Should they have walked off?

When I was a kid watching old movies with my parents, we'd see Chinese store signs written with slash-style calligraphy that was not Chinese, just bogus characters swinging on shingles in a movie set. Chinese dialogue was usually a series of frantic percussive sounds ("Wok tok dong!"), or hifalutin English without contractions ("Thank you, kind sir, my father will not be having tea").

It's not that a phrase like "Long Duck Dong" isn't funny, but that its staying power in our culture perpetuates foolish ideas. For decades Asian men were portrayed as Machiavellian evil-doers or over-eager buffoons until replaced by Millennial stereotypes like the bumbling hipster and malcontent sub-genius ("Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle," or Bruce in "Get Smart").

Hollywood has usually strived for an appearance of assumed authenticity while seldom banking on its reality. Think about WWII movies where Nazis speak in bullying, guttural German while their Jewish victims talk in a Britishy sort of accent, even though both parties are probably German nationals. (And most Southerners know that a Hollywood Southern accent just stinks). Think about historical dramas and biopics where  two people were made into a single character, or pivotal moments were erased, all for the sake of advancing the plot. It's Hollywood. It's movies and TV. It's utter fantasy.

The problem is, some of us come to accept it as reality.

Our presumptions of correctness
When those Native American extras walked off Adam Sandler's latest movie set, for every American who supported the move, there was likely also one who thought, "Oh for Pete's sake, it's a comedy, lighten up and get over it. Now we've all got to watch what we say!"

But here's why it's a disservice to our country to just "get over it": TV shows and movies have a powerful influence on us, if only because we grant them more power than the books and articles we read (or don't read), the ideas we uphold, or the probing we don't do to learn about other cultures. Our kids watch too, and we may not express skepticism ("Remember it's just a movie") so we won't ruin the fun and fantasy. Movie catchphrases linger ("Make my day!") and movie "realities" often become the culturally entrenched single narrative we glom onto as "factual evidence" about how others groups and ethnicities exist in the world, never mind that they're only partial realities or flat-out errors.

And yes, we do have to watch what we say, because if we're going to confine our cross-cultural learning to sources like TV and movies, celebrity magazines, and anecdotal evidence versus firsthand experience, then there's a higher risk of offending a customer or even causing someone devastating injury (such as when suspicious Alabama police tackled that grandfather visiting from India, and put him into the hospital).

Thanks to 9/11, some of us continue to make erroneous judgments based in fear, not information, believing that most law-abiding Muslims are active jihadists while ignoring the "boondock jihadists" within our own heartland, in the form of neo-Nazi and white supremacy paramilitias.

To believe other cultures should just "get over it" is a denial of American values.

Should those native American extras have walked off? Absolutely. Comedy notwithstanding, by doing so they said, "My heritage means a lot more than what you're paying me each day to bear witness to this crap."

In my encounters with people of other cultures, I've learned there is always an exception to the single-narrative belief we might hold of that person's group or heritage. The best way to learn? Take that other person as an individual, and ask questions with care and civility. The payoff is that you might be taken as an individual as well, in a position to dispel any mistaken notions they might have of Americans.

"That woman"

Clara Harris Rathbone

This isn't marketing, but I do love a good backstory. 

The lives of three women were slowly but irrevocably being changed in the days leading up to Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865. 

Julia Grant, wife of Ulysses, had developed an active dislike for Mary Todd Lincoln through the years of the Civil War. Always a controversial and volatile personality, Mrs. Lincoln believed Mrs. Grant had shown her up one night when their husbands were discussing what should be done to Jefferson Davis if captured, and in a rather catty maneuver Mrs. Lincoln said, "Let Mrs. Grant answer this important question." The sarcasm was not lost on Mrs. Grant, who smoothly replied that any such decision should be left up to the wisdom and prudence of the President. Her witty response drew laughter and approval from the men, but Mary Todd Lincoln hated any woman who—real or perceived—played up to her husband. She snubbed Mrs. Grant whenever possible, to the point where Mrs. Grant said she would never again pass another evening with "that woman." No surprise, when the Grants were invited to join the Lincolns at Ford's Theater, they took a pass. (The breach was so acrimonious that Mrs. Lincoln snubbed Julia Grant's condolences even after the assassination).

