A quick reaction to Newtown

As somebody trained in sociology of mental health, people might be surprised that I'm NOT on the "it's all about mental health" bandwagon in the wake of the Newtown shooting. WHY? Because severe mental illness occurs at similar rates across cultures. But gun ownership and access to guns do not. And there is a nearly linear relationship between ease of gun access (more guns available) and gun deaths. 

So, let's keep the focus where it belongs: on GUN CONTROL rather than on the shooter's alleged mental health status. 

Of course most of these mass murderers have a history of mental health issues. No surprise there. But to focus on that truly distracts from where the problem lies. We need strict gun regulation, and there ARE a number of reasonable steps we could take that would result in, using Obama's words, "meaningful action."

I care deeply about access to mental health treatment, about early and effective treatment, and I have compassion for all those who suffer.  But to make Newtown a story about mental health is a dangerous distraction from the all-too-often-neglected issue of gun regulation and America's odd fascination with both killing machines and its bizarre attachment to a Constitutional amendment whose composers surely never anticipated people having access to the weapons available today.

I wish there were something helpful to say to the victims' families.  Their pain haunts me.  And my heart goes out to them. 

I promise to build on this post later, and supply you with needed data.  I just wanted to say what is on my mind now, because I've been so horrified by what happened yesterday in Newtown and have been equally horrified by some of the responses I've been reading in articles and in social media.  

Our hearts belong with the victims and their families; our energies should be devoted to getting guns off streets and getting all types of semi-automatic, war-grade weapons out of all civilians' hands.  Nobody, short of soldiers *on duty* or police officers *on duty*, needs access to the types of weapons used yesterday in Newtown. 

Lara Logan’s Talk at PSU: Not the Chicago Talk (Or, “Never Attend a Talk with a Preconceived Idea of What You’re Going to Hear”)

Author’s note:  I KNOW this is a long piece, particularly for a blog.  It’s my blog.  I decided to break the “rules.”  I look forward to your comments.
AN 10/20/12:  After seeing pics on the PSU Facebook page, I changed the oh-so-important description of what she was wearing.  Turns out, what looked blue in the Lincoln Auditorium's dim lights was actually black.  I *did* label that paragraph "God Is In The Details"!

Preamble

A few months ago, I received a surprising - and very short - email from a friend in Portugal.  “I’m so jealous!,” it said.  And then there was a link.  I clicked on the link and discovered that Lara Logan would be giving a talk in Portland, a mere two hours from where I live.  My friend, like me, a longtime “fan” of Lara’s, wouldn’t be able to go, but *I* would.

I got in touch with a few (more local!) friends who have journalism backgrounds, asking if they’d like to go to the talk with me.  One already had plans, but the other jumped at the chance.

So, to cut to the chase here, I went to Lara Logan’s talk at Portland State University this past Friday with an old, dear friend who got her journalism degree from Northwestern University in Chicago.  She jokes that in her next life, “it’s 60 Minutes for sure.” 

The talk was held in a 100-year-old, very ornate building, though the auditorium itself was very simple.  The first 10 rows or so were reserved for people who had forked over the big bucks to attend the reception beforehand.  My friend and I managed to score two seats in the first available row behind the reserved section.  

 ********

The Initial Reaction

When the talk itself ended, however, we both looked at each other.  “What did you think,” I cautiously asked.  Maybe I’d missed something.  Like something BIG.  My friend, a generous soul not prone to criticism, hesitated, “Um, not what I expected,” she replied.  I asked if she wanted to go out and discuss it – kind of debrief about the array of fascinating stories we’d heard and what we had *thought* we were going to hear.  My friend wanted to go out and talk over a beer, but couldn’t, as she had to be at work at 6:30 the next morning.

So, I went to bed that night trying to sort out why I felt let down.  And I’m glad I didn’t blog about the talk right away, because thinking about it for 48 hours (and emailing my friend in Portugal with the “detailed, blow-by-blow” account she’d requested) gave me a chance to realize some things about expectations and about the talk itself, things that I surely wouldn’t have realized had I blogged what I was feeling at 9 p.m. Friday night.

What I was feeling that night at 9 p.m. was “Really?  Thirty-five dollars and a two hundred mile round trip and THAT was what I got?” 

But, happily, I don’t feel quite like that now.  

There is an important difference between simple *expectations not met* and *really bad talk.*  It wasn’t what I had expected, but it wasn’t a bad talk. 

What the Talk WAS

It was totally distinctive from any other talk I’ve ever been to at a university or college (and as an academic, I’ve been to my fair share!).  I’m going to be bold (and conceited?) enough to say that a mini-introduction about the talk’s main message and how she planned to deliver it would have gone a long way toward making the talk itself easier to follow.  It was not introduced with any kind of main idea; it was a meandering stream-of-thought talk and I literally have spent two DAYS typing emails about it to my Portuguese friend in order to figure out what was the message. 

