1968 - PART 3: ECONOMICS AND SOCIOECONOMICS

Detroit's black middle class emerged from 1968's upheaval

John Gallagher, USA TODAY NETWORK – Detroit

Before 1968, America’s small African-American middle class operated mostly in a segregated world.

Black-owned funeral homes, pharmacies, restaurants and clubs served a mostly black clientele in

neighborhoods like Detroit’s Black Bottom, soon to be razed for "urban renewal" — decimated like many

others by new freeways.

Many college-educated blacks were able find jobs only in a few places open to them, such as the post

office. When Ford Motor Co. was asked in 1963 to list its white-collar occupations open to African-

Americans, it had to include service jobs such as valets, porters, messengers and mail clerks just to have

any at all. Blacks then at Ford were relegated mostly to the worst dead-end jobs in assembly plants.

But after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and the report of the Kerner Commission on

urban unrest, America began, slowly and painfully, to offer more opportunities to people of color.

Yet, a white backlash grew along with the greater opportunities for African-Americans. In another

momentous change wrought by 1968, the white working class began to drift to the right politically, with

enormous implications for the nation's political scene that resonate today.

No place did the struggle for opportunity and the backlash against it play out more dramatically than in

Detroit.

Among those who witnessed it all was the Rev. Doug Fitch, a black Methodist pastor from Los Angeles

known for his ministry to the Black Panthers. He was recruited in 1968 to help run the Detroit Industrial

Mission, a task force designed to open up auto industry jobs to African-Americans.

“Often, those who were poor were relegated to the very dirty jobs,” Fitch, now 81, said recently. “They

were on the assembly line, but they were not in the organization as managers."

Industry responds to Kerner report

During that dramatic year, some of Detroit's corporate elite, including Henry Ford II and financier Max

Fisher, mandated more opportunities for blacks in industry, including Detroit's many auto plants. Some

civic leaders sincerely believed change was needed, while others cynically referred to such affirmative

action programs as "buying riot insurance" in hopes it would tamp down black resentment.

Not everything changed, by any means. Schools and housing patterns in Detroit would remain segregated

for decades. But over time, Fitch said, more economic opportunities opened up for African-Americans,

from the factory floor to professional offices.

"What happened is that corporations began to think seriously about new employees coming into their

business that would change the face of that corporation," Fitch said. The face of work began to “look a lot

like us.”

Statistics bear out that a new black middle class was emerging. Historian Thomas Sugrue notes in his

book Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North that in 1960 the entire

state of Michigan had just 324 black doctors, 142 black lawyers, 201 black engineers and 95 black college

teachers. Those numbers rose dramatically in the years after 1968. By 1990, black doctors in Michigan

numbered 1,076; lawyers, 1,178; engineers, 2,658; and professors, 1,509.

Yet it remained a tense time. Rod Gillum, later a vice president and senior member of General

Motors' legal staff and chair of the commission that built the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in

Washington, grew up in northwest Detroit in the 1960s at a time when a distinguished legal career for an

African-American youth remained unusual at best.

Gillum remembers vividly how it felt to grow up black in Detroit in 1968. At the time, he had a job at the

Northland Mall in suburban Detroit, where as a black youth, he stood out among the mostly white clientele.

“You would pause a little bit, look over your shoulder, because you’d have some concern,” he said. “That

was just the reality, that was your normal. You always wondered how others kind of viewed you at that

time; and then with the death of Dr. King, whether they viewed you with some trepidation or they viewed

you with more of a welcome. But that was your normal as a teenager.”

During the civil disturbances of 1967, which in Detroit left 43 people dead, President Lyndon B. Johnson

named Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner to head a 12-member advisory panel on civil disorders. The famous

Kerner Report, issued on Feb. 29, 1968, found that black resentment of white racism fueled the unrest.

In its most famous passage, it warned: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white —

separate and unequal."

Gary Gilson, a broadcast journalist, documented black resentment during the five months he spent in

Detroit in late 1968 and early ’69 filming Do You Think a Job Is the Answer? His documentary was about

efforts by Detroit industry to integrate more African-Americans into the workforce. It ran on public

television in March 1969.

Driving around Detroit, Gilson saw long lines of blacks lined up outside a movie theater. Puzzled, he

stopped to look into it. They were there to see The Battle of Algiers, a film about Algerians rebelling

against French colonial rule by organizing themselves into secret cells to defeat the occupying French

authorities.

“There’s no way that the cops can crack that secrecy,” Gilson said recently. “Well, all these people were

lining up to learn this! It was a symptom of what was the mood of the town. Resentment that so many

black people felt toward the police was one of the major issues in town.”

President Johnson's administration rejected the Kerner Report when first issued. But when King was

murdered just weeks later in Memphis, at least some white Americans began to take the concerns of black

America more seriously.

Sugrue, a professor at New York University, said the dramatic events of the year demonstrated the need

for real change.

The streets of Detroit during the 1967 riot.

TONY SPINA, DETROIT FREE PRESS

“The long hot summers and the 1960s all

the way up through the riots that

accompanied the assassination of Martin

Luther King Jr. in April 1968 sent a very

strong signal to government and to civic

elites, particularly in riot-affected cities, that

they needed to address the grievances and

concerns of African Americans,” he said.

