The Story of Soviet Russia

Posted on by under Socialism

The Russians have a long history of battling for basic human rights and true anarchist democracy, as documented in Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism, published in 1970.

In 1905, the Russian people rose up in rebellion against the brutal dictatorship of the czar and the horrendous inequality between the ruling and lower class. 150,000 impoverished workers protested their tragic living and working conditions in the capital of St. Petersburg in January, agitation that led to Russian soldiers at the White Palace firing into the unarmed crowd. The “Bloody Sunday” massacre sparked a revolution: nearly half a million people went on strike across the nation, clashing with police, who shot people down in the streets; sailors and soldiers mutinied against their officers; peasants attacked the homes of their landlords; Baltic peoples demanded independence; students rioted at their universities; and terrorists assassinated government officials and military and police commanders. Workers seized factories and businesses from their employers, taking ownership by force. In St. Petersburg, anarchists and socialists helped set up worker councils called “soviets,” true anarchist organization. The people and their leaders demanded an elected parliament, voting rights, freedom of the press and religion, and the right to form political parties. In other words, they demanded basic individual rights and a less autocratic system of government that other parts of the world, such as the United States, had won. Daniel Guerin writes:

The Russian Revolution was, in fact, a great mass movement, a wave rising from the people which passed over and submerged ideological formations. It belonged to no one, unless to the people. In so far as it was an authentic revolution, taking its impulse from the bottom upward and spontaneously producing the organs of direct democracy, it presented all the characteristics of a social revolution with libertarian tendencies.[1]

The State of course responded with repression: the army was dispatched to destroy the worker councils and disperse strikes, protesters were imprisoned, and some citizens were executed. Well over 10,000 people died, and scores of thousands more imprisoned. Nevertheless, power yielded hesitantly to ever increasing demand and strife. Toward the end of 1905, Czar Nicholas II agreed to broadened personal freedoms and the establishment of an elected parliament, expressed in the October Manifesto. The working people celebrated. However, as under the American oligarchy, the new Constitution of 1906 granted little power to the people. The czar retained veto power over all law, the power to elect half the legislature of the new parliament the revolutionaries had called for, and total power over the military and the church. These concessions satisfied few socialists, many of whom still pushed for the overthrow of the czar.

Struggles for more freedom, political power, and decent living conditions continued, exploding violently again in February 1917. Russian soldiers, horribly unprepared for the Great War against Germany, were being slaughtered, wounded, and imprisoned by the millions. Troops were mutinying and deserting by the tens of thousands each month. The people were starving, commodities scarce, inflation skyrocketing. The czar consistently worked to weaken the elected parliament.

On February 23, 90,000 people went on strike and marched in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg), demanding food and an end to the war. Tens of thousands more joined them, until Petrograd fell into chaos. Many of the strikers were women, who were left to suffer in the factories and plants as men were shipped to the bloodbath of Europe. Army groups were sent to crush the strikes, but soldiers refused to fire upon women, and many joined the protestors. Workers again took control of their workplaces. Peasants seized the land of the agricultural bosses. Socialist political parties recreated the 1905 soviet. The people organized socialist communities characterized by cooperatively- and communally-owned government, childcare facilities, kitchens, laundries, farms, and factories, and also characterized by personal freedoms when homosexuality, abortion, and birth control were legalized.[2]

Without the power of the military, the czar surrendered his power in March.

But the battle was far from over. As the world has been reminded in the recent Arab Spring, the ousting of a dictator often leaves political establishments in the best position to take control. The political party that took charge of the transition government, the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), had been a liberal party born during the 1905 revolution, but was distinctly non-socialist, made up of political elites and aristocrats led by Prince Georgy Lvov. The transition government was expected to organize elections for a Constituent Assembly, in which the people would democratically select representatives to compose a new government. But the Kadets announced they would continue the war, and would not organize such elections until the war was concluded. This outraged the people, and a new wave of massive protests shook Russia. Half a million workers and soldiers marched on July 1, 1917 in Petrograd alone; they called for the war’s end and all political power to be handed over to the soviets, the worker councils. Hundreds of soviets banded together into an All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The Kadet government responded with the usual means of repression, but was forced to yield in July; Alexander Kerensky, from a coalition of socialist parties, was made the new prime minister by the political establishment. But Kerensky also refused to organize a Constituent Assembly. He declared himself commander-in-chief and Russia a republic.