There were, to be fair, several messages.  Really care about what you do.  Don’t expect others to achieve your success.  And “this is the way we seasoned journalists get it done.” 

But it was nothing at all like the barnburner of a talk she gave in Chicago 10 days prior, and which has received an ungodly number of retweets (primarily by folks on the right, who feel – perhaps correctly – that Lara has given them the narrative they were looking for to claim Obama is lying to Americans and sucks at foreign policy).  Never mind that she said in that speech that she did not care who was in office, or that she emphasized that MANY actors in Washington were giving this false narrative (CIA, think tanks, military, AND the administration). 

Watch the WHOLE speech from Chicago.

Never mind that the right has always claimed to be the “defense party” and that this tired old trope gets dragged out every election cycle.  Never mind that ANY sitting president with a war on his hands gets raked over the coals by the other side for the decisions he makes.  Never mind that there is little evidence that the other side would necessarily handle this messy situation much differently.

Lara’s talk in Chicago, whether she meant it to or not, gave the right the kind of fodder they salivate for. 

Folks glommed onto her Chicago talk and ran with it and (in my humble opinion) the media on the “left” has TOTALLY dropped the ball in responding to her speech. 

Are they scared to admit she might be right (because that is an inconvenient fact during this time in an election year)?  Or, if they think she’s wrong, are they scared to argue with her because of some kind of deference for a colleague who has been through hell? 

I suspect there may be some of both processes going on, and, in my opinion, the “left” media’s unwillingness to address the fallout from her speech furthers the right’s common refrain that the MSM is biased. 

Good god, people, don’t give them that!

But I digress...back to the speech Friday night.

What I Had Expected

I’d expected that she’d address the fallout from the Chicago speech – and that she’d do so explicitly.  She’s known for being blunt, honest, forthright, so I expected she’d address head-on what had just occurred.

I think that in fact she did refer to the Chicago speech several times, but BOY you had to be paying CLOSE attention and you had to have followed the prior 10 days obsessively to know that that was what she was doing.  She never once made an explicit reference to the Chicago speech (except in the Q and A, to my question) or to her main claim in that speech that the US has defeated neither the Taliban or Al Qaeda and that that story coming out of Washington is really nothing more than the (expectable, in my opinion) justification for deciding to get out of an unpopular and (in my opinion) largely unsuccessful war.

*******

So, What Was the Talk About?

First, she received a standing ovation BEFORE the talk.  I don't ever remember seeing somebody get one of those just for, literally, walking out on stage.  (The guy who had just introduced her had just read the promotional material from her agency;  I recognized it immediately, as I've read it before. There was also a short video about her, which can also be seen online.)  

God Is In The Details

For those who want to know the trivial stuff:  She was wearing a color-blocked dress with short sleeves -- the bust part of it was black, the mid-section was white and the skirt part was grey and black.  She had on very high heels.  AND SHE HAS GREAT LEGS.  Holy smokes.  And she really is every bit as pretty in person as she is on TV.  She just IS.

“Portland Polite”

She immediately said that she'd heard that Portland is very polite, something called "Portland polite" and that she just expected we'd nod our heads and smile.  My friend and I (and many others) laughed, though I knew, from growing up there, that that was essentially true. (This becomes relevant later...keep "Portland polite" in mind.)

How to Take Notes When You Don’t Have Paper

She started talking about how she got into the field, and talked about "initiative" and about writing her first story (which was picked up by all presses in South Africa) on the back of a cigarette box.  (She hadn't expected to be writing a story, and was asked to do so.)  Privately, I was laughing to myself, because the notepad that I ALWAYS HAVE WITH ME wasn't in my purse, so I was writing notes for the email I was going to send to my friend on the back of a letter and on the ticket envelope I found in the bottom of said purse.  

Those notes, such as they are, are the skeleton for any details in this blog.

That, and my memory, which we all know is a dangerous thing to rely on.  (Not mine specifically, but everyone’s memories in general…)  But it’s what I’ve got.

First Message

She emphasized that she got to where she is because she "never expected anyone to do it for me."  She also said that she had been delighted when "shit hit the fan" in South Africa, because that was exciting for a journalist.  She talked about riding with fighters in South Africa /Botswana, about having a knife pulled on her in the airport, about understanding that when people believe they're fighting for everything and they’re exhausted, they behave badly (I’m paraphrasing here, but that was the gist).  She related this to what she now sees in Israel.

This was one of the many places in the talk where the connection between one thought and the subsequent one wasn’t all that clear. I can imagine how she’s connecting fighters in apartheid South Africa with people in Israel, BUT…she definitely didn’t spell it out.

