Godheval.net

I Wish I Could Read Every Book in the World

Godheval — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:05:37 +0000

Something positive for a change. This is a spoof done by 2-cent entertainment of a Lil Wayne song that is too despicable to mention. With some pretty good production values and some really impressive imitations of Drake, Plies, Nicki Minaj, and of course "Weezy" himself, this video turns everything that's wrong with modern rap into something positive. Complete with auto-tune.

Best of all, 2-cent managed to get Scholastic to donate nearly 1,000 books to an elementary school in New Orleans. Incidentally, I too wish I could read every book in the world. But in the meantime, I'd settle for Lil Wayne and Drake taking a break from their idiocy long enough to read one...

The Misconception About Welfare

Godheval — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit and observe an 11th grade AP English class. They were doing satire presentations, which included everything from posters to videos to poems. One such poem - a very good one in spite of its content - poked fun at people on welfare, and featured an African-American mother with 7 kids who has her kids steal from stores because they have no money. When confronted by security, she responds by saying "You can have my welfare check. A local crackhead enters the picture, at which point one of the children exclaims "That's my daddy!" The mother confronts the crackhead, asking for money, who responds and ends the poem by repeating the punchline "You can have my welfare check!"

Hilarious, right?

When asked who her audience was for the poem, the student said "Minorities, because they're the main ones on welfare..."

Now for some demographics. The vast majority of students in this classroom were Euro-American, the exception being two African-American girls. One of these two girls was the one reading the poem. In case the gravity of that escapes you, there were three things very wrong with this scenario. First was that the girl has been given a totally skewed view of the demographics of welfare. She has bought into the idea that African-Americans receive the lion's share of welfare benefits, to the point of believing Reagan's myth of the "welfare queen".

Second, whatever little bit of privilege she's experienced out here in the desert (more on that later), she apparently has no concept of the historical inequalities that created the disproportionate need for socioeconomic support for minorities. Third, she felt comfortable enough in a room full of white peers to perpetuate this vicious stereotype. As if when lines of class and race are drawn, she'd stand with them, and they'd all laugh together.

A little while ago I intuited that the African-Americans in this state had mostly "assimilated", for their lesser numbers (measured versus the national proportion and especially the east coast), and for the fact that the much larger Mexican minority serves as a greater threat to the white majority.

So my speculation has been that African-Americans in the West, much like Latinos and Asians in the east, for their non-threatening numbers and significantly improved socioeconomic distribution, have been afforded a sort of “hostility waiver”. In other words, they are acceptable so long as they do not grow too large, act too radically, or cost the average taxpayer too much in social programs. A controlled minority is a tolerable minority. Those Hispanics on the other hand…

In plain speech, because there are so many Mexicans in the state, they are the group that white people fear, hate, and resent, rather than African-Americans. So African-Americans out here decided to throw in their lot with the white people. And why not? Because as long as the Mexicans are the focus of white fear and rage, they can slip in under the radar and point the finger, too. It's just good politics, right?

What this situation highlighted for me was the overall misconception about so-called "welfare" in the United States. As this young lady and many others around the country seem to think, people of color gorge from the national bosom, having excessive amounts of children while refusing to work, so that they might benefit from so many "hand outs". The contention, especially for white Americans, is that their hard-earned tax money is being spent disproportionately on undeserving minorities.

This reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of welfare, in terms of the allocations by ethnicity, and just how much welfare takes away from the overall federal budget. From 1935 to 1996, that which we call welfare fell under the federal assistance program known as Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). From 1996 onward, after welfare reform by President Clinton, the program was renamed Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), reflecting a new policy of limiting assistance to a maximum of five years. The statistics of AFDC recipients by race varied from year to year throughout the life of the program, but a brief from the census bureau provides a snapshot:

About 1 in 4 Black mothers of childbearing ages (1.5 million) were AFDC recipients, higher than the 7 percent of corresponding White mothers (2.1 million). Despite these differences in recipiency rates, Black AFDC mothers did not have significantly more children than their White counterparts.¹

I selected African-American families for my comparison for two reasons - first, because the "welfare queen" was portrayed as a black woman, and because the statistics for "Hispanics" are troublesome, in that linguistic classification may apply to families who are also categorized as white for the purposes of the census. These numbers show that, contrary to popular misconceptions, there were a larger number of white welfare recipients than African-American families. This goes against any idea that welfare is a particularly "black" problem, or even that African-Americans form the majority of people on welfare. Now here someone might point out that a higher proportion of African-American families received welfare, which is true, but it is a fact taken without consideration for historical inequality - from hiring to housing, part of the greater socioeconomic legacy of racism throughout this country's history.

