The NYPD is bad news. The NYPD has always been bad news. Short of some cataclysmic change in city and police administrative culture, the NYPD will continue to be bad news.
I lived in New York for a few years in the late '90s, when Rudy Giuliani decided to clean up the joint and set about cracking down on drugs, prostitution, and panhandling, among other things. As a friend and lifelong New Yorker recently told me, "It was good, and then it went to far." By her account, a new leader in the police department instituted some radical changes and made some really positive change in the city and police culture, but Giuliani got bitten by the green-eyed monster when that guy got credit for cleaning up the city. So he canned him, and filled the position with someone a little more militant and a little less forward thinking.
By the time I arrived in New York, the police were, under the guise of cleaning up the city, busting skulls pretty much at random, treating drunk revelers talking loudly in nightclub lines with the same violent rigor that they treated armed drug dealers in a sting. They sodomized Abner Louima (a suspect arrested for accidentally punching an officer while attempting to break up a fight between two women at a nightclub) with the handle of a bathroom plunger. They shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed and innocent man who they thought matched a suspect's description as he reached for his wallet to present identification. They fired twelve shots at a mentally ill Hasidic man who was armed with a hammer, and killed him as well. The response from the department to all of these things felt like a shrug. Shit happens, right?
And so here we are, more than ten years later, watching the NYPD refuse access to credentialed reporters from organizations like the New York Times and Reuters as officers in riot gear evict the denizens of Zuccotti Park. Pardon me if this suggests that unnecessary force is not just likely, but probably part of the plan.
The same New York friend I mentioned above, who is not a protester or a radical, told me, "I don't trust them. I try not to have to deal with them ever."
What I'm saying here, is that the NYPD is pretty far from the protect and serve ethos that was, once upon a time, a sentiment sacred to law enforcement officers who were justifiably proud of the work they did to keep the populace safe. And the public is far from holding in their minds the image of Officer Friendly, the approachable beat cop who's tough but fair and looks out for your kids.
I'm appalled by the way the NYPD has handled OWS. When we were there, there were officers stationed along the sidewalks telling passersby to keep moving, to keep the sidewalks clear as they tried to read the protesters signs on Broadway or watch the drummers at the other end of the park, and they were not nice about it. I do a fair amount of crowd control involving hundreds of people at work on busy summer days and I understand how easy it is to get frustrated when people just won't listen, but we're talking about a dozen people at a time walking by and slowing down to look. They were moving along, though slowly, but the officers were extremely loud and extremely aggressive shouting at what were mostly tourists to move along. Guess what, NYPD? There were a lot of people from elsewhere that were willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, or maybe hadn't even heard about your terrible reputation. Way to spread the word that you're a bunch of power-hungry dickheads to every corner of the world.
And they're not the only department overstepping their bounds and generating a shameful public image across the country. Oakland, another department notorious for its aggressive and antagonistic behavior has showed their true colors, landing more than one veteran in the hospital with head injuries sustained from rubber bullets. And sure, in chaotic situations these types of injuries are not uncommon, but if there was any doubt the police were deliberate in their decision to inflict damage as opposed to controlling the crowd, this video, in which a group of protesters rushes to the aid of Scott Olsen, a young veteran who suffered a fractured skull and brain swelling after being hit in the head with a tear gas canister should put those doubts to rest. No one is behaving aggressively, or even looking at the police. They're attempting to address the needs of an injured man lying on the street. The flashbang thrown here reportedly landed only a foot or two from Olsen. You might also watch this, in which students at Berkeley are beaten at length for refusing to disperse. Note in particular the three officers in riot gear in the lower left corner who separate a young man from the crowd and really put their backs into it, then slink off behind the bushes to disappear into a larger crowd of officers. That student was later taken to the hospital having been beaten extensively in the head and ribs.
It's horrifying. It's egregious. It's absolutely shameful. But I'd like to address the collateral damage, outside the physical wounds of protesters, namely the honor and dignity of police everywhere.
My uncle, William Baker, has spent a lifetime in law enforcement, starting as an officer in a small town force where he eventually became the chief. After a brief stint in the Department of Public Safety in Massachusetts, UMaine law, and Haiti doing police training under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, he returned to police work as the chief in Laconia, New Hampshire. Laconia, known for its down and dirty "Bike Week" had both some serious public safety concerns and a deeply antagonistic relationship with the police. A tremendously personable guy and a cop for all the right reasons, one of Bill's main goals in the town was repair the terrible community relations. He instituted a mentoring program pairing officers with at-risk youth and promoted other outreach opportunities in which community members got to know the officers on the streets and were encouraged to approach them not just in emergencies, but with their concerns and suggestions as well. To the dismay of motorcycle enthusiasts, he cleaned up some of the seedier elements of Bike Week (cole slaw wrestling, anyone) and went so far as to ban weapons in the tow during a year when several of the larger biker gangs in the country were publicly warring.
