Haiku on being a Dad #1

Children yell and scream:
"I want what I want right now!"
Fatherhood is great.

I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything

“I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything.”
- Gus, The Wire, Season 5

Lately, I've been lucky to learn a bit about the politics and social justice struggles in Israel and Palestine. I admit, I know very little about this incredibly complicated subject. This past summer, I read Thomas Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which was a good introduction to some aspects of the history and culture and politics that influences conflicts in this part of the world, but it was also a bit more about Friedman, his opinions and experiences. For example, one of Friedman's main cultural analyses of the roots of violent conflicts in places like Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq is that those places, and the people who live there, are inexorably shaped by long standing tribal relations and ingrained practices of blood feuding. For Friedman, those cultural practices and cultural histories explain, for example, the Hama massacre that occurred in Syria in 1982. Basically, Friedman's argument about the powerful influence of cultures of tribalism in this region of the world is that Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Arab peoples respond to threats and attacks with irrepressible violence. Friedman calls this "Hama rules." Any threat against people in this region must be met with crushing, total repression. As I read his chapters on "Hama rules" and his descriptions of how it seemed to be a widespread worldview in the region, I couldn't help think of when Sean Connery's character from the 1987 film, The Untouchables, describes "the Chicago Way," to Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner. To take down the ruthless gangster, Al Capone, Connery's character tells the fictional Ness, "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone." Perhaps a culture and history of blood feuding and tribal identities is enough to explain some aspects of politics in a place like Syria, but I had a hard time reducing something as repressive and terrible as the Hama massacre to a cultural practice. All the while I read Friedman I kept wondering, where are these combatants in Lebenon, Syria, Israel, Iraq, and other regions he covers, attaining their weapons? Should that factor into our understanding of the root causes and effects of this violence? How much context do we need in order to understand complicated political and social events?

One of Friedman's strengths as a writer is that he takes incredibly complicated political and social phenomenon and distills explanations of them through understandable factors. Why did the leader of Syria murder tens of thousands of people in order to suppress a political uprising? Because that is their culture expressions of power; that is the historical practice of Bedouin tribalism. But while that makes for a good story, and explains some aspects of what is happening it seems like it is only one slice of the context in which those events occurred. Undoubtedly, wider geopolitical factors such as the Cold War, arms trading, oil interests, and regional politics influenced what happened in Syria in the 1980s. Friedman side-stepped those issues, which would have complicated his story.

The character, Gus, from Season 5 of The Wire, is correct: we need a lot of context, conflicting context, contradictory context to seriously understanding anything. Such context does not necessarily help make neat stories, but perhaps we should sacrifice our need for simple stories built around dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong, in order to really try and understand what is happening in a given political and social situation.

That is my approach to trying to understand what is happening in Palestine and Israel. I want context, not ideology. I want peace for everyone there, especially children. And I want to understand fully the multiple factors that shape people's thoughts and actions.

In my mind, Palestinians should not have to suffer from a violent, repressive occupation and Israelis should not have to suffer from terrorism. Stating that does not make the politics behind each phenomenon equal, but it does equate the common humanity that, I think, is the proper context from which to try and build broad knowledge of what is happening, and ultimately to build and struggle for peace.   

 

   

  

Open letter to my students about Boston marathon bombing

Dear Students,

No doubt you've heard the news about the bombing in Boston, and perhaps even seen the terrible images. I've lived through two acts of violent terrorism, both at the former World Trade Center in Manhattan; and unfortunately, many of us can recall recent news events of mass shootings: at schools - Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook; at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin; the attempt on Congresswoman Giffords's life; the shooting in the Aurora, CO, movie theater. Moments of violence like the one that happened at the Boston marathon make me feel very afraid, sad, and angry. Lately, when things like this happen here in the US or around the world, the only way I feel comforted is when I hug and hold my small children tightly.

But, awake earlier than usual, and still numb from the news in Boston, my thoughts wandered to my work as a teacher, and what my students and I try to accomplish in the classroom.