Civil unrest continued, and more and more the soviets, having no political power of their own, looked toward a party called the Bolsheviks for representation. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, would increase in popularity and come to dominate the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, taking the reigns of the worker revolution, and would thus become an enemy of the Kerensky regime. But the Bolsheviks did not hold the anti-statist views of anarchists, other socialists, or even much of the citizenry. Lenin rejected free speech, and said that the workers were “a hundred times further to the left”[3] than he or the Bolsheviks. In fact, “The anti-Bolshevik, left-wing labor movement opposed the Leninists because they did not go far enough… [Leninists] used the international radical movement to satisfy specifically Russian needs, which soon became synonymous with the needs of the Bolshevik Party-State.”[4]

Guerin wrote that the party “had been authoritarians for a long time, and were imbued with ideas of the State, of dictatorship, of centralization, of a ruling party, of management of the economy from above, of all things which were in flagrant contradiction with a really libertarian conception of soviet democracy.”[5] Lenin wrote before the October 1917 Revolution that the anti-capitalist organization of industry should be overseen by the State, that it should seize a monopoly over all industry and operate in the interests of the people and not capitalist owners.[6] The Bolsheviks even “regarded the soviets with suspicion as embarrassing competitors.”[7] They were interested in ending capitalism and building a new, prosperous Russia without suffering or poverty, but without question sought the power to oversee this process themselves as a ruling party. But in order to appeal to a far more liberal base, the party often had to offer support to ideas that contradicted their traditional beliefs. In the words of the anarchist Voline, “in order to catch the imagination of the masses, gain their confidence and their sympathy, the Bolshevik Party announced…slogans which had up till then been characteristic…of anarchism,”[8] like “All power to the soviets!” The party had to make concessions here and there and play along with certain ideas in order to survive and grow.

As soviets across Russia pressured the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to end the Kerensky government, the Bolsheviks organized an armed uprising that faced no real resistance. On November 7, Lenin led tens of thousands of armed supporters to the government buildings in Petrograd and took them over. The Winter Palace was seized and the Kerensky officials were arrested. The Bolsheviks seized power, and while it was legitimized by the soviets and a cause for celebration among much of the citizenry, libertarian socialists and anarchists were dismayed. Voline wrote:

Once they have consolidated and legalized their power, the Bolsheviks–who are socialists, politicians, and believers in the State, that is to say, centralists and authoritarian men of action–will begin to arrange the life of the country and the people by governmental and dictatorial means imposed from the centers… Your soviets…will gradually become simply executive organs of the will of the central government… An authoritarian political state apparatus will be set up and, acting from above, it will seek to crush everything with its iron fist… Woe betide anyone who is not in agreement with the central authority.[9]

Anarchist Errico Malatesta warned that the

…armed forces which have served to defend the Revolution against external enemies…tomorrow will serve to impose the will of the dictators on the workers, to check the course of the Revolution, to consolidate newly established interests, and to defend a newly privileged class against the masses. Lenin, Trotsky, and their companions are certainly sincere revolutionaries, but they are preparing the government cadres which will enable their successors to profit by the Revolution and kill it. They will be the first victims of their own methods.[10]

And all this is precisely what happened. Despite a 1918-1922 civil war, in which other political parties and anti-Bolshevik organizations battled to remove Lenin and his party, despite intervention by the United States military and other Allied powers, and despite persistent riots and strikes against their regime, the Bolsheviks became the ruling party of Russia. They arrested and executed political opponents, crushed independence movements among peoples like the Ukrainians, and established a bureaucracy of directors to manage the economy. Many of these directors were wealthy capitalists “left over from old Russian capitalism, who had adapted themselves all too quickly to institutions of the soviet type, and had got themselves into responsible positions in the various commissariats, insisting that economic management should be entrusted to them and not to workers’ organizations.”[11] They dismantled worker cooperatives, refusing to allow any factory or company to operate with its own democratic will. Government dictators replaced capitalist dictators. The workers and the soviet worker councils had no real power, and were subject to all decisions made by the State.[12] Anarchist groups became the most active and the most popular among the Russian people by 1918, but the Bolsheviks systematically crushed their movement by 1921, criminalizing anarchist literature and activities, then arresting, exiling, or executing anarchists and other libertarians.[13] The dream of worker self-management in Russia died under authoritarian socialists, under communists, under “the vilest and most dangerous lie of our century…Red Bureaucracy,” as Mikhail Bakunin said.[14] He declared:

I detest communism because it is the negation of liberty and I cannot conceive anything human without liberty. I am not a communist because communism concentrates all the powers of society and absorbs them into the State, because it leads inevitably to the centralization of property in the hands of the State, while I want to see the State abolished. I want the complete elimination of the authoritarian principle of state tutelage which has always subjected, oppressed, exploited, and depraved men while claiming to moralize and civilize them. I want society, and collective or social property, to be organized from the bottom up through free association and not from the top down by authority of any kind… In that sense I am a collectivist and not at all a communist.[15]

Though crushed in Russia, the soviet worker councils inspired other ordinary people throughout Europe, in Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, Bavaria. Guerin writes of Ukraine, which was shaken by peasant revolts and saw brief independence after World War I:

Peasants united in “communes” or “free-work soviets,” and communally tilled the land for which they had fought with their former owners. These groups respected the principles of equality and fraternity. Each man, woman, or child had to work in proportion to his or her strength, and comrades elected to temporary managerial functions subsequently returned to their regular work alongside the other members of the communes.

This Bolsheviks destroyed this movement also.

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Notes

[1] Guerin, 82

[2] Maass, Case for Socialism, 133

[3] Guerin, 83

[4] Paul Mattick, Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969), p. 295.

