perfidy

Mike, it occurs to me that the one arena where your argument about class being more important to Americans than race is affirmative action. I was partially mistaken in arguing the contrary, and I apologize. 

In fact, affirmative action illustrates your point perfectly. If it weren't for class, AA would not be as widely considered as necessary because class-derived performance issues (including those attributed to the legacy of segregation, i.e. race) would be less of a concern. In fact, I remember writing something to that effect a while back, so I am doubly remiss in contradicting you. 

Ahhh... here it is. On April 1, I wrote (slightly edited):

[W]ithout dismissing several hundred years of history and systematic repression, there are many social, cultural, economic, and geographic factors aside from race that determine how a child's education goes. [In fact], affirmative action stands in its own way [by focusing the discussion solely on race rather than other related matters]. Now, when we want to talk about race-based issues in education, we talk about affirmative action. Unfortunately, AA doesn't even address the [real educational questions attributable to lingering racial issues]. 

For example, take the high incarceration rate among young black men. A felony rap means not being eligible for federal student aid, a Clinton policy that cut off a large swath of society from easy access to higher education. Affirmative action can't touch that, though it's partly a race-based education issue. It's my sense that economic factors influence more about a person's educational path than does race, yet colleges do not consider economics[ that is, class differences] when deciding admissions policy. . . . Public schools are in [deep trouble] all over the place, and students advance grades without learning basic skills. Affirmative action can't compensate for that either, even though that's what it was meant to do. Instead, the debate remains narrowly confined [and cuts] the real problems out of the picture.

Calpundit asks a very good question.

Every time there's a big trial the media names it the "Trial of the Century." But it occurred to me the other day that now that the 20th century is over, we should be able to decide which trial really was the Trial of the Century (American version). Leopold and Loeb? Sacco and Vanzetti? The Lindbergh baby kidnapping? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? The Chicago 7? Patty Hearst? OJ?

A reader also mentions the Scopes trial, which would probably get my vote, and I would have to add in more: the Debs trial; Nuremberg (though a military tribunal); Roe v. Wade. 

The problem with choosing just one trial of the century is that all the standouts are so iconic, and for different reasons. Anti-communism. Xenophobia/Anti-immigrant sentiment. Racism. Anti-Semitism (repeatedly). Class. Culture. Morality. The damn anarchists. If nothing else, an interesting mind exercise which illustrates what you believe to be the single dominant theme in 20th century US-weighted history. 
 

Upon discussions with Goodwife Two-Cents (who knows about such things), I find I was wrong about something yesterday (no!). While I was correct that public libraries generally do not receive operating money from the Federal Government, they do receive lots of Federal funding in the form of grants. That's how they buy computers. With library budgets slashed to the bone, libraries have two options to buy new computers for patron and administrative use: federal grant money, or Bill Gates' largesse. The first comes with strings attached, the other is rather rare. As a result, the Supreme Court's decision yesterday to uphold the CIPA will have an immediate, and unfortunate, effect on public libraries.

Well, I had an extended post on the subject and I lost it. I'll be brief. First, I'll reiterate my intense hatred for Noel Ignatiev and his so-called book that is really a big pile of crap. Second, whiteness studies, including Noel Ignoramus', argue that the Irish were racially distinct in Anglo-Saxon America and then tried to become white. Really? All the Irish Americans in all of America all got together at a meeting and voted unanimously to become white? In order to do so, they also voted to hate African Americans and be mean, evil, racist, awful terribly people. Where are the minutes of that meeting? There was no meeting. Irish Americans, like every other ethnic group, have simply wanted better for their children than they had. That's it. End of story. I've touched on this in previous posts so I won't belabor it here. I'll just say this. Sure. Members of the Irish-American ethnic group have, and some still do, prejudged others. But other ethnic groups are exempt from this? Hardly. In a previous post I wrote that my mother used to tell me that there's good and bad in all kinds, and that most American ethnic historians weren't paying attention if their mother told them the same thing. 

Thus, whiteness studies are another way for the IT to browbeat Irish Americans. They decided to become white by hating African Americans. They are evil horrible people. 

Oh, go sit on your Ivory Tower and spin. 
 

This is why the rest of the country thinks we're a joke. From Reason's blog:

"Accessibility for all is very important," says the Web site for the town of Shutesbury, Massachusetts. "Please remember all public events in Shutesbury are fragrance free." 

If you are wondering what "fragrance free" means, there's a helpful explanation here from Ziporah Hildebrandt, chairperson of Shutesbury's ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) Committee. If you're planning to go to a select board meeting or visit the public library during Fragrance Free Hours, you should

shower beforehand using baking soda instead of soap and shampoo. Baking soda effectively removes many odors. Change into clothing that has not been dry cleaned or laundered with scented products, especially fabric softeners, and has not been around smoke or fragrances. Rinse contaminated clothes with baking soda. Dry without additives. Wear a hat to contain residual odors from hair products. Wear an uncontaminated shirt over your other clothing. Depending on the event, these measures may be sufficient. Ask others present if your clothing, hair, etc. is a problem. Leave if you cause discomfort to others, or sense that your presence may be a problem. Remember: "An ounce of prevention!" Planning ahead to be free of scents is the easiest and best solution.

