Cheers for America’s Children of 2020!
How rousing and exhilarating is the spirit and energy of the many-hued cast of the musical Hamilton! How well it mirrors – in advance – the demographic change predicted to occur in the year 2020. That’s when, according to the US Census Bureau: Most of the nation’s children will not be of European descent. Or, to put it another way, Children of solely European descent or origin will be fewer in number in the US than the children of indigenous, and/or African, and/or Asian descent or origin, and certainly, much fewer in number than the children of “mixed” ancestral heritages. Question for all: What does this mean for me and “my people”? Do I feel excited by this change? Eager to add more shadings to my own family’s repertoire of choices and imaginings?...
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A Tale of Two Faces
What would have happened if they looked like this? Imagine if the boy on the left was found dead, incontestably shot and killed by the man on the right. How differently the course of events would have gone! Racism is, at its deepest core, about the pre-linguistic, pre-behavioral, “in your gut” feelings of (fully human) “people like us” versus “those dangerous others” (who may just be less-than-human, and thus are all the more dangerous, cunning, and animalistically endowed). At a level that does not easily allow for conscious self-examination, there is an unspoken fear of “their” danger to “us” which motivates words, actions, laws, and policies regarding “them”. The use of racial epithets, the creation of behavioral traditions (e.g. residential segregation) and the enactment of legal tactics (e.g. Jim Crow voting strategies) all stem subsequently from those deep-seated concerns...
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Forever in Our Hearts – Loki
This is the piece I wrote to be published in the “Forever in Our Hearts” section of the September, 2013 issue of the quarterly magazine, the Leo Letter (the official publication of the Leonberger Club of America) To write about our magnificent communicator, Loki, requires me to use words, which of course Loki could never produce. But that never stopped him from understanding our words and all of our other ways of communicating, both consciously and unconsciously, and of communicating his thoughts and feelings back to us In the days since his death, in between my audible sobs and silent tears, I have also smiled and even laughed about our Loki-boy. We had many affectionate names for him: Lokenberger, Puppy Boy, Buddy, Sweet Boy, Lok-man. Looking over some of the many pictures I have of him brings back so...
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To Fellow Members of the Leonberger Club of America: My Loki is Gone
This is the email I sent to the LeoList (an email list for members of the Leonberger Club of America) announcing Loki’s death. A great heart has stopped forever – our Loki boy’s… Our huge-hearted, people-loving Loki boy died yesterday (Tuesday) morning at the emergency animal clinic, leaving us in grief and tears. We’ve known for more than a year that he had laryngeal paralysis, but he was actually doing relatively well, even without a tie-back operation. We got a slow-feed bowl and fed him several small meals throughout the day, and kept his walks short and in the cool part of the day – which is usually not difficult to do here in the cool Pacific Northwest. It also helped that his personality was very calm. We had been having a wretched hot spell for the past few...
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The Montgomery Police Badge, the Harlem Shake, and Other Post-Pain Performative Gestures
Two recently televised events – Melissa Harris-Perry’s reaction, on her show, to the Harlem Shake dance craze, and Montgomery, Alabama Police Chief Kevin Murphy’s public apology to civil rights veteran Representative John Lewis – both caught my eye as being surprisingly relevant to the book project I am working on now regarding deadly prejudice in an entirely different historical and cultural context. The puzzle I am grappling with in my own work is deeply personal. As a Polish-American anthropologist who has spent over a decade teaching college students about genocide and the Holocaust, I want to be critically honest about the sociological workings of anti-Semitism in Poland, particularly around the time of the Nazi occupation there. At the same time, however, I still want to nourish my family’s connection to, and pride in, the land of my ancestors. Yes,...
Read MoreMatty Brown – BIPOLAND
From Seattle-based filmmaker Matty Brown: “I chose to not only observe present-day Auschwitz, but also present-day Poland, document both, and show them as I felt them…knowing the strength of these people who looked forward and fought tooth and nail so the new generations could live these beautiful lives today inspires me so much. This is my tribute to Poland, its people, and the ones who perished in World War II.” Music by Philip Glass “Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra: Movement II” Performed by Dennis Russel Davies BIPOLAND from Matty Brown on...
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