how the class war works

Joy may have found the source of this picture here.

the challenge of all holidays

The challenge of all holidays is to take them back from the merchants and find the spirit of their makers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

ETA: Terri Windling has an excellent Thanksgiving post.

Life Between Borders

An essay written in 2003 for the Interstitial Arts Foundation:

Crossing from Canada into the U.S., I was arrested for possession of hashish found in the car that I drove. I was at the border; federal charges applied, not state ones. Instead of a misdemeanor, I faced a felony. Instead of a fine, I faced hard time.

I tell you this because life's dangerous between borders.

After I hired a lawyer and learned that I'm one of those who fail polygraphs when telling the truth, the woman who lost the hash heard what had happened and confessed. The Ontario Provincial Police sent their report to the U.S. Since the hash was discovered outside of Canada, she wasn't charged by the O.P.P., and my charges were dropped by the U.S.

I tell you this because rules work differently between borders. That can be to your advantage.

I first noticed genre borders in libraries: a rocket ship on the spine meant one thing, a cowboy hat meant another.

I first found artists crossing genre borders in comic books and B-movies: Billy the Kid could face Dracula, a World War II tank crew could be advised by J. E. B. Stuart's ghost.

I first found artistic borders in English class: fiction is about story, literature is about style.

I first found artists crossing artistic borders in genre fiction: most Nebula winners in science fiction, most Spur Award winners in westerns, writers like Chandler and John D. McDonald in mysteries.

But the writers who crossed the borders of art usually stayed within the borders of their genres, and the writers who crossed the borders of genre usually cared more about story than style.

When I tried to write my first novel, I started a naturalistic story inspired by my childhood at a Florida tourist attraction called Dog Land. I wrote some pages, got frustrated, and decided I would never be a writer. Then I started a naturalistic coming-of-age story inspired by my teen years as a poor kid who was expelled from an exclusive prep school. I wrote some pages, got frustrated —

So I decided to write something that felt safe, a fantasy adventure called Cats Have No Lord. Witch Blood was another fantasy adventure, but I used a first-person voice inspired by Robert B. Parker. Both books were easy to sell, though I hadn't written them with the market in mind. I wrote them because I was afraid to try something more artistically dangerous.

Then I wanted to fuse science fiction and fantasy, to create a book that could be either. The Tangled Lands is my problem child: it ended up being more science fiction than fantasy, not both. Marketing it was a disaster: the cover has a man teleporting next to a unicorn.

Elsewhere and Nevernever are both set in Terri Windling's Bordertown. I love the setting because the city's in the Borderlands between Faerie and the World. The implication is that magic works on one side, science on the other, and both work oddly in Bordertown. I love its borderness, its sense of unpredictability, its focus on the border and its lack of interest in the equally mundane worlds of science and magic.

With Dogland, I was finally ready to write about my childhood. I kept two models in mind: Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. And I decided to try a different version of the game I had played with The Tangled Lands: I wanted this to be a work of ambiguous fantasy, so readers could decide for themselves whether they were reading a gothic tale or a realistic story about a boy at a tourist attraction who gets caught up in the civil rights struggle.

Dogland has had three editions so far. Its hardcover suggests it's a quirky contemporary novel. The trade paperback suggests it's a quiet literary novel. The young adult paperback suggests it's a weird kid's adventure. I like them all.

After Dogland, I didn't know what to do. I felt like it was my best work; why write something inferior? Then I realized that "best" is a matter for readers, not writers. Chimera is a science fiction mystery that uses genetically altered creatures and the tropes of film noir. Thor's Hammer is a historical fantasy about three boys from San Francisco in 1876 who go to the land of the Norse gods.

Now I'm writing The Secret Academy (which became The Gospel of the Knife), a sequel to Dogland. Part of it is set at a prep school. The rest is in Jesus's Galilee and Jerusalem. I don't know how it'll be marketed. I can't care now, while I'm writing it. The artist's job is to make something new. Let the marketers decide how to sell it.

To me, Interstitial Arts is a formal recognition of an ancient phenomenon: in every creative area, you find artists who need to explore the boundaries they see. Just last night, I had dinner at Cafe Roka, one of Arizona's most highly praised (but reasonably priced!) restaurants. Their wine menu has a paragraph suggesting people order what they like and not be bound by other people's conventions of what wine goes with a particular dish.

