Dispatch from Coronaville: My Theory on Conspiracies

I hear a lot of conspiracy talk these days. I mean not, many people actually use that word.  No one really want to claim the title of conspiracy theorist.  Instead, they'll say things like "When you dig a little deeper and understand what's really going on. . ." Or  "The media wants you to believe. .." Or they'll just toss off something like it's a given. "Because the numbers are inflated on we're not really getting an accurate picture. .. "

The root of our distrust of government, science, and the press is often our belief in what essentially boil down to conspiracy theories. Beliefs that some nefarious group is working behind the scenes,invisible masters manipulating the puppets we see towards destructive ends.  Whether its the Marxists, the globalists, Soros or Gates, the deep state, or even the Illuminati, dark forces with sweeping power are at working behind the scenes.

I generally don't believe in conspiracy theories. Here's two reasons why: 

• First, I find that most actors in a conspiracies don't seem to act in ways that are consistent with human nature.  I'm always looking at what someone would have to gain. And in conspiracies generally that's power-broad, sweeping power--world domination even. This is what movie villains typically want, and a lot of conspiracies and conspiracy-adjacent ideas have that flavor. But in general,real life human beings don't function that way.  Lets consider the idea being floated that the COVID-19 numbers are being "inflated."  Who benefits from inflated numbers? Who would want to crash the economy and scare people into believing that a mere flu is this horrible, deadly disease? No one. Unless, of course their goal was to bring the United States to its knees so that they can establish a new global order and rule the world! (Cue maniacal laughter). Yeah, I don't think so.

• Second, vast, far-reaching conspiracies require vast numbers of people to cooperate. The bigger the conspiracy the more foot soldiers you need.  And all these people need to stay quiet and stay on plan. It doesn't make sense. Let's look again at those "inflated"  COVID numbers. For our virus counts to be way overstated (or the impact of the virus to be exaggerated) you would need the organized, consistent cooperation of hundreds of thousands of people in media, medicine, and government, not just in the United States but all over the world (Note the U.S. is not the only country, nor even only one of a few that are struggling with this virus).  The problem is, the more foot soldiers you need, the more likely you are to have people who won't or can't toe the party line.  Human beings are just too emotional, irrational, and undisciplined to keep up with uniform secrecy required of conspiracies.  Some one is going to talk, some one is going to speak up.  Our free press is privately run. It makes it's money from consumers not from shadowy billionaires so if they can find and verify something that will "shock the world" they will absolutely run with it because it means more money in their pockets. If there was a global conspiracy, multiple hungry reporters (not just some lone wolf  YouTuber) would have already uncovered it. No way would they miss a scoop like that.

Much more credible is the banality of evil--what is done in broad daylight, that we choose to look away from.  This is more consistent with human nature: greed, selfishness, pride these are the prime movers of sinful human nature. Like those old backward masking stories (which I don't believe either), there was so much emphasis on the hidden evil messages in "rock music" when a lot of the time what was plainly said in the music was plenty evil enough.  

The problem with conspiracy theories is they let us off the hook. They allow us to look away from realities we'd rather not see (like an actual global pandemic). If the real enemy is a shadowy network of powerful globalist billionaires then we are freed from having to take action.  The best we can do is be "knowledgeable" about "what's really going on" but what does that knowledge translate into? Nothing.

So on to the numbers for today: The U.S. total number of cases now stands at 2,559,047, a 4.9% rate of increase which is higher than the average has been until this weekend but not as a high as Friday's 6% increase. Now is a good time to point out that the percent of increase has to slow due to sheer volume as the numbers rise.  For example if we were to go from 2 cases to 100 cases in three days that would be a 5000% increase. That's a huge jump, but it's only 98 cases.  Compare that to today's 4.9% increase which is a much lower rate, but represents 120,352 new cases over the past three days. A 5000% increase on Friday's total would have brought us to 126,413,445, more than a third of the U.S. population, out pacing the world total by far. Which would be insane. So a slowing rate of increase should absolutely be expected, and indeed that the rate of increase was stable for so long and has now even gone up is quite significant given the size of the numbers involved.

On that note it is good news that the rate of increase for deaths has now dropped below 1% after the brief spike on Friday.  There have been a total of 126,105 deaths, an increase of 0.9% over Friday. Presuming the rates of increase remain steady (which they shouldn't) we would have 2,726,400 total cases by Thursday, July 2 and 127,239 deaths.

Florida's numbers continue to spiral far off the charts. It wasn't possible for me to graph the 23,381 new cases the state registered over the weekend.  Ohio's new cases dropped though, and while Nebraska continued to increase in new cases it's still far from its peak numbers at the beginning of May.

Total Cases:

Florida: 146,333 total cases, 0.67% of the population. Florida is now among the top five states with the coronavirus.

Ohio: 51,046 total cases, 0.44% of the population.

Nebraska: 18,988 total cases, 0.97% of the population.

To me it's clear that, at least so far, the spike in cases is not leading to a spike in deaths. Florida's case surge began around June 17 (really, one could argue as early as June 5). It's been almost two weeks, and the Grim Reaper's heartbeat of deaths in Florida and Nebraska remains more or less steady. In Ohio's case there actually seems to be an overall downward trend in the number of deaths. It may well be that the case increase is not due to testing but increased spread, but it does appear that the spread is proving less deadly, perhaps because it's mostly younger people being infected now.

Total Deaths

Florida: 3,446 total deaths, a rate of 2.4% (Compare to a rate of 4.4% a month ago)

Ohio: 2,818 total deaths, a rate of 5.5% (Compare to a rate of 6.1% a month ago)

Nebraska: 271 total deaths, a rate of 1.45 (Compare to a rate of 1.3% a month ago)

Angry: Pride (In the Name of Love)

A few years back a student transferred to our school for her 8th grade year after spending many years in one the so-called good public schools in the suburbs of Columbus. There were many reasons why her parents chose to make this change in her 8th grade year, but one of them as I understand it was because of some of the ugly experiences she had with racism at her old school.  One such incident occurred when she wore a t-shirt to school that said "Black Girls Rock" or something similar.  The amount of nasty, hateful comments she received throughout the day shocked her and her parents.