The connection between accessibility and fragrance freeness is "multiple chemical sensitivity," a syndrome that, according to Hildebrandt, makes its sufferers vulnerable to "extremely upsetting symptoms as well as irreparable damage" from "just one whiff of many chemicals." Combine this contention with the logic of the ADA, and we may all be forced to go fragrance free one day--not just in government buildings but in any business identified as a "place of public accommodation." Since "just one whiff" is reportedly all it takes to cause "severe pain, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, respiratory distress and other symptoms," separate sections for the fragrant will not cut it.

Jesus. Good think I had my underarms botoxed, or I'd be a damn pariah! 

FYI, Shutesbury is a small town about fifteen miles north of Amherst, a pretty cool little place like you find in that area where farmers and hippies can coexist in peace. Entertainingly, Shutesbury is governed by selectmen and open town meetings. Question: can barring citizens from town meetings on grounds of fragrance be construed as violating the 24th Amendment? (Probably not, but it's still not right.) 
 

In regard to my post this morning on the Supremes upholding the Children's Internet Protection Act, I have to ask... if the Court is leaving it up to "community standards" to determine what gets filtered from library to library, what is the point of upholding the law in the first place??

I thought I'd pull this out of the comments section. Thanks to Windy City for the opening volley.

WINDY CITY MIKE: I've spent so much time pointing out the flaws in whiteness with my departmental compatriots that I''d rather not rehash it now. But I'll go on record to say that it''s wrong, stupid, and just another way for historians of ethnic America to brow-beat Irish-Americans, except that everything they say about Irish-Americans is wrong. Race isn't really the big divider in the U.S. It's actually class. Aside from Japanese Americans during WWII, who hates Asians? Seriously. Do people with prejudices fear African-Americans wearing a three-piece suit, carrying a briefcase, and speaking into a cell phone? No. Propagators of whiteness are only trying to deflect attention from themselves because they are members of the middle class or better. That's the group that really has all the privileges they attribute to "whites." White is not an ethnic group. I say to Noel Ignatiev, Matthew Frye Jacobson, and this professor at UMass, get your head out of your ass.

JOHNNY TWO-CENTS: Mike, I disagree. Although class is a powerful, and unheralded, divider in the USA, race still exerts a powerful undertow. Also, despite the great class consciousness shown in the Gilded Age and first part of the 20th century when Frick, Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Morgan formed a brotherhood and the mill workers formed one in opposition, the middle of this century all but wiped out the working-class unity of spirit that I think you would agree is necessary for a true class consciousness. The proud man in overalls was replaced in American iconography by the man in the gray flannel suit, and the so-called working classes have never quite made it back to that status, except on a local scale. However, race retains its power to divide and unite long after the worst abuses took place. To take an easy example, why do you think "In The Heat Of The Night/They Call Me Mr. Tibbs!" is still such a good film? Because it plays upon the mistrust of middle-class African-Americans (suit, briefcase) by certain white Americans. If viewers of the film can't all necessarily agree with that prejudice, it is still familiar enough to resonate with most if not all American viewers. 

When whipped up by demagogues, race can still trump class. Although empirically I agree that people really differ and unite more along class lines, the perceived power of race (what certain marxians would call a "false consciousness') is greater. Long after racial inequality/discrimination/awareness has been minimized, the spectre of race will linger. 

As for whiteness studies, it is of limited usefulness. A few excellent books and articles have been written on the subject that avoid navel-gazing and total self-indulgence, but as I said, the field lends itself so easily to abuse, indoctrination, and dogmatism that it is a dangerous petard to hoist. To coin a phrase. Petard... is that even a word? (Yes, yes I know...)

In closing, I just want to say to you, Mike, that from what I have seen you are 110% correct in characterizing most "whiteness" studies practitioners as having ulterior motives. I do think there's more to it than class, though, namely the famed and notorious white liberal academic guilt we hear so much about these days. Having taken classes in which "whiteness" was a topic of "learning" (enough with the "scare quotes," Johnny!), I can report that class, politics, and race all come together in one big ball of squishy, soggy pointy-headed guilt. 

Finally, what an amazingly provincial concept, "whiteness studies" is! Made by US historians and US cultural theorists for the study of US History by specialists in US History. A bit of a tempest in a teapot, if you ask me. Or at least it should be.

Mike, I'm interested to get from you sources in which whiteness is used to set the Irish apart racially (as opposed to culturally or ethnically) from the rest of society. I'm familiar with "How The Irish Became White," but nothing else.

Ross of Spiral Dive thinks we don't post enough. Well, hard cheese.