[5] Guerin, 86

[6] Guerin, 86-87

[7] Guerin, 84

[8] Guerin, 85

[9] Guerin, 87-88

[10] Guerin, 112

[11] Guerin, 90

[12] Guerin, 91

[13] Guerin, 95-96

[14] Guerin, 22

[15] Guerin, 22

The Division of the Ottoman Empire

Posted on by under History

On May 16, 1916, French and British diplomats put the finishing touches on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided up the terminated Ottoman state into territorial zones controlled by the British, French, and Russians.

Negotiators George Picot of France and Sir Mark Sykes of Britain drafted the original document from November 1915 to February 1916, but Sir Edward Grey of Britain and M. Paul Cambon of France hammered out the portion that detailed the fate of the Arabs and their place in the British and French empires. The British aimed to carve up Arabian land that could bridge its European and Asian territories, allowing easy transportation from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, and thus the crown jewel of the empire, India. The British further desired a French buffer zone between themselves and Russia, and wanted Palestine controlled by international forces to prevent a French takeover. France wanted a land bridge to Persia and the Mosul oil fields, as well as control of the Mediterranean coast and southern Turkey.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement reflected the British and French policy of partition adopted during World War I aiming to dismantle the Ottoman Empire. While they previously wished to maintain the “sick man of Europe” to recover debts, the war provided an opportunity to gain strategic advantages and vast amounts of territory and resources. The Agreement also exemplified the British policy of making assurances concerning Arabs it never intended to keep. It hints at preparing Arabia for one independent state, an empty promise already made by the British government to the Sharif of Mecca as justification for the ensuing land grab; the Anglo-French section begins by declaring: “France and Great Britain are prepared to recognize and uphold an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States.”

Of course, the rest of the document made it plain the aim was actually to increase European imperialism in the region, as the powers outlined their right to “establish direct or indirect administration or control as they may desire” in their zones. Rights were given in the form of “priority of enterprises” such as commerce and shipping, control over ports, management of water, restrictions on railroad construction, freedom of troop transportation and goods movement, management of tariffs and custom barriers, control of weapons, and a ban on granting any other imperialist nation power in the Middle East. In the weak guise of fulfilling Arab hopes, the Sykes-Picot Agreement declared the heart of the Ottoman Empire belonged to France and Britain. The Arabs were outraged when the document was leaked by the Russians.

This was not a formal treaty, but rather a policy statement: a simple clarification of France and Britain’s goals and an arrangement that could satisfy both while keeping the other in check. Sir Mark Sykes was not even an official diplomat (he was a Member of Parliament), and while the negotiators had the backing of their respective governments, national leaders did not sign it. Its intended secrecy and the later embarrassment over its exposure suggests it was never meant to be anything more than a quiet, unofficial plan between two untrusting allies.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement changed the face of the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire disappeared, replaced by European-controlled spheres of influence. Britain gained territory in the modern regions of Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait, and benefited more from their acquisitions than did the French. France occupied Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Turkey. Palestine was placed under international rule.

The spheres of influence were later the basis for the mandate system, wherein a foreign nation developed (occupied) another until self-government was possible (yet in practice never granted). The development of the mandate system in the early 1920s would lead to the creation of the Middle East’s modern-day national borders, most determined without much consideration of the religious and ethnic animosities that would be suddenly thrown into a country together. However, the fight for Arabian independence would be long and hard, as foreign occupation would continue for decades after the borders were drawn.

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My Time With Special Needs Children

Posted on by under Politics

In 2013, after finishing my graduate studies, I accepted a job as a paraprofessional at an elementary school, working with special education and emotionally disturbed children in the Blue Valley School District.

I worked with W in the mornings. He was a friendly, energetic second-grade boy, skilled at math but slow at reading and writing. His ADHD was untreated. At his best, he was a creative spirit who loved to talk to adults and students alike. At his worst, as with all our kids, he refused to accept adult authority or complete his assignments. He would often kick his desk in anger, scream, cry, throw things on the floor. Once he became so angry he jumped on a table and bellowed like an animal. At times like that he was physically removed from the classroom and placed in our “quite room,” a padded room where our students were put when they become a danger to themselves or others (though our kids also used it to relax or nap). In this room, he once shrieked that he would kill me. But when it was over and it was all out of his system, he was quickly happy again as if nothing happened.

W, after the trauma of his parents’ divorce, was savagely raped by his new step-brother, a boy of 13. W likely has PTSD. He was terrified of and idolized his brother. One day he brought to school a drawing his brother made of himself, and all W wanted to do was stare at it. I was finally able to convince him to put it away so he didn’t have to think about the event his whole day. He was in therapy, but as a victim he will nevertheless be more likely to molest others when he is older.

I also worked with N in the mornings. He was a fifth-grade boy with Autism who had an incredible memory, excelled at math, and loved to clean. His mind was terribly logical, and he needed his day structured, with a minute-by-minute routine carefully followed. He was terrified of fire alarms, and I left the building with him before any drill. N often spoke in hypotheticals like:

If I was getting physically aggressive and was being destructive of property, would you get your walkie and say, “Could the principal come to C pod? I’m having trouble here.” Would you say that?