But as more opportunities began to open

up for African Americans, the white

backlash grew, too.

Backlash, then flight

In the presidential race that year, the winner, Republican Richard Nixon, running on his law-and-order

message, and independent George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, together garnered

57% of the national popular vote, while liberal Democrat Hubert Humphrey took just 43%.

Holding Michigan for Humphrey that year became a major goal for Detroit union leader Walter Reuther,

president of the powerful United Auto Workers and a national leader of progressive liberalism.

In 1968, Reuther faced criticism from within his own union, both from angry African-American members

who had formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement to demand greater opportunities for blacks,

and from resentful white autoworkers resisting black progress.

As Reuther biographer Nelson Lichtenstein writes in his book The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,

Reuther confronted that growing opposition during one visit to a UAW town hall meeting featuring a

Wallace-friendly crowd. Attempting to respond to a white woman's question, Reuther addressed her in

union vernacular. "If the sister will sit down, I'll explain that," and the woman shot back, "Don't you call me

a sister!"

For the legendary Reuther, who had led sit-down strikes in the 1930s, survived beatings and

assassination attempts, and negotiated landmark contracts for his members after World War II, the rebuke

from his own ranks was stunning.

Sensing his UAW members drifting toward Wallace with his angry anti-Washington message, Reuther

poured huge resources into saving Michigan for Humphrey. As a result, Humphrey carried Michigan that

year and Nixon and Wallace did several percentage points poorer than their nationwide averages.

But the writing was on the wall. "It was the last heyday of labor liberalism," said Lichtenstein, a professor of

history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It sent this jolt across the liberal labor leadership

that this whole world was turning against them. They saved the day (in Michigan), but it was an auger for

what would happen in the future."

Many whites already believed that the equal

opportunity movement was pushing too

aggressively for change. White flight to Detroit's

suburbs became a flood, ultimately costing the

city of Detroit more than half its population. White

discontent fueled calls for more law and order

and more aggressive policing in cities in

particular.

Within a few years after 1968, the rightward shift

of working-class whites was obvious. A key

moment came in 1970, when hard-hat

construction workers attacked anti-war

demonstrators in New York City. In January

1971, producer Norman Lear launched his iconic All In the Family TV show with Archie Bunker as the

stereotypical working-class bigot. Labor and liberalism were no longer synonymous.

Historian Sugrue notes, "urban unrest in the 1960s was decisive in pulling working- and middle-class

whites rightward politically. … Recall that even Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t have the support of a majority

of whites north or south by the time he was assassinated in 1968."

The rightward shift of white workers has been evident since, with the importance of "Reagan Democrats,"

epitomized by suburban Detroit's Macomb County, key to the 1980 presidential election — and the same

cohort helping Donald Trump win the state in 2016.

The opening of more opportunities for African-Americans and the white backlash against it were only two

of the ways the year 1968 changed the American economic scene.

Years of debt-fueled government spending on both the Vietnam War and Johnson's Great Society

programs started inflation bubbling by 1968.

From a modest 2.8% inflation in 1967, overall prices jumped 4.3% in 1968 and 5.5% the following year. In

a few short years, that inflation would soar all but out of control, hitting 11.1% in 1974, worsened by the

OPEC oil embargo of the mid-'70s.

In the years that followed, recession marked by waves of corporate and personal defaults and

bankruptcies shattered the American sense of economic security.

It was the twin threads of black opportunity and white backlash that most dramatically changed America in

1968. It's those threads that still underlie much of the unrest and culture wars in America today.

T r i b e s C r e a t e T h e i r O w n F o o d L a w s t o St o p U S D A Fr o m K i l l i n g N a t i v e F o o d E c o n o m i e s

Jacob Butler checks on grapes in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian

Community garden. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

From blue corn to bison, narrow federal food-

safety codes impact tribal food systems. But

advocates are writing their own food laws to

preserve Native food sovereignty.

BY TRISTAN AHTONE MAY 24, 2016

SALT RIVER PIMA-MARICOPA INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. – Jacob Butler eyed a lemon tree—its

bright yellow fruit nestled among thick green leaves and set against the blue Arizona sky—then

checked on the tiny pomegranates and grapes in the garden as a black-striped lizard darted into the

shade of a mesquite tree. In the distance, downtown Phoenix glittered under the rising sun.

”Our garden is a platform to perpetuate our culture.“

“We try to grow what’s been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” says Butler, the Salt River

Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden coordinator, as he surveyed the land and the plants

growing on it. “For the past 13 years we’ve been doing this, so it’s in the minds of the people now.”

Traditionally, Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew lima beans, squash, corn, and other

vegetables; used mesquite trees for food, medicine, and other practical purposes; and relied on wild

game for food. Today, about 12,000 acres of their reservation are used for industrial farming—cotton,

alfalfa, potatoes, and other commercial crops—but, in the garden where Butler works, agriculture isn’t

a financial boon: It’s a way to strengthen and cultivate culture.

“What are the stories that go along with this tree? What’s the story we tell that says when squash

came to the people or corn came to the people? What are the songs that go with those things?” says

Butler. “That’s what we incorporate here: Our garden is a platform to perpetuate our culture.”

According to Butler, tribal members once cultivated myriad varieties of beans, squash, and melons.

