How Chelsea Manning sees herself. By Alicia Neal, in cooperation with Chelsea herself, commissioned by the Chelsea Manning Support Network, 23 April 2014.
Chelsea Manning is dealing — on top of other stress — with a lack of medical care for her gender transition and imprisoning in an all-male prison, and tried to commit suicide earlier this month. As punishment, the government is considering administering the cruel and unusual punishment of up to 30 years of solitary confinement.
She got 35 years for what is, arguably, whistleblowing. During her trial she was held in torturous conditions, in solitary confinement, for eleven months that started in May of 2010. According to Juan Mendez, who is in charge of the United Nations department that investigates allegations of torture worldwide, “”The 11 months under conditions of solitary confinement (regardless of the name given to his regime by the prison authorities) constitutes at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture. If the effects in regards to pain and suffering inflicted on Manning were more severe, they could constitute torture.”
Last year, they tried to put her in solitary confinement AGAIN. But it didn’t happen. Why? Because 100,000 people like you stood up and signed a petition saying, “Not in my country.”
But they are trying to do it again. Indefinitely — which may be up to 30 years of solitary confinement. In our country. In the United States of America. For being so bankrupt of hope and wherewithal to face tomorrow that she tried to commit suicide, they will force her to live in torture for thirty years.
Now, Army officials have informed her that she is facing serious new charges directly related to her suicide attempt. These new charges include:
1) Resisting the force cell move team (Chelsea was unconscious when this team arrived, which makes this charge particularly absurd.)
2) Prohibited property (For the items she used to attempt to take her own life.)
3) Conduct which threatens (For somehow putting the prison at risk while attempting to take her own life, quietly, in her own cell.)
And even now she is still being denied medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, and she is forced to live out her days in an all-male prison.
Chelsea is a transgender woman being forced to serve out her sentence in an all-male prison, which is in itself dehumanizing and exhausting emotionally. She is currently being denied medical treatment for her gender dysphoria, which experts have stated is the only course of treatment through which she would no longer be suicidal.
Suicide rates among transgender individual stand at 40%, and they are exacerbated by discrimination and physical abuse. And that’s outside of prison. Inside of prison — in an all male prison…we already know what the reputation is for men. It would be worse for a transgender women — where the sexual assault rate is already a nightmare outside of prison.
Making her punishment worse by putting her in solitary confinement cannot be tolerated in the United States of America. We’re better than this. We have to be better than this. She needs to be put in a prison that fits her gender, to be accommodated for all her personal needs, and to be given the freedom to do with her life as she pleases — but first, we need to make her life liveable.
This threat of solitary confinement cannot happen. We can make sure this does not happen. We have done it before. We can do it again.
Make your voice heard. Tell the government that cruel and unusual punishment is not tolerated here by signing this petition.
I’m starting to realize that not everyone is a compassionate atheist.
So many atheists are hypocrites. The same atheists who will shame Christians into oblivion for racism, classism, blind cult-like followings, misogyny, and the like, will defend their own “right” to engage in all of the above ferociously. I had no idea about this, before. Here in the writing/blogging world and in much of the convention world, most atheists are compassionate and vocal on these issues, and nearly always on the side of defending marginalized populations.
But these people seem, largely, to have a smaller online presence than the YouTube atheist community, which is often unapologetically and proudly callous when it comes to attitudes towards marginalized populations. Like the other Republican candidates in the primary race, we writers have, for the most part, tried to ignore them over the years (with a few notable exceptions). And as a result, this YouTube community seems to have been the unencumbered face of atheism, growing its enormous echo chamber. Those who go on YouTube and look into atheism are going to see that the highest-rated videos are those that are, too often, the ones most spiteful of marginalized groups and those who fight for them.
Now, a quick disclaimer. I think the title “Social Justice Warrior” is misleading. I try to have well-sourced arguments for my positions on a wide array of issues, which gives me several nuanced positions. I’m not saying everyone does this; some simply do not have the time. Others genuinely want to be compassionate and go with the group that seems most compassionate, whether the facts really uphold their case or not. Overall, however, I’ve seen strong evidence that the more compassionate side that often gets labeled “SJW” is more accurate than the other groups that oppose it.
Increasingly, it’s become clear to me that the individuals in the YouTube atheist community are predominantly anti-SJW and seem to be either cold-hearted regarding marginalized groups, or in denial that these marginalized groups exist. The result of this attitude is that Atheism seems unappealing to compassionate individuals looking to see if they can find atheist friends who will support them.
For example, if a woman passionate about her rights in society is wondering what atheists think of women’s rights and whether they’ll listen to her concerns, and types “Atheism Feminism” into YouTube, she’ll see the following 19 titles :
“How Feminism Destroyed ‘New Atheism’” (Thunderfoot)
“How Feminism CASTRATED ‘New Atheism’” (Thunderfoot)
“Atheists — Beware of the Extreme Feminist” (Jaclyn Glenn)
“Why Feminism is poisoning Atheism Part 1” (Thunderfoot)
“Atheism, Feminism, and The Bible” (Ravi Zacharias — a Christian evangelist against atheism)
“Atheist woman thinks ‘New Atheists’ have a problem with feminism” (SecHummer)
“Feminism vs. Freedom of Speech” (Thunderfoot)
“This feminist thinks atheism needs feminism” (Actually arguing the opposite, done by Ceara McCord)
“Why Feminism is poisoning Atheism Part 3” (Thunderfoot)
“Sarah Haider on Feminism, Atheism, and Homegrown Terrorism” (mostly against feminism, done by the anti-feminist show The Rubin Report)
“Milo Yiannopoulos and Dave Rubin: Gamergate, Feminism, Atheism, Gay Rights” (Interviewee is against strongly against feminism, this is done by The Rubin Report)
“Why Feminism is poisoning Atheism” (This is a Playlist of Thunderfoot videos)
“Failure of Feminism” (The Amazing Atheist)
“Why Feminism is poisoning Atheism Part 2” (Thunderfoot)
“Atheism does not need Feminism: Reply to Steve Shives” (SisterDanger)
“A Feminist vs. The Amazing Athiest” (The Amazing Atheist)
“Rape, Feminism, and The Amazing Athiest” (The Amazing Atheist)
“Why Feminism is poisoning Atheism Part 4” (Thunderfoot)
She would also notice that there is one item on the list that is positive — the one with the apparently controversial title, “Feminism did NOT destroy atheism,” and it has less than a 50% “like” ratio.
