Jews. Obama, Jimmy, and Compassion

Sighhhh ...

I understand that the need for my people to defend Israel often means moral compromises that are difficult to reconcile with our traditions of liberalism. Alliances with fundies and even with South Africa make my skin crawl. But, faced with extermination what should we do?

One thing, however, is VERY clear. We should never give the moral high ground to others. No issue is more clear in this regard than the virtual apartheid we impose, for good reasons, on the Palestinians in Israeli controlled areas. Showing compassion for our Palestinian brothers and sisters is the right thing to do AS WELL as making strategic sense.

A failure to understand the power of being strong and showing compassion was the source of the tragic reaction of many Jews to Jimmy Carters new book. "Apartheid" correctly compares the life of Palestinians to the life of Bantu people in South Africa's bantustans. This important point of view outraged many irredentist Jews, who need to see everything in stark colors. They were a bit correct. Mr. carter in trying to help us all see the pain of these people, fails to place blame and responsibility of their own leaders. Is there anyone more desirous of Palestinian well being than the (Jewish) PeaceNow movement. We need to pursue peace while being strong. compromises obviously occur, but they should never occur with the loss of compassion for people in pain.

Now there is the following insulting and stupid letter to Senator Obama. Apparently Adelman and other AIPAC members want to hem in Mr. Obama. This is worng headed and NOT in the interest of Israel. I WANT Mr. Obama to be elected and to use his talents as a leader to bring peace to the much scarred semitic peoples. How in all hell can Mr. Adelman hope for Israel to survive without solving the problem recognized by Mr. Obama?

Yitzak Rabin once said he shook hands with Arafat because there was no other choice. if Rabin could shake hands with a momser like Arafat, surely all of us can show compassion for the people suffering the most because of all this.

the letter:

Dear Senator Obama,

I am writing to express my concern with your comments in yesterday’s Des Moines Register (Up-close Obama urges compassion in Mideast; He backs loosening restrictions on Palestinian aid).

As an Iowan, democratic precinct caucus attendee, and leader in Iowa’s Jewish community, I am greatly concerned about the situation in the Mideast and your views on this matter.

I find your statement in yesterday's Des Moines Register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” deeply troubling. I would greatly appreciate a response clarifying your statements.

The Palestinian people democratically elected their leadership, part in which, Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. It fails to recognize the right of Israel to exist and encourages terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli Jews, Christians and Arabs.

Again, I respectfully ask for clarification on what you believe needs to be done to bring peace to this region of the world.

Iowa Democrat and AIPAC member, David Adelman

State of the Antiwar Movement

Seattle is voting in a non-binding ballot about whether to rebuild a shoreline highway through the down town or replace the current (falling apart) viaduct with a tunnel. Neither option has any clear financing or idea about how it would impact the city. Instead, the politicians are b;abbering about Seattle's status as a World Class City. Why do we want Seattle to be a "World Class City?" For that matter what is a "World Class City?"


Lets see ...

Do we want to be:

Tokyo ... or Kyoto?
Rotterdam or Leiden?
Munich or Frankfurt?
New York or San Francisco?

It sems to me that the current Mayor equates WCC with lotsa folks living in high rises, I LIKE that idea. I LIKE the idea of Seattle developing an urban, high density culture t fgo along with our traditional neighborhood/Ballard Ya Shure Betcha culture.

But the key words here should be "Seattle" and "Culture." The current growth of high density housing in Seattle has all the urban planning one expects of Marvin Gardens on the Monopoly board.

Look at South Lake Union? No plans for schools, no plans for magnet retail areas, no plans for parks .... forgive me Mr. Allen, but the only reason I can see that anyone would want to live there is a fantasy that this is part of Seattle or, perhaps, the Western end of Manhattan.

How does all tis apply to the tunnel kerfuffle? Other than the surface option and Ron Sims' wise comments, no one has offered a serious plan for the water front. It seems ot me that the City Council cold help by passing legislation requiring any traffic plan in Seattle to include a cultural impact statement, explaining how the work would fit into our overall plan for urban development. Of course this means we need a plan! But why in hell not? Why do we discuss the viaduct as if it were independent of the issues in Rainier Valley or South Lake Union?

Lets look at some of the successes and goofs of the past. The stadia, aside form all other issues, have pretty well destroyed Pioneer Square. Surely, as part of the deal with Allan and the Mariners, an investment could have been required in development of this desirable property? At the other extreme the loverly convention center WORKS because it was panned with the hotels neighboring the freeway. Other examples abound. The Pike Place Market and the stairs project worked very well. Seattle Center works when and only whenb it fits into Queen Anne and serves the downtown, etc etc.

Back at the via duct .. this vote is stupid. We need planning and better leadership. UPDATE .. the citizens voted both options down.

Gack ...

This is a link to a dreadful schtick by Lewis Black, a comedian whose talent for dengrating his own people .. the Jews, has all the charm of the nigger/hinkley slingers we see in the African American community.

The sad thing is that this link appeared on HorsesAss, the blog run by David Goldstein. David is a wonderful, thoughtful rational person. But, like many Jews, he has bought into the general concept that we are just another people and the acceptance of self deprecation. Black is a sad example of our failure as people to stand up for what WE have top offer.

I am not opposed ot Jewish humor. I loved Victor Borge and Mort Sahl. Jewish humor, sarcastic Jewish humor is part of our persona. Mort Sahl aggressively attacked the McCarthy/Eisenhower era conceptions of morality and did so openly as a Jew. Black is no replacement. Mort Sahl he ain't, hell ... Black is not even Al Franken or John Stewart. Black is gross like the black comics who try to make a living off of calling folks niggers and honkeys. Black makes me want to call him a kike!

What purpose does this diatribe serve ... other than to denigrate Judaism along with Christianity? This reminds me of other puerile humor .. such as the Gay group that dresses like nuns, they remind me of Ann Coulter,

Before anyone here misunderstands, I am a very uptight Jew. I think fundies of all kinds are committing blasphemy in an era where Science, call it God if you want, provides a powerful vision of Reality. I think antisemiut5ism is intrinsic to Christian history. Any exclusivist, any dogma that teaches that all other beliefs lead to Hell is despicable. Indeed one thing I am very proud of is that Judaism has rarely shown this sort Christain/Islamic bigotry. Jews are actually taught, that the goyem can more easily please the Diety because the Unnamed One has made special demands on "His" people.

While even Jewish fundamentalism teaches respect for pious goyem, the reward from the Islamic world and Xtian world is to diss my people. Try as he might, even John XXIII, could not dissipate the smog arising form the idea that the Jewish God was bad and needed to be supplanted by the human sacrifice of the crucification. Millions of Jews (and Muslims and Pagans and ... have dies for that cross.

If Black had decried that, as part of his speech seemed to, I would have been very pleased. Instead, his fowl mouth merely adds to bigotry. Gak,

Regional Answers

The central issues in this debate are the need for the Region to move traffic N and S and the need for Seattle to develop its downtown.