Now, many of those crops have become extinct and their stories lost, and losing other heirloom foods

would have irreversible effects on cultural practices.

Indigenous communities have been sustained by thousands of years of food knowledge. But recent

federal food safety rules could cripple those traditional systems and prevent the growth of agricultural

economies in Indian Country, according to advocates and attorneys. Of the 567 tribal nations in the

United States, only a handful have adopted laws that address food production and processing.

Without functioning laws around food, tribes engaged in anything from farming to food handling and

animal health are ceding power to state and federal authorities.

To protect tribal food systems, those advocates and attorneys are taking the law into their own hands,

literally, by writing comprehensive food codes that can be adopted by tribes and used to effectively

circumvent federal food safety codes. Because tribes retain sovereignty—complicated and

sometimes limited though it may be—they can assert an equal right with the federal government to

establish regulations for food handling.

Recent federal food safety rules could cripple those traditional systems.

“Tribal sovereignty is food sovereignty, and how do you assert food sovereignty?” says A-dae

Romero-Briones, a consultant with the First Nations Development Institute, an economic

development organization. “You do that through a tribal code.”

Food codes and laws are basic legislation governing agriculture and food processing. Food codes are

good things: They are designed to protect consumers from products that could make them sick or

even kill them, as with a national salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter in 2008, and, more

recently, E. Coli outbreaks at Chipotle restaurants in 11 states.

Since 2011, food laws have become tougher, thanks to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA),

the first major rewrite of U.S. food-safety laws in more than 50 years. Under FSMA, producers must

take into account everything from the packaging and refrigeration of products to how crops are grown,

all in the name of safety. These safety controls raise interesting questions in Indian Country.

Traditionally Pima and Maricopa tribal members grew lima beans squash corn and other vegetables. Today about 12000 acres of their reservation are used for industrial farming. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

In many Native communities, for example, access to

certified kitchens and state-of-the-art facilities is slim

to nonexistent. That means producers often must rely

on traditional knowledge to make foods that are safe

for consumption. One example, says Romero-Briones, is blue corn products.

“That’s an industry that has existed for generations,” she says. “But if you want to produce it or

process it in traditional fashions, you’re probably not going to be able to do that because you’re going

to have to do it in a certified kitchen.”

Under FSMA, tribal food economies face two options: Assimilate by complying with federal law or

keep tribal food products confined to the reservation.

“It’s one thing to say that we have to develop food and process food in certain ways, but it’s another

thing to recognize that tribes have their own versions of food safety,” says Romero-Briones. “Tribes

have been developing food economies for thousands of years.”

Another example of how traditional foods are impacted is buffalo slaughter. Dozens of tribes from the

Dakotas to Oklahoma are engaged in buffalo management and harvesting. But those hoping to get

buffalo products into markets outside of tribal communities often face big hurdles. ”Tribes have been developing food economies for thousands of years.“

Buffalo, for example, is considered an exotic animal under federal guidelines, says Dan Cornelius,

with the Intertribal Agriculture Council. And that has repercussions when it comes to what the federal

government will support.

“For domestic animals, USDA will pay for the cost of that inspector. For exotics, they don’t,” Cornelius

says.

Inspections can run as high as $70 an animal, and all buffalo products must be processed in an FDA-

approved facility. By implementing food codes, tribes could find alternative ways to getting buffalo

meat inspected and processed. Cornelius says building an infrastructure that lowers costs would

allow buffalo meat to get to market faster.

“Ultimately, is it a safe process? If it is, then how can you develop a tribally specific provision that still

is ensuring a safe and healthy food but is addressing that barrier where there is a conflict?” he says.

So how do 567 different tribes with 567 different traditions, needs, and goals go about writing food

codes specific to their cultural heritages? They call a lawyer. Specifically, Janie Hipp, director of the

Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, a legal think tank at the University of Arkansas.

Hipp, a former senior advisor for tribal relations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says her office

has already received dozens of calls from tribal governments about food inspection and how to get

tribal products off reservation and into other markets.

One area of concern has been general food safety. With the passage of FSMA, laws governing how

food is grown, processed, and handled are changing rapidly.

According to Hipp, tribal governments need to respond, not only to protect their own producers, but

also to protect their own existing food production systems. Jacob Butler in the seed bank. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

Intellectual property is another priority. Many

tribes have specific, traditional uses for seeds,

crops, and livestock, and, without laws to

protect a tribe’s unique use of a particular plant

or animal, a corporation could trademark and

commercialize that product—anything from

Wojapi, a Lakota dessert made from berries, to

Piki, a traditional Hopi bread made from cornmeal.

“Having nothing on the books is not an option anymore,” says Hipp. “Regardless of whether it’s a

commercialized product or a traditional and very sheltered and protected product, the law needs to be

robust in that area.”

The development of tribal food codes isn’t a copy-and-paste job, though. It’s more of a choose-your-

own-adventure situation where newly written laws can be adopted, then tweaked to an individual

tribe’s needs. As portions of the code are written, they’re made public so tribal governments can start

adapting them. So far, Hipp says the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative has had more than a

dozen meetings with tribes.

”Are we putting our seeds at risk?”