Also, if you type in “Atheist Feminist,” all the videos on the first page are by The Amazing Atheist (who, as you can see from the above list, is very anti-feminist) — except one, which is by Jaclyn Glenn (who is also anti-feminist).
This is the face we’re putting forward on YouTube as a community. It’s also fairly bad if you type in something like “black people atheism” (as I’ve covered in previous posts). We’ve more than earned our “Atheism and Racism” section in Wikipedia.
You may insist that atheism is “only about a lack of belief in God or gods” all you want, but those outsiders who are checking out atheism are seeing that it is not friendly to marginalized groups.
I left God because there were too many ways I wanted to care about other people that the Bible said was off-limits. I left God because I wanted to embrace feminism, because I wanted to fight for racial justice, because I wanted to fight against class-based inequality, because I wished to fight against lgbtq discrimination, and so on. I have always had a passionate heart for those at the lower rung of society, and have wanted to speak for them — and much of this experience, as far as race is concerned, includes myself, as a black man. I thought this was why most people became atheists.
But it’s not. A lot of these atheists literally make a living out of fighting against the progress social justice movements are working so hard to make.
This wing of atheism is so prominent and harmful to marginalized populations in this country that I’m uncomfortable, these days, recommending atheism to them. Why should they leave church to enter into a community that laughs and decides not to seriously consider its concerns?
I just want to make one thing clear on this blog.
When I argue for atheism, I’m arguing for compassionate atheism, not heartless atheism. I’m arguing for an atheism that left God to embrace the most vulnerable in love, not insult them in callousness.
If fighting for the prominence of atheism means fighting for the prominence of the callous views I’m beginning to see on atheism…I want no part of it. An uncompassionate atheism is, in my mind, much worse than an honestly compassionate Christianity.
So I’m changing my focus a bit. I’m going to start arguing for compassionate atheism on my blog. This will mean, practically speaking, a bit less bashing on Christians, and more of a focus on how I love people as an atheist. Less anti-theistic, and more pro-humanistic, if that makes sense.
If you’ve been following me over the past few weeks, you already know what I mean. I’m out to defend the most vulnerable in this country with a message that, regardless of what they may see online, there are some people here who are willing to listen to their concerns and work to make things better for them, instead of shaming them and insisting their honest concerns are “poisoning atheism.”
This is not by any means (as some new commentators have suspected) the agenda of all of Patheos, or even all of Patheos Atheist (although I know a lot of them agree with me). The way Patheos works is that we are free to write whatever the hell we want on our own blogs (including, but not limited to, atheism). There is no editorial board after they let you on board. And really, we can write whatever we want. Seriously. Unlike several ignorant commentators who have excoriated me and Patheos atheist in general for things I’ve written on this blog, this is ultimately my blog, my property, my choice, and I’ve decided myself that I’m going to be focusing more on compassionate atheism in the future, so far as I can see. Just so you know.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
One thing I’ve noticed…we call marginalized groups “brave” as if what they do in overcoming barriers is good for them. Like it makes them better people or something.
It doesn’t. They’re ordinary people, like you and me, forced to jump hurdles neither you nor I nor them, in many cases, want to jump. That’s the hard truth. It doesn’t “produce character” in most circumstances. It just makes life harder for them. They aren’t there for OUR inspiration. They’re their because THEY want to live, same as you.
It wasn’t like they chose the life they had. They didn’t sign up to be marginalized as a character-training exercise. It’s something that happened TO them, and they HAVE to do what they do, oftentimes, in order to survive with the dignity they want, which is the dignity everyone wants.
Like…I just think this whole thing about marginalized groups being “brave” or something marginalizes them even more. They’re just regular people, y’know?
I dunno. I just learn that time and again. Every time I think someone treated as a second-class citizen is, like, extraordinarily brave or something, eventually I find out that underneath it all they’re just a regular person, and the way they are treated differently is just out-and-out ugly and unfair, and there’s nothing particularly inspiring or cute about it.
It’s just fucked up.
Fighting for equality is the answer, not smiling at fake inspiration.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
So, Christian Today kinda pissed me off, recently.
I wrote a blog post a while ago wishing that there was a heaven after death. I don’t think there’s evidence for it, and I don’t believe in it. I wouldn’t want to be there forever — I’d prefer it to be a place I could leave if I got tired of it. And it would be awesome if it were a place were everything made sense, and everyone loved and cared about each other, and…well, a lot of things that are beautiful in my mind. You can read more about it here.
I was a bit worried about how that would come across to atheists, as I’ve heard a lot of atheists say that a desire to go to heaven was nonsense. That’s why I said that this wish that there was heaven was not “atheistically correct.” It had nothing to do with the dictionary definition of “atheism” — that’s nothing more than a lack of belief in God or gods. It had to do with the atheists that I knew in the United States and that I wrote for often. I was saying I didn’t think that my wish that there was a heaven would go over well.
I was wrong, for the record. The article was more well received than I thought it would be. Simon Davis from the Religion News Service contacted me soon after I published the piece to write an article about it, among some other observations about those who had no religion and wanted to (or actually did) believe in heaven. He got one key detail right:
Asked if [Hughes] was ever tempted to believe in the version he described, he said he tried, but ultimately could not: “I found no evidence for it.”
A rather important detail. I think that the evidence points to death being it. That’s important, because it makes it that much more important for me to make the most of my life here on earth.
Which is why I’m a bit disturbed that Christian Today missed that detail, in their determination to show that those without religion embodied a “contradiction.” The article starts:
An atheist who believes in heaven may look like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, there are people who do not believe in God but who do believe in an afterlife.
Atheist blogger Martin Hughes is one of them.
