Check out the charity scam being run by Sean Hannity. What else could you call it other than scam when less than 10% of the donations end up going to the cause? I would like to see a jury through him in prison for charity fraud (and everyone else who runs a charity that skims 90% of the top).
For those who want to spend their vacation volunteering their time in some far-off exotic place, Slate’s Sandy Stonesifer offers this thought:
There is no question that unless you have very specific skills to offer, an organization could do more good with the amount of money you will spend on travel, accommodations, and tourism than you could do during your weeklong visit.
There’s a new French documentary based upon a faked French television show (”The Game of Death”). The “show” was based on the experiments Stanley Milgram conducted at Yale in the 1960’s.
On the TV show, the game consisted of one participant asking questions to another player locked inside a booth with an electrode hooked up to his or her wrist. Any wrong answer meant the first player had to push a lever that subjected the victim in the booth to electrical charges up to 460 volts as punishment.
The audience applauded and chanted “Punishment! Punishment! Punishment!” when the contestant inside the booth answered wrong.
The results were startling, just as they were in Milgram’s study: 80% of the contestants administered what they believed to be lethal electric shocks. BTW, it’s not clear whether the audience consisted entirely of stooges–I assume that all audience members were stooges and that they had been instructed to encourage the reckless behavior of the contestants (if not, the consistently terrible audience reaction was phenomenally more interesting to me than the behavior of the contestants).
The CNN reporter reporting on this French “show” was perplexed by the behavior of the contestants on this “show.” She was flummoxed by the contestant’s willingness to administer (what they believed to be) painful and apparently deadly shocks to innocent people. She quoted the show’s French producer: “People were willing to act against their own morals, their own principles when they were ordered to do something extreme by a source they they trust is legitimate.”
According to the CNN reporter, the lesson is that “even the most well-adjusted person can be swayed to act in horrendous ways if the situation leads them to it–that anyone is vulnerable to this.” The host of the CNN news show, Campbell Brown added, “I hope that’s not the case.”
But the evidence is ubiquitous that people will happily allow entire communities of other people to needlessly suffer and die. We tolerate mass death of millions of innocent people, including children, through starvation and malaria right here on planet Earth, even though we could substantially alleviate those disasters if we only acted. We tolerate and even cheer on wars that have no purpose relating to “freedom,” even though we know that using our terrifying weapons often takes the lives of numerous innocent human beings. We fail to guarantee a minimum safety net of health care for those who can’t afford it, resulting in more deaths. We tolerate thousands of institutions that are “schools” only in name rather than insisting on paying a bit more for first rate teachers–we know that these sad public “schools” are ruining lives, but most of us couldn’t care less (if we cared, would we be doing something about the situation? Consider too, these eight other ways to kill 3,000 people. How is it that we tolerate any of this? But we do tolerate needless suffering every day, most of it through our inaction. “The Game of Death” demonstrates (just as Milgram had earlier demonstrated) that people are also willing to hurt and kill through their one actions, not merely inactions. For the most part, however, I find this action/inaction distinction to be legalistic and distracting. Highly moral people don’t make this distinction when lives are on the line.
How can people on the “show” be so cruel? In my opinion, the Milgram study is a finding that relates to limited human attentional capacity. Our limited and rickety working memory can easily be filled with things (such as audience encouragement and the “authority figure” of a show host) which leaves little room for moral processing. Simply fill up our heads with TV, “the threat of terrorism,” or whatever, and we are willing to not attend to everything else. We are incredibly fallible beings. I would also suggest that Hannah Arendt’s concept of banality of evil illustrates this human vulnerability to attentional distraction. I explain my reasoning regarding human attention capacity in the context of Arendt’s work here.