When he left Laconia, he decided to go back to his roots and took a job as a rank and file officer in Biddeford, then decided it was time to leave that type of work to younger men and became the chief in Westbrook. Like Laconia, Westbrook was a town with a number of chronic problems, most notably drugs, and he immediately began an aggressive campaign to curb that activity in the city. He also worked with his officers to improve the culture and morale of the department, promoting transparency and community outreach. Though, again, unpopular with people often engaged in less than legal activities, he was successful in creating community buy in and repairing the relationship of the community at large and the department. He now works as a consultant for the FBI.
There are two major reasons that people go into police work: 1) Because they want to give back to their community and help people and 2) Because they've got some power and control issues and enjoy working in a position that gives them both. Unfortunately, the former, like my uncle are increasingly a minority.
We live in a hyper-aggressive culture, and a lot people go into police work hopped up on adrenaline-seeking and unresolved anger, despite attempts by police academies to screen for and train out those tendencies. Plus, it's a job that, depending on where you work, can pretty easily cultivate a bad attitude. Imagine doing a job where most of the time, the fact that you were called in is a bad thing. Either someone has committed a crime and they're obviously not glad to see you, or someone has been the victim of a crime and your arrival is part and parcel of that negative experience. Police officers deal with people assaulting, insulting, spitting, vomiting and bleeding on them on a regular basis. That's a pretty tough gig. It certainly doesn't excuse the outrageous behavior we've seen across the country, but it's worth keeping in mind before we start painting all police officers with the same brush.
I have to admit that I cringe every time I hear or read, "Fuck the police," or hear them referred to as "pigs." Because I'm not sure, given the extreme situations in which those sentiments are expressed, that the people expressing them will ever be able to separate the heinous actions of those particular officers or departments from the badge in general.
And likewise, I feel deeply angry at the officers perpetrating these offenses, not just for the sheer inhumanity of it, but because they have betrayed the dignity and respect of their position. They've corrupted what ought to be a noble institution and rendered it infinitely more difficult for their more upright brethren across the country to the kind of good work that everyone in uniform should be known for.
I'm sad for the dozens of victims of police brutality these past few days. I'm sad for every officer who reports for duty with a sense of pride in their community and concern for the public and is met with disdain and mistrust. I'm sad that we live in a culture that has allowed this sort of behavior to escalate to such a dire, dangerous, monstrous state.
Don't fuck the police, fuck that.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Occupy Wall Street, All I Ever Wanted II: Total Inspiration
I've been worried since my last post that it might have been too negative, or given the mistaken impression that I'm not a huge fan of OWS after my visit, which is anything but the truth. Looking back, though, I think it's a pretty honest assessment of the camp itself. The main point, of course, was that there's a significant difference between the physical occupation of Zuccotti Park and the protest movement it symbolizes.
But now get ready, because this is going to be a long freakin' post, and roughly halfway in I start gushing like a weird little fangirl.
After spending some time in the park, we went to 60 Wall Street, a cavernous lobby space open to the public that protesters have been using for teach-ins and working group meetings. (This weekend they'll be having a public reading of Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" there). We went there to attend a teach-in, and sat down near a likely-looking circle. As it happens, they were OWS, but not the group we were looking for.
But now get ready, because this is going to be a long freakin' post, and roughly halfway in I start gushing like a weird little fangirl.
After spending some time in the park, we went to 60 Wall Street, a cavernous lobby space open to the public that protesters have been using for teach-ins and working group meetings. (This weekend they'll be having a public reading of Melville's short story "Bartleby the Scrivener" there). We went there to attend a teach-in, and sat down near a likely-looking circle. As it happens, they were OWS, but not the group we were looking for.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Occupy Wall Street, All I Ever Wanted
It's becoming more and more difficult for me to articulate my
thoughts on Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement, and I'm
not sure whether visiting Zuccotti Park made that more or less so. I
think it's fascinating and really important to think and talk about the
very complex issues facing the movement and to do so critically and
impartially despite my support. I am wary, however, of having any
criticism I might have used to discredit the movement, so I feel
increasingly pressure to make sure I'm speaking very precisely. There
were some parts of my visit to OWS that were a bit disheartening, but
others that were utterly transcendent. Whatever shortcomings I might
identify, I am, now more than ever, a huge supporter of this movement
and extremely impressed with the work that's being done and the
extraordinary level of complexity and organization within the group.
Since I tend to think of my experience there in two parts, I'm going to split this into two posts. For one thing, it'll just hang together better, and for another, I'm fully aware that I'm, well, wordy, to put it kindly. And so.
I guess as good a starting point as any is the peculiar semantic dissonance of the term "occupation" and the actual structure of the protest group. I've had a number of discussions lately with Occupy skeptics, and it's occurred to me that despite the fact that a huge majority (read thousands upon thousands) of participants and supporters are not actually, literally occupying tents in Zuccotti Park or other designated spaces across the country, the encampments, because they are a visible, tangible, 24-hour manifestation, are the sum total of evidence for how many people judge the movement.