No I’m not. I’m not. I don’t believe in heaven. And I think that’s important, as this is our one chance to pursue understanding and love of our fellowmen, especially the most vulnerable among us. This is it.
So I want to set the record straight.
So far as I know, this is each and every one of our’s last chance to make life beautiful for ourselves and others.
And in a way, it’s better than heaven, because it’s real. I don’t have to worry about having faith or living for what happens after I die. I can embrace it right now.
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
— Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail
This is a post on an ongoing controversy I’ve had with TJ Kirk (The Amazing Atheist). Niki Massey has a good background here.
So, I thought we were done with the TJ Kirk (The Amazing Atheist) drama. Turns out we weren’t. Here’s his latest response, in which he strongly encouraged bloggers not to call him racist.
The most annoying thing in the whole Amazing Atheist debacle is that all TJ Kirk’s fans can see is the fact that I called him a racist. Had I known that he would be so sensitive to being called a racist, I likely would have thought twice. Not because I didn’t think he was racist, and not because my regular audience would not get the point — because they would. Most people who actually read my blog posts did see what I was saying, because they took the time to understand it. No, the reason I would likely have avoided the label is that The Amazing Atheist fans are largely cult-like in their devotion, and all many of them heard in my discussion is that I had dared call their Dear Leader a racist, a statement that so shook their consciousness that they didn’t stick around to hear the much more important reasons as to why.
Here’s the point I want to make absolutely clear. I don’t particularly care whether you label The Amazing Atheist a racist or not. What I’d like to say is that when The Amazing Atheist talks about race, he simply does not know what he’s talking about, and a lot of his fan base doesn’t, either. He’s an ignorant asshole.
And either one of those things is fine. I like ignorant people who will admit that they are ignorant, and I can stand assholes who actually have the intelligence and knowledge to logically back up their condescending tone. But the two of them together is as annoying as nails on a chalkboard.
And this combined with the fact that he is a hypocritical crybaby is grating. I can stand crybabies. Just be consistent about it. But the crybabies who go out of their way to label other people victim cults for hurting their feelings…and hypocritically sets up a victim cult of hundreds of thousands that caters to their every sniffle…. I’m sorry. I don’t get that.
That’s all I have to say, really. When it comes to race issues, he’s really not worth listening to. Atheism? Brilliant, oftentimes. Race issues? Ignorant as hell.
And losing. Yeah, there’s a majority demographic in atheism that is going to validate his echo chamber and fanboy everything he says, but in spite of the fact that he’s attracting them like magnets, the hard fact is that he’s losing, and the people who know what they’re talking about are, largely, not listening to him. And they’re the ones who are going to change things in the long run. I’m not saying he’s Donald Trump…but I’m not the only one who thinks he sounds like him. Like Trump, his ignorant-as-hell fanclub loves him, hundreds of thousands strong, but those who actually know what they’re talking about look at him in embarrassment.
So yeah. That’s really what I have to say. If you’re one of the members of TJ’s personal victim cult of whiners and your attention span has ran out, or you’re too “triggered” to hear another word of critique, you can go to the comment section and praise your Dear Leader without reading the rest of this. Most of you, by your own admission, only have an attention span of reading about this far anyway. You have your insults to go cry about: “Ignorant asshole” and (ironically) “Hypocritical crybaby.” Feel free to whine about it in the comment section all you like without reading more of this.
Now, the handful of you still here, who want proof — I’ll keep writing for you. At least you’re a little better than that. You’re willing to enter into a conversation. So let’s have it. Check out one of the links below or press the “continue” button to go to the first link.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
I was excited to see how Bernie Sanders would pull off the biggest speech of his career.
I think the beginning was strong. He acknowledged our disappointment, and said that he was disappointed, too. He acknowledged an unprecedented 8 million contributions at $27 a piece. He acknowledged that his campaign showed that you can run a campaign without a Super Pac. He acknowledged that the spirit of the campaign, #notmeus, was about issues for all America, not just one person. He said that he would have preferred for it to go differently, as many of us would have. In front of hundreds of crying millenials in the stands who thought he was our future, and millions more off-camera, he got down in the ditches and felt the pain and the hurt and the disappointment with us.
He acknowledged that we have shed tears at his speeches and millions of us who were locked out at the parties Clinton threw for millionaires gave what we had for someone who truly cared about working people.
And then he made the case. Concrete reforms that his campaign had made to Democratic Party platforms. Because a lot of us are cynical. A lot of us think, after putting our heart and soul in a campaign, many of us for the first time ever, because we thought we were doing something revolutionary…that the issues don’t matter. That now we’re expected to blindly follow someone who is antithetical to our values, and what we did before didn’t matter one positive iota. At least, that’s what many jeering Clinton supporters say in my feed.
Unlike most Clinton supporters I’ve heard from, Sanders recognized that his supporters were, largely, not in it for him, personally, but for the principles he represented, and that they thought those principles failed with his inability to get elected. And he showed how voting for Clinton was moving those principles forward, as opposed to merely saying, “Vote for Clinton because she’s not as bad as Trump.” What’s more important, he understood that the best way to get his supporters to act was to validate the fact that the principles they fought so hard for WERE important — that the next step is based on fighting for those principles, long after Sanders is dead and gone.
The revolution continues. Sanders got a lot of it right. Clinton is just another step for it, but it’s not about Sanders. It’s not about Clinton. It’s about working hard for the policies that are best for the American people. It’s not about resigning to cynicism, but fighting for hope.
It’s not about a political candidate. It’s about us.
You didn’t choose the color of your skin. So you shouldn’t have to apologize for it.
And, honestly, it’s insulting to apologize for “privilege” when you worked to get to where you are. You didn’t make excuses. You worked hard to get to where you are — rich or poor — and, likely, would have gotten around as far if you had been a minority. But even if you didn’t — what you did was take the hand you were dealt and play it instead of complaining about it.
Now you’re living in a country with — well, plenty of friends who happen to be minorities, and you tend to get along with them pretty well. Or maybe you are a minority yourself, and everything seems more-or-less fine.
