The Outsiders

Peter Jackson's 2009 film "District 9" is a not so sympathetic look at how civilized nations deal with immigration.  The film begins with an alien crisis, a real alien from outer space crisis, that grips the city of Johannesburg, South Africa with fear. As the crisis escalates, the foreign community pressures South Africa to deal with the crisis head on. After storming their spacecraft, they find that the aliens are in extremely poor health and desperately need medical attention and nourishment.  The community responds. However, they are overwhelmed by the situation, and end up creating more of a problem with their help. Temporary tent cities turn in to permanent slums and ghettos, marred by violence and crime, and illegal activity. The ghetto is fenced off, separating it from the rest of the city, isolating those on the inside and the outside.

Donald R. Kinder and Tali Mendelberg published an interesting article "Cracks in American Apartheid:The Political Impact of Prejudice among Desegregated Whites" in 1995.  They found that whites who lived in isolation of blacks were more likely to hold stereotypical views of blacks. They also found that these stereotypical assumptions affected public policy making.  But their research also found that those whites who had more interactions with blacks were more likely to hold positive views of their black neighbors.

Just as in the film District 9, in real life, segregation breeds contempt and mistrust.  Daily interaction between blacks and whites promotes tolerance and understanding.  This is true off all dominant/non-dominant groups.  Education can further promote healthy attitudes towards one another.  Stereotypes are perpetuated when groups live in isolation.

Love is Blind

Love is blind.
You can fall in love in just 5 seconds.

You love who you love. 

Its hard to imagine that an industrialized nation such as the United States would have had antimiscegenation laws on its books as recently as the 1960's.   "The Crime of Interracial Marriage" was published in the journal America in 1967.  The article notes that at the time, 18 states still had antimiscegenation laws on the books that treated interracial marriage as a crime.  The laws were not overturned until the landmark ruling in the Supreme Court Loving v Virginia case in 1967.

What's interesting about the Loving case is the support it had in the religious community. Religious leaders were very vocal in their opposition of antimiscegenation laws.  Stanley Kramer's 1967 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner offers an interesting view of the issue of interracial marriage. The most sympathetic character in the film is that of the priest, Monsignor Ryan. Even though the couple played by Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are portrayed as progressive minded liberals, they both have problems with their daughter's announcement that she is going to be marrying a black man.  They are forced to reconcile their feelings toward racial equality in theory and their feelings toward their own daughter and the person she has chosen to marry. Hepburn and Tracy's counterparts are shown to have just as many reservations towards an interracial relationship.   It is an absolutely brilliant commentary on the human condition.

Oh Yes She Can!

Rosie the Riveter was happy to hang up her apron and exchange it for a lunchbox and work uniform, thrilled to finally be pitching in to help out during the war effort and lend a hand. Or was she? It seems we're always presented with this version of the fairy tale when we discuss women in the workplace, and women's accomplishments in the workplace as compared to those of men. But are women participating in the work force by choice?

George Cukor's 1949 film "Adam's Rib" envisions a world where women and men are equal, so long as they are of the same financial and educational background. The film was very ahead of its time given the era in which it was filmed.  Catherine Hepburn's character Amanda drives a car, is a successful lawyer who is coincidentally married to a lawyer, lives in a lovely city apartment and has a country home retreat in Connecticut where she likes to unwind with a game of tennis or two.  Conspicuously absent from this fairy tale are any children.

According to research done by Ruth Milkman a, women are entering the workforce and are essentially being relegated to tasks and jobs that force them to work long hours for less pay than their male counterparts.  As a matter of fact, on average, women are paid 23% less than men for the same jobs.

Paddy Quick offers a quick comparison on the myths and realities of Rosie the Riveter and all those Rosies that have followed in her foot steps in his 1975 "Rosie the Riverter: Myths and Realities."  The article paints a picture of women who drop their children off at daycares to be taken care of by complete strangers only to march off to their jobs where they work tirelessly for hours only to return home to pick up their children and continue to work a full day at home, cooking and cleaning and looking after their children.  Maybe women aren't all that happy in the workplace after all.

The Voice of All People?

 Harvey Milk became the first publicly gay official in San Francisco in 1977.  Although the town was considered to be progressive and and had a vibrant gay community, the election wasn't easily won.  How can a seemingly single issue candidate run a campaign and appeal to all members of the community? Milk was able to appeal to a broad base of voters, precisely because he didn't run as just a gay candidate. He also ran as a local businessman, and he appealed to the youth of the neighborhood as well. He campaigned for rent-control, improved parks and better services for the whole community.