On the one hand, I understand. If you aren't already predisposed to support it based on the vague ideas presented in the mainstream press, it's difficult to invest the time and energy necessary to understand the layers upon layers of nuance the movement engenders. And it's called "Occupy" which suggests (again, to those disinclined to really examine it) that somehow the physical presence of protesters in tent cities is somehow the point.
On the other hand, that's some pretty goddamn lazy thinking. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm group shy and took my time getting comfortable with Occupy, but I spent some time trying to get a feel for it, and found it relatively easy to get a handle on. Granted, as my high school history teacher taught me, I went directly for the primary source readings, occupywallstreet.org, occupytogether.org, participants blogs, etc., because if you want to know what people are talking about, you'll always to better to ask directly then to accept someone else's account of what they seemed to be saying. Particularly when "someone else" is a reporter who may or may not have done their research.
At any rate, this question of Occupy Wall Street (or anywhere else) as a physical occupation of a particular space versus a larger philosophical and/or off-site presence is important and I became more cognizant than ever that the physical occupations, while symbolically important, should not be the standard by which the movement is judged. Because if I were to judge OWS by Zuccotti Park, I would have been very disappointed.
Since I tend to think of my experience there in two parts, I'm going to split this into two posts. For one thing, it'll just hang together better, and for another, I'm fully aware that I'm, well, wordy, to put it kindly. And so.
I guess as good a starting point as any is the peculiar semantic dissonance of the term "occupation" and the actual structure of the protest group. I've had a number of discussions lately with Occupy skeptics, and it's occurred to me that despite the fact that a huge majority (read thousands upon thousands) of participants and supporters are not actually, literally occupying tents in Zuccotti Park or other designated spaces across the country, the encampments, because they are a visible, tangible, 24-hour manifestation, are the sum total of evidence for how many people judge the movement.
On the one hand, I understand. If you aren't already predisposed to support it based on the vague ideas presented in the mainstream press, it's difficult to invest the time and energy necessary to understand the layers upon layers of nuance the movement engenders. And it's called "Occupy" which suggests (again, to those disinclined to really examine it) that somehow the physical presence of protesters in tent cities is somehow the point.
On the other hand, that's some pretty goddamn lazy thinking. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm group shy and took my time getting comfortable with Occupy, but I spent some time trying to get a feel for it, and found it relatively easy to get a handle on. Granted, as my high school history teacher taught me, I went directly for the primary source readings, occupywallstreet.org, occupytogether.org, participants blogs, etc., because if you want to know what people are talking about, you'll always to better to ask directly then to accept someone else's account of what they seemed to be saying. Particularly when "someone else" is a reporter who may or may not have done their research.
At any rate, this question of Occupy Wall Street (or anywhere else) as a physical occupation of a particular space versus a larger philosophical and/or off-site presence is important and I became more cognizant than ever that the physical occupations, while symbolically important, should not be the standard by which the movement is judged. Because if I were to judge OWS by Zuccotti Park, I would have been very disappointed.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
It's the #Occupation That's Sweeping the Nation
There was a time when timidity kept me from joining things. As time goes on, it's become more curmudgeonly distaste than fear that keeps me flying solo. There are a number of political and social issues that move me, but I always end up disinterested in aligning myself with the official movements that support my positions.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but at the top of the list is my overwhelming aversion to the doctrinaire thinking and the kind of accidental complacency that creeps in when people align themselves under a philosophical flag.
Which is why I really like the #Occupy movement.
Given the respectful, dignified and diverse face of the this movement, the opposition's at a bit of a loss to find a critique that gains traction, but the standby seems to be the lack of coherent message, the old, "but they're not accomplishing anything," attack, which really misses the point.
For starters, there may not be a list of demands but guess what? This is a protest movement, not a hostage negotiation. As far as there not being a message...isn't a little bit farcical to pretend the message is indecipherable? The bottom line here is that the American public has become a marginalized minority by its theoretical representatives in government and the undue influence of corporations on same.
At this early point, the over-arching goal of this movement is to win the hearts and minds of the American public.
Because while morally dubious political decision-making and corporate malfeasance are the direct roots of our current malaise, we, the 99%, need to take a little bit of responsibility here too. I'm not talking "you can't complain if you don't vote," because voting is a pretty bare minimum of involvement and is, as we've seen, pretty ineffective. It's not enough to check a box on a ballot if elected officials know there'll be no consequences if they let us down. The corporate/political complicity that #Occupy stands against didn't happen suddenly, it happened incrementally and as a nation we were a) not paying attention or b) too lazy to respond beyond bitching to our friends.
There were people protesting, the proverbial canaries in the coal mine but average Americans were either a) not paying attention or b) too lazy to think critically about what they were saying. The message that corporations have a dangerous hold on politics is not a new idea. We've watched G8 summits and IMF meetings turn into chaos and rioting and we've seen a steady stream of furious hippies and punks railing against the man and his money and the control it has in our lives. The thing is, they were preaching to the choir, or at the very least to lapsed members of the congregation. The people who heard the message were the people who already understood the dynamic. The people who needed to hear it saw a bunch of very angry people with weird hair and insufficient personal hygiene with whom they had nothing in common.