The NS issue effects a lot more than I99. In fact I99 is a lousy solution! What dimwit would want to use any sort of I99 .. that is Aurora with tis dstop lights and cross traffic .. to transport a widget from Everett to Vanc WA? A real plan would address the regional needs. What does this mean? 405 and a new "ring road" .. a "605," should be taken seriously. So should rail based solutions.

The Seattle part of the equation changes once when addresses the NS issue this way. The parameters are fairly clear:
1. Seattle needs to maintian or expand its capacity for NS traffic between commercial districts on the N and the S side of the city. Part of the solution should be a COMMERCIAL toll road that would only be open on a limited hours basis to the rest of the drivers. Another part may be other NS traffic, esp. martin Luther King. Currently connections on the east side of the Seattle peninsula are terrible. You can easily get into the Central District from the North via Montlake or the South via MLK, but these routes do not interconnect in any efficient manner. Finally, esp., North of the canal, there is no good way of getting across Seattle.

That brings us to the real idea .. creating a NS waterfront boulevard. This debate would be a lot easier if the damn Seattle newspapers would publish some realistic numbers on costs. Mayer Nickels' claims about costs are fanciful. We need to know what the thing would really cost. That said, we also need to know the benefit from all this to real estate developers and ow best ti optimize their efforts in terms of both the k,ind of city we get and their willingness to contribute $$ to the effrot.

The obvious example is Allantown ... or Vulcan Villas, my nasty name for South Lake Union. Vulcan/Allan are engaged in a classical visionless development. There is no regional plan for Vulcan Villas, no plans for amenities, very limited retail, no transportation plan (other than the silly street car), and certainly no plans for families to live there 9aka schools). In Vulcan's defense, access to and from SLU is horrible. Mercer s unusable most of the day and the current way the viaduct works makes access form Aurora almost impossible,. This issue grows immensely if we are to take seriosly Vulcan's claim to want mixed development with commercial and residential properties.

So, by going regional and figuring on the benefit to Vulcan and other developers, we could three very important questions:

1. how does all this development effect all of our taxes?
2. If improved transport will help Vulcan make $$, what should Vulcan contribute to the costs?
3. How does the viaduct issue effect the region and how should the region help defray the cost of NS traffic?

The Equivalent. Scleroderma

I hesitate to show this image. Years ago I discovered that my inner thoughts emerge in my photography. This is the hard to explain idea of the photograph as an equivalent of what we see. The idea developed by Minor White, my long term inspiration. Minor taught us that the discipline of photography could teach us to see .. to see what we would later print. To see what was there in our minds.

Often I am surprised. Well, this last weekend we were in San Francisco to attend the Scleroderma Research Foundation Meeting. I am funded by the SRF, in part because I very moved by the paradox of this disfiguring disease and the Foundation itself.

Sclerodrma means hardening of the skin and the disease is like a diffuse scarring after being burned. The paradox is that the Foundation was founded by a very beautiful woman, a dancer. I only knew her at the latter stages of her disease. Somehow, through her scarring, came the vision of the beautiful dancer. I do not understand the paradox, her disease made her very beautiful. I wish I had had the courage to photograph her. Is this a lesson about transcendent beauty?

Anyhow, as I walked on Jefferson Street, after the meeting, I heard a street musician playing a lute. The music was wonderful. This is what I "saw." The player had affixed what looked like elongate nails to his fingers and was making music with these bizarre fingers. I tried and tried to find a good exposure, but no matter what I did the camera would only overexpose his normal hands, turning them into these white washed objects. The camera made me angry, yet ..this is what I saw too. You read the image for me!

Obama to run as a Republican?

PHLEEZZZZZ

The Publicans DO NOT HAVE a candidate! For better or worse, Bush, Rove and company have redefined the party. How can one be Publican and oppose the Xtian Right Agenda? This makes as much sense as Jesse Jackson ... or for that matter Dan Evans .. running as a Publican!

Ironically, the MOST credible Christian candidates now are all demos! Obama has a story (and a life) that inspire Xtians ... hold that up against Guiliani! Look at what happened in Virginia! ... A devout Xtian beat a posturing Xtian! Hillary, by the way, has spent the last six years attending the fundamentalist prayer breakfasts in the senate. Quietly! Do you suppose McCain was there? Richardson is a devout Catholic with a record of service that has claimed Christian inspiration.

Romney? A believer in Jesus living on as an American Indian? A believer that all people can become God? Running as Christian? Leaving aside dirty campaigning, the fundies are serious folks, they are not going to vote for someone who is a polytheist.

This smells a but like the Reagan era in reverse. It is not hard to imagine that Southern baptists, who have been trying to heal the wounds of the civil war and Civil Rights,
will find a natural alliance with their African Baptist colleagues. Imagine Obama speaking to a Baptist convention where ALL colors are present? Hmmm. Obama, a Christian by choice, a monogamous man with two wonderful (Christian) daughters, running against multiply divorced McCain, Guiliani, or worse .. Gingrich!

Ironically, the closest match to Carl Rove's ideal Publican candidate would have to be Hillary or James Webb or even John Edwards! Any of these people fit the Karl Rove formula better than a divorced catholic who lives with gays, a former house speaker who left under rumors of abusing a past wile, a believer in many Gods, etc. The only believable Christian Republican in John McCain .. or maybe Obama? Lets see .. fiscal conservative, patriotic, 20 year marriage, CHOSE to be a Christian, did voluneter service AFTER being a Harvard success, can EXPLAIN his stands on abortion and prays regularly. Sounds like a compassionate conservative to me.

I smell a new Demo coalition. Built on patriotism, service, America-firstism, and fiscal responsibility. oh yeh, on respect for other nations, jobs, education, jobs, fair taxes, jobs, ....

The Housing Phenomenon on Capitol Hill

We have lived on an area of Capital Hill for over thirty years. We came here to defray our taxes, buying what was for us a very expensive house so as to maximize our tax deduction. What an investment! In the last three decades our $75,000 has become something like a $million.

There is a price for anything. The community we joined was wonderful .. a mix of working class folks, often African American, pioneering Yuppies, UW types like ourselves trying t find housing we could afford near the YooDub, nunneries, priesteries, Rajneeshees, Gayfolk, and the wonderful arts community. Block parties were held at least three times a year.

As time has past, the diversity has declined. No one comes to block parties. Today's owners of homes on our block now range from a few docs, a couple of profs, some Microsoft biggies, a few oddities (us?) left over from the old days and one heir to a major American corporation.

Now we may have gone assymptotic. The house next door used to belong to the O'Briens. A Catholoc family in a neighborhood built for catholic families., Lots kids. dad an ex basketball star from Seattle Univ who went on to a baseball career and ended up as associate manager of the much missed Kingdome. Johny O'Brien was a Seattle Icon. The O'Brien house, a Tudor built on the bones of a Sears' catalog house seemed to be a beauty.