N accepted the consequences of his actions well, because he cared deeply about rules. But he also seemed to get a bit of a high breaking them. He was obsessed with curse words, enjoying the shock and awe of blurting out a random “fuck!” in class, and used Google to try to find new words to use (and he once searched for porn while at school). He sometimes encouraged our other kids to swear or throw rocks at recess, delighting in the rebellion. He loved to say things like “Shut up!” and “Zip it, happy meal!” He would sometimes throw chairs and become physically aggressive toward peers and paras, but this wasn’t common. N had a good home life; he was thoughtful, curious, and creative, and we enjoyed each other’s company so much I ended up being his para at summer camp after that school year.

I worked with L in the afternoons. She was the sweetest child I ever met. Her mother drank heavily (and was likely on drugs) while pregnant, so L had the cognitive functions expected with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was a third grader with the mind of a 4 or 5 year old. She could not remember 1 + 1 or 1 + 2; it had to be shown to her using manipulatives like blocks or fingers. We usually drew dots on white boards together, and either added more or erased some. L was a decent reader and writer, struggling with spelling on par with other third graders. Her loving grandma, whom she lived with, owned a horse and L knew how to ride. Horses were her thing. She was not violent in any way, though she did throw her math notebook on the ground once in frustration.

Her energy was extreme. She would race about the room, laughing maniacally. When I first met her, she was shy and terrified of me, but also very sober due to meds. After switching to new meds she was more vocal and spunky, and being used to me she was soon unafraid to yell “OK, we’re done with math now!” two minutes after we began, slamming her math book shut, cackling with laughter. I think what made L so cute was she repeated things you said to her to help her process. She spent most of her day speaking to herself:

I’m going to draw on this white board with permanent marker. No! Don’t do that, sweetie. You have to show positive behavior to get a happy face for this part of math. If you don’t get enough happy faces, you don’t get the prize box!

We eventually decided she had a voice or two in her head. One of them had a name, and when I asked L about this she grew embarrassed and secretive.

There were a few kids who needed hospitalization and residential care. Two girls, N and R, had psychological problems too severe for our setting.

Then there was T, a fifth-grade boy abandoned by his parents, living with an unloving foster mother. He was on the verge of being adopted in third grade, but at the last moment the couple changed their minds. When T received low marks, his diet was restricted at home and he was made to stay in his room, which reportedly had next to nothing in it. T always made sure to have a book with him — it would sometimes be all he had for the night. He loved to read; I gave him a copy of Redwall. His foster mother disliked him, but the way she treated him was not severe enough to have him removed by social services. T weighed as much as I do and was nearly as tall, so when angry he could hurt people. He screamed and tore apart classrooms, and when we restrained him he bit. He threw a textbook once to strike another child in the face. He sprinted from the building. Usually, his breakdowns occurred at the end of the day, when he realized his score was low and there would be repercussions at home. He dreaded going home, causing him to go ballistic. We suspected T was abused as well at some early point in his tumultuous life.

There were others. K was a cute kindergartner with Autism, who when upset screamed, bit, kicked, and grabbed the front of his pants to expose himself to adults. There was M, a sweet boy who was Autistic and for years, I was told, was a self-mute. He was vocal when I came along, but when angry and defiant simply sat and refused to move or speak. Happy or enraged, he always had that same goofy smile on his face. Sometimes, when really upset, he crawled under his desk, or slowly plucked things from the wall and set them on the floor, or took a chair and carefully tipped it over until it rested comfortably on its side. But he was in love with L, so often when she insulted him or didn’t want to play he charged her and angrily waved a fist in her face.

Another boy named M, a kindergartner, lived with grandparents who thought it wise to let him play Grand Theft Auto, and thus he loved guns and tried to talk about shooting cars and cops in the game before teachers cut him off. His father was decapitated by a train.

Finally, there was C, a girl with Asperger Syndrome. She had a terrible bowl haircut and large grey eyes. But she loved learning (I taught her social studies), was very bright and thoughtful, and enjoyed Karate (sometimes threatening to use it on adults, but in general remembering to only use her powers for good). She was known to elope from the school, but was usually not physically aggressive.

It was hard to say goodbye to them.

The next year I took a similar job at a Grandview grade school that offered a higher income despite being a poorer district. While the classroom in Blue Valley was evenly mixed economically and racially (far more racially diverse than the school as a whole, which made me worry about the perception of the hundreds of white students: why are the only black kids in the school in the naughty classroom?), the Grandview class was mostly poor black boys. Two or three times that year I found myself discussing race with them when they raised the topic; one amusing moment I won’t soon forget was when one inquired about a girlfriend of mine. He asked, “Is your girlfriend black, Mr. Griffin?” I replied, “No, I’ve never had a black girlfriend.” “Ha!” another laughed. “Mr. Griffin can’t have no black girlfriend! There oughta be a law against that!” “You know, it wasn’t that long ago that…”

