Minority Politics

After hearing a rather interesting news blip on NPR the other day, I decided to do a bit of surfing and see what was going on. I was driving somewhere, and the NPR newsreader did a very quick passing mention of a library that had identified White Men as the minority that they would be discussing in that weeks discussion (I think this month is supposed to be some sort of “acknowledge a minority for PC” month or something like that).

This one sentence news story got me thinking. Statistically, white guys are almost certainly a minority. China probably claims the top ranking for number of people (that would be the Chinese), and I think Indians are probably in second. Could be wrong on the Indian one though. No matter how you slice it though, if you count up all the white guys, and then count up everyone else, the white guys are gonna definitely NOT be the biggest racial population. As far as the whole male thing, chicks have outnumbered the guys for a long time.

OK, so now things get really interesting. See, here in the USA, we’ve got all kinds of minority entitlement programs. These programs are supposed to make up for some sort of deficiency that minorities have that makes it impossible for them to compete against the majority. TO make up fro the deficiency, universities have lower entrance requirements for minorities, many financial assistance programs target minorities, and certain minorities (but not all) are allowed to have exclusive “(insert minority here) clubs”.

really. While the women have been going crazy taking the knights of Columbus, the elks, and other fraternal organizations to court to force them to admit women, most college campuses have black-only clubs, women only clubs, and so on. I’ve never seen a white boys only club, and don’t ever expect to – if one was ever created, the other minorities would go crazy and tear it apart. So here’s the question: If the white male minority is treated differently from other (more politically correct) minorities, what ever happened to equal rights?

In an interesting turnabout, the women’s, black, asian, gay, etc etc etc minority groups that have been lobbying for inclusion in all aspects of the white male world are the very same organizations that are claiming that THEY have to have exclusive (meaning only members of their minority are allowed) organizations, clubs, and so on. Not only that, but they argue that it would be discriminatory to extend the same special programs and privileges that they get as minorities to white guys. Because in their minds, discrimination is OK as long as it doesn’t take away their special status.

Now, I’m somewhat realistic, and I know that white guys aren’t ever going to get equal treatment, but wouldn’t it be cool if people who claim to fight for ‘equality’ really did?

Then, when you see a gay black woman in a high paying job, you wouldn’t have to wonder if she was actually qualified, or was just filling an Equal Opportunity Employer position? And before you get your shorts in a knot, this does happen. Frequently.  I’ve worked at companies where it was openly admitted that certain staff members were hired specifically because of their race, and everyone knew that the people in question were given do-nothing jobs because they simply weren’t qualified for anything else. In the worst cases, even the EOE hire knew it, and for years sat there sucking up a big fat paycheck while doing nothing – simply for belonging to the right minority (one particular woman collected a six figure salary, and her job was to go through the corporate phone bill every month and make sure that the company phone log matched the one the phone company gave us – about 2 seconds of work for a computer). Come to think of it, maybe the white guys ARE better off without equal rights…….

Why Conservative Judaism is a Failure

Hmmm.. a glance over the past few posts makes it look like this is a blog about the abject failure of the cops in the US.  To correct that, I’ve decided to blog about one of my favorite organizational failure: Conservative Judaism.

Now don’t ge me wrong, I dig the whole Jewish thing. Really. So much so that I became a Jew, although it took me over a decade to finally knuckle down and do it.

So, some fairly sarcastic background for those of you that aren’t familiar with the major categories of Jews:

First, ya got the “Orthodox”. These range from the radical right black hat crowd to the more centrist Lubavitch (who still dress funny). Wouldn’t think of eating a non-kosher meal. These are the ones that TV shows make fun of.

At the other extreme, you’ve got Reform Jews. Think Unitarian, but with a bit of Hebrew thrown in. Thinks the idea of Lobster Bisque appetizer and pork chop main course is fine. Never heard of kosher.

Then ya got the Conservative Jews. They are a lot harder to describe, because they are everything in between. Some of them would fit in just fine with an orthodox community, but have decided to be a bit more mainstream, and call themselves conservative. Some of them are really reform Jews, but know that mom and dad (or maybe gramma) would freak out if they knew.

Of course, that exposes the real root of the problem with conservative Judaism – they identify themselves by what they are NOT. The most common description I hear from conservative jews is “I’d be reform/orthodox, except for (insert whatever pet peeve you care for here)”. Conservative Jews know that the Rabbi should keep kosher, and follow all of the rules that an orthodox Jew would follow, but as longa s the rabbi does, no one in the congregation has to bother. The Temple’s Hebrew School has to teach the kids to read and speak Hebrew, know the Torah inside out, and be able to expound on the history, culture, and rituals of Judaism, but as soon as the kid is 13 and has their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, they can forget it all. Oh yeah, and don’t expect to see/hear/experience/ or discuss any of it at home, because “thats why we send you to Hebrew School”.