Take what you like. Use it how you will. Don't be afraid of failure. Delight in success.

If there's better advice for artists, I don't know it.

Will Shetterly's Finest-Kind Cookies

This began as a recipe from the back of a Quaker Oats box, but it's evolved over the years, and Quaker Oats, for reasons known only to them and their God, have switched to an inferior recipe. Evil does walk the Earth. But Emma Bull says this cookie can thwart the powers of darkness; I say it tastes pretty darn good.

3/4 cup butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
1/8 cup apple juice (or water, if you're as boring as Quaker Oats)
1 tsp. vanilla
3 cups uncooked rolled oats
1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 - 1/2 cup coconut (optional, but nice)
1 bag (12 or 16 oz.) Guitard's (my favorite, but you can use similar deluxe) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup raisins
1 cup almonds, pecans, and/or walnuts (sliced or chopped)

Preheat oven to 350 degree F.

Beat the butter, sugar, honey, egg, juice, and vanilla together until creamy.

Combine the oats, flour, salt, soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a separate bowl, then mix them with the wet ingredients. Add chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, and nuts to the batter last.

Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes.

Eat some of the batter while the first batch is cooking. You're the cook; you deserve it.

ETA: I once got a great fan mail for these cookies:

I tweaked the recipe a bit; I believe we had apple cider rather than apple juice, so I figured I’d give that a shot. I also tossed in toffee bits and white chocolate chips.

The cookies went over rather well. I believe the technical term for what happened to them is “inhaled”. And they resulted in one of my favorite compliments of all time. Since the main credit goes to you, I hereby pass it on:

“Tracey! These cookies could bring world peace!”

There followed a brief discussion of the possibilities of dropping cookies on miniature parachutes over various war zones.

This recipe is astonishingly forgiving. You can add anything you love and leave out just about anything you don’t, and it’ll be swell.

ETA 2: I found a tweaked version at String Notes: Cookie nomnomnom. I especially like adding the cocoa nibs. And I like that this has become an open source recipe. That's the fate of all good recipes.

ETA 3: In the comments, Phiala provides "photographic evidence of great cookie goodness." I'm right chuffed.

Judy Blume's Blubber, plus free fiction and class links

Update: I expanded my review on Goodreads, so I'm expanding it here, too:

I saw a reviewer say she didn't like Blubber because the ending did not make it clear that bad things are bad. That's because Blume knows to trust her readers. As many children's book writers have noted, children usually can figure out things their parents don't understand.

When Judy Blume wrote Blubber, I wasn't interested in kids' books. But when Robert N. Lee wrote, "I've said for years and years that everybody should be issued this book before they get online," I decided I needed to read it.

Blume is at least as good as her fans say she is, and she may be better. I know a lot of writers, myself included, who could learn from her style, her sense of structure, her pacing, her attention to scenes, her humor, her acceptance of human shortcomings, and her ability to tell a moral tale without a hint of preaching.

Will-Bob gives it four and a half stars. (I gave it five on goodreads. I might've given it four if I hadn't seen the comment by someone who gave it two. I think the ending is a little rushed, but that's a minor quibble.)

* * *

I posted "Little Red and the Big Bad" here.

Got a couple of class links here. I especially recommend clicking on the interactive "The Geography of the Recession" map.

Midnight Girl is now available—buy or read free!

Your dad used to be the spooky-mysteries TV show host Professor Midnight. Your grandmother lives in the basement and only comes upstairs after dark. Your mom died when you were a baby, and nobody will tell you about her. Oh, and you have two birthdays, both on Halloween. And that's the part of your life that's normal.

But with this birthday, everything is going to change.

Free electronic file at Scribd.

Epub, Kindle, and other electronic formats ($3.95) at Smashwords.

Kindle edition at Amazon.

Trade paperback ($14.95) at Lulu.

Hardcover ($21.95) at Lulu.

ETA: Why isn't Midnight Girl with a major publisher?

India

From here:

In India, over 40 percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. Ten million of those poor would have to work over 60 years each to match the combined fortune of India’s 100 richest. This Indian top 100, Forbes related last week, now together hold $276 billion in assets, “over $100 billion more than the $170 billion total net worth of their Chinese counterparts.”