In lectures, documentary viewings, research projects, debates, questions, and discussions, we try to wrestle with ideas. Sometimes, those ideas are hard. Sometimes, the material we study is difficult and unsettling, but we do our best to strive for analyses based on honesty and integrity. We don't have to agree with each other, or like each others' arguments. It behooves us to challenge one another - to ask questions and seek clarity. I used to think this type of work was the luxury of working in higher education, but the Boston bombing and a great deal of other violence that rocks people around the world reminds me that intellectual exchange, debate, and thinking clearly on hard matters are not luxuries that should only exit in the halls of academia. We need those practices to exist everywhere, all the time, amongst all strata of people, especially in dark hours when violence and suffering befall human existence and explanations about why this happens, and what to do next, do not come easy, if they come at all. 

So this is a thank you letter to my students - thank you for asking hard questions about difficult topics; for debating one another; for pushing me to be clear in my thoughts and words and arguments; for reading and working and struggling with your thoughts; for valuing ideas. Please bring these practices with you wherever life takes you - military service; corporate work and business; artistic work; politics; technology development; law; medicine; theater; dance; social work; religious ministry; accounting; engineering; science research; education; parenthood; citizenship - global and domestic. 

Terrorist violence, war and human suffering occur when fear, narcissism, avarice, hateful and bigoted insecurity, or sheer insanity subvert intellectual exchange and bold leadership directed towards the widest possible peace and prosperity.

Intellectual exchange and deep thought on difficult questions has so far not eliminated war and terrorism. Perhaps, in the day-to-day course of events, what we do in the classroom - thinking, debating, listening, asking questions, reading, discussing, writing, researching - may not seem important.

But I shudder to think of our world without it. 

Sincerely,


Professor Purnell

Response to claim that Christians can love gay people but not support homosexuality

People certainly have a right to say what they believe; but you cannot say you "do not support homosexuality" and that you love gay people because, in fact, the first statement negates the second one insofar as it does not support a part of gay people's humanity, and therefore denies that person love. Christians who are not gay need to realize that a person can be straight, love gay people in all of their humanity, including their sexuality, and still be Christian.

In fact, to not support an element of other people's expression of love is, in fact, to deny them a part of their humanity and to not live as Jesus did which, in my mind, is to not be a Christian.

Writers Diet Test

Schoolyards buzzed with activity. Boys gathered in camps and plotted raids onto courts and fields. They ran and burst across the concrete, and wreaked havoc everywhere. Girls formed tight circles of conspiracy. They laughed and shrieked, danced over jump ropes and hop scotch. Boys and girls formed separate armies. Traitors crossed battle lines to flirt, pull hair, and blow kisses, but the hardcore troops forgot them, like the names of soldiers dead in battles.

Handball courts possessed speed, danger and power. The game was not for people with weak arms or hearts. One warrior could challenge another, and the two gladiators entered the arena with one goal: crush the opponent. When teams formed, the contest evolved into a fast dance of four bodies, one ball, and one wall.

+++

I wrote the above passage after reading two NY Times blogs on grammar and writing style and then clicking onto this website that had a "writers diet test." First, I entered two passages from my forthcoming book, and the test told me that my writing needed to go on life support. The prose was bloated, the verbs vague and clunky. This is a paragraph from my book that I entered into the test, one I thought was a great piece of writing:

On February 3, 1964, one of the largest civil rights demonstrations in United States history occurred. Nearly half a million students boycotted a racially segregated municipal public school system as parents and activists demanded a plan for comprehensive desegregation. Ten years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision had declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional, this city’s government had failed to desegregate the school system. The integration movement rallied behind a Christian minister, a man known for his eloquent, trenchant sermons against racial discrimination and poverty. He transformed his church into a movement headquarters, which organized racially integrated “freedom schools” throughout the city. The man and the movement made history.

The diagnostic test said the passage was about to die from overuse of vague subjects and weak nouns.

It just goes to show - never trust writers or parents to be objective about what they create.  

Was my writing really horrible? 

Yes.

Addicts must admit their problems before they recover.

Hello. my name is Brian, and I am addicted to academic verbiage. 

