Obsidian Wings

So much

by liberal japonicus

So much stuff happening, so hard to make sense of it all. My strategy is to usually to take a small corner of it and poke and prod at it, which I'll subject all of you too.

To lay down my cards, I'm largely in agreement with this article.

The Bucks put their season on the line. The players’ dreams of winning a championship were willingly sacrificed. And when the five other NBA teams scheduled to play Wednesday joined in not playing, they collectively threw the future of the league, and, ergo, their own personal financial futures up in the air. They deserve the benefit of the doubt that they knew exactly what they were doing. All the evidence coming out of the NBA bubble in Florida points that way. The Bucks players issued a statement Wednesday evening, asking for the police officers that shot Blake to be “held accountable” and for the Wisconsin State Legislature to reconvene and “take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality, and criminal justice reform.” And whether you agree with their protest and message or not, these players’ levels of sacrifice must be respected.

I wonder if this author, who dismissed George Hill's comments, would reconsider his position or hold to it. It's also a sign that history may not repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes when we consider that was 4 years ago to the day that Colin Kaepernick began his prescient protest during the National Anthem at a pre-season game.

I know we have a strange mix here with some people irretrivably in love with sports and others who just don't see the point. We also have people who might not be familiar with US sports. So I think that we might have a range of opinions on all this, but regardless what you think of the decision though, you have to acknowledge that it is unprecedented. Sports has always been something that has been held to, regardless of what else happens in the world. In fact, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the decision was to continue to play professional football, despite players not wanting to play.

It will be interesting to read a history of the moment of the strike. I don't think it is unsurprising that the Bucks were first to strike (strictly speaking, it is not a boycott). Milwaukee is 40 miles from Kenosha. But Milwaukee was also up 3-1 in the playoffs. Had it been a team that was losing, one can imagine people claiming it was an excuse, but you can't really claim that for the Bucks. But I'd love to know how the decision came about. Accounts say that it was a decision made totally by the players. George Hill, Bucks point guard and team leader and the recipient of a new 3 year 29 million dollar contract, has been the most vocal about how the Orlando 'bubble' has drawn the focus away from social justice. Giannis Antetokounmpo, who many are saying may be on his way to becoming an all-time great, is not American, and I often believe that outsiders can sometimes have a clearer view. But is also is, I think, a story of a team decision, they did make a team statement, but how such a momentous decision occured is something that I think historians may look at in the future.

And Milwaukee has a recent history of being at the front. They supported their teammate, Stirling Brown when this happened.

On January 26, 2018, Brown was tased and arrested inappropriately according to the Milwaukee Police Department Police Chief Alfonso Morales the following May. Brown brought suit in June 2018 after the May release of bodycam footage and alleges racial profiling occurred in the administration of a parking ticket at a Walgreens parking lot. In October 2019, Brown rejected a $400,000 settlement offer.Brown has expressed that he has rejected the offer in part due to his ability and sense of responsibility to use his platform as an NBA player to raise awareness.

The team was one of the first to protest after George Floyd's murder, happening just over the state line in Minneapolis.

After the Bucks refused to play, not only did other NBA teams also join in, but a number of other teams in different professional sports did as well. The video of this Guardian article, showing Kenny Smith stepping away from the broadcast and the comments of Chris Webber and Doc Rivers is also a sign of the solidarity. I'm sure that some will suggest that the other NBA players are being silenced by political correctness, but I don't see that.

Reportage says that the Lakers and the Clippers the teams that don't want to continue while all the other teams still in the playoffs do. That could be taken that this strike is being pushed by a small number of players on three teams out of 13 teams remaining, but looking at Five Thirty Eight's predictions, there's a 50% chance that one of those three teams would be the winner is what I take away.

It was only a few years ago that Kaepernick began what I believe was a prescient protest. This event had me find stories about the activism of Craig Hodges, former Chicago Bull and how he approached Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson on the eve of the first game of 91 Finals and asked that they consider striking for that first game as a protest.

As I said, I'm sure that there are other opinions, and looking at twitter (always a mistake) has people attacking the players. How many do they represent?

We are Philoctetes

by liberal japonicus

A little background and my overripe thoughts about Biden quoting Seamus Heaney (after Sophocles), started off by this article from the Guardian.