Now for $1.5 million some investors bought Johnie's house. The agent told Johnie that he had hit the Jackpot. What about the investors??? They seem to be afficonadoes of Capital Hill, maybe with romantic ideas about this place. But, as nice as they may be the new owners found a lot of problems .. rot, house built to close to ground ..and now they have utterly gutted the place. All that exists is the framing. The real estate agent tells me they expected most of this! Talking to neighbors .. it seems the investors expect to make a profit! How??????

How can this be? They need to lower the lot by a foot and a half to raise the foundation, replace a lot of the framing, build a new house in the old shell. They MUST have spent a hundred thou just on the disassembly. What is the framing and foundation worth? Do they expect to sell the house for 3 million? Nothing on this street has ever sold for the $1.5 they have already spent. I am not sure what to hope for. I they succeed we could be forced out by the taxes. If they feel, our property values could be hurt. What of they decide to abandon the the project?

Funny thing .. someone emailed we, "Will" claiming I had misspelled "Capitol" as "Capital". Typoes aside, perhaps Freud was helping?

A Funeral

Yesterday we attended a funeral at St Joseph's Church for Bruce Gilliland. Bruce was a Professor at our medical school and one of the calmest, wisest figures i have yet met. This entry is not about him, it is about the funeral.

A lot of people came, many of whom I recognized from the UW Medical School. There was a bagpiper and a priest, 2 daughters, 1 son and a wife named Collins. My understanding is that Bruce was Presbyterian, so the use of St. Joe's .... I assume ... was to comfort Bruce's wife. The odd thing about this is that most of the service was about Jesus and about Bruce going to be with Jesus. This is such a beautiful image. Certainly for the living person it may be a great comfort. Was it Dr. Gilliland's wish as well? I don't think he had converted but perhaps it does not matter. The wish, at the very least, was well meant.

Of more concern to me was the passage from the Roman Bible chosen by Father Paul Fritterer. The choice was Matthew 8. In this passage, Jesus is approached by a Centurion. A Roman Centurion, kind of like a Lt Colonel in Iraq. A Commander of 80 men, Roman soldiers, occupiers of Jesus' homeland.

This Centurion asks Jesus to help, "Et dicens Domine puer meus iacet in domo paralyticus et male torquetur," his servant it seems was ill and the Colonel wanted to ask Jesus to heal the sick person. Jesus was willing but the Colonel demurred, claiming that the home of a Roman Officer was not grand enough to host the great healer. The Officer went further and pointed out that Jesus, as a great man, must have same ability to command that the Officer had himself. Couldn't Jesus just command the healing?

These verses follow:

8:10. And Jesus hearing this, marvelled; and said to them that followed him. Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.

8:11. And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven:

8:12. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

8:13. And Jesus said to the centurion: Go, and as thou hast believed, so be it done to thee. And the servant was healed at the same hour.

The good priest saw this as a wonderful message of the faith of a gentile in Jesus. To Father Fritterer the Centurion was being humble about his home, though I wondered if the Roman may have felt unease at asking a Jewish holy man into the hime of an occupier. Perhaps the priest was sending a message to Dr. Gilliland's wife that Bruce's life, while not Catholic, would be seen by Jesus as a life of service and faith?

In that way, Mathew 8 was appropriate and loving. As an aetheist and a Jew I am jealous of those whose loved ones live on in Heaven.

But, I am Jew. I read this differently from Father Fritterer and, that reading is part of the last 2000 years of antisemitism. Why? Imagine that Jesus was a Chassid, a holy Rabbi, in Russian occupied Poland and the Centurion was a Commisar. The Russian is there, and proud of his duty in suppressing the religion and freedom of the Poles. Yet, Jesus not only praises the Comissar for his faith but goes on to exult about the horrors to come under Communist rule. Mathew's Jesus says,

"And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

in simpler words,

"Your faith is well meant to me and I will welcome all gentiles to the worship of the true God, but the Jews will be cast out and suffer pain."

These are the words of the Church of Rome. They are words that forgive the Romans, and their heirs the Church, for what would be millenia of hatred. In the Jewish tradition, the tradition of Hillel the great Pharisee, Jesus may well have said to the Centurion that all good people, even a the lowly servant of a Roman Officer, have equal rights before God. Those words would not have been followed by the prediction of a cruel future for the Jews.

These are words that justify the Jewish wars, the Arch of Titus, the Crusades, the Inquisition and, perhaps, the Holocaust.

I hope it does not offend my Catholic friends to point out how hateful this verse is to a Jew.

The Perils of a Professional Army

Take a look at this blog entry at Huffington on the conditions for Iraqui vets at Walter Reed.

But why is anyone upset? When we did awy with the Draft, we hired a professional Army. We pay these guys and gals to die and suffer and be glorified for doing so. Why pay attention to those who have been injured on the job?

We should have mandatory, universal service. Everyone should serve, not just to be fair but to share responsibility.

Think of the opportunities for service and the effect of knowing that OUR kids were in service. A Teacher Corps might revolutionize education not just be droppi9ng the labor costs (conscripts are cheaper then Union members) but be raising awareness of the crappy conditions in many of the schools these soldiers who serve in.

Imagine the good it would do to the polity if American Peace Corps kids safety depended on the support the receive while distributing AIDS drugs in the Congo!

And howsa about them illegals? You snuck in? Now you wanna be a citizen? Kool ..sign up here for your two years in Baghdad!


The image was taken at Fort Lewis. Seems to be a soldier, a boy in drag? Don't ask and I won't tell!

Decline of Radio Talk

Seattle once had pretty good talk shows. Then something happened. The right erupted with tabloid vitriol ... Rush Limbaugh, the drugged voice of anti feminazis everywhere, engendered Medved, Lapin and Savage. KIRO remained an island of middle roadism. Some of this reamins ... their all star property is Dave Ross, a voice of reason. KIFO also runs Ronnie Reagan II, a pleasant voiced liberal apologist for his Dad. Then there is a guy called Monson, more or less Rush without the hate speech. Otherwise KIRO this has gone down the tubes, so to speak. Now we have hosts whose erudition is well represented by Ron and Don ...
These guys (the two book ends), prove that one can look as dumb and dumber as one sounds. They chase each others inane comments ... pitying each other for having fled from Katrina threatened jobs in N'Awlins' Big East for the Big Wetness of Seattle. If these guys have abny cultural value it is growing as a fungus on the walls of their former apartments in the French Quarter.

This began with an email from a colleague of mine, Gina. She is an African American with a great deal of concern and commitment to her community. Gina knows I am interested and shared some legislation she was interested in. This legislation, if passed would allow use of State funds to help AA students attend traditional Black colleges.

My response:

Gina

Thank you for sharing this. I respect you a great deall for participating in this sort of activity.

I would like to share my own, rather negative response to this sort of legislation. Personally I would disagree with this bill and even if it were passed I suspect it might have serious constitutional issues.