Back to the “Game of Death”. . . Some of the contestants purportedly explained that the power of television made them do those horrendous things, but this claim confuses me. I suspect that the live audience served as a proxy for that “television audience” (there actually wasn’t any such audience, at least until the documentary came out). But assume that the live audience boo’d and hissed when shocks were administered, thereby working at cross-purposes with the show host. In such as case, I would assume that far fewer “lethal” shocks would have been administered. My belief, then, is that the fact that there was a television audience (even an imagined one) didn’t cause the contestants to act in any particular way. Rather, the effect of that audience depends on how that audience reacts. No research needs to be cited for the fact that we are social animals and that we feel immense pressure to do the things that are approved by others around us (though I will cite this famous study by Solomon Asch).
Some might find this sort of “show” bizarre, but I find it valuable, and I hope that the documentary reaches a wide audience. Humans cognition is a complex and conflicting bag of tricks, many of which work counter to others. That is one reason I have repeatedly stressed at this site that we should first and foremost think of humans as human animals, not the demigods . We desperately need the humility and the skepticism that usually comes with the acknowledgment that we are frail and fallible. Consider that when when humans are thinking least clearly, we are nonetheless capable of feeling certain that we are correct. We are a lot less competent than we’d like to believe. The French “show” is dramatic evidence that merely presenting an audience and an “authority figure” can severely inflict moral blindness. These two things blinded the contestants to the most basic rule morality: don’t needlessly hurt and kill others.
The more likely that human animals become consciously aware of their gaping cognitive and moral vulnerabilities (I consider these part and parcel), they are less likely to do great damage to other humans. Perhaps this show will remind us that we regularly need to exercise social skepticism and put on the moral brakes, even when those around us seem certain.
I received my census form in the mail today. I don’t generally think twice about it - I understand why the government needs this information to allocate representation, funding, etc.
But the insert caught my eye: the Census Bureau took the time to tell me that I don’t need to worry about what they’re going to do with my personal information. It is, after all, protected by law. Here’s an excerpt from the Census Bureau website:
We depend on your cooperation and trust, and promise to protect the
confidentiality of your information. Title 13 of the U.S. Code protects the confidentiality of all your information and violating this law is a crime with severe penalties. In addition, other federal laws, including the Confidential Statistical Efficiency Act and the Privacy Act reinforce these protections.
Obviously the Census Bureau considers these assurances regarding the legal protection of privacy to be crucial to getting honest answers. I’m not surprised - the information could certainly be used to identify likely tax evasion, immigration status, even occupancy codes. It is very sensitive information in its raw, unaggregated form.
This isn’t my first census form. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in the previous two censuses. But for me, for the first time, I am not reassured by their claim.
After all, I’m pretty sure that warrant-less wiretaps are illegal too. As is torture - isn’t it? I believe the evidence is strong that our government has authorized or allowed both activities. Certainly it was necessary to pass legislation giving telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for participating in wiretaps. I’m no legal expert but to this citizen that means that the wiretaps are acknowledged to be illegal - we just won’t do anything about it.
So, how can I have any faith that the Census Bureau would live up to it’s claims? How can anyone?
But it’s an opportunity. This is one of those “teachable moments” that a parent, or teacher would apply to an unruly child. What more natural consequence could there be for lawless behavior by the government than to say “You know what? I won’t tell you that information because I don’t trust you to act in good faith with it.” The census, as an opportunity for civil feedback, is a perfect time to teach that lesson. I only wish that it could be recognized as civil feedback instead of the apathy that it would undoubtedly be labeled as.
A few weeks ago, I posted on a terrific video on a tried-and-true formula, “A Standard News Report,” used by television “news” stations to package non-stories in order to present them to the public as “news.”
Now, The Onion has presented its own version of packaging used by television “news” stations for presenting non-stories as “news” stories. Quite funny, yet serious and well-concocted. The Onion’s video looks like a news story about non-news stories, yet it presents a topic that is certainly newsworthy.
Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere
Speaking of The Onion, check out a new written Onion story on bigotry. Here’s an excerpt:
A coalition of the nation’s most fervent bigots convened in Washington Monday to address growing concerns that the production of hateful new racial slurs has failed to keep pace with the rise in mixed-race births.
Constance McMillen wanted to go to her high school prom. Like most students in the United States, she doubtless saw the event as the capstone of four years of effort, a gala event for students that represents a reward for getting to the end of their senior year and, presumably, graduating not only from high school but into adulthood. One night of glamor and revelry, dressed at a level of style and affluence many might never indulge again, to celebrate the matriculation into the next level of independence. A party where students can show themselves—to their peers and to themselves—as adults.
It has become something more, probably, than it was ever intended to be. Patterned after high society “debuts” at which young ladies of good breeding (and potential wealth) are introduced to Society (with a capital “S”) in a manner that, when stripped of its finery and fashionable gloss, is really a very expensive dating service, with the idea of creating future matches between “suitable” couples, the high school prom is a showcase, a public demonstration of, presumably, the virtues of a graduating class. Over the last few decades, even the less well-off schools strive to shine in what a prom achieves. Instead of a local band in the high school gym, with bunting and streamers and colored lights to “hide” the fact that normally gym class and basketball are performed in this room, the prom has become elevated to a decent hotel with a ball room, a better-priced band (or a DJ), and all the attributes of a night on the town in Hollywood. Tuxedos and gowns are de rigueur and students’ families spare no expense to deck their children out in clothes they really often can’t afford. Limousines transport the budding fashionistas and their knights errant to the evening’s festivities and you know this cost a fortune.
Students may be forgiven for believing that it’s for them.
In its crudest terms, the prom is for the community, a self-congratulatory demonstration of how well the community believes it has done by its youth. It is a statement about what that community would like to see itself as.
In the case of Newdow v. Rio Linda, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that talking about “God” is not religious talk. The case was brought on behalf of an atheist public school student who was required to recite the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance, which includes the phrase “under God.”
The Majority Opinion holds that the phrase “under God” in the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance is not a personal affirmation of the speaker’s belief in God. Further, the Majority plays a shell game, pretending that is is required to analyze the entire Pledge (which it finds to be primarily patriotic) rather than having the courage to look at the offending phrase “under God,” which was added by Congress in 1954, during America’s McCarthyite period. Here’s the Majority’s shell game in action (from p. 3877):
We hold that the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Establishment Clause because Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism and that the context of the Pledge—its wording as a whole, the preamble to the statute, and this nation’s history—demonstrate that it is a predominantly patriotic exercise. For these reasons, the phrase “one Nation under God” does not turn this patriotic exercise into a religious activity.
I will emphasize points raised by the Dissent because the Dissent is coherent and honest, in contrast with the disingenuous Majority opinion. The Dissent begins at page 3930 with an elaborate table of contents. Don’t trust me on any of these points: read the opinion for yourself and you’ll see that I’m not exaggerating in the least.
What are the facts of the case? I’ll refer to the case description given by Judge Reinhardt’s Dissent (from page 3976):
When the five-year-old Roe child arrived for her first day of kindergarten, her teacher, a state employee, asked the young students to stand, to place their hands on their hearts, and to pledge their allegiance to “one nation, under God.” Neither young Roe nor her mother, however, believe in God. Thus, having already learned that she should not tell a lie, young Roe simply stood silently, as her classmates recited in unison the version of the Pledge that requires its proponents to express their belief in God. Everyday thereafter, the children filed into school, and each morning they recited an oath of allegiance to “one nation, under God” — an oath that undeniably “requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind” to which young Roe does not subscribe: a belief that God exists and is watching over our nation. Cf. W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943). For eight months, the five-year-old Roe faced, every morning, the daily “dilemma of participating” in the amended Pledge, with all that implies about her religious beliefs, or of being cast as a protester for her silent refusal. Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 593 (1992). On some days she quietly endured the gaze of her teacher and her classmates as she refused to say the Pledge, standing in silence as the classroom’s lone dissenter; on others she walked out of the room and stood in the hallway by herself, physically removed from the religious “adherents” — the “favored members of the [classroom] community,” Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 310 (2000), who were able to swear their fealty to the United States without simultaneously espousing a state-sponsored belief in God that was antithetical to their personal religious views. In April, 2005, Jan Roe filed this lawsuit on behalf of herself and her child. Her claim is straightforward: The Constitution of the United States, a nation founded by exiles who crossed an ocean in search of freedom from state-imposed religious beliefs, prohibits the purposefully designed, teacherled, state-sponsored daily indoctrination of her child with a religious belief that both she and her daughter reject.