So here we are, having fallen rather far into the rabbit hole of economic and social decline and finally, finally waking up and taking a stand. To my mind the real target of the #Occupy movement (at least at this early stage) is only nominally the 1% and its stranglehold on government. It's not so much against something as it is FOR a great awakening of the public consciousness, FOR the creation of an educated, engaged populace, FOR a sense of unity to replace the binary us vs. them, liberals vs. conservatives, white collar vs. blue collar narrative that has effectively paralyzed our capacity to act together. We've spent a very long time misdirecting a lot of dogmatic, impotent rage at each other instead of valuing the things we share and working to achieve common goals.
To change those attitudes, particularly as deeply entrenched as they are, is no mean feat. #Occupy has made impressive inroads already, and if it keeps on apace, it will have achieved something far more valuable than revoking corporate personhood or prosecuting some crooked CEO; it will have changed the culture that created the conditions for these shenanigans in the first place.
And so I'm putting aside my natural aversion to joining and heading down to New York next week. I have faith it's going to be engaging and inspiring. I'm excited to meet people and talk with them about what's going on and I'm sure there'll also be a bunch of people and things that drive me crazy. Which sounds like democracy. It sounds good.
There are a lot of reasons for that, but at the top of the list is my overwhelming aversion to the doctrinaire thinking and the kind of accidental complacency that creeps in when people align themselves under a philosophical flag.
Which is why I really like the #Occupy movement.
Given the respectful, dignified and diverse face of the this movement, the opposition's at a bit of a loss to find a critique that gains traction, but the standby seems to be the lack of coherent message, the old, "but they're not accomplishing anything," attack, which really misses the point.
For starters, there may not be a list of demands but guess what? This is a protest movement, not a hostage negotiation. As far as there not being a message...isn't a little bit farcical to pretend the message is indecipherable? The bottom line here is that the American public has become a marginalized minority by its theoretical representatives in government and the undue influence of corporations on same.
At this early point, the over-arching goal of this movement is to win the hearts and minds of the American public.
Because while morally dubious political decision-making and corporate malfeasance are the direct roots of our current malaise, we, the 99%, need to take a little bit of responsibility here too. I'm not talking "you can't complain if you don't vote," because voting is a pretty bare minimum of involvement and is, as we've seen, pretty ineffective. It's not enough to check a box on a ballot if elected officials know there'll be no consequences if they let us down. The corporate/political complicity that #Occupy stands against didn't happen suddenly, it happened incrementally and as a nation we were a) not paying attention or b) too lazy to respond beyond bitching to our friends.
There were people protesting, the proverbial canaries in the coal mine but average Americans were either a) not paying attention or b) too lazy to think critically about what they were saying. The message that corporations have a dangerous hold on politics is not a new idea. We've watched G8 summits and IMF meetings turn into chaos and rioting and we've seen a steady stream of furious hippies and punks railing against the man and his money and the control it has in our lives. The thing is, they were preaching to the choir, or at the very least to lapsed members of the congregation. The people who heard the message were the people who already understood the dynamic. The people who needed to hear it saw a bunch of very angry people with weird hair and insufficient personal hygiene with whom they had nothing in common.
So here we are, having fallen rather far into the rabbit hole of economic and social decline and finally, finally waking up and taking a stand. To my mind the real target of the #Occupy movement (at least at this early stage) is only nominally the 1% and its stranglehold on government. It's not so much against something as it is FOR a great awakening of the public consciousness, FOR the creation of an educated, engaged populace, FOR a sense of unity to replace the binary us vs. them, liberals vs. conservatives, white collar vs. blue collar narrative that has effectively paralyzed our capacity to act together. We've spent a very long time misdirecting a lot of dogmatic, impotent rage at each other instead of valuing the things we share and working to achieve common goals.
To change those attitudes, particularly as deeply entrenched as they are, is no mean feat. #Occupy has made impressive inroads already, and if it keeps on apace, it will have achieved something far more valuable than revoking corporate personhood or prosecuting some crooked CEO; it will have changed the culture that created the conditions for these shenanigans in the first place.
And so I'm putting aside my natural aversion to joining and heading down to New York next week. I have faith it's going to be engaging and inspiring. I'm excited to meet people and talk with them about what's going on and I'm sure there'll also be a bunch of people and things that drive me crazy. Which sounds like democracy. It sounds good.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
A Thing That Drives Me Bats:
With the exception of my gender, most of my demographic info falls in the privileged category. I recognize it. I do my level best to be mindful of it. I’m interested in discussions and debate with people who are and are not privileged in the same ways.
But I have to say it really bums me out when the notion of privilege gets bandied around as a way to invalidate someone’s input in these sorts of explorations. I haven’t run afoul of it myself, but I’ve seen a lot of it lately.