What was quoted by Biden was originally part of a theatre piece that Heaney wrote for the Field Day Theatre Company, at the end of the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland. In the program, Heaney notes:

The conflict between the young man's [Neoptolemus, son of Achilles] sense of integrity and the older man's [Odysseus] code of loyalty and solidarity intiates the drama, which goes on to enact itself in the consciousness of Philoctetes himself: in him and around him Sophocles locates an argument about the different consequences of outrage and obligation:

The Guardian article quotes Heaney, who says

“Poetry’s special status among the literary arts,” [...] “derives from the audience’s readiness to … credit the poet with a power to open unexpected and unedited communications between our nature and the nature of the reality we inhabit.”

The article doesn't note that this is poetry's trap, you can get yourself waaaay out on a limb and then saw through the limb you are perched on, which I will demonstrate below the fold

The way they were

by liberal japonicus

Someone asked earlier in passing whether anyone else noticed how much politico had upped their game. This look back at the 2016 Republican convention tells me they have. Discuss.

Education and privilege

by liberal japonicus

I hope this draws some more information from the commentariat and might provoke some interesting discussion. The Guardian helpfully groups all their articles on the subject here.

In the UK, there is currently a rather large problem with university places for the 2020-2021 school year. Places are (always?) allocated by the results of tests called A-levels. These tests are subject qualifications and the rough pattern is that students choose the subjects with an eye to the university they want to attend and the subject they want to study (no changing majors multiple times like I did). They complete their GCSE (formerly known as O-levels) and if their results are good enough, are allowed to study the subjects. The range of subjects is quite astonishing for an American (Modern Hebrew or Bengali anyone?) Interestingly though, according to Wikipedia, 2017 reforms deleted a number of subjects, including archaeology, anthropology, creative writing, critical thinking, general studies and home economics.

A portion of the grade was allotted by coursework, but the underlying principle is that there is a terminal exam. Because of that, a 're-sit' culture developed, where people would re take the exams they did poorly in while holding on to the other grades. The reforms made the subjects more centered on terminal exams, but required that a student retake all the tests. It was claimed that the reforms were to deal with grade inflation.

With some (most?) subjects, there is a written mock exam that is supposed to give students an idea of how well they will do. Obviously, for some subjects, written mock exams are not possible, so the mock grades are based on a teacher evaluation from the school. These mock grades form the basis for provisional offers to attend university, if the student makes the grades on the A levels. I'm not sure how the application itself works and how applicants provide proof of their projected grades, but in a normal year, the actual tests can then used to verify these projected grades and provisional offers become actual offers. But as y'all may have noticed, this ain't a normal year. I'm not sure if the mock exams were completed just before the virus hit, but for this year, there have been no A-levels. So provisional results were the only data that was available.

A tough problem, made tougher by the fact that the UK government is Trumpian in its attention to details. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual), faced with this issue, used the historical data from the schools to allot results, resulting in an unsurprising mess.

One Oxford college, Worcester, has said that it will accept all students it made a provisional offer to. However, other universities, generally at the top of the food chain, (known as Russell Group universities) seem to be simply withdrawing all offers that don't match the provisional grades, though it is hard to tell on the basis of reports and anecdotes.. That seems to be a lot of offers, as downgraded results comprise of almost 40% of all test takers.

The Education Ministry has, unsurprisingly, floundered. I marvel at this '"triple lock system"' of regarding the grades as an prefect example of the bullshit advertising culture that permeates everything we do and only wonder why they didn't get three punchy words (with alliteration) to emphasize what was going on (Mine would probably be 3 F's with the first two being flawed and flummoxed, but the triple lock procedure was discontinued the following day.)

So looking at this from afar and with a limited understanding of the system, this seems like a very interesting illustration of privilege and how it works in that all the demands are that the results be redone rather than tearing the whole thing done. 2/3rds of the students were not marked down, so I presume they are going to sit tight, though I would think that one way to oppose this would be to work to organize all the students attending, say, the Russell group universities, to simply opt out of their places regardless of their grades (is that possible? Or if they don't go, they cannot apply again?) and plan on resitting their exams next year unless all unis honored all provisional offers. Even if the universities offer a huge number of provisional offers and calculate that the administered tests would whittle down the numbers (which then makes the universities even more complicit in the system), there is a high probability of in-person classes not happening in the fall, so universities could start adapting the online education to deliver the first year of coursework. But it is hard to imagine the 2/3rds taking that on for the 1/3rd.