“I don’t think it does anybody any good for us to just sit and bake it up for three years,” said Hipp. “We

would prefer to roll things out, get in touch, modify, have it be a more organic process than to just

have everybody sitting outside the room waiting for the release.”

Back at the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community garden, Jacob Butler pulled a brown paper

bag off a shelf. He dipped his hand into the bag and produced a fistful of white pea seeds. Most of the seeds in the seed bank are heirlooms with genealogies stretching back hundreds of years. YES! photo by Tristan Ahtone.

“My generation and generations before me, we

all went to school outside of the community,”

says Butler. “None of us really got taught our

culture directly at home because our parents

were taught that it was a detriment to our

success.”

The seed bank is currently housed in a janitor’s closet with brown paper bags, plastic bottles, and

glass containers full of pinto-striped runner beans, amaranth, basil, luffa, corn, and dozens of other

seeds. But Butler says he has concerns for their future.

“For me, it’s cross-contamination with [genetically modified] seeds,” he says. “If this was to become a

bigger enterprise, where we were growing traditional foods for sale, then are we putting our seeds at

risk?”

Most of the seeds are heirlooms with genealogies stretching back hundreds of years, and Butler says

one of his next projects is to meticulously catalogue every item in the bank for future Pima and

Maricopa farmers.

“There are kids that have grown up being a part of this program that know right off the bat, ‘Oh hey,

that’s a Keli Baasho or a muskmelon,’” Butler says as he looked around the shelves. “That word Keli

Baasho means ‘old man’s chest,’ so they’re associating that melon with language.”

With food and culture so intimately intertwined and vital to the survival of Salt River, the tribe has

some big ideas to consider when it comes to the future of agriculture: Will it be commercial or

traditional? What constitutes organic? How will the few remaining heirloom crops be protected from

GMO contamination? Will Pima and Maricopa crops be sold, and, if so, how will they be kept safe for

consumers? Salt River has yet to decide on those issues, and Butler says adopting a comprehensive

food code would start the process of strengthening the tribe’s future: Native people growing native

foods, protected and guided by native laws.

“It’s a conversation we should be having,” says Butler. “People are wanting to see change.”

TRISTAN AHTONE is an award-winning reporter and a member of the Kiowa Tribe. He serves as associate editor for tribal affairs at High Country News and is president of the Native American Journalists Association.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/04/we-should-all-be-concerned-about-the-student-debt-crisis.html

We should all be concerned about the student debt crisis

PUBLISHED MON, NOV 4 2019 8:00 AM ESTUPDATED MON, NOV 4 201910:01 AM EST

Patrick B. Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners

Alys Tomlinson | Cultura |

Getty Images

Many Americans are still

recovering from the 2008

financial crisis. Almost

everyone knows someone

who lost a job, their

retirement savings or even

a home in its aftermath.

While the effects of the

Great Recession were felt

throughout the economy, its main cause can be traced back to subprime lending in the mortgage

industry.

In the early to mid-2000s, lenders introduced risky products such as zero-down home loans and

payment-option adjustable-rate mortgages, which enabled borrowers to take on more debt than they

could afford. Lax lending practices led to increased demand and skyrocketing home prices.

When the housing bubble burst and sent home prices plummeting, it set off a chain of defaults that

snowballed into a recession. This cautionary tale of risky lending, ballooning debt and market

speculation should be a clear warning of looming perils in the student loan industry.

Higher education is increasingly considered a necessity, and today’s young people are often encouraged

to borrow to cover the costs. With approximately $1.4 trillion of outstanding debt, student loans are

now the second-largest category of household debt in the U.S., trailing only home loans. Many of these

loans are guaranteed by the federal government, the largest student lender in the U.S., so all American

taxpayers have a stake in this issue.

As tuition and fees continue to increase at both public and private institutions, students’ debt loads are

rising along with them. Over the past 20 years, college costs have grown at over three times the rate of

inflation. The result: 70% of college graduates have student debt, with the average borrower owing

more than $37,000 at graduation.

WATCH NOW

VIDEO01:42

This college student had to choose: Go to class, or go to work so she can afford to eat

Unfortunately, many students take out student loans without a clear understanding of the

consequences. Choosing a college is a major decision, and some parents encourage their children to

attend the best school they can, regardless of cost.

Many students aren’t worried about taking on debt, reasoning that they’ll be able to easily pay it back

after they graduate. With readily available student and parent loans, obtaining financing is as easy as

filling out a few financial aid forms.

Much like the mortgage industry before the housing crisis, lenders are extending credit to students

without fully weighing their ability to repay the debt. This is particularly true with federally-guaranteed

Stafford loans.

While some students choose majors that make it more difficult to pay back their loans, others leave

school without completing a degree. In fact, approximately 40% of students who pursue a bachelor’s

degree do not graduate in six years. That percentage is much higher among those who attend private

for-profit schools.

Experts believe that student loan defaults have the potential to adversely impact the U.S. economy,

which could trigger another recession.

Patrick Healey

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF CALIBER FINANCIAL PARTNERS

Both nonprofit and for-profit institutions are eager to enroll students, but many borrowers, especially

those who leave school without a degree, struggle to find well-paying jobs to pay back their loans.

Recent graduates who are unable to obtain work in their fields often enroll in graduate programs,

further increasing their debt loads.