Clara Harris (pictured) was a young socialite, daughter of judge and senator Ira Harris, who'd become friends with Mrs. Lincoln. As Washington celebrated the end of war, she stood by a window with the First Lady watching the fireworks, noting the President was resting on a sofa, exhausted but quietly elated that the war was finally ended. The Lincolns felt an affection for Clara and her fiance, Henry Rathbone. At the last minute Clara and Henry were invited to Ford's with the Lincolns, and she wore a special white satin dress for the occasion. (It would later be tied to many ghost stories about Lincoln's death). 

Mary Surratt ran a modest boarding house on H Street. Her son John was a Confederate spy and courier who became Booth's righthand man, and invited the conspirators to his mother's boarding house, later described by President Johnson as the "nest" that nurtured the assassins. It's unlikely Mrs. Surratt was committed to Lincoln's death; she'd been struggling to overcome debt ever since the death of her husband, and what living she could eke out from taking lodgers was still not enough.

On April 11, Lincoln delivered an impromptu speech from the White House and John Wilkes Booth stood in the crowd, seething with rage as he heard the President's words, especially when advocating voting rights for newly freed African Americans. "That's the last speech he'll ever make," Booth declared. From that point on, earlier plans to kidnap Lincoln turned to assassination, and when Booth went to collect his mail at Ford's the morning of April 14, he learned the President and First Lady would be attending the evening's performance.

The meanings behind the words

Deah Shaddy Barakat, his 21-year-old wife Yusor Mohammad, and her 19-year-old sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were shot to death Tuesday near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. Craig Stephen Hicks, their 46-year-old neighbor, has been arrested and charged with murder. His wife and defense attorney claim it was over a parking dispute.

Last September Sen. Bennett (R–OK) referred to American Muslims as "a cancer that needs cutting out." Aside from the staggering ignorance of his comments, I wanted to get at the original meaning behind words that become stigmatized over time with popular use.

• Followed by one-fifth of humanity, ISLAM is the second largest religion in the world, mostly in the Middle East but scattered over the globe. It means "submission to God," so a Muslim is one who strives for submission to God. The Quran instructs Muslims to read three other holy books, one being the Injeel (the gospel of Christ). Among Islamic tenets is the importance of valuing life—thus, burning a man alive is not acceptable (although both Muslims and Christians have done so throughout their long histories).

• I'm sorry to have ever used the word "jihadist," because the truth is that JIHAD means "struggle," not merely "Let's wage Holy War against Christians," so in the original sense, it could be a personal spiritual struggle within one's own religion. It's only in recent years that jihad has come to signify the violence we've known. Muslims refer to violent groups like ISIS and al Qaeda with delegitimizing terms such as "deviant." No argument with that, and I'm going to start using that word because it aligns with the behavior.

• A BIAS is an inflexible positive or negative prejudgment about the nature, character, and abilities of an individual; and is based on a generalized idea about the group to which the person belongs. It's not just about race: a white judge may be biased against a white defendant bc he's gay, or has tattoos, or comes from a certain socioeconomic class.

• RACISM is bias based on race, the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. Scientists have found that only 2% of genetic code account for actual differences between races.

• PREJUDICE is pre-judgment—e.g. deciding on a person’s qualities, characteristics and value on the basis of an arbitrary descriptor such as race or socio-economic class (or both), before knowing the facts.

• DISCRIMINATION refers to the recognition of differences among people and making choices based upon those qualities, real or perceived. In that sense, even a positive stereotype is discriminatory.

In general, these last four terms are characterized by common denominators: they are subjective, and they are unusually resistant to change, or the influence of rational explanation (new info). And, as "leaders" like Sen. Bennett demonstrate, they can become talking points for cultivating fear and intolerance.

Send a thank-you note to Romania for keeping us out of last place

Last week the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) released a report on child poverty in America. Done in partnership with the Urban Institute, it presents some troubling stats but also nine strategies for reducing child poverty by 60%.