A Little Afrikaans

She inserted some Afrikaans into her lecture.  I loved hearing her speak it, and she did translate it -- something about somebody handing her something and telling her she was pretty -- but at this point she was talking so quickly and jumping from anecdote to anecdote so fast that I had a hard time following this as a linear train of thought.  

The Overall Message, With References to Looks

She was really, throughout her talk, talking about training -- getting training by doing the job.  

She mentioned hearing more than once that "they hired you because you're so pretty."  My friend and I had the same reaction to this -- why was she even bringing it up?  She seemed to be wanting to say that she earned her place through her work, not her looks, but I don't think anybody in the room thought otherwise, so it was kind of weird to have this inserted in the talk (and without references to the specific people who have made these claims, which *I* know of -- at least some of them -- but which others might not have known).  

It was at this point in the talk that I started thinking about who her audience was, and for what type of audience this talk was likely first conceived. 

This was an alumni audience.  LOTS of grey hair.  Some students, to be sure, but they were most definitely not the majority.  So, for this relatively “mature” audience, the array of stories of how she did her job was probably less relevant than they would have been had the audience been made up of journalism students.  

More Stories

She talked about getting arrested by the French police, when she was working for GMTV. I know I've read about this story before, so I didn't write it down.  She also mentioned that she'd been playing hooky from work the day that 9/11 happened and kept calling GMTV to ask "Are you sure you don't need me to come in?"  

Throughout the talk, there were lots of little interesting stories like this, but with absolutely no analysis or any clear connection, really, between them.  She talked about entering Kabul, in a place where women had not been seen in public for 8 years.  She briefly mentioned the current talk of "gentler Taliban" and said that this is "hard to believe."  

This was one of the few places in her talk that I thought she was probably obliquely referring to her Chicago speech.

She said she doesn't compare Iraq to Afghanistan.  I didn't understand where she was going with this point....She hated that CBS pulled her out of Baghdad and she stayed on the Jordanian border trying to get back (lots of detail about what she didn't have that she needed -- phone, money, food, cameraman).  

She then switched to discussing that that was the point that journalists started using security companies, and that these companies didn't know ANYTHING, she claims, about what was really going on.  To test her theory, she told a lie to a security contractor, to see if it got back to her.  It did and she learned that the security guys were relying on the journalists to tell them what was going on.  

Overall Reaction

At this point in my notes, I wrote down "really disjointed but entertaining."  I'd have to say that was my overall reaction to the whole speech, at least that night.

She also referred several times to "absolute certainty" but I was unclear whose absolute certainty she was referring to.  Hers?  Or doubting it?  She was talking, at times, VERY fast.

She talked about importance of contacts on the inside (like translators and fixers).  In my notes, I wrote "duh."

Self-Characterization

Without ever using this word, throughout the talk she was describing herself as STUBBORN and driven -- she would go where she wanted to because DAMN IT that was where she thought she needed to go to get the story.  And it sounds like she'd lie and charm and do her own filming or go without food or whatever if that's what it took. She said as much, and I've heard this about her before.  

Another Message

She then said "so much of what you do in this job is what you make of it."  I wish I'd asked her about this; could be interpreted as a bit self-congratulatory.  Perhaps deservedly so, but I also just wonder what the hell she's made of that makes her so different from most people who, you know, might want to be a tad more cautious.  Or just less energetic!

Then she asked what time it was; how long she'd been talking.  She remarked that as a journalist, she’s always going too long.  Somebody in the front row told her it was 8:20.

“Good,” she said, “I have a few minutes.”

She totally switched topics to Egypt.  

Egypt

She said she "stands by" what she said about what happened to her in Egypt.  She said that she did NOT feel the need, ever, for revenge or justice.  And that she's never had nightmares.  She said she made a conscious choice not to be a victim.  

Another reference to Chicago speech?

She said that Egypt has nothing to do with Afghanistan, that her opinion about what is happening in Afghanistan is NOT due to what happened to her in Egypt.  I interpreted this as her saying that the criticism some have leveled since her Chicago speech – that of course she’d be worried about the rise in the Taliban and Al Qaeda due to her assault in Tahrir Square – is total BS.  

And I agree, that is total BS.  You don't have to have been through some sort of horrific event in Tahrir Sqare to be able to document a rise in terrorist groups and identify DC actors who deny that very rise, and to see those two facts as alarmingly inconsistent.

She said she was very proud of the fact that people can talk of sexual violence because of what she did, coming forward to say what happened to her.

She told a few anecdotes about that night in Egypt that I'd never heard, and because I don’t know if she was assuming everything about this speech was private, I’m not repeating them here.  Editorial choice; it just doesn’t feel right.  I’ve said enough about the talk already.

