Obama and the Nobel Prize

I view Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize as a recognition that the power of ideas is equally important if we are going to realize the potential of “activity” or “work” towards peace. Barack Obama is the first American president to embrace the idea that the U.S. is a part of the international community, and not just a force (for good or for bad) within it.

I find the argument that “it is too early” for him to be awarded this honor unconvincing. Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize simply for promoting and starting the idea of a peace movement in Northern Ireland. Their organization began in August 1976 and they were awarded the Nobel in 1977. They were 32 and 33 years old, respectively. The Troubles were still raging even as they received their prizes. But these women were, in my view rightly, awarded this prize for the very idea that there could be peace and that violence was not the answer to the political struggles of Northern Irish Catholics.

There are some who were already skeptical of this president and see this as just another way of “enshrining” him when “he hasn’t done anything”. First, I don’t think many of us knew about his work on nuclear proliferation before this (I know I didn’t know much myself). And it appears that few people know anything about it even now.

But more important, I’m not convinced that receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize does anything to enshrine anyone. Obama is already enshrined as the first black president in the U.S. And consider the fact that Yassar Arafat and Henry Kissinger also were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Public figures will, in the end, be remembered for the totality of their contribution to the betterment (or worsening) of the human condition.

Interesting health facts

Many people seem to have lost their sense of reason this summer. Perhaps it's a side effect of climate change. Or a slow news cycle. Whatever it is, we have people fomenting at the mouths over the proposal to ensure that every resident in the U.S. has access to the health care they need, when they need it. I would hope that whatever conversations can be had around whether and what kind of health reform we are to have in this country, it is based around facts rather than fear and lies.

In response to a recent discussion (well, one person was discussing, the other was ranting), I thought I'd provide some facts about health and health care in the U.S. I randomly chose North Carolina to compare to Massachusetts, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Massachusetts was chosen because we have a mandatory health insurance law and provide support and subsidies not too dissimilar to the controversial "public option." Vermont has a small, rural population and a well-regarded system of integrated health care. Wisconsin has been on the forefront of social health and welfare experimentation for decades, particularly in extending health care benefits to children. Whatever health reform gets passed, it will likely incorporate different elements of the systems found in these states.

Below are comparative rankings derived from Kaiser State Health Facts website. The Kaiser Family Foundation is considered one of the most credible sources of comparative health information.

% non-elderly uninsured (in order of most to least insured):
Massachusetts: 1
Vermont: 36
Wisconsin: 7
North Carolina: 44

% reporting that they could not see a doctor because of cost (in order of highest to lowest access to care)
Massachusetts: 2
Vermont: 15
Wisconsin: 5
North Carolina: 45

% adults who visited a dentist or dental clinic within the past year (in order of highest to lowest dental visits)
Massachusetts: 2
Vermont: 8
Wisconsin: 16
North Carolina: 33

Infant mortality rate (in order of lowest to highest infant mortality rate)
Massachusetts: 2
Vermont: 6
Wisconsin: 19
North Carolina: 44

Stroke and other cerebrovascular disease deaths (in order of lowest to highest):
Massachusetts: 10
Vermont: 12
Wisconsin: 26
North Carolina: 46

Per capita health spending (in order of highest to lowest spending)
Massachusetts: 2
Vermont: 9
Wisconsin: 16
North Carolina: 30



So what have we learned here? The states that make the effort to provide access to health and medical care, as Massachusetts, Vermont, and Wisconsin do, have better outcomes. Indeed, on these randomly chosen measures of access, utilization, and health status, these three states consistently rank in the top 33-50 percentile. North Carolina, on the other hand, has comparatively less access, and also poorer health. This state consistently ranks in the bottom third. Interestingly, Vermont has a relatively low rate of health insurance, and yet still ranks higher than North Carolina on every other measure.

So access to health insurance matters, but it isn't the whole story. The structure of the health care system is equally important. That is a conversation that we have not yet had the opportunity to have.

As the per capita health expenditures shows us, we also see that ensuring good access requires that we spend a little money. As these measures of health status show us, it appears to be good money spent.

"I want my America back"

By now we have all heard and possibly seen the widespread disruption that has been occurring in health care reform forums and town halls across the country. The nuttiness of it all makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. The claims about death panels are so patently ridiculous that you can only wonder how many tin foil hats these folks have in their closets.