First, the bad news: 

• It's not just that over 21 million American children live in poverty, but that this nation ranks 34th out of 35 industrialized nations in how well it addresses the problem. (Last place goes to Romania, which has an economy 99 times smaller than ours). Think about it: a nation with the world's largest economy fell next to last in civic response to children living in abject poverty.

• Every year that we keep children in poverty costs this nation $500 billion. If you look upon them as individuals, it may be easier to understand the long-range problems emerging from the toxic stress of a childhood spent in poverty: fewer cognitive skills, impaired brain function, less productive adult years, aggravated health outcomes, criminal behaviors, and "dynasties" of poverty through future generations.

But here's what we can do:

• Download the CDF report. It's a cogent and detailed piece of nonpartisan reporting.

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html

Get the details on the nine proposed strategies. Spread the word. Make it a part of your volunteer efforts, church ministry, or philanthropic planning. For example, advocating an increase of your state's minimum wage to $10.10/hour would help.

• Educate your policymakers on the proposed changes and policy improvements, and their consequences. Remember that humanity lives on both sides of a defined poverty line*: such changes would not only benefit kids living under the poverty line but also children in jeopardy just above it.

• Don't let anyone tell you this country cannot afford to end child poverty. CDF's policy recommendations would cost $77 billion, just 2% of our national budget. For further perspective, consider that Americans represent only 5% of the world population, but 37% in military spending, yet in 2013, more than 45% American children lived in homes where there wasn't enough to eat.

The bottom line: Whether or not you have children, no American citizen should remain a bystander to what is a national moral disgrace.

* The poverty line is defined as $23,834 for a family of four.

Why Everyday Nigerians Ought to Matter to Everyday Americans

While the world wept and marched with France over the shocking attack on Charlie Hebdo, the Boko Haram (BH) insurgency massacred 2,000 elderly, women, and children in northeast Nigeria. What's more, the world barely noticed. With Nigeria's elections set for February and given the BH's aspirations for statehood, cold-blooded massacre may just be the BH's way of hitting the campaign trail. But why should Americans care about what transpires in the villages of Nigeria? After all, we have our own troubles.

Here are the top three reasons why Nigeria matters to us.

Textile vendors in Lagos, Nigeria

Reason 3:  We have history together. A longtime ally of the U. S., Nigeria is regarded as our proxy on the African continent. We can't afford to let Nigeria destabilize any further into an ongoing humanitarian nightmare of atrocities, which also spell thwarted economic initiatives and disrupted educational opportunities. Current Nigeria is an economic and humanitarian paradox — it lives in fragments of tribal and ethnic tensions, yet also amazing human resilience. Despite its advantages (see below), most of its people live below the poverty line, rendering them — especially women and children — especially vulnerable to groups like the BH.

Reason 2:  We can do a huge amount of lucrative business together. Porsche, Intercontinental Hotels, MAC Cosmetics, and L'Oreal are just some of the corporations currently working in Nigeria. Home to Africa's biggest population, the largest economy on the continent ($510 billion GDP), the nation is rich in resources, not the least of which is an extremely industrious and entrepeneurial population with an emerging middle class. It's also been predicted that Nigerian millionaires will increase 47% by 2018, and Goldman Sachs has put Nigeria on its "Next 11" list of nations that will be off-the-charts moneymakers in the 21st century. Nigeria's success can also serve as a model for other weak African nations, which brings me to . . . 

The Number 1 Reason:  We both need a stable Nigeria in order to fight a more effective war against terrorism. In Nigeria, terrorism and its humanitarian outrages are inextricably entwined. Look at the region: Nigeria lies in and below the Sahel, a semi-desert stretch below the Sahara that's become a "terrorist corridor" where militias and jihadist groups (emerging from more tenuous nations) are trading huge amounts of weapons and supplies with each other. Close by, Libya has become a convenient arms depot and shelter for militants, and France is again fighting Islamists in Mali. Continued weakness in that region means incubation of yet more "boondock jihadists."

The savage power of the BH must be nullified as quickly as possible, and its leaders brought to justice. This is not only because it's the right thing to do — the humanitarian thing to do — but because if and when the BH attains even an illegitimate statehood, they'll be harder to stop — their atrocities against the vulnerable and defenseless will only grow with impunity, and reach a point where these aren't just committed against Nigerians. They will also become a hub for providing materials, training, and moral supports to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, even Europe.