Over at LGM, there are some heated debates about school choice, in response to posts by Eric Loomis, and way that reinforces privilege (here is the most recent post about that). The folks over there have sharper elbows than we do here, but I'm sure that if we were to get into the weeds about the US school system, we would probably be just as heated here. And perhaps, even talking about the UK system is too close to home, though there are a number of interesting wrinkles and a very different history of higher education that the US, but maybe we can get to that in the comments. Still, I'm really interested in not only the nuts and bolts of the system, but also what likely pushback we will see to this latest Conservative screw-up.

veep talk and the Indian diaspora

by liberal japonicus

Reading thru all the things on Kamala (pronounced 'comma-la', the name comes from Sanskrit) and going down rabbit holes. Didn't know much about the Indian-American diaspora, except that in addition to Harris, Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal (and Dinesh D'Souza, gross) were part of it. I also, as is my wont, tend to be sarcastic with things that bother me, so when I read 'Asian American' plopped into an article about Harris, I think of the joke about the difficulty of telling Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping apart because everyone knows that all Asians look alike, so I resisted reading up any speculation about the pick, but now that's she has been chosen, I'll read stuff even if they have 'first Asian American' whatever. (I have to go back and see what 'South Asian' vs 'Asian' correlates with in these articles)

I get the impression that a lot of articles have emphasized Harris as a Black American, but it is striking to me that it is the same as Obama, parents who divorced, the candidate raised by the non-black mother, yet the emphasis is on the father, an emphasis that Harris makes herself. I think I wrote something about that in discussing a bio of Ann Durham, Obama's mother. I'm waiting, with bated breath, for Harris to be accused in a similar way to Obama, that he was black-ish rather than black (though that may be a rhetorical pretzel too far for some) so I want to emphasize that my interest into Harris' Indian roots shouldn't be taken as negating her black identity. I also think that as a general rule, men are more boxed into an identity than women, which also has some bearing here.

A common thread in a lot of left pubs that I don't really care for (I'm looking at you Jacobin) is that Harris is simply another neo-liberal cog in the machine. Still, I feel like the issues raised by George Floyd's execution are elided with the Harris pick because of her path. Is this indicative of the campaign's take on BLM? Hell if I know, though if this bothers you, you may want to take a look at this article. But I think that the history of the Indian diaspora actually gives us some insight as to why Harris traveled the road she did.

Wikipedia is a good starting point with Indian Americans and I didn't know about United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.

Bhagat Singh Thind had come to the United States in 1913 for higher studies after obtaining a bachelor's degree in India. He enlisted in the United States Army, became a Sergeant and served in the First World War. He was discharged honorably with his character designated as "excellent". Thind was granted citizenship in Washington state in July 1918 but his citizenship was rescinded in just four days. He received his citizenship for the second time in Oregon state in November 1920 after the Bureau of Naturalization was unsuccessful in its efforts to stall it in Oregon court. The case then reached the Supreme Court, where Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, a California attorney and fellow immigrant, represented Thind.

The arguments offered on behalf of Thind were also interesting

Thind argued that Indo-Aryan languages are indigenous to the Aryan part of India in the same way that Aryan languages are indigenous to Europe, highlighting the linguistic ties between Indo-Aryan speakers and Europeans, as most European languages including English are similar to Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi.

Since the Ozawa v. United States court case had just decided that the meaning of white people for the purposes of the Court were people who were members of the Caucasian race, Thind argued that he was a white person by arguing that he was a member of the Caucasian race. Thind argued using "a number of anthropological texts" that people in Punjab and other Northwestern Indian states belonged to the "Aryan race", and Thind cited scientific authorities such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach as classifying Aryans as belonging to the Caucasian race. Thind argued that, although some racial mixing did indeed occur between the Indian castes, the caste system had largely succeeded in India at preventing race-mixing. Thind argued that by being a "high-caste, of full Indian blood" he was a "Caucasian" according to the anthropological definitions of his day.

Thind's lawyers argued that Thind had a revulsion to marrying an Indian woman of the "lower races" when they said, "The high-caste Hindu regards the aboriginal Indian Mongoloid in the same manner as the American regards the Negro, speaking from a matrimonial standpoint." Thind's lawyers argued that Thind had a revulsion to marrying a woman of the Mongoloid race. This would characterize Thind as being both white and someone who would be sympathetic to the existing anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

Kuromatsu, it ain't. Interestingly, Japanese-Americans are often touted as a model minority, but in some senses, Indo Americans would probably be a better example.