A. Concerns

1. From An AA Perspective

I apologize if this is presumptuous. I am obviously not an AA. However, as it happens my life has often become intertwined with your community and I do have feelings about tha AA community. Crudely put, I admire many AA and feel an identity between the modern AA story and my own people’s story over a longer period.

a. The choice of one of these schools is something I would applaud BUT it is a very personal one. Asking the State to support it has a supplicant flavor that I think looks bad because it makes it appear as if AA wish to be treated not only as a minority but as having special needs that do not apply to other under represented minorities.

b. Rather than recognizing these special schools for their unique qualities, the act singles them out as places for dealing with a minority problem. If it is desirable for an AA t g to Morehouse, why isn't it also desirable for a Lumni person or for that matter a farmworker Hispanic kid? Or .. why wouldn't some rich white kid from the Highlands benefit as well?

2. From a WA state perspective

a. Our interests as a State should be in improving the numbers of Americans who represent our mixed heritage who want to live and work here. This does the opposite. In effect it says, we can not serve this need at home so we are sending our kids away to other states.

b. These schools are only unique because of theoir relationship to the AA community. There are other similar schools that apply t other communities. To cute an extreme example ... Dartmouth was FOUNDED esp for indigenoous Americans and still has a special scholarship for these kids. If WA state has historic ethnic debts, as we do, this has to be #1.

3. From a Jewish perspective

The term "people of color" is to me, a Jew who has been persecuted for crimes unrelated to my skin color, intrinsically racist. I feel we ... not Jews but all Americans .. need to get out of this "people of color trap." The term raises a false issue. America's race issues are NOT based on color, bigotry is a lot more complex than that and we have under and over represented groups whose prejudicial issues certainly do not reflect skin color. Here are a few examples:

a. Appalachia
The US still has not recovered from the coal-mining era. We have a sizeable community of poor whites whose children have little hope of ever being educated in a competitive way. Washington state has what I fear are the beginnings of a similar issue with the unemployed folks of former lumber areas.

b. Caribbean and African immigrants
I think you know what i am going to say. Skin color is NOT a gtood criteria for defining a deserving AA. 75% of the "black" kids at Harvard are now of non-american parentage. As an effort toward diversity, this means this group is way OVER represented at Harvard. In my experience with the STAR program, the same is true here. Of the URM students I see every summer, it is RARE to meet someone whose parents are both of American descent and frequent to find kids whose "colored" parent is not of American birth. Statistics form City College in New York also show that "colored" Caribeans and Africans folks achieves right up there with Koreans and SE Asians.

c. Hispanics

This irritates me greatly. I have met Brazilian immigrants who are receiving help because they are Hispanic. (Actually the case in my mind was a Brazilian-African). By what weird perspective are Hispanics more people of color than Italians or Iranians? Are white skinned Hispanics of US origin less deserving than dark skinned ones?

d. "Asians"

Isn't this obvious? Equating Japanese Americans with their high level of success with Pacific Islanders is absurd. The US really abused the Phillipino people. In my own lifetime, the US Navy enlisted Phillipinos as personal servants to American born (I assume this include AA) officers.

4. From the perspective of other “people of color.”

Why would this be more reasonable than supporting a Catholic American, esp. a Hispanic, in her desire to attend Gonzaga? Color is poor criteria for meeting Dr. King's dream.

B. An Alternative

I think the AA community has not yet understood one wonderful change. Many Americans regard the AA as leaders. Barack Obama is not an aberration nor is his success simply an issue of his being African/American vs. the descendent of an AA family. In many ways, AA have taken on the mystique of Asian immigrants and before them of my people. There is an intrinsic American respect for a people whose immigrant vigor drives them to success. This is the clear message of the silliness of the reaction to Senator Biden’s words. What I am sure he meant to say is that Obama, along with Mfume, Bill Gray, Condy Rice, Norm Rice, Duvall Washington, Ron Sims, and others of their generation have climbed to a new level. Unlike previous African descended Americans who we see as heroes because of their are fights as blacks or for blacks, these are all folks admired by other Americans because of the values of an African heritage. This is similar to Asian and Irish and German heritages of similar folks in the past ..it makes these people better Americans. I believe all these Americans represent the success of Dr. King’s dream speech.

The contrast with previous Black candidates for President is obvious. Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson were articulate candidates. But their candidacies were not seen as credible in the sense that no one took the possibility of Jesse or Shirley seriously. There as no one who wondered, would ALL Americans benefit from Jesse or Shirley’s backgrounds? I won’t mention Sharpton. As someone who identifies more than a bit with your community, he is an embarrassment.

Let me give you some historic examples form other peoples, Brandeis is widely seen not only as a great Justice but as having brought his heritage as a Jew, our struggle and beliefs, to the Supreme Court. The elder Kennedy brothers are seen asparadigms of the contributions of the Irish to America. Thurgood Marshall is seen as much more than the first AA Justice, he brought his experiences to the court in a way that served all Americans.

What I am trying to say to the people behind this legislation is that they diminish themselves by trying only to serve the needs of AA kids. I would propose something like the following instead:

Realizing The Dream in Washington State

In the years since the Dream Speech, America has come a long way toward achieving Dr. King’s vision. Today’s Americans treasure and benefit from cultural diversity. This is especially true of the contributions to all of us by underprivileged groups who have had to transcend the prejudices of our society based on differences in religion, race, or ethnicity.

Washington State has, in some ways, not had the full benefit of these changes because our ethnic mix does not represent the mixture of all Americans. At the same time we have our own unique history due to the recent advent of non native peoples in the Northwest. It is in all of our interests, as citizens of this state, therefore to seek cultural diversity in education. The purpose of this Act is to develop a pilot program designed to increase the diversity in our institutions of higher education by supporting exchange programs between our State institutions of higher education and American schools with traditional focus on minority groups that are under represented or underserved in our State. Our hope is to encourage attendance at these other schools by Washington State students fro all ethnic groups and to encourage students form those institutions to attend Washington State colleges and universities.

To achieve this end, we will establish a fund to support Washington State Dream Scholarship Grants. Any Washington State Institution or group pf Institutions may apply for one of these grants along with a participating traditional minority school located in another state or territory of the United States. Institutions applying for these grants must agree to accept exchange students from the partner schools with full academic credit for course work completed at either site.

Sister institutions participating in this program must agree to accept tuition as paid to each other as covering the full non residential costs of education during the exchange.
Washington Sate students participating n the State prepayed education program would be
free to sue those funds to apply for positions in the exchange program. Degrees will be
awarded from the sponsoring school.

Use of Dream Funds:

Programs will be developed at the discretion of the partnering institutions subject to the following guidelines:

a. Priority for financial support for students while in the Dream program, must go to students on the basic of financial need. This is intended to allow those students
not in need of additional support to participate in the exchange. b. Funds may be used to cover costs of tuition differences between institutions as well as travel and housing costs incurred by students during the exchange. c. No more than 20% of the entire fund may be used to administer the program including fund allocated to faculty exchanges ot promote the interaction.

d. The Dream program will not include institutions explicitly religious intent that would violate the Washington State Constitution.

e. The Dream program may be used for professional education including the health sciences, law, business, and technology lading to advanced degrees.

f. Priority will be given to a matching fund meant to assist Washington State and the partner institutions raise private funding to support the Dream effort.