Getting your high school student ready for college

I went through this process as a single parent and it's not easy, but here are some ideas that helped us. Hopefully they'll help you as well.

Check out The Colleges That Change Lives consortium.  There are about 40 participating colleges, and the concept grew out of education columnist Loren Pope's bestseller about what these schools offer — a focused commitment to the student; smaller class sizes; programming and support for out-of-classroom experiences; an academic and communal experience that transforms the student in positive ways. Their tuition ranges vary as well. Just because they're not part of the Ivy League brand does not make them inferior by any means. My own child attended one of the CTCL schools; it lived up to its promises. (Contact me if you want details).

When you attend college fairs or make campus visits, prompt your child to get to know faculty/staff key to the admissions process, not just pick up brochures. Have your student dress for the occasion as he would for a job interview; you wouldn't believe how many kids show up for college fairs dressed for a day at the beach (in shorts and flipflops). When particular colleges capture his interest, have your child exchange business cards with those key individuals, and send a follow-up note that thanks the faculty/staff member for their time, and includes more pointed questions. As with sales touchpoints, this helps to build the relationship. And trust this: very few teenagers take this approach, so if your child does this, he'll stand out. And he should ask questions, because it's four years of his life that he'll be investing with them, not just the other way around.

You can create a card for your child (see illustration) that profiles him as a candidate. Leave the GPA blank so he can handwrite the latest as he gets deeper into the process. Include AP classes, SAT scores, unique capabilities, anything you want flagged for attention. Again, very few teens do this, so he'll stand out.

You'll be able to sense when a school has a smart enrollment management strategy. For starters, it'll be more than "bodies in/bodies out." A ho-hum, lackluster admissions representative is a poor showing. The admissions counselor of my daughter's college was enthused, engaging, and extremely proactive about recruiting her. They traded emails that addressed her questions about life at the college. Another incentive: if she applied by October of her senior year, they'd waive the application fee. When each college charges fifty to a hundred bucks in application fees, this is a big help, especially if your child applies to more than three or four colleges. 

You might also check out the FAFSA website (www.fafsa.gov). That's the Federal financial aid resource. In January of your child's senior year in high school, you'll want to fill out an application. It's allocated on a first-come-first-served basis: the sooner you do this in the year, the better your options (ie, January versus July). Do it every year your kid's in college. Do not worry that the info you give them may be subject to change. The financial aid offices of the college will fine-tune as your child's circumstances become more imminent. 

Being a transfer student might ease the process. We didn't do this but a lot of families have their kids attend the first two years of college in a local school close to home, to benefit from in-state cost breaks. This also helps the child adjust gradually to living away from home, and affords the family a couple more years to save for tuition. Then they have their child transfer to the college of their choice, because sometimes it's easier to get in as a transfer. This isn't always a desirable solution, but a solid alternative.

Have your child create a web site or social media presence showcasing special talents or interests. For example, is your child eager to study creative writing? Every writer in the world is urged to create a platform, and this will show she's savvy about social media, professional about her passion, and knows how to communicate her ideas to a larger audience. She can also start a Facebook page for the same purpose. With every new blog post on her web site, she can also post it to her Facebook page, Tweet it, even load it with images onto Pinterest. It doesn't have to be perfect: just make it exist with a professional tone. She can then encourage admissions folks to visit those sites.

About social media.... After he applies, the colleges will likely have a work-study student check out his social media. This is a great opportunity: have your child synch up his social media identity to be consistent with how he wants colleges to perceive him. You wouldn't believe how many kids apply and say, "I'm a passionate student of international relations and read The Economist weekly," but their Facebook pages are riddled with behaviors like "F**k you, man, I'm going to blow it out my *** this weekend!! KEGGER!!!" True story. Don't let a deal-killer come from temporary lapses in judgment.