We all know by now too that these antics have been carefully and widely promoted by the conservative organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. The "best practices" memo distributed by these organizations gives its supporters the strategies for disrupting the meeting. Participants are supposed to "yell back" and have someone else follow up with a "shout out". I'm not sure how they are supposed to reconcile this with the very next instruction: "Don't carry on and make a scene - just short intermittent shout outs." Yell at people out of turn, but don't make a scene. If the descriptions of these events are any clue, it seems like people are having a hard time doing that.

Nevertheless, this woman, at an town hall meeting with Arkansas Representatives Mike Ross and Vic Snyder, followed this advice to the letter:

"At this point in my life, I have never seen my America turned into what it has turned into, and I want my America back. And I don't think the Representatives and Senators are gonna be able to do it. I'm scared!"
(click here for the video; this woman's comments start at 1:16)

Let us set aside the fact that these boisterous, "spontaneous" expressions of opposition have been carefully orchestrated by well funded astro-turfing organizations. I have no doubt that this woman is sincerely afraid. The question is, what has America turned into that she is so afraid of? An America where everyone has the option of obtaining health care? An America where insurance companies cannot deny necessary care? Or is she afraid of an America that elects black presidents? An America that, as the Daily Show "correspondent" put it, is becoming darker?

When I first saw this particular clip (admittedly on the Daily Show) I could not help but think about the crowds taunting and screaming the Little Rock Nine as they tried to go to high school.

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

It seems to me that fears expressed by this woman in Arkansas (and others) are the same kind that prompted Hazel Bryan Massery (and others) to harass Elizabeth Eckford back in 1957. The kind of bigotry that has haunted Massery since this photo came to symbolize the challenges we faced as a nation in overcoming racism. Her apologies to Eckford later in life, and her apparent life long quest to make amends were, in the end, never totally accepted by anyone. She will likely always be remembered as the person in the picture above.

Hazel Bryan Massery's transformation was possible in large part because she was aware of her racism. Her actions captured in the photo above were clearly intended to maintain a position of racial supremacy. It is this conscious racism that has likely allowed her to rethink her views, change her attitudes, and attempt to make amends (however clumsy and self-serving).

I believe that the fear that the woman in Arkansas expressed at that town hall meeting has nothing to do with health care reform. We know that the misinformation and hysteria seen in the health care forums and town halls is orchestrated by conservative organizations fronting for lobbyists of the health care and pharmaceutical industry. We know that it is fomented by greedy media pundits like Glenn Beck, Britt Hume, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Newt Gingrich, and supported with the forehead slapping stupidity of weekday morning mainstream media TV shows. Unfortunately, the lies peddled by these info-tainment whores obscure the underlying bigotry on which they are based.

The fear expressed by many of these protesters has everything to do with racism and bigotry. Sadly, I doubt the woman in Arkansas is even aware of the racism inherent in her fear.

And he was arrested in his own home

So here's the new hot topic in Boston. A prominent Harvard professor arrested for disorderly conduct. His crime: mouthing off to a police officer. He was having a bad day and he took umbrage at the police officer's line of questioning. He claims that the whole affair was one of racial profiling. The charges were dropped.

Since the story originally broke, but unfortunately before the positions hardened, the story of what happened at 17 Ware Street in Cambridge got a lot more complicated. It is increasingly looks like the entire brouhaha isn't entirely about race, except insofar as Professor Gates' own racial narrative informed his reaction. Indeed, it appears that this is mainly an issue of class, privilege, and who should have shown deference to whom first. It is also likely an issue of a lack of understanding of what police officers do.

With that said, much of the earlier (and some of the continuing) outcry against the Cambridge Police is that he was arrested "in his own home." Go ahead and do a Google search. Tens of thousands of articles, blog postings, and commentary (informed and otherwise) are upset that this man was arrested in his own home. The violation of the sanctity of property is enough to cause the vapors, make one have to find a seat, put the back of one's hand to the head, and swoon.

Let us put aside that this is an inaccurate portrayal of what happened (he was arrested when he continued to berate the police on the porch for all of the world - or at least several other police officers and allegedly 7 witnesses to see). Let us put aside the obvious implication that certain people (famous academic entrepreneur intellectuals, for example) should not be held to the same standards of conduct or common sense as the rest of us.

What strikes me is that the outrage over Gates' arrest "in his own home" is that there is no similar outrage over recent report by the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic, over the exact same thing occurring routinely in the immigrant community. This is Day 7 of the Gates tempest. Lexis Nexis reported 372 stories about it and Google News came up with 10,436. Do a Google News search of the Constitution on Ice report and you'll get exactly 17 unduplicated stories. Lexis Nexis returns a grand total of 11 stories.

