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Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
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Posts: 15,254
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Color Blind/Color Blessed
I've been thinking about some racial issues this week, ever since I heard an interesting phrase suggested by someone to use in place of "color blind". She was saying don't be color blind, be color blessed!
It made me think of a lot of things (I can just hear Lizra laughing at me - she thinks I think too much!) Then I read this article in our local paper today, which also was pertinent to what I was thinking. So here's the article, and then I'll post some thoughts, and look forward to reading your guys' thoughts on the subject ![]() dailynews.com Article Published: Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 12:00:00 AM PST Court offers inmates 'diversity' to die for By Chris Weinkopf, Editorial-page editor For the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, California prisoners' right to fully integrated prisons apparently supersedes their right to live. Judicial imperialism is, if nothing else, bizarre. On Wednesday, the Court ruled in Johnson v. California that the state's Department of Corrections must go before a lower court to justify, under the terms of "strict scrutiny," its policy of racially segregating certain inmates. That means the California Department of Corrections gets one last chance to defend a policy that has nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with saving lives - a policy that the activists on the court seem committed to abolishing. For no more than two months after inmates arrive at a California prison, they stay in racially segregated two-man cells. The idea is to determine if they belong to violent, racist gangs before putting them in close quarters with other prisoners they may try to maim or kill. The CDC also won't initially bunk Northern California Latinos with Southland Latinos, as they're likely to belong to rival gangs. Nor will it put Asians of different nationalities in the same cell until confident that doing so won't result in ethnic violence. The policy is based on common-sense safety measures, with not even a hint of bigotry. Though separated, the inmates are treated entirely equally, and when it's determined that they can be safely integrated, they are. No one claims that inmates of some races receive better treatment than others. Inmates of all races benefit from the policy, as they're removed from harm's way. The state argued, and lower courts agreed, that the policy was constitutionally sound under the more lax terms of the 1987 case of Turner v. Safley. In that ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged that, in the interest of order and safety, prisoners' constitutional rights can sometimes be restricted. The Turner ruling also held that it's up to prison officials who do the day-to-day work of safeguarding their facilities - and not judges, who lack any such expertise - to determine which rights need be curtailed, provided that doing so is "reasonably related" to legitimate penal interests. By that standard, California's policy clearly stands up to constitutional muster. But the "strict scrutiny" standard called for in Johnson v. California is another matter entirely. Now the CDC must demonstrate a "compelling state interest" for its policy, and it must show that the rule is "narrowly tailored." While the compelling state interest - thwarting racial gang violence - would seem to go without saying, the "narrowly tailored" provision is tricky. It enables judges to prohibit the policy if they believe the same goals could be achieved in some other way. In other words, Johnson v. California usurps the authority the court extended to prison officials in Turner, allowing judges to micromanage the nation's penitentiaries - a job for which they're manifestly unqualified. But after decades of judges' pretending to be legislators, we shouldn't be surprised that they now fancy themselves prison wardens, too. If Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's language in the majority opinion in Johnson is any indication, these would-be wardens seem determined to bring their own racial vision to the state's prison system. Under that vision, members of the system's five largest gangs - the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Nazi Low Riders, La Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia - will all live happily side by side, assuming they're not too busy slitting each other's throats. In O'Connor's ruling - joined by all the court's usual liberal stalwarts, save Justice John Paul Stevens, who held out for even more - the court goes to great lengths to disparage the policy that has helped to keep the peace in California prisons for 25 years. "By insisting that inmates be housed only with other inmates of the same race," O'Connor opines, "it is possible that prison officials will breed further hostility among prisoners and reinforce racial and ethic divisions." Well, sure, it's possible, just as it's possible that a little one-on-one time with a minority inmate might turn a hardened member of the Aryan Brotherhood into a born-again civil-rights crusader. But that's not what the officials who actually run the prisons have found. And who's better suited to decide which policies will most likely lead to smooth prison operation: those who have spent their careers operating prisons, or eight unelected justices sitting 3,000 miles away? Silly question. The justices consider themselves masters of all trades. O'Connor even lectures the CDC for "perpetuating the notion that race matters most." That's ironic, seeing that it was O'Connor who, two years ago, wrote in the court's Grutter v. Bollinger decision that racial discrimination is permissible in college admissions. Her reasoning then was precisely that race does matter most, so much so that a public university's commitment to "diversity" can trump its obligation to treat people equally, regardless of skin color. Now diversity in California's two-man prison-transfer cells also trumps the need to keep prisoners safe. Of course, should the courts ultimately overturn the CDC's policy and prisoners respond by killing each other, this same group of justices will declare that the condition of California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And, for once, they'll be right. Chris Weinkopf is the Daily News' editorial-page editor. Write to him by e-mail at chris.weinkopf@dailynews.com.