The population of Indo-Americans (also categorised as East Indians, Asian Indians and American Indians) in the US is 2.4 million, the second-largest immigrant group after Mexicans. It is also the most successful, with the median household income at $107,000 – almost twice that of American-born households. Indian immigrants are more likely to be enrolled in higher education, to participate in the labour force and twice as likely to be employed in management, business, science and the arts as the overall population.

link

And of course, there were the 'Hindus for Trump', though the demographic is Democratic leaning. However, this conservative streak reminded me of this Guardian article explaining why British Indians are so prominent in the Conservative party.

So, when we talk about Harris' path via law school and California Attorney General, I feel like it was determined in part by accomodation rather than reaction, more so than Obama's path.

Some other links about Harris that might be of interest
Atlantic on how Harris represents a new democratic coalition

Harris is a demographic bridge between Biden and the modern Democratic Party, but she’s not nearly as much of an ideological bridge. Though she ran sharply to the left during the early stages of her unsteady presidential bid, her record, like Biden’s, is fundamentally moderate.

Forbes on conservative attempts to undercut Harris as a Black candidate

But some conservatives are piling on the criticism and have sought to refute claims that Harris would be the nation’s first African-American vice president and saying that her heritage does not trace back to slavery.

This article with some interesting details about the mixed race demographic and introduced me to the ADOS movement

The ADOS movement includes supporters as wide-ranging as Harvard philosophy professor Cornel West, who has said that it is giving working-class Black people a voice, and white conservative political commentator Ann Coulter. But the movement has many detractors, some of whom view it as divisive at best and xenophobic at worst. Others have argued that it ignores the long history of African Americans with immigrant roots, including black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who was Jamaican, and Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, whose mother was Grenadian.

Here's a dissection of West's support of ADOS. Quick rule of thumb, if you are ever grouped with Ann Coulter, don't walk, run to get out of that space.

The Guardian had a panel give responses, I like Jill Filipovic's take, and this is a bit more detailed about the challenges that face women in general on the issues of crime and punishment

This NYTimes about Trump Jr's quickly deleted tweet, which seems to indicate a level of panic with messaging.

“Don’s tweet was simply him asking if it was true that Kamala Harris was half-Indian because it’s not something he had ever heard before,” the spokesman, Andy Surabian, said at the time. He added that the tweet was deleted after it was recognized that followers were “misconstruing” its intent.

And an interesting note about Biden and Harris not graduating from Ivy League schools.

All these links are post selection, one thing to be careful about is to identify the articles that were raising issues with Harris during her presidential campaign. As shocked as all of you may find this, some people tend to makd arguments not because they believe them but because they want their supported candidate to win.

Anyway, a thread for your Kamala Harris thoughts.

In Praise of Potemkin

by wj

We’re overdue for a new Open Thread. So this is it.

Recently, I’ve seem increasing numbers of reports that members of the administration who speak with Trump, or with members of his inner circle, are routinely slanting (or totally inventing) what they say to him about the world outside the White House. Especially when it comes to how things are going with covid-19 and with his reelection campaign. Fake polls are especially big.

I submit that this is a good thing. Trump strikes me as, at least potentially, the kind of guy who would destroy everything around him rather than admit, especially to himself, that he has failed or is somehow a loser. But so long as he is surrounded by a bubble of (mis)information which tells him he is succeeding, he has no reason to deliberately do anything massively destructive. If he can be kept in the dark until the election, it will be all to the good.

After the election, of course, he may be unable to avoid the fact that he has lost. Not that he won’t frantically try various tactics to undo the result. But the critical fact will be that those around him will know that he is on the way out. And therefore, it is in their own self-interest to avoid letting anything happen that would trash their personal employment prospects going forward. In short, his enablers are likely to cease enabling.

Sure, it would be nice if Trump could be persuaded to do something constructive about covid-19 or about the economy. But realistically, how likely is that? Is it even possible, given how he is? And since he can’t, better he continue to be encased in a Potemkin village where everything is going great. No matter what reality is outside.

timely, timeless, and amusing

by russell

via Mellisa Byrnes at LGM, a brief historical overview of sex with demons.  a diversion from the pressing topics of the day, or perhaps not.