On Public Sevice

The Seattle POst Intelligencer ran an editorial on Feb 19 endorsing a raise in judicial pay to levels more competitive with the private, legal sector.

Unfortunately, The editorial misses a fundamental
accounting issue: the current value of having a life time salary!

200,000 dollars paid for a lifetime is an lot more valuable than
200,000 dollars per year. A Justice would need about 4 million
dollars in an annuity fund to provide comparable value. I doubt many
law firms offer that sort of recompense.

While I sympathize with Chief Justice Roberts, an appeal based on the
excessive pay to recent law graduates is not as convincing as a free
marketer, like the Justice, should know. When we hear that candidates
are turning the job down or when any of the justices leave for better
pay, then we may need to worry.

A better issue may be financial issues other than salary. Moving to
DC, as one example, may make huge demands on a Justice's housing
costs, especially if she or he wishes to maintain their original home
as well. There are also likely costs in the form of loss of business
opportunities due to ethical concerns. The latter issue may be
unsolvable, but we obviously can deal with the former issue by
offering a generous, non taxable allowance for housing and
transportation. We already do just this for the heads of the
Executive Branch and I have not noticed a deficit of candidates for
those jobs.

This is a general issue in paying public servants even without the life time service. Dwight Eisenhower entered the White House with the minimal finances of a General. he left as
a multi-millionaire. Similar magic enriched Bob Dole, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, etc. Clearly high office entail financial benefits not immediately obvious on the W2.

I also suspect President Obama or President Clinton would be pleased
to see some of Mr. Bush's appointees seek better pay in the private
sector!

Witness to a Crucifiction

I was recently in Ventura California where I spent the afternoon photographing in Grant Park ... atop the hills above this coastal town. As I drove into the park there was disclaimer posted by the city .. in effect claiming no responsibility for the cross in the park. It appears that the cross is somehow on private land, a slip of land just 30 feet or so from the western edge of the park and conveniently overlooking the city. Ah, the Constitutionality of it all.

Anyhow, while i was there this guy crucified himself .. or seemed to. He stood before the rough hewn cross, absorbing the rays from Apollo, sometimes stretching his arms, lost in a trance most of the time. He saw nw raking pictures and smiled.

I have never understood the mystery of all this. "What would Jesus do?" Crucify himself? Suffer? Glorify inhumanity of man? Of course, if you are a polytheist or a believer in the Deity as multiple personalities, and accept the Jesus persona as a manifestation of The One Deity, then what Jesus would do is not your concern, all you need to to glory on the light of Jesus' care for you. The image of a loving God transends our objective vision of the reality of the world.


I wonder what sort of person crucified himself that day?

A Christmas Message to a Friend in Israel

Part of what I like abut Israel is actually meeting the crazies ... the cheredi. As with the fundies here, they are .. imo .. suffering from a psychosis.
Isn't it odd that we live in a world where anxiety as a treatable illness, anger is a disorder, alcoholism is a bad disease, but but belief in
a superhuman, demonic dictator, amoral being who kills his only begotten son is considered normal? Well, at least in Israel the crazies are my own.

We had a funny experience one day in Jerusalem. A smallish fellow, peyes and scraggly beard, dressed in medieval black and sweltering clothes with the deepest dark eyes came over to get me to doven with him. I do not mind this, though an atheist, I accept worship as part of tradition. But the guy .. he looked out of place. Turns out he is an Afghani Jew who had "accepted" membership in a cheredi sect. I wonder if there any Ethiopian Jews with dreadlocks (peyes) and fedorahs?

BTW .. do you know the Catholic meaning of NY Day? It is, vu denn, the feat of the holy prepuce! .. they celebrate a bris! Imagine an excavation in Bethlehem. An old synaguogue has been found, dating from the E year (as in CE and BCE). In the synaguougue are found an ossurary within which are the tools of a Mohel and small fragmetn of human skin, dried out over the millenia. ..................................

Of Races .. a dialog

This is a dialog between me and a fellow named Richard Harris. The exchange, began, of all places, on a photography website. I am not sure, but suspect Richard is a pretty literate non scientist who has read too muych about how the term "race" has been misused. I began the responsa because he seems sincere and because I feel that polical correctness can poison science by blocking the use of terms.




As one example, I was very fortunate to take some of my psychology education form Richard Hernstein. Unfortunately for him, Professor Hernstein had the gall t make an effort to look at the role fo race in intelligence. A hard subject, difficult enough without the assorted strains of bigotry but no less reasonable than attempting to measure anything else. Anyhow, Prof. Hernstein had the grace to die young, but not before he was pilloried and verbally tar ans feathered by none other than Steven J. Gould. Now, I have a disclosure to make. I am a card carrying memebr of the Society of Steves and contribute money in Gould's memory to the fight against creationist obscurism. But Gould was as blind as a Fallwell on this issue. His book, the mis-measure of intelligence, is full of major statistical errors and ad hominem attacks.

In my own world as a scioentist, this topic is bizar. Ont he one hand the NIH takes "race" seriously and demands "race" data in our studies. On the other hand, when I have suggested obtaining valid genetic data on race, I get yelled at. Sad.

Here is the post:

___________________________________________________________________________________

First,

No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just as with Darwin's Finches. As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman. We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a Manchu, etc.

Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the "Blacks."

These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we would NOT get an adequate sample.

Second,

The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of humanities' branches.

To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.

Third

Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?

I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite, Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a racial identity.

Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.

So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a zygote has a personality.

Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.
- Show quoted text -


On 12/23/06, Richard Harrison wrote:

Sure, what the hey!

Sickle cell is actually significantly more prevalent in India than in
Africa. It is a mutation that seems to arise whenever malaria is an issue.

The main problem with "races" is that, well, we pretty much just made
them up as we went along. We are pretending that there are these
obvious dividing lines through humanity that just don't exist.

If you have ANY group of people, just any random group mind you. One
side of a random street instead of the other for example, there will be
average differences between the two groups. One will be taller, or
shorter, or heavier, or darker. One will have more smokers, or more
people with a criminal record or more decent athletes. One will have
more people that have had cancer or relatives with sickle cell or
familial dysautonomia or....

This applies to ANY GROUP of any size at all that you can select. So,
does that make one side of the street a different race than the other?
And, if the average difference was that they were taller, does that mean
that the shorter people on that side aren't really a member of the "left
side of the street race"?

But, you can use which side of the street you came from for medical
diagnostic purposes so it must be valid. After all, thanks to the
redhead family there, that side of the street goes under when given
anesthesia measureably more quickly. And, they have two people with
emphysema while the other side has none. So, we should always ask which
side of the street someone comes from. If the left, don't bother
checking for emphysema. And pass a law that you must ask which side of
the street you live on before you knock them out!