Except for a group of people. The complainers and their comrades. And, honestly, they seem to be looking for a handout — to take away from your life or your dignity, the one you worked hard for with your own blood and sweat.
Yes, you can understand things being a bit more difficult for them. But things are more difficult for everyone, in one way or another. Things are more difficult for you because of your religion, your age, your sex, your tax bracket, your disability, etc. But that does not obligate everyone to personally accommodate you. You were never going to get forward in life if you didn’t take control of your own choices, in spite of those difficulties.
It’s real life. It’s a life that a lot of these liberals don’t understand. They think they’re bleeding hearts or trendy, but honestly their rose-colored glasses and whining ignore the hard fact that the way to succeed is not to go through life with your hand held out, but to move forward and succeed as well as you can. If you want success, you can’t beg for it; you have to have the wherewithal to stand up and take it.
And that’s what so many of these people don’t get. But others, like most blacks. are still are complaining instead of solving the problem. If you think about it, Barack Obama is President of the United States — that’s just one piece of several pieces of solid proof that we are not in the 1960s, as these complaining people pretend to be. And yes, the black prison population is high, and it’s trendy to point out that police officers are arresting black people on the street — but the honest truth is that black people are more likely to kill someone than white people. So the tendency to shoot black people is really, ultimately, black people’s fault. And really, why are they on the street shouting against cops, when this killing really isn’t their OR your problem, because black people do it to each other.
And yet, they are out on the streets trying to get you to feel guilty. How does that make sense? How is that rational? How is that fair?
You did not sign up to be your skin tone or to be born in this culture. You will not apologize for the way you born, and that doesn’t mean that you’re a 1960s racist. It means that, just like every other person, you’re looking out for yourself and helping yourself succeed — which is much more polite to society than the intrusive nature of what Black Lives Matter is doing.
Black people and white people are the same, in your mind. It’s just that each person has to take responsibility for the cards they were dealt and for their own lives. The responsibility for making things better is for each person. And if several black individuals think things are terrible in their communities — instead of marching the streets, maybe they should become police officers. Instead of complaining about poverty, maybe they should work hard and get better jobs. Instead of complaining about bad education, maybe they should take a more active role in their education. Instead of complaining about the criminals in their communities, maybe they should work towards more stable family structures that are less likely to produce criminals. Instead of protesting against police, maybe they should crack down on criminal activity in their own communities. And if they did this, maybe the view of black people would eventually improve.
This is what responsible people do. This is what you do. It has nothing to do with which race is better or worse. It has to do with each group taking responsibility. And the reason black people DON’T succeed as much as they otherwise would is because so many of them don’t take that responsibility. They’re begging for people to cry for them, instead of realizing that the path to improvement is to work on their own success.
You know what I think about all that?
If I’m going to be dead honest, that makes a lot of sense to me. When I was a die-hard Republican, far-right conservative mulling over libertarianism several years ago, I would have agreed with you.
I changed my mind, though, somewhere along the way. And I’ve been trying to think about why.
I’ll start with a confession: I’m racist.
I don’t talk about it that often, but it’s true. I don’t just mean that ironically. I’m black, and I was racist as hell, and it still crops up sometimes. What makes the difference, for me, is admitting it to myself (or when it’s called out and the accusation proves true) and dealing with it. And I usually haven’t realized forms of bigotry I’ve had myself (as a former far-right conservative) until I realized that views I had were getting in the way of facts and friendships and were upheld, surprisingly, by an ignorance that had led to a bigotry or racism. So I worked on changing.
I’ll show you what I mean with a racism I think I finally got somewhat past.
When I was living in Arizona around 15 years ago, there were a lot of undocumented immigrants in Sedona, Arizona, where I lived (that place is beautiful; take a visit sometime), and they happened to be Hispanic. They lived in a trailer park, waiting to be picked up for landscaping or other work. Instead, ready workforce. And I didn’t really care about them, to be honest. They were workers who had come into Arizona to take our jobs, they were illegals, they looked and acted different than me, they…well, I had my share of conversations about how “you know how those they are.” This isn’t to say I didn’t know any Hispanics. My viewpoint wasn’t individual. It was more of a general stereotype. If you were to talk to me then, I would insist it was about undocumented immigrants, not Hispanics, and I’d think that was the truth…but looking back, I have to admit that sometimes I would see Hispanics and automatically assume they fit into a stereotype.
Then I started waiting tables in the nearby city of Flagstaff, Arizona, and worked with some undocumented Hispanic immigrants. They were awesome coworkers. They had families and good friends. Cute kids. Friendly. They were people, trying to do the best they could with what they had. And we had our share of conversations in the break room, me talking fluently, them in their broken English. And as I talked to them, I started to care. At first I just cared about them, but then I began to care about undocumented immigrants more generally. It interfered with my hardcore conservatism…but eventually I began to care about their plight, and then I realized I had been racist. I had seen them as somehow inferior and less important than me. And I didn’t realize that until I was connected to them, worked with them, and became their friend.
Before that, I would have said that them being deported to Mexico was not my problem.
And there’s no really rational way to explain this change. Once it wasn’t my problem, and then I began to care more, and it became my problem. Something I was passionate about, and eventually I was going to be damned if my vote contributed to them losing their livelihood and seeing their family separated and them being forced back into a nightmare of a situation, away from being my friend and coworker in the beautiful mountains and forest of Flagstaff, Arizona. I would fight against it tooth and nail. I cared about people I had not seen as having to do anything with me. And what did it was racism — that whole thought that because someone looked differently than I did and had less status in culture than me, they were unimportant to my life.
And, honestly, the undocumented Hispanic immigrants wanted the support. It’s true you could barrage them for not taking responsibility for their own lives. There’s an argument to be made there, and I made it before I met them. But somewhere along the line, we became close, I simply flipped, and I saw their anger at immigration as something I was angry at, too. When they urged me to care, I suddenly began to feel like I should care, because they were my friends — and how do you not care about whether your friend gets their life ruined and their family torn apart?