The financial impacts last long after students leave school. Many borrowers don’t pay off their student

loans until they are in their 40s or older, and a significant number never finish paying them off at all. The

Brookings Institute estimates that nearly 40% of borrowers who entered college in 2004 may default on

their student loans by 2023.

High student debt burdens and defaults on loans affect students’ credit scores, thereby making it more

difficult to buy a home or get ahead in life. I often use the analogy of having a mortgage without the

house.

Andy Sacks | Stone | Getty Images

There’s more at risk than just the borrowers’ futures. As with home loans before the housing crisis, Wall

Street has been speculating on student debt as collateralized loan obligations. Though student loans

typically can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, betting on any unsecured debt can be a risky investment.

Experts believe that student loan defaults have the potential to adversely impact the U.S. economy,

which could trigger another recession.

Finding solutions to the imminent student debt crisis requires a multi-faceted approach.

Research supports tightening regulations on for-profit institutions, focusing on degree attainment and

promoting income-based repayment options. Colleges and universities can better control tuition costs

by taking steps to increase their efficiency, such as embracing shared services.

While governments and institutions need to do their part, students and families should carefully

consider their college funding options and weigh the pros and cons of different programs and schools

before taking out loans.

— By Patrick Healey, founder and president of Caliber Financial Partners.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in Acorns.

HTTPS://WWW.NPR.ORG/SECTIONS/THETWO-WAY/2018/03/12/592982327/NATIONAL-GEOGRAPHIC-RECKONS-WITH- ITS-PAST-FOR-DECADES-OUR-COVERAGE-WAS-RACIST

'National Geographic' Reckons With Its Past: 'For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist'

March 12, 20187:40 PM ET

LAUREL WAMSLEY

In a full-issue article on Australia that ran in National

Geographic in 1916, aboriginal Australians were called

"savages" who "rank lowest in intelligence of all

human beings." The magazine examines its history of

racist coverage in its April issue. C.P. Scott (L) and H.E. Gregory (R)/National Geographic

If National Geographic's April issue was going to be entirely devoted to the subject of race, the magazine decided it had better take a good hard look at its own history. Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg asked John Edwin Mason, a professor of African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia, to dive into the magazine's nearly 130-year archive and report back. What Mason found was a long tradition of racism in the magazine's coverage: in its text, its choice of subjects, and in its famed photography.

The April issue of National Geographic is all about race. National Geographic

"[U]ntil the 1970s National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers," writes Goldberg in the issue's editor letter, where she discusses Mason's findings. "Meanwhile it pictured 'natives' elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché."

Unlike magazines such as Life, "National Geographicdid little to push its readers beyond the stereotypes ingrained in white American culture," Goldberg says, noting that she is the first woman and first Jewish person to helm the magazine – "two groups that also once faced discrimination here." To assess the magazine's coverage historically, Mason delved into old issues and read a couple of key critical studies. He also pored over photographers' contact sheets, giving him a view of not just the photos that made it into print, but also the decisions that photographers and editors made.

He saw a number of problematic themes emerge.

"The photography, like the articles, didn't simply emphasize difference, but made difference ... very exotic, very strange, and put difference into a hierarchy," Mason tells NPR. "And that hierarchy was very clear: that the West, and especially the English-speaking world, was at the top of the hierarchy. And black and brown people were somewhere underneath."

For much of its history, the pages of National Geographic depicted the Western world as dynamic, forward-moving and very rational. Meanwhile, Mason says, "the black and brown world was primitive and backwards and generally unchanging." One trope that he noticed time and again was photographs showing native people apparently fascinated by Westerners' technology."It's not simply that cameras and jeeps and airplanes are present," he says. "It's the people of color looking at this technology in amusement or bewilderment." The implication was that Western readers would find humor in such fascination with their everyday goods.

Then there's how the magazine chose its subject matter. Mason explains that National Geographic had an explicit editorial policy of "nothing unpleasant," so readers rarely saw war, famine or civic conflict. He points to an article on South Africa from the early 1960s that barely mentions the Sharpeville Massacre, in which 69 black South Africans were killed by police.

South African gold miners were "entranced by thundering

drums" during "vigorous tribal dances," a 1962 issue reported.

Kip Ross/National Geographic Creative

"There are no voices of black South Africans," Mason told Goldberg. "That absence is as important as what is in there. The only black people are doing exotic dances ... servants or workers. It's bizarre, actually, to consider what the editors, writers, and photographers had to consciously not see."

Then there's the way women of color were often depicted in the magazine: topless.

"Teenage boys could always rely, in the '50s and '60s, on National Geographic to show them bare- breasted women as long as the women had brown or black skin," Mason says. "I think the editors understood this was frankly a selling point to its male readers. Some of the bare-breasted young women are shot in a way that almost resembles glamour shots." Mason says the magazine has been dealing with its history implicitly for the last two or three decades, but what made this project different is that Goldberg wanted to make reckoning explicit — "That National Geographic should not do an issue on race without understanding its own complicity in shaping understandings of race and racial hierarchy."

Although slave labor was used to build homes featured in a 1956

article, the writer contended that they "stand for a chapter of this

country's history every American is proud to remember."