If someone’s out of line, rebuttal with a legitimate, reasoned argument is a million times more productive and enlightening than telling them that their race/gender/sexual orientation/what have you means they can’t possibly understand. It’s belittling, it undermines constructive conversation and it promotes isolation and mistrust.
I recently saw a tweet from someone who often supports arguments that use the concept of privilege as a weapon. In the tweet, she used a race-based colloquialism that is considered offensive to some members of the minority it references and then made a sarcastic reference to the “political correctness” police. I was disappointed by the lack of respect from someone who insists on respect from others and the realization that she’s less interested in real examination of privilege and difference than in validating her own position.
Respect is the bottom line. Privilege and related concepts aren’t intended to be weapons in an arsenal, trotted out to dominate an argument. They’re tools for understanding ourselves and others and they’re meaningless if respect isn’t in the equation.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
We're Going to the Promised Land
I'm guessing most everyone's familiar with some variation on this phenomenon, but let's define a term real quick before I get down to business:
"Black Eye Season" is the nebulous off-season of businesses (or for that matter cities or states) that operate year-round but are largely seasonal.
During the long, dark, cold winter when things get a little sleepy people have a lot of time on their hands, a portion of which inevitably ends up devoted to grousing about working conditions in the long, dark, cold winter, and concocting grievances (both reasonable and un-) against co-workers, management and the cruel, cruel universe at large.
Those of you don't work in an industry like this can just picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Well-adjusted people don't live here anymore, Mrs. Torrance.
Good then. Let's go.
"Black Eye Season" is the nebulous off-season of businesses (or for that matter cities or states) that operate year-round but are largely seasonal.
During the long, dark, cold winter when things get a little sleepy people have a lot of time on their hands, a portion of which inevitably ends up devoted to grousing about working conditions in the long, dark, cold winter, and concocting grievances (both reasonable and un-) against co-workers, management and the cruel, cruel universe at large.
Those of you don't work in an industry like this can just picture Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Well-adjusted people don't live here anymore, Mrs. Torrance.
Good then. Let's go.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
A Tale of Two Cities
It ain't a pretty fact, but it's a fact that where there's a society, there's hierarchy, and where there's hierarchy, there's a bottom, social science's dreaded "Other." Maybe it's a religious group, a racial minority, people of a particular gender, or socio-economic class. It's not rational or fair, sometimes it's not even conscious, but there it is. And of course, Otherness isn't exclusive, so there might be several varieties of bias in effect at the same time.
In my experience in Portland, dating back to the eighties, class is the big dog of Otherness. In an otherwise mostly homogenous city, the differences between rich and poor were marked in carefully delineated unspoken categories: the actually wealthy (I don't recall meeting any of these mythical creatures), the upper-middle class, the middle class, the working class, the poor.
Like many (hopefully most) children, I was unaware of these categories as actionable distinctions, but I was aware that it was different to visit a friend in their single-family home in Oakdale than to visit one in an apartment in Kennedy Park: Their parents' speech was different, they wore different clothes, the buildings smelled different, the sounds and sights of the neighborhood were different. Both were a little foreign to me.
My mom grew up middle class and we affected many of the habits and characteristics of that background, but the finances of our young, single-parent, female-headed family put us in a different category. We lived on Sherman St. in a decidedly pre-gentrification Parkside. For the treatment of a colicky baby, the upstairs neighbors suggested a hint of heroin in the bottle. I remember my mom trying hard to distract from the giant smear of blood on the stairwell wall when we came home. I remember my confusion when we ducked into a building that was not our own to get away from the menacing fellow who'd followed us from the bus stop. We weren't as fancy as some people I knew, but we were fancier than others. My mom's always been a down to earth sort who didn't make a big deal about that sort of thing. My life has been incredibly rich in people, both casual encounters and lasting friends because she raised me to look beyond difference.
As often happens, though, those differences began to loom larger as I got older. I count my middle school years as among the most miserable, in part on that account. When I was there, King Middle School was a class war incubator. I would count as low points the day a bunch of girls told me they planned to "kick my fuckin' ass" after the school dance because I was friends with one girl's boyfriend and the day a boy threw a handful of pubic hair on my science table because I wasn't getting sufficiently upset at verbal taunts. Resentment flowed in all directions: Kids who came from tough situations and had little support actively scorned peers with more capital, financial or social, whom they perceived as soulless snobs. The flipside was the more privileged kids dismissing those with less as troublemakers and losers. The one time I ever got in trouble (for swearing, maybe?), a teacher (in what I recognized even at the time as a shockingly inappropriate move) told me not to act out to fit in. "After all," she said, "someday those kids will be pumping your gas."
To a certain extent, I think that's a fairly good summary of the marginalization of people in lower socio-economic classes in Portland, although it was rare for someone in such a progressive-liberal area to say it outright: "Those people" are criminals and deadbeats. "Those people" are a corrupting influence on respectable culture. "Those people" can be ignored. Sound familiar? It's the same horrifying script that appears in larger cities where the marginalized Other is a racial minority.