The Question and Answer Part (Or, "One Person Blows “Portland Polite” Out the Window")

During the Q &A, the first question was, essentially, "how do you keep your own perspective out of stories about the Taliban?"  Lara responded rather simply:  "I don't."  She went on to say that she's always very honest with people about how she feels about the repression of women, about religion's role in that.  She also made a comment that she thinks one of the reasons South Africa was able to change was because it was not a “religious” country.

Wholeheartedly agree.

At this point, I put my notes down and went to stand in line to ask a question.  Everybody was asking SUCH easy questions ("What's your favorite part about journalism?"  and "What do you hope for?").  The guy in front of me, though, totally went another direction when he said that although he was so upset to hear about her assault, he didn’t feel like he had a very clear idea of what had happened.

Oh, you asshole.  Cry me a river, you didn’t get enough detail. 

I wanted to scream.

He kind of went on and on, and I took a quick glance around the room.  People were APPALLED.  Lara interjected "What?  You want the gory details?"  I think she should NOT have even answered his question, but instead she almost verbatim repeated her interview from 60 Minutes (making me think she's either watched it 100 times, or she rehearsed it 100 times before she gave it).  

If it were me, both things would be true.

That was kind of weird to see in person.  She appeared very in control, but I hated seeing her give this guy the time of day.  But for God’s sake, major KUDOS to her for the cool (and POLITE) manner in which she addressed that jerk.

I Ask a Question (Almost Coherently)

Some guy handed me the microphone.  I *almost* said "Well, I guess the stereotype of "Portland Polite" has just been completely blown."  But I didn't. 

I kind of wish I had.

I made a reference to the talk in Chicago, acknowledged that three recent stories (Malala, drones in Pakistan, changing intelligence on what happened in Benghazi last month) seem to confirm what she argued there, and then asked if she thinks that means that staying in Afghanistan is a good idea. 

Honestly, I know that how I said the question was messier, less linear than how I just wrote it.  But that’s what I wanted to ask.

I was the only person who asked a foreign policy question.

The Answer

Lara was quick to say she doesn't do policy and all she does is tell what she knows to be true.  I interpreted this to be another vague reference to her Chicago speech – that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are on the rise and the US hasn't gotten rid of them.  But she was quite careful in how she answered the question, and I, obviously, couldn't take notes because I was standing there at the microphone.  I asked, without holding the mic, about whether we need to take war to Pakistan (she couldn't hear me).  The men waiting to ask questions behind me said "Ask that!"  

“Wrap it up!”

A woman in the audience apparently thought I was taking up too much time (even though it was LARA that was talking) and gave me the journalistic sign for "wrap it up" (rolling your hands over one another).  The man handed me back the microphone and I did ask about Pakistan, but could hardly, sadly, pay attention to the answer as I was trying to snake my way back to my seat.  

(Aside:  What IS the protocol for that kind of situation?  Was I supposed to immediately move back toward my seat – as I did – so that I didn’t appear to take up “too much” time?  Or by doing so did it appear that I didn’t even care about Lara’s answer?  Whatever…these types of interactions make me less like myself and into some caricature of me.)

I'm sad to say, but I do not even remember what the last two questions were about, except that they were easy, lowball ones.  One was, I think, about why she “always” goes to the Middle East, and Lara laughed and listed an impressive list of places she’s been and places she’s going this year.

The Ending

One of the men who had introduced her got back on stage and said "Thank you for coming."  Lara was standing off the side, practically off stage, and the clear message was "IT'S OVER."  People clapped and left.

I am assuming she was ushered off because she had to catch a flight BUT it's one of the few college talks I've been to that did NOT have a meet-and-greet.  And that was disappointing, and I cannot really frame that any other way.  I feel immature for admitting that I was disappointed, but heck, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

I would have loved to have said, face to face, how much I admire her work and that I think how she has handled the fallout from Egypt has ABSOLUTELY made a massive difference for victims of sexualized violence.

I didn’t get the chance.

Final Thoughts

As a professor, I'm used to a certain lecture style:  you use stories to illustrate a POINT that you have already clearly laid out.  The stories come AFTER the point.  

This talk was set up as if it was up to all of us to figure out the point from the stories themselves, and I admit this may be a journalistic “thing.”   (Make people feel like they’re “there” and let the facts speak for themselves with little analysis.)  I realized later that I don’t think I’d ever listened to a talk by a journalist. I’ve heard Nobel Prize winners, politicians, researchers, scientists, activists, but never a journalist.  So, perhaps the  ‘format’ that I’ve come to expect is just not the format for journalists.  In any case, it sure ain’t her format. 

She comes across as energetic, restless – as if you stuck a quarter in her and SHE’S OFF!  An energizer bunny.  Or, as she once related her brother said about her, that living with her is “like being handcuffed to a tornado.”  Her energy is impressive.