The Majority Opinion also blunders by incorrectly stating that “under God” is not a religious phrase because it was not allegedly not inserted in the Pledge for religious reasons. The Majority Opinion makes the laughable claim that the phrase “under God” is simply “a reference to the historical and political underpinnings of our nation,” and that its purpose is to remind us that our government is a “limited government.”
The Dissent responded to this point at page 3931:
Were this a case to be decided on the basis of the law or the Constitution, the outcome would be clear. Under no sound legal analysis adhering to binding Supreme Court precedent could this court uphold state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance by children in public schools. It is not the recitation of the Pledge as it long endured that is at issue here, but its recitation with the congressionally added two words, “under God” — words added in 1954 for the specific religious purpose, among others, of indoctrinating public schoolchildren with a religious belief. The recitations of the amended version as conducted by the Rio Linda Union and other school districts fail all three of the Court’s Establishment Clause tests.
Was the phrase “under God” added to the Pledge in 1954 for religious reasons? There is no doubt about this. The idea to insert “under God” began in the pews of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church—The Dissent provides loads of citations and details (see, for example, p. 3944). How did the phrase “under God” get into the Pledge? Congress inserted it in 1954. On page 3957 of the opinion, the Dissent presents the all-telling details. The Dissent explains starting at page 4008:
Not only was the message underlying the new Pledge clear — “true” Americans believe in God and non-believers are decisively un-American — but so too was its intended audience: America’s schoolchildren.
The legislators who set out to insert the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance were fully aware that in 1954 the original Pledge was a commonplace scholastic ritual. Indeed, a primary rationale for inserting the explicitly religious language into the Pledge of Allegiance, as opposed to into some other national symbol or verse, was that the Pledge was an ideal vehicle for the indoctrination of the country’s youth. The amendment’s chief proponents in Congress were not at all bashful about their intentions. Speaking from the well of the Senate, Senator Wiley endorsed the bill by saying, “What better training for our youngsters could there be than to have them, each time they pledge allegiance to Old Glory, reassert their belief, like that of their fathers and their fathers before them, in the all-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, allpowerful Creator.” Id. at 5915 (emphases added). Senator Ferguson, who authored the Senate bill, agreed that “we should remind the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the other young people of America, who take [the] pledge of allegiance to the flag more often than do adults, that it is not only a pledge of words but also of belief.” Id. at 6348 (emphasis added). In the House, Congressman Rabaut, the original author of the first bill to amend the Pledge, declared that “from their earliest childhood our children must know the real meaning of America,” a country whose “way of life . . . sees man as a sentient being created by God and seeking to know His will.” Id. at 1700 (emphases added). His colleague, Congressman Angell, argued that “the schoolchildren of America” should understand that the Pledge of Allegiance “pledge[s] our allegiance and faith in the Almighty God.”
In conclusion:
An examination of that text and the plain meaning of its words clearly reveals the explicitly religious purpose motivating the amendment to the Pledge. The words “under God” are undeniably religious, and the addition to the Pledge of Allegiance of words with so plain a religious meaning cannot be said, simply because it might assist the majority in obtaining its objective, to be for a purpose that is predominantly secular. The words certainly were not inserted for the purpose of “reinforc[ing] the idea that our nation is founded upon the concept of a limited government.” As I have stated earlier in this dissent and as I reiterate here, the suggestion by the majority that the purpose of inserting the phrase “under God” into the Pledge was to remind us that we have a “limited government” finds no support in the record and is wholly without merit.