It is well known that people in a community feel better served if the person in office is someone they consider "one of their own." This applies not only to those in the gay community, but also those in minority groups such as African Americans and Latinos. Donald P. Haider-Markel,Mark R. Joslyn and Chad J. Kniss published their study "Minority Group Interests and Political Representation: Gay Elected Officials in the Policy Process" in the Journal of Politics in 2000.  They note that members of a community are more likely to feel that their needs are being met if an elected official shares their background. This is true of women in politics, as well as gays and other minorities.

But does identifying yourself as a minority make you less likely to gain political support? Not according to the research submitted by Haider-Markel, et. al.  In fact, their research found that the political office holders that associated with their minority peers were more likely to be sympathetic to minority issues. Harvey Milk started out as a gay candidate, but he ended his career as a dedicated champion of rights for all of the members in his community.

Citzen Me! or how ordinary citizens are creating the news

Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane" brings us back to the days when newspaper men had empires and people bought the morning and evening editions of the paper.  With today's 24/7 access to news never further away then the keyboards under our fingertips, it's hard to imagine a time when people had to wait as much as 12 hours between news reports!  It's also hard to imagine that people would accept the word of one paper to serve as the only voice on the issues of the day.


 Doris A. Graber's 1986 article "Press Freedom and the General Welfare" asks if perhaps the Freedom of the Press guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution has given those in the press a sense of entitlement, and perhaps a sense of invincibility.  Publishers of newspapers all have their own political and social agendas, and their newspaper articles often only present the side of the story that supports their ideology.

Luckily, citizens today have risen up and taken to the internet to explore the other side of the story.  The proliferation of personal blogs and independent news sources have sprouted up all over the internet, and now serve as legitimate sources of information.    Leo Bogart's 1984 article  "The Public's Use and Perception of of Newspapers" polled people on the sources where they most frequently got their news information. It's hard to imagine, but in the 1980's, the internet wasn't even on the list of questions posed to the poll groups! Now,what was initially considered an alternative news source is quickly becoming a primary source for information. We are all turning in to our own Citizen Kanes, spreading information across the internet almost as quickly as it is discerned. 

The Tobacco Lobby and Congress ~ A working relationship

The United States has been in love with tobacco, promoted with romantic images of the rugged Marlboro Man. But the tides have turned in recent years, and anti-smoking campaigns are on the rise. New York City  banned smoking in restaurants in 2003, and other cities quickly followed.  But not everyone is happy with the anti-smoking laws, namely the tobacco industry and the political lobbyists who fight for on their behalf. But what about our government? Does Congress really want our nation to quick smoking?

Harvey M. Sapolsky's 1980 "The Political Obstacles to the Control of Cigarette Smoking in the United States" offers a peek at what the tobacco industry stands to lose if the anti-smoking campaigns are successful in educating the public and discouraging smoking outright.  Sapolsky notes the $16 billion dollars in gross revenue the cigarette manufacturing business reports annually. The government gets its "cut" of over $6 billion dollars in excise taxes on this revenue. How easily would the government be able to replace that sum if smoking were banned entirely?

The government simply can't afford to campaign against smoking. Tax increases are presented and promoted as yet another incentive for the smoking public to quit. However, if that were the case, then presumably the increased taxes levied by the feds would be directed to some anti-smoking program to help individuals quit smoking. But this is not the case. The money is added to the federal coffers for general use.  Our government has become so dependent on this income stream, it simply cannot afford to cut if off. So while the government may publicly denounce smoking, privately, they're all for it!

Red *#%$ Tape and Other Necessary Evils

Bureaucracy. Red Tape. Pencil Pushing Bureaucrats.
All the entities I can remember my parents rallying against when I was a child.
What is a bureaucrat? The dictionary lists the following definitions:

Unnecessary, as in avoidable, futile, gratuitous, irrelevant, useless and worthless.

 But does bureaucracy actually have a purpose in our every day lives?
 Terry Gilliam's 1985 film explores the world of the bureaucracy and gives the bureaucrat a human face.  Bureaucrats have feelings, and are not beholden to the rules that govern their occupations. According to Gilliam, bureaucrats are able to make their own decisions and are not strictly guided by the rules arbitrarily imposed by the bureaucracy.  I'm not so sure I buy in to that assertion. What are your experiences with the bureaucracy? Do you agree with Gilliam?