It’s not hard to see her point. By and large Jacoby’s book was aimed at what currently passes for conservatism, religious or otherwise and ‘folks’, however much some may identify with a Joan Baez or an early Bob Dylan, qualifies as an inherently conservative word (actually just one letter off from the Volk so prominently employed in Nazi mythology).

A basic dictionary definition for ‘folks’ leads off with: “The common people of a society or region considered as the representatives of a traditional way of life and especially as the originators or carriers of the customs, beliefs, and arts that make up a distinctive culture.“

Common, traditional, passive — that’s certainly the vision which the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin indulge in with their endless exhortations for “the Folks”. Outrage about such shady sentiment can easily be mocked with a wink and dismissed as intellectual elitism, thereby only further reinforcing the folk imagery.

Phillip Roth aptly captured this point in his novel The Plot Against America when the newly elected isolationist Lindbergh administration, through an agency called the Office of American Absorption, introduces a program called Just Folks, “a volunteer program introducing city youth to the traditional ways of heartland life”, causing the narrator’s Jewish father to think that the whole idea is to separate Jewish children from their families and convert them into honorary conservative WASPs. His concerns were harshly dismissed by his enthusiastic son and sister-in-law, who typically accuses her brother-in-law of fearing that “his children might escape winding up as narrow minded and frightened as he was”.

Again the Orwellian paradox:  serious and obvious skepticism set against folksy populism with the aw-shucks defense always available should the inquiry grow too serious. Plus as Roth demonstrated, the issue of race is a factor that screams off the page no matter how much America’s first black president goes out of his way to placate both Wall Street and the heartland. White nationalists and the like have always called themselves the only real Americans, a factor that will only bubble to the surface more prominently as the white majority continues to dwindle rapidly in the coming years.

Of course, it’s not only Republicans and conservative blowhards that employ such rhetoric. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both oozed with it. Recently it was Barack Obama, a Harvard graduate, speaking at a rally in Minnesota, who drove the point home almost too perfectly:

You’ll hear a lot of folks, by the way, say that government is broken. Well, government and politics are two different things. Government is our troops who are fighting on our behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s government.  Government are also those FEMA folks when there’s a flood or a drought or some emergency who come out and are helping people out.…Government are our firefighters and our police officers, and the folks who keep our water clean and our air clean to breathe, and our agricultural workers. And when you go to a  national park, and those folks in the hats – that’s government.

There is something particularly grating about the bipartisan tactic of American politicians going out of their way to intentionally sound more stupid. It may not have an equivalent anywhere in the world and it is an easy temptation to view the decline of the U.S. through the decline of rhetoric, as if it, in a nutshell, reflects the staggering numbers of Americans who believe the world was really created in seven days or that humans and dinosaurs once shared the earth. Yet the main impetus for any American decline was summed up nicely by Matthew Continetti in The Weekly Standard some time ago.

In declaring Sarah Palin as the possible heir to the American populist tradition he identified with Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, and Ronald Reagan, Continetti demonstrated the trajectory of American politics. Jackson and Bryan, despite some major transgressions (Jackson for his callus treatment of the Cherokees, Bryan for his sneaking sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan), would still be considered by humans to be at least somewhat on the Left, while Reagan, president almost a century after Bryan’s unsuccessful campaigns, fell squarely on the Right. That the same is true of Palin (or Michelle Bachman) shows both the slippery nature of populism as well as the way it has slid. Continetti puts it like this:

Over the last century, the popular energies that fueled Jackson and Bryan shifted to the right side of the political spectrum. Increasingly, the public directed its animosity at the bureaucratic and governmental elites who robbed ordinary folk of liberties in the pursuit of “social justice.” At the judges who designed busing schemes that disrupted neighborhood schools. …For the last quarter century, right-wing populism, often infused with social conservatism, has been the most demonized force in American politics–and also the most interesting and dynamic.

It is in this populism, under the diverse guises of the great white backlash, the war on drugs, welfare reform, American Exceptionalism, all aligned with corporate power, that the Left can’t seem to put a serious dent; this, despite increased poverty, unemployment, and declining infrastructure, not to mention massive plundering by the upper class. In the closing pages of The Populist Persuasion, published more than a decade ago, Michael Kazin argues persuasively that some form of leftist populism is necessary to break the anomie that continues to dominate left wing politics. It simply leaves a large remnant of the masses open to reactionary populism. Kazin’s words echo even louder today:

To move any closer toward redistributing wealth and revitalizing mass democracy, intellectuals have to take part in social movements that knit such people together…Otherwise, we risk spending the future as spectators to the endless competition between spin doctors and copywriters, captives to anyone who seems to make the old rhetoric sing again, if only for one acceptance speech or thirty-second spot.

Only a fool would expect the Democrats to contribute to any such thing. The time for accusing them of selling out has long passed; in fact, the charge misses the point entirely. The party is simply a vassal for Wall Street money. Still history offers a shield against hopelessness. There was a time when places like Nebraska and Oklahoma were bastions of populism and socialism (Oklahoma, along with Milwaukee, was the center of American socialism with more Socialist Party members than any state). Kansas once housed Appeal to Reason, the muckraking weekly that serialized Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Even today poll numbers show that most Americans are less conservative than the beltway when it comes to things like health care and unions. There is plenty of room to maneuver with legislation like the Employee Fair Choice Act which makes it at least a little easier to organize unions and it should be easy to point out that those who spout such reactionary populist rhetoric aren’t in it for love of mother and country but just the opposite: disgust and hatred of fellow citizens.

If Richard Hofstadter was right when he wrote the United States itself was doomed to be an ideology, at least in the sense that the meaning of being American will always be cherished and debated, then for the Left to have a chance it will have to revitalize its own American-based populism. That can be a tedious and risky fight, but it is a necessary one.

A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four and nothing over. Thomas Gradgrind, Sir- peremptorily Thomas- Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket. Sir, ready to weight and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, case of simple arithmetic.

It’s hard to fathom that the banal philosophy of such a universally mocked caricature from Victorian times would make a strong resurgence over a century later. Yet just like neoliberalism, another Victorian leftover, this ideological brand has achieved bi-partisan support, near pundit consensus, and billionaire backing. Substitute test scores for ‘facts’ and Bill Gates or Joel Klein for Gradgrind and we have an almost perfect match for what passes for educational philosophy and reform these days.

It was Joel Klein, former schools chancellor of New York City credited with implementing major changes such as opening over 100 charter schools and pushing for teacher merit pay, writing in the June issue of  The Atlantic regarding criticism that reformers like himself ought to be more collaborative with existing education structures, who said “Collaboration is the elixir of the em>status-quo crowd.” The essay was the expected paean to the usual buzzwords like accountability, choice, union obstructionism, and test scores.

Test scores are sacrosanct, particularly in the aftermath of Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB),  enthusiastically passed by both parties in 2001. The bill mandated schools improve test scores in reading and math in grammar schools (third grade through eighth grade) or risk closure in five years. It left it up to individual states to create their own tests and determine relevant curriculums.

However, an editorial on the normally reactionary NY Daily News op-ed page on June 14th succinctly explained the obvious pitfall of NCLB. It turns out that after eight years of Klein’s stewardship (along with billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg) 80% of the graduates of New York City’s public high schools are not ready for college or successful careers. This according to the state’s Education Department. The News puts it:

After steadily climbing over the past nine years, the proportion of city students graduating in four years hit 61%, or 65% counting August completions. That used to reason to cheer. No more. Now additional statistics are cause for alarm…In other words, standards were so dumbed down that vast swaths of the school system were offering only a pretense of a quality education…The rising graduation rate of city high schools is of little consolation when most of the diplomas are barely worth the paper they’re printed on

Things don’t seem to be much better nationally on that front. On the same day as the Daily News op-ed, the New York Times and other news organizations reported that only 20 percent of fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders, and 12 percent of high school seniors who took the latest National Assessment Exam demonstrated proficiency in history (for example, only two percent of high school seniors correctly answered a question about Brown v Board of Education); the study of history, while perhaps being valuable in itself and critically important for an educated citizenry, not being reading or math and therefore overlooked by NCLB test cramming.

Then, of course, there is Michelle Rhee, the glamour girl for free-market education whose picture has glazed the cover of just about every weekly news magazine during her three year tenor as chancellor of DC public schools. Rhee became a hero to conservatives and libertarians for closing schools, firing dozens of principals, over 200 teachers, and managing a teachers’ contract that leans towards merit pay. Worship of Rhee went so far that during the 2008 election Obama and McCain pathetically duked it out over who was closer to Rhee’s opinion about vouchers.