Which brings me to the real topic of this post: Portland Forecaster reporter Emily Parkhurst recently wrote a piece titled, "Students Tend to Flee Portland's Most Diverse Schools." It's a real humdinger of a headline, and it certainly caught my attention. Sounded like the ol' Forecaster (full disclosure: I freelanced for them roughly a decade ago and my ex-husband was a full time reporter there while we were married) finally decided to sink its teeth into a meaty story -- hot damn!
Unfortunately, the story was a pretty dry recitation of numbers -- numbers of out-of-district requests to and from various schools and the racial demographic data for those schools -- sprinkled with a couple of bland quotes from Superintendent of Schools Jim Morse. If you, like many, many people zone out when confronted with fistfuls of stats (it's how the Press Herald gets away with getting numbers wrong so very, very often), you'll probably be satisfied to accept not just the literal accuracy of the headline but the incendiary subtext that diversity is the reason students are leaving as well. One could argue that no such subtext was intended, but then I would say to one, "BAW HAW HAW! Let's cut the coy bullshit, shall we?"
First of all, I'm going to take issue with the literal accuracy. Yup, lots of students are leaving Riverton, Presumpscot and Hall (no demographic info presented on this last one). In fact, they make up the bulk of the transfer requests. The problem with making an argument that they're "fleeing" diverse schools is that it suggests not that a lot of students are leaving some diverse schools, but that, in general, diverse schools are seeing an exodus. Among the four schools here with roughly 50/50 white/minority populations, Riverton and Presumpscot are losing a lot of kids. Reiche and East End are seeing nearly as many kids transferring in as out. I have a hard time correlating the exodus with racial demographics, when the number of kids actually "fleeing" varies pretty widely within the pool of diverse schools, and the number of requests to leave paints an incomplete picture of how desired or reviled various institutions are.
Second of all, let's look at the insinuation that parents are requesting school for the their kids specifically to get them away from minorities. Riverton, the school throwing up the biggest numbers of requests to leave, is diverse, yes, but it's also classified as a "failing" school by the federal government (East End, also diverse, is also failing). The housing development associated with the neighborhood has had a rough reputation for quite a long time, hitting a new low this summer when a police SWAT unit evacuated residents during a day long armed standoff. Presumpscot and Hall, the next most fled establishments, are both currently over-enrolled, by 25 and 20 percent respectively in part because of previous requests for students to transfer in. It strikes me that there are a number of legitimate reasons that parents might wish to move their children from these schools.
I'm also curious how race became the only cross-referenced demographic in this piece. To get back to my seemingly unrelated intro, I'd be willing to guess that if there's a great big cultural-bias driven factor in this, it's class over race. Riverton has a low-income housing development, Hall has Sagamore Village, and the most requested schools, Lyseth and Longfellow are, yes, overwhelmingly white, but also located in comfy, relatively stable, relatively affluent neighborhoods, the kinds likely to have helpful neighborhood "School Grandmas" and attentive PTAs and boosters.
It's taken me a while to figure out what really bugged me about this article, but here's a short list:
1) Incomplete reporting. Again, I'm curious about the socio-economic data for these schools. I'd like to know about class sizes, program reputations, teacher turnover, etc., at least to the extent that I'm satisfied they were examined by the writer on my behalf. In the middle of this article there's a mention that schools consider reasons for the requests in their deliberations -- I'd like to know how those given reasons break down. Most of all, I'd like to hear from parents, those removing their kids and those keeping their kids in the most-left schools. It would almost certainly be more informative and engaging than Jim Morse saying dumb shit like, "Sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no." If you're going to insist on this demographic angle, wouldn't it be nice to have quotes relevant to your thesis?
2) General haphazardness. It's just a little random the way the whole thing is presented, what gets scrutiny, what doesn't. I'm now completely preoccupied wondering about Hall's diversity numbers, for instance. Honestly, it feels like Parkhurst filed the FOIA for out-of-district requests, had a hunch it was related to race demographics and proceeded to research the story exclusively from that angle despite the uncomfortable fit of that data and the results.
3) Sooo weirdly irresponsible. I guess I'm thinking about this from a place where I assume that Parkhurst only had the data she included in the published story. I suppose it's possible that she talked to a bunch of parents who confirmed they fleeing diversity or had access to all kinds of demographic data and found that the closest thing to a pattern was in the racial data. I just can't imagine that could be the case since it would be ridiculous not to reference any of that in the published piece. I could also assume that maybe she wrote the story from a bland, straight place and some devilish editor put a provocative headline on it, but based on my experience with the paper, that most likely wasn't the case. If the only evidence that parents are yanking their kids from schools to keep them away from minorities is what's presented in this story, I don't buy it and it makes me pretty upset.
Portland is in the earliest stages of negotiating race relations as the minority population grows. There's definitely racism afoot, but there's more of the ignorant, I'd-be-mortified-if-I-realized-how-offensive-that-is, "You people have such nice hair," style racism for the time being than the n-word-using, unabashed hate-style. At this stage it's crucial that we address racial tension where it crops up in order to build a healthy future for our community, but it's irresponsible and counterproductive to stir up conflict where it doesn't seem to be.