The boy who found the thought of me with a black woman so hilarious and strange was a large, round second grader named C. From what I could gather his home life was pleasant enough, but he had great difficulty with authority and loved being in charge. He apparently ran the show at home and had trouble changing his attitude at school (days with a substitute teacher meant he had to be carefully monitored or he would attempt to take over classroom leadership). C, despite being a football player and knowing full well how much bigger and stronger he was than all the other second graders, was not one for violence. A gentle giant. He would threaten to beat kids up at times, but when angry would simply refuse to move and let two or three adults struggle to carry him to the private cool-down room (no padded room this time; students had to be held until calm). But he was delightful to teach, loved learning and excelled academically, and would often have us adults trying to suppress gales of laughter at his wit and flamboyant personality (“He’s more of a sista, really!” as one of my black co-paras put it). When C danced at Friday dance parties, however, there was no hiding our mirth.

The class was mostly second graders. There was R, who was always kind, calm, and thoughtful but struggled with academics, especially reading. I heard he brought a knife to school once, however, before my time there. M was almost certainly Autistic, though his mother didn’t want him tested. He was sweet and full of boundless energy, but could throw quite the tantrum — and sometimes objects. His meltdowns were always more “sad crying” than “angry crying.” He often spoke to himself, and I remember him saying “Oh, snaps!” when surprised. P came from one of the poorest families. He barely spoke at first and remained quiet throughout the year, usually a rather serious look on his face. For being skinny he put up quite the struggle when he had to be removed for not following directions or misbehaving, such as when he shouted “nigga!” at recess. He also stole from time to time, and even committed sexual assault — exposing himself and thrusting against a girl. Again, he was a second grader. And again, possibly abused himself.

There was a kindergartner, Z, who when upset always spoke of hurting or killing his cat. I often told him how much I loved cats and asked how his was doing, hoping to encourage peaceful interaction; abuse of animals can often predict worse acts later on. A white third grader named Z was abandoned, at least for a time, by his mother and lived with relatives, as did other boys. A black third grader named Z came from an extremely poor family. His father was a Burger King worker. Z was prone to screaming when having a breakdown, shrieks that could be heard throughout the school. L, a third grader, was sweet but very talkative, a bit nervous and socially awkward — sort of a chubby, white, human C-3PO.

An adjacent classroom had our older boys: a fifth-grader who was friendly and witty but often refused to do schoolwork and liked to challenge authority (he was held back, and resented being sixth-grade age in an elementary school); a usually stoic fourth grader who had few social skills, lived with a schizophrenic mother who lived by welfare alone, laughed uproariously at anything related to private parts (he may have been sexually abused), and often reeked of cat urine; a fourth grader obsessed with Minecraft; an ultra-sensitive fourth grader with a mohawk who was stained by secondhand smoke; and a fifth grader who lived with a grandma who told him she didn’t want him, had a brother in prison, once cut up his hand by angrily punching a window at home, and put me in an odd spot when he tried to physically barrel his way past our principal to escape the building, prompting me to restrain him while a black parent in the office next door recorded what she called white brutality against black youth. That was not a pleasant experience, to say the least.

I have many fond memories of my boys, such as drawing them pictures of superheroes, villains, and monsters. I loved teaching them and watching them learn. Taking them to specials (art, gym, music, etc.) was always a joy, and helping them practice controlling their anger and letting adults be in charge were powerful moments. Other experiences, such as daily supervision of hygiene (mouthwash, deodorant) or riding the bus with them to make sure they got home safely, were not so happy yet still made me proud to be doing good in the world. (On the bus I saw their homes: some modest houses in pleasant neighborhoods, others tiny, crumbling, crime-ridden, roach-infested apartments.)

I loved all the students I worked with those years. They were rebellious of authority in their own ways. Like other kids, they could be selfish or nasty. They would act poorly just to get attention or avoid schoolwork. Some could grow violent when enraged. They experienced trauma, loss, abandonment, hunger, anger, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, extreme poverty, physical and mental impairment, and psychological and emotional disorders of the worst kind. Most of the fathers of my Grandview boys were in prison. Some of these children are the most likely to commit awful crimes and go to prison when older (a grisly rape-murder in Kansas City a couple years ago was committed by boys who formerly attended the same special education classroom in which I worked). But they were sweet children. They knew how to treat others with kindness. They would share, compliment each other, laugh and play and sing together. When they did so I reflected on their resilience. Life dealt them horrible hands, yet they found joy where they could. But when they were upset, when I struggled to hold them as they flailed, screamed, and wept, I marveled at how they functioned at all. How they tolerated a single math problem we asked of them, after what they had been born into and experienced! Truly, their rebellion against authority was an effort to control something — anything — in a life as turbulent as the sea, their misbehavior a product of factors beyond their control. When they broke down, after the anger passed, they would often sob uncontrollably, for far longer than the incident or infraction warranted. When I held them, now to comfort and not restrain, I thought I knew why they wailed. They wailed against an unfair life.