That vitriolic response to expressions of black pride is not uncommon. For many white people, black pride (much less black power!) is seen as hateful, threatening, dangerous. "Is it not reverse racism," they ask? "If I wore a shirt that said "White Girls Rock" would I not be summoned to the principal's office for a dressing down? Why the double standard?"  This issue was further down my list of Angry topics, but I decided to bump it to the top after seeing yet another post by a friend in a similar vein on Facebook yesterday. 

 It's been more than a month since George Floyd lost his life and the protests began. People are beginning to wear down, and some of the sillier surface gestures towards anti-racism (no longer calling master bedrooms "master" bedrooms, canceling Paw Patrol etc) are not helping at all. As a result the expected push back is coming, and coming strong. Some of it is the usual appeals to black pathology, the hauling out of black critics of Black Lives Matter, and murmurings about the specter of Communism with the statues being removed.  But the ugly underbelly of all of this is starting to show as well.  And so today, I thought I'd address this ambivalence (and perhaps downright disgust) towards black pride by taking apart the post I saw yesterday.  I'm not going to "brutally destroy it" because I hate that kind of social media language (Watch this black woman brutally destroy Black Lives Matter in five minutes! Spare me).  I'm just going to dismantle it, piece by piece. I may throw in a few other points in defense of black pride along the way.

 I have often wondered why Whites are considered the only racists, and yet no other race is...... It's because while prejudice and hatred is the province of all human beings regardless of skin tone, racism requires having control of the levers of power.  I think it would be hard to argue that black people or any other ethnic group besides whites hold the levers of power in this country (and yes I know we had a black president, and that there are all kinds of rich and powerful black Americans, but that's not at all the same as being the dominant cultural force in the country. I will unpack this more in an upcoming blog, so stay tuned).

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc.

And then there are just Americans. Well, we are all Americans.  African-American (as well as all the others ethnic identifiers) is not a qualifier of our status as Americans (or at least it shouldn't be).  African-American in particular is actually a quite useful identifier since not all black people are African-American.  There are Caribbean blacks, Latino blacks, and of course various Africans (Somali, Ghanaian, Kenyan etc) that are quite different culturally from black people who have lived in this country for generations and are part of the legacy of American slavery. African-American recognizes this distinct cultural group. You can identify as Irish-American or German-American if that is your desire.  No one will accuse you being racist, I promise. You might even be able to swing Euro-American. 

You call me 'White bitch,' 'Cracker,' 'Honkey,' 'Whitey,' 'Caveman'... And that's OK...No, that's not okay. And it's even worse if those words have historically been followed by an assault or a lynching by black mob that is supported by the police. It's even worse if you're attackers get away with it and society concludes that you probably did something to deserve it anyway.  It's even worse if those words are more than hateful insults but a way of reminding you of your "appropriate" place in society. Perhaps as an adult you've also been called "boy" or "gal" as a way of reminding you that you're not on the same level as the black person who called you that. No? Hmmm.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you....

So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live? I don't know. Sounds like you feel already know the answer. I'm guessing it has something to do with the dysfunction of black culture or something like that.  But could I point out what's not a dangerous place to live? A  neighborhood with a lot of black people that isn't a ghetto (they exist!)  So maybe it's not the race of the people living in the ghettos that are the problem. Here's the thing: When whites, especially whites in uniform (or the authority of the uniform backing them), do commit violence against us they tend to go unpunished. Which tends to lend to a sense of impunity among said white people. I don't go around in fear of white people in general, worried that violence will be unleashed on me at any moment. None of the black people I know do.  We do, however, understand how important it is not to frighten white people as the response can be, shall we say, overzealous. 

You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month.

You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You have Yom Hashoah.

You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi.

You have the NAACP.

You have a BET...They don't have to "ours".  You're welcome to celebrate them too!  According to Wikipedia, you can even apply for a UNCF scholarship, even if you are not black! You see all of these observances you've mentioned exist because the contributions of the people of color to the history of this country have been minimized or ignored by mainstream (one could even say white) culture. The United Negro College Fund exists because it has historically been hard for many black people to go to college. Blacks weren't welcome in "your" colleges and universities for many years which is why we formed our own.  The NAACP was created to advance the interests of colored people because those interests weren't being looked after by those in power.  As for BET:  When you watch TV an ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, HBO, who do you mostly see.  Heck, when you watch the commercials, who do you mostly see? One could argue that you could lump all of that into one channel and call it WET. Part of the reason Black Entertainment Television exists is because of the long held assumption that white people won't watch media that features predominantly black people, that focus on traditionally black styles of music and culture.  This has been proven wrong from Michael Jackson to  the Cosby Show to Black Panther, but the belief persists that if there are too many black people on the screen than white people won't watch, that entertainment is for the "urban" audience. If you have an issue with BET, you might want to take that up with white Hollywood (although in fairness, according to Wikipedia, BET has taken a fair amount of criticism from a broad spectrum of black people for presenting a poor representation of black people to the world. So maybe that's not something you want to aspire to?).  Finally what it is Yom Hashoah and Ma'uled Al-Nabi?

If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we'd be racists.

If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.

If we had White History Month, we'd be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR lives, we'd be racists.As mentioned above you do kind of have WET and, it is kinda racist. Here's the thing about pride days and history months and organizations of your own. These things come about not in order to exclude people, but to celebrate and support those who are typically excluded. So if you spend all year learning about Barack Obama and Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglas, and you barely know the names George Washington and Thomas Edison and Walt Disney--like people have to intentionally teach them in school because no one talks about these people at all, well then it would make sense to have White History Month and it wouldn't be racist. I mean is there really a case to be made that white people have been historically held down for so long in this country that there needs to be an organization to advance their lives?

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.