And why is it that the Majority Opinion is pretending that this case is about the effect of the entire Pledge rather than the two-word phrase that is clearly at issue? To avoid the obvious. Here’s what would have followed from honest and competent jurisprudence (again, this is from the Dissent):
[The earlier U.S. Supreme Court case of Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1984)] explicitly requires us to compare the original statute to the amended form and to examine what the amendment has added. Where the addition is religious, the addition must be invalidated. Here, Wallace unquestionably requires us to strike down as unconstitutional the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation of the “under God” language in the Pledge of Allegiance in the public schools. Omitting the two words added by the 1954 amendment and returning to the recitation of the secular version of the Pledge that was used in public schools for decades prior to the adoption of the amendment would cure the violation of the Establishment Clause at issue here.
Newdow v. Rio Linda would seem to suggest two things to those who take the logic of the Majority Opinion seriously. First of all, stare decisis is the sacred foundation of our entire legal system–except when it is not (for instance, when the Newdow Court intentionally skates around the Wallace decision), and that the principle of stare decisis can be cavalierly switched on and off by an appellate judge. Second, it’s time to revoke the tax-exempt status of all churches that talk about “God” because such talk is no longer religious.
The bottom line, though, is that Newdow is simply the latest in a long line of dishonest Pledge of Allegiance decisions. For example, see this earlier post on the federal district court case of Freedom from Religion Foundation v. The Hanover School District, where the Court claimed that making the children recite the Pledge each day is for the purpose of “teaching them history.”
If you want to know about an organization’s character, watch what it does; don’t listen to what it says.
Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood is a gutsy little organization. How little? Two employees. How gutsy? They make a lot of noise and they get a lot done. CCFC is the hero in the story I’m about to tell. Here’s a post featuring one of those two employees, Josh Golin, speaking intelligently and from the heart about the disturbing trend of increased commercialization of childhood. And consider this bold stand that CCFC took when President Bush praised a fraudulent corporate scheme to make children “smarter” during his 2007 State of the Union address.
Not content to simply make a lot of noise, CCFC threatened litigation against Baby Einstein (which had become part of the Disney empire). This approach resulted in Disney offering refunds for its Baby Einstein products which, alas, weren’t actually able to make children smarter–in fact, there is good evidence that they hinder the development of children’s brains because many of the products require plopping babies in front of televisions for extended periods.
Happy ending, right? Nope. Now I’m going to tell you about children advocacy organization that refused to do the right thing.
It appears that Disney wanted some revenge against CCFC, and that Disney pressured “Judge Baker Children’s Center,” (CCFC’s landlord) to suddenly evict CCFC from it’s headquarters. It also appears that Disney attempted to gag CCFC at about the time when Disney agreed to offer those refunds (under threat of litigation by CCFC). Therefore, it appears that Disney used its power to turn a large prestigious children’s center against a tiny children’s advocacy group. And the more you know about JBCC, the more it is clear that this move is about far more than choice of office space–CCFC was kicked in the teeth thanks to this eviction. For the record, Disney’s actions were reprehensible, but that’s what I’ve come to expect from all big for-profit corporations (note this for the record). Maybe I’m naive, but I still assume that non-profits such as JBCC will generally do the right thing.
I just sent an email to JBCC to voice my intense displeasure at its actions. In the subject field, I entered “Shame on you.” Here’s my email:
To: John R. Weisz – President, Judge Baker Children’s Center
Stephen Schaffer - Chief Operating Officer
Michele D. Urbancic - Vice President of Advancement
And to everyone else it should concern at the Judge Baker Children’s Center:
I have just read in the New York Times that your prestigious Center suddenly evicted a tiny do-gooder organization that had recently exposed consumer fraud committed by the Walt Disney Company.