I am the Class Guy

Accepting my obsession, I've created a new blog, The Class Guy. I've moved my old political posts there. When I post something new, I'll announce it here, so no one needs to subscribe to it.

I should get a Don Quixote icon.

about forgiveness

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish wrote:

The l6th of January, 2009, is the day when my three precious daughters and niece were killed by Israeli shells. I do not want anyone in this world to see what I have seen.

What I have lost will never come back. I need to go forward and be motivated literally by the spirit of what I lost, and to do them justice. I lost three precious daughters, but I am blessed with five other children and the future. I believe that life is like riding a bicycle, as Einstein says - “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” I will keep moving.

And what about forgiveness? Is forgiveness necessary? When you forgive someone, you forgive and value yourself. Forgiveness is about letting go, completely and permanently.

Then there is the choice, the crossroads, the path of light or the path of darkness. I chose the first. Most people assume that this path, that of forgiveness, is difficult, but in the long run it is easier to forgive than to live with hatred or be consumed with revenge.

Forgiveness helps you move forward, away from the pain of the past to the brightness of the future. Indeed, forgiveness opens the door to a future that will not repeat the old tragedies. Sometimes the beauty in forgiveness is to forgive when you do not know whom to forgive, when no one asks you for forgiveness.

Whatever the situation, to err is human, but to forgive is truly divine.

If you visit daughters for life, your heart will break a little. And that's good.

I'm crossposting this to LiveJournal, because people there wanted to talk about forgiveness in general.

ETA: autographedcat reminded me of real live preacher's excellent forgiveness.

peeve of the day: "magick"

It's not as bad as "magique", but still, if you're not using a traditional spelling, use one that's shorter.

The Love Wanga

It is really easy to make fun of the way the meanings of words have changed. And sometimes that easy fun is irresistable:

via Golden Age Comic Book Stories

US Supreme Court supports censoring books

I did some follow-up on the second story in US peddling yet more lies about Cuba, about the US Supreme Court supporting censorship. It's true:

"It is a sad day for free speech in our great nation," said JoNel Newman, ACLU of Florida Cooperating Counsel. "This is a dangerous precedent, and a huge leap backwards in the battle against censorship. The aftershocks may be felt in public school libraries across the country. "

An earlier story about it: ACLU of Florida Sues to Stop Book Censorship by Miami-Dade County School Board

NED Watch: Cuba and Honduras

If you've seen claims like Cuban poll: 82% say life so-so or worse, the explanation is in US peddling yet more lies about Cuba.

Will the National Democratic Institute Support the Coup in Honduras?

castrati and class

200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song: Great Castrati of the 18th Century:

Castration was an officially illegal operation often carried out at the behest of poor families to preserve a promising soprano voice from the hormones that would change it and thereby prevent an operatic career.

Worth reading just for the anecdote about Casanova.

Frenchman's Creek

Just saw the 1998 Masterpiece Theatre version of Frenchman's Creek, and enjoyed it very much—it had both better dialogue and a more sophisticated understanding of romance than I was expecting. Plus swords and pistols!

Makes me wish the 1944 version was on Netflix. Might even make me read the novel. Can't remember if I've read any du Maurier, but Emma says she wrote one of her favorite time travel novels.

The Poorest Part of America

The mods at Metafilter gave this post no love:

The Poorest Part of America"Virtually all of the 20 poorest counties in America, in terms of wages, are on the eastern flank of the Rockies or on the western Great Plains... There are two unusual things about the deprivation in this region. First, it is largely white. The area does include several pockets of wretched Native American poverty, but in most areas the poor are as white as a prairie snowstorm. Second, most people do not think of themselves as poor."

From Dale Maharidge Interview: Covering The Economic Pain Of Real Americans: "Four-fifths of us who work for salaries or wages make less than $20 an hour. This is a poor country. We're a nation of the working poor, and it's something that people don't want to acknowledge."

Before the thread was shut down, jefficator linked to Buffalo Commons and List of the poorest places in the United States, and infini provided Official government poverty line shows signs of old age. I'm sorry the conversation was killed in its infancy. I guess my interest in class issues is uncomfortably high.

my unloved metafilter post

The mods at Metafilter gave this post no love:

The Poorest Part of America"Virtually all of the 20 poorest counties in America, in terms of wages, are on the eastern flank of the Rockies or on the western Great Plains... There are two unusual things about the deprivation in this region. First, it is largely white. The area does include several pockets of wretched Native American poverty, but in most areas the poor are as white as a prairie snowstorm. Second, most people do not think of themselves as poor."