Wonder who pays for that??I had to look this one up. For the most part it appears that the members of the chamber of commerce "pay for that." There isn't just one "chamber of commerce"; there are many and they all have differing goals and priorities.  The National Black Chamber of Commerce appears to also be supported by it's members and the goal seems to be empower black-owned business, embracing capitalism as a way for black businesses to thrive rather than relying solely on the "social fix" (that's from their website.)  What could be more American than that? The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is in Spanish so I can't say for sure who pays for them, but my hunch is it's the members again.  Given our cultural tendency towards the assumption of white competence it seems like such organizations might be useful to get the word out that non-white businesses can deliver the goods too!

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.In this country the standard of beauty is the white woman. I suppose if you'd gotten the message for generations in this country that black is beautiful and white is ugly, well I suppose there would be a place for a Miss White America. Miss Black America was formed to protest the lack of black women in the Miss America pageant.  The first black woman to win the "regular" Miss America pageant was Vanessa Williams and you can see that she is fair skinned, with hair and features that look closer to white than black:

Since her win as Miss America 1984, I haven't been able to confirm how many winners were black. But as of 2010 the then 89 year old pageant had had only 8 black winners. And looking at the pictures I was able to find, with the exception of this year's winner, it's hard to tell whether some of them are black or not. Typically it helps if you're a lighter skinned black in America, than if you are darker. Especially if you are a woman. On the other hand check out Ryann Richardson, the winner of Miss Black America this year: 

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships... You know we'd be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US.

Yet if there were 'White colleges', that would be a racist college.I believe I've already explained the reason for the United Negro College Fund. I know there's this belief that if you are black you can basically go to college for free--and frankly, I think that's a wonderful idea. It just doesn't happen to be true.  The openly proclaimed black colleges--technically they are called Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's) are open to anyone.  Here's a handy guide for what a white student can expect at an HBCU. They seem very welcoming! On the other hand almost every one of our non-HBCU colleges and universities were at one time only open to white people (and in some cases only white men--thus the existence of  all-female universities like Smith and Wellesley. ). The first college in the United States to admit a black person was Oberlin College in 1837, 201 years after the founding of the first American college, Harvard University. You might say that there were in fact white colleges  at one time and they were racist.

In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights.

If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.There are those among you--in the minority, I grant you--that do march for your race and for your rights. I'm sure you could join them if you are so inclined.  These marches, protests, and "other activities" mainly exist to protect your racial dominance, rights, and power position from being eroded. Their stated goal is to keep America a white nation. And yes, they are racists. Because they are acting from a position of power and their goal is to prevent anyone else from sharing that power. The goal of the Million Man March and the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Live Matter movement has never been to make the United States a black nation and to make white people second class citizens in this country. The goal is equality not dominance.  Is that the goal of a march for the white race and rights?

But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.The thing is that police aren't really supposed to be in the business of shooting bad guys and beating up drug dealers.  We live in a nation of laws and what's supposed to happen is that when people commit crimes, even violent ones, they are supposed to be arrested, tried in a court of law and sentenced appropriately. Police sometimes have to use violence to protect themselves in the line duty, but the argument that George Floyd or Rayshard Brooks deserved to die because they were bad dudes completely upends the notion of the rule of law.  And we're just talking about the presumably guilty victims. I notice you conveniently failed to mention innocent people like Breonna Taylor and Philando Castille who were also killed by law enforcement. Here's the thing: if you don't address police brutality when they come for us, eventually they will come for you too. (And for those that fuss that there are no protests when unarmed white people are killed by police and that the media doesn't cover it, there isn't a Protest Approval process. I think the biggest reason why you don't see more protests when white people are killed by the police is because  by and large it seems white people don't see police brutality as a problem. If someone gets killed it's just kind of assumed they had it coming.  Why would you protest? But I welcome protests on behalf of white victims. More police accountability is a win for everyone!)

I am proud of...... But you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists??

There is nothing improper about this post.

Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on.

I sadly don't think many will. I know it feels like you're being shamed for being white. I understand the instinct to say: "There's nothing wrong with who I am. I'm a good person. I have good values." I strongly relate to those feelings, in fact.  Declaring pride in your whiteness seems like a reasonable response to that shame and guilt.  While anyone can be racist, as I've quite thoroughly explained, in order to actually be racist you have to have the position of dominance.  When a black person declares pride in their race, it's not a declaration of dominance. It's a declaration of love. A declaration that we love our selves rather than hating ourselves as we have been taught. It's a declaration that we are worthy of love. It is an inclusive declaration that says I too, am a man. Is that what white pride declares?  Because it's funny, all the white pride declarations I've seen seem to be very hateful. When was the last time you saw a white pride protester protecting a black counter protester from his fellows because "hey guys, that's not what we are about."  I know you're saddened that not many will send your post on. But frankly, I'm relieved.

That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country.When you've been in power, having to share that power does feel like you're losing your rights, I'll grant you that. More on that in an upcoming post.

Im gonna be proud to be me regardless of my skin color. I don't have any problem with that sentiment.

If this is your experience when you go into any store in America than maybe there's room for white pride.

Free at last, they took your life

They could not take your pride

                         --U2, "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

Dispatch from Coronaville: The Invincibility of Youth?

First we were glad it was hitting the old. Those folks were already getting ready to kick the bucket anyhow was the harsh calculus--I mean was it really the virus that killed them anyway? Come on, now.  Now we're glad it's hitting the young because presumably they are not getting hospitalized or dying so much. Any way you slice it, it's not any worse than the flu. Whatever it takes to get us back to where we want to be: The virus is overblown. We all need to calm down.

I've always kind of hoped the deniers were right, and I still hold on to that hope. But I'm going to cautiously predict that we're going to see a spike in deaths within the next two weeks, even with this current rash of infections primarily being among the young and invincible. I'm just not convinced that this is "no big deal" or that it's just "media panic."

