Everyone is Racist

A recent article inthe Atlanta Journal-Constitution reminded me that one of the reasons I started a blog was to address racial issues.  I fear that the more I write about racial issues, the more likely I will be called a racist.  My qualifications for writing about racism and racial politics are that I am the parent of a biracial child and that I have been asked by both black people and white people if I thought they were racist.  I believe that most people perceive me as open minded and not bigoted.  I am a white man who needs to teach his mixed-race son what it means to be a black man in a white man's world.  The place to start is to teach him that everyone is racist.  Some people are openly racist.  Other people may not give racial issues very much thought.  Still other people think they are not racist, or do not wish to be racist.  In our heart of hearts, though, we all think that our own race is superior in some way to the other races of men.  There may be some enlightened individuals who are completely free from racial and ethnic bias, but they are extremely rare.

I believe the teachers who wrote the math worksheets mentioned in the Atlanta Journal Constitution article fall into the category of people who do not give much thought to racial issues.  They did not think through what might happen.  I know from doing market research interviews for textbook publishers that educators value instructional materials that can be used for more than one subject.  The teachers probably came up with the worksheets so that they could use them in history or social studies classes as well as math classes.  Just from reading the article, it seems as though the word problems were not well thought out if the idea was to generate questions about slavery.  The sentences quoted in the article give the impression that whoever wrote the worksheets has a rather flippant attitude about slavery, like they think it is cute to make students figure out how many whippings a slave might receive in a certain period of time.  Without actually seeing the worksheets, a person can get the impression that whoever wrote the worksheets does not take issues associated with slavery as seriously as they should.  That is what happens when you are a person who does not give racial issues very much thought, but has to teach children about racial issues.

Becoming not racist takes a great deal of effort.  It is an effort that must be taken before anyone can hope to teach children to be free of bigotry.  That is one reason we have approval procedures, which the teachers who wrote the math worksheets ignored.

The Columbus Dispatch published my letter to the editor

If you have comments, please post them through the blog.  Thank you.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/01/05/dont-let-politics-divide-facebook-friends.html

Hospitals should not advertise

I heard a story on NPR this morning about how hospitals associated with medical centers have been increasing advertising and marketing themselves more lately.  I have always been irritated with hospitals conducting any kind of advertising.  I doubt that it helps anyone make an informed decision, and it adds to the cost of medical care for everyone.

I believe in a free market, but the provision of medical care is one exception.  Hospitals should not compete with each other.  Advertising will not help us to evaluate which doctor or hospital does a better job of treating a particular condition or providing better care overall.

In a previous post, I proposed the idea that we get rid of health insurance and make the provision of medical care a public service, like police and fire protection.  If a person wants an opinion on which hospital is best for them, they should talk to their doctor.  If they think their doctor is biased because he or she has privileges at a certain hospital, get a second opinion.  I do not see how anyone can get useful information about a hospital from a television ad.  I also have the impression from seeing advertisements for hospitals that they are pandering to hypochondriacs.

Occupy the Schools

I found the Occupy Wall Street movement the most interesting thing about 2011, even though it disappointed me.  It disappointed me because I thought that they would make people aware of the criminal activity in our financial system and the inequality of opportunity that now pervades our society.  Instead, the people who occupied Wall Street and the financial centers of other cities did little more than display a sense of entitlement.

By focusing on the one percent of Americans who have more wealth than the 99 percent of the rest of us, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement failed to convince the rest of us that we need to make profound changes in our financial system and our government in order to restore the equality of opportunity that the authors of the United States Constitution had in mind.  Inequality of income is just a symptom of inequality of opportunity.  Many of us do not have an issue with others having enormous wealth, unless they acquired that wealth by cheating the rest of us.  Occupy Wall Street has said little or nothing about lax enforcement of insider trading laws, and they have said little or nothing about the financial geniuses who rigged the system so that it is harder to tell the difference between investment and speculation.

I thought the Occupy Wall Street movement would try to put pressure on the government to prosecute those who were responsible for the banks having to be bailed out by the government, or at least try to get them fired.  One of my Facebook friends claims that the banks failed because they were forced by the government to give home loans to people who could not pay back the loans.  Neither Occupy Wall Street nor the mass media has addressed this issue.  No one has addressed how the public educational system no longer provides access to opportunity as it once did.  A person who graduates from high school in a wealthy school district has many more college and career opportunities than a person who graduates from high school in a poor school district.  It should not matter whether a person graduates from a rich school or a poor school, but it does.

Occupy Wall Street was correct in protesting on Wall Street instead of protesting at the United States Capitol, because the real power is on Wall Street.  However, it is futile to tell Wall Street that they have too much money and that they should share it with the rest of us.  To bring about change, they need to do much more than complain about how some people have more money than others.  They need to remember that if all of the wealth in America were to be fairly distributed around the world, all Americans would have much less than we do now.  They need to come up with an idea to restructure the tax code so that all schools are equally funded.  If we all receive the same educational opportunities, economic inequalities will be less severe.

Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas

I had a short discussion with a co-worker last week about saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” The conversation got interrupted because we were making phone calls, and had to get on with our work. Some of my friends on Facebook have posted comments along the lines of, “It’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays.”