That is all races are really. Groups that were arbitrarily selected.
They were defined by a mythical "average" member of that group and then
we pretended that there was some magical but obvious dividing line
between these groups. And some pretty stupid laws have been passed to
prolong this myth. Look at the "one drop of negroid blood" laws
throughout much of this country. Or how they determine if you qualify
for the federal student aid given to "Native Americans" (one of your
parents before about 1970 had to say he or she was decended from a
native, no proof had to be offered, then you were officially a "native
american" and eligible for funds).

We are all different. If you clump us into groups, ANY groups, then
each of the groups will average differently in some measurements than
the other groups.

But, to use this fact to try to justify the groupings is just ignorant.
No matter how many races your personal mythology leads you to believe
in, and the numbers range from 3 to about 30 depending on where in the
world you are and your "classical education", not a single one of them
are any more justifiable from any scientific standpoint than my "other
side of the street" example.

You mentioned your pride in your ancestry. Stephen, I admire you, you
are an intelligent person and can hold a reasonable discussion on a
touchy subject which is a rare and wonderful thing. I hope I don't
insult you here but, well, here goes.

I have long felt that pride in one's ancestry or race is the pennadir (a
cord I coined, pen = the one before and you know what nadir means) thing
that a person can be proud of. You might be honored and even humbled,
that would be reasonable and I feel it about my ancestry (there are also
members in my gene pool that I'm glad aren't public knowledge :) ), but
proud? Pride is something that should be reserved for your
accomplishments, NOT for things that you had no control over.

I have my ancestry traced back to the early 1700's. Of that 10 or so
generations (about 1024 people), I am pretty sure about 8% of them which
is MUCH higher than average. What percentage for you? I think you
mentioned a time equivalent to about 14 generations. That would be a
few over 16,000 people. How many of them do you have the names for?
Within the approx 10% "psst, he wasn't really the father" compensation
that is?

That wasn't trying to be insulting actually. It was just pointing out
that, well, we are all mongrels. If race ever did exist, it has long
since been whiped out. There have been no significant "isolated"
peoples for about 600 years now. The definition of isolation is that
NONE of them interbreed with others. For as soon as any do, then that
group just become a small blip on the spectrum that has a very shallow
slope (where a cliff used to be) merging them with the rest of
humanity. It only takes 3-4 generations and that time has WAY passed
for all (racial) groups.

Richard (AKA DIPics)

Stephen Schwartz wrote:

> If you want we can continue the thread here or on my blog.
>
> --
> Stephen M. Schwartz
> Pathology





--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology


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Richard Harrison
Stephen, Yours are in Blue, mine in Black, old stuff in red. Sure you can. Ok...
11:08 am (6 hours ago)


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5:16 pm (14 minutes ago)
RH .. sorry bit whatever SW you are using. my gmail is not showing the colors. I will use ## SMS and ##RH



## SMS >
> No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as
> "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just
> as with Darwin's Finches.

##RH

Sure you can. Ok, I'll give you an example. I'm going to draw a circle
around Central Texas. This circle will extend 150 miles out with Austin
as it's center. I'm going to define as a race everyone that had at
least two ancestors in this circle in 1880.

Now, let's examine this new "race" genetically. The average person in
it has is closer genetically to the current mayor of Munich Germany than
they are with the current mayor of Birmingham England (assuming that the
former is of mostly German heritage and the latter mostly English, not a
valid assumption but we're just playing here). There are obvious
differences in the average from the Germans though. They average out
significantly darker than either of the above. So, they are obviously a
race, right?

If not, why not? If so, why?

## SMS responds ...

Sure.. if that is how you want to define it, but that is not what anthropologists or geneticists mean because the branching is too recent. The branching called "race" is not at all precise, but it older than the settlement of Texas.

Obviously, there are those who use the word race for different things .. the Japanese claim to be a different race than the Koreans, but their common branch is so recent that I do not know anyone who thinks this is reasonable.

Returning to the human genome project, if all we did was use your Texans in out sample, we would leave out a great deal of the complexity of our species.

## SMS
> As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman.
> We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the
> Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a
> Manchu, etc.

##RH

There is no denying that, but then obviously just from your description,
you are describing an obvious spectrum, NOT a collection of seperate
groups. Hence, not races at all.

SMS answers

Again., I think you are trying too hard to be precise. No geneticist thin ks that race is a precise term. It is less precise, for example, than species and that is less than Newtonian! If you want o refer to major branchings in oir origins, that is OK too. The bottom line is neither that Australian indigenes and Samsk of Finland are different in any absolute way, but the last common ancestor was about 40-60k years ago. Even this does nto have to be absolute. There have been some suprising evidences of ol' Ghenghis Khan's genes migrating far from the amazing circle of women he impregnated. But, if there were to be evidence in an Australian of pre-European or Asian discovery, I would guess we would have to consider that some very talented explorer got a long way form Eurasia early on. The aboriginal and the Samsk would still be "races" or "branches."

##SMS

> Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the
> ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the
> Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in
> Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the
> "Blacks."

##RH
The only legitimate way you could have worded it would have been to add
the words "a significant amount of the" in front of the phrase
"ancestors of most Europeans". The people in the Urals, while a small
group, were not seperated from the rest of humanity to a degree to count
them as a "sub-species". And, to the extent that they were seperated,
this seperation dissapeared thousands of years ago.

SMS ..

I used the word "most" for exactly the reason you suggested. Nor have I ever used the word "sub-species." Humans are all pretty closely related. If there is anything like speciation it is hard to see. Maybe pygmies and Massai would be mutually incapable of producing viable offspring.

##SMS

>
> These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA
> to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to
> get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we
> would NOT get an adequate sample.

##RH

You do? Exactly what "races" do you use? The three classic races? 4?
6? 10? 30? what? Aah, there is the problem. How do you justify calling
one arbitrary group a "race" and not another? Unless you can answer
this, then your argument is lost.

##SMS replies

The "You" here is not "me" it is the world community of human genetics. The sample tries to include people whose origins are as diverse as possible .. I am nto sure of the number of geographic/erthinc groups but at a minimum I suspect it inblcudes, Bantu (major African population), Han, Euro, Indian subcontinent, American indigen, .. I am not sure what else.

See, what you are actually doing in my opinion, is you are trying to
sample from varied enough parts of the spectrum that we call humanity to
get the greatest diversity. After all, trying to do it by "race"
automatically limits you, doesn't it?

##SMS ...

You are the one harping on the term race. It has to be called something and that is the term most or all geneticists use while understanding exactly as you do that it is an imprecise term.

#SMS
> Second,
>
> The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued
> against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or
> White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is
> that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans
> vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an
> "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of
> humanities' branches.

##RH


Branches that were mixed long before the American slave trade. Look at
the Lembda. It's not as if they were the only lighter skinned peoples
to migrate south... As soon as a sub-species ends it's isolation, it
takes about 3-4 generations to blur the edges enough that it is no
longer considered a sub-species. Why should race be any different?
IMHO it shouldn't.

##SMS

I am not sure when the Lembda migration occured by it is proabably not all that long ago .. it can not be more than a2k yrs.

Again, given that species itslef is hard to define and that none consider humans to have subspecies, I do not see what point you are trying to make.