This study analyzed several hundred records of arrests that occurred in the course of home raids conducted by ICE. These raids are supposed to have targeted criminals but instead, an earlier study by the Migration Policy Institute found that 73% of the people arrested in these raids have no criminal history.

The Constitution on Ice study reports that ICE officers regularly enter homes without obtaining consent, as they are required to do under our Constitution. The analysis shows that in only 14% of Long Island and 24% of New Jersey arrests was consent to enter given. In addition, the authors claim that some of the consents that the officers claim they were given in the arrest records in the New Jersey sample appear to be fabricated. The report provides over 2 dozen accounts of law enforcement misconduct, including illegally seizing non-targeted individuals, breaking down locked doors, entering through closed windows, or otherwise illegally entering and searching homes, and targeting individuals on the basis of their racial or ethnic appearance or lack of English proficiency.

The report also describes a pervasive cowboy mentality among many ICE agents. As reported in the NYT, ICE agents have conducted home raids in Nassau County "wearing cowboy hats and brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons," endangering the lives of the families subjected to this harrasment, and the larger community.

So, I expect that those who are upset about Gates "unreasonable" arrest "in his own home" will be writing to Janet Napolitano to demand that the home raids conducted by ICE cease until the agency adopts the recommendations in the Constitution on Ice report. Here's the address in case you are interested:

Director Janet Napolitano
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

I do more writing than is obvious here

Now that I've finished the dissertation and have graduated, I can think about writing about other things besides theory, method, and regulatory law. We've decided to take a break from home remodeling after living for almost 3 months in our guest bedroom. I find that my writing has been mostly in response to something else as of late. My most coherent pieces are emails I send to Boston Globe journalists/columnists. So, I've decided to start posting those here.

This is an email I sent today to Derrick Jackson. In his editorial A Welcome Shade of Gray, he writes that Obama has "persuaded Americans to see race in shades of gray." He goes on to discuss how Obama is trying to do the same with the issue of abortion and the American approach to the Middle East.

I am not disputing his overall claim that Obama is attempting to add nuance to our understandings of each other in the hopes that it might lead to more productive rhetoric and action where we do have common ground. My problem is that his thesis sees race relations entirely in terms of black and white. Indeed, the color gray is a shade of black. Or, if you prefer, a mix of black and white. This ignores the fact that "race relations" involves other groups, including Latinos, which I attempted to call to his attention with the following email:

Mr. Jackson,

If you only look at race relations as an issue between African Americans and White Americans, than your claim that race relations in the US are on their way to starting to improve may be accurate.

However, the recent acquittal of three white teenagers in the beating death of a Mexican migrant worker in Shenandoah, PA, the beating death by white teens of an Ecuadorian in Patchogue, Long Island, New York, and scores of socially (as well as legally) sanctioned attacks against Latinos belies your claim that race relations may be on the mend. FBI crime statistics show that between 1995 and 2007, the number of anti-black hate crime incidents and victims have been declining (by 11% and 13% respectively), the number of anti-Latino hate crimes incidents and victims have been increasing (by 15% and 19%). And these are only the reported crimes. We both know that many immigrant Latinos do not often go to the police when they have been victimized. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently published a report showing that low income Latinos living in the South are "routinely targeted" for abuse and discrimination.

Please remember that race relations is not simply a matter of shades of gray. There are also shades of brown too.

Personally, I am happy to see anti-Black hate crimes on the wane (although we're still waiting for the 2008 FBI report on Hate Crimes). However, if we continue to see race only in terms of black and white, when Latinos and Asians are the fastest growing non-white groups in the country and are increasingly targeted for racial animosity, we will only have taken one step forward and 2 steps back.

Reality check

I've spent the better part of the past year focused on writing a dissertation and buying a house. I cannot recommend doing these two things at the same time. It means that my capacity for thoughts, large and small, became narrowed to two domains: qualitative research method of regulatory activities and real estate law. I couldn't handle anything outside of this, which is a long way of explaining why my last blog entry was June of 2008.

And it seems that I am always inspired by someone writing about Obama and the election. I've been thinking about the election of Obama alot lately, at least when I am not thinking about my research or how to find the right contractor.

I am excited about the election of Barack Obama. I was excited to see the pictures my friend in Wilmington, DE posted of his stop there yesterday. I will probably watch the inauguration, which I have not done since Clinton was first elected.

At the same time, I am skeptical that Obama is going to meet the expectations that so many seem to have of him. He is not the liberal that my more liberal colleagues see and desire. Neither is he the liberal that so many of my mother's right-wing friends fear. And if you look at who he has picked for his team, all I see is caution.