From Dale Maharidge Interview: Covering The Economic Pain Of Real Americans: "Four-fifths of us who work for salaries or wages make less than $20 an hour. This is a poor country. We're a nation of the working poor, and it's something that people don't want to acknowledge."

Before the thread was shut down, jefficator linked to Buffalo Commons and List of the poorest places in the United States, and infini provided Official government poverty line shows signs of old age. I'm sorry the conversation was killed in its infancy. I guess my interest in class issues is uncomfortably high.

groupthink

Excerpt from Victims of Groupthink by Irving Janis:

The eight symptoms of groupthink are:

1. an illusion of invulnerability, shared by most or all the members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages taking extreme risks;

2. collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings which might lead the members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to their past policy decisions;

3. an unquestioned belief in the group's inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions;

4. stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too weak and stupid to counter whatever risky attempts are made to defeat their purposes;

5. direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group's stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, making clear that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;

6. self-censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting each member's inclination to minimize to himself the importance of his doubts and counterarguments;

7. a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent);

8. the emergence of self-appointed mindguards - members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

ETA: Fighting Groupthink With Dissent

groupspeak

From here:

“Groupspeak” is another feature of all cults. Groups use what Lifton calls "the thought-terminating cliché”. Repetitive phrases, clichés, sayings, platitudes and buzz words are regularly invoked to describe all situations, and prevent further analysis or discussion. Any disagreements are usually settled by referring to the sayings or writings of wise leaders (past or present), rather than by turning to independent analysis. Members are rewarded for their ability to regurgitate this “Groupspeak” and for their willingness and talent for putting down dissenters with cult clichés. Lifton argues that the effect of is critical to mind control “since language is so central to all human experience, .. capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed" Moreover, the “secret vocabulary” reinforces the idea of distance from the outside world.

Groupspeak is inevitable in any group. That's why it's a danger in all groups.

The Police Officer's Dilemma

via fuse theorem:

The Police Officer's Dilemma, from researchers at the University of Chicago. The test is here.

her swords like twin white dragons

Hongxian lives on

gay and fey

From Whirled of Kelly:

The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons

via Louis Proyect

racism equals prejudice plus power, so only whites can be racist?

Since I learned the Project Implicit race test reveals that 20-25% of whites either have no implicit racial preference or, like me, have an implicit preference for African Americans, I have a new problem with the "racism = prejudice + power" theory. So I googled "prejudice plus power" to learn a little more about its history. An article at fanhistory says it was coined by a white woman:

"racism = prejudice plus power" is a phrase coined by anti-racism trainer Judith H. Katz in her book White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training, a book rooted in the 12-step movement, conceiving of racism as a disease in need of treatment. In the book, it's on page 53 (2nd edition), almost an aside, an optional addition to dictionary definitions of racism. Mary Langan in her essay, "The Legacy of Radical Social Work" remarks that Katz's phrase and its accompanying approach tend to lead to acrimonious situations

Mary Anne Mohanraj explains it well:

there’s an alternate and widely-used definition of racism that goes like this: We’re all prejudiced, because we grow up in a racist culture and we inherit those prejudices. But racism is a system of institutional, systemic oppression, and in order to be racist, you need both the prejudice + the power to affect people. By that definition, which a lot of progressives share, PoC (people of color) can’t be racist, because they don’t have any reinforcement from that institutionalized power. We may hold individual racist ideas and thoughts, but we only have the power to do damage with our actions in the rare, brief contexts where our other privileges temporarily override color privilege. A relative of mine may say racist things about black or white people in her own home, but when she engages with the wider world, as she must do daily, she’s just another brown girl, and is therefore at risk.

There’s a definite utility and sense to that definition, but it isn’t the one I normally use.

I've been fond of saying the problem with the theory is that Condi Rice and Oprah Winfrey have far more power than any white homeless guy living under a bridge, or just about 99.999% of the American population, regardless of color. But googling brought up a few more observations that I liked in the comments here. ron kozar said, "By Weind's definition, the American Nazis aren't racists, since they have no power." And an anonymous person said, "I thought a racist was any conservative who was winning an argument with a liberal."