> To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up
> "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as
> the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing
> up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones
> herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as
> the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.

##RH

So, what defines a race? If you cannot define it, then you cannot
pretend it is scientific.

So, define one for me. Tell me a characteristic or set of
charasteristics that are shared by ALL members of any race but not by
any person outside of that race.

##SMS

YOU are creating a defnition not I. I would simply use the term "race" in a general way to refer to subgroups of a species that have collected, as a population, sets of markers resulting from their partial isolation form other members of their species over a long time.

There are many scientific terms that lack the sort of precise definition you want .. including evolution itself.

#SMS

Or, from another perspective. To be an American Indian, exactly what
percentage of your ancestors had to be pure Amerind? And, please
justify your answer...

##SMS

Well, first of all I am not of any of the American indigenous peoples so I can to speak for them. I know, however, that some fo the peoples, like my own people, accept others who wish to become of their kind.

On the other hand, if you mean what percent one has to be to claim 100% origin from American indigenes ... that is pretty easy. It ia 100%. We can measure that by reading a person's code.

Not really diffcult.

##RH
If you cannot define it, how can you call it science?

##SMS again, there are many terms in scoence that can nto be defined precisely. Are you aware that the "speed" of light is an average?

SMS

> Third
>
> Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?
>
> I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that
> correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite,
> Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have
> genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a
> racial identity.
>
> Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be
> horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as
> huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there
> is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the
> diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.

##RH

Hmm, the term inbreeding comes directly to mind about the "no harm in
that" thing. You want the healthiest dog? Get a mutt.

##SMS

Not necessarily. If you want the fasted rce horse, you would breed for that. Hybrid vigor is not simply magical. It involves having two distinct sets of chromosomes, enough mix to slect against recessives, etc.

##RH

But, breeds are a significantly different thing than the myth we call
"races" today. To put your example into reality, imagine these dog
breeds 300 years AFTER we humans have left. I bet you would not be able
to find a single "purebred" dog anywhere. This is the actual state of
humanity now.

##SMS ...

Not necessarily true. The dingo evolved in Australia as a result of isolation of the dogs brought there by man. Chihuahua and St. Bernards may now be speciated. But, again, the issue is NOT speciation. No one thinks humans are speciated.

##RH

And, dividing the humans into "races" is IGNORING, not celebrating their
diversity. It is an ignorant attempt to limit the range of this
wonderful diversity by trying to categorize small divisions of it and
then trying to place everything into those small, artificial divisions.
There ARE small humps and clumps in the genome. They tend to have VERY
smooth, gradual edges to them that "seperate" them from the rest of the
genome. This edge is not a cliff, it is barely even a slope. So, where
on that slope does that "race" end? And which of these humps are
"races" and which aren't?

##SMS

Sorry, I can not see how recognizing diversity is a bad thing. Pretending it does not exist is as bad as pretending it is something it is not. Americans who equate all Asians with one "people" are as racist as Americans who think white skin defines race.

> So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to
> oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political
> correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do
> away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a
> zygote has a personality.
>
> Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.


##RH
I don't think that I have ever been accused of being politically
correct. After all, I am actually a member of both the ACLU AND the
NRA. :)

##SMS
I am not a member of either because BOTH practice politcal correctness albeit of different kinds.

##RH
Identity? What identity? Race is nothing but an attempt to REMOVE
personal identity by associating people with a mythical average of that
"race". It is a quasi-scientific attempt to pigeonhole people by
assuming (pretending actually) that the averages of one of these
mythical races actually apply to them as individuals.

##SMS why do you say this? Part of MY identity is my Jewish ancestry. I ahev a friend who is Karite and has proven ancestry of over 2000 years. I see nothing wrong with peole taking pride in their genetics.

Actually, my experience is usually that folks who oppose such rpide want their own great amalgam.. often euro-Christian, as the norm. I am sure you are not that way, but why would we want one world without ethnic or racial identities???

##RH
We are ALL different. There is no way to deny this. The biggest
genetic leap between people is that of parent to offspring. That is 50% on average. Each step further away is smaller. So we use a division
that is removed from us by 50 or more generations, something where the
difference between our "race" and another "race is so small it is pretty
much totally nonexistant and pretend that this non-division division
helps define us? Right.

##SMS .. I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Yes, you received about 50% of your genome from each parent. Depending on their origins, a variable part of the contribution from each aprent will be unique. If both parents are of the same family, as with the typical Bedouin, there may be a lot of homozygosity (same genes on both chromosomes). If Dad is an IBO and Mom and Ainu, there will be much less homozygosity.
- Show quoted text -




On 12/24/06, Richard Harrison wrote:

Stephen,

Yours are in Blue, mine in Black, old stuff in red.

First,

>
> No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as
> "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just
> as with Darwin's Finches.

Sure you can. Ok, I'll give you an example. I'm going to draw a circle
around Central Texas. This circle will extend 150 miles out with Austin
as it's center. I'm going to define as a race everyone that had at
least two ancestors in this circle in 1880.

Now, let's examine this new "race" genetically. The average person in
it has is closer genetically to the current mayor of Munich Germany than
they are with the current mayor of Birmingham England (assuming that the
former is of mostly German heritage and the latter mostly English, not a
valid assumption but we're just playing here). There are obvious
differences in the average from the Germans though. They average out
significantly darker than either of the above. So, they are obviously a
race, right?

If not, why not? If so, why?

> As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman.
> We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the
> Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a
> Manchu, etc.

There is no denying that, but then obviously just from your description,
you are describing an obvious spectrum, NOT a collection of seperate
groups. Hence, not races at all.

> Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the
> ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the
> Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in
> Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the
> "Blacks."

The only legitimate way you could have worded it would have been to add
the words "a significant amount of the" in front of the phrase
"ancestors of most Europeans". The people in the Urals, while a small
group, were not seperated from the rest of humanity to a degree to count
them as a "sub-species". And, to the extent that they were seperated,
this seperation dissapeared thousands of years ago.

>
> These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA
> to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to
> get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we
> would NOT get an adequate sample.


You do? Exactly what "races" do you use? The three classic races? 4?
6? 10? 30? what? Aah, there is the problem. How do you justify calling
one arbitrary group a "race" and not another? Unless you can answer
this, then your argument is lost.

See, what you are actually doing in my opinion, is you are trying to
sample from varied enough parts of the spectrum that we call humanity to
get the greatest diversity. After all, trying to do it by "race"
automatically limits you, doesn't it?

>
> Second,
>
> The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued
> against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or
> White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is
> that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans
> vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an
> "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of
> humanities' branches.


Branches that were mixed long before the American slave trade. Look at
the Lembda. It's not as if they were the only lighter skinned peoples
to migrate south... As soon as a sub-species ends it's isolation, it
takes about 3-4 generations to blur the edges enough that it is no
longer considered a sub-species. Why should race be any different?
IMHO it shouldn't.

> To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up
> "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as
> the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing
> up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones
> herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as
> the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.