Robert F. Sisson and Donald McBain/National Geographic

For those of us who have spent long afternoons thumbing old issues of the magazine and dreaming of far-off lands, Mason wants to make clear that looking at foreign people and places isn't a bad thing.

"We're all curious and we all want to see. I'm not criticizing the idea of being curious about the world. It's just the other messages that are sent—that it's not just difference, but inferiority and superiority."

So where does the storied publication go from here?

One good step would be to invite the diverse contributors to the April issue to become part of the magazine's regular pool of writers and photographers, Mason suggests.

"Still it's too often a Westerner who is telling us about Africa or Asia or Latin America," he says. "There are astonishing photographers from all over the world who have unique visions – not just of their own country, but who could bring a unique vision to photographing Cincinnati, Ohio, if it came to that."

He notes that the magazine's images have so often captivated, even when they were stereotypical or skewed. Mason says a number of African photographers have told him that it was magazines like National Geographic and Life that turned them onto photography in the first place. "They knew that there were problems with the way that they and their people were being represented," he says. "And yet the photography was often spectacularly good, it was really inviting, and it carried this power. And as young people, these men and women said, I want to do that. I want to make pictures like that."

http://timashby.com/the-german-general-who-told-hitler-to-go-screw-himself/

The German General Who Told Hitler to Go Screw Himself

July 23, 2012 By Timothy Ashby 8 Comments

I am fascinated by colorful historical characters, especially military or naval figures. Very few of these people could be considered truly heroic. One of the rare exceptions is Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander of a small German army – largely composed of black troops – that fought the British Empire in East

Africa during World War I – The German General.

A master of guerrilla warfare, General von Lettow-Vorbeck lived by a warrior’s code of chivalry embodying honor, respect for one’s enemies, and humanitarian treatment of his men as well as civilians. During a world war in which the U.S. Army actively discriminated against black soldiers, von Lettow- Vorbeck treated his African Askaris no differently from white Germans under his command. His fluency in the Swahililanguage earned the respect and admiration of his African soldiers; he appointed black officers and “said – and believed – [that] ‘we are all Africans here’.” In one historian’s estimation, “It is probable that no white commander of the era had so keen an appreciation of the African’s worth not only as a fighting man but as a man.”

General von Lettow-Vorbeck was never defeated in battle, and only surrendered after learning about the Armistice in November 1918. The British repatriated the white German soldiers but confined the Askaris in squalid camps. General von Lettow-Vorbeck refusedto leave until he had won promises of decent treatment and early release for his black troops.

.Returning to Germany as a national hero, von Lettow- Vorbeck became active in politics and tried to establish a conservative opposition to the Nazis. He was able to bring some of his black officers with him to serve in the German Freikorps. When Hitler offered him the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James’s in 1935, he “told Hitler to go fuck himself.” Although repeatedly harassed by the Nazis, he survived their regime due to his popularity as a genuine hero of the old school.

The old general never forgot his Askaris, and he returned to East Africa in 1953 where he was tearfully welcomed by his surviving soldiers. Upon returning to Europe, he campaigned to provide for their welfare. When von Lettow-Vorbeck died at the age of 93 in 1964, the West German government and the Bundeswehr flew in two former Askaris as state guests so that

they could attend the funeral of “their” general. A few months later, the old warrior’s fondest wish became reality when the West German Bundestag voted to deliver back pay to the 350 surviving Askaris in Africa.

A fitting way to say “f*ck you” to Hitler and Germany’s racist past.

Koreans Slap Bill Gates for ‘Rude’ Handshake

By Joohee Cho

@jooheecho Follow on Twitter

Apr 23, 2013 7:35am

Credit: Yonhap/EPA

SEOUL, South Korea – The buzz in town today is this photograph of Microsoft founder Bill Gates’

shaking hands with South Korea President Park Geun-hye.

Gates, 57, might have not realized it Monday, but a one-hand shake in Korean culture – and also in

Asia – is notably casual, done only when the other party is a good friend, of the same or younger age.

Using one hand with the other tucked in the pants pocket is considered rude here, done when one is

expressing superiority to the other.

“Perhaps it was his all-American style but an open jacket with hand in pocket? That was way too

casual. It was very regretful,” said Chung Jin-suk, secretary general at the Korean National

Assembly.

President Park’s office has said nothing publicly about the incident and a spokesperson for Gates

declined to comment.

But Internet chat rooms and social network sites are filled with views debating cultural differences

and analyses of Gates’ laid-back style.

“I don’t know if that was ignorance or just plain disrespect,” Cho Park, a Korean student studying in

New York, said. “It was pretty rude of him. The thing is I’m not sure if it is rude in Western culture.”

The controversy doesn’t end there. Gates had met with two other previous South Korean presidents:

Kim Dae-jung and Lee Myung-Bak. He apparently gave the proper handshake with both hands to the

late Kim in 2002 but was spotted giving an improper shake to President Lee in 2008. That also

became a subject of debate.

Some South Korean media have been speculating that perhaps it was intentional, showing his

political preference; respect for the opposition leader Kim but disrespect for the ruling party leaders

Lee and Park, 61.

“Cultural difference or bad manners?” the Joongang Ilbo newspaper wrote.

“A disrespectful handshake or a casual friendly handshake?” DongAh Ilbo newspaper said in its

photo caption.