So the COVID surge across the South and West has finally impacted our national rate of increase. It appears that the surge may be spreading to other states as well. Certainly, Ohio is feeling the heat. As of today there are 2,478,695 total cases in the United States representing a 6% increase in the past three days. This is the largest percent increase we've experienced in quite awhile. As a result my prediction was short by about 55,000 cases.  The official line is that deaths aren't increasing significantly, but I wonder if it might be too soon to say this definitively.  We do see a slight uptick in the rate of increase in this three day period, back up to 3.4% after hovering between 1% and 2% for at least the previous six days. U.S. deaths now total 124,966. That's 2,800 more deaths than I predicted.  Based on these percentages I would expect to see 2,627,417 total cases by Monday, June 29 and 129,215 deaths.

I've added one more panel to my graph but even that does not reach the heights to which Florida has scaled. I would need another two vertical panels to reach the 19,457 new cases Florida recorded in the past three days, and I've run out of graph paper. My sincere hope is that Florida's numbers will start to sink before too long and the numbers will fall back within range of my graph. Ohio has also surged, notching the second highest number of cases in a three day period that I've recorded.  Even humble Nebraska is posting a modest gain over the past three days.

Total Cases:

Florida: 122,952 total cases, 0.56% of the population. If Florida were a country it would have the nineteenth highest number of cases in the world right ahead of Canada, which has almost double Florida's population.

Ohio: 48,638 total cases, 0.42% of the population.

Nebraska: 18,424 total cases, 0.94% of the population

Deaths are on the rise as well in all three states, though thankfully no record highs for any of the states.

Total Deaths

Florida: 3,365, a rate of 2.7%. Because the deaths have not matched the massive increase in cases, we're seeing a pretty substantial drop in the death rate among those who have tested positive.

Ohio: 2,788, a rate of 5.7%

Nebraska: 268, a rate of 1.5%

Angry: The Assumption of White Competence

Themes in Racism: White is Right

A Good School? (Photo from Humanizing the Vacuum)*

It's long been an article of faith among many African-Americans that to be accepted as merely competent you have to be twice as good.  It's been said of President Obama that if he'd fathered children by three different women, made crude comments, and had questionable financial dealings he would have been pilloried by the Right and probably been un-electable.  (He did none of those things and was pilloried by the Right anyway, but I digress.)  Not least because, these characteristics are often assumed to be synonymous with dysfunctional black culture when a black person has them. Black people are placed under a microscope that just isn't deemed necessary for white people. When the white guy starts talking at the board meeting, we assume he knows what he's talking about--especially if he's surrounded by black people (or women). 

White competence is a theme that I hear voiced in black circles almost as much as I do in white. We can be quite hard on ourselves.  Poor service, low quality, lack of professionalism or timeliness are all chalked up, with a shake of the head, to black folks being well, black folks.  Most of the time it's implied but I've even heard it voiced aloud. If you want it done right, get a white. It's even come up in recent weeks with the push to support black-owned businesses--if the price is too high or the service isn't right we gripe about our fellow black business owners needing to get it together if they want our business. We ourselves contribute to the expectation that nothing less than excellence is the standard for competency if you're black.

A poorly run business is a poorly run business, regardless of the skin color of the business owner.  If you don't like your experience at a black-owned business, I don't recommend you keep going back. I do recommend that you find a different black owned business if possible. That is, of course, if supporting black owned businesses is really important to you. And when you give that harsh review, how about omitting the part about it being a black-owned business?  Food sucked, overpriced, customer service was poor is more than sufficient.  There's no need to associate blackness with those negatives. When we get bad service or poor products from a white business we don't attribute it to the whiteness of the owner--nor should we. We give them a one star rating on Yelp and move on to a different business.  It's not that our society says that white people are always competent.  But when black and white businesses are held side by side the assumption is that the white business will be competent.  The black business has to prove it.

I remember very well the first time, many years ago, I realized that a majority white-run business could actually be run worse than a majority black-run one. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd always just assumed that the white-run organization was firing on all four cylinders, making wise decisions, or at the very least had to be doing better than similar black companies. I was shocked to find that wasn't the case. And I realized that the mismanagement I saw happening I would have unconsciously attributed to their race if the organization had been black-run.

Schools are one area where this assumption of white competence really comes in to play.  I remember a white friend sharing with me some years ago that she would love for me to be her son's teacher.  I appreciated her belief in my teaching talents, but I also doubted she'd consider sending her son to my school because it's predominantly black. "Oh come on, that's not fair," you might say."She might have had a lot of reasons not to send her child to your school." True. But, I never heard that my school was even up for consideration.  And the reasons one hears are things like: "Well, I just want a really strong academic environment for my child" or "You know I just worry about the values being brought in by these EdChoice kids" or "I just want more diversity on campus, you know?"   All of these are euphemisms for the assumption that a white-dominant school is just better quality.  Alfred Soto, a blogger, eloquently explains the euphemism of the "good school" in a post on his Humanizing the Vacuum blog (Soto is not well-known, or at least I've never heard of him. I found his blog while looking for a lead photo for this post. But I thought he made some cogent points.)

This is one thing I saw, even when living in the Marianas Islands. There weren't many black people on the island, but there were a lot of brown, and I saw how if a school got too dark the white people just stopped coming.  There are two schools on Saipan that immediately come to mind where it seemed all the American kids went. You'd visit those campuses and it felt like you'd just been dropped back into the suburban Mainland. And I'm sure if you asked the parents they'd say a lot of the same things I mentioned in the paragraph above.

 I'll never forget this one lovely family that seemed to have missed the memo about where they were supposed to go. When Barbara and I arrived at our school in 1998, it had a mix of American (read: white), local, and Asian kids but over the years we got a little two brown and our white students all but evaporated.  Then came this family who toured our little campus, talked to the teachers and principal and decided we were a good school.  Those two little boys stood out like little blond marshmallows in a sea of chocolate and caramel and they fit right in.  The family was with us until they relocated to Kazakhstan (they were the kind of family that relocated to Kazakhstan. I love it!). I've never forgotten them and I'm still amazed by their seeming unawareness of the assumption of white competence.