The demographics of AFDC or TANF are hardly the main thrust of my argument, however. That comes with how we even define "welfare". If the issue is the federal government providing funding to people who have not earned it, then our definition of welfare must be expanded to include all of the corporations who received subsidies through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (otherwise known as the "bailout"). These corporations together - and lest we forget, corporations are recognized as "people" - were allocated tens of billions of dollars. So here I ask you, who is more "deserving" of assistance - a poor family, irrespective of ethnicity, or a corporation whose executives directly facilitated our current economic meltdown?

The primary opposition to welfare comes from conservatives. And at least we can say that they are consistent in their stance, critical of both social welfare provided to families, and the bailout. Until we consider another major recipient of welfare, who they almost unanimously support: the state of Israel.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, a site amicable to Israeli interests and continued U.S.-Israeli cooperation, "Israel has received more direct aid from the United States since World War II than any other country...", nearly $100 billion since 1974.² The point of mentioning this is not to make a political statement against U.S. Aid to Israel, although in the interests of full disclosure I must admit that I am opposed to this financial assistance. The point is to put things in perspective, as it concerns just how much money the U.S. spends on "welfare" as a whole.

Projections for U.S. financial assistance to Israel were $2.55 billion for fiscal year 2009, and $2.7 billion for 2010, totaling $5.25 billion across the two years. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the payout for TANF is capped at $5 billion for the same two years.³ So, it is nothing short of hypocritical for politicians, pundits, and ignorant citizens to condemn poor families - particularly the disenfranchised poor - while directly or implicitly sanctioning U.S. aid to Israel, all of which is used by their military, not for any financial hardship. Average citizens may be excused for not knowing about these allocations to Israel, but in these cases their hypocrisy revolves around the rigor with which they condemn poor minorities while not investigating the full scope of U.S. "welfare".

This imbalance in focus undoubtedly stems from racism, with the idea of minorities disproportionately leeching from the national coffers just another affirmation of already negative preconceptions. Such ignorance is common enough amongst white Americans, especially in a conservative state, and bears relatively little impact. But where a young African-American student can buy into the stereotypes levied against girls much like her - even the girl herself under slightly different circumstances - the situation becomes grave. It provides a sobering insight into just how institutionalized and deeply entrenched racism has become.

Pro-Choice is not Pro-Abortion

Godheval — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:28:18 +0000

There is one obvious truism that when presented to pro-lifers never prompts any reasonable rebuttal.

Making abortion illegal will not prevent abortions.

Before Roe vs. Wade (RVW) - which for those who don't know was the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in the United States - women were forced to resort to all sorts of illicit means of getting an abortion. You may have heard horror stories involving coat hangers, or "black market" doctors who lost their medical licenses but continued to perform the procedures illegally.

Were Roe vs. Wade to be overturned, or were any states to pass anti-abortion laws, the number of abortions would not be likely to decrease. So from the pro-life perspective, which necessarily stems from a desire to "save babies", overturning RVW would do nothing to help their cause. On top of that it would re-introduce instances of female injury through abortions performed under unsavory conditions.

Perhaps here is a good place for me to state my position on abortion. I am unabashedly pro-choice. However, I do not think that supporting a woman's right to choose is the same as sanctioning the practice willy-nilly. Where at all possible, I would hope that a woman would choose to keep the child. I would hope that any decision would be made only after a thorough education on all of her options, issues around adoption including the grievous abuses of the foster system and probability of adoption as it corresponds to ethnicity or disability.

Being pro-choice is not the same as being pro-abortion, because I certainly wish that no abortions had to take place, that every pregnancy could come to term and birth a child into a safe, healthy, equitable environment. The reality, however, is that the world we live in does not often provide such an environment. The most common argument by pro-lifers it that adoption is always a viable alternative.

Except that it's not. At least not for everyone. For instance, it is practically a given that a Euro-American child of no physical or mental disability has a good chance for adoption - certainly much better than her disabled counterpart of the same ethnicity, or those of other ethnicities. While there has been a strange almost fetish-like trend of Euro-American families adopting Asian children, no such trend has emerged for African-American children or disabled children. I do not mean to begrudge those children who were adopted into loving families; I mean to point out all is not equal when it comes to the viability of adoption as an alternative to abortion.