Granted, Obama is inheriting problems that we have not seen in two generations. A severe economic recession (if we are lucky), two wars, and a quickly changing world. These challenges alone make the kinds of structural changes that progressives like myself would like to see difficult to come by. More importantly, as much as I believe that Obama will be a good president, looking at his history and his choices, I just don't see him heralding in the next Pax Americana.

Obama's election has great symbolic value. As one woman in the Boston Globe Magazine wrote today, his election may pave the way for non-white Americans to see embrace both their ethnic identity and their American identity, a privilege previously held only by the Irish, Italians, some Jews, and perhaps Poles.

At the same time, there are material changes that we would like to see happen and want to believe that Obama will bring. Equitable access to health, improved school systems, wider and equitable access to college, a refocus on public transportation and away from highway building, stronger environmental protection laws, stronger civil rights laws, a more equitable tax system, etc. A tall order indeed.

Maybe it's because I don't want to be disappointed. More likely its because I know the structure of government and know that Obama will have split Senate governed by timid Democrats, few of whom can be said to really be innovative, much less progressive, thinkers. I will maintain hope but I'm not holding my breath.

Michelle Obama

I haven't written in a while. I've been focused on my dissertation, as I promised my husband. The opportunity costs are mounting and I need to get this done.

But I couldn't let this one slip by.

I read an article today about Michelle Obama in the NYT. Overall, I think it was about as honest and positive portrayal of Ms. Obama as we can expect. Newspapers these days do not do a very good job of talking about smart people who have complicated views of the world. It is all that much harder when they are generally good and nice people. Regardless, there are two things in the article that bothered me.

First, this quote from Senator Claire McCaskill:

All she has to do is be likable

Apparently, she doesn't have to be smart. Or tough. She doesn't need to have her own mind, her own story, or her own opinion. She just needs to not offend anyone. Lest we have another uppity woman in the White House -- and a black one at that! To hear this coming from a woman senator is as heartbreaking as it is disgusting. I can only hope that the quote was taken out of context.

But the more difficult issue that I think the article highlights is the tension between trying to move towards a "post-racial" America and the reality that while many things have changed, many things remain the same.

I admire Obama's position that we need to move beyond the past, as he famously stated in that speech in Philly earlier this year. I also believe that it is naive. You cannot move beyond racism and bigotry without confronting it. Michelle Obama's story, as told in this NYT article, demonstrates the continuing need to point out the elephant in the room. If someone didn't do that, there might have been vaccine experiments in Chicago that focused exclusively on black teenage girls. Apparently no one saw the parallel to Tuskegee. Hmm, I wonder why?

The Democratic primary race clearly showed that this country still has issues with race. We all know that the rumors implying that Obama was Muslim and many of the other race-baiting comments (like implying that he might have been a drug dealer) came from the Clinton campaign. Let us not forget the "hard working Americans, white Americans" slip up. I really do not believe that Hillary Clinton is racist. She may feel entitled but I do not for a second believe it is because she believes that, because she is white, she deserved the nomination more than Obama. But once you starting going down that road, it is a slippery slope.

The more recent attacks on Ms. Obama also point to a country that has yet to move beyond race. Why else would there be the effort to portray her as an "Angry Black Woman"? Apparently for some people, there's something offensive about angry black women. Not quite sure why angry white women are less offensive, unless you believe that if a white woman is angry there must be a good reason. Why should a highly educated, wealthy black woman be angry? It must be because she resents white people and wants to oppress all white people and take their jobs. There goes that slippery slope again.

I agree with Senator Obama that white working class anger is real. But we cannot ignore that this country's largest social failings fall disproportionately on non-whites. We also cannot ignore the reality that the biggest obstacle to helping poor and working class whites is the objection that many people, especially those in leadership positions, have to providing any assistance to non-whites. Remember what many Southern states did when it was forced to integrate their schools? They shut them down. They did this despite the fact that it would hurt poor white children as much as it would black children. Welfare reform under Reagan was made using images of the "welfare queen," a black woman with a full closet, jewelry box, and a Cadillac paid for through her several children. Did cutting back on AFDC under Reagan, and further under Clinton, hurt white folks? Sure did. But it was intended to hurt non-whites. Until angry, working class whites understand this, this country will never be able to move beyond the past.

As Michelle Obama's story shows, we cannot get over the past until we start talking about it. As she put it:

Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.

That might require being a little less likable. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for easy campaigning. And isn't this what this campaign is about - change?