However, she was all but forced to resign after incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid in a contest that was billed as a referendum on Rhee’s running of the city’s school system. Not long after revelations emerged that recent state tests in several DC schools contained an exorbitant amount of erasures that changed wrong answers to correct ones. For example, the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus, touted by Rhee as a prime example of getting results since the percentage of students who achieved proficiency on DC tests jumped from 10 percent to 58 percent in just two years. The principal and teachers were showered with bonuses while computer analysis of erasures in one 7th grade class showed that students averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures in a reading test, compared to less than 1 average for the whole district; a very likely case of teachers under pressure from an unreasonably demanding boss and with economic incentive to take matters in their own hands, a trend that would figure to show up again elsewhere.

It is an easy truism that when simplistic numbers become the end-all corruption is an inevitable result. Thus, this is what the education revolutionaries have sowed: dumbed-down standards, narrow curriculums, meaningless test drilling, and union busting. Yet this shallow revolution is backed by deep pockets, mainly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, by far the largest foundation in the U.S., six times wealthier than the next largest, and the Walton Family Foundation (according to the foundation’s website it’s ‘more focused than ever on sustaining the Walton’s timeless small-town values’). Through large grants to cash strapped states, dependent on such stipulations as not granting teacher tenure in less than three years and ‘ensuring successful conditions for high performing charter schools and other innovative schools’, large donations to both political parties, and hundreds of millions of dollars in media advocacy (including Gates sponsoring the documentary Waiting for Superman), big money philanthropists have been able to shape the education debate and be fawned upon by the national media. Indeed one study cited by Frederick Hess in “With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education“ revealed that from 1995-2005 there were thirteen positive articles about education initiatives of major foundations for every single negative one in national news outlets.

Still all is not yet lost. For all the hyped despair about U.S. students falling behind their international counterparts this claim can be put into context. Joann Barkan, writing in Dissent Magazine (“Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools”), cites the results of two of the three major international tests- the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study. Both are given every five years. She explains the results:

The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent rankedfirst in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty ratewas 10 to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose higher still, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty.

It is the poverty rate, along with the incarceration rate, that has long separated the U.S. from other industrial countries. Mechanized test prepping, schools closing, and cheapened diplomas won’t make a dent in either, that self-reinforcing loop, in the absence of real reform and commitment to communities as a whole, figures only keep on churning.

On that note, it shouldn’t be overlooked that this year marks the 200th anniversary of a movement whose name is synonymous with technophobia and/or incompetence. The Luddites burst on the scene in northern England in 1811. It was quite a harsh time to be a stockinger (textile worker) or a worker in general: no minimum wage, the only rare ability of stockingers to own their own frames (machines), common child labor, Napoleon’s boycott of English trade, the criminalization of unions (through the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800), the War of 1812 with the U.S., poor harvests in Britain between 1809-1812, wages less than rising food prices, it all painted a grim picture.

In March 1811, in Nottingham (also home to the Sherwood Forest that staged the Robin Hood tales), British troops busted up a workers’ protest demanding more jobs and higher wages. Later that night angry workers took sledgehammers to textile machinery in a nearby village. It wasn’t long after waves of attacks were occurring over a 70 mile span as Luddites around Northern England rallied around the fictitious figure of ‘King Ludd’ whom legend had it smashed two stocking frames in 1749 after being whipped for idleness. They wrote ballads, occasionally cross-dressed, sent threatening letters to factory owners, continued their attacks on machines which spread to include more skilled cloth finishers, and appeared to have a good deal of local support. The British government responded by making machine-breaking a capital offense and positioned soldiers to protect factories. As result many Luddites were sent to the gallows or to exile in Australia. Between repression by the state and eventual economic recovery, the movement subsided. Given the secrecy involved a great deal of information died with it (the most famous legend in this regard involves young Luddite John Booth, who while being interrogated on his death bed after an attack on Rawfolds Mill in Yorkshire, allegedly by Rev. Hammond Roberson, is said to asked his interrogator if he, the interrogator, could keep a secret. When impatiently told yes, Booth muttered his final words “Aye, so could I”).

Despite lingering conservative rhetoric, shabby marketing about authenticity, and prideful boasting by technophobes, the mythology surrounding the Luddites is inaccurate. The original Luddites should not be understood as an anti-technology but as a social protest rooted in early 19th century England. The stocking frame was not a new piece of technology by the time the Luddites came around; it had existed for more than two centuries. In fact they can’t even claim originality as machine breaking had a long history in English protests, and was used by others after them. Their problem was not with technology per se, but with how it was applied. The way it was used to cheapen jobs, impoverish skilled workers, increase production with improving wages, all the class warfare that Marx and Engels would describe in their manifesto a few decades later.

In A People’s History of Science, Clifford Conner makes the very important argument that, contrary to the dominant narrative about great men of genius (Einstein, Newton, Galileo, etc), for most of human history technological improvements predated scientific theory. In other words for a long time it wasn’t great men of learning creating abstract, mathematical scientific theories that led to greater technology, but practical (i.e. experimental) innovations and improvements in technology that led to the growth of science, and credit for that technological innovation should be given to many whom history left unnamed. That includes the preliterate ancient peoples who domesticated virtually every plant and animal species we still consume, the natives who pioneered geography, navigation, and cartography, the miners, mechanics and artisans who laid the foundations of metallurgy and chemistry. As Conner puts it for example:

The experimental method that characterizes modern
science originated not in the minds of a few
elite scholars in universities but in the daily practice of
thousands of anonymous craftsmen who were continuously
utilizing trail-and-error procedures with materials and tools
in their quest to perfect their crafts.

Thus, in a sense, the Luddites were protecting what was theirs: skills, a livelihood, a technological heritage. The important thing to emphasize is that, for all the importance of grants and patents, science and technology are collective entities. Therefore responsibility and accountability are likewise collective. The importance of this cannot be overstated as technology continues to exponentially expand in our epoch, an epoch already named the

Anthropocene by many geologists due to humanity’s dominance of the planet (the idea is that in this age humanity essentially creates its own environment). More and more technology’s advancement will bring along issues that go to the basic heart of ethics: Genetics will challenge and redefine what it means to be human, nanotechnology and robotics (including the creation of Artificial Intelligence so powerful that it will be capable of creating its own greater Artificial Intelligence) will need constant regulation and democratic oversight. The enticing temptation for many who care about humanity and the environment is to have a hostile outlook to technology itself due to its relentless essence. Whatever the merits of such an attitude the fact remains is that it is a pointless one given technology’s inevitable advance. The key is harnessing technology’s great life expanding tendencies while minimizing its destructive potential, of which there are plenty now with more to come in the future (further corporate control, Orwellian totalitarianism, bio-engineered viruses). It’s the battle the Luddites fought two centuries ago. Let us keep up the struggle in their name.

]]> http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/in-praise-of-luddites-towards-humanistic-technology/feed/ 0 http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/wrong-division-the-fallacy-of-race/ http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/05/wrong-division-the-fallacy-of-race/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 16:01:28 +0000 Joseph Grosso http://dissidentvoice.org/?p=16834

In the opening pages of British author Martin Amis’ latest novel, The Pregnant Widow, two friends, Keith and Whittaker, are discussing their surroundings in Italy where they are spending the summer of 1970.

‘It was incredible, that. These- these fucking Italians.’
‘Italians? Come on, you’re a Brit. You can do better than Italians.’
‘Ok, these wags- I mean wops. These fucking beaners.”
‘Beaners are Mexicans. This is pathetic. Italians, Keith- spicks, greaseballs, dagos.’
‘Ah, but I was raised not to make distinctions based on race and culture.’

The interest in this dialogue goes beyond its considerable humor. Writing as an American, an Italian-American at that who grew up in an diverse American city, it is striking to see the word ‘spicks’ (along with the customary greaseballs and dagos) used in reference to Italians since in the U.S., especially in this day and age, spicks is derogatory slang used to describe Hispanic/Latino Americans, which Italians aren’t considered to be (again that’s in this day and age- more on that point later).

Living long enough guarantees one will come across more than a fair share of such instances. When chatting with his Portuguese teacher, a native Brazilian living in New York City (Brazil being a country, like most in the Western Hemisphere and increasing the world, that is full of people that are considered ‘White’, ‘Black’, ‘Asian’, and ‘Native American’ and also like in all such countries it is the white people who historically have most of the wealth and power), this writer commented that here in New York she would probably be considered Hispanic rather than White like in Brazil. She responded with an emphatic and defensive ‘No! No, I like being white.”

These small examples give some insight into the slippery nature of what perhaps has been humanity’s gravest and silliest blunder. The interesting thing about the word race is that it seems everybody would declare without hesitation that they know exactly what races are, as well as figure that everyone else would be on the same page about it (usually without speaking too overtly on the subject in good company), yet it’s a safe bet that very few people would be able to come up with an adequate, working definition of the word.

The online Free Dictionary (with what seems like a reprint from the American Heritage Dictionary) attempts to give five such definitions, all worth quoting in full:

1) A local geographical or global human family distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically physical characteristics.

2) A group of people united by or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographical distribution.