It troubles me when aggressive pro-life propagandists spread messages like "African American children are an endangered species" or suggest that the higher rate of abortions amongst African-American women is reflective of some eugenics agenda by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. What this does is sensationalize what, for being a very sensitive and complex issue, needs to be analyzed and discussed with discretion and compassion. Such propaganda glosses over the issue of adoption equity, and attempts to manipulate the emotions of the disenfranchised to serve a political agenda.

Let us make no mistake. Abortion has become, for many, more a political issue than a personal one. If you wish to see RVW overturned even when presented with evidence that it will not prevent the "murder of babies" that concerns you so greatly, then arguing for the overturn has less to do with saving children as it does with taking an ideological position.

And for that, you should be ashamed.

It is my opinion that the pro-life and pro-choice positions are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would wager that most pro-choice advocates would wish for a world in which all children are able to come into the world safe, secure, and healthy. None of us rally for more abortions. All of us want less of them. But for that, we are not willing to deny a woman her right to choose what is best for her and/or her family, without pressure from pundits and ideologues more concerned with being right, than with doing what's right.

The Phases of Belief and Disbelief

Godheval — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:15:55 +0000

As children, we believe mostly whatever we are told - by parents, family, teachers, and even friends. We hear a story and we do not know - until it is clarified by another - whether or not the story is real or make-believe.

Then as teenagers it is common for us to go through a rebellious phase - not necessarily acting outside of any established moral or ethical framework, but daring to venture out on our own, to establish our identities as individuals, and to explore for ourselves what constitutes "truth". Sometimes we act like raving lunatics just to be contrary.

Then we enter adulthood, and invariably become more "grounded", learning to temper our youthful passions, to focus that energy towards more "practical" pursuits. We learn balance, objectivity, humility. We are able - in most cases - to reconcile our personal views with the fact that others have different views.

We grow up.

It occurred to me recently that there may be a parallel between this maturation from childhood to adulthood, and people's progression through different phases of belief and disbelief. Of course not everyone has the journey through belief and/or disbelief, just as we don't all mature at the same pace or experience the same things at any given point in our lives. So the parallel I am drawing is meant to be generic and abstract, rather than a precise comparison.

For those of us who grow up in religious households, we are taught our parents' beliefs, go to their church, temple, or mosque if they have one, and are saddled with our parents morals, ethics, and any baggage that might come with it. We take what we are given at face value, accept it as truth, due to the trust we place in those that have proven themselves by caring for us. But unlike our natural inevitable journey into adolescence, many people never push beyond the beliefs instilled in them during childhood, they do not dare to venture out on their own, to establish their own personal religious identity.

More often than not, those who do not "progress" beyond this stage are the fundamentalists of any given theology, the hardliners, the literalists. These are people who retain their childhood stories but never learned to look at it with grown-up eyes, to appreciate things like subtlety, nuance, multiple interpretations - like only appreciating poetry where it rhymes, rather than being able to read between the lines.

For those that do move to the next phase, however, some rebel violently against their former beliefs and institutions - or at least the most vile version or perception of those institutions. Perhaps they rebel due to a falling out with a parent or preacher or other authority figure. Perhaps because of some major discrepancy between what we've been told to think and what we've reasoned for ourselves or even directly experienced. This discrepancy usually has some noteworthy psychological impact, forcing a person not just to let go of their beliefs, but to run away from them screaming and yelling.

These are people like the militant atheists and agnostics - those for whom it is not enough to simply disbelieve, but who feel compelled to attack those who do believe. Not all atheists fit this description as I'll explain in the third phase below. Far from simply establishing themselves as individuals "free" of religion, feel some pressing need to return to their old beliefs and institutions with venom and fire, to criticize and belittle them. In this way they are just as tethered to those old institutions as they always were, their identities as atheists dependent upon there being a religion against which to rebel.

Just as angry teenagers do not listen to their parents' reasoning, their attempts to defend their choices, militant atheists do not listen to the more rational believers, the liberal theologians. They are too busy screaming and yelling. They need to cast religion and religious people as villains against whom they must stand in opposition. The ironic thing is that they become the very thing that they are trying to rebel against, like the worst nightmare of any rebellious teenager - to become just like their parents.

The new atheists, who attack a repugnant version of religion, use it to condemn all religion. They use it to deny the reality and importance of the religious impulse. They are curiously unable to comprehend those who found through their religious convictions the strength to stand up against injustice…The new atheists, like all fundamentalists, flee from complexity. They can cope with religion in its most primitive and abusive form. They are helpless when confronted by a faith that challenges their caricatures.
America's New Fundamentalists pp. 33-34

My experience with this involved some evangelicals and their implication that my mother, for her experimenting with Buddhism and other religions, would be condemned to Hell. Another example can be seen in the movie The God Who Wasn't There, which presented itself as a critique of religion and the Jesus myth, but by the end revealed itself to be one man's personal vendetta against his religious upbringing and parochial school. Much like a teenager finally getting to tell her parents all the things they did wrong in raising her.