Competence doesn't come in a color. Neither does incompetence.  Any person, business, school, organization should be judged. It should never be automatically given credit for a certain level of quality in comparison to another.  Black excellence is often lauded as a "credit to their race." The problem with being a credit to ones race is the assumption that one race needs credit. And the other race doesn't.

*So one of my struggles with these posts is finding a good picture to lead into the blog.  I couldn't figure out what to do for this post for the longest time. I wanted the meme that compared Obama impeccable personal life with Trump's considerably troubled one but couldn't find it.  Finally, I thought What if I just do an image search of the phrase "good schools."  Given the post I just completed I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by what I found. Good schools, are apparently synonymous with a majority white student body (having some black students or a black teacher isn't necessarily an impediment; and there was one photo of what appeared to be an all Asian school.) Finding evidence of the assumption of white competence is easy as a Google image search, apparently.

Angry: Privilege: What It is; What It Isn't

Privilege. What an irritating word. White privilege. The lecturing tone that comes with it. The guilt being laid at your feet. The assumption that you are entitled, that life has been handed to you on a silver platter while all the dark folk around you struggle. The liberal, bleeding-heart earnestness that makes you ill. Ooh, and when someone sanctimoniously tells you to check your privilege? Oh no. It's about a loaded a term as it gets.

I don't think privilege means what a lot of people think it means. There are lot of great think pieces on this topic that explain it probably better than me. But this is my take, large portions of which have been taken from a private message discussion I had with an old and dear friend.

The short version means not having to think about the color of your skin (except for rare occasions, such as when you visit that awesome Baptist church with the rockin' music and powerful--but long--sermon). It doesn't mean that your life is easy or that you don't have any problems. It just means that your skin color isn't one of the things making your life difficult or causing problems for you. 

For example, if you are white, when you were looking for a house to buy I'm pretty sure you never thought "I'm glad to let my spouse take the lead in the house hunt that way I don't have to worry about not getting the house we want in certain neighborhoods." I did.

When you go running, you don't think: "I love to explore new neighborhoods on my run, but I think I'll stick to my same old route where people know me and might not think to call the cops."  I do. (I was advised by a friend, to just carry a gun when I go running...In what world is that a good idea--the practical aspects aside? God bless him, but I think his privilege was showing. The one thing black men have to hold on to when they get gunned down is that they were unarmed. Let that black man be armed and there will no question that cops--or the overzealous neighborhood watch--were unquestionably justified in taking lethal action).

You can see white privilege in a negative sense in the Amy Cooper video where she threatens the guy asking her to leash her dog by saying "I'm going to call the cops and tell them an African American man is threatening my life." You'll note in the exchange that she says she's going to call the police. He responds, "Please call the police. I want you to call the police." Then she ups the ante--you can totally hear it in her tone: Oh yeah, you want me to call the police? Sure about that? How about this? "I'm gonna call the police and tell them an African American man is threatening my life!" Cooper knew exactly how our society functions. I doubt Ms. Cooper is a card-carrying Klan member. She was simply angry and perhaps scared and new what weapons she had at her disposal. She knew the power that she had and she knew he knew.   Some years ago the anti-racist educator Jane Elliott asked a white audience if anyone would be willing to treated as black people are in this country. Not one hand went up (you can see the video here). Because everyone knew that was not going to be a fair trade. Time has passed, but I wonder how many white people would say today: "Hey times have changed. I'm up for the switch." Would you?

My approach in life is to always to assume the best in every interaction. I don't go around looking for racism. I assume that I will be treated fairly, and in general I usually am treated that way. But it's that little caution in the back of my mind that white people don't have to deal with that defines white privilege.   As a person of color what I've always envied about white people is the freedom they have to just be a person and not be defined by the color of their skin. When there's a white guy standing on the corner we say: "Who is that guy standing on the corner?" When it's a black guy, we say "Who is that black guy standing on the corner?" (Okay, to be fair it depends on the neighborhood, but you get my point.) I just want to be "that guy."  I experienced that for 11 years in Saipan and I have to tell you it was wonderful. It's not that people didn't know I was black. Of course they did (Well there was this one woman who thought I was Bangladeshi).  But it didn't matter. It wasn't how I was defined.  That freedom was one of the best things about living there.  

Another great way for white women to understand white privilege is to think about your experience as a woman. There are certain things I will never understand or experience. I have male privilege.  I have never ever worried about parking my car in a well lit area.  I have never ever given a thought to the clothes I'm wearing and whether they will give someone the "wrong impression" about what I'm up for.  I have never, not even once worried about being raped. That is completely foreign to me.  That's what privilege is. It's not my fault for having it.  I'm not wrong for having it. It just is.  But if, in my male privilege, I dismiss the #metoo movement as just a lot of whining women then that becomes a problem. Because I don't get it.   I don't understand the advantages that are conferred me just by virtue of my anatomy.

Here's a meme that misunderstands the concept of white privilege. You can find a lot of these types of memes when you google white privilege.  All of them make the mistake of equating privilege with wealth.

We tend to equate privilege with wealth, but that's not it. The assumption is that black people are poor (because racism) and white people are rich (because racism).  Of course that assumption is easy to dismantle, but while privilege often does manifest itself in economic inequities that's not the essence of what it is.  Jay-Z may have 99 problems (of which wealth and you know what ain't two), but a white man of equal wealth has only 98 problems. Though certainly wealth does bring with it privileges (as well as it's own set of problems), being poor doesn't mean you don't have racial or gender privilege and being rich doesn't mean you do.  While wealth (and fame, fame really helps) can mitigate the challenges of being a woman or being black (or being both), it can never fully inoculate you. You can be a world famous pop-star and still be violated. You can be an esteemed professor and still be profiled. 

Here's another meme that purports to "brutally expose" the "myth" of white privilege.

Well, since you asked.. .