From a school perspective, framing this as a race issue ignores the fact that there are a couple/three schools with significantly higher numbers of requests to leave. Let's figure out what's going on in the schools that makes parents trust or mistrust particular institutions more than others. I feel strongly that this article makes racial tension in elementary schools an unfortunate red-herring that distracts us from more pressing school and social-justice issues.
Every society has an Other, but the goal should be to mitigate that condition rather than instigate additional mistrust. Unfortunately, this kind of poorly supported surmise will likely make minority families feel even more uneasy and unwelcome and feed the embarrassed discomfort that many white people who have little exposure to diversity feel when these discussions arise. Many white Mainers haven't thought much about diversity one way or the other, but a good way to poison the well is to give them the impression that they're perceived as bigots. Likewise, I'm sure the minority community would prefer to give their neighbors the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming they're secretly wishing them ill.
I'm curious to hear what people think. I suspect there's a certain Rorschach aspect to this wherein people will identify the social ill they're most in tune with as the problem.
In my experience in Portland, dating back to the eighties, class is the big dog of Otherness. In an otherwise mostly homogenous city, the differences between rich and poor were marked in carefully delineated unspoken categories: the actually wealthy (I don't recall meeting any of these mythical creatures), the upper-middle class, the middle class, the working class, the poor.
Like many (hopefully most) children, I was unaware of these categories as actionable distinctions, but I was aware that it was different to visit a friend in their single-family home in Oakdale than to visit one in an apartment in Kennedy Park: Their parents' speech was different, they wore different clothes, the buildings smelled different, the sounds and sights of the neighborhood were different. Both were a little foreign to me.
My mom grew up middle class and we affected many of the habits and characteristics of that background, but the finances of our young, single-parent, female-headed family put us in a different category. We lived on Sherman St. in a decidedly pre-gentrification Parkside. For the treatment of a colicky baby, the upstairs neighbors suggested a hint of heroin in the bottle. I remember my mom trying hard to distract from the giant smear of blood on the stairwell wall when we came home. I remember my confusion when we ducked into a building that was not our own to get away from the menacing fellow who'd followed us from the bus stop. We weren't as fancy as some people I knew, but we were fancier than others. My mom's always been a down to earth sort who didn't make a big deal about that sort of thing. My life has been incredibly rich in people, both casual encounters and lasting friends because she raised me to look beyond difference.
As often happens, though, those differences began to loom larger as I got older. I count my middle school years as among the most miserable, in part on that account. When I was there, King Middle School was a class war incubator. I would count as low points the day a bunch of girls told me they planned to "kick my fuckin' ass" after the school dance because I was friends with one girl's boyfriend and the day a boy threw a handful of pubic hair on my science table because I wasn't getting sufficiently upset at verbal taunts. Resentment flowed in all directions: Kids who came from tough situations and had little support actively scorned peers with more capital, financial or social, whom they perceived as soulless snobs. The flipside was the more privileged kids dismissing those with less as troublemakers and losers. The one time I ever got in trouble (for swearing, maybe?), a teacher (in what I recognized even at the time as a shockingly inappropriate move) told me not to act out to fit in. "After all," she said, "someday those kids will be pumping your gas."
To a certain extent, I think that's a fairly good summary of the marginalization of people in lower socio-economic classes in Portland, although it was rare for someone in such a progressive-liberal area to say it outright: "Those people" are criminals and deadbeats. "Those people" are a corrupting influence on respectable culture. "Those people" can be ignored. Sound familiar? It's the same horrifying script that appears in larger cities where the marginalized Other is a racial minority.
Which brings me to the real topic of this post: Portland Forecaster reporter Emily Parkhurst recently wrote a piece titled, "Students Tend to Flee Portland's Most Diverse Schools." It's a real humdinger of a headline, and it certainly caught my attention. Sounded like the ol' Forecaster (full disclosure: I freelanced for them roughly a decade ago and my ex-husband was a full time reporter there while we were married) finally decided to sink its teeth into a meaty story -- hot damn!
Unfortunately, the story was a pretty dry recitation of numbers -- numbers of out-of-district requests to and from various schools and the racial demographic data for those schools -- sprinkled with a couple of bland quotes from Superintendent of Schools Jim Morse. If you, like many, many people zone out when confronted with fistfuls of stats (it's how the Press Herald gets away with getting numbers wrong so very, very often), you'll probably be satisfied to accept not just the literal accuracy of the headline but the incendiary subtext that diversity is the reason students are leaving as well. One could argue that no such subtext was intended, but then I would say to one, "BAW HAW HAW! Let's cut the coy bullshit, shall we?"