3) A geological line; a lineage

4) Humans considered as a group

5) Biology

   a) An interbreeding, usually geographically isolated population of organisms differing from other populations of the same spaces in the frequency of hereditary traits.

Clearly there is an obvious amount of overlap and vagueness in all these definitions. For one thing each one could be applied to everything from a single family to abstract notions that apply to billions of people. Of the first it could be asked what genetically physical characteristics are involved. Hair color? Eyes? Height? Skin tone? The same question applies to the different elements of the second definition: which geographical distribution? A country? A continent? What common history and of what time period? It also most clearly applies to the third which can mean almost anything. The fourth seems to possibly express what is probably the safest, grandest, and, this essay will hope to argue, smartest position that in reality there is only one race and that is the human race. From a scientific standpoint the fifth is the only accurate definition of race and from that standpoint it does indeed show that humans fit the bill only once.

What all this boils down to is the question of what criteria is there for a person or group belonging to or making up a race? Contrary to the implied essence of the term and the imagery of things like ‘the eternal nation’ or ‘ancient peoples’, race (and ‘nation’ for that matter) is actually a relatively modern concept. The ancients had no real idea of it Even Aristotle’s famous dichotomy of ‘Greek’ verses ‘Barbarian’ isn’t a suitable parallel since what we would classify as race wasn’t particularly involved in his reasoning. He seemed to suggest that barbarians can at least adopt Greek ways. Ancient thinkers in general often posited the idea that some were born to rule and others to be slaves and speculated climate and geography impacted human appearance and character but it wasn’t at all a common idea that one ‘race’ was inherently superior to another.

While it is entirely possible today, though not as easily as one would like, to acknowledge and accept a division of humanity into races without being at all racist, it wasn’t until the mid-19th century, with the acceleration of European imperialism in Africa and Asia along with a distorted view of Darwinism (not to mention the increased numbers of chattel slaves in the American South), that Western notions of race and racial hierarchy became solidified, based loosely, as it seems all subsequent racial classifications are, on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s late 18th century model (though Blumenbach did not buy into inherent racial superiority). Such schools of ‘scientific’ thought and practice during the Victorian epoch included polygency, social-Darwinism, and eugenics, all based on the notion that some groups of people were scientifically superior to others, though given the sheer number of different racial classifications that were in the air at the turn of the century, ranging from some that posited a few different races to those that included dozens, the science was obviously tainted by ideology and limited in its knowledge.

After those deliberately awful false starts and after advances in genetics and related molecular technology science now proves that there is no such thing as biologically distinct human races. In fact we now know that there is more genetic variation within one tribe of wild chimpanzees than has been observed within all existing humans (see Joseph L Graves Jr.’s outstanding The Emperor’s New Clothes). All the physical diversity, the traits such as skin color and hair texture with which we categorize racial difference amounts to only a handful of our genes, not nearly enough to classify a separate species or any subspecies. All people alive today are Homo sapiens, the only member of the Homo genus not extinct (as opposed to others not as fortunate such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Homo neanderthalensis just to name a few) . It’s simple and beautiful, if from an evolutionary standpoint a bit dull: Biologically we are one species.

Of course no amount of scientific proof will persuade a Klansman to regard all other people as racial equals. Even good natured people could possibly point to cultural or environmental differences. However what is clear, even or actually especially in the case of that Klansman, is that the boundaries of race and racial thinking have been very fluid and right up to the present moment are in flux. This fact on its alone goes some way towards proving that race is a social construction rather than a scientific one. There is perhaps no greater illustration of this than the history of what can be called whiteness in America.

Hazy Whiteness

In 1790 Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 which stated that

that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of the United States.

It was the first of a series of such Acts (including the more famous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798) that were passed in the ensuing decade. Each mainly modified the amount of time an alien would have to live in the country before being naturalized. The basic designation and eligibility of ‘a free white person’ wasn’t altered.

Yet by the mid-1920s it was the Ku Klux Klan that was the largest volunteer organization in the U.S. Unlike its first incarnation in the 1860s as a terror group out to sabotage black emancipation and federal Reconstruction, the 20th century version of the Klan had more on its agenda than the Great Migration of African-Americans to the manufacturing centers in the north. Now there was another menace to be reckoned with, the stakes for racial degeneration and decline being nearly as high as the earlier one.

Between the years 1886 and 1925 abut 13 million new immigrants arrived on American shores, 70 percent of that number arrived between 1901 and 1915. Unlike previous waves of Irish and German immigrants in the mid 19th century, whom by the 20th century were largely accepted in the American mainstream, these so-called ‘new’ immigrants were seen as a different animal, mainly coming from southern and eastern Europe- Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungry, in other words mostly Catholic (like their Irish forebears), Jewish, and clearly not in any way Anglo-Saxon. While not at the level that approached that of African-Americans down south or Chinese migrants on the West Coast, the new immigrants faced a good amount of violence and discrimination.

Some of the more notable instances of this discrimination include the lynching of eleven Italians in Louisiana in 1891, followed a few years later by a legislative attempt in the same state to disenfranchise Italians from voting. Greeks were victimized in the ‘race’ riot in Omaha, Nebraska in 1909, and Jim-Crowed in Pacatello, Idaho at about the same time. For a time Italian immigrants were assigned to black schools in Southern educational systems. Many Jewish immigrants had fled the worse violence of the pogroms in Eastern Europe but still encountered a high level of discrimination here (in fact in the minds of white supremacists today Jews still haven’t come close to achieving the status of being white). On the Iron Range in Minnesota, towns were disqualified from being white if they contained too many immigrants from Europe (all these examples are listed in David Roediger’s Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White).

This all led up to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 which capped the annual number of immigrants from any country to 3% of the number of people of that nationality living in the U.S. according to the census of 1910. This was followed soon thereafter by the even more severe Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act) that limited the annual amount to 2% of the number of people of a given nationality according to the census of 1890. Needless to say, the math greatly favored older immigrant groups from northern and central Europe (i.e. Irish and German), not the newer immigrants from the south or eastern ends (the Act also included the Asian Exclusion Act which barred legal immigration from East Asia entirely. This part of the legislation wasn’t repealed until 1943).

The logic that motivated the legislation was summed up by then Senator Ellison DuRant of South Carolina when he stated in a Congressional session:

Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations… Without offense, but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure American citizens and develop our own American resources.

While a majority of senators may not have shared DuRant’s overt racism, the Johnson-Reed bill was passed with only six dissenting votes.

Of course looking back to the original waves of immigration in the mid 19th century reveals a lot of the same dynamics. If Irish and Germans were at least largely accepted as ‘white’ enough to be granted relatively favorable immigration quotas in the 1920s, it shouldn’t be forgotten that there was a time when they faced comparable hostility. Before the KKK emerged out of Tennessee there was the ‘Know Nothings’ and the Native American Party in east coast cities, and other similar parties, whose nativism targeted mainly Irish and Catholic immigrants (those fleeing from oppressive famine in Ireland; before the Great Famine most of the nearly one million Irish immigrants were from Ulster, mainly Anglican and Presbyterian). There were examples of Irish laborers in the South assigned jobs that were deemed too dangerous for slaves (i.e. owned property therefore at least worth something) to perform. An anti-Catholic riot in Philedelphia in 1844 saw the buring of St Michael’s and St Augustine’s churches along with many Irish homes. Thirteen people were killed. A similar riot occurred in Louisville in 1855.

It was during and after the famine years when the newly arrived Irish masses crowded the rapidly expanding slums along the American east coast, the same areas where the north’s African American population often resided. Noel Ignatiev begins his book How the Irish Became White with an apt summation of the dynamics between the new neighbors:

As they came to the cities, they were crowded into districts that became centers of crime, vice, and disease. There they commonly found themselves thrown together with free Negros. Irish and Afro-Americans fought each other and the police, socialized and occasionally intermarried, and developed a common culture of the lowly. They also both suffered the scorn of those better suited. Along with Jim Crow and Jim Dandy, the drunken, belligerent and foolish Pat and Bridget were stock characters on the early stage.

Ignatiev goes on to make the all important point that for the Irish (and the same could be said for later groups) ‘to enter the white race was a strategy to secure advantage in a competitive society.’

Exactly what did it mean to be white at the time? A salient fact is that in the late 18th century the definition of Negro in an encyclopedia in the U.S. included concepts such as idleness, intemperance, debauchery, and treachery (as pointed out in Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race). Would that make whiteness in that context the noble opposite of all those things?

That is the main thrust of David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Roediger actually contrasts working class attitudes towards race from preindustrial to industrial times. Prior to 1800 biracial festivals weren’t uncommon in American cities. The New York City slave revolts of 1712 and 1741 were also biracial affairs. However with the onset of industrialization and the rise of wage labor (‘white slavery’), the decline of the independent artisan economy and culture that went with it, along with the new inherent workplace discipline and mechanization, black people came to be seen as exotic, undisciplined and, crucially in Jacksonian American, anti-Republican. When the insecurity and loss of independence of wage labor needed to be strongly contrasted with slavery in order for workers to have some sort of peace with the industrial system, both slaves and black freemen became convenient targets, while at the same time also perversely serving as attractions in popular street theater such as minstrelsy (in which white performers would often don black make-up and act in stereotypical ‘black’ ways). It’s possible that this kind of conflicted attraction and revulsion can account for the neighborliness between Irish and African-American peoples in places like New York’s infamous Five Points neighborhood and the largely Irish led (and very anti-black) Draft Riot of 1863.