Maybe it had to do with depending on them every day I went to work. Recognizing that we were part of a community that had to work together to succeed. Being friends with them and caring about them made the food service go better, resulting in better tips. But more than that, it made for a better work environment, it resulted in deeper friendships, and it gave me a better all-around life that inspired me to look forward to a workday.
But I didn’t have to do that. I could have said their fear of deportation was their problem, and focused on my own life, and let them be my friends or coworkers without looking at the larger issue of possible deportation they constantly faced.
I could have said that I didn’t get ahead based on their help, but solely based on my own wherewithal — my own sense of responsibility. And that they needed to do the same thing.
That option was available to me, too. And if I had done that, I probably still would have seen arguments defending undocumented immigrants as annoying, and resented anyone who urged me to stand up for undocumented immigrants’ rights. But those experience were like a floodlight, showing that they were connected to my goals of making a living for myself, and that reality would have been enshrouded in darkness if I had seen myself as a lone waiter in an every-person-for-themselves environment.
That was a domino effect. When I’ve been prejudiced against a certain group, I eventually got to know them, listened to their concerns, talked to them, debated them, worked with them, etc. until I began to connect with them; they became an important part of how I saw the world and I’ve found, in each case, that they had far more to contribute to my life and society than I thought. It’s how I went from being a hard-core fundamentalist Christian to a hardcore liberal atheist. I kept caring about more and more people and saw how they were connected to me in more and more ways that I hadn’t known about before.
Here’s one thing I realized, too — those undocumented Hispanic immigrants weren’t just fighting for themselves. They were fighting for their families and friends. So it wasn’t enough for them just to make sure they were taken care of as individuals — they had to work to ensure that people heard their concerns so that those they cared about were protected, too. It simply wasn’t something they could do on their own.
And I saw that being neutral wasn’t. Not caring meant they would get treated the same or worse. I cared so much I tried to get other stubborn people to care. And that was when I first started to become a little less conservative, even though I didn’t (and still don’t) know all the correct solutions to what they’re going through. It was a flood of change after that.
It’s how I eventually came to feel about the LGBTQ community, after many experiences and deepening relationships. How I came to feel about atheists, eventually.
When my mother was in a wheelchair for a couple years, I began to feel angry at the way people treated her, as if my mother — full of life — was mentally weak and inferior. It made me care more about how disabled people were treated. Because she couldn’t do it all on her own. There were times when she was on her bed and couldn’t even move.
And I suppose I could have said that she was responsible for her own life — our family could have said that. But the reality was that she needed help — and because of that help, she is now active and works in a gym, and her efforts to continue raising and encouraging us have helped hundreds of thousands of people, by extension.
I remember once, standing in Washington D.C. several years ago with a homeless friend who had grown up on the streets whose mother was a prostitute and who didn’t know who his father was, who had had a hard life all his years, preaching to him about picking himself up by his own bootstraps, and him exploding to me that I didn’t know his life, that people sometimes get broken in all kinds of permanent ways, and crying. And I could have said that he was a victim and to dust himself off and stop crying. But I knew he had been told that many times before, and besides I cared about him, he was my friend, and I knew — from knowing him for a year — that he had great potential inside him. So I began respecting his life, and encouraging him. Eventually he got a job and got off the street. But it took someone to actually recognize his struggle, y’know?
Here’s another story: At my job, I work with a lot of future physicians in a way that allows me to know hundreds of stories regarding how they came to decide to become physicians. And this experience has taught me that many of care about people because of an experience they had or someone close to them had. Maybe they or a loved one was sick, or someone close to them died due to the care they experienced in the hospital. So this medical student is becoming a physician so they can make things better and doing research that will help others heal better. Especially when it comes to the poor and those least able to afford it, in most cases. Again, that’s the inspiration of hundreds of these future physicians I help. And they have the audacity, sometimes, to get others to help them or advocate with them.
No, they don’t HAVE to do this. They don’t have to be physicians. I suppose an alternate philosophy is that if someone’s sick, they’re sick — tough luck if they have to die on the street. You take care of your own health, right? Why can’t someone else take care of their own, as well?
You can have that philosophy. I did, once. But…there are just too many connections I’m seeing between people, and too many people I connect to, since those days as a waiter, or pushing my mother in her wheelchair…for me to think we’re just islands like that.
There’s another way of thinking that seems to make more sense. It sees connections between the pain struggling people experience and the physicians who helped them, that shows them how they can be a physician to help others. And helping others through the eyes of their own pain enables them to help others better; for example, the person who cares for drug addicts because his own fiance — who he loved deeply — died from a heroin overdose is likely to have far better bedside manner than the person who is clocking in and clocking out and doesn’t really care.
I mean, I can see this in my own experience in a hospital. For example, when I was seventeen, I sprained my neck in a self-defense class injury. Here I am, more than a decade later, and the pain still flames up like hell sometimes because the physician I went to for it looked at it for about six seconds, in a rush, said it was a lighter sprain than it was, and left. If he had spent more time, I likely would not have this lifelong annoyance.
Now, I can either have the attitude other people who have similarly sprained necks should struggle as much as I did or worse for the rest of their lives, to build character (because, after all, it’s no one’s problem but theirs). But if medicine worked that way, how much would healthcare really improve?
Or I can have the attitude that I don’t want other people to struggle as I did, and say physicians should look for ways that they can be more thorough in a diagnosis so that someone else doesn’t have as bad of an experience, and has a better life.
Which strategy is better? It seems that if medicine worked with that first strategy, it would eventually make the field of medicine worse and worse. If they worked with the second strategy, people might have more and more positive experiences after getting sprained necks.
It’s the difference between, “I went through a hard time, so you should go through as bad or worse.”
And, “I went through a hard time, so I’ll work to make yours better.”
It seems clear to me that following one consistently will make society worse, and following the other probably make it better.
Here’s the other thing — for me to know about those connections, I had to listen to people who were often not listened to. Yes, I try to represent the opinions of other people every once in a while. But there’s also a lot of value in listening to people who are silenced. I tend to listen to the people who are seen as the victims in society, the second-class citizens, because 9/10, they are contributing members of society. And we would realize how they are contributing members of society and highlight those contributions if we actually listened to them. I’ve found this time and time and time again.