In case you folks haven’t done it recently, I’d recommend that you each spend about a minute to read your own mission statement.
The Judge Baker Children’s Center promotes the best possible mental health of children through the integration of research, intervention, training and advocacy . . . Through advocacy we use scientific knowledge to expand public awareness and inform public policy.
[Emphasis added]. Truly, your Center has just demonstrated a lack of class so momentous that it deserves some sort of special public recognition above and beyond the recent NYT article. At least now we know that your mission statement is for sale. And PLEASE don’t blame it on your board. No one forced any of you to sit there in silence while your Center betrayed Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. You were free to call the NYT and criticize your own Center; of course, that would have taken courage and scruples. And no one forced any of you individuals to acquiesce when your Center tried to gag a bona fide children’s advocacy organization.
The rank hypocrisy of what you did (and tried to do) to CCFC reeks all the way to my hometown of St. Louis. Here’s a suggestion to avoid this kind of scolding in the future: try to remember that your mission is “improving the lives of children.” Your mission (and your “shifting focus”) should not be to serve as the enforcement arm for corporate wrong-doing.
For your punishment, you should each go look in a mirror and contemplate who it is that you are seeing.
I’ll leave you with a quote:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Erich Vieth
St. Louis, Missouri
http://dangerousintersection.org/
I received a warning when I logged into my YouTube account recently. I had openly and with attribution used a couple of popular tunes in some of my videos. Those have been flagged as violations of copyrights, my account to be reviewed, and the videos may be pulled, or my account suspended. Meanwhile, those videos sport pop-up ads to buy the tunes.
The two offending videos use tunes that had their heydays in the 1930’s and 1970’s. Even the children of the original creator and performer of the older tune are all dead. Is it right that some corporation is making a fuss over my sharing this with a few friends? There have been less than 75 views in the year since it’s been posted.
I see no reason to fight this. I’d be quite content to have ads pop up for the tunes I use. I even wish there were a mechanism in place to request ads to pay for use of related content. It’s not so much that I like ads, but that I respect content creators. But I don’t respect any right in perpetuity for corporations to hold creative rights once a creator and his direct heirs are out of the picture. Like McCartney having to pay the estate of Michael Jackson to use his own songs.
Sometimes, after a stressful period digging through work, family, and community obligations, I find myself driving past a cemetery and telling myself a private joke. “Lucky bastards,” I utter in a serious voice. “They get to to have endless amounts of deep sleep.” I’m trying to be ironic at those moments (though I always do enjoy my own jokes!).
There is a serious point to this. Many people have had enough, and they do want to end their lives. It turns out that they do have some options other than an often gristly self-inflicted suicide, the type of death that leaves behind families that are horrified, angry and/or guilt-ridden.
Since 2002, Holland has allowed euthanasia to those afflicted with ‘hopeless and unbearable suffering’ certified by two doctors. But now, after 112,500 signatures were collected on the issue, Holland’s legislature is considering pushing the envelope even further. According to World News, the Dutch legislature is considering a measure that provides for this:
Assisted suicide for anyone over 70 who has simply had enough of life is being considered in Holland. Non-doctors would be trained to administer a lethal potion to elderly people who ‘consider their lives complete’. The radical move would be a world first and push the boundaries even further in the country that first legalised euthanasia. Supporters say it would offer a dignified way to die for those over 70 who just want to give up living, without having to resort to difficult or unreliable solitary suicide methods.
I’m not writing about gadgets here, but about the information that makes the gadgets useful: Software. This video is nominally about web design consulting. But I’ve lived these situations back before the web, as well as with web clients.
One problem is that the buyer of information has no idea what it’s worth until he has it. And once he has it, why should he pay someone for it? Therefore, it isn’t valuable. This dovetails neatly into other copyright issues, but I’m not going there.