And perhaps a tad disarming, disorienting, and tiring. J

She is quite possibly as charming a person (at least at a podium) that I have ever seen.  She's funny, too.  There were lots of laughs during the stream of stories-from-the-trenches that she told.  I have no doubt that *for journalism students* these stories are probably not only as fascinating for them as they are for everybody else, but they are likely helpful. 

For me, who was expecting talk about lessons learned *about foreign policy or foreign situations* I didn’t hear what I thought I came for.  I didn’t expect (nor would I want) her to pretend to be a policy person, but I had expected that, between her last 60 Minutes piece on blue-on-green violence in Afghanistan and her speech in Chicago, I’d hear more specifically about what she thought was going on.

I cannot do much, personally, with a story about how to get a visa from the Russians (take the visa guy to a café, offer him your – fake – phone number, and voila, score said visa). 

On second thought, perhaps I can…

Any talk that keeps you thinking about it for a full 48 hours has to be rated, in the final analysis, as a very good talk.

J

I Hate Censorship

I hate censorship.  I may disagree 1000% with what you stand for or what you believe, but I’ll defend to the death your right to *say* or *write* it, as well as my right to respond to you.

I'm totally pissed off right now because somebody deleted a post of mine on a private Facebook page, presumably because she didn’t like the political nature of it.

Let me explain:   A few weeks ago, a friend invited me to join this group "Random Acts of Kindness Eugene." Basically, they are a bunch of do-gooders – NICE people – who go around the city doing random acts of kindness.  Sometimes, their acts are organized – as in dozens working together to spruce up the yard of a woman who was recently widowed.  Sometimes their acts are totally random – as in leaving bottles of bubbles in parks for people to find, or distributing flowers to anonymous people.  Always they leave their "RAKE" "calling cards" without their names.

I think what they're doing is fabulous.  Kindness is always the right thing to do, and performing these acts randomly is one good way to show our kids that our lives can impact others’ in positive ways.

The local news even did a little piece about the group.

But, of course, these acts do nothing to change underlying sources of oppression or injustice. Giving a sandwich to somebody who needs it is undeniably a good act, but working to change a system where so many are unemployed or homeless is arguably just as (or more) important.  “Random” acts do not challenge underlying systems and do little more than make the givers feel better about themselves, and the receivers momentarily cared for, which is of course not insignificant.

So...naively I thought it would be OK to leave a message on their private FB page, that if anybody wanted to join me in working on a political campaign, I think that would be great.  I explained the difference between changing systems versus random acts...

Two people responded: "I don't combine politics with personal acts of kindness" and "this group isn't for that."   I responded that I didn't want to change the group, just was hoping to find people to work on campaigns. (I had also mentioned I have signed myself onto Obama's campaign.)

THEY – or, more likely, the woman who started the group and who had responded “this group isn’t for that” –DELETED MY WHOLE POST, so that now NOBODY ELSE GOT TO SEE WHAT I WROTE. 

Isn’t it true that, had she left the post up, people could have either a) responded or b) ignored it?  Why did it have to be deleted?

There is hardly another way to interpret her action other than it challenged her to recognize the FUTILITY of *only* doing random acts of kindness without also acknowledging the hard and necessary work of politics.  Or, perhaps she is convinced that the personal is not political (don’t get me started…) or that “being nice” means “being apolitical.”  I don’t really know for sure, because she booted the conversation off the page.

I made her uncomfortable.  That much is obvious.  And perhaps she worried that I would make *others* uncomfortable, too – she may think that she’s being the “responsible one” to keep such political riff raff off her page of "do good-feel good."

But rather than LIVE with that discomfort – think about it and discuss it in an intelligent, mature way, or ignore it and let others discuss it – she deleted the post that spawned it, so that nobody in the group would be asked to struggle with this reality or consider that perhaps actions *in addition to random acts* might be warranted by the privileged.  (This group has over 400 members and while I cannot say how many are privileged, the ones that *I* know are VERY privileged, and I count myself in that group.)

I certainly didn’t expect that everyone would want to be involved in politics; most people either do not understand how it is NECESSARY for a democracy for all to be involved, or are so disillusioned that they (wrongly) believe that their acts won’t make a difference.  Some – perhaps most – would claim they simply don’t have the time.  (Yet – if they have time to spruce up somebody’s yard or pass out flowers, they DO have time to make a few phone calls or pass out fliers or stuff envelopes…)

I DID expect not to be censored, because I had posted something true and polite and didn’t ask the group to change.

Apparently, THAT was too challenging.

The Power of Symbols: The Hoodie and the Short Skirt

Like bloggers everywhere, I cannot help but weigh in on the Geraldo Rivera comment that Trayvon Martin's hoodie was "as to blame" as his assailant, George Zimmerman, for his murder.


I hope it's not really necessary for me to say I disagree.


But Rivera does bring up a point -- albeit ham-handedly -- about the power of symbols in our culture.  In sociological terms, everything is a symbol.  Words are symbols.  They stand for things.  What *do* hoodies (and pants worn below the butt, and baseball caps worn backwards, and...) symbolize to many people?  