But we can only listen to them if they speak. Like, I can’t speak completely for an undocumented Hispanic immigrant. I can talk about trends, etc. — but I have to give them the mike and let them speak, and to do that, I have to fight against “victim” labels that are often extremely determined to shut them up. I have found, time and time again, that getting to know these individuals, listening, and understanding can show me how I’m connected to them in ways I never thought of before, and help me join with them to make life better.
I speak up as an atheist and as a black man not just to hear myself talk, and not to represent the views of ALL atheists or ALL black men, but because I’m giving a report on what it’s like to be in my position in society that will, I hope, help us in showing how we’re connected — giving us a better blueprint of how to make society better. And I do the same thing for other people. Like, for example, when I was a pro-life atheist. What changed my mind, besides the facts, was actually going on YouTube and watching several videos of women talking about what it was like to have an abortion, and what having an abortion allowed them to do. This opened up a whole world for me that I wouldn’t have seen if I had done what conservatives had told me to do — dismiss the experience the woman had as captive, completely, to a narrative of what the woman was supposedly supposed to do.
But that story is best told by her. My story, as someone who was part of a collection of voices that once silenced such woman, is that this person that many people think is inferior is not, based on my experience — to shift my own conversation and focus in society to help her.
And like I’ve said, I’ve done it in several areas. And it’s not all altruistic. It’s selfish as hell — I want to create a better world for myself and others in my position, and that often means highlighting the ways the people who are connected to me operate so I can work with them to do that. Doing that requires hearing their voices, and honestly expressing the parts of who I am that seem (in my experience) to be a possible asset to the community that people try to silence — such as, for example, being black or being atheist.
You don’t have to listen. But I think that changing the way we look at blackness and look at atheism with concrete experiences can open up concrete ways in which we can improve society. This kind of thing can help us as a society become less bigoted in all kinds of ways.
It’s messy. I’m not talking about following people blindly. I’m talking about studies and data, in addition to concrete experiences. And the studies and date seem clear — there does seem to be racism in this country.
You can live your life in the dark of how this marginalization affects you, and insist on others doing so, too. Or you can decide to join with others and choose to see those marginalized parts of us as part of society. That’s how I try to get past racism, anyway. Not through guilt, but relationships and caring and learning and listening, especially to parts of people that seem most silenced. And who you are intersects with one of those parts — speaking up and telling us what you’re going through, so we can help you back and, together, make the world a better place for all of us.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
And now, this:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKj6PxBCdpM[/youtube]
This is clearly plagiarizing. And yet Trump’s campaign, and everyone affiliated with it, is not doing the usual thing — which is to say a staffer made a mistake, fire the staffer, and move on. Instead, they are making the unprecedented move of denying that it was plagiarism. This is, clearly, extraordinary.
I’ve been scratching my head as to why they’re doing this, and I’ve come up with a somewhat plausible, charitable explanation.
I work at a university for graduate students in the health sciences, and I’m the go-to person to explain to plagiarizers how what they’re doing is plagiarism. I’ve also taught several students, and dealt with a few students who have plagiarized in that role, as well.
Almost all of the students I’ve had interactions with who have plagiarized were not native to the United States, and they were angry at the prospect that they had plagiarized. I’ve noticed that the more high-profile the assignment, the more the student was likely to think that plagiarism was a sign of respect for the assignment. They were so intimidated by the assignment, and so respectful of the assignment, that they thought it would be insulting the assignment to use their own words. So they used words others had used in a similar situation. It may be hard for those entrenched in an American culture with a strong regard for originality to understand, but for these students doing so was not dishonest. It was a sign of respect for the nature of the writing event — a nod to tradition.
Yes, it’s true that on some level they may have thought it was plagiarism. But the higher-profile the assignment was, the harder it was for them to consciously avoid plagiarism, and the more they tended to think that using words borrowed from previous events respected tradition. Again, they did not think of this as cheating. They thought of this as respect. And the more high-profile the assignment was — for themselves and for others — the harder it was for them to do the brainwork required to remind themselves this was plagiarism (something that did not, naturally, feel wrong to them).
When I am assigned to talk to these students about plagiarism (as happens from time-to-time) I prepare myself for what I’m about to encounter. With very few exceptions (and those exceptions were all native American speakers) these students were not repentant, but furiously angry. Here they were, trying to give respect to an important writing event and expecting everyone to be pleased — for them to prove that they respected the rhetorical situation and all those involved in it, to the highest possible degree. For many, it was one of — if not the — most important opportunities to show respect in their lives.
They thought that using the words of others was showing respect to all those who depended on them to do an outstanding job that meshed well with the tradition of that assignment. And by the time they got to me (after being reprimanded, in several cases, by the school) they had already, in many cases, came out of a meeting where the very people they had been trying to impress telling them that they been profoundly DISrespectful of that event — not only that, they had disrespected it in the worst way possible and shown themselves to be embarrassingly incompetent. The anger and frustration and humiliation is hard to overemphasize. So I had to be patient and understanding, trust that they were good people with good intentions, and calm them down if I was going to move past their humiliation and help them avoid plagiarism.
I think this is probably what happened with Melania Trump, for the following reasons:
Melania Trump has been in the United States for about 20 years, but she has not done academic writing for an American university, and has been out of school since about 1990, having dropped out of college at about 18. The likelihood is very high that she is not naturally a strong writer in English, according to conventional American standards, much like much of the people (many of them professionals) I tutor who have been out of school for a decade or more. Add being out of school for so long to no experience at an American school, and you have a situation very similar to those of many international students I’ve run into who have unintentionally plagiarized under the stress of a high-profile writing situation (and in some ways, her situation is even more difficult).
Before the speech, she said she wrote it “with as little help as possible.” If a speechwriter put the plagiarized words in, they would be fired (as former campaign director Corey Lewandowski pointed out). But you can’t fire Melania Trump. So the only way this makes sense, really, is if Melania Trump put the words in.