As far as the status of the new immigrants regarding their whiteness there are two main schools of analysis. One takes the position that the new immigrants were actually ‘white on arrival’ (the title of Thomas Guglielmo’s book on Italian immigrants in Chicago) and that whatever racial middle ground or otherness they occupied the new immigrants did have color on their side. According to this view being Italian-American in the early 20th century would mean being racially distinct (a member of the ‘Italian race’ or the ‘Southern Italian race’) and being open to discrimination and hostility, even persecution, but still generally being white at the same time.

The other view, represented by David Roediger’s Working Toward Whiteness, posits that the new immigrants did hold an ‘inbetween’ position of not being securely white or nonwhite, arguing that the strict separation of race and color of the ‘white on arrival’ thesis is too difficult to sustain. For instance he points out that judicial opinions regarded the color of southern Europeans as open to question, but their white racial status secure. Plus given how treatment and the attitude toward the new immigrants varied from place to place this position has a point.

Yet, whatever the subtleties within these two categories, in a major way it can be said that their main difference is without much meaning given their broad agreement; any analysis will recognize the critical fact that whatever the views of the KKK, newspaper editorials, or individual and/or groups lawmakers (and these views at times would have to be described as sensationally racist), the new immigrants’ whiteness was largely protected by the naturalization laws, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Census. This meant that despite the efforts of many they were able to become citizens, vote and therefore acquire some degree of political power, apply for certain jobs, and eventually live in certain neighborhoods with no real legal obstacles.

A general timeline of experience, particularly for the immigrant groups who arrived around the dawn of the 20th century and its first decades, would include, after a good deal of hardship, a general acceptance of being white in American society (both popular culture and high society), as well as a collective awakening on the part of the communities themselves to the reality of whiteness and the advantages that it presented to them (Guglielmo’s White on Arrival convincingly argues that in the case of Italians it wasn’t until the 1930s that this awakening even began to take place on a large scale). There is broad agreement that World War II, with its military draft and calls for national unity, was a watershed in this awakening.

However perhaps equally as important ironically was the impact first that the immigration regulations that targeted the new immigrants themselves had on their assimilation, and second the way New Deal programs were administrated through a racist bureaucracy and local governments displayed just how important whiteness was to things like homeownership (including property values) and economic advancement. Once the process began it proved largely unstoppable. So much so that the by then burned out KKK eventually opened its membership to Catholics and most of those groups it had previously organized against. Meanwhile right up to the present day the votes for the ‘white’ working class are vigorously fought over in every national election, and usually with the so called liberal party of the system trying to prove just how conservative it can be.

A side effect that arises when bringing to light the history of the new European immigrants is the narrative that one hears from time to time, usually from their descendants, about how those immigrants overcame displacement, poverty, and

discrimination to build better lives for themselves and their children without a helping hand from anyone, particularly the government. The obvious, and racist, implication

being that others (blacks, maybe newer immigrants) haven’t been able to do the same and so always have their hands out for government support, i.e. welfare, food stamps, etc, that taxpayers (honest, hardworking white people like themselves) are forced to dole out. While that rags to riches mythology correctly acknowledges the hardship and struggle of the immigrants, as well as their hard work, it is faulty to say the least. The main historical lesson to be learned is that it was their somewhat belated assimilation into whiteness, and their acceptance of it, that opened the door of advancement through access to New Deal programs and career opportunities that were denied to other people deemed nonwhite.

Race Matters

What American history shows is that racial thinking varies a good deal by time and place. Given that race also has no real scientific meaning it can be concluded that it is just a product of the human mind (perhaps a leftover remnant from earlier tribal times). At the same time it may also be argued that to deny the existence of races may lead to a denial of the existence of racism itself. After all, even if race is a relatively modern concept is it realistic to expect a collective realization that it isn’t real, especially since believing that different races exist doesn’t automatically lead to a person being racist? Even if one feels forced to concede, if only reluctantly, that some of that is probably true, there is no reason to concede total defeat and no denying the genuine progress that has been made. Numbers of ‘inter-racial’ marriages continue to rise and while the latest version of the census continues to divide people by race it can’t be overlooked that Americans have for the first time elected a president who did not check off ‘white’ on his census form. So even if some form of racism is destined to exist somewhere the fact that history clearly demonstrates its parameters can change and weaken is enough to hope and expect that racist thinking can be marginalized further and further. History and science also show that any attempt to find or build racial ‘purity’ in either individuals or societies is both reactionary as well as futile. We may even be able to envision a world where other related, artificial concepts such as borders, nations, and Diasporas are also marginalized. Such is a form of globalization that can be embraced.

The criminal charge related to a painkiller called Bextra, considered a Cox-2 inhibitor, which was pulled from the market back in 2005 due to mounting evidence that it increased the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death. According to the government Bextra, and several other drugs, were promoted as treatment for medical conditions beyond the conditions which the FDA had approved for them. It was the fourth such illegal marketing settlement for Pfizer in the last decade and much like the other three it hardly put a dent in its fortunes ($2.3 billion amounts to less than 3 weeks of Pfizer sales) as its stock declined a mere 14 cents on the very day of the settlement and the company announced plans to acquire rival drug maker Wyeth for $68 billion. The deal is expected to be finalized before the New Year.

In the pharmaceutical industry Pfizer may be the largest shark but it’s hardly a solitary rogue when it comes to this sort of thing. In January of this year Eli Lilly coughed up $1.4 billion for its illegal marketing of Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic with the usual slew of side effects; and Bextra being pulled from the market was hardly an isolated case. Since 1992 more than a dozen drugs have been pulled from the market or had strict limits put on their use.

Back in 1976 Henry Gadsden, chief executive of Merck, just before retirement lamented to Fortune magazine the tragedy that his company’s market was limited only to those who were afflicted with illness when his dream had long been to sell to healthy people, therefore having a market that potentially included every person in the world. Well one can imagine the internal chuckle Mr. Gadsden would have enjoyed scanning the New York Times front page on September 2nd, 2009 (a day before the Pfizer settlement was announced) where it was gloriously revealed, this in a headline of course, “Taking Big Risk for Big Payoff, Industry Seeks Cancer Drugs.” The article bluntly explains that, after years of the industry ignoring the fatal disease, recent scientific breakthroughs and the opportunity to charge people dying from cancer outrageous amounts of money is finally too tempting to resist.

It’s ironic that the Times alludes in passing that drug companies have become perhaps the most powerful force in the country by fulfilling Gadsden’s utopian vision of treating the healthy. Through infinite amounts of marketing and promotion, including consumer advertisements in the form of countless TV ads the kind of which are illegal in all other industrial nations (except New Zealand), and even more effort aimed at co-opting the medical establishment through high paying consulting jobs and ‘continuing education’ seminars for doctors as well as an army of sales people pushing their wares all over the country, drug companies have built vast empires selling mostly the same potentially dangerous drugs of questionable effectiveness under different brand names for allegedly chronic, so called ‘lifestyle’ conditions, the number of which continue to grow practically exponentially.

Further from the edge of life and death the top selling prescription drug in the U.S. in 2008 was Pfizer’s anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor, which brought in $7.8 billion according to IMS Health. Lipitor was far from the only cholesterol drug, known as statins, to reap billions as AstraZeneca’s Crestor saw its 2008 sales jump 30% to $3.6 billion. Such cholesterol drugs were the most profitable class of pharmaceuticals in the world for the past decade. While guidelines for what should be considered ‘normal’ levels of cholesterol were continuing to be lowered, often by medical panels full of doctors with numerous financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, the companies saw gold. In her book The Truth about the Drug Companies, former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell explained the process:

The original statin, Merck’s Mevacor, came on the market in 1987. It was a truly innovative drug, based on research in many university and government laboratories throughout the world… Other companies were quick to produce their own statins. Mevacor was joined by the same company’s me-too drug Zocor, Pfizer’s Lipitor, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Provachol, Novartis’s Lescol, and now Crestor… There is little reason to think one is any better than another at comparable doses.

The key to getting a toehold in the market, according to Angell, was either to test me-too drugs for slightly different outcomes in slightly different kinds of patients, then promote the statin for those uses or to compare new statins to older one’s at nonequivalent strengths – to test a higher does of a new statin against a lower dose of another one. The marketing machines, whose budgets within companies far exceed the research ones, take over from there usually taking the form of paid celebrities leading awareness campaigns (while not acknowledging that they’re on the take of whatever drug company patented the drug they’re promoting), ghost written essays in medical journals, and saturation of TV and print with advertising both sunny and fearful at the same time.