I pecked across the keyboard and wrote that memory about mornings in the St. Mark's schoolyard. Thankfully, that short passage passed the test. The computer considered the prose and verbs and adjectives "lean." When I wrote that passage I concentrated on clear nouns and active verbs. 

What a great devise, and habit!

Meta-Brooklyn

In the late-20th century, people from Brooklyn were arrogant about being people from Brooklyn. We had a strange pride in being from a place that stood in Manhattan's shadow. And that pride could be sliced down into the most minute scales: to neighborhood, to parish or school or synagogue, to block, to building and street. We took pride of place to absurd levels and defended our love of home with religious passions.

I find it odd to read about Brooklyn as a meta-concept, a brand, because its always been that. Brooklyn has always been cool and hip, precisely because it was a place that was not cool or hip - not the Village, not Manhattan, not LA, not anywhere but Brooklyn. Growing up, we oozed Brooklyn in the way we spoke and walked in our neighborhoods, even the way we said Brooklyn, which inevitably came out with an air of, "and what of it." Even the nerdiest, least athletic, non-intimidating kid breathed a hint - just a hint - of urban realism when he said the word. No matter how much people who leave Brooklyn try to they can't hide it - even when they adopt a generic Midwestern way to say "water" or "coffee;" even when an Ivy League degree has beaten out the street or the island or the mosque from their voice. Try as they might, the new Brooklyn, the Brooklyn as international brand of urban cool, does not capture this essence. In fact, nothing really can except for the sights and sounds and demeanor of the place and the people as they are, in real time, not celluloid.

When I watch Girls, and yes, I do, which may signal a loss of credibility with which I am fine, I don't see Brooklyn. It is certainly a New York that has always existed, the New York of newcomer and dreamer. The New York of the searcher and the entrepreneurial. The New York and the New Yorker as fad. But this Brooklyn as fad will fade, as all fads do. The transplants will leave, and so will their hip culture. A new middle class will stay behind - see contemporary Park Slope - and new outcrops of Brooklyn hubris will emerge from the homes and streets of recent transplants, immigrants, the new working classes, from people who do not have the luxury of time or money to obsess over fashioning their Brooklyn chic brand.

It will just come out of their mouth when they say the name of the place to the inevitable question, "Where you from?"      

My mission - if I choose to accept it

I am two and a half months shy of 35 years old.
Before I die, would it be possible to read all of the National Book Award Winners in Fiction and Nonfiction?
Only one way to find out. 

These folks could benefit from reading Barbara Fields

I don't think Barbara J. Fields is right about everything, but her analysis of race as an ideology, and her call for historians to be clearer - indeed harder - about the ways they write about race are both very important. I think the contributors to this NY Times exchange on Black public intellectuals could have benefited from taking seriously some of the points Fields makes in her older essays, which have been republished in the book she co-authored with her sister, Racecraft.

Fields has a few main points to consider when thinking about and writing about "race" in America:

1) Race is an ideology, which is different from an idea and from propaganda and information. In essence, an ideology derives its meaning from everyday social interactions, and it is at that level of human interaction at which ideologies are made and remade. I tend to think of ideologies as frameworks through which people understand who they are, or maps that people use to navigate their social worlds. The clearest example of an ideology I can think of is religion, or a system of thinking and acting predicated on faith, and through which adherents order their lives and understanding of the world. Race serves a similar function. It is social and ideological; it is real, not because of science or biology, but because people make it real through social interactions and history.

2) Race has history. Fields spends a lot of time explaining this, but in essence, her main idea is that race is not metaphysical, ahistorical, or timeless. It came into existence at certain times for specific economic, political, and social reasons; and people made and remade it over time. Along these lines, race does not "have a life of its own," nor is it responsible for historical action. The best example Fields has of this is that race did not make slavery; slavery made race. If race continues to have meaning after slavery ended that is because people found new social practices in which racial ideology had meaning. In the US, Jim Crow segregation and ghettoization are the two most powerful social-historical phenomenon that have made and remade race over time.