“It’s a head of state we’re talking about,” said Rick Yoon, a brand retailer in Seoul. “And she’s a lady.

This is not just a Korean thing. It’s an international protocol.

“Maybe it was intentional. Otherwise, he has a very strange habit.”

Gates was in South Korea on a three-day visit to promote his start-up TerraPower, which is

developing next-generation nuclear reactors.

ABC News’ Joanne Kim contributed to this report.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/21/anti-muslim-harassment-american- classrooms-student-bullying

How anti-Muslim sentiment plays out in classrooms across the US Words are the most common weapon of bullies, but in the past month harassment in schools is increasingly manifesting in physical attacks and incidents are taking a psychological toll on some students Ghazala Irshad Monday 21 December 2015 07.00 ESTLast modified on Tuesday 5 January 2016 07.27 EST

While watching a TV news report on the Paris attacks with her seventh-grade class, Farah Darvesh became acutely aware that she was suddenly the center of her classmates’ attention.

“When they said Muslim terrorists did it, everyone’s heads turned and all eyes in the room were on me,” says 12-year-old Farah, one of only three Muslims at her middle school in Columbus, Georgia.

A few weeks later, a classmate asked Farah point blank: “Why did your people kill those people in Paris and San Bernardino?”

Farah, a highly confident and self-described popular girl among her peers and teachers, had “gotten used to people joking” that she was a terrorist. But even so, she said: “Before the attacks I was mostly treated like everyone else. But now I’m having to answer questions about my religion and the actions of people I don’t even know. It’s a lot of pressure. I mean, I’m only 12.”

She waited for her anger to cool down before retorting to her classmate: “Don’t ask me, ask them. Do I ask you why your people are shooting up schools?”

“That shut him up,” Farah said. She concedes that she may not have the best answer, but she’s doing her best considering the circumstances. “I’m feeling the same way everybody else is – I’m mad at Isis too. They’re killing innocent Muslims everywhere too. The shooting in San Bernardino happened 9 miles from my cousin’s school. It’s very scary that she was so close to danger. But exactly because I’m a good Muslim, I’m not going to take my anger out on anyone.”

Muslim American students, many of whom weren’t even born until after September 11, are coming of age in an era of a protracted “war on terror” abroad, and broad surveillance and profiling of their community at home. In the month since attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have spurred escalating rhetoric from Donald Trump and other politicians, the long- simmering Islamophobia in America has reached a boiling point with a litany of threats, vandalism, and violence against Muslims.

Versions of this anti-Muslim sentiment have also been playing out in the classroom setting.

Muhammad Rahman, a 15-year-old at a Chicago high school, says he gets asked “Is that a clock or a bomb?” at least once a day since the international outcry over the arrest of 14-year- old Ahmed Mohamed. That the uproar was over teachers and police wrongfully assuming Ahmed’s homemade clock to be a bomb – when in fact it was a clock – doesn’t matter to

Muhammad’s bullies.

Muhammad Rahman is a 15-year-old Chicago high school student. Photograph: Ghazala Irshad

“Even the nicest people, who you wouldn’t expect to be mean, say stuff,” Muhammad says. “I know my friends aren’t racist of course, but the jokes aren’t funny when they’re disrespectful.

“Every day, they make sure to let me know that I’m different from everyone else.”

In Georgia, a school principal apologized last week after a teacher asked a Muslim student if she had a bomb in her backpack.

Words are the most common weapon of school bullies, but in the past month, anti-Muslim sentiment in schools is increasingly manifesting in physical attacks, particularly against girls who wear the hijab. On 19 November, three boys allegedly beat up a sixth-grade girl wearing a hijab, calling her “Isis”. A 2014 study by Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) study found 29% of students who wore hijab experienced offensive touching or pulling of their scarves.

Fear of ‘being judged as either oppressed or radicalized’

Lana Alshahrour is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed 12-year-old Syrian Muslim at a Chicago middle school. Because she does not wear the hijab and has Caucasian features, when Lana was a new student she was privy to Islamophobic gossip about a classmate who wore the hijab.

Lana risked her social standing to defend the girl. “Instead of making fun of her, why don’t you get to know her?” she told the bullies. “But that’s what terrorists wear,” they replied. “No, that’s what Muslims wear. It’s just a piece of cloth,” Lana countered.

Lana appears to be clearing the path for her own future, too – she is conflicted by her desire to wear the hijab out of devotion to God, her fear of “being judged as either oppressed or radicalized,” and the “pressure to represent the hijab for all Muslims without letting it define me”.

Fifty-five percent of Muslim students surveyed by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) last year reported that they were bullied at school in some form because of their Islamic faith. That’s twice the national percentage of bullying reported by all students, regardless of their religion. According to the CAIR survey, verbal harassment is the most common, with non- Muslims calling Muslim students terrorists or referencing bombs. But physical assaults also occur.

These incidents are taking a psychological toll on Muslim youth. “At a crucial time in their identity development, they’re suffering from chronic trauma,” says Dr Halim Naeem, a

psychotherapist and president of The Institute of Muslim Mental Health. Dr Naeem says that in the past few months alone, he has seen increased cases of depression, anxiety, image issues, paranoia, and substance abuse among Muslim American youth. In the short term, the constant stress wreaks havoc on students’ immune systems and destroys their focus, disrupting learning ability.