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KMBC Doesn’t Realize ‘Thug’ is a Racial Code Word

Posted on by under Race Relations

On Thursday, KMBC 9 News published a story on a black man who robbed a Jimmy John’s on 39th Street, pulling out a gun and pointing it mere inches from an employee’s head. Within the story itself, the man’s reprehensible actions were reported with the professionalism one would expect from a news organization. He was labeled a “suspect” and a “gunman.”

When KMBC shared the story on Facebook, however, professionalism was abandoned for racially-charged language. “Do you recognize this thug?” the status asked.

What most thinking persons suspect, yet the news station seems oblivious to, is that “thug” has indeed become a modern racial slur. Thug is almost exclusively used, by media and individuals, to describe black male suspects or criminals (or even, at times, peaceful black protesters or nonviolent black drug users). Richard Sherman put it best when he said, “The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays.” This was after he was labeled a thug despite not engaging in any violent or vulgar language or actions, the precise same label actual rioters in Baltimore received thousands of times on major networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.

Defined as a “ruffian,” “criminal,” or “violent person,” the word has gone through slight evolutions over the years and been applied to many different social troublemakers, from members of the Italian mob to unionists to civil rights and anti-war activists. Like the N-word, thug was adopted by black hip-hop and rap artists as a way to describe self and culture, and is sometimes used to describe black suspects and criminals by prominent African Americans like Barack Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. And there are exceptions to the rule — when thug is used for whites. However, none of this makes it acceptable for media outlets to also partake, knowingly or unwittingly, in language that is today typically reserved for people of color. It is indecent and insensitive for any professional organization that serves a diverse community.

It is almost difficult to envision KMBC asking, “Do you recognize this thug?” in reference to a white man. This is because our language, like our society as a whole, has yet to reach a place of racial equity, a place where blacks are viewed and spoken of in ways no worse and no better than whites. We must watch media portrayals of black criminals closely for signs of bias.

KMBC needs to recall that words can have a great deal of power. They can move us toward that place of racial equity or take us farther away, but they rarely keep us still. The station also must realize avoiding terms that have been tinged with racial meaning is not terribly difficult. As one black Kansas Citian commented on the story: “Thug??? Why not man, suspect, person, criminal, gunman, etc. We all know why he was referred to as a ‘thug.’” Whether or not KMBC realized this word has racial meaning, this seems like a good time to listen to Kansas Citians of color and reflect upon why and how language can hurt its own viewers.

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It’s That Time of the Myth

Posted on by under Politics

As with any other topic, there exists a broad range of attitudes in human societies toward menstruation. Ancient cultures like the Cherokee thought menstrual blood was imbued with a woman’s strength and spirit, a source of power that could be harnessed to defeat enemies (Blood Politics, Sturm), and the Greeks may have used it for medicine and fertilizer. Menstrual blood was thought by some societies to have magical healing properties, so it was consumed or used in ointments. Yoruk women made menstruation a spiritual experience. But the attitudes have typically not been positive. Joan Chrisler summarizes the myths in Psychology of Women Quarterly:

Drops of menstrual blood upon the ground or in a river kill plants and animals; wells run dry if a menstruating woman draws water from them; men become ill if they are touched by or use any objects that have been touched by a menstruating woman; beer turns sour if a menstruating woman enters a brewery; and beer, wine, vinegar, milk, and jam go bad if touched by a menstruating woman. These beliefs have been reported in various places in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, and they are related to contemporary beliefs that women should not bathe, swim, wash their hair, do heavy housework, play sports, tend houseplants, eat or drink certain things, or engage in sexual intercourse during the menses.

The Romans thought a woman on her period could stop storms, dull swords at a glance, or use her blood to cure ailments, but also kill crops and bees, drive dogs mad, and cause people and animals to miscarry (Natural History, Pliny the Younger). Monthly bleeding was seen by some cultures as the female body ridding itself of disease, impurities, excess emotions, or demons. Eskimo men thought contact with women on their periods would spoil their next hunting outing by making them visible to prey, and Bukka women could not go in the sea because they might poison fish. Europeans in the 13th century thought that menstruation produced fumes that would “poison the eyes of children lying in their cradles by a glance” and that a child conceived while a woman was on her period would have “epilepsy and leprosy because menstrual matter is extremely venomous.” In the 1920s and for decades later, pseudoscience claimed “menotoxins” secreted by women killed plants and caused colic and child asthma. In Britain as late as 1982, menstruating women were instructed to avoid killing pigs, milking cows, and making butter so the food wouldn’t go bad (Everyday Discourses of Menstruation, Newton). Plus, dough wouldn’t rise.

Today some Nepali force menstruating women to sleep in sheds and stay out of school so they won’t infect others or anger the gods (similar traditions persist in rural Africa and Brazil), and some Indians still believe magical menstrual blood is an aphrodisiac if consumed. In some parts of Ghana and among the Ulithi the cycle is celebrated and women receive gifts. A sect of Hindus in India celebrate the yearly menstruation of the goddess Kamakhya Devi with their huge Ambuwasi Puja festival, yet Indian women are typically barred from entering places of worship while “impure.”