 Besides the aforementioned emphasis on money, this meme suggest that race isn't the real determiner of who gets afforded a pass and who does not. I will grant that this meme is more sophisticated than the first, because it raises the question of whether differing treatment really is the result of race.  In a way I think it intends to undercut the message of this meme: 

The first meme questions the assumptions of the second. Is it really race that is the cause of these disparities? If so, then what are we to make of Willie Nelson?  I'll grant that you can't prove that Tanya McDowell was sentenced to five years because she was black. Arguably, it had as much or more to do with Huffman's deep pockets and the resulting type of representation she could afford that got her the slap on the wrist. Nevertheless, I think it would hard to plausibly argue that Willie Nelson got his assets seized because he was white, while Sharpton skated by on his skin color (Also, I'm pretty sure Rev. Sharpton is no longer welcome at the White House, ijs). There is however documented evidence that black defendants receive harsher sentences than their white counterparts for the same crime (See also )

You may say "I don't have any privilege, you have the same opportunities and advantages as I do."  Ironically, the goal is to make that statement true.  And I sometimes wonder if the real fear, deep down, that motivates some white people to insist there is no white privilege is the fear of losing white privilege. But that's for another post. . .

Angry: The Black Community

I suppose I could alternatively title this post "The Double Down."  After it all it was the sentiments in this post that got me unfriended on Facebook by an acquaintance who I truly enjoyed knowing and hearing from. I still regret that I responded thoughtlessly in haste to her pain, and that I wasn't able to take down my comment before she saw it.

That said, I do stand by what I said, if not the timing of when I said it.  This post elaborates on that deleted comment. I don't imagine my friend will see this post (since, you know. .. .unfriended) but if she does, I hope she can now understand where I was coming from. 

A rare photo of a meeting of the Black Community. (Just kidding, this is just a stock photo courtesy of Pond5.com)

I hear the phrase "the black community" thrown around a lot, by people of all races. Indeed I've been having an offline discussion with another friend where this topic has come up. I'm not honestly a huge fan of the term. It often seems to imply a kind of groupthink among black people. It's as if we all belong to some giant association that has monthly meetings and votes on the various issues we will address, the statements we will make and the opinions we will have. In the minds of some the Black Community is currently chaired by Al Sharpton, and in our May meeting voted for riots and looting to be approved at all Black Lives Matter protests.  

I'm not denying the existence or importance of black community--of shared culture and experience that naturally occur. Nor the existence or importance of literal predominantly black communities that often face unique challenges but have their own joys as well. I'm not denying the existence of black social communities that voice the concerns shared by many (but not all) black people, Black Twitter, for example. One of my favorite social media groups is the Wakinda SDA Fellowship (Wakinda being a play on Wakanda) where the experiences of being both black and Adventist come together in delightful relatability.  Yet even here, we are not all of one mind.  Their are cultural differences, between Caribbean and African and African-American, and differences of opinion ranging from very religious to culturally Adventist but non-believing. There are the politically conservative (okay, that's more rare, but it's there) to liberal views. We don't always agree--one of my biggest arguments on Facebook was with another black person in this group over whether racism is always about hatred (I argued that it wasn't).

What I have an issue with is when one black person is expected to speak for all black people. ("So, Sean, what's the black perspective on this?" And I'm thinking, man you have no idea how unqualified I am to answer that question).  I object to the actions of one or a few black people being a reflection on all black people (particularly when the actions are negative. When a black person earns their PhD, you don't hear people saying "There go black people again, doing their thing."  But let a couple of teenagers beat up an old lady and it's the Black Community's fault for not stopping it and not issuing an Official Statement of Condemnation).  It's this sense of the Black Community that has me drilling my students when we go on our class trip that they do not have the privilege of acting the fool because whatever they do right will be credited to their individual remarkable nature ("Can I just say, your students are so well-behaved") but anything they do wrong will be a reflection on all black people. They don't get the "hey kids will be kids, just blowing off steam"  pass when they get too loud in the hotel hallways or hotel pool.  They must be exemplary at all times.

Now, I know what you're about to say.  "Exactly, Maycock! So how is it fair to blame all white people for the bad actions of a few? There's no White Community either!"  And to that I would say:  I don't blame all white people--or really any white people--for the actions of a few. My issue is always with the system, not the people. People don't ask for the "white perspective" on things because it's understood that there will be a variety of perspectives depending on that person's politics, culture, and background. I'm simply saying the same is true for black people. We are not a monolith anymore than white people are. When a cop kneels on a guy's neck till he's dead the response isn't "There go white people again, doing their thing." We say there goes a broken system again that allows a bad dude to do things like this and the good folk to look the other way.  When your kid acts the fool, some might say it reflects bad parenting, but nothing about it is assumed to be endemic to the White Community.

The one thing that every black person in America,whether a Turning Point shill or Black Lives Matter activist, shares is simply being black. We may deal with that reality in different ways but blackness itself is the common thread.

Dispatch from Coronaville: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3. . Is this thing on?

As the coronavirus once again blossoms throughout the land, one of the explanations for the increase is that it's due to an increase in testing. President Trump even suggested (jokingly?) that we should slow down the testing so we wouldn't get such high case numbers.

I was curious to know if there'd been a recent massive increase in testing in some of the new hotspots such as Florida that would have preceded the accompanying massive increase in cases.  I wasn't able to find any definitive information to this effect. It just seems like it would have made sense to announce: "We're pumping up our testing capabilities, so expect to see a rise in cases in the next week or so." But our country has lacked leadership at the top and suffered from uneven leadership across the states, so I suppose asking for such an organized and coordinated response would be asking too much.  As it is right now, there's no definitive answer explaining the explosion of cases across the South and West.

In the process of trying to get some answers, I've been looking at a number of interesting websites. There's the Kaiser Foundation website and the Covid Tracking Project at the Atlantic to name two.  Particularly interesting is the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University. Their data indicates that Florida, Arizona and other states with surging numbers do not meet the positivity recommendation of lower than 5% positive results from testing. High positive percentages indicated that there's still not enough testing going on because we're tending to get results only from those that are already showing signs of illness. 

It would appear that whatever is causing the surge in positive cases, it's not the testing.