So, what defines a race? If you cannot define it, then you cannot
pretend it is scientific.

So, define one for me. Tell me a characteristic or set of
charasteristics that are shared by ALL members of any race but not by
any person outside of that race.

Or, from another perspective. To be an American Indian, exactly what
percentage of your ancestors had to be pure Amerind? And, please
justify your answer...

If you cannot define it, how can you call it science?

> Third
>
> Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?
>
> I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that
> correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite,
> Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have
> genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a
> racial identity.
>
> Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be
> horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as
> huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there
> is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the
> diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.


Hmm, the term inbreeding comes directly to mind about the "no harm in
that" thing. You want the healthiest dog? Get a mutt.

But, breeds are a significantly different thing than the myth we call
"races" today. To put your example into reality, imagine these dog
breeds 300 years AFTER we humans have left. I bet you would not be able
to find a single "purebred" dog anywhere. This is the actual state of
humanity now.

And, dividing the humans into "races" is IGNORING, not celebrating their
diversity. It is an ignorant attempt to limit the range of this
wonderful diversity by trying to categorize small divisions of it and
then trying to place everything into those small, artificial divisions.
There ARE small humps and clumps in the genome. They tend to have VERY
smooth, gradual edges to them that "seperate" them from the rest of the
genome. This edge is not a cliff, it is barely even a slope. So, where
on that slope does that "race" end? And which of these humps are
"races" and which aren't?

> So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to
> oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political
> correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do
> away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a
> zygote has a personality.
>
> Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.


I don't think that I have ever been accused of being politically
correct. After all, I am actually a member of both the ACLU AND the
NRA. :)

Identity? What identity? Race is nothing but an attempt to REMOVE
personal identity by associating people with a mythical average of that
"race". It is a quasi-scientific attempt to pigeonhole people by
assuming (pretending actually) that the averages of one of these
mythical races actually apply to them as individuals.

We are ALL different. There is no way to deny this. The biggest
genetic leap between people is that of parent to offspring. That is 50%
on average. Each step further away is smaller. So we use a division
that is removed from us by 50 or more generations, something where the
difference between our "race" and another "race is so small it is pretty
much totally nonexistant and pretend that this non-division division
helps define us? Right.


> On 12/23/06, *Richard Harrison* <> > wrote:
>
> Sure, what the hey!
>
> Sickle cell is actually significantly more prevalent in India than in
> Africa. It is a mutation that seems to arise whenever malaria is
> an issue.
>
> The main problem with "races" is that, well, we pretty much just made
> them up as we went along. We are pretending that there are these
> obvious dividing lines through humanity that just don't exist.
>
> If you have ANY group of people, just any random group mind you. One
> side of a random street instead of the other for example, there
> will be
> average differences between the two groups. One will be taller, or
> shorter, or heavier, or darker. One will have more smokers, or more
> people with a criminal record or more decent athletes. One will have
> more people that have had cancer or relatives with sickle cell or
> familial dysautonomia or....
>
> This applies to ANY GROUP of any size at all that you can select. So,
> does that make one side of the street a different race than the other?
> And, if the average difference was that they were taller, does
> that mean
> that the shorter people on that side aren't really a member of the
> "left
> side of the street race"?
>
> But, you can use which side of the street you came from for medical
> diagnostic purposes so it must be valid. After all, thanks to the
> redhead family there, that side of the street goes under when given
> anesthesia measureably more quickly. And, they have two people with
> emphysema while the other side has none. So, we should always ask
> which
> side of the street someone comes from. If the left, don't bother
> checking for emphysema. And pass a law that you must ask which
> side of
> the street you live on before you knock them out!
>
> That is all races are really. Groups that were arbitrarily selected.
> They were defined by a mythical "average" member of that group and
> then
> we pretended that there was some magical but obvious dividing line
> between these groups. And some pretty stupid laws have been
> passed to
> prolong this myth. Look at the "one drop of negroid blood" laws
> throughout much of this country. Or how they determine if you qualify
> for the federal student aid given to "Native Americans" (one of your
> parents before about 1970 had to say he or she was decended from a
> native, no proof had to be offered, then you were officially a "native
> american" and eligible for funds).
>
> We are all different. If you clump us into groups, ANY groups, then
> each of the groups will average differently in some measurements than
> the other groups.
>
> But, to use this fact to try to justify the groupings is just
> ignorant.
> No matter how many races your personal mythology leads you to believe
> in, and the numbers range from 3 to about 30 depending on where in the
> world you are and your "classical education", not a single one of them
> are any more justifiable from any scientific standpoint than my
> "other
> side of the street" example.
>
> You mentioned your pride in your ancestry. Stephen, I admire
> you, you
> are an intelligent person and can hold a reasonable discussion on a
> touchy subject which is a rare and wonderful thing. I hope I don't
> insult you here but, well, here goes.
>
> I have long felt that pride in one's ancestry or race is the
> pennadir (a
> cord I coined, pen = the one before and you know what nadir means)
> thing
> that a person can be proud of. You might be honored and even
> humbled,
> that would be reasonable and I feel it about my ancestry (there
> are also
> members in my gene pool that I'm glad aren't public knowledge :)
> ), but
> proud? Pride is something that should be reserved for your
> accomplishments, NOT for things that you had no control over.
>
> I have my ancestry traced back to the early 1700's. Of that 10 or so
> generations (about 1024 people), I am pretty sure about 8% of them
> which
> is MUCH higher than average. What percentage for you? I think you
> mentioned a time equivalent to about 14 generations. That would be a
> few over 16,000 people. How many of them do you have the names for?
> Within the approx 10% "psst, he wasn't really the father"
> compensation
> that is?
>
> That wasn't trying to be insulting actually. It was just pointing out
> that, well, we are all mongrels. If race ever did exist, it has long
> since been whiped out. There have been no significant "isolated"
> peoples for about 600 years now. The definition of isolation is that
> NONE of them interbreed with others. For as soon as any do, then that
> group just become a small blip on the spectrum that has a very
> shallow
> slope (where a cliff used to be) merging them with the rest of
> humanity. It only takes 3-4 generations and that time has WAY passed
> for all (racial) groups.
>
> Richard (AKA DIPics)
>
> Stephen Schwartz wrote:
>
> > If you want we can continue the thread here or on my blog.
> >
> > --
> > Stephen M. Schwartz
> > Pathology
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Stephen M. Schwartz
> Pathology

More on Drinking Liberally

This is a continuation of a previous post.

So, as the year draws to an end, I have made a video about the 2006 election. The video is built around my photographs at the Montlake Tavern, where each Tuesday night liberals from Seattle gather to beerify and gather about the liberal blogger in chief for Seattle, David Goldstein. The essay begins at Move-On headquarters at a meeting to make phone calls for Move-On sponsored candidates and progresses through the election season at the tavern.

I have posted it to YouTube as a video .. quality there is pretty bad so anyone who know me can come by and get a DVD. Hope you enjoy the essay and lets hope for a better future post Bush the lesser.