In a word, danger.


It's not fair.  As Glenn Fleishman (@GlennF on Twitter) tweeted today: "Hoodies kill kids just like halter tops cause rape." 


Indeed.  Saying the hoodie is to blame for Trayvon's senseless killing makes about as much sense as saying a girl wearing a short skirt who gets raped was "asking for it."


It's precisely that obvious parallel that gives me pause, because -- as a white mother to a teen white girl -- I am deeply conflicted about what I allow my daughter to wear.


On the point that Rivera made -- that he tells his sons not to wear hoodies, not to wear pants "down to their ankles" -- I find myself nodding my head.


Not my academic, sociological, analytical mind.  But my parental, over-anxious self.  The part of me that wants to do everything possible to keep my girl safe.


For while I want to say that my child should dress however the hell she pleases (and, she pretty much does), I cannot help but worry that some outfits give different messages.


Different outfits are different symbols.  


Jeans, long-sleeved shirt, flats?  Nicely dressed teen girl.


Short skirt, bare legs, flats, top that shows a little form?  *I* still think "nicely dressed teen girl" but I'm afraid others may see something along the lines of "loose" or "asking for attention."


It's surely a sign of societal sickness that parents everywhere have to worry --- with good reason -- about what their children wear.  That parents of minority boys may, in particular, be wary of whether or not their sons are perceived (wrongly!) as "thugs."  That parents of girls (of any race) may be rightly worried whether or not their daughters are perceived (again, wrongly!) as "asking for attention."


But make no mistake:  a 130 pound kid with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea -- hoodie or no hoodie -- did not deserve to be killed (or even bothered by) by a 250 lb neighborhood "watch" man who carried a *gun*.  


And if anything ever happens to my daughter, I'll personally strangle the first person who says that her attire was "as to blame" as her assailant.


But we ignore *at our peril* the kernel of truth to Rivera's worries.


Sometimes, we do need to be aware of how we are perceived.


Even if the person doing the perceiving is -- clearly -- the one who is wrong.

Academics and Journalists

I'm not a well-known academic (at all).  That's because I haven't published (much) in academic journals.  It's also because I've chosen not to have a traditional academic career; I've chosen (with all the expected harm to my professional life) to work part-time as an adjunct rather than pursue a tenure track job.  Though I have loved being able to spend more time with my children than most (if not all) of my tenure-seeking friends have had with theirs, my professional choices have, to a certain extent, sidelined me as "not a real" academic, a fact that sometimes is quite painful.

I'll never fully be comfortable with it, but it is what it is.

But even if I *had* chosen a tenure-track job, I might have still been marginalized by many of my fellow academics, for one reason:  I prefer and do qualitative -- not quantitative -- research.

Translation:  When I do research, I either interview people or consult lots and lots of newspapers or archives.

It's not that I cannot do statistical analyses or read data.  I learned enough of that to get the Ph.D., did enough of it in the dissertation to prove a decent level of proficiency.  But I knew, very early on, that I was never going to want to sit behind a computer and run statistical analyses.

I'd rather sell shoes.

There is a hierarchy within academia in general, and within social science in particular, that holds that the "smarter" people work with the big data sets and do the fancy statistics, while the rest of us "just interview people".  Or maybe we analyze years and years of news articles or work in dusty historical archives.  In any case, we who do not do heavy statistics are generally looked down upon by those who do.

Graduate students are socialized into this reality in multiple ways.  First, there are more grants and more job opportunities during grad school for those who can crunch data, so if you choose to be a qualitative researcher you truly are the proverbial poor-as-a-church-mouse grad student (and you probably work in a restaurant in your "spare time").  Second, there are more job opportunities  after grad school if you choose to be a number cruncher.  Third, there are more job opportunities outside academia, even for those who (gasp!) don't finish the Ph.D.  All in all, there are some strong arguments for more graduate students to choose quantitative skills over qualitative ones.

But not if you hate the work.

I knew I couldn't be that person.  But I hadn't quite understood the negative effect it might have on my self-esteem until, one day in graduate school, I had the following discussion with other students and a few faculty about types of research and what we liked to do.

"I really like interviewing people, hearing what they have to say and how they perceive their lives."

"But that is just journalism," one statistically-minded (and highly competent) researcher told me.  "How do you know that what you're hearing is true?"

That was the moment I learned just how great the divide is between some qualitative and quantitative researchers and how many in the latter camp use another field altogether -- journalism -- as a way of dissing those in the former.

Prior to that comment, I had not really had any negative opinions about journalism.  In fact, I had seriously considered going to journalism school.  I chose sociology because I perceived that it welcomed people with broad interests.  If there is nothing else true about me, it's that my interests are broad.

