Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

Categories
Diversity Legal, Laws, and Regs

The Pledge

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was extremely pleased and surprised to hear that an appellate court has ruled that reciting the Oath of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the phrase “…under God”.

Not everyone believes in a God, nor do all religions support the concept of taking an oath. In both cases, the daily oath makes kids who don’t participate feel like outsiders, especially in today’s frenzied patriotic environment.

The Oath of Allegiance and coating our cars, homes, and bodies with variations of red, white, and blue are cheap and easy ways to show our patriotism. Much simpler to say an Oath than to carefully pursue details of bills pending in Congress, or to vote based on individual merit rather than party affiliation.

Not all webloggers are so pleased as I. Amidst a tangled web considers this a giant step back, saying As a big fan of God, I hope he gets to stay in the USA. At Boboroshi.com:

It’s gotten to the point where society is evicting any piece of religion from anything political. The problem exists that, in evicting religion from our society and becoming completely secularized, those who have exized religion have not been able to replace its moral teachings.

Our society was based on a secular government, a nation whereby church and state are separated. This does not preclude the practice of religion, but does put religious practice where it belongs: celebrated by individuals in their own space, their own time, protected by law.

As for the “moral teachings” of religion, there is no religion – none – that doesn’t have incidents in its past that the modern practitioners of same would just as soon forget. And there have been few wars fought that didn’t have a kernel of religion at their core – including the current conflicts in the Middle East. In actuality, morality, or lack thereof, is a matter of individual responsibility rather than religious affiliation.

Perhaps we should create a new Oath – one with a bit broader base:

I give my promise
to all of humanity
to support freedom in all its forms.

 

And to the world
in which we live
one world, indivisible
I support liberty and justice for all

I can live with this.

Categories
Diversity Political

SFSU 2

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I did have a chance to talk with people directly familiar with the SFSU peace rally. Additionally, The Jewish Bulletin provided expanded coverage of the email that generated so much discussion.

I rather liked the Bulletin’s coverage. It makes no apology that it has a bias — it is a Jewish publication. However, within that framework, it seems to go out of its way to present the facts. That has earned my respect and it is a publication I will pay close attention to.

From my understanding, there was unwarranted ugliness, and difficulties associated with the counter-demonstration:

Sophomore Dikla Tuchman, an organizer of the pro-Israel rally, said she and others in her group were cleaning up and saying their goodbyes when the event was “sabotaged” by pro-Palestinians, armed with whistles and bullhorns. Although the rally had ended at 1:30 p.m., Hillel had reserved the campus space until 2 p.m., so “it was still our time” when the pro-Palestinians demanded that the Jewish students clear out, she said.

However, it would seem as if the events weren’t quite as “drastic” as was originally reported:

The conversation was getting heated on both sides,” explained Polidora (SFSU Public Relations Director). “Our goal was to keep everybody safe.”

But Polidora also pointed out that much of what happened is based on perception. “Everyone has a unique perspective depending on where they’re coming from,” she said. “Everyone saw it differently.”

Ultimately, the focus about this event should have been about the positive aspects of the rally:

Cohen (International Hillel’s senior consultant) said he was personally disappointed that the controversy undermines the fact that throughout 90 percent of the day, “this was the most successful rally for peace in Israel at SFSU for years.”

Anti-Semitism is not to be tolerated — I may not agree with the Bulletin’s unqualified support for Isreali policies, but I can agree with it’s battle against anti-Semitism. And based on this, I plan on attending as many of these events as possible in this area, in order to fight anti-Semitism. However, this does not change my viewpoint on the policies inacted in the Middle East — it only reflects what I’ve known and felt all along: that all racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism is wrong, and to be stopped wherever it occurs.

I’ve also sent the link to the Bulletin’s article to Mike Sanders, Meryl Yourish, and Glenn Reynolds. Considering that the article was written by people who were there and directly involved, I would think that they would be interested in hearing what it says.

I do ask that my interest in finding the truth about this event not be misrepresented. At most I ask you to write that I sought the truth. And printed it when I found it.

End of story.

Categories
Diversity Writing

Of kitchen things

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I love reading about everyday things.

Allan talks about a new Sushi restaurant opening in town that uses trolleys to deliver the food. I’m still trying to figure out how this system of food delivery is going to work. I’m visualizing this little trolley racing by, and having to grab food out of it, quickly, before it goes out of reach. However, we’re talking about food — sushi — that doesn’t necessarily grab that easily. In my mind I see nori and rice as well as bits of fish flying hither and yon.

Justin takes a sentimental journey through town and through memory as he prepares for a move. Speaking as one who has lived all over this country, it’s the small things — our barbers, favorite restaurants, and walks — you miss most when you move.

Everyday things.