The more precise definition, of course, is a racist is anyone who disagrees with the idea that racism equals power plus prejudice.

I do think "power plus prejudice" is a perfect description of class oppression, but then, I would.

Dave Chappelle: Black White Supremacist

Dave Chappelle: Black White Supremacist

Midnight Girl update for those who read version 0.9.etc.

I made bigger changes than I expected. The first two chapters have been smoothed, and the last chapter has been heavily revised, with an addition of a plot development that I had planned to save for a sequel. (Never save things for sequels. Give 'em everything you've got, then invent more.) Also, one character had been a bit neglected at the end, so I've done what I can for her sake. And I did a little restructuring to heighten the drama. I'm much happier with version 1.0.

Which will be available soon.

Emma took Project Implicit's race test

Emma also has a bias for African Americans. That makes three "white" people I know who aren't, according to Project Implicit, in the 75 to 80 percent of whites who are biased toward European Americans. That Emma and I should test the same at first seems like another sign we're meant for each other, but my suspicion is that since she's a musician, a writer, and a socialist, it's highly likely that she would have a bias for African-Americans.

I wish whites who say all whites are racist would take the test. It might confirm their belief that they are racist, or it might give them what would either be a pleasant surprise or, depending on the degree of their belief, a troubling insight.

ETA: I also wonder how many black Critical Race Theorists have a bias for European Americans. Project Implicit says 50% of all blacks who take the test favor whites.

more Nicholas Brothers, plus Dorothy Dandrige

a fat fact

Heavier Americans Push Back on Health Debate:

Two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese. In four states — Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia — more than 30 percent of adults are obese. In 1991, in contrast, no state had an obesity rate over 20 percent.

And, according to the American Obesity Association, a research organization, poor minority women have the greatest likelihood of being overweight.

Glenn Miller ft. Nicholas Bros. I've Got A Gal In Kalamazoo

Glenn Miller ft. Nicholas Bros. I've Got A Gal In Kalamazoo:

Hugh Laurie - Minnie the Moocher

Ricky Gervais Extras: The Racist Test

The Racist Test:

if you want gay marriage

History suggests you have to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" first. Truman issued an Executive Order ending segregation in the military in 1948. Loving v. Virginia didn't legalize interracial marriage until 1967.

Night witches

Night witches: "Russia's three all-female air regiments flew more than 30,000 missions along the Eastern Front in WWII. At home they were known as Stalin's Falcons, but terrified German troops called them the Night Witches."

via Pamela D Lloyd

Yes We Can-Corporate Hope

via douglain

people may even be less racist than Project Implicit implies

from In Bias Test, Shades of Gray:

In a series of scathing critiques, some psychologists have argued that this computerized tool, the Implicit Association Test, or I.A.T., has methodological problems and uses arbitrary classifications of bias. If Barack Obama’s victory seemed surprising, these critics say, it’s partly because social scientists helped create the false impression that three-quarters of whites are unconsciously biased against blacks.

As Shaking the foundations of the hidden bias test notes,

This has been one part of an ongoing debate that has suggested that the IAT is not all it's cracked up to be, while the originators of the test have fired back with the heavyweight review [pdf] of over 100 studies, defending their position and the IAT's credentials.

The debate is important because the IAT has become one of psychology's central tools for separating conscious and unconscious associations and has been applied to pretty much everything from racism to diagnosing psychopaths.

So Project Implicit may be right, or their critics may be right, but either way, the Critical Race Theorists and Whiteness Students are, to be kind, mistaken in their belief that everyone's racist.

(Thanks, serialbabbler, for pointing me to the Mind Hacks link!)

Li'l Cthulhu

testing for racism at Project Implicit

Years ago, I did the race test at Project Implicit. I don't remember the result, which is probably significant. So I did it again today. (And was amused to find Project Implicit has its own implicit assumptions. Under politics, you can be "strongly liberal," but you can't be a socialist. Ah, well.)

The result:

Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.

To the best of my knowledge, I took the test fairly. But I noticed one thing: when it required me to post bad things and African Americans in the same category, it hurt.

I will have to work on my prejudice against white people.