This is the most high-profile moment of Melania Trump’s life. She’s speaking in front of 40 million people. She’s trying to get her husband elected President. Keynote address of the evening. She had the responsibility of writing much of her own speech. So the anxiety would have been much, much higher than usual to look at past successful speeches, see how well they worked, and use parts of them in order to be sure to respect the event.
There are indications that this was not intentional plagiarism. She did change the words slightly (though they are obviously plagiarized). The majority of the speech was not plagiarized. The only part that was plagiarized came near the beginning, at one of the most important parts of the speech — and again, she did make an attempt to tweak words slightly. In an event like this, if you were doing your own speech, you would likely look at past speeches, too, right? Just to know what the protocol was. She probably did the same, but was not as adept as most native Americans with more experience in school might be at making the sentiments her own. The tweaking is very similar to what I see when a student who has English as their second language and has a different cultural background tries to avoid plagiarism without knowing what, in American culture, plagiarism is.
The denial that this is plagiarism only makes sense if Melania Trump is acting the way most international, ESL students act when I’ve seen them called out on plagiarism. There is a strong tendency to preserve the image they worked so hard to make — to insist they were not plagiarizing (in their minds, often, they were not), to insist the sentiments were their own, and to be thoroughly insulted at the idea that they were incompetent. Remember, the reason for the plagiarizing, and the reason they are often blind to it, is anxiety over their own competence. This insistence would be especially strong after experiencing a moment in which they were successful in their hard-fought goal in front of millions of people.
(5) Would explain why Donald Trump has not yet spoke. His wife does not want to appear incompetent, and the marriage has to appear amicable and strong at all costs. He has to stand with his wife. So he can’t call her out, which means the campaign can’t call her out. But he also can’t come out himself and say that his wife didn’t plagiarize, because that would make him look ridiculous. So he sends out his cronies as the fall guys repeating his wife’s insistence that she didn’t plagiarize, protects his wife, and stays silent on the issue. Making this about Clinton allows Melania Trump to displace her anger (and Trump supporters’ anger) towards the situation onto Clinton, making the husband and wife and Trump supporters an even stronger team.
That’s the theory that makes sense…if we’re being charitable. Again, having seen this play out on a smaller scale, the progression looks strikingly familiar. But we’ll see what happens.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
Last night, a portion of Melania Trump’s (Donald Trump’s wife) speech stated:
From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say and keep your promise. That you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son and we need to pass those lessons to the many generations that follow. Because want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength to your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
Not bad, eh? Nothing wrong there, and for the Trump campaign, not terrible. How did the campaign get such intelligent, strong words?
The answer seems clear. Michelle Obama, back in the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Compare Melania Trump’s words above to Michelle Obama’s here:
And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: like, you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and to pass them onto the next generation, because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.
It’s striking and unmistakingly similar. That wasn’t an accident.
The Trump campaign, however, says there is no similarity. Really? Really?!? That’s a load of bull. And need I remind you that one of the plagiarized phrases was the value “your word is your bond.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
Two days ago, MTV came out with a video that did an excellent job explaining Black Lives Matter. However, if you look at it, you’ll see that it’s downvoted to hell — although it seems like a decent video, it has 24, 084 views and a 75% “dislike” percentage. Visitors may wonder — why? The video actually looks like it’s a helpful, sensible explanation.
For the culprit, you need look no farther than a popular YouTuber named Sargon of Akkad, who downright lies to discredit the helpful video. His video critique, which just came out yesterday, has about 163,000 views as of the time of this writing, and a 97% “like” percentage.
First, the original MTV video discusses the question: Why isn’t Black Lives Matter concerned about Black-on-Black crime?
To answer the question dead on, Francesca (the person in the MTV video) explains that it’s a matter of focus, and that other organizations like Cease Fire are looking into Black-on-Black Crime. The purpose of Black Lives Matter is to eradicate violence from police officers — regardless of their race. It’s a matter of focus. This does not, however, mean that the black community is not concerned about gun violence in its communities — it is. It’s just that the arm of black communities that is Black Lives Matter has a specific goal. If the black community is concerned about gun violence, the question seems pointless — Black Lives Matter is just focused on a subcategory of concern.
Sargon of Akkad ignores this fact, instead stating that the problem is that Black Lives Matter is not concerned about black-on-black crime (ignoring, apparently, that there are black people in law enforcement). But different organizations have different focuses — this is normal. The objection to this is somewhat confusing.
See, what Francesca is doing is showing that criticizing Black Lives Matter for not doing the work of Cease Fire is ridiculous. These are different organizations with different focuses. Good point. And yet, Sargon of Akkad, completely missing the point, continues for the rest of the video criticize Black Lives Matter for not doing that work.
Francesca then stated that black-on-black crime isn’t a thing — meaning that the primary problem is not the skin tone of the people who are killing each other. Her argument for this is that people tend to kill those closest to them, and that black communities cause black people to be in closer proximity to each other. These communities experience institutionalized racism, which causes them to have higher poverty rates, worse education systems, and a higher likelihood of being targeted by police. As a result, the stress in their communities results in more violence. Now, you can say this is wrong all you want, but causes end in effects.
Sargon of Akkad’s outrage over this is somewhat infuriating, because he urges black people to take responsibility for the consequences of other people’s racism. More exactly, he indicates that the poverty, bad education, and targeting by police is primarily black people’s fault. However, if you look at the chicken-egg of this whole thing, racism undoubtedly came first. As we saw in Ferguson, police have generationally marked some primarily black areas as high-crime areas, which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, we have seen police in black communities frame black people for crimes — as in Walter Scott and others. We know they lie TODAY. What it must have been like before cell phone cameras and when racism was worse is infuriating. When you see your close family members shot and imprisoned unjustly on a regular basis, that makes you hate the law. That’s not to say that there are NO just arrests, but our cell phone cameras indicate that there are far more unjust shootings than there should be. And that problem should be fixed by fair policing that still is not happening.