The role of teachers

Most kids don’t report any Islamophobic harassment to their teachers. “I don’t think they’d do anything that would make a difference, because they probably wouldn’t take it seriously,” says Farah. Her fear may not be unfounded, as she reports that even some of her teachers recently asked her questions about Islam“in a way that wasn’t just curious.”

Lana Alshahrour worries that if she wears her hijab, she’ll be “judged as either oppressed or radicalized”. Photograph: Ghazala Irshad

The CAIR survey found that the sentiment that teachers don’t take Islamophobia seriously is shared by a majority of Muslim American students, and it goes beyond the typical adolescent fear of being labeled a tattle-tale. “I was afraid they [teachers and administration] would have their own opinions and give priority to the others,” reported one California student when asked about reporting Islamophobic bullying to teachers.

One in five Muslim students reported being discriminated against by school staff. Recently, a California teacher asked her class “Who thinks Muslims should die?” and called a Muslim student in class a terrorist. The school board disciplined the teacher, but he is still teaching. Students discriminated against by teachers often transfer classes or schools in order to feel more comfortable, as Ahmed Mohamed ended up doing.

How parents respond

Muslim parents are grappling with how to respond appropriately to protect their children while maintaining a sense of normalcy. Some have reluctantly kept their children home from school, fearing reprisals after the Paris and California attacks. Many are sitting down to give them “The Talk,” much like African American parents do with their children, about how to avoid raising suspicion and avoid physical harm or arrest. “I told Farah that it’s not wrong to be Muslim, but it might not be a good idea to be vocal about it right now,” says Mrs Darvesh. “It’s sad because I want my kids to be proud of who they are, and that’s what this country is about.”

Others, such as St Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Aisha Sultan, call for engaging kids instead. “Part of raising your child when you’re a minority is showing them and modeling through your own confidence and advocating for them non-confrontationally without shame, and without fear.”

Experts say addressing the problem requires the cooperation of non-Muslim parents and teachers to educate their kids.

“This is where teachers and parents of all faiths need to come up with a plan together to talk to kids about Islam and current events both at home and at school,” says Naeem, the psychotherapist. “When you teach racism and incite hatred in a developing brain, you actually alter its structure.”

Shaheen Pasha, a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and mother of two, says that she sees too many students come into her classroom unaware of what’s going on in the world. “Non-Muslim student awareness and allyship can play a big part in resolving this issue.”

Islam in the curriculum

On Friday, tensions boiled over in Augusta County, Virginia, when schools were closed after a lesson in Arabic calligraphy elicited an uproar from the community. Students in the world geography class were presented with an Islamic Statement of faith written in Arabic to demonstrate the artistry of the calligraphy, but a community forum that night blasted it as an “indoctrination” of faith.

The incident sparked a fiery social media debate that reinforced the fears many students have about expressing their religion at school.

But while Lana ponders the consequences of appearing visibly Muslim through the hijab, she can’t help herself from using her own background for reference when the subjects of Islam, terrorism, and Arab refugees come up in her eighth-grade classes. In a recent debate about refugees, her classmates argued that Middle Eastern refugees should not be allowed into the US “because they could be Isis”.

Lana laughs. “They think if we don’t let anyone in here, then the terrorism stays overseas. But Isis doesn’t need to send fighters to America – they can recruit from the internet. Besides, Isis is not the root of the refugee problem.”

When someone suggested bombing the entire country of Syria to eliminate all threat of terror, Lana realized that her classmates didn’t see them as individual humans. “They think all Muslims and Arabs are scary. So I shared my family’s story: My uncle was a student in Syria but he is now a refugee living with us in Chicago after he had to escape being captured by Bashar al- Assad’s forces. The root of the problem is Assad, not Isis.”

possible concepts for extra credit

— the following concepts are from

chapters 1 and 2 of the text book.

They are in no particular order. There

could still be some concepts in

chapters 1 and 2. There are most

definitely more concepts in the rest of

the book. This list is meant only as a

suggestion.

- socioeconomic status (SES)

- inequality

- definition of minority group

- definition of majority group

- characteristics of a minority group

- racial minority group

- ethnic minority group

- race

- ethnicity

- race as a social construction

- markers of group membership

- stratification

- theories of Karl Marx (proletariat,

bourgeoisie, means of production,

importance of the economy, conflict

as good

- living wage

- theoretical perspective proposed by

Weber

- theoretical perspective proposed by

Lenski

- subsistence technology (foraging,

agriculture, industrial, post-industrial)

- intersectionality (Patricia Hill Collins);

matrix of domination

- relationship between power,

competition, conflict

- evolution

- prejudice

- stereotypes

- gender

- discrimination

- ideological racism

- institutional discrimination

- miscegenation

- assimilation

- pluralism

- Anglo conformity

- social structure

- human capital theory

- multi-culturalism

- ethnic enclaves

- separatism, forced migration,

genocide, revolution

- industrial revolution

- any of the different immigrant groups

discussed in class

- chains of immigration

- anti-Catholicism

- anti-Semitism

- pogrom

- push factors; pull factors

- three generation model

- quota system

- ethnic succession

- labor unions

- structural mobility

- degree of similarity

- ethclass

- sojourners

- ethnic revival