Putting together the next college class is intentionally creating a new community, not just about grades but about who each freshman is as an individual. Sorry to be longwinded, but this can be a daunting process and I wanted to "pay it forward." If I could get through this, then you can too.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: The Role of 9/11

A photo montage with a portrait of each 9/11 victim

I lost no one on 9/11/01, but every year I try to read about some of the victims — who they were, where they were in their lives, who they left behind. There was the firefighter with the older-model Wagoneer that was constantly breaking down. The EMT who should've had a day off, but turned on his heel to run back into the first smoking tower. The bright-eyed middle-schooler on her first flight to another city. 9/11 gave us a new "Spoon River" anthology of lives, cruelly interrupted .

My father was in New York City that day with a Chinese film crew, and I had three or four friends traveling in commercial jetliners like the one that cartwheeled and vaporized over a Pennsylvania farm field. My family and I tried all day to reach Dad, were finally relieved to learn he was unharmed. My loved ones were inconvenienced by 9/11, and their safe return enables me to feel a level of empathy for those who did lose loved ones that day. For several hours, that possibility had been ours. 9/11 refreshed a public component in our sense of empathy: caring for the plight of strangers is not a bizarre thing to do.

Empathy being a vital part of public grief

There are diverse attitudes about 9/11, one being that only New Yorkers have any right to mourn it, since the attack epicenter was in their neck of the woods (hello! Pentagon on line one). Another deplored our day of "grief porn," that a nationwide mourning of 9/11 is somehow maudlin and self-indulgent.

Neither works. Far more than American lives were lost that day, and far more than American lives were in jeopardy during the hours of uncertainty that followed. More than 90 countries lost people in the attacks. 9/11 was a global event that happened on American soil.

Our nation, among these 90 others, experienced butchery on a massive scale, and for a while we engaged in an unprecedented sense of community and compassion. Then it devolved to polarized discourse, fingerpointing, spitefulness, and all levels of social, political, and emotional violence. The same Congressional chamber that saw Americans rising to their feet to applaud the widows of Flight 93's "Let's Roll" heroes also saw, years later, Congressman Joe Wilson screaming "You lie!" to a newly elected POTUS. 

Today incivility characterizes our most ordinary dealings with one another, from Little League ballfields and mall parking lots, to workplaces and groceries. 

And yet when we applauded the Flight 93 widows, nobody stopped to ask if their dead husbands had been liberals or conservatives.

The role of public grief

So ... back to the role and value of public grief (that it's public only means it's widespread, not histrionic) —

Grief enables the living to try and understand (if not accept) the breadth and depth of their bereavement. It helps us to reflect on those lost, and what they mean to us. It gives us an opportunity to honor memories, whether one does that by laughing over anecdotes, burning incense in a place of worship, making a pencil rubbing off an engraved memorial, or buying a tacky souvenir from the 9/11 museum shop.

The more abrupt and violent the loss, the more unpredictable the grieving process. To those who have lost a great deal in the cruelest manner, a day of public grief gives the rest of us a chance to stand with them, to offer care and support, even if they are strangers. That's being humane, not "pornographic."

Self-ordained for what?

As a culture, this nation has gotten good at self-ordination based on sentiment versus fact. We're skilled at identifying how we're entitled. Some of it's been to the positive, and some has been gasbag punditry and blatant hatemongering. 

Over a decade later, despite the violence that was done to us on 9/11, we've become a more violent nation. And we've yet to find the common ground we share with other nations much less among ourselves: currently we're more invested in being morally triumphant than in finding unprecedented solutions. And we'll get no closer to finding common ground by telling others their most heartfelt emotions — such as grief — have no place in public discourse (Sandy Hook parents). 

Lively debate is one thing, but to believe you can make someone else change their moral vision is a presumption of correctness that's wrong for the times in which we live. Don't forget, it was moral intractability that drove the terrorists to act as they did.


So what?

9/11, as it turns out, didn't bring us closer to agree but to disagree. Its consequence was — and remains — our greatest opportunity, because in disagreement we find new ideas, even fresh collaborations. The same convictions that got us here won't be the thinking we need to get us out — and over — to better solutions. 9/11 awakened those who'd been spiritually dormant, and galvanized those already engaged in social justice and geopolitical accords.

Twilight's last gleaming? If we can't do compassion, can we at least try civility?