In Our Daily Meds, Melody Peterson described just how widespread the production of me-too drugs has been:

Between 1990-2004 the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved about 1100 new drugs. Only about 40% of them were actually “new”, or what the FDA called a new molecule entity. In addition, federal regulators found that most of these “new molecular entities” were not significant improvements over the medicines already being sold. Only 183 drugs, or about 16%, were actually new and significant. The rest were nothing more than me-too drugs or drugs for which there was no need.

The same kinds of shadiness can be seen in the class of drugs that has recently replaced the statins at the top of the sales charts. This year will see the publication of the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V), the field bible for mental health professionals. If earlier editions are any indication the latest one will feature and slew of newly established disorders all to be treated with the latest anti-depressants or anti-psychotics. DSM-IV featured, among others Dysthymic Disorder (defined by the online Mental Health Encyclopedia as ‘a mood disorder with chronic (long-term) depressive symptoms that are present most of the day, more days than not, for a period of at least two years’), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (‘an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures which goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior’), and Schizoid Personality Disorder (‘a condition characterized by excessive detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings’). Anti-psychotics such Zyprexa from EliLilly and Seroquel ($3.8 billion in sales in 2008) may not yet be the household names that Prozac, Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft, and Sarafem are but still are mega-blockbusters- a blockbuster being the code word for a drug that pulls in more than a billion in sales.

Other disorders, both mental and physical, conjured up or legitimized in recent years include Social Anxiety Disorder, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, Irritable Bowl Syndrome, Estrogen Deficiency disease, Osteoporosis, not to mention the always stretching boundaries of ADD (see Adult ADD) and ADHD to include more and more drug takers. It can’t be said that the effort of branding new disorders and expanding the very concept of what disease is has been a failure for the drug companies. Prescription drug use has skyrocketed over the past two decades. Americans now spend money on prescription drugs in amounts that equal or surpass the amount spent on higher education and automobiles. Their profits enable to have a death lock over the country’s political process. The predictable flipside being that, according to a 2005 survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse the number of Americans who admitted to abusing prescription drugs doubled from 1992-2003.

While American children living in the suburbs get pumped with medication for all sorts of overstated or marketed illnesses, children living in the planet’s rapidly expanding slums perish of preventable digestive-tract diseases rooted in contaminated drinking water and overall polluted conditions. In sub-Saharan Africa alone neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are the most common conditions affecting the region’s poorest 500 million people. A recent assessment published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases estimates that hookworm, an infection that weakens immune systems and causes anemia, occurs in 40-50 million school aged children. Schistosomiasis, the second most prevalent NTD claims 192 million victims and is ‘possibly associated with increased horizontal transmission of HIV/AIDS.’ There are many others (Lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, roundworm) often overlapping in the same individuals. Why put all of them under the banner of ‘Neglected’? The WHO webpage puts it thusly:

The misery caused by neglected tropical diseases is largely hidden. Affected people live almost exclusively in remote rural areas and sprawling shantytowns, where lack of safe drinking water, poor education, poor sanitation, substandard housing and where access to health care may be virtually non-existent… Neglect also occurs at the level of research and development. The incentive to develop new diagnostic tools, drugs, and vaccines is low for diseases with a market that cannot pay.

It’s a tale of two worlds: one overmedicated, one largely left to suffer debilitating conditions in silence due to the fact they can’t fill the coffers of drug companies (research for NTD treatments, as well as for other deadly diseases like AIDS is often performed under government funded initiatives like the NIH; breakthroughs are later usually licensed to drug companies without any price control requirements). Perhaps Henry Gadsden just forgot to mention that his dream was not only the sale of drugs to healthy people, but to the well off; or maybe that was simply implied as an obvious fact. For all the rhetoric about healthcare “reform” shouted in recent months, it seems that real reform would begin with an industry that for years has been making healthy profits by making the rest of the planet sicker.

Indeed that was an apt and true reply which was given
To Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized.
For when that king asked the man what he meant by keeping
Hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride,
‘What thou meant by seizing the whole earth; but
because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while
thou dost it with a Great fleet art styled emperor-

– Saint Augustine

In his ode to British imperialism, Empire: The rise and demise of the British world order and the Lessons for Global Power, Niall Ferguson begins his first chapter with the subtitle ‘Pirates’ where he describes with considerable sympathy some of the many adventures of the British, relatively late comers to empire building, search and seizure for gold all over the New World. When the new territories under the Union Jack (Canada, Virginia, etc) came up empty in terms of precious metals in contrast to Spain’s plundering of Mexico and Peru, the British turned their attention to robbing the Spanish fleet. The exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake among others, under the license of Elizabeth I, yielded large dividends:

In a period of recurrent war with Spain from 1585 to 1604, between 100 and 200 ships a year set off to harass Spanish vessels in the Caribbean and the value of prize money brought back amounted to at least 200,000 pounds a year.

For Ferguson this ‘naval free-for-all’ was a major building block toward British domination.

Of course Britain wasn’t the only major power to have its origins affected by piracy in some form. The newly independent United States, like the Atlantic European powers, saw its shipping interests under siege from pirates of the Barbary States of North Africa, themselves reduced to a state of piracy as a result of the struggle between Ottoman and European interests for control of the Mediterranean. In prior centuries the Barbary States had a lucrative trading niche with Mediterranean markets through Venetian and Florentine merchant ships. The cargo of these pirates included slaves captured from ships and coasts as far away as Ireland (the Irish town of Baltimore was emptied of all its inhabitants in 1761) held for ransom and tribute against future attacks. While paling in comparison to the Atlantic slave trade, an estimated one million Europeans were enslaved in northern Africa between the years 1530-1780. In addition to the Barbary pirates the U.S. saw its access to the Mississippi river blocked by Spain and locked out of trade to the British East Indies (one former advantage of colonial status was the protection offered to American ships by British treaties with the Barbary regimes). Both the Barbary States and European powers were apt at using all sides against each other and none of the Europeans were anxious to see the emergence of a potentially dynamic new trading economy on the mercantilist stage. After several American ships were captured and sailors held for ransom, a newly formed navy and Marine Corps were established for a series of skirmishes in North Africa sometimes called the Tripolitan War (1801-05) which ended for the U.S. with a favorable, if temporary, treaty . It was less than a decade later this same navy would prove its mettle in the War of 1812.

An old, familiar adage claims that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. The examples above demonstrate t he battle with and against pirates can lead to empire; perhaps they also show one man’s criminal can be another’s mercenary, or adventure hero. In an interesting book titled Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, Edward Kritzler romantically tells the story of some Jews expelled from Spain by the Inquisition who took to the seas to attack and rob from the ships of the regime that expelled them (these adventures included what was apparently the largest heist in pirates history). It’s a safe bet that in this case moral condemnation wouldn’t be universal; in fact it’s safe to say sympathy would largely be with the pirates.

Since ancient times when humans first took to using the sea for trade to the present day, pirates have had an everlasting presence. The first recorded pirates were the Lukkans who appear in the records of Egyptian scribes all the way back in the 14th century BCE. From there pirates were able to haunt the Athenian, European, and Byzantine empires; soon after pirates were employed by the French, Dutch, and English against Spain, the French word in this case being ‘corsair’. From classics such as Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island to modern day blockbusters like The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, the image and mythology of the pirate, in both romantic and negative lights, has never been far from popular culture. American professional sports feature the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team insignias displaying the customary eye patches and skull and bones, a figure which continues to be a fixture of theme restaurants and Halloween costumes.

As is often the case popular conceptions miss a much larger picture. During the Golden Age of Pirates, considered the years 1716-1726 (the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession during which there was again wide spread use of ‘privateering’, i.e., piracy in service of states, particularly, once again, against Spain), the years that gave the world Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts, as well as the mythology of eye patches and hook hands, life aboard a pirate ship presented an intriguing alternative of democracy and egalitarianism to the rigid, exploiting ways of the navy and merchant ships with their all powerful captains, harsh punishments, disease, and brutal working conditions. Pirate crews, often made up of former sailors and indentured servants, elected their=2 0own captains, sat on common councils, and shared food and booty equally. When compared with the Atlantic trade economy and its sugar plantations, low wages, and slavery, piracy offered a version of a free life, albeit almost always a short one. Many are the pirates who hung on the gallows from Jamaica to New York, often not renouncing an ounce of their defiance and getting at least occasional sympathy from locals.

In his mesmerizing history of the period, Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, Marcus Rediker puts it thusly:

Piracy…offered the prospect of plunder and ‘ready money’, abundant food and drink, the election of officers, the equal distribution of resources, care for the injured, and joyous camaraderie, all as expressions of an ethic of justice.

It also offered harsh vengeance against captains who mistreated their men, while captains who were established to be largely of a just character were let go, sometimes with compensation.