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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#2 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
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So to finish my post, I was thinking about some things in my life relating to racial issues ...
When I was in high school, the crowd I mostly ran around with was white kids in the AP classes (calculus, physics, etc.) However, I was also in another crowd - sports - and in this crowd, there were some kids from different ethnic backgrounds. I remember our basketball team - Tracy, our starting center, with her afro and long lanky body and her smile that lit up a room; Tia, our starting forward, very quiet and kinda goofy but boy could she hit those outside shots; I was the other starting forward, skinny white girl with glasses and braids; Cindy, our starting guard, Chinese, and boy could she dribble, and Cathy, the other starting guard, even whiter than I was, with red hair and a temper to match. Karen, our first sub - dark, dark skin, stunningly beautiful, sweet as anything, and taught me the meaning of a few words that I didn't know the meaning of! ![]() We were friends. Yet friends only in the sports circles, except for Karen, who was in one of my AP classes, and whom I always enjoyed talking with. I can still remember seeing Tracy with a group of friends, all black, across campus, and calling out a "hello!" to her. And Tracy - beautiful, smiley, laughing Tracy - barely smiled, barely returned my hello, and the kids with her glared at her for even the weak hello she gave me. I think that's when I first was hit by the ugliness of prejudice. Tracy was a great girl! such fun, so sweet - but Tracy around a group of friends of her ethnic background was a different Tracy ![]() The second thing I remember is at work - I worked as an engineer at a military radar company. Some of my friends were Bharat and Pradeep, two guys from India; Piya, a guy from Thailand; Paul and Dan, two Japanese guys; Sonny, a Filipino guy, and Laura, a girl from Korea. So how do I describe these people? With their sex and their ethnic group. Is that "bad" somehow? I don't know ... I don't think so ... See, from across the room, if I wanted to point one of them out, I would say, "There's Sonny - the short Filipino guy - he's such a great guy!" It's really the easiest way to point someone out! We look at people's faces mostly, and what is (sometimes/mostly) obvious from a face is their sex and their ethnic background. If there were a bunch of Filipinos all together, I would have to say "the guy in the blue shirt", but if Sonny was in a group of white guys I would say "the Filipino guy". So is there anything wrong with that? Have we gone so far from the horrors of prejudice that we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater and we're afraid to acknowledge ethnic differences as a GOOD thing? I know I am SO glad I got to know all these people, and find out about their backgrounds! I was thrilled to talk with Pradeep about one of my favorite books, Kipling's "The Jungle Books" (don't think of the movie - the books are great!) and find out that the names of the animals actually translated into the type of animal in Hindi! (IOW, "Hathi" is the name of the elephant, and "Hathi" means elephant in Hindi.) I got a kick out of hearing how Laura would take her kimchi and dip it in her water glass to make it less potent. I learned some Tagalog from Sonny. I learned the secret of pronouncing Japanese names from Paul. And on and on. I think it's kind of a neat idea - replacing a term, "color blind", which means you don't see something, with "color blessed" - which means you see something that is there! and rejoice in it and enjoy it! What do you guys think?
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 02-28-2005 at 01:41 AM. |
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#3 |
Greatest Elven woman of Aman
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Having way too much fun with Fëanor's 7
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I agree with you up to a certain point R*an - that there is nothing wrong in acknowledging what is obviously there. And 'Color blessed' is indeed a nice term!
![]() Race is still a difficult issue to talk about. Hard feelings involved ...
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Co-President of Entmoot
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Wow, great post R*an! I don't really have a comment on the article - I'll attempt to avoid passing a judgement on people hundreds of miles away.
