Ben Fainer’s Bracelet

Ben Fainer inspired me. With his wonderful Irish-Polish accent, he consistently spoke of the need to love and forgive others, despite the horrors he had been through. This included long perilous years during the holocaust, including time at the concentration camp at Buchenwald.  I was so glad Ben allowed me to tell his story. He sat patiently in his living room as I asked him lots of questions. I just noticed today that my video interview of Ben has now been viewed by almost 100,000 people.

And now, Ben's daughter Sharon Berry has a new story. It has been determined that while in captivity, Ben created a metal bracelet that was recently discovered on the grounds of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Apparently my video helped to make this determination. I invite you to "meet" Ben by watching his video, which I filmed in his living room in 2012, a few years before he died. For more about Ben's bracelet, see also this article from today's edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

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About the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Over the years, I have heard many references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but I never stopped to really understand the extent to which China was thrown into upheaval by mostly young people who sought to purify the country. Here are some websites (and here) and short videos that are among the materials I reviewed tonight.  As I studied these materials, I was repeatedly tempted to draw comparisons to the contagion, humiliation and the rhetoric used by the Woke as they try to purify colleges and other American sense-making institutions in modern times. To be clear, is my belief and my hope is that we will not face widespread violence as a result of Woke ideology--there are massive historical and cultural differences between 1960's China and 2020's U.S. My comparison of Wokeness to the Chinese Cultural Revolution thus is quite limited in scope, though it is compelling in some ways.

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Jodi Shaw Describes the Racially Hostile Environment of Smith College

Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster invited Jodi Show onto their show to describe her experiences at Smith College. The details show the extent to which Critical Race Theory and Woke ideas have infected the culture of Smith College.

An excerpt of Jodi Shaw's discussion from the 18 min mark:

I started sending emails and asking for definitions because clearly we were using different dictionaries at this point I well understood that my definition of racism was not consistent with um smith college's definition and nor was my definition of what i think of with equity and inclusion, so I started asking for definitions and I wasn't able to get those. Instead I got referred to Ibram X. Kendi’s book. I got sent an essay called Me and White Supremacy . . .

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Abraham Lincoln, Racist . . .

Oh, I see it is still 2020.  Apparently, fighting a bloody war to end slavery and writing the Emancipation Proclamation are not impressive enough. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Abraham Lincoln, an iconic American hero, could soon be an outcast in San Francisco, his legacy called into question and his name ripped off a high school. Lincoln is one of dozens of historical figures who, according to a school district renaming committee, lived a life so stained with racism, oppression or human rights violations, they do not deserve to have their name on a school building.

Once again, where do you draw your line with the Woke? At what point do you say "Enough"? If we don't speak up about this insanity, haven't we also implicitly voted to tear down the Lincoln Memorial?

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When U.S. Race Relations Soured

I recently read a thread on another forum in which 100 out of 140 posts declared that we became a divided nation under Trump and it was Trump's fault. I then found Gallop data that tracked opinions on race relations historically. I found it fascinating. What jumped out at me was the legacies of the last two presidents, when things began to fall apart, and the disappearance of the "No Opinion" response.

Obama, who took office in 2009 inherited a relatively united country from Bush. A majority of both blacks and whites felt similarly that race relations were "very/somewhat good." When Obama left office, a majority of both races felt that race relations were no longer "very/somewhat good." Things started falling apart around 2013 and the downward trend line simply continued under Trump. Over time, the number of people expressing no opinion shrank to near-zero.

The lines moved in parallel. Even when the gap reached 20% in 2007, both groups were still positive. Joe Biden will inherit a divided nation. If we focus on blame without understanding that this trend began in 2012, we will not reunite.

I understand that attitudes on racism are extremely complex. That said, my first significant indication of coming trouble was John Lewis's characterization of John McCain in 2008 as a "racist." I had always respected both men, and although by then I was becoming accustomed to hearing Democrats cut off debate by pointing at the nearest white Republican and yelling, "Racist!," that was unlikely to apply to McCain. He had matured in the US military, arguably one of the least racist institutions in the country.

My second indication came in 2011, when prominent civil rights leaders repeatedly proclaimed that the only reason to disagree with Obama was racism. His approval rating at inauguration was 70%. Less than three years later it was in the low 40s. One-quarter of Americans had become racists in very short order, apparently.

Bureau of Justice Statistics is not, IMO, intentionally obfuscatory, it's simply standard bureaucratic denseness. It's difficult to tease out, but the numbers don't support a narrative of black victimization at the hand of whites. Interracial violence is unusual, and while black-on-white crime is more common than the inverse, it's still relatively rare.

In 2014 Michael Brown was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in self-defense. The "hands up, don't shoot" false narrative came out of this. Some forty FBI Agents were dispatched to Ferguson, Missouri, and three White House representatives attended the funeral. The town of Ferguson was seriously damaged and the "Ferguson Effect" was born, with police officers hesitant to approach black suspects not for fear of being shot, but for fear of criminal charges.

Events occurring during the Obama presidency put U.S. race relations on a downward track. Trump, to his discredit, has only made things worse. My point is that we shouldn't be focusing on Trump alone, overlooking events from the preceding years. We need to acknowledge the longer duration and complexity of this unfortunate trend to begin to fix what has gone wrong.

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