be deliberate about what I do so that all parties can breath more easily. I can't know how they feel, but because of past experience I can try to react in ways to make all parties feel as safe as possible.

Roughly 50% of my love for music has its origin with this person

Sing, move arm, self learn

This past week, I had the honor of directing some of the music at a church service in DC. We call the role "Cantor," though it's not a Jewish service, and I was more nervous than I expected before and during the ceremony, which was mostly spent in song.

Nerves when performing in front of large groups aren't new for me (though I've grown a lot in this area since college); the strange part was that I had to feara or qualms about any of the singing - instead, it was the direction that distracted me. I was constantly monitoring if we were too fast, too slow, or having other issues, all while trying to figure out the appropriate moment to cut off the songs.

That experience, and others in DC, have helped me realize that I don't enjoy leading big group events unless there's a structure that I can create or enforce. That doesn't mean that structure is appropriate - it's just what makes me comfortable.

The lesson I take from this (knowing that more experience would make me much more comfortable) is that I am happiest when I can participate, support, and intervene vs lead. Staying the background lets me embrace my desire to analyze and observe without being so concerned about how people are perceiving my actions.

Experiences like this also make me appreciate the skill of being able to comfortably MC and corral a crowd. We collectively need people who can do this to guide us through the group experiences that bind us together more effectively than any blog or electronic communication. Those in center stage, in being themselves, display something we can identify with, and build a shared identity that maintains ua through trying times.

My kinds of festivals

On Free Speech and College Campuses

Summary to date: student group invites an apparent white supremacist to speak on campus at my alma mater, students react, alum start to react, college president cancels the appearance, now time for the Monday-morning quarterbacking

I've been thinking a lot about free speech (as a value, not as a legal right) and wanted to record some thoughts.

• I believe that there are lines where inviting a speaker just ain't worth it. The most basic and obvious line relates to personal conduct - a speaker that sexually harasses students, threatens students, or refuses to answer audience questions may not be worth inviting.

• I believe that the test to *stop* a speaker gets progressively higher through the following list:
• Issuing an invitation for a mandatory event like a class
• Issuing an invitation from college institutional leadership
• Issuing an invitation from the college faculty/staff
• Issuing an invitation from a student or student group
• A student group canceling an invitation
• The college canceling an invitation from faculty/staff or leadership
• The college canceling an invitation from a student or student group

This means that I would push back on the college issuing an invitation to an objectionable speaker, but will give students more leeway to pursue their own speakers, and that the highest bar for action is canceling an invitation on behalf of a student or student group.

In other words, I believe that President Falk's decision merits the highest scrutiny, most particularly because it blocked an invitation from someone in the "aggrieved" class (in this case, black) and falk is himself White.

I agree with Falk that there's a line; for example, in inviting a flat-earther, psychic, or astrologist in any context except allowing students to interact with someone pushing psuedo-science. I'm not sure that this crosses it. Racism is a real social organism in today's world, and students deserve a chance to confront it as they decide how they will embark into the world

Zach Wood, the organizer, says (1):

To many, Derbyshire’s views might not be worth trying to thoroughly understand. To me, they are worth the intellectual investment of interrogating and dismantling principally because that is the only way in which it may ever be conclusively decided upon that his racist views are invalid.

I also think there are a variety of steps a college can take to make a lecture like this useful. It could hold trainings on productive confrontation, counter-programming on the same topic, or even feature the college president to speak for the Academy and repudiate the views of the speaker. I'm not sure which of these is the best option. For some students dealing with racism at Williams, a speaker like this is (at minimum) unhelpful, and possibly harmful. I am not a student that would be harmed, and would want to listen to the student group about the best way to mitigate that.

I also think that I might be wrong. A former professor wrote eloquently on the lack of education value in some statements, and I think he's correct that there's a line where speech becomes harassment and that Williams has no obligation to "support" racist speech, though I'm not sure that providing a venue constitutes true support.