Today in the United States we have a had a total of 2,337,456 cases of COVID-19, a 3.7% increase over the past three days, and mere 900 or so cases more than I predicted. There have been a total of 120,838 deaths, only a 1.1% increase over the past three days. That's 500 or so fewer than I predicted, and the lowest rate of increase in deaths we've had since I began keeping records. Based on these numbers I expect 2,423,942 total cases and 122,167 total deaths by Friday, June 26, 2020.

Ohio and Florida are both down in new cases over the past three day period, though down for Florida simply means the second highest number of cases the state has ever recorded in a three day period. Their case numbers still exist in the stratosphere above our other two benchmark states. Ohio's new cases fell quite a bit though not to June 14 levels, which were the third lowest since I started tracking the data. Nebraska remained virtually flat, with the new cases at 366 compared to Saturday's 365.

Total Cases:

Florida: 103,495 total cases, 0.47% of the population. Florida joins the 100,000 club of seven states with a total of over 100,000 cases.

Ohio: 45,537 total cases, 0.39% of the population.

Nebraska: 17,957 total cases, 0.92% of the population

Deaths are down for all three states. with Ohio posting the steepest drop to just seven deaths over the past three days, just one more than the perennially low Nebraska. This is the lowest number of deaths in Ohio I've ever recorded.  I will be watching those death rates closely over the next two weeks, especially for Florida to see if all those new diagnoses translate into a higher number of fatalities.

Total Deaths

Florida: 3,143, a rate of 3.4%

Ohio: 2,697, a rate of 6.1%

Nebraska: 255 a rate of 1.4%

Angry: Acceptable Protest

"A thousand people in the streets

Singing songs and they're carrying signs

Mostly say hooray for our side."

                    --Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"

What constitutes Acceptable Protest?  In this country the consensus seems to be that  for protest to be Acceptable it must be necessary and it must not be violent or disruptive.  Let me be crystal clear at the outset that I agree with these criteria. The protest actions led by Martin Luther King, Jr and others 60 years ago or so are considered by most today to be the gold standard in protesting.  Everyone agrees that King's cause was just and that the things he and his supporters protested against were clearly wrong.  He passed the Necessary test. Further, because of his explicit, disciplined commitment to non-violent protest, he met the Non-Violent requirement as well.  You've probably seen the meme:

We've once again entered into a season of protest in the United States.  And while many are joining arm and arm with the protesters, many others are not happy about "a thousand people in the streets".  This current batch of protests don't seem meet the criteria for Acceptability. Most of the objections stem from the Non-Violent Clause for acceptable protests. The violence and looting disqualify or render moot the value of the peaceful protests. I do not agree that the violent behavior of a few should invalidate the cause, voices, or actions of the peaceful majority. And I would contend that the majority are peaceful. I've already addressed that specific objection in another post.  But even apart from violence, there are those who object to the disruptive nature of the protests even if  no one is getting hurt.

Remember this guy?

I have hard time understanding what the furor was over Kaepernick. People got very upset, and, dare I say, emotional about the anthem, the flag, the troops.  But it wasn't like he was walking all over the flag, he wasn't holding a sign proclaiming "Thank God for dead soldiers"  like the Westboro Baptist Church  did, he didn't extend the middle finger or even raise his fist. I guess the objection was that it was disrespectful, but as protests go, kneeling is about as respectful an action as there is (unless of course someone happens to be underneath your knee). The only thing he disrupted was people's sense of propriety. And of course now days people long for the days of his silent, solitary protest.

The larger objection, though not articulated as often, is really to the violation of the Necessary Clause of Acceptable Protest. Far too many white people just don't see the need for all the fuss:   "The freedom to assemble is being abused!  Things were fine until folk started getting whipped up by the radicals and the media. People were happy.  We were getting along.  We're living in a better time."  They just don't see the need for the protests. I'd suggest that had a lot to do with the objection to Kaepernick.  People just didn't think his stand (or kneel) was necessary.

Let's revisit Dr. King.  There was no national consensus that King's protests were necessary. If there had been, well. . .the protests wouldn't have been necessary. Just as today's protests are associated with the Antifa and violent radicals, King's protests were tarred with accusations of Communism*  His marches were for equal rights, sure, but they were also for economic parity, fair pay and working conditions (the day he was shot, MLK was in Memphis to support the local sanitation workers strike)**, and against the Vietnam War. He was not popular, he was not universally respected. Violence still happened, not just after his death but right in the heart of his work. The Watts riots for example took place in 1965 while King was very much alive.  This narrative of a period of  necessary, peaceful protest under King being replaced by unnecessary, violent protest after his death is just not true. And let's not forget that his protests were disruptive. The marches and sit-ins and boycotts effectively prevented people from going about their business undisturbed. 

With our 2020 hindsight we all tend to flatter ourselves that we'd have been right out there with MLK back in the day.  We'd have been running an Underground Railroad station out of our house if we lived in those days.  But I think if we're being honest, it's more accurate to say that whatever we are doing now, we would have probably done then.  We forget the extent to which outmoded racist ideas were once the norm, accepted by all white people except for a few radical types. Marching with King, being an abolitionist--to be involved in these noble causes you had to go against the grain of what most of your friends and neighbors thought. You were advocating for a change in a society that the vast majority of white America thought--at least at first-- was just fine the way it was.  So do the math: If you just don't see a problem now, chances are you wouldn't have seen one then. That doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you're not "radical," you are a product of your time who more or less accepts the values of "mainstream" polite society. 

Sadly, the most acceptable (and effective) protest seems to be the suffering and death of the protester.  There's something really awful about the fact that protests like Kaepernick's or the peaceful protests of the Black Lives Matter movement get criticized, but when an innocent person is beaten, abused, or killed then we say: "Wow, okay these concerns are legitimate." George Floyd didn't set out to be a hero; his desire was not to lay down his life to be an inspiration for a movement. Yet that was his lot.  I sometimes wonder if that's the real reason King's protests are the gold standard.  The abuse heaped on kids at the lunch counters, the fire-hoses, the dogs, the bombings, and finally King's death from an assassin's bullet. That got people's attention. We see it, and we say "Oh, no that's wrong.  But if you live and don't even get hurt, we're going to look askance at you."  Do you ever think about how deeply unfair that is?