I have a few websites, most of which are loaded with free information that I painstakingly collected and developed. The sites are also built from scratch, mostly with a simple text editor. Some people see value in this; I receive donations. Some years as much as the low three figures.
People used to ask me if HTML was easy. I’d say, “Yes, you just need to remember how a few hundred easy commands interact.” Most developers don’t bother to make sure their site even meets official web standards (as published and tested for free by W3C.org). Even WordPress, the engine on which this site is built, shows errors in the validator. Google? Thousands of errors on every page.
I’ve had clients who understand what I do, and were happy to pay. Unfortunately, usually their superiors had to be cajoled. Eventually, these situations melt down and leave me out of work.
The “Just a small change” problem comes up often. After I’ve been reporting and demonstrating every step of the way, and finally a web site is finished, then do they bother to look and notice that it isn’t what they need. They make “little” requests comparable to having a builder simply move a bathroom from the first floor to the second as the keys to a house are handed over.
This video made me cringe.
Colin Beavan (”No Impact Man”) discusses progress:
2009 had cooler cell phones than 2008. 2010 has cooler cell phones than 2009. 2011 will have even cooler cell phones than 2010.
That won’t be progress. Year in, year out, we have cooler cell phones. If it’s the same year in, year out, how can it be progress? Because it’s not actually progress. It’s more of the same . . .
Far away from us, one billion people in the world have no access to clean drinking water. Because of this, far away from us, a child dies of diarrhea every 15 seconds . . .
Ask the average person: Do you want to watch TV on your cell phone or save the world’s children from dying of diarrhea? I know what they’d say. People are good . . .
What would be real progress? . . .
When we find a way to concentrate on bringing clean drinking water to the billion people who don’t have it instead of looking for a way to bring better TV reception to our cell phones.
Tonight, the parents of my children’s school were given a chance to view and discuss the 2009 Chris Rock movie: “Good Hair.” As you can see from the following YouTube trailer, the film is characterized as a “comedy,” and there were certainly many lighthearted moments throughout the film. On the other hand, the subject of the film is also tragic, in that it is the story of millions of African-American women who have been convinced that their natural hair is not beautiful. Chris Rock documents the extreme lengths that many African-American women go to to cover up their African-American hair.
The story starts when one of Rock’s young daughters asked him, “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?”
What can an African-American woman do when she wants to have “good hair”? The options include the use of highly caustic sodium hydroxide for straightening the hair (with its potential for painfully scalding the skin). I knew about that particular practice, but I had no idea that so many African-American women have actually covered up their own hair with “weaves,” straight dark human hair grown by women from other cultures. Rock traces some of the most sought-after weave hair to India. Many Indian women periodically give up their hair (having their heads shaved completely bald) in religious ceremonies called “tonsure.” From those temple rituals, that hair somehow ends up in the United States, where it is purchased by African-American women at prices ranging from $1,000 on up. It’s even more amazing to consider that so many women of modest means work so hard to cover up their hair with weaves. Several of the women stated that an African-American woman simply cannot succeed in the business world without hair that has been straightened or covered with a weave. Many of the women featured in the film indicated that taking care of a weave is extraordinarily difficult–no swimming for these women, and many of them wouldn’t dream of ever letting a man touch their delicate fake hair, even their lover.
I had no idea that so many women would go to such extraordinary lengths to have “proper” hair, or that so many women consider it to be more “natural” to display hair that is not their own natural hair.
Watching this film was a wonderful anthropological journey for me; this story is thoroughly about people and in the lengths to which they will go to display themselves in what they see to be culturally appropriate ways; it’s not just about hair. I truly enjoyed viewing the delightful interviews of the many people Chris Rock artfully stirred into his vivid mosaic.
The broader lesson is not about hair, or even about African-Americans. It seems to be about consumerism and the deep need of humans to display their traits to each other in expensive ways.