During this decade around 4000 people, most of whom were previously sailors mutinied against their captain and took over the ship or were taken prisoner before deciding to join their pirate captors, lived the pirate’s life. The number included a diverse motley of ethnicities including a fair number of Africans and African-Americans, both escaped slaves and free men. All in all over 2000 ships were captured and plundered, including many slave trading ships, probably contributing to the prolonged slump in English shipping that coincided with the period.

Recent months have seen a surge in pirate related headlines, mainly news of ship captures and ransom off the East African coast of Somalia, a point where about a tenth of global trade passes near or by. It was widely reported on February 5th, 2009 that Somali pirates made off with $3.2 million ransom for freeing the Ukrainian ship the MV Faina that was seized last September. In fact pirates are still holding ten other boats, this after, according to the French military, 43 boats were seized off the Somali coast in 2008. The situation has grown severe enough that at least 20 warships from various nations including the first ever naval mission created by the European Union as well as the U.S., Russia, China, Malaysia, and India are patrolling the near by Gulf of Aden. Japan recently announced it will add two of its destroyers to the mix that U.S. Rear Admiral Terry McKnight was quoted describing as “one of the most coordinated international efforts I’ve ever been a part of.”

While the pirates in Somalia have grabbed the headlines, they are far from operating alone. In its 2008 annual report, the International Maritime Bureau documents an ‘unprecedented rise’ in piracy with 293 reported incidents, up 11% from the year before. Nigeria ranked second with 40 reported incidents, and while numbers are down from recent years, pirates continue to be active around Indonesia and the Malacca Straights (another key point of global trade located between Singapore, Malaysia, and Sumatra).

Much like their Atlantic predecessors, today’s pirates are branded by governments and their mouth pieces as pure villainy, menace, and, as fitting the age, terrorists — a word that wouldn’t have been lost on King George or Cotton Mather. Also like their predecessors today’s piracy has its roots in an economic context. In Somalia, it has increased with the lost livelihoods of local fisherman whose traditional methods are no match for illegal trawlers and European fisheries that overexploit East African waters (the same thing is also occurring with devastating consequences for wildlife as hunted ‘bushmeat’ replaces fish for protein consumption). The pirates consider themselves a coast guard of sorts in a cause that can claim some justice, especially in a country rocked by warlords, famine, and violence the past two decades. Of course as the piracy stakes have grown some of these same elements appear to have become intertwined with it, however once again a pirate’s life offers a chance for riches well beyond what the surrounding economic system provides. The BBC reported last October that pirates have actually become a source of loans to businessmen. It’s for these reasons that a survey conducted by the Somalia news site Wardheer News found that 70% of respondents viewed piracy as form of defense of the country’s territorial waters.

What does all this say about piracy? It’s clear that the line between the pirate and privateer is a blurry one. Pirates have been the servants and enemies of states, instruments and headaches for empires. Throughout history they have practiced violence, traded weapons and slaves, and terrorized communities. However they have also rebelled against oppressive authority, freed slaves, had local support and admiration, and given the opportunity for a better, freer life to many who wouldn’t have otherwise had the chance. That being the case the pirate it seems is destined to suffer the same fate the terrorist: admired by some, reviled by others and on an always slippery slope. Perhaps by now it should be clear that the disappearance of both will only come under a just economic order. That was Augustine’s observation sixteen centuries ago. How tragic that it still hasn’t come to pass.

Giving a brief history of the transformation of the old Knickerbocker waterfront to an infamous slum, Riis, while certainly not above ethnic stereotyping, or even outright racism in the case of the burgeoning Chinese population, wasn’t content to let the slumlords’ position, that unregulated population growth and porous morality innate in poor people were the reasons for slum conditions, slide idly by. Rather he argued it was the exorbitant rents and negligent, greedy property holders. He wrote in the introduction:

We know now there is no way out; that the “system” that was the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed has come to stay, a storm-centre forever of our civilization… The story is dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart. If it shall appear that the sufferings and sins of the “other half”, and the evils they breed, are but a just punishment upon the community that gave it no other choice, it will be because that is the truth.

The results of How the Other Half Lives were far-reaching. New laws were passed to enforce stands of hygiene, a homeless shelter was built to replace dreadfully overcrowded police cellars, parks were built, play grounds added to schools, the settlement house movement took off, and eventually child labor laws were passed.

Today New York is a city of more than 8 million people under billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. With a poverty rate about the double the national average, it wouldn’t take long for an astute observer to grasp that the city again has a housing crisis. As has often been the case historically, New York has been on the forefront of crises that engulf the rest of the country, if not the world. It was New York, on the heels of the financial crisis in the mid-1970s, which served as the incubator of neoliberalism. It also may prove to be New York where the subprime mortgage crisis, while affecting the city later than other places, may have some of its greatest impact.

Foreclosure

Abandonment of the 1970s, where entire blocks are stripped… is what this will look like.

– Sarah Gerecke, CEO of the Neighborhood Housing Services (NY Daily News, February 17th, 2008)

The edge of eastern Queens has for at least a half century been a haven for black working and middle class homeownership. Over the past two years it has become ground zero for the mortgage crisis in New York. An investigation by the NY Daily News of a three-by-three block section of South Jamaica off Linden Blvd. (one of the area’s main thoro ughfares), found 98 properties foreclosed from January-June 2008. A five block radius around nearby 118th Ave
and 152nd St contains another 32 foreclosed properties.

The foreclosure epidemic spreads from Jamaica to the surrounding neighborhoods of Rochdale and South Ozone Park. Where not long ago streets were filled with working class families living in starter homes, vacant, garbage covered yards are becoming the norm. Squatters and drug deals, not to mention rodents, have seized the opportunity to move into the abandoned homes that have no “For Sale” sign attached anywhere. Residents report that some of the homes have been turned into crack houses (this at a time when New York’s crime figures are still paraded for show by law and order types, though some crime numbers are now inching up).

Predictively, the mortgage crisis has hit New York’s minority neighborhoods the hardest. Besides eastern Queens, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Bushwick, and Hunts Point, all predominantly black neighborhoods, have experienced high foreclosure rates. Despite making up only a third of all New York homeowners, blacks and Hispanics obtained nearly 70 percent of all subprime refinance loans in 2006.

Since the beginning of 2008, more than 1200 homes in the city have been repossessed. New York State governor David Paterson recently signed legislation that added a 90 day grace period for homeowners to avoid foreclosure, while at the same time warning that major budget cuts are in the state’s near future.

Rezoning

How in the world does the mayor justify what he’s trying to do? He’s nationalizing our property like we’re in Venezuela or Russia, then determining which of his friends will get it.

– Willets Point business owner.¹

In 19th century New York, elites typically moved further north in a rapidly developing Manhattan in order to escape from the immigrant hordes and working class expanding from the south. During the Bloomburg administration, with less such available land, the focus has shifted to “rezoning”, i.e. declaring a neighborhood or district a “marginal commercial environment”, or blighted, and using such legalities to radically transform the landscape by handing it over to large-scale developers and Big=2 0Box stores.

Among the targeted areas has been Downtown Brooklyn, long a commercial center for small business (largely minority and immigrant), that despite drawing 100,000 daily shoppers and posting $100 million in total annual sales was rezoned under the Brooklyn Downtown Redevelopment Plan of 2004. According to a report by the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center (UJC), small businesses are suffering as a result: 57 percent of the businesses surveyed in the report have been displaced or forced out of business either due to rising rents or redevelopment as more properties can be tapped for office towers, hotels (including Brooklyn’s first Sheraton, scheduled to open next year), and high-rise condos.

Willets Point in Queens is another area now targeted under similar pretext. A rezoning plan there, opposed at the moment by a majority of the City Council, would force out 225 private, mostly industrial businesses and 1300 workers in order to transform 61 more acres into $3 billion worth of retail stores, “market place” housing, and movie theaters (Bloomberg also claims a public school).

In East Harlem, Columbia University is almost set for a $6.2 billion expansion into a neighborhood that has likewise been ruled by two studies to be full of old, obsolete buildings. A public hearing is scheduled for next month as some owners are vowing a fight against the forced sale of their property to the university. Columbia for its part has promised some token community investments in return.

Other neighborhoods hit by or targeted for rezoning include Riis’ Lower East Side (now considered one of the city’s hippest places) where a rezoning plan threatens to enclose remaining Hispanic enclaves between a wall of high rises, Williamsburg (right across the East River from the Lower East Side), another historically working class, immigrant neighborhood that has been massively gentrified over the past decade, and the Hudson Yards area in Brooklyn slated to be the site of a new basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets.

The common thread running through each rezoning plan, proposed or underway, is that of stable, historically working class neighborhoods turned upside down and gentrified by deliberate top down policy.