Finally, though, the incendiary passions of militant atheism, like adolescence, are tempered through a sort of rational - rather than physical - maturity. We learn to read religion like poetry - to understand subtlety, nuance, interpretation. We learn that no one interpretation is necessarily right or wrong, but that they simply are. This is not to say that we become believers again, but we no longer categorically deny the possibility - or legitimacy - of believing again. And should we choose not to believe, we are able to make peace with religion, to reconcile our disbelief with others' belief, to accept that disbelief is merely another interpretation of our experience.

To clarify, I do not mean to imply any qualitative difference between people at the different stages of belief or disbelief. I do not think that people at any given stage are better than any other, no more than adults are better people than teenagers, or teenagers better people than young children. They all simply have different ways of viewing and interpreting the world and their experiences within it. I do contend, however, that just as adults tend to be better educated, better adjusted, and to possess greater wisdom for their length of experience, those who have progressed to the "third phase" are also wiser and better adjusted. They are more capable of higher order thinking, more rational, more objective, and more established and comfortable within their identities.

They are independent enough to think for themselves, to make their own choices, and wise enough to look deeper into things rather than taking them at face value. They are secure enough that they no longer need to prove themselves against the standards or norms of another. They are grounded enough to no longer need to fly to the attack on others' beliefs, or the defense of their own.

In short, they have grown up.

I Heart Xclusion

Godheval — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:16:45 +0000

Valentine's Day is a day that, like all good cynics, I take issue with for all the usual reasons:

1. Why should we only pay special attention to our significant others on a certain day?
2. The holiday is just part of a consumerist scheme to support the "industrial complex"

Blah blah blah. Whatever. It's all true, of course, but I wasn't going to post anything about it until I came across this promotional offer from XBox Live. It offers some free Microsoft Points if only you'll watch one of the offered movies with your loved one on Valentine's Day. Sounds like a good deal, except for the wording of the advertisement.

It annoyed me right away on a subliminal level, although it took me a bit of time to rationalize why exactly I took issue with it. At first it was the dichotomy between those who have "someones" and those who do not. I must either a sentimental sap who likes frilly pink hearts simply for having a girlfriend, or I'm some chest-pounding "manly-man" type who "don't need no stinkin' girlfriend! Guys rule!" Is that it?

I couldn't possibly be a guy who is between relationships, or a guy who for the sake of career, livelihood, or personal choice, just doesn't have a significant other? I couldn't be a girl who is single for any of the same reasons? Or a girl who doesn't like frilly pink hearts? I couldn't be a gay man or woman in a relationship where such cave-painted gender roles aren't so clearly established? I couldn't be a person of any gender and sexual orientation who appreciates a romance movie, even watched in solitude? Maybe I'm some basement-dweller with the social skills of an empty pizza box and movies are my escape from harsh reality, in which case, thanks for reminding me of that.

Then there's the matter of which movies are offered to either side. If I'm the romantic type, I must want to watch some trite garbage like The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past or the insufferably pointless and overrated Paranormal Activity. But if I'm not - if I'm the skull-crunching manly-man type, or the lonely lurker type - then I must want something involving drunken stupidity like The Hangover, the pulp sensationalism of Inglorious Basterds, gangsters in Public Enemies, explosions like G.I. Joe, or a healthy dose of racism like we find in The Goods - you know, because the target market probably isn't Asian or anyone else who might be offended by Asian stereotypes.

Because all real chest-pounding manly men enjoy that kind of stuff.

As a guy in a successful heterosexual relationship, his ad was tailor made for me, right? Except that I hate most romance movies no matter who I'm watching them with, because of their hackneyed storylines and characters who are either unrealistically beautiful or exaggeratedly hideous only to - by way of magic or hard work - become unrealistically beautiful. Except that I don't buy into the idea that ideals like love or tenderness or sensitivity or - you know, generally not being some chest pounding machismo asshole - are mutually exclusive from my identity as a man.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but the shit just annoyed me. Maybe me and my girlfriend, instead of exchanging frilly pink hearts, like to share a cocktail inside of a flaming skull right before we headbutt each other. With love. You don't know. It's just more evidence of how the consumer culture is so oblivious or indifferent to the many different types of ways that people can choose to interact with one another - and not just on Valentine's Day.