I haven’t said anything here yet about the current hubbub over Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal, because both cases are very tricky situations. Some conservative pundits try to paint the liberal acceptance (and even celebration) of Jenner’s new female identity as hypocritical in light of their disdain for Dolezal’s claim to African-American identity. These writers make some good points. But IMHO, the situation is not that simple; the Jenner and Dolezal situations have significant differences (I mean, Jenner cannot even try to coverup her past as a him, whereas Dolezal seemed to need a few fibs or, excuse the term, “white lies”, to get where she was).

I believe or at least hope that both situations are doing America some good by making us think about and discuss the deep but seldom-questioned issues regarding who we think we are and what makes us whatever that is. Philosophers and sociologists will have a field day dissecting these cases with their classes. Hopefully some rational thoughts and enlightened attitudes will filter their way through all the static and hucksterism that our non-stop media circus has created over Caitlyn and Rachel.

About the only thing that I can add is that in the end, society will decide what a man or a woman is, and what white or black identity involves. The lead-off agents in that social determination process should be those  »  continue reading …

The title of this essay comes from Randy Newman’s 1977 song “Baltimore“.

As something of a wanna-be pundit, I find the recent “civil disturbances” in Baltimore (triggered by a fatal police incident) very frustrating because it is so difficult to digest and say anything useful about. Ditto for Ferguson, New York, Berkeley, Cleveland, and the other sites of current unrest over police shootings. The 1960’s (especially 1967) were a time of many civil disturbances in major cities (Detroit, Newark, Watts, Roxbury, etc.), where African American communities vented similar anger about aggressive police actions. It was fairly clear back then that the triggering police acts were just a spark that ignited a volatile underlying anger, which stemmed from a multitude of unjust social and economic conditions faced by black communities. And it seems reasonable enough to conclude that the same applies to the angst and frustration expressed by African-American leaders and communities responding to more recent police shootings involving unarmed victims such as Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Kimani Gray, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, et al. Police bias is certainly a part of it, but is far from the extent of it.

Unlike the 1960’s, however, it is more difficult for the nation as a whole to grasp the overarching social and economic injustices involved, and to see what can be done to fix them. The starting point for those who decry these injustices is racism, of course. The many fatal police incidents in and of themselves allegedly prove that racism is alive and well in the American criminal justice system, and thus by implication is rampant throughout all of our social institutions, large and small.

Unfortunately, however, when you look at the details of at least some of these police incidents, the alleged racist inspirations become more and more difficult  »  continue reading …

Being more of an essayist as opposed to a Twitter-ist, I enjoy reading essay style magazines. That’s not a surprise to anyone who has read more than one or two of my posts (all 3 or 4 of you . . . if that many). And you also know that one of my favorite essay magazines is The Atlantic. I often comment here in an essay format about some of the essays that appear in each new Atlantic issue (kind of like fighting fire with fire, perhaps). So that’s what I’m going to do right now. Fasten your seat-belt, here we go with another Jim G essay, FWIW.

The March 2015 Atlantic contains an article by Jonathan Rauch entitled “Be Not Afraid”. Rauch’s main point is that President Obama was entirely correct in saying last August that even though many Americans believe that life in America is more dangerous than ever, in truth we’ve never been safer. Rauch ticks off a list of facts and expert opinions that weave together a picture of an America and a world where the risks of violence and mayhem continue a long-term historic decline. The headlines we read focus upon on-going terrorist attacks in major cities; armed conflict in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Mexico, Yemen, central Africa, etc.; near-plague-like conditions from Ebola in Liberia and Western Africa; and nuclear weapons in the hands of irrational ideologues (North Korea and Iran). And yet, when compared with the past, even the not-so-distant past, fewer and fewer people are actually dying from such conflicts and threats. Even crime is way down in the US and most other industrialized nations.

Well, QED (quod erat demonstrandum, Latin for “it had to be proven and so it has”). According to Rauch, “Americans’ threat perception has never been as distorted as it is today.” And thus we need to thank our intellectual President for lecturing the public about this, even though  »  continue reading …