In the past few years, conservative Judaism has crashed. While the Orthodox and Reform populations have continued to grow, Conservative Judaism is withering. Congregations are shrinking, and temples are being forced to merge or close down. There is an old saying among non-Conservative Jews that conservative Jews are on a stepping stone to assimilation, reform, or orthodoxy. Why? Because Conservative Jews have set themselves up to be as orthodox as they choose, but to also be as mainstream as possible. Reform Jews had the good sense to simply admit that they wanted tobe mainstream, and punted the majority of the “baggage” that orthodoxy carries with it, and have openly admitted that they are more interested in being “normal” than in being Jewish. The conservatives tried to walk a middle line.

The end result is that the Conservative Jews that were truly interested in continuing to live a more traditional Jewish life were scorned, and pushed out. The folks that were comfortable with the fact that they wanted to be mainstream went reform to start with, or slowly wandered out of the conservative temples where the services had too much Hebrew, expected at least token following of ritual (at least in the synagogue), and were simply too traditional for the truly “liberated” jew.

What is left of Conservative Judaism? There ARE a few left after all:

The families that are so invested in the local temple that they simply can’t walk away from all that money spent to get the family name plastered on the windows, door frames, pews, and whatever other random bit of furniture was big enough to hold a name plaque.

The people who still need to feel that they are “better Jews” or “more Jewish” than those reform Jews over there (even though the only difference is that the “conservative” Jew goes to high holiday services at a conservative shul, whereas the reform Jew goes to the reform shul).

The otherwise orthodox Jew that has some issue with Orthodoxy in general, and chooses to affiliate with a Conservative shul, even though they know that they’ll always be outcasts and viewed as extremists.

Of course, the fact that Reform Judaism is moving towards being more traditional is also eating into the Conservative Jewish population. As the Conservative movement has moved more left, the Reform movement has moved more right, so there really is very little (if any) difference between the two – at least in reality. There are all kinds of  “real differences” that people will pontificate about, but when it comes right down to it, there really isn’t much difference. Walk into a conservative shul one weekend, and try a reform shul the next. Once you’ve tried a half-dozen of each, you’ll realize that many of the reform shuls are much more traditional than many of the conservative shuls, and many of the conservative shuls are much more liberal than many of the conservative ones.

So there ya go. Conservative Judaism is failing because of an identity crisis. They’re really (mostly) reform Jews that are simply unwilling to admit it, and as they admit (or die off, and their kids admit it) Conservative Judaism is fading away.

border guards beats up author Peter Watts

Check it out here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html

and here:

http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/

Turns out simply asking why you are being detained and/or searched is grounds for being beaten by the US border guards. Then getting charged with assault for allowing said guards to beat you up.

Constitutional rights? Nah, he’s a Canadian after all.

Basic civil rights?  Civil? in the united states? What cave are you living in?

Basic Human rights? what, you expect the U.N. or the world court to hold the US responsible for its constant violations of basic human rights? Better crawl back into that cave before a cop finds you…

forget “police state” we’re talking brown shirts here……

4 cops killed: an excercise in perspective

In Washington state today, 4 cops were shot to death while sitting in a coffee shop.  I must admit, that my first thought was to blog about the possibility that this was a response by an individual to some abuse on the part of the police, but a bit of quick research suggested that in this case, that probably isn’t true (or if it is, the shooter had a long history of violent crime, so even if there was abuse by the police, it probably wasn’t the root cause).

The media frenzy has already begun, so instead, I would like to take this opportunity to do some “what-if” and think about how this event would be handled if some of the details were different.

Imagine if the 4 people who were killed lived in a housing project in New York City, and the shooters were cops. Chances are, it wouldn’t even make the news. Things like that are just too common to bother reporting – especially in the New York City slums.

Imagine if all of the people involved were just “normal” people (white, middle class). We’d probably get a bit of a human interest story, and that would be it. Maybe a minute or two of coverage in the morning news.

Imagine if all of the people involved were those same poor folks in the New York City slums. You probably wouldn’t hear anything about it, but it if you did, it would be blamed on drugs or gangs (regardless of the reason).

None of this should be any real surprise. Nobody really cares if some scum in a housing project gets whacked. Sure, if it was a cute kid, the networks may play for a bit of the tear-jerker ratings, but beyond that, it just doesn’t matter. When some middle class action takes place, it hits a bit closer to home, but hey, that was all the way over in Washington. It couldn’t happen here, and it doesn’t really make any difference to our lives.

So why is it so different when its a cop? The press has been displaying a disturbing trend in this regard – there seems to be some pervasive belief that cops are special, and deserve special attention. this is very disturbing. Cops are people – no different from any one else. When we act like a cop is more important than ‘regular’ people, we start down the road to creating a police force that is treated differently from the regular people. We give them special attention, special powers, and immunity from regular rules. history has consistently demonstrated that this is a one-way road. And the road ends with a police state, absolute police authority, and a complete lack of rights for the “regular people”. OK, so we’re not there yet, but we’re definitely heading down that road. (How many of you live in states where the sentences for killing a cop is more severe than the sentence for killing a non-cop? Check you state laws. You’d be surprised how many there are.)

So hey, all you news whores: how about reporting that 4 PEOPLE were killed. The fact that they were cops is irrelevant unless they were killed BECAUSE they were cops. Oh yeah, and start reporting the other cases of senseless killings too.