3) For Fields, liberal and progressive intellectuals perpetuate a sloppy understanding of race and veiled sinister practices (her word is evil) when they insist on analyzing "race relations," which Fields rightly criticizes as an undefined system of social interaction, and when they push for diversity initiatives in curriculum and admissions. (I agree with her first point about race relations, but I disagree with her critique of affirmative action and multicultural education. Both do need to be much more specific with respects to how they deal with histories of racial ideology, but that does not mean that the mission of race-based affirmative action and multicultural pedagogy perpetuate the evils of racism.)

She makes many other provocative points, and this is a very rough summary, but I think the contributors in the above mentioned NYT exchange could stand to think more about what she says about racial ideology.

As I read the exchanges, only the scientists and the historian really wrestled with the socially constructed historical nature of racial ideology. (I am not sure exactly what the political scientist's and the religious studies scholar's point was.) Scholars who identify as Black - either because of their personal history or their political and personal ideology - have to fashion ways that their intellectual and professional work does or does not speak to that particular social ideology, and in what ways. While there is certainly not one way to "be Black" - as an intellectual or otherwise - there are certain socially and historically shaped ways - always multiple and always contested - in which Black people understand themselves and their wider world. Like Fields says, those frameworks are products of history and they exist in time and space. An intellectual who identifies as Black and who wants to connect particular social and political issues that some Black people experience to wider discourses and debates needs to be clear and conscious of the multiple communities she represents and addresses. I don't think this is anything new, and what that does or does not have to do with racial ideology depends on social context and history.

The problem with this NY Times exchange is that it made race a rarefied, metaphysical "thing" that Black public intellectuals either spoke to or ignored.

At their best, the participants in the exchange added context and specificity to their responses. They actually explained what it means to think about and make sense of racial ideology and who Black people are - politically, culturally, socially - in time and space.

(C) Brian Purnell, 2013

Rast Trent in a VW - Is It Racist When a White (American) Immitates Jamaican Patois?

I'll answer the above question in a real weak way - it all depends, but in this case, not really. Frankly, I think the VW add that has gotten so much attention is more silly than sinister.

Here's the premise: a predominantly white setting - an office park, perhaps in the American mid-West, which features what appears to be a nearly all white, all make work force. One man is perhaps American, perhaps of east Asian descent. A handful of white women work there too.  A white man from Minnesota imitates Jamaican patois as he goes around, smiling and spouting funny sayings to encourage everyone to be push away their Monday morning doldrums. In one clip he tells a clearly frustrated female colleague to "turn that frown the other way." The character is goofy and when I see it, I don't see anything that remotely resembles Jamaican or West Indian people, or even an attempt to mimic Jamaican people. If the presentation of a clearly non-Jamaican person tried to do that - in satire or even in an exploitative way - that would be, as NY Times columnist Charles Blow said, "black face with voices." But I don't think that's what is happening here.

This commercial spoofs Americans and Westerners, mostly white, but perhaps of any color, who adopt a cartoon-like version of West Indian and Caribbean style and aesthetics as a means of stepping outside their own seemingly humdrum social and professional worlds. Think of the American tourists who spend a week in Montego Bay and braid their hair and burn their skin as a means of vacating from their everyday lives of work and kids and commuting. I think the ad makes fun of those people more than anything or anyone.

A clearly satiric - and I think hilarious - spoof of white Americans "playing Jamaican" is Andy Samberg's character, "Ras Trent."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcK0MYgnHjo

Samberg is much clearer about who is the butt of his parody: white privileged college students who play at being Rastafarian as a means of rebelling against class, religious and parental conformity.  But Ras Trent and the character in the VW commercial are two sides of the same coin - privileged Americans with money who escape via what they imagine to be authentic, carefree, happy Jamaican culture. In truth, both the VW and the Ras Trent spook tell us more about the vapidness of those privileged Americans than about Jamaica or its people.          

Before I saw the VW add, I heard about it on the Public Radio International radio program, "The World." The podcast is available here:

http://www.theworld.org/2013/02/is-it-racist-for-a-white-guy-to-speak-jamaican-patois/

The podcast features an interview with Karen James, a journalist in Kingston, Jamaica. Her analysis is smart and basically, without directly saying so, I think she lets-on that the reason many Jamaicans are not offended by this add is that they are laughing at silly Americans making fools of themselves wasting money getting high and drunk and what have you during their Caribbean get away.

