Not One of Us???????????

One week ago today a man, driven by ignorance and hate, radicalized by the din of the irresponsible, and possessed with the will of a zealot, killed 50 people and injured many more at to mosques in Christ's Church New Zealand.    His reasoning was the often cited idea that immigrants, especially those of color and non-Christian religions, are on a mission to destroy the so-called White Race.  He felt a sense of duty to attack, terrorize and kill as many of the others he could. 

A foreign body

And a foreign mind

Never welcome

In the land of the blind

We see the ideology that permeated this man's thinking daily, coming from the talking heads on the news and even from leaders in our own country.  They call for a wall to keep out the invaders from south, a term that the killer used as well when describing his victims.  This sets up a real sense of US and THEM and makes the THEM an evil force destine to destroy the US. 

There's safety in numbers

When you learn to divide

How can we be in

If there is no outside

The fear that is being developed in the onslaught of rhetoric is driving a rise in white nationalist hate and we are now in the business of exporting it.  The New Zealand attacker cited Americans including our President as people who are to be emulated.   When one speaks for the identified other in this separation of people they too become the enemy.  So often the language of some has risen to inspire terror against the upstanders in politics and the media.

You may look like we do

Talk like we do

But you know how it is

You're not one of us'

But there is hope.  Today I stood with dozens of Jews at a mosque in Indianapolis as the prayed their Jumu'ah.  We held signs in solidarity and shared stories and frankly learned about each other.  The interesting thing is that this mosque, established by Black Muslims in the 1970s now draws from a diverse group of Muslims from many countries.  I met people from East Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and Europe.  All Muslims coming to pray.  As Jews we were honored to stand up for them, to show the world we accept them as our human family while their path to the Divine is different. 

All shades of opinion

Feed an open mind

But your values are twisted

Let us help you unwind

Yesterday I went to the Indiana State House as clergy leaders from across a variety of faith traditions shared words of consolation, hope and yearning, and even words of demand that the state lawmakers take Indiana off the short list of 5 states without a bias crime bill.  As each person rose to express their traditions vision of the issue of hate in our community they all cited when another had been attacked for being different.  The goal was to show our elected officials that religious communities see you and we will take care of the praying, it is time for them to act.  If only they would. 

It's only water

In a stranger's tear

Looks are deceptive

But distinctions are clear

We all cry the same tears when sad.  We are share the same emotions, regardless of the color of our skin, the words we choose to call on the Divine or how we dress, wear our hair or cover ourselves up.  We should be and always will be a country and a world of distinct differences.  Differences of thought and tastes.  But in that vast difference we should all strive to not only see the beauty of diversity but point it out to others.  We must also challenge those whose words and actions try to make the distinctions something to fear, not something to embrace.  While every group will have bad actors, we cannot define an entire people by the actions of a few.  We are at a dangerous time, those who hate seem to have found a new and louder voice, here in our own country and across the world.  So we must focus on the actions of those that stand in the breach.  We must educate those who spread the vitriol and when that is not possible, be ready to respond to their rancor.  The time is now to squash the nonsense and replace it with a possibility of growth and even love.  We are better when we all come together as people, from many paths but with the same journey.  To create a brighter world for those who come later, our children, our grandchildren and beyond.  Don't let those who see the world as better when monochromatic win.  Our progeny will never forgive us.

*Words in italics are from Peter Gabriel's Not One Of Us  

Vaccines and the World of Social Media

I just saw a report that there are an army of anti-vaccination believers have made death-threats to doctors who support vaccinating children, causing a recent Centers for Disease Control program to require high levels of security.  Imagine that, a group of doctors reporting on disease spreads and the solution that is proposed required armed security with automatic weapons.  This is where we are today as people seem to not be able to trust, in some cases, long established science, often using debunked research that asserted as fact things that were not found. 

This is not a partisan issue.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Democrat and a loud voice in the so-called anti-vax movement.  He often speaks out against government requiring vaccines and citing nonsense opinions about the link between vaccines and autism.  However so are many on the right.  The current President has been a vocal supporter of this debunked idea going back many years.  He has stated publicly and linked to alternative websites that continue to say there is a link.  Besides politicians there are tons of celebrities and just ordinary people who live in a place where they are more likely to believe these false ideas and put their children at risk than really research the history of vaccines. 

Vaccines can cause harm, to an extremely small percentage of the population.  It is a terrible thing when attempts to help cause harm, but medicine is still an art, there are no perfect solutions.  But children who have been harmed by vaccines are being exploited by the anti-vax crowd, up to and including lying about how they have been harmed. 

The mass distribution of vaccines like the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine (MMR) have only been around since the 1960s and world-wide distribution since the 80s.  In that time deaths from these disease have dropped from more than 2 million a year to less the 200,000 and most of those are in the developing world.  Millions have received these vaccinations and most have no ill effects.  While there is a rise in diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the last few decades but I am certain that it isn't the result of vaccinations and probably, in part, due to recognizing it more. 

I personally welcome science to explore any questions about vaccines or aspect of our public health experiences but this has been done.  People who have published stories about vaccines and autism, for example, have been found to be faking the data.  While the medical profession that is supposed to be in on some kind of vaccine conspiracy openly acknowledge that sometimes vaccines cause harm.  But like many things the benefits outweigh the risks.  A car seat can save your child's life in an accident, but it can also trap them if the accident causes a car fire.  But you are more likely to be in an accident that can throw your baby from the car than one where they are burned, so using a car seat is a good idea even though there are risks.  Same with vaccines, there is a chance of causing a form of harm but it is so tiny the benefits are far more important.