Back to the Future

It’s in the above contexts where it’s worth noting that the homeownership rate in New York is only 33 percent, about half the national average of 67 percent. While it is true that New York has always been a renters’ city full of new immigrants and young professionals living in multi-family dwellings (and Long Island, for all intents and purposes the suburbs of the city, has always served as the area’s home buying Mecca, not to mention the white flight refuge), New York also the lowest homeownership rate of any major American city.

Ethnicity plays a key role in New York’s home ownership. The Furman Center’s 2007 State of the City Report shows that only 28 percent of New York’s black population and 16 percent of Hispanics own their own home (compared to 44 percent of whites and 40 percent of Asians). The Hispanic homeownership rate in particular rates far behind other cities, for example in Chicago the Hispanic homeownership rate is 45 percent.

The Furman Center’s report also found that homeowners in New York are far more affluent than non-homeowners while also less likely to be middle income, and more likely to be in the upper income brackets, than homeowners in the rest of the country.

In the present day, most of the worst elements of the tenement slum have been somewhat, at least legally, eliminated: windowless apartments, double-decker tenements, cellar shelters. However some of the same conditions remain. Exorbitant rents forcing tenants to pay more than 30% of their income on rent are not only still common but increasing, leaving many poorer renters in crowded conditions, especially in the largely immigrant populated sections of the city such as the adjacent neighborhoods of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona, and Sunnyside. These were listed in the Furman Center report as having the highest numbers of severely crowded households — severely crowded being modestly defined as having more than 1.5 persons per room.

The best way forward to reform New York City’s housing problem harkens back to Riis’ efforts all those years ago. In the short-term, grass roots efforts already underway can do their best to beat back mayor Bloomberg’s rezoning efforts while at the same time ensuring that Bloomberg be denied any chance of a third term (the city now has a two term limit on mayors but there is talk of doing away with it, as there was at the end of Giuliani’s second term in the aftermath of 9/11. Giuliani’s effort was defeated).

The long term solution would be one that focuses on affordable housing, community orientated development, and government sponsored housing programs that can bring minority homeownership more in line with national numbers. It will be a difficult task that can expect to meet opposition every step of the way from the entrenched business elite that has called the shots for the past three decades. However, history has already proven that change is possible; and indeed inevitable when it comes to New York.

1. Quoted in NY Daily News, June 26th, 2008.

All of the above characteristics describe the bluefin tuna and bizarre as it may appear, it is on the verge of being eaten into extinction. Until a few decades ago this majestic fish was considered suitable food only for dogs, cats, and horses, or as prize game for fishermen to battle with and then bury after the hunt. However times have grown worse since then as blue fin tuna has in recent decades, under the menu name maguro, been the prize catch of chic sushi bars that have sprouted around the world. A single one can sell for over $100,000 in a Tokyo fish market and tuna hunts have come to include some of the hallmarks of modern warfare such as the use of spotter planes, radar, and electrical harpoons.

The bluefin tuna isn’t the only species of fish to recklessly fall prey to the taste of trendy society. Ones so evolutionary perfect that they haven’t needed to evolve an iota in millions of years, which were residing in the ocean in the ocean millions of years before the dinosaurs ever existed are slaughtered for their fins to the main ingredient in an expensive soup, or are discarded as by-catch by industrial fishing technology. This describes sharks, most of whose populations declined significantly in the past quarter century, threatening to do irreparable damage to the ocean’s food chain (sharks being notoriously slow breeders, recovery from over fishing is difficult). An estimated 100 million sharks a year are killed for their fins to be used for shark fin soup, a delicacy that fetches a $100 a bowl from the newly rich in China.

While Tokyo remains the world’s sushi capital, its spread, for whatever reason, has followed the new global elite like an economic indicator to Moscow, Dubai, India, and China, soon to be the biggest market of all. In his celebratory book The Sushi Economy: The Making of a Modern Delicacy, Sasha Issenberg puts it one way:

Culturally, sushi denotes a certain type of material
sophistication, a declaration that we are confidently
rich enough not to be impressed by volume and refined enough
to savor good things in small doses…More than any other
food, possibly more than any other commodity, to eat sushi
is to display an access to advanced trade markets, of full
engagement in world commerce.

Fishing methods used today in pursuit of such delicacies include long-lining, which consists of a single boat setting a monofilament line across 60 plus miles of ocean, each of which bears lines baited with up to 10,000 hooks, and trawling, or dragging nets equipped for 15 tons of gear across the ocean floor destroying everything in their path- in effect blatantly bulldozing the underwater ecosystem. In the riveting science fiction novel The Swarm, Frank Schatzing imagines a time when the oceans, incited by an all knowing life form called the Yrr, revolt against their human polluters. The revolution takes the form of whales sinking ships, crabs poisoning water supplies, and other surprising twists. Such a scenario is the perfect mirror to what modern human civilization is inflicting on the oceans as fishing has become so brutally efficient as to be revoltingly inefficient. Bycatch, or unwanted species throw back dead or dying make up at least a quarter of the global catch, an estimated 88 billion pounds of life (this according to a 2006 Mother Jones article titled “The Fate of the Ocean”) including some 40,000 sea turtles and hundreds of thousands of seabirds.

The March 2008 issue of Scientific American includes an article titled “Bluefin in Peril” that cautiously endorses commercial domestication of at least most of the ocean as the only way to save the bluefin tuna, and many other species from over-fishing. While such very imperfect methods may ultimately prove to be unavoidable, what would be the grandest solution to save the oceans will be an energized international framework, including provisions such as the banning of trawling.

For the bluefin such a framework has long existed. In 1969, just as the boom was picking up steam, seventeen countries bordering the Atlantic or Mediterranean, including countries with fleets operating there, created the International Commission for the Conservation of the Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT). Its mandate was to protect thirty tuna and other, similar, species with regulations such as minimum size limits and quotas allotted to countries (the European Union being its own signatory). However the commission has largely failed in its mandate, mainly because of piracy (where the Libyan government is directly complicit) and lack of international willpower to enforce treaties, particularly in governments surrounding the Mediterranean. A major loop-hole also exists that allows the minimum size requirement to be bypassed simply by catching a smaller bluefin and fattening it up in captivity to reach an acceptable size before killing it, therefore dangerously killing tuna before they can breed and affecting future generations.

An even grander hope is that such international action will be enforced by an educated public. Ultimately it is consumer demand that drives industries and has the greatest potential to spur reform. In the case of the ocean such a people’s movement would save both important and beautiful species as well as the industries that have spawned around them. At the end of the day this is truly the only hope.

In The Sushi Economy Sasha Issenberg ends his introduction by writing “What goes into the making of sushi has to really be a narrative about the development of twentieth century global capitalism.” Issenberg is more correct than he probably cares to realize, all the more reason for the narrative to finally change.

It wouldn’t take long for a visitor to get the general idea. Listening to the local sports radio station in New York on any given day, one will not be able to go ten minutes without hearing the voice of Donald Trump. The reason being that Trump, a powerful, if awful, influence on the city the past decade, is pushing his secret for building wealth in the form of a DVD from which those viewing will learn to get rich by pedaling real estate his “way”.

The smug voice of Trump may be momentarily acceptable to listeners; however his won’t be the only siren’s song enticing pushovers with promises of quick wealth. It won’t be long before a racket called Internet Speedway begins another commercial with the question “Do you know the difference between the millions and millionaires in this country and you? They decided they wanted to be millionaires, so they went out and did it.” The pitch here is an “internet business that virtually runs itself.” Again salvation comes in the mail in the form of a DVD that promises a way to generate money even when asleep.

In case sports talk radio is beneath the interest of most people, New York’s Barnes and Noble bookstores and other megastores have a steady stock of the latest “self-help” sensation. The current fever is a book and DVD called The Secret, edited by Rhonda Byrne and endorsed some months ago by the always reliable Oprah Winfrey (ensuring the book sells in the millions- an estimated three million copies thus far). The Secret also presents a notable novelty; whereas other wealth formulas require at least some kind of physical effort, according to The Secret, the world is inherited by those who simply think the right thoughts. Did you know: “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts” or “Our physiology creates disease to give us feedback, to let us know we have an imbalanced perspective, and we’re not loving and we’re not grateful”; a world full of ungrateful AIDS victims and overly pessimistic poor masses.

While get rich quick schemes sold by shady charlatans and quacks aren’t new, there is also a deeper theme in all this that may have a parallel historically. New York, of course, has always been a large part of the “streets paved with gold” mythology. Now Bloomberg, Trump, Weill, and Ratner of the new Gilded Age have become the historical reincarnation of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Morgan. Marx wrote that major historical events always return as farce the second time, and indeed farce is an apt description of much of the Big Apple.

The words “SoHo” and “Hell’s Kitchen” have become nothing more than marketing slogans and catch phrases for hipster T-Shirts. The former “bohemian” and yuppie populations of SoHo have moved to the Lower East Side and North Brooklyn, historically working class and immigrant neighborhoods, displacing most of the long-time residents. This gentrification has also reached traditional African American cultural strongholds such as Harlem, Fort Greene, and Bedford Stuyvesant. The New York Times has reported that data from the 2004 census reveals that New York’s City’s black population has declined for the first time since the 1863 draft riots (April 3, 2006).

