Global Relations

It’s interesting how even with our modern, global technologies firmly in place it still takes a couple of days for a disaster of this magnitude to fully reveal itself. Most of us have seen some of the images coming out of Japan and, frankly speaking, they look a good deal like other images that I’ve seen of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and the like. But the New York Times published some satellite photos that allow the viewer to move a slide bar across the screen to see geographic areas “before” and “after” the earthquake/tsunami and it’s quite illuminating–and profoundly unnerving to see the extent of the damage.

Check out the satellite photos.

This video tells the story of the power of water:

posted by Sam Richards

This is a great video to show the complexity of economic life. When you think “economics,” consider consumption and production. People accumulate resources, manipulate them in some way, and then repackage or resell them at a higher price to someone else–produce and consume. Or they offer some service to fulfill some need of others. Economic exchange never stops–not even in an earthquake or when it appears as though an entire social structure has fallen apart.

When this in mind, check out this video about life in one of the refugee camps in which over a million Haitians now call home. (it might take a minute to load…)

posted by Sam Richards

I’ve been saying for over a decade that students should learn Mandarin if they want to ensure that they’ll have a future in the economic marketplace that includes unlimited upward mobility…and a job. Out of the thousands who have heard the message, a few have listened. Not bad.

So here is an article about the increase in the number of high schools teaching either Mandarin or Cantonese, even though there is an overall reduction in teaching of foreign language classes. (Spanish remains constant, by the way.) Hmm…someone is listening. Not teaching language in high school is probably not a big deal; I’ve rarely met anyone who truly learned to speak a foreign language after even four years of study. So why waste the time? But if we’re going to invest, I suppose Mandarin (and Spanish) is the way to go.

This from the New York Times: “Foreign Languages Fade in Class–Except Chinese”

And here’s your first Mandarin Chinese language lesson in case you want to get started:

posted by Sam Richards

Here’s an interesting article from TIME/CNN about the upcoming U.S. Census and the use of racial signifiers. Quite fascinating discussion of “new school” – “old school” terminology and who should get to decide which terms should be deemed acceptable for public use.

“Should the Census Be Asking People if They’re Negro?”
By Barbara Kiviat – TIME/CNN

Use of the word Negro to describe a black person has largely fallen out of polite conversation — except on the U.S. Census questionnaire. There, under “What is this person’s race?” is an option that reads, “Black, African Am., or Negro.” That has raised the ire of certain black activists and politicians as the Census Bureau gears up to mail out its once-a-decade questionnaires. The controversy has been cast by many as an instance of a tone-deaf agency not keeping up with the times. In actuality, the flash point represents a much larger theme: the often contentious way the Census both reflects and forges our evolving understanding of race. (See the best pictures of 2009.)

The immediate reason the word Negro is on the Census is simple enough: in the 2000 Census, more than 56,000 people wrote in Negro to describe their identity — even though it was already on the form. Some people, it seems, still strongly identify with the term, which used to be a perfectly polite designation. To blindly delete it is to risk incorrectly counting the unknown number of (presumably older) black Americans who identify with the term. (See rare photos at home of Martin Luther King Jr.)

But the Census Bureau is aware that times are changing — and not just when it comes to the word Negro. As part of the 2010 Census, the bureau will test 15 major changes to questions about race and Hispanic origin. For each, approximately 30,000 households will receive a slightly different questionnaire so that demographers and statisticians can use data — along with follow-up interviews — to decide if the modification helps or hurts the accuracy and consistency of information collected. “We hope this will help us better understand the way people identify with these concepts,” says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census’ racial-statistics branch. One change being tested: deleting the word Negro. Others include combining queries about Hispanic origin and race into one question and getting rid of the word race in the question altogether.

Those modifications could have a lasting impact on how Americans think about race. Census data underpin broad stretches of society, from federal regulations to corporate marketing strategies, and how data are framed when collected speaks to our collective worldview (both contemporary and historical). Consider that in a 2006 study of 138 censuses from around the world, New York University sociologist Ann Morning found that only 15% of those asking about ancestry or national origin used the term race. Almost all of those that did were former slave economies. (See a video of perspectives in Harlem on President Obama’s first year in office.)

Further, among nations Morning studied, only the U.S. asked about Hispanic ethnicity in a stand-alone question. (Race and ethnicity are synonymous practically everywhere else in the world.) Morning concluded that talking about the two separately, as is done in the U.S., could unintentionally reinforce the view that while ethnicity is a product of culture and society, race represents something else — a set of characteristics inherent to a certain type of person (e.g., black people are athletic; Asians are smart). (See TIME’s special on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

If it seems like a stretch that the Census would have such grand influence, take a moment for a little history. The first Census, in 1790, explicitly asked about only one race: white. Blacks, for the most part, fell into the slave category. Race was about civil status. In the 19th century, concerns about keeping the white race pure led to the addition of the “mulatto” category in 1850 (and “quadroon” and “octoroon” in 1890), a process traced by Harvard political scientist Melissa Nobles in her book Shades of Citizenship. With rising immigration, Chinese and Japanese were added as categories — but not Irish or Italian — underscoring that somehow Asians were more fundamentally different.

In the civil rights era of the 20th century, Census data took on a whole new meaning. The antidiscrimination laws written in the 1960s and the affirmative-action policies that followed relied on Census data to determine if minorities were underrepresented in any number of realms, from home sales to small-business loans. One of the largest leaps in the Census’ racial scheme came in 2000 when, for the first time, respondents were allowed to check more than one race box. The change was celebrated by those hoping to usher in an era of postracial America and assailed by those fearing the weakening of civil rights enforcement.