Then I took their religion test, and left this comment at my Live Journal:

Oh my god! I'm prejudiced against Christianity! I'm prejudiced against white people and Christians!

Actually, this delights me too much, but it really wasn't the result I was expecting.

I got Islam on top, Judaism and Hinduism as equals, and Christianity below that. They were all grouped toward the middle, so I'm not extremely prejudiced against Christianity, but still, this is hard for someone who considers himself a Christian Unitarian Universalist metatheist.

To choose a test there, click Go to the Demonstration Tests.

I've been thinking about Project Implicit's conclusion that I'm a little prejudiced in favor of African Americans and a little against Christians. I expected the reverse, because I had bought into the theory that we're all at least a tiny bit racist in favor of our cultural group. But when another "white" friend was also indicated as favoring African Americans (though she favored Christians), I realized that my assumption was nonsense. Our biases come from our understanding of our culture, not from our culture itself.
Project Implicit also rejects the theory that everyone is racist in favor of their race: "75-80% of self-identified Whites and Asians show an implicit preference for racial White relative to Black."

Saying everyone is racist is nonsense. Saying three-fourths of the population is racist might be accurate.

ETA: Just noticed that I used "nonsense" twice here. I think that was because I hesitated to use "bullshit." Project Implicit's studies strengthen my conviction that ideological anti-racists who insist we're all racist are just trying to rationalize their recognition of their own racism.

ETA 2: I recommend Project Implicit's FAQ, especially questions 8 and 9:

Is the common preference for White over Black in the Black-White attitude IAT a simple 'ingroup' preference?

Do Black participants show a preference for Black over White on the race attitude IAT?

ETA 3: About the participants for Project Implicit:

The participants at Project Implicit form a sample that is generally more diverse than those found in traditional laboratory studies. Below are approximate percentages broken down by gender and ethnicity:

Female: 62%; Male: 38%
American Indian: 1%
Asian: 6.3%
Black/African-American: 6.8%
Hispanic: 5.1%
White/Caucasian: 72%
Multiracial: 4.8%
Other: 3.7%

more about Project Implicit, plus families hitting the road

I've been thinking about Project Implicit's conclusion that I'm a little prejudiced in favor of African Americans and a little against Christians. I expected the reverse, because I had bought into the theory that we're all at least a tiny bit racist in favor of our cultural group. But when another "white" friend was also indicated as favoring African Americans (though she favored Christians), I realized that my assumption was nonsense. Our biases come from our understanding of our culture, not from our culture itself.

Project Implicit also rejects the theory that everyone is racist in favor of their race: "75-80% of self-identified Whites and Asians show an implicit preference for racial White relative to Black."

Saying everyone is racist is nonsense. Saying three-fourths of the population is racist might be accurate.

Also: In a tough economy, many are trading their houses for RVs and the highway: Play the video. I was wondering if the kids were sincere, until I saw the son speak.

ETA: Just noticed that I used "nonsense" twice here. I think that was because I hesitated to use "bullshit." Project Implicit's studies strengthen my conviction that ideological anti-racists who insist we're all racist are just trying to rationalize their recognition of their own racism.

ETA 2: I recommend Project Implicit's FAQ, especially questions 8 and 9:

Is the common preference for White over Black in the Black-White attitude IAT a simple 'ingroup' preference?

Do Black participants show a preference for Black over White on the race attitude IAT?

ETA 3: About the participants for Project Implicit:

The participants at Project Implicit form a sample that is generally more diverse than those found in traditional laboratory studies. Below are approximate percentages broken down by gender and ethnicity:

Female: 62%; Male: 38%
American Indian: 1%
Asian: 6.3%
Black/African-American: 6.8%
Hispanic: 5.1%
White/Caucasian: 72%
Multiracial: 4.8%
Other: 3.7%

bonus post

John Arkansawyer says this comic is "like if Randall Munroe (of XKCD) had a degree in theology."

From Too Much Weekly:

Daring to Diss 'Equality of Opportunity'

Rebecca Hickman, In Pursuit of Egalitarianism: and why social mobility cannot get us there. Compass, London. September, 2009. 28 pp.

Just over a half-century ago, in 1958, a progressive British political activist wrote a futuristic satire entitled The Rise of the Meritocracy. The author, Michael Young, imagined himself in the year 2034, in a society where an “aristocracy of talent” had replaced “an aristocracy of birth.”

