Culture:

Reader at Large: September 4–17, 2021

by David Goodman | September 20, 2021
6 min read

Editor’s Note: The Sun’s Reader at Large, a.k.a. David Goodman, dedicates his leisure to reading voraciously and eclectically about politics, government, society, culture and literature. Every two weeks or so, the Sun will post for your pleasure and edification the Reader’s digest (pun intended) of some of the best and most thought-provoking articles, books and podcasts that Goodman has recently enjoyed. Please note that the italicized text is quoted and that some of the linked articles may be in publications that impose a pay wall. Neither the Sierra County Sun nor the Reader at Large endorses all the views expressed in the featured books and articles.

LITERATURE

Harlem Shuffle book coverI have admired and enjoyed (though I always hesitate to use that verb about books on such harrowing subjects) Colson Whitehead‘s novels “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” so I am looking forward to reading (or, more accurately, listening to, since I got the Audible version) his new novel “Harlem Shuffle,” especially after reading Janet Maslin’s review in the New York Times (9/10/21), in which she wrote:

“Harlem Shuffle” brings Whitehead’s unwavering eloquence—at one point he describes traffic as “honking molasses”—to a mix of city history, niche hangouts, racial stratification, high hopes and low individuals. All of these are somehow worked into a rich, wild book that could pass for genre fiction. It’s much more, but the entertainment value alone should ensure it the same kind of popular success that greeted his last two novels, “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys.” It reads like a book whose author thoroughly enjoyed what he was doing.

* * *

Minor Detail book coverApropos of brilliant books on harrowing subjects, I read “Minor Detail” by Adania Sibli and quickly became captivated by this novel set, at first, in newly created Israel in 1949. I heard Sibli (born in Palestine in 1974) interviewed on a “Between the Covers” podcast and found her perspective and her insights thought provoking. The book brought to mind the one of the main themes of “Conflict is not Abuse” by Sarah Schulman (mentioned in my last column): that those who suffer trauma can become its perpetrators on others.

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It may seem too soon for poetry that reflects on a pandemic that is still with us, but fortunately the poet Bob Hicok does not think so. This is an excerpt from his poem “Breathe,” published in the current issue (#28) of the poetry magazine “Smartish Pace”:

Everything we do is rooted in,
is a branch of breath. Some of us are afraid
of breath and I am killed by this new style
of death, distanced and alone. Have you Zoom
funeraled yet? Been a ghost in a box
mourning a ghost in a box? I cry
for those I couldn’t sprinkle soil upon.

* * *

For other bibliophiles who love to give and receive books, I highly recommend “The Gifts of Reading,” a compilation of essays on that topic. Read one or two for a quick reminder (if one is needed) of the joys and insights books bring and of the bonds they create among those who share them.

POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Legislation and Religion

New York Times (9/9/21): “Legislating in the Name of God” by Linda Greenhouse
I could go on with this list [of state officials that openly cite religious reasons for anti-abortion legislation], but these examples are sufficient to raise the question for those of us not on board with the theocratizing of America: Who let God into the legislative chamber? The answer is that we did. Our silence has turned us into enablers of those who are now foisting their religious beliefs on a country founded on opposition to an established church.

* * *

What reason other than religious doctrine is there, really, for turning back the clock on a decision that nearly a half century ago freed women from the choice between the terror of the back alley and the tyranny of enforced motherhood? About one third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup poll, want the court to overturn Roe. And yet, as we saw earlier this month, the right to abortion is already functionally dead in Texas, and its fate may soon be left to the whims of Republican politicians everywhere else. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to call out those who invoke God as their legislative drafting partner.

Texas Abortion Law

Washington Post (9/9/21): “Texas Abortion Ban: Justice Department Sues to Stop Law ” by Devlin Barrett and Ann E. Marimow
“This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one that all Americans, whatever their politics or party, should fear,” said [U.S. Attorney General Merrick] Garland, warning that what he called the “bounty hunter” element of the law may become “a model for action in other areas by other states and with respect to other constitutional rights or judicial precedents.” The U.S. government, Garland added, has a responsibility “to ensure that no state can deprive individuals of their constitutional rights.”

Misguided Cancel Culture on Campuses

New York Times (9/17/21): “An Antiracist ‘Reckoning’ Smears a Good Person’s Legacy” by John McWhorter

In this column, Columbia University professor John McWhorter reflects on the University of Wisconsin’s decision to strip the name of famed actor and UW alum Frederic March from two theater buildings in response to questionable charges that he had been a member of a racist organization in his youth.

I must take one more liberty and venture: That is not the way most of us think, including those of us quite agonized over how to turn a corner on race in America. This witch-burning mentality is something most of us less concur with than fear. These “Crucible” characters (Arthur Miller helps us again) get their way by threatening to shame us the way they are shaming the latest transgressor.

Best Years of our Lives movie still
Frederic March and Myrna Loy in “The Best Years of Our Lives” Source: RKO Radio Pictures

The Atlantic (8/31/21): “The New Puritans” by Anne Applebaum
By contrast, the modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. Yet the values of that online sphere have come to dominate many American cultural institutions: universities, newspapers, foundations, museums. Heeding public demands for rapid retribution [against those accused of violation of or insensitivity to new social norms], they sometimes impose the equivalent of lifetime scarlet letters on people who have not been accused of anything remotely resembling a crime. Instead of courts, they use secretive bureaucracies. Instead of hearing evidence and witnesses, they make judgments behind closed doors.

9/11 Recollections and Reflections

 As did many others, I found George W. Bush’s remarks at the 9/11 memorial ceremonies moving, but I also appreciated Heather Cox Richardson’s  reminder about why we should not lapse into overly fond recollection of him and his advisors.

But even in 2001, that America was under siege by those who distrusted the same democracy today’s events commemorated. Those people, concentrated in the Republican Party, worried that permitting all Americans to have a say in their government would lead to “socialism”: minorities and women would demand government programs paid for with tax dollars collected from hardworking people—usually, white men. They wanted to slash taxes and government regulations, giving individuals the “freedom” to do as they wished.

author

David Goodman is the Sun’s Reader at Large. A lifelong Clevelander, he cannot recall when reading was not his passion. Now retired, the former public finance attorney devotes his mornings to reading. In the afternoons, he reads whenever he can. He also enjoys bedtime reading.

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HAVE YOU SEEN?

Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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