What is left out of the current triumphant grandstanding was summed up nicely in a recent report by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. At the moment 1.3 million New Yorkers, one in six residents of the city, cannot afford a consistent food supply and must rely on shelters and pantries. Demand for such services has exploded an estimated 20% this year to go with an 11% increase last year. According to the Coalition’s report, the sheer numbers of the hungry showing up (along with the Bush Administration’s slashing discretionary spending for emergency food by 76% since 2002) have forced more than half of the city’s pantries to ration food or even turn people away.

These numbers are the foreground to the fact that New York City owns a poverty rate roughly twice the national average and well above where its own poverty rate was two decades ago. It is also one of the most unequal cities in the world — a study earlier this year by the Bookings Institute classified only 16% of the city’s neighborhoods as middle class.

Beyond the pomp and circumstance of millionaire populism, other parallels could be drawn from the current Gilded Age to its predecessor. Like the mid 19th century, the New York of the early 21st century is largely a city of immigrants: Mexicans, Eastern Europeans, and Asians, being the modern pioneer representatives of their Irish and German forbears (currently about 37% of the city’s residents are foreign born). While textbook historians shine brightly on the robber barons and their “philanthropy”, and present day tabloids focus on celebrity “sightings” and shopping sprees, it was the vast army of workers that have had the greatest historical impact on the city, a benevolent influence that continues to the present day.

It was in the heart of the first Gilded Age when a united working class led what was the greatest labor organizing effort in the city’s history. The pinnacle of the movement took place in the summer of 1872 when in May of that year the largely native, English speaking building-trades workers began striking for the eight-hour day. They were soon followed by German furniture makers a few days later. By May 25th there were an estimated 20,000 workers on strike, a week later the number grew to 40,000, and before the summer was over more than 100,000 of the city’s workers took part in the eight-hour strikes. The summer action included an “eight-hour parade” through the Bowery on June 10th led in part by the International and organized by the Eight Hour League, which also organized strikes in several other cities.

Though the workers were ultimately defeated by an alliance of large manufacturers (led by the Steinway piano company; New York is still blessed with a Steinway Street, a main shopping thoroughfare in Queens), police clubs, and a conservative media (of which the New York Times was at the forefront), the foundation was laid during the Gilded years for the eventual victory of the eight-hour day and for the coming of the “Progressive” Era. Lasting products of the first Gilded Age included the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Labor Day.

New York in its current Gilded Age hasn’t completely abandoned its labor heritage. Despite experiencing the outsourcing of its manufacturing base and its transformation into a service economy, the city still claims about a million union members, some of whom have shown signs of life in recent times. This month is the second anniversary of the 2005 transit workers strike against proposed cutbacks to pension plans that shut down the city for most of a week. In April 2006, New York hosted some of the massive immigrant rights demonstrations that swept the country. This past September saw a strike by yellow cab drivers against Global Positioning System devices in their cabs. The ongoing gentrification has stirred up some passionate local resistance in several places. While most of these actions have been defensive in scope, and with mixed success, the potential certainly exists for the resurgence of truly progressive politics. Just as the most significant legacy of democratic progress during the original Gilded Age was accomplished by the diverse, hardworking masses, there are still signs of hope that the same will be said for the present one.

Hegel observes somewhere that all great
incidents and individuals of world history
occur, as it were twice. He forgot to add: the
first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

There have been many such instances and individuals since Marx wrote that passage in 1852. Our own present day contains several examples, such as the awful fact that there exists a strong possibility the United States will have a quarter century’s worth of Bushes and Clintons as president. Or perhaps Rudy Giuliani will be able to repeat his local carnage on a national level. A far more tragic instance is how the world stood by as a speedy genocide unfolded in Rwanda just over a decade ago, while largely doing the same as a slow moving genocide has taken place in Darfur.

While the skullduggery in Darfur and Iraq continues, another demonstration of Marx’s theme, what future historians may call the longest, most useless, and perhaps most costly war of our time also continues unrelentingly and always shows signs of expanding: the poorly titled “war on drugs.”

Two recent news items confirm this reality. First, the AP reports on August 25 that about 1,100 Colombian refugees have fled to Ecuador, joining the 250,000 already living there; the UN estimates that another 3 million Colombians have been internally displaced by violence creating the largest internal refugee population in the world outside of Sudan. How many Americans know that the Colombian government is the third largest government recipient of American aid after only Israel and Egypt? Or that the U.S. funds a campaign of aerial herbicide spraying that has destroyed the livelihood and environment of thousands of peasants.

The second news item comes from a UN report that establishes that opium production in Afghanistan has reached record levels for the second straight year (up 17% in 2007). This despite a $600 million American counter-narcotics initiative; the NY Times reports that a proposal for a polite aerial fumigation program is now being considered despite opposition from Afghan officials.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Policy, was quoted in the Times as stating: “Afghanistan today is cultivating megacrops of opium. Leaving aside China in the late 19 th century, no other country has produced so much narcotics in the past 100 years.”

Fitting that Mr. Costa should refer to 19th century China. It was there that the then greatest imperial power in the world used the opium trade as a means to open China up to foreign imperialism and exploitation. How ironic then that a century and a half later the current world hegemon uses the disruption of this same trade, 6% of all global trade, as a cover for its current imperialism

In the mid-19th century it was the British provoking two “Opium Wars” against China that eventually forced the Qing government to grant Britain, and other European powers, favorable treaties, ports, and other privileges within China (including British rule over Hong Kong). The Qing government had previously banned opium imports as a threat to morality and custom. The 21st century, picking up where the 20th left off, now has the U.S. justifying imperialism abroad and repression at home in the name of the health and morality of its own population against the trading and selling of drugs- historical tragedy and farce come full circle.

Some of the casualties of this war have been well documented. The U.S. contains the largest per capita prison population in the world, young African American men continue to be exponentially more likely to be ensnared in the criminal justice system, Colombia cannot escape from its drug fueled civil war with the U.S. playing the patron to a government presiding over an extremely unequal economic arrangement that includes the highest number of murdered union activists in the world. Meanwhile in Afghanistan the criminalization of opium, probably the most practical crop at the moment, helps fuel the resurgence of the Taliban (itself a strange ally in America’s drug war before 9/11).

As dreadful as all that is it still doesn’t nearly cover everything. The criminalization of drugs, mixed with neoliberal economics and rapid urbanization in the form of slums, has left most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere in spiraling violence. Time magazine recently reported that Mexico is well on pace to eclipse the 2000 drug related murders it recorded in 2006. The story also notes that the violence has reached previously immune northern cities and become more horrific:

The atrocities would seem more familiar south of
Baghdad than south of the border: mass executions,
contract shootings carried out at funerals and ghastly
video-taped beheadings posted on the Internet while
victims heads are tossed in the streets…the latest surge
in violence is claiming a broader range of victims, including
police, businesspeople, journalists, and politicians.

Further south Central America, the transit route for drugs from the Andes to the U.S., has in effect been seized by high level drug traffickers, corrupt police, and street gangs. Estimates on the number of gang members in the region run as high as 100,000 (the two largest gangs, Mara 18 and MS-13, have their roots in Los Angeles among Central Americans who fled the U.S. sponsored wars of the 1980s) and murder rates have exploded in recent years to some of the highest in the world. The same can be said of Brazil which in the past 15 months has seen its two main cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, become battlegrounds between powerful drug gangs and even worse displays of police force (one week of violence in Sao Paulo in May 2006 left 170 people dead).

The beauty of this war for U.S. policy makers (missed by mainstream critics of the drug war) is that it offers an instrument of domestic control in the form of prisons, probation, and the eliminating of voting rights to poorer citizens, and at the same time greases the wheels of the arms and law enforcement industries (the U.S. spends around $50 billion a year on the drug war), while enabling a permanent connection with militaries throughout the hemisphere at a time when even conservative politicians have to sound somewhat like Hugo Chavez (briefly overthrown in a U.S. supported coup) and Evo Morales. A rise in populism in the region has always meant the potential of U.S. backed military interference.

The surest solution to combat this imperialism and repression has long been obvious: the legalization of all narcotics. The effects of this would be multifaceted and magnificent: the opening of prisons, the eliminating of an imperial pretext, and the weakening of street gangs and crime dons that hold local populations prisoner in places like El Salvador, Brazil, and Jamaica. Add to the list greater medical oversight, less health risks for users (most of whom use drugs without adverse heath effects), and economic benefit to poor farmers.

As the anti-war movement goes forward against war in the Middle East, it is critical that it not overlook a war fought by every American president since Nixon, a heavy casualty war that takes place all over the world. The time has come a militant anti-war movement to meet it head-on.