My interest in reading about everyday things is especially heightened after I read one of Jonathon’s posts about Japanese women’s writing — books by eleventh century women authors. Today he writes about how women’s writing was considered inferior, joryu bungaku:

I would not understand until years later that, consciously or not, Rimer was following a long tradition in Japanese literary criticism which—using terms such as “joryu sakka” (woman writer) and “joryu bungaku” (women’s literature)—places most women writers in a separate (and implicitly inferior) category

A low opinion of women’s writing wasn’t limited to the Japanese; Western civilization also considered women’s writing to be inferior. For instance, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:

“American is now wholly given over to a d____d mob of scribbling women, and I have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash — and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed.”

Though Western women didn’t write in a separate language, as the Japanese women did long ago, they wrote of subjects considered of “lesser importance” — of life and love and everyday things. An indirect reference to this is made in Jury of her Peers, by Susan Glaspell. She wrote:

Nothing here but kitchen things,” he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.”

Introducing my new weblog tag line: Nothing here but kitchen things…

Categories
Diversity

Say What?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Jeneane Sessum just posted a note that had me going “say what?” about half way down.

I can sympathize with Jeneane that she misses her husband while he’s working in Japan, but I can’t agree with her when she generalizes her own personal sense of lonliness and temporary loss of his presence with sayings such as:

Look, the absence of testosterone in a household, combined with an overabundance of estrogen, is just not a good thing. I’ve seen it in companies I’ve worked for. Those places where the first meeting in the morning means two or three women crying, or at least one of them walking out in a fit of rage, punctuating their departure with a slammed door.

I haven’t worked at a lot of companies that are controlled by women at the top, primarily because I’ve worked at larger corporations and control of these types of companies is still male-dominated. However, I’ve worked at a significant number of companies where my upper level management is female, and I’ve never noticed a difference in the number of women “…crying, or at least one of them walking out in a fit of rage…” at these companies.

To be honest, I’ve not really noticed that much of a difference, good or bad, in overall behavior of a group based on the sex of the upper management.

Regardless of the preferred expression — tears or words or actions — excessive emotionalism at work occurs in both sexes. Sex of the boss, number of men or women in the group, sex of your co-workers — none of these purely sex-based characteristics play into this one.

Group dynamics is a lot more complex than basic rutting behavior.

To say that women need to have men to somehow “balance” them in the work place or home because of an estrogen/testosterone thing is to support stereotypes that can only hurt both sexes, professionally and personally.

Categories
Diversity Just Shelley

Associations

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Mike Golby found another “friend”, Stone Reynolds, who seems to be unhappy at Mike’s treatment of another weblogger, Mike Sanders.

However, in an amazing display of twisted brotherhood, Mike Golby states:

There’s something decidedly odd about this guy. His half-formed views appall me but I find, dare I say it, a sense of humor, in his writing. And a sense of humor, they say, is everything (of course, it could be a mask hiding naked hatred but, like my friend Christopher Locke, I am a professional and can handle any situation should it turn ugly).

So, I’ll be stopping by at a hell of a note from time to time – if only to swap gratuitous insults and find out what’s going down in the world of racism, sexism, anything lewd and smutty, the good ol’ boys, the loony right, etc. Look at it this way. If St0ne Freeman is a friend of WonderChicken’s, how can he not be a friend of mine?

To which Stone replies:

I promptly posted a comment there expressing my thanks and overall flabbergasmic response to his review.
…

Sounds good to me…and PageCount: Into The Lake of Fire joins my linklist

All of this would be interesting, except for the fact that I got dragged into this indirectly.

It seems that Stone doesn’t have too high an opinion of me for my “mistreatment” of Mike Sanders, either. But he continues his lack of high opinion elsewhere with little tidbits like the following:

And, speaking of MT and self-respecting ‘bloggers, burningbird, for all her l33t skillz, needed help from stavros to get MT installed. I’m not sure what that says about MT, or the flamingfowl…but if Dave had any difficulty with the installation, he hasn’t yet mentioned it.

Seeing all this, Mike Golby writes:

And, from there on in (while doffing his cap this way and that to various and vicious warbloggers of note), St0ne proceeds to rip into Shelley (for whom he nurses a dark and secret passion), Jeneane, Dave Winer, and me.

To which Freeman responds with:

There’s something decidedly odd about this guy”, Golby notices. I can’t argue with that, but I vigorously dispute the “dark and secret passion” he alleges I nurse for Shelley Powers.

I have a sense of humor. I really do. And I appreciate that both Stone and Mike got a chuckle out of this interchange. However, I found my association with the phrase and the entire exchange to be demeaning.

A simple phrase — funny or interesting for one person, embarrassing or painful to another. Thoughtless associations. Stupid word tricks.

Guilty as charged.

I wrote a posting last week that talked about Mike and Chris Locke and how much I admire and envy their writing skills. In this posting I used an association, a phrase, that looking back now I realize I shouldn’t have used. I pulled and re-posted this several times since, but pulled it permanently today.