When you are trapped in a place where the police are your enemies, where poverty and racism makes it more difficult to get a job (and yes, racism does make it more difficult to get a job, whether you have a father or not, and poverty makes transportation, dressing for an interview, time you can afford to use to get a job, etc. more difficult), where your education system leaves you at the wayside, it’s no wonder that you’re more likely to commit crime. Admitting that these are problems is not a cop-out. It’s admitting that these are problems so we can fix them. It is profoundly unfair to tell someone who experiences racism day in, day out that they should take responsibility for problems of education, poverty, and police violence they don’t really have control over.
I mean, do you really think that if black people committed less crime than white people, the police would be in their neighborhoods less often? If so, let’s use a test case. Who suffers more from the war on drugs? Black people. Even though white people take drugs at about the same rate. If we want crime to go down, we need to deal with the systemic racism that prevents black individuals from living with dignity in their communities.
Sargon is wrong when he says that we’re blaming this inequality on something that happened 100 years ago. We’re blaming it on things that are happening now. Even the stats that Sargon cites in his article — 10% of married black families live in poverty and 46% of single mother households live in poverty — are significantly higher than the general population, where “in 2014, 30.6 percent of households headed by single women were poor, while 15.7 percent of households headed by single men and 6.2 percent of married-couple households lived in poverty.” There is still an enormous discrepancy, and yet Sargon treats his statistics as if they PROVE that poverty is black people’s fault, when they do nothing of the sort.
Then, when she says that Black Lives Matter are not saying that blue lives matter less, Sargon goes to a clip of a crowd shouting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!”
But this is blatantly dishonest or, at the least, ignorant, because that group was not Black Lives Matter. It was a rogue march at this point, a split-off group from the Millions March in NYC, who released this statement:
On behalf of the Millions March NYC, we express our deepest condolences to the families of the officers who were killed on Saturday. Our march last weekend was a peaceful outcry that senseless violence in our society is harmful to trust, community, and security. This tragedy is in no way connected to our march, or ongoing protests against police brutality, discrimination, and profiling – and we condemn, and are disappointed with any entity that would try to imply such connection. As New Yorkers, we will continue to march for a peaceful society, where trust between communities and law enforcement is finally achieved.
But Sargon didn’t discuss this, because it didn’t fit with his narrative. These was not a Black Lives Matter protest. That Sargon did this is even more infuriating considering the fact that he is able to separate Cease Fire from Black Lives Matter, but is not able to separate Black Lives Matter from a rogue march.
Sargon of Akkad also says that being a police officer won’t be a choice if Black Lives Matter get their way, citing this clip of a woman discussing ways that community-based solutions could replace the police system. So wait a second — Sargon of Akkad (earlier in the video) says that the police system is bonkers in the United States, but doesn’t support an overhaul in the way we go about law enforcement? In addition, this is just one person — the official website says nothing about getting rid of police. And yet, Sargon of Akkad treats this woman as if she represents the entire BLM movement.
Sargon of Akkad then states that most police shootings of black people are justified. Really? I’m not so sure. Other countries have managed to avoid shooting their citizens at the rate the United States does.
I mean, Richmond — which is a fairly active city — managed not to kill nearly as many people when the police tried to get involved in their community. As a 2014 article noted:
A spate of high-profile police shootings nationwide, most notably the killing of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, has stoked intense scrutiny of deadly force by officers and driven a series of demonstrations across the nation and the Bay Area. But in Richmond, historically one of the most violent cities in the Bay Area, the Police Department has averaged fewer than one officer-involved shooting per year since 2008, and no one has been killed by a cop since 2007.
Many observers and police officials attribute Richmond’s relatively low rate of deadly force to reforms initiated under Chief Chris Magnus, who took over a troubled department in this city of 106,000 in 2006. Magnus implemented a variety of programs to reduce the use of lethal force, including special training courses, improved staffing deployments to crisis situations, thorough reviews of all uses of force and equipping officers with nonlethal weapons such as Tasers and pepper spray.
“Our officers are used to dealing with individuals who are dangerous and, often, armed,” Magnus said. “It’s not an aberration — the scary and challenging is routine — and I think that gives them the familiarity to know what level of force to apply.”
So I’m not at all sure that deadly force is necessary in quite as many cases. We also know that police lie in several cases — the few times we’ve caught them have been when someone happened to have a cell phone camera on. And again…places like Richmond show that it is possible to run a police department in a violent area without killing anyone for seven years.
He also blames criminal pasts for black people unable to get a job, when that’s not remotely the case. In fact, as the end of this article notes, studies have shown that black men without a criminal record were as likely to get a job as white men who had just gotten out of prison.
That’s not their fault. That’s racism.
Then he brings up Black Lives Matter as allegedly saying that they want other people dead — which, again, was not an official BLM statement or an official statement of any black organization, and was a statement that was soon apologized for Millions March in NYC even though they had nothing to do with it.
He also states that it’s not hard to find black people who think white lives don’t matter.
True. It’s also not hard to find white people who think that black lives don’t matter, even though he says he hasn’t heard one person say that black lives do not matter.
Here’s one of hundreds of thousands of videos:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac0BxACky5w[/youtube]
But again, that is not Black Lives Matter’s position. It’s a red herring. It has less to do with the video defending BLM than the Neo-Nazi video above has to do with Sargon of Akkad.
He repeats his points, again, about how black people are shot for legitimate reasons. I already discussed that above — police lie, and places as violent as Richmond, California have found out how to avoid killing people for seven years in a row — and somehow police frequently avoid shooting violent white people all the time.
Racism is alive and well, and when people like Sargon of Akkad try to bend over backwards to prove otherwise, they have to use anecdotes and lies. And people want to believe them so badly that they fail to hear Black Lives Matter’s actual message.
It’s a pity that lying YouTubers are handy to help them bury their heads in the sand. Ah, well.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I do.
Oh, here’s the video, if you want to see it without that awful commentary and maybe give it a thumbs-up.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ_0bqWKO-k[/youtube]
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Image via Johnny Silvercloud under CCL 2.0