![]() ![]() As for colour blind... in this case, it's positive. If you say, "When it comes to people's race, I'm colour blind," it's a great term because that's when you don't want colour to matter. Colour blessed is cool but colour blind makes more sense to me. Unless you mean "colour blessed" in that you're lucky to know lots of people from different backgrounds. This is a very interesting thread. I'm going to give it some more thought! I'm trying to figure out different people's backgrounds from my highschool. Most kids were white, I think there were two (!) black kids in an entire school of 750, probably about 15 native kids, maybe the same amount of asian kids. The whole school pretty much knew each other, and there weren't problems with race. Actually, I went to a great school in a lot of ways. Also, the city had/has a significant non-white population. What I mean by that is even though most of the people were white, there's the Indian reserve which is an important part of the city, and a lot of people live there, and there's many immigrants from Japan, China, Italy, India, and Greece (enough people to start a Greek Orthodox church anyway). Every Canada day, there would be a huge celebration in the big city park, and the Multicultural society would have booths from different cultures that everyone would really enjoy. Canadian culture is like a mosaic. Every time someone new comes into the country they add another tile. I believe the word "multicultural" is also a Canadian invention. ![]()
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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#5 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
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Posts: 15,254
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__________________
. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Not where I want to be ...
Posts: 15,254
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__________________
. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
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Posts: 15,254
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I was hoping to see more posts on this thread by now, but perhaps everyone feels like Arty - "Race is still a difficult issue to talk about. Hard feelings involved ."
If anyone here has been/is currently in a situation where they felt like a minority, would you please share it here? Both good and/or bad.
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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#8 |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Maryland, US
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Is this thread about race or is it about your word play thing? or about the jail segregation controversy? its hard to tell. Im in favor of a thread on race. Would make great discussion material.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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#9 | ||||
Co-President of Entmoot
Super Moderator Join Date: Aug 2002
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I've personally never been the subject of racism, for which I'm very thankful.
However, there is a significant amount of the population of British Columbia (still the minority) that has a totally backwards and ignorant attitude towards native people. There is a continuum of moronic attitudes, ranging from silly but relatively harmless assumptions, to being totally bigoted. There was a completely embarassing referendum on the Treaty process(1) when the provincial government was first elected. The questions were biased towards trying to weaken the Treaty process, and legal experts pointed out afterwards that it would never hold up in court. This was probably the dumbest thing our (provincial) government has done, and they've had a couple years to screw something else up by now. ![]() There are people who are only racist towards natives. I mean, you can have someone who's just a racist bastard against everyone not like himself. However, there aren't a lot of people like that. There's a disturbing amount of people who you can be pleasantly chatting to, fellow university students who you know fairly well as intelligent and nice people, then suddenly they'll come out with a completely racist statements about natives. Erm.. there's a lot more to that rant, but I'll leave it for now. Suffice to say that racism in general pisses me off, but the one I see the most as a British Columbian, is towards natives. In my home city the Reserve is an important part of the city, and I went to school with about 15 or so natives - 1 of whom was in my close circle of friends. If someone says natives are lazy freeloaders, or that events of 150 years ago don't matter, I suppress the urge to tell them to go get hit by a train. [/rant] Quote:
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![]() (1) The Treaty process is the method by which native landclaims are discussed with the goal of resolution. Claimants and the government hash it out. We've only signed one treaty (the Nisga'a treaty), but many more are in various stages of development. It's worth noting that we've only really started trying to do this properly in the last ten years.
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"I can add some more, if you'd like it. Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to Punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-fools." - Sam Gamgee, p. 340, Return of the King Quote:
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Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
Join Date: Sep 2002
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Posts: 15,254
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__________________
. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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Greatest Elven woman of Aman
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![]() ![]() I also agree with what Bombadillo said, that people from the same cultural background tend to stick together, without that having anything to do with racism. Quote:
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--Life is hard, and then we die. |
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Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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See, I think most people are just naturally interested in someone that looks like they're from another country, and they ask questions in a kind way, and with the intent to make them feel comfortable and included, not realizing that the person has lived in that country most of their lives. What ideas do you have for people to do in this situation? I suppose just don't ask questions, but is that the best solution? I just don't know, and I would appreciate your input.
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! ![]() "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! Last edited by Rían : 03-02-2005 at 03:04 AM. |
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