There are real exploitative issues at work in Jamaica's relationship with the wider world, namely that a place like Jamaica faces problems of debilitating poverty while at the same time serving as an international playground for massive levels of conspicuous consumption through its tourism industry.

Unfortunately, the VW commercial has not prompted conversation about that type of economic exploitation and imbalance.

And this is where I part ways with Karen James's analysis. She welcomed the VW commercial as a positive presentation of Jamaica and Jamaican people. (She even made an interesting argument about how the commercial uplifts Jamaican patois as authentic language, although it is ironic that a white American male playing Jamaican becomes the international vehicle through which Jamaican linguistics attains legitimacy.) As a journalist beset with the everyday problems Jamaicans face - poverty in the midst of plenty, and crime, violence, economic segregation - she no doubt saw this commercial as a chance to embrace a lighter side of life in her home, the side in which Jamaicans promote positivity and happiness to the jet-setters, wedding parties, spring breakers, and middle and working class vacationers who come to the island's white beaches to spend a week or so forgetting about their first-world problems. Perhaps, for a change, a spoof of how silly vacationing Americans look when they bring back their sing-song West Indian speak to their banal office parks can offer beleaguered Jamaicans a respite from their troubles. I can't fault her for feeling that way.

But I wish that instead of debating whether or not the VW add is racist, Americans could have a serious talk about how economic exploitation shapes life Jamaica, and about how international trade policies and histories of colonialism make possible that inequality, as well as Americans' enjoyment of it via tourism. In short, let's have some intelligent national talk about the themes raised in the 2001 documentary film, Life and Debt.

Because just like VW will laugh all the way to the bank through this parody of Americans playing West Indian,  someone is getting rich off all of the decadence American tourists experience during the sun fun weeks in Jamaica.

And it certainly isn't the vast majority of Jamaicans.

Amituofo - Blessings from the heart

This weekend my family and I drove to New York City to celebrate the 100 day naming ceremony for my niece, Zoe Amaez. My brother-in-law, Daniel Amaez, is a Buddhist disciple and student of Shi Yan Ming, the founder of the USA Shaolin Temple. Danny and his wife, Diana, held Zoe's naming ceremony at the Temple, and it was a beautiful event filled with good food, family, friends, and all-around positive vibes.

In this, my first blog post in a very long time, I wanted to share a meditation that I read posted on a wall in the Temple. I think it is a standard reflection in Chan Buddhism. When I read it, I found it so simple and inspiring.

"Before I was born, who was I?
After I am born, who am I?
Respect yourself, and everyone will respect you.
Understand yourself, and everyone will understand you.
There are mirrors all around you:
Strive to see and understand yourself.
Strive to have the heart of a Buddha.
Stop doing bad things, only do good.
Do whatever you can to help others.
In these ways you help yourself.
Help yourself, and you help the world."

During the naming ceremony, Shifu, which is the term for "Master," or even "Teacher," and is the title most people use when speaking with Shi Yan Ming, explained some principles of Chan Buddhism. "Amituofo," is a common term members of the Temple use in many difference scenarios: when greeting each other, or visitors; when entering or leaving the Temple; before they execute a Kung Fu form. Another disciple invited me to have a drink of Chinese "wine" with my brother-in-law and a few other members of the Temple. "Amituofo," can even mean cheers, or bottoms-up. When Shifu talked about Amituofo durint Zoe's naming ceremony he explained that all faith traditions are beautiful, and so are all people. "Jesus Christ is wonderful," Shifu said. "Christianity, is beautiful." In his explanation of Chan Buddhist philosophy, no hierarchy of belief existed. All Gods, all beliefs, all people were good and excellent, and all paths to peace were beautiful.

The entire spirit of the ceremony and the people just made me smile. "Do whatever you can to help others. In these ways you help yourself. Help yourself, and you help the world."

Amituofo!