But the worst of the anti-vax crowd are those that attack parents who have children who died even if receiving a vaccine.  When a two-year old died of the flu the anti-vax crowd attacked.  The crowd even suggested that the mom murdered her child.  This is disgusting.  The woman vaccinated her child against the flu, but it didn't work and her son died.  We should simply be sad that science isn't perfect but that is not what science is meant to be.  In fact the idea that we continue to make vaccines and other ways of helping are always being revisited.  Science doesn't settle on it laurels, it probes further, it looks for more connections.  People are alive today because of the vaccines that took a long time to develop and be successful.   The polio vaccine made it so I have never met anyone who had to use an Iron lung, and my guess is that there is an entire generation in college today that would have to google Iron Lung to know what it is.  But that might not be true in 20 years.  We are seeing measles outbreaks around the country.  We are seeing other diseases make a come back after huge declines in the last 50.  Some say they are harmless childhood diseases but we know people have died or have suffered significant side-effects because of the disease.  Even vaccinated people are at risk as vaccines are not 100% effective and thus rely on diseases not getting a stronghold in a community especially a tight knit one.  So while some anti-vax people feel that it is their choice, they are putting others in danger. 

Social media has made it easy for people to portray themselves as experts and promote all manner of things.  In the 90s, when the internet was just getting to a majority of people I showed how easy it was to my students to find websites that said the earth was flat and that lizard people controlled major governments (Bill Clinton apparently is a lizard person).  They looked like well researched websites with images and details that looked legit.  Things really haven't changed and with social media you don't even need a website, just a link to RFK, President Trump or any number of famous people who promote anti-vax nonsense and you look like you have done research.  So I will say to you what I said to those students.  Don't believe everything you read, including this blog.  Do your own research, but remember, when doing so, look for facts.  Oh and if you are under 60 years old, chances are you are here and well in part because of a vaccine. 

See The Other.......

At a recent town hall Howard Schultz, the Starbucks founder who is thinking of running for President, uttered the nonsensical phrase, "I don't see color".  This kind of faux-liberal idea that we can have a color-blind society has been problematic for decades.  The reason is that when you say you don't see color, first you are lying, second you filter everyone through a white European lens.   You look for a flat cultural and social expression that you see as a standard.  It erases the diversity of experience of people of color and other minority visions that are part of our country.  We saw this laid bare when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was nominated.  Early in her career Justice Sotomayor gave a speech in which she included the line "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."  Her quote, taken out of context, was attacked as suggesting she was saying Latina women were smarter than men.  What she was doing was pointing out in some cases people of color and she included women have a different vantage point to understand a situation, specifically she was talking about from the bench, but it is true in the board room, the campus and the factory floor.  Justice Sotomayor, in the speech, said:

"Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice [Benjamin] Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like professor [Steven] Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown .




We can see that what she is saying that one's experience is not necessary but history teaches us that the different perspective of a person of color can move our understanding along faster and with more justice. 



We have always been a country that valued and accepted diversity.  In the 1780s when the United States was recently established there was an idea that the new country would be a melting (some said smelting) pot.  The idea that we would welcome people from around the world and with each new culture they would add their distinction to what it means to be an American and being American would change.  But it didn't take long until people wanted the immigrants to give up who they were and become the Western European standard which was white and Protestant.  America became like the Borg of Star Trek, we wanted full assimilation and that our culture would somehow just use what we wanted from each wave of immigrant culture.   This is seen in the "speak English in America" crowd who still go out and get drunk on Cinco De Mayo.  Color blind ideology wants to people to be the same and that is never going to happen.   


But what is more insidious is the way some people blame the problems of race on the victims of racism.  Earlier this week when Michael Cohen was testifying about his role in the actions of President Trump, things he will go to prison for, he called the President a racist.  Let's be clear, the President has shown clear signs of racism over the many decades he has been in the public eye.  But Representative Mark Meadows decided to parade out a black woman who works for the Executive Branch (a woman that used to be the Trump party planner and is now at HUD) to suggest the President can't be racist.  He was challenged by Rep  Rashida Tlaib.  She called what he did a racist act.  Meadows, who has been connected with racist acts in the past like his fervent birtherism, was appalled.  Since the exchange (again she called what he did racist and not him racist, a distinction that is important) she has been attacked for playing the race card.  Again the idea that we shouldn't see color comes up.  But this is an example of why seeing color is important.  Let's assume the Rep. Meadows did this without trying to cover for the President.  Maybe he truly believes that if you hire people of color in position of authority you can't be racist.  So for him just bringing her out as a prop is a fine thing.  Except the vast majority of people of color don't see it that way.  They see the tokenism that it represents, something Meadows never has to deal with.  There was a joke at the universities I have been associated with that a black woman professor is the hardest working person on campus.  She is asked to serve on every committee and be in as many campus photos as possible.  The reason Meadow's act struck a cord is because that kind of tokenism often is specifically designed to cover up a failure to embrace real diversity or out-and-out racism.  Rep Tlaib may have been trying to educate Meadows and by extension the American people on how not to do it.  But in the end it continues to shine a light on the ignorance of so many, that in the last month (Black History month no less) has seen Democratic politicians who admit to black face, use the n-word and not understand how to respond to a black woman running for President simply being black. 


We are all ignorant and one of the reasons is that we can't see the world through someone else's eyes if we haven't lived their life.  Rep Tlaib learned that when she used an anti-Semitic tome recently.  We all have something to learn and one thing is not to try to white wash society.  I hope Tlaib and Meadows learned something.  Hope is something t