Young meant his work as a warning — against letting those “judged to have merit of a particular kind” calcify into a smug new ruling elite.

But Young’s satire never stuck. Instead, the word he coined — “meritocracy” — has become a shorthand for the society that we’re all supposed to want to see.

“I believe in equality of opportunity,” our politicians intone whenever they’re angling for a cheap applause line. “I don’t believe in equality of results.”

Enter Rebecca Hickman, a public policy analyst who used to run the government relations office for London's mayor. Hickman no longer mindlessly applauds when politicos earnestly pledge to help people — of “talent and resolve” — climb the “ladder of opportunity.” In this masterfully argued new pamphlet, she explains why, in a punchy prose that leaves no prisoners.

“By its own logic,” Hickman notes early on, “equality of opportunity as both goal and method does not make sense.”

Today's elected leaders, Hickman relates, regularly employ “meritocracy” as a rhetorical hook for avoiding issues around the distribution of income and wealth. But real equality of opportunity, she shows, requires that “everyone starts from the same point and has equal prospects of progressing.”

And that requires, for a truly “fair” race up the economic ladder, a high level of equality right at the outset.

Hickman’s pages delightfully demolish the sloppy reasoning of those who tout “opportunity” as the ultimate yardstick for social decency. Along the way, she also introduces questions that force us to face the morality of fixating on opportunity at the expense of all else.

“Meritocracy,” she writes, “fails to create a more just society because at best it is about removing the obstacles from the paths of those who have the energy and luck to be able to make the most of their talents, and at worst, it is about social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest and the demise of the rest.”

So what’s the alternative to meritocracy? Hickman outlines a dozen steps, from affordable higher education to progressive taxation, “to put right the accidents of birth,” to ensure everyone the “freedom to be valued and to know dignity.”

“Social justice must go so much deeper than simply clearing the way for those who are able and tenacious,” she observes. “It is above all about how we look after those who may have less to contribute, who encounter bad luck, or who simply make mistakes.”

And if we took this broader responsibility seriously, everyone would benefit, even the awesomely affluent who might become somewhat less awesome.

A redistribution of society’s resources “that enables the poorest in our society to have access to the external sources of dignity — a decent income, a comfortable home, a pleasant neighborhood, first-class education, and health care — will cost the wealthiest in terms of their disposable income,” as Hickman points out, “but not in terms of their happiness.”

“Redistribution and collective responsibility are not zero-sum games where the more we share with others the less we have for ourselves,” sums up this engaging brief for equality. “They are ways of living and of being that mean we are all better off.”

And, if you care about education under capitalism: The Tree Trunks Are Rotting in the Groves of Academe

Midnight Girl update, mostly for my proofreaders

Many thanks to the proofreaders, both for what they caught and for what they suggested! Here's my current list of names for the acknowledgments page:

glinda, Thomas Bull, jenstclair, gailmom, Pamela Dean, Mad Gastronomer, glad2dance, Cyn Horton, Ann Lemay, J. Brundage, Anne KG Murphy, David Dyer-Bennet

No need to send anything if your name is listed correctly, but if it's wrong, either leave a comment here or email shetterly at gmail.com. The deadline is Tuesday at midnight, Arizona time.

I'm not sure yet when I'll release the official version of the book. I want to do a little more with Cat and Tarika's relationship at the end of the story, even if that's only a few lines, and I want to take a last, hard look at the first two chapters.

I'm deleting the public file of version 0.9 now.

ETA: I'll delete it tomorrow. What's currently there is 0.91, which incorporates the comments to date.

linkies

Questionable Content: Salutations from DyreWolff: For those who keep up on the scifi and YA genres.

23 Private College Presidents Made More Than $1 Million

A racist comic story from the '50s that says so much about the conservatives of that time: Cave Girl and the Mau Mau. It won't teach you much about the real Mau Mau Uprising. If you're obsessive, compare it with Cave Girl in 'The Devil Boat!' There, whites are the bad guys, and the black cops are good guys, but they're still drawn like Sambos.

I liked the logic of this panel from the Mau Mau story:

ETA: I forgot that on the internet, no one knows you're ironic. "Liked" should be read with your sarcasm detector on.