I especially agree with this (2):

Given the unusual circumstances of this case, the lack of prior community consideration of the invitation and the short time frames involved, his choice was reasonable. 

If I was a black student looking to apply to colleges, articles about invited speakers like this one without counterbalance could well give me pause when deciding which colleges deserve my time and energy. I know racism exists; I lived it growing up, and there are better ways to engage it than by inviting speakers like this one.

Its very possible the harm to recruiting made the dis-invitation worth it; I don't know enough to say, and I think the disruption of such a speaker is worth consideration. For me, a one-time invite is worth the one-time disruption, but a weekly "today's racist" series would not be.

In general, the trend of censorship demanded by students on campus is a little disturbing, and deserves its own scrutiny (though this came from the college president) (3):

More to the point, the world is not a safe place. It is extremely dangerous, flawed, full of bloodshed and corruption. By sheltering ourselves from its harshness we are doing nothing meaningful to change it. If we are serious about confronting power we must throw ourselves into the danger and hurt that so many people have no choice but to live with. While self-care is necessary to sustain us in the long run, avoiding the darkness entirely is nothing more than a cop out.

Williams doesn't have to support racist speech, but if students seek to engage with it, what better place to be exposed than at a college, with professors and fellow students to help unpack a viewpoint?

References:

1. https://www.thefire.org/williams-colleges-zachary-r-wood-racism-is-a-pathetic-excuse-for-disinviting-a-speaker-from-campus/
2. http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2016/02/a-williams-college-education-doesnt-require-random-acts-of-racist-speech-.html
3. https://medium.com/@UptheCypherPunx/why-this-radical-leftist-is-disillusioned-by-leftist-culture-63419aa85a58#.1mygn29ng

Muslims have always been part of America

From a recent speech by Barack Obama:

Back then, Muslims were often called Mahometans.  And Thomas Jefferson explained that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom he wrote was designed to protect all faiths -- and I’m quoting Thomas Jefferson now -- “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan.”  (Applause.)

Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Koran. Benjamin Franklin wrote that “even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”  (Applause.)  So this is not a new thing.

Generations of Muslim Americans helped to build our nation. They were part of the flow of immigrants who became farmers and merchants.  They built America’s first mosque, surprisingly enough, in North Dakota.  (Laughter.)  America’s oldest surviving mosque is in Iowa.  The first Islamic center in New York City was built in the 1890s.  Muslim Americans worked on Henry Ford’s assembly line, cranking out cars.  A Muslim American designed the skyscrapers of Chicago. 

The Conscience of a Conman

Interstellar's "No Time for Caution," remastered

The Progress of Humanity

Humans are irrevocably flawed. We default to communication silos, we often steal when we can, we exploit each other. Wikipedia's list of ongoing conflicts is depressingly long.

And yet, we are less violent today as a species than at any point in our world's history - Steven Pinker's book on the subject is both sobering in revealing violent history and uplifting in showing how many fewer people are massacred these days. Some who dispute Steven Pinker's argument remind us that the deterrent of nuclear weapons might have a lot to do with this, but they concede that the overall numbers are down. In addition, increased global trade has drawn countries together in a way that makes true war impossible between an increasingly large world community.

This is not the state of humanity that all desire. ISIL and its peers seek an apocolyptic world of warlords, where violence and death are a regular part of life. They dream of a mass regression of humanity to an earlier, more brutal time when families were split and sunders by the whim of kings and dictators.

When attacks come out of this ideology - made events that seek to awaken our "reptile brains" and make us fear each other - it's a mistake to think of counter-pushes as "weak." On the contrary, our greatest warriors dreamed of creative days of peace, and maintaining peace is harder than creating way. Anyone can destroy, shoot a gun, or create chaos. Order, peace, and stability take work.