In the United States, of course, the idea that women shouldn’t hold high political positions because of their cycle exists and has for a long time. In 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman infamously explained to U.S. Congresswoman Patsy Mink that a woman should not be president — or perhaps even a CEO — due to “raging hormonal imbalances.” Just imagine a “menopausal woman president who had to make the decision of the Bay of Pigs” or the head of a bank “making a loan under these raging hormonal influences.” Yes, because the Bay of Pigs was such a success. In 2009, conservative pundit G. Gordon Liddy said of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: ‘‘Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then!’’ Hillary Clinton’s presidential runs in 2008 and 2016 drew plenty of the same from conservatives. Dimwits preached the tired inanity that a period could lead to nuclear war and holocaust. From male commentators on Fox News to female CEOs on Facebook, it’s consistently made clear that many believe menstruation disqualifies women from gaining the same power as men. We still live in a nation where sexism is a problem.

This stigma, that a woman who menstruates is too dangerous and unstable to handle major political affairs, exists alongside a larger stigma that positions menstruation as something shameful and horrid. This goes beyond mere evolutionary aversions to bodily fluids, to being “grossed out” by blood, urine, feces, or semen. Those attitudes exist, but do not always carry the same degree of associated stigma in a society (further, the fact some societies have more positive views of menstruation and others more negative views reveals the power of social factors as well). As Emily Jupp at the Independent wrote:

It’s interesting that so much embarrassment, awkwardness, and shame surround a natural bodily function experienced by half the population at some point in their lives. We don’t hide toilet paper away, yet some women still get flustered if a tampon drops out of their handbag, or we might buy a floral-patterned tin to hide our sanitary pads. If you spotted some toilet roll tucked away and covered in a little bespoke baggy in someone’s loo, wouldn’t you find it faintly ridiculous? And yet that’s what we do all the time with sanitary products, as though the evidence that we have periods is something to be ashamed of.

The mark of shame is pervasive, from the word “period” being censored on television to hiding away the “feminine hygiene” section in stores (which, as Chrisler writes, “itself suggests that there is something dirty about women”) to Kotex marketing “a new ‘crinkle-free’ wrapper, so that other women in a public restroom will not know that someone is unwrapping one of their products.” Experiments show people sit further away from a woman they suspect is on her period and judge her as less competent and likable. Research also shows women expect this, which demotivates them. Men and women alike are often highly embarrassed about this topic or anything that approaches it. Women commonly report that particularly great shame accompanies menarche.

Again, this is not to say other, related things don’t cause shame and embarrassment — the bloke who inadvertently gets an erection in class or has his condoms discovered by his mother for example. Addressing the stigma of menstruation doesn’t posit others don’t exist. It is important to ask how shame comes about and is perpetuated, and what might be done to alleviate it if that would be beneficial to society. These questions should be asked concerning many topics related to biology and sex, but this article only addresses a particular one.

While acknowledging the role that biological aversion to anything that exits the human body plays in the creation of stigma, we must consider the social factors as well. Different social factors will produce different attitudes in different societies. A more general piece would examine the absolute hysteria over human anatomy, nudity, sexual intercourse, sexual orientation and gender identity, and so on that still grips much of America, but looking at how social factors affect a specific issue like menstruation serves as a nice exemplar of the whole.

I see three major ideologies that affect American cultural attitudes on menstruation: patriarchy, religion, and conservatism. Whether these effects are positive or negative I will mostly leave to the reader for the sake of time, even though my position is clear and my last paragraph suggests action.

The ways in which patriarchy, religion, and conservatism encourage or perpetuate discomfort or disgust toward menstruation are obvious.

Consider patriarchy, the domination of societal power by men. What has historically been used to justify such a system? All the talk of women being inferior — inferior intelligence, reason, or courage, say — but also the fact that the ability to carry children or the menstrual irritability that would destroy a nation should a woman be president or even vote mean we’d all be better off if women were consigned to the home. In other words, biology dictates what women should or shouldn’t be allowed to do. This is blatant discrimination and patriarchal tyranny, of course, but the point is menstruation has been used in history as an excuse to not allow women to do this or that, and still is. They were (are) considered unclean and handicapped by periods. So if menstruation serves a function in a male-dominated society — if it’s a means of preserving male power by holding back the other sex — it is quite natural that men would hold and perpetuate negative attitudes towards it (even subconsciously), such as disgust. It’s highly useful.

This is on top of the fact that because men don’t experience menstruation it easily becomes taboo in a male-dominated society. It shouldn’t be discussed. They say man fears what he doesn’t understand, but I have always found this a poor choice of words. A better phrasing: Man is disgusted by anything outside the norm of his own experience. What he doesn’t experience is abnormal by default. Sadly, many women, particularly religious and conservative women, have been indoctrinated by his vain worldview, taught to view their own biology as shameful and horrid. Well, a female-dominated society would look quite different, wouldn’t it? Imagine if our society had been historically run by women and men were the powerless, marginalized sex. Don’t you suppose attitudes toward menstruation would be less taboo, more openly discussed, more normal? If you think it might, you can therefore see what patriarchy does.