But I didn't choose sociology over  journalism; I just decided I wanted to teach college.

This tension between academics (particularly those who do quantitative analyses with large random samples) and journalists has bugged me ever since, and I see it play out among my colleagues in depressingly predictable ways.

I know a certain sociology department with a long history of animosity between the qualitative researchers and the quantitative ones; those in the former group are referred to as "Camp A" and those in the other as "Camp B".  Camp B has more power and more men.  Let's just say that *if* I were in this department as an assistant professor seeking tenure, I'd be in Camp A and have good reason to fear not getting tenure.

I'd also have good reason to fear being compared -- and not with respect -- to journalists.

I'm going to skip the essay on what good interviewing entails, and on how hard an academic has to work to do enough interviews to know for sure that he or she has found a pattern, rather than just an idiosyncratic story.  (Sociologists look for patterns in society, not just interesting stories.  However, interesting stories can lead them to look for patterns -- thanks, journalism!)

Why is it that academics so often dis journalists?

I think academics often see journalistic work as ephemeral, ahistorical and atheoretical.  O.K.  Fair enough. Often true.

And I think that academics worry (with some legitimacy) that students hang onto journalistic accounts of reality without looking at studies of the same thing.  Also true.  They do.  I have to tell my students that they must go read peer-reviewed studies and not "just" rely on what they find on MSNBC or CNN (not that they do not often find excellent stuff there, too -- they do.)  But, to be fair, often news (especially about science) is watered down in the mainstream media because it has to be -- if you really want to understand a study, you have to go read it.  It's up to us academics to make sure our students know this; it isn't journalism's fault that students can be lazy.

Academics become upset that so much of what is put out there is done too fast and without enough analysis.

I wouldn't disagree.

So, turning it around -- why is it that journalists (sometimes) dis academics?

I think journalists' proverbial feathers get ruffled when they hear "experts" discuss politics or situations without having been there.  True.  I do not disagree that some academics (particularly in this media age) LOVE the opportunity to go on TV and see themselves hold forth.  They may not always be as careful and cautious in their analyses as they should be (but I think I could safely say the same about some journalists).

I recently told a colleague how much of my course material was peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books and how much was stuff written by journalists.  I rely quite a bit on articles written in The New York Times or The Atlantic, for instance.  I seek out books written by journalists (such as Nick Kristof or Barbara Ehrenreich) who I think are truly exceptional writers and researchers.  I like finding authors who bridge that journalism-academia divide (Ehrenreich being probably my favorite).

My colleague was a bit surprised at how much I do rely on good journalism for teaching sociology, but he also acknowledged that sometimes the journalistic accounts are easier to read, more student-friendly than the academic ones.

"I guess David Brooks is kind of a sociologist," he said.  "He kinda hovers above all."

I joked that it my next life, I'd be happy to "hover" as a journalist/sociologist.

For now, I have to settle for being an adjunct.

Not all academics dis journalists and I hope not all journalists think we're just a bunch of head-in-the-ivory-tower people who don't respect their on-the-ground work.  Some of us really appreciate their work and use it as inspiration for our own.

I've always been heartened by something a very old (and, ironically, very quantitative) sociologist told me (also during grad school):  "You know, Elaine, you don't have to worry about being "like a journalist".  Some of the best journalists out there would have been great sociologists."

NIMBY and YIMBY

Last night, my Home Owners Association (HOA) announced on their (closed group) Facebook page that there was a meeting at the local high school about a proposed affordable housing project.  The announcement was framed clearly:  "For those who oppose this project...".

Not surprisingly, there is a group of neighbors who have formed an organization to protest this (and other) low-income housing developments in our area.

The Executive Director of the local St. Vincent de Paul, -- one of the partners in this project -- wrote this editorial in the local paper as an attempt to allay people's fears about a relatively large low-income housing development in their area.

Before I lose myself in a discussion of thinly disguised classism, racism and unfounded fears, let me say that I *do* agree the proposed development is rather large (perhaps TOO large) and that it does appear to violate several of the City's Housing Dispersal Policy objectives and goals (one being that no low-income development should have more than 60 units; this proposed one has 101 and there are other projects proposed to go in next to it, meaning that, in the end, the developers could end up locating a majority of the city's poor all in one place).

The Housing Dispersal Policy was written in 1996 and, well, lots of things have changed since then.  It is particularly notable that the policy was based on *1980* Census data -- we're 32 years past that!

While I'm twitchy about a really large low-income housing development *anywhere* in the city -- and particularly since there is more than one planned for the same area -- I fully realize that the demand and need for subsidized housing far outstrips the availability.