That's the cause that we dedicate ourselves to each time we vote in an election, or yell at each other on social media instead of doing violence, or help out a stranger only tied to us by our shared humanity. That's the dream of so many warriors in years past, and its why I have no doubt that ISIL and its peers will fall apart. However, there will always be others to take their place - the flaw isn't something we can eradicate.

We just have to keep proving each day that it's better to live in peace than to dream of war.

On recent events and their designation "Terrorism"

Terrorism is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims."

These days, I worry that we misuse the term. A killing spree caused by anger against the world isn't terrorism - it's mass murder. And mass murder is just as bad as terrorism - both take life, and both do harm to our communities, families, selves. The recent Colorado Springs shooting and San Bernardino massacre are both important data points in the ongoing struggle against mass killings in the United States.

However, I don't think we should call either "terrorism" at this point.

The added dynamic of terrorism is that someone is doing it to cause a political reaction, or to change the behavior of a population. The targets of terrorism are not the direct victims of gunfire - they are us, the "everyone else" who might have been at that store, or at that party. Even if the shootings in recent events were motivated by political statements, that doesn't make them terrorism because they weren't going after our minds.

Now, should the non-designation change our response?

I would say no. The designation of terrorism is tactical - it calls us to be on guard against manipulation of society through violence. For example, the recent suspicions of Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks (committed by people who were neither Syrian nor refugees, but who apparently carried a passport from a refugee to ruse us) was a successful result of that terrorist action. A public murder, such as the killing of a reporter and cameraman in Virginia, may not have those same attempted manipulations, but it demands our response just like any act of terrorism.

The DC Sniper Attacks are my counter-example - they were committed over a period of days with the goal of terrorizing a population to "shut things down" in the United States. The clear targets were not the random victims (known to the killers in 2/3 cases above), but instead the rest of us. That did demand a calculated response - taking all actions to catch the murderers, and knowing that they sought to create fear and therefore taking counter actions (like putting more police in schools).

The words we use to label things matter. Let's not muddy the waters of "terrorism" by assigning it to every killing with a political connection.

EDIT on 1/3/16:

Now we have some militiamen in Oregon occupying a Federal building and a lot of questions about if this action is "Terrorism." While it matches my dictionary definition, I don't think they occupation is being done to scare other Americans or (and I don't see a threat that anyone will be taken hostage). They also aren't doing this to change the original prison sentences - the Hammond family doesn't welcome this occupation. I'm still struggling, though, to create a clear definition.

The political stance these people are taking seems to be "it is the right of the people to occupy an empty federal building."

What it means to "use" Whiteness for good

Posted by Upworthy on Tuesday, December 1, 2015

The seductive temptation of inaction

Think of any recent news of political action or decision and you will find quotes in opposition. That's normal and expected - the easy, non-controversial decisions don't get coverage. However, it's much easier to oppose - to support inaction - than it is to take action. The person acting must take responsibility for outcomes. Those pushing for inaction have no responsibility. The easier side to be on is inaction/opposition, and many commentators have discussed this in recent years.

I want to highlight another tendency to inaction that is sneakier and a sibling to righteous opposition: the showcasing of a harmful outcome to someone involved in a policy.

We see news articles all of the time about the people harmed be various government policies. Many times, they feature people suffer from unjust gov't decisions or results, and put a human face on those harmed by poor decisions or policies. This sentiment is valuable, and I'm glad to see these types of stories, but they also represent risk.

The third character we don't see in these stories is the status quo, which has no face and no new victims to showcase. We get used to the constant pain of bad policies, especially when the pain comes from complexity or faceless bureaucracies that can't be easily placed in an article, and the victims are more collective than singular. It becomes hard to compare the harm of action and inaction, but without a good way to find or weigh the beneficiaries of a new policy against those harmed, inaction is easier.

I suppose the same problem applies in budgeting - the benefits of targeting spending may shine brighter than the collective pain of slightly hire taxes. Individual stories are easy - collective benefits are harder to see. Both matter.