Dr. King shrewdly understood that this self-sacrificial method would elicit sympathy in a way that nothing else would.  He understood optics, and what it would take to get through white complacency. The soldiers in his army of love would have to be victims, preferably ones beyond reproach (check out why the NAACP  passed over Claudette Colvin in favor of Rosa Parks to be the test case for fighting the segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama). I think he knew it was unfair, but was willing to suffer the short-term unfairness in the service of long term justice.

King may have been right that this is the only form of Acceptable Protest, but I think it's wrong to demand that of today's protesters. I think we ought to be able to be given a listening ear without having to sacrifice our bodies or our lives. The merits of the protest should stand on their own without cost in blood. I maintain that the protests today are both necessary and for the most part, peaceful (see photos below of recent protests attended by friends of mine). 

Protest in Portland, Oregon a few weeks ago attended by my college friend Pat Rodriquez Castillo (pic is from her)

Three of my former students (the two standing having just finished their 8th grade year in May) attending a protest in here in Columbus (photo credit: Tricia Crawford)

*I could not believe it, but just yesterday I saw someone drag out that same tired old argument that the push for equal rights was and still is all a Communist plot. Really?  The Soviet Union's been dead these thirty years and we're still worried about Communism? Talk about dredging the bottom of the objection barrel!

**I urge you to read that Wikipedia link on the Memphis Sanitation Worker's strike. I learned so much I didn't know. This is exactly the kind of protest that people still object to today.  And King was there, and lost his life for it!

Dispatch from Coronaville: The End is in Sight

Well, the end of this blog series anyway. I've just added new panels to my graphs and I've decided that when I conclude this next panel on September 3, 2020, I will end my regular "Dispatch from Coronaville" posts. It doesn't mean that I won't write about this extraordinary moment in world history anymore. It does mean that I won't post graphs and number updates every three days. At that point, coronavirus will officially become normalized on my blog and any posts on the virus will be just part of my normal posting regimen (which--lets be honest--had pretty much ground to a halt in the years leading up to the arrival of COVID-19).

 It would be nice to imagine that the the end of this series will also mark the end of the virus. I admit I kind of thought that by the time we reached the end of my graph, there wouldn't be a need for another panel. I figured the trajectory would be clear, represented by a more or less smooth bell curve.  We'd be entering the tail end of this as we began the summer.  I think that's what our leaders thought too and interestingly, that's how they've been planning the "re-open" as well.  It seems we've collectively decided to ignore the actual trends in favor of the trends we want. 

But there's no steady downward trend.  What we have is, at best, regional spikes and declines averaging out to a national plateau. Today we have had 2,253,172 cases of COVID-19 in the United States, an increase of 3.7% over the past three days. This is only 804 fewer cases than I predicted.  Further evidence of the plateau is that for awhile now my projections have been quite close to the actual outcomes.  The percent of increase has remained quite constant. Likewise my predicted number of total deaths was over by only 342 at 119,515 deaths, a 1.5% increase. Based on these percentages, it seems we're likely to see 2,336,539 total cases by Tuesday, June 23 and 121,308 total deaths.

I thought I might have to add a third vertical panel to my graph due to Florida's manic COVID surge. I did not predict I'd come within one interval of having to add a fourth panel. 11,078 new cases in just three days! Unbelievable. I shudder to think that a fourth vertical panel will be necessary for Florida or any of the other states. This massive jump has moved Florida from it's usual spot at 8th or 9th in the nation to number 7. Ohio continues to trend upward (though it's now in 17th pace nationally after hovering between 15th and 16th place for quite awhile), while Nebraska showed a significant drop in the past three days.

Total Cases

Florida: 93,789 (!!!) total cases, 0.43% of the population

Ohio: 44,262 total cases, 0.38% of the population

Nebraska: 17,591 total cases, 0.90% of the population

Deaths are up in Florida and Ohio over the past three days while they've dropped back to 10 in Nebraska. I would expect to see a big increase in deaths in the coming weeks in Florida as the case spikes bears it's awful fruit.

Total Deaths:

Florida: 3,143, a rate of 3.4%

Ohio: 2,697, a rate of 6.1%

Nebraska: 249,  a rate of 1.4%

Angry: Why I Won't Watch the Videos

I have not watched the George Floyd video.  I did not watch the Ahmaud Arbery shooting or the Rayshard Brooks shooting. Same for Philando Castille.  Everything I know about these incidents I've gathered from reading or looking at the still photos.  And those are bad enough.

Normally, I like to see things for myself.  Let me see the raw footage and draw my own conclusions, rather than the edited clip the media is running with.  But when it comes to these kinds of videos, I just won't do it.  I don't need that trauma in my life. I know what happened. I don't need to see it. In general our culture has historically taken a rather careless attitude toward black and brown bodies at their the most vulnerable. Whether it's a black man in his last moments of life paraded before the world, or the nude bodies of brown people from other cultures plastered across the pages of a magazine (images that would be considered inappropriate if the bodies were white) the message is sent that black people are somehow less worthy or needful of privacy and protection.

That said, it's good that footage is out there. But it's not for black people.  We know our own suffering well enough.  We do not need to see a video loop of bodies that look like ours being desecrated. It's not good for our mental health (something that lynching parties have always known).  But the proof of the evil should be out there. And there are people who should watch these videos, in the hope that the sight will jolt sleepy consciences into an awakened state. When Emmett Till's mother elected for an open casket, she wasn't doing that for her friends and family.  She was doing it so the world would see what they had done to her son.

For those of us whose identities don't allow us the luxury of ever looking away from the destruction of black lives in this country, I think it's okay not to look. For everyone else, a good hard look is necessary.