I know this not just from statistics like the ones cited in the above editorial, but also from my own friends who struggle to make ends meet.  I recently tried to help a friend find a one-bedroom apartment, with utilities, in  a safe neighborhood, for less than what she is paying now.  We searched and searched and couldn't find one.  She makes "too much" to qualify for any government program -- meaning she likely wouldn't be able to live in this proposed development -- yet she is spending far more than 50% of her income on her rent.

It shouldn't be that way, folks.  She works.  (Like lots of other struggling people!)  She attempts to play by the rules (like lots of other struggling people!).  And she cannot make it without help; when she cannot find it through agencies (which is common, given her "high" income), she has to either earn money under the table or ask friends for help (like us).

There is no doubt in my mind that Eugene needs more affordable housing, that Eugene (like cities everywhere) largely lacks a living wage, and that this vacant lot near where I live is one of the rare ones in the city.  Our neighborhood has the *space* to build this development, whereas most areas of the city do not.

It's also true that there are also other low-income housing developments already on our side of town, so it's not (as some comments on  articles have erroneously claimed) that "all" the people over "there" (here) are "elitist snobs" or "against poor people".  There is, in fact, quite a range of incomes and housing types and options in our neck of the woods -- mansions and large houses next to or near ranch-style homes, small one-story homes, older two-story homes, condos, apartments and rented houses and affordable housing developments.  

Not everyone who opposes the development opposes low-income housing per se.  Many people who oppose this project oppose it on several valid claims:  that it violates the City's (perhaps outdated and still unexplained) no-more-than-60-units rule; it consolidates the poor in one location (ironically far away from where services are located); it potentially adds a LOT more traffic to the area; it potentially adds many students to our already overcrowded schools.  In other words, these concerned citizens might get behind a smaller (60-unit) project, one which puts less stress on already stressed systems (particularly schools).

Others contend that adding students to our schools might be a good thing -- more students bring more money to the schools and *may* make classes *smaller* because, if enough students enroll, schools have to hire more teachers.  This is a theoretical claim that has yet to be proven.  With parents and students and teachers reeling from the effects of our last round of budget cuts (which included closing several schools), few think that the potential addition of hundreds of kids to our neighborhood would uniformly result in many more teachers being hired.  At the very least, it seems likely that class sizes *would* increase, particularly for older students.  But class sizes are already too large -- 39-42 in middle school classes and, depending on the subject, 40-50 per high school class.  As a parent of two kids still in public schools, I share this concern that our local schools -- like schools throughout the city -- are already stressed beyond capacity.

The questions that I have about the development have not been answered anywhere (at least not in articles I've found).

1)  How many people in Eugene currently qualify for low-income housing *and cannot find it in Eugene*?  In other words, are ALL low-income housing units in Eugene currently occupied?  Or do we have some vacant ones?  What *exactly* is the need?

2)  If the need is, indeed, 101 or more units, can we build several smaller housing projects throughout the city, rather than all 101 (or more) in one place?



Simply building more low-income housing *which residents have to pay for* may not solve enough of their problems if *they actually can't find a job to begin with* or cannot afford childcare so they can work in order to afford their housing.  If they don't work, they have no income.  If they have no income, they cannot pay for the housing...  If they have no childcare, they cannot work.

It's all connected, people.

Many years ago, when I was working at Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), I did research on programs for at-risk families.  In a nutshell, HFRP consistently finds that the best programs -- the ones with the best outcomes for kids and their parents -- co-locate services at one place.

I strongly believe that this housing development should really be far more than just a housing development if we are at all committed to doing something to help people.  But I would argue that it should be on the smaller side (in part because, if successful, one would want to replicate it elsewhere).  This development shouldn't be about making money for the *developer* but about serving people.

A doctor, a dentist, and an eye doctor (who accept the Oregon Health Plan, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) should have office space on site.   There should be on-site, affordable childcare center (for residents only).  A preschool (perhaps Head Start) should be there, too.  Buses should be plentiful (this, ironically, may be the easiest thing to do -- get a few more LTD buses to the area).

While we're at it, the neighborhood as a whole has been complaining for YEARS that it doesn't have a grocery store.  There's been talk of building a Market of Choice nearby -- but that market, as local and lovely as it is, does NOT serve the needs of the poor.   What grocery store -- not gigantic, but decent-sized -- can we bring to the neighborhood, that could be within walking distance of the development?

We live in a community -- with problems like all communities.  But the NOT IN MY BACKYARD APPROACH doesn't build communities; it erodes them.  At the same time, lack of careful consideration of the complex problems that ALL families have (but which affect poor families more) could easily result in a project that nobody likes -- including those who would qualify to live there.

Bottom line:  I'm not against building affordable housing in my community, but if we do so, we have to be committed to establishing the services (including grocery stores, child care, and schools) that would be required to make this housing development a successful community.

Housing, in and of itself, doesn't do that.

I'll be at the next meeting, proposing something far more ambitious than just housing.  YIMBY -- Yes, in my back yard!