Chrysler writes:

It is powerful members of a society who determine what the social (or physical) norms are and what defines people as deviant. In the case of stigma applied to women’s bodies, the norms are androcentric [male-centered]. Stigmatization legitimates the status hierarchy because it allows the nonstigmatized to justify the status quo and their place in it. Stigmatizing others also enhances the self-esteem and personal empowerment of the stigmatizers because it promotes favorable social comparisons with outgroups [marginalized women].

Powerful people can also protect themselves from the types of threats [to male power] by distancing themselves from stigmatized individuals, bodily substances, and biological processes; by objectifying the stigmatized groups and thinking of them less as individuals and more as objects to be derided, admired, or manipulated; by discriminating against stigmatized individuals in social and employment settings in order to minimize their contact with those individuals; and by setting and enforcing cultural rules that require individuals to control, eliminate, or hide their stigmatized marks from public view. After all, as Steinem wrote, if men could menstruate, the menses would be a badge of honor, not a mark of stigma.

As for religion, that one is almost too obvious to get into. Religious texts written by primitive male-run desert tribes that billions of people still hold dear and take far too seriously of course describe menstruation in superstitious and primitive ways. For example women on their periods are “unclean,” so unclean that anything they even touch is unclean, at least according to the bible. There are many examples in Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and other holy books of the horrors of this natural human body function. All unsurprising considering the unscientific, ignorant men who wrote them and the barbaric times in which they were penned.

So here you have God or Allah or whomever passing out laws that treat menstruation with disgust, as something that makes you a pariah. That’s going to influence societies and people, and has for thousands of years. It’s going to hurt and shame a great many women. Again, imagine if it were women who were the priests throughout history and made up the gods. You can imagine things might be a bit different in how female biology is discussed in holy books, how the church treated women, and so on.

On top of all this is the hysteria over sex itself, which on its own is a dark, dirty secret in the eyes of the ultra-religious. It’s taboo, can’t be talked about, certainly can’t be on ads and in shows, books, films, or even art. So anything related to menstruation is out by default. I don’t think there’s any question that less religious people have been the first to be more open and public about sexuality and sexual matters as the human race progresses. Considering that’s something the ultra-religious consistently complain about, it seems a fairly uncontroversial opinion.

Similarly, there’s conservatism, which by definition is resistance to new ideas and change (the term “conservatism” has been explicitly used to justify holding women back in U.S. history, I might add). So you have entrenched patriarchy and unyielding religious indoctrination since birth, and the conservative attitude, whether consciously or subconsciously, is to maintain the status quo. Conservatism by definition will resist new, more open attitudes to sex and menstruation and related topics. If you don’t, you’re more liberal on the issue, again by definition.

Political and social conservatism are very closely interwoven with religion (which conservatives take pride in) and patriarchy (which doesn’t get as much enthusiasm these days but is still an issue among some on the Right — check out the ultraconservative, sexist website Return of Kings, but not after eating). Many conservatives are deeply uncomfortable with and quite closed to public discussions of sex, so again menstruation is basically out automatically.

It won’t be controversial to say that the people who create period-related content like this cover of the Village Voice are usually not conservatives, nor is it a shock to suggest the people who react with the most consternation likely are conservatives. Liberals and feminists, like nonreligious people, tend to be much more open about matters of sex and anatomy (whether or not you agree that’s wise is your business). Because of this aversion to open discussion of sex and female biology, misinformation and disgust are allowed to breed like viruses in a petri dish. For a final round of role playing, imagine if there were only liberals in the U.S. Do you not suppose a reaction to the Village Voice cover — deemed indecent, vile, vomit-inducing, and so on by conservative critics — would be a bit quieter? Would it even be a thing? Well, the reaction itself is going to perpetuate ideas of female biology being so nasty it’s unmentionable. It will teach others to react in the same way. I think it’s clear where the loudest reactions come from and how the next generation is taught that menstruation is shameful and appalling. That’s conservatism perpetuating the hysteria.

This is not to say all religious persons and conservatives are horrified by periods, believe they shouldn’t ever be mentioned publicly, think they disqualify women from gaining the same power as men, etc. But I think we all understand reality too well to think these ideological factors don’t impact attitudes toward menstruation.

If we see women experiencing shame over their own biology and men perpetuating that shame and holding women back as undesirable, as any decent person would, we need to normalize menstruation, and that begins with open discussion and thoughtful listening to the experiences of women and unyielding assaults upon the ignorance and misogyny of men. We need to question the prevailing attitudes. That’s the only way stigma eases, and when you think about it there are many modern examples. The stigma of pornography use is easing, as is the masturbation stigma. It’s become easier, perhaps, to come out as gay or trans as humanity has progressed a bit. This doesn’t mean bodily functions aren’t still gross to most humans, but it does mean fewer humans are experiencing shame because of our innate sexual nature and biology. We have to likewise ask ourselves: Why should women be embarrassed concerning periods? Why should men make them feel embarrassed or handicapped? Why should it be this way? Why not build a society where the stigma doesn’t exist?

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