I have not heard anyone complain about anybody saying Merry Christmas for several years. I even forgot myself for a minute, and wished a Jewish person Merry Christmas yesterday. I understand why the controversy arose. Christmas is the most important day on the calendar for most Christians. People who are not Christians may feel as though Christians are trying to force their beliefs on them by saying Merry Christmas. Since Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and New Years Day all arrive close to Christmas, it makes sense to cover them all and not offend anybody by saying Happy Holidays.

“Happy Holidays” sounds so watered down. It just sounds like a person wants to wish others a Merry Christmas in a Politically Correct way. Christians may feel that they are not giving testimony to their faith if they say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Jesus told us not to judge others, but he also said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but through me.” (John 14:6) He was trying to tell us that we can’t wander into salvation through any old religion. We need a focus, and Jesus came into the world to be that focus. Without a focus, it is easy for us to be led into darkness through false religion.

Those who object to hearing Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas may need to ask themselves if they announce their faith at times of year other than Christmas. We celebrate that Jesus came into the world at Christmastime. His birth was an expression of God’s love. We need to remember Good Friday and Easter. Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday so that we could have our sins forgiven by believing that he endured the crucifixion for us. His resurrection on Easter Day was his greatest miracle. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection were the reasons for Christ’s birth.

So, if you want to insist on Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, ask yourself if you are witnessing and evangelizing the rest of the year.

Worldwide Income Inequality

I admire the people involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement for bringing attention to some serious flaws in our financial system.  One of those flaws is the fact that many people responsible for our current financial problems have not had to face consequences for rigging the system so that they could bet on its failure.  Our system of investment has moved further away from realistic assessments of the productivity or profitability of an enterprise.

One of my Facebook friends works in banking.  He claims that the housing crisis and the financial collapse that followed were caused by legislation that forced lenders to make loans available to people who could not pay the loans back.  Although they have not used the exact words, he and other Facebook friends have made comments that lead me to believe that they think the people occupying Wall Street are operating under a sense of entitlement.

Income inequality is an important issue to address, but I get the impression from some things I read that some members of the Occupy Wall Street movement need to be reminded that no one owes anyone else a job.  Businesses hire people to do jobs because they think they can make a profit from the work that gets done.  If a worker is paid more than the revenue brought to the business as a result of the work done, that worker will not have a job for very long.  Those who protest income inequality in the United States need to consider income inequality worldwide.  Those who claim to be among the 99% in the United States may be among the 1% worldwide.

For many decades, the citizens of the United States have made up a small fraction of the world’s population, but have consumed the majority of the world’s resources.  We take many things for granted while people around the world do without food, housing and medical care.  Improved communication technology is changing that.  Employers can now find workers around the world who are more skillful and reliable than domestic workers, and will work for much lower wages.  This means more profit for businesses that send office work overseas.  As the Chinese economy grows, more people in China can now afford to buy things that they could not afford in the past, such as beef.  A greater worldwide demand for beef will result in higher prices for beef at supermarkets and restaurants in the United States.

Even if those who occupy Wall Street are successful in reducing income inequality in the United States, addressing income inequality and consumption inequality worldwide will mean that we in America will have much less than we do now.  The Arab Spring may result in even higher gas prices.  We forget that dictators in the Middle East made it convenient for us to extract oil from their countries at low prices.  Democratically elected governments in Egypt and Libya may want their fair share of oil revenues.  Overall, we can expect to become poorer as people in other parts of the world become less poor, especially if we continue to think that someone owes us a job.  We have to have skills or products that we can sell in a global marketplace if we want to maintain our current standard of living.  Advances in communication technology will give us the chance to do that, but will also give a chance to everyone else in the world.

Invest, Don't Protest

The Occupy Wall Street movement is as historical as the movements that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the protests at Tiananmen Square, because instead of taking their protests to the United States Capitol, citizens are taking their complaints to the place where decisions about money are made.  They know that our government is unable to help them.  They acknowledge that our elected representatives are puppets of Wall Street.

I ask the people occupying Wall Street to look deeper.  Wall Street is a puppet, too.  Wall Street is merely one component in the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.  President Kennedy also warned us about a monolithic conspiracy.  Taylor Caldwell wrote a novel about an international cabal that controls our lives.  I am now starting to wonder if this vast complex devised a powerful system to control trading and banking that is now out of control. 

If Occupy Wall Street wants to correct the abuses of our financial system, I suggest that they use their organizational skills to get people to pool their money to invest.  Wall Street will not listen to protests in the park.  They will listen to how shareholders vote for board members.  If we want our media to give us real news instead of celebrity gossip, we need to elect enough directors to the boards of media corporations to make that happen.   If we want to make sure that pharmaceutical companies are not sitting on patents for lifesaving drugs, we need to organize with each other to put enough money together to buy enough shares of pharmaceutical companies to elect directors to the board.  If we don’t want a manufacturer to ship jobs overseas, we need to own enough of that company to make them keep the jobs here.

If corporations are our government, getting involved in public life means owning a piece of Corporate America and getting our neighbors to do the same.  We also need to organize boycotts of privately-traded firms if they do harm to the social good.  The boycott of one bus company helped end racial segregation on public transportation throughout the United States.  We can influence policy with how we decide to use the few dollars we have.  Getting more directly involved in the financial world may be the only effective way to uncover and correct the shadowy forces that control our government and our financial system.