First of all, I'm going to take issue with the literal accuracy. Yup, lots of students are leaving Riverton, Presumpscot and Hall (no demographic info presented on this last one). In fact, they make up the bulk of the transfer requests. The problem with making an argument that they're "fleeing" diverse schools is that it suggests not that a lot of students are leaving some diverse schools, but that, in general, diverse schools are seeing an exodus. Among the four schools here with roughly 50/50 white/minority populations, Riverton and Presumpscot are losing a lot of kids. Reiche and East End are seeing nearly as many kids transferring in as out. I have a hard time correlating the exodus with racial demographics, when the number of kids actually "fleeing" varies pretty widely within the pool of diverse schools, and the number of requests to leave paints an incomplete picture of how desired or reviled various institutions are.
Second of all, let's look at the insinuation that parents are requesting school for the their kids specifically to get them away from minorities. Riverton, the school throwing up the biggest numbers of requests to leave, is diverse, yes, but it's also classified as a "failing" school by the federal government (East End, also diverse, is also failing). The housing development associated with the neighborhood has had a rough reputation for quite a long time, hitting a new low this summer when a police SWAT unit evacuated residents during a day long armed standoff. Presumpscot and Hall, the next most fled establishments, are both currently over-enrolled, by 25 and 20 percent respectively in part because of previous requests for students to transfer in. It strikes me that there are a number of legitimate reasons that parents might wish to move their children from these schools.
I'm also curious how race became the only cross-referenced demographic in this piece. To get back to my seemingly unrelated intro, I'd be willing to guess that if there's a great big cultural-bias driven factor in this, it's class over race. Riverton has a low-income housing development, Hall has Sagamore Village, and the most requested schools, Lyseth and Longfellow are, yes, overwhelmingly white, but also located in comfy, relatively stable, relatively affluent neighborhoods, the kinds likely to have helpful neighborhood "School Grandmas" and attentive PTAs and boosters.
It's taken me a while to figure out what really bugged me about this article, but here's a short list:
1) Incomplete reporting. Again, I'm curious about the socio-economic data for these schools. I'd like to know about class sizes, program reputations, teacher turnover, etc., at least to the extent that I'm satisfied they were examined by the writer on my behalf. In the middle of this article there's a mention that schools consider reasons for the requests in their deliberations -- I'd like to know how those given reasons break down. Most of all, I'd like to hear from parents, those removing their kids and those keeping their kids in the most-left schools. It would almost certainly be more informative and engaging than Jim Morse saying dumb shit like, "Sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no." If you're going to insist on this demographic angle, wouldn't it be nice to have quotes relevant to your thesis?
2) General haphazardness. It's just a little random the way the whole thing is presented, what gets scrutiny, what doesn't. I'm now completely preoccupied wondering about Hall's diversity numbers, for instance. Honestly, it feels like Parkhurst filed the FOIA for out-of-district requests, had a hunch it was related to race demographics and proceeded to research the story exclusively from that angle despite the uncomfortable fit of that data and the results.
3) Sooo weirdly irresponsible. I guess I'm thinking about this from a place where I assume that Parkhurst only had the data she included in the published story. I suppose it's possible that she talked to a bunch of parents who confirmed they fleeing diversity or had access to all kinds of demographic data and found that the closest thing to a pattern was in the racial data. I just can't imagine that could be the case since it would be ridiculous not to reference any of that in the published piece. I could also assume that maybe she wrote the story from a bland, straight place and some devilish editor put a provocative headline on it, but based on my experience with the paper, that most likely wasn't the case. If the only evidence that parents are yanking their kids from schools to keep them away from minorities is what's presented in this story, I don't buy it and it makes me pretty upset.
Portland is in the earliest stages of negotiating race relations as the minority population grows. There's definitely racism afoot, but there's more of the ignorant, I'd-be-mortified-if-I-realized-how-offensive-that-is, "You people have such nice hair," style racism for the time being than the n-word-using, unabashed hate-style. At this stage it's crucial that we address racial tension where it crops up in order to build a healthy future for our community, but it's irresponsible and counterproductive to stir up conflict where it doesn't seem to be.
From a school perspective, framing this as a race issue ignores the fact that there are a couple/three schools with significantly higher numbers of requests to leave. Let's figure out what's going on in the schools that makes parents trust or mistrust particular institutions more than others. I feel strongly that this article makes racial tension in elementary schools an unfortunate red-herring that distracts us from more pressing school and social-justice issues.
Every society has an Other, but the goal should be to mitigate that condition rather than instigate additional mistrust. Unfortunately, this kind of poorly supported surmise will likely make minority families feel even more uneasy and unwelcome and feed the embarrassed discomfort that many white people who have little exposure to diversity feel when these discussions arise. Many white Mainers haven't thought much about diversity one way or the other, but a good way to poison the well is to give them the impression that they're perceived as bigots. Likewise, I'm sure the minority community would prefer to give their neighbors the benefit of the doubt rather than assuming they're secretly wishing them ill.
I'm curious to hear what people think. I suspect there's a certain Rorschach aspect to this wherein people will identify the social ill they're most in tune with as the problem.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)