As it turns out, neither extreme came to pass — partly because only 2.4% of the population checked more than one race. Nonetheless, the instruction to “mark one or more boxes” signified a major turning point in how the Census sets the parameters for national discussion. In the words of former Census director Kenneth Prewitt, we are now moving from “a justice-based classification system” to “an identity-based classification system.” If not revolution, that is at least evolution. (See the world’s most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100.)

And it continues today. One of the possible changes the Census is testing during the 2010 count is allowing respondents to check more than one box not just for race but for Hispanic origin as well. A popular rally cry during the push to allow multiple races was, Why should a person with one black parent and one white parent be forced to choose between them? Indeed, why should a person with a Hispanic mother and non-Hispanic father be any different?

Another change under review is letting people who check “white” or “black” to write in more specific information afterward. In recent years, groups representing a number of backgrounds, including Afro-Caribbean and Arab, have lobbied to be included separately on the Census instead of being confined to broad categories (black for people of Afro-Caribbean decent; white for those with Arab ancestry). By trying out additional write-in blanks, the Census is attempting to see what other designations it might be able to reliably collect data about.

For the time being, write-in responses still often need to be shoehorned into broader categories for the purpose of following certain laws based on official statistics. But in the longer term, the write-in box could prove to be an even more momentous step in the evolution of racial categorization than the ability to check more than one race. By encouraging wider swaths of people to explain as precisely as possible how they see themselves, the Census is implicitly acknowledging that its count of the U.S. population is increasingly becoming a conduit for self-expression. “We are measuring the characteristics of the American people as they wish to be known,” says Prewitt.

That is true even when the way a person wishes to be known is as a Negro — at least for the time being. Considering that older black people are more likely to use the term, Negro will almost surely eventually come off the Census. But it is important to remember that when it does, it will not be a simple reaction to changing social mores. In 1970 the Census changed its black category from “Negro” to “Negro or Black.” The Federal Government sent a form to every U.S. household and effectively said, We have a new way of thinking about this particular group of people. Census categories reflect perceptions. But they also forge them.

posted by Laurie Mulvey

I have spent my adult years piecing together an ecumenical spirituality in which I use the symbols and teachings of many religious traditions to help me comprehend the intangible and unknowable parts of Life that we all encounter. But I have never fully grasped the central idea of Christianity—Jesus as sacrifice. I’ve never understood how one person’s suffering could somehow liberate another person, how the crucifixion of Christ could lead me toward salvation.

Until the earthquake in Haiti. I don’t have to recount the misery that is taking place in that small island nation. We all know that it is simply too much for anyone to bear. It is a calamity completely outside any idea I have of fairness or a spiritual force that might guide our lives if we are in “right relation” to it.

But as I hold still and listen to the news and the jumbled voice of a Haitian friend standing in the rubble with his cell phone and pleading for me to understand something impossible to understand (“No horror movie is as bad as this,” he says), I feel things shift inside of me. I notice that I’m less concerned with my possessions, my ideas, my hopes, the things I think I deserve. I am more willing to give, to help, to care about someone else. “What would someone from Haiti do?” I find myself asking, as the question invokes the otherworldly anguish of the images and stories that have become commonplace broadcasts from this broken land. Time and again, the question pulls me away from self-importance and into alignment with things like caring and community.

Maybe we are in the presence of another crucifixion.

Please understand that I am not saying that the earthquake in Haiti was the will of the Creator, meant to liberate the rest of us, or that it was the destiny of the Haitian people to be sacrificed for the betterment of our souls. Life is a series of random acts and events—and the earthquake was one of them.

What I am saying is that acknowledging this suffering, knowing full well that I cannot relieve it (“No aid can compare to the magnitude of what happened here,” my friend tells me), and allowing it to work inside of me may just be what the symbol of the crucifixion is pointing towards.

I still think my Sunday School teachers got it wrong: Jesus didn’t die for me. But truly recognizing real suffering just may have the power to pull me away from my “sins” (you know, things like desire and jealousy, greed and selfishness).

So, whether it is the image of the cross or the ruins of a nation, maybe the simple gesture of holding the anguish of another in our mind’s eye can transform us—if we just keep ourselves open to it.

MC Hotdog, Taiwanese Hip Hop Artist

posted by Sam Richards

No doubt a few of you know this guy, MC Hotdog. He’s been around for a minute, as they say, and is popular in Taiwan and known in Southeast Asia. He is recognized for his gritty lyrics and many supporters and critics claim that his music represents a vision of “real life.” Sound familiar? Gangsters, fast women, tough talk, fast living…you know the standard schtick.

This particular song is about perceptions of people, women in particular, that northern Taiwanese have of people from the south Of that country, and a general commentary of the nexus between the north and south Taiwan. But alas, it’s mostly about women and the fact that he prefers the Taiwanese “beauties” over those women with cultural ties to mainland China. Watch the video:

What jumps out for me is how you could use Photoshop and FinalCut and replace all the people in the video with African American actors/artists and you’d never know. You could probably keep 98 percent of the lyrics and just replace names like “Taipei” (the capital of Taiwan) with “Compton” (a community in Los Angeles) throughout it. And so I’m struck by the enormity of this globalized village in which we’re living, of how some artist on the other side of the world can take the hip-hop formula and very easily reproduce it to become a well known artist in his own land.

Here is a video from Zanka Flow, a popular hip hop group from Morocco:

I have no idea what they’re saying–they’re spitin’ it in Arabic, although they might be using some local dialects–but it sounds like it might be rather hard core. Morocco is a pretty poor country–rich in history and culture, poor in terms of resources that would help them compete in the global economy. The unemployment and underemployment rate for young men is extremely high in this Muslim land, and so I can imagine the kinds of things that young males might be saying to the world.

Any thoughts on this world wide dissemination of hip hop and rap? Personally, I find it pretty cool that people around the globe are tied together by music. They always have been, of course, though it has happened much more quickly this time around.