Current Events

Guilty of White

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The lottery that I won at 6:37 p.m. on November 18, 1968, was not the product of any hard work on my part. It was not a reward for playing fairly or for especially clean living, nor was it awarded to me for playing by the rules and earning my way.

It was a scratch-off ticket, generated at random, and someone else could have gotten it just as easily as I did. Like the service at a lottery counter in a gas station, life is a first-come, first-served proposition. It was a scratch-off, and, my gosh, did I win a nice jackpot.

If reincarnation existed, one could say that someone else may have deserved this life more than I did or do, and one could certainly argue that someone else might have done a better job with it than I have so far, but it is mine. It is the golden ticket.

The lottery that I won paid off immediately: I am white in a country that treats this minor genetic condition like it is something one diligently worked for and earned. And I am male. I am heterosexual. This world and this country rewards the bearers of those accidental tickets pretty generously, too. When I was a child, my family was middle class in income if not status in a country and at a time when being in the middle of middle-class life in America meant one was living more comfortably than three-fifths of the residents of the rest of the world. And citizens in this country treat that privilege like a victory over immediate enemies rather than the several-generation accumulation of incidents that it is.

Education? Paid for through high school by virtue of being born where I was. By which I do not mean the Spackenkill school district. Nor Poughkeepsie. Not even New York State. Being born in America in 1968 meant an education. (The states were not yet privatizing education or dictating their own local test-versions of education, so I benefited from learning when the dinosaurs existed and the one main reason for the Civil War.) Thanks to my parents, my mom especially, I do not remember the experience of learning how to read or count, because I was taught before my earliest memory (age two and a half) is time-stamped.

Perhaps it is a bit of speculative science fiction to offer the idea that none of these matters are in and of themselves good, righteous, holy, or even earned things. I could have been born in a country that does not privilege the pink pigment of white skin. Or I could have been born in this country but not white. We could have lived in a country where money did not provide some piece of status and “our type” might have been punished at random moments. My mother was born and raised in America, but she had cousins in “the old country” (near Minsk) who were exterminated. They had money.

So I know that I am racist, sexist, whatever-ist. By virtue of being born white, male, and middle class in America in the late 1960s, how could I not be? The day that I walk through (every damn day) is a different day than any woman, black person, gay person—any member of a minority group randomly pre-selected according to these criteria by society—walks through. And the sad, simple fact is that it is a luxury for me to even type that sentence or play with that thought. I do not need to consider what life is like for me, what my day is like, because no power group makes me aware of it.

Oh, sure, it’s society’s rules and some people seem to know how to play by them. “If you don’t commit any crimes, what do you have to worry about?” And that is the thing: I don’t. Simply because I am guilty of white, guilty as charged of male. I am a born member of the power elite, me with my $11,000 annual disability income.

Why does anyone march? Or protest? Or agitate? Or riot, finally? Because if you told me that I had “earned” the genetic anomaly that is taking my legs away, which I did not, not any more than I earned being white or heterosexual, I would attack you with my cane, with every fiber of my being.

* * * *
The Gad About Town is on Facebook! Subscribe today. Daily facts (well, trivia) about literature and history plus links to other writers.

____________________________________________
The WordPress Daily Prompt for December 7 asks us to reflect on the word “Protest.”

The WordPress Daily Prompt for March 2, 2016, asks us to reflect on the word “divide.”

The WordPress Daily Prompt for April 4, 2015, asks, “Link to an item in the news you’ve been thinking about lately, and write the op-ed you’d like to see published on the topic.” Today is the 47th anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The WordPress Daily Prompt for December 2, 2014, asks, “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. When was the last time that sentence accurately described your life?”

Visit “Occupy Daily Prompt,” the DP Alternative.

Landing on a Rocky Rubber Duck

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It took over a decade for the Rosetta space probe to travel approximately four billion miles. While not exactly a meander through the inner solar system—for several years it has been traveling at 34,000 miles per hour—its looping journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko actually led it be misidentified once, seven years ago this week, when astronomers noticed a previously unidentified asteroid heading our way. It was even given an asteroid name, 2007 VN84, before it was correctly identified and everyone laughed uproariously.

In August, Rosetta arrived at Comet 67P/C-G, its destination for the entire trip. Three times, the probe’s path brought it close to its home planet, which provided a gravitational swing each time to throw it farther away from the inner solar system. In one complicated months-long maneuver, it swung out by Mars, took a boost from that encounter to return to Earth at a faster speed, and then passed Mars again; that solar system pick-and-roll flung it into the asteroid belt, the rock quarry orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The European Space Agency has provided an interactive website to illustrate this: “Where is Rosetta?”

The comet is as old as comets are, billions of years old; it is made of stuff left over from the formation of the solar system. Comet 67P is a comet stuck in a stable orbit around the sun; it does not venture far beyond Jupiter’s orbit and does not come much closer to the sun than inside Mars’ orbit. One orbit, one year on Comet 67P, is about six and a half years. Every three years it is as close as it will come to the sun and every three years it is as far away as its orbit takes it. Thus, for Rosetta and its lander, it offers no surprises but many discoveries.

Right now, the comet is in the asteroid belt and making its return to the inner solar system. For the first time, it has a hanger-on. Today, Comet 67P, the Rosetta space probe, and the Philae lander are traveling partners 310 million miles from Earth.

It is the ideal comet to attempt to land on. Other comets, with longer orbits, like Halley’s Comet and other Oort cloud objects, develop a long tail as they come close to the sun, heat up, melt a little, and throw off material. They become unstable. This was spectacularly seen one year ago, when Comet ISON disintegrated as it approached the sun. Comet 67P has been through this process countless times already and is probably not going to heat up and eject too much material, but if it does, science will have a close-up seat.

In September, it started to heat up and gave Rosetta some spectacular views:

comet 67p

Jets springing from Comet 67P

Right now, comet and company are traveling at over 40,000 miles per hour, or 18 kilometers per second. As remarkable as that is, the manipulations and maneuvers to land Philae on the surface—which is dusty and icy and rocky and there is no way to know how stable that surface is or how thick the dust is without getting close and risking everything in a one-and-done landing attempt—slowed the lander to a one-meter-per-second speed after dropping it off. So the lander was traveling 40,000 miles per hour with the comet, and one meter per second closer to the comet, and the landing was not smooth: It bounced, but not off the comet entirely. Harpoons were supposed to secure it, but they did not fire for reasons still unknown. A few footpad screws appear to have been enough to settle the lander in place; millions of miles of travel and it was just like building a desk from Ikea: the big bolts that you were sure you weren’t going to use were never needed in the first place.

As Rosetta approached the comet earlier this year, it became apparent that the object had a complicated shape, that it has one big section and one smaller section. It is shaped like a rubber duck, and my affection for ducks is well-known. The lander is on the comet’s head, which is the smaller part, only about a mile and a half by a mile and a half.

This may be the most amazing fact of the whole project: the comet is not the size of a planet or even an asteroid; it is tiny. There is no human-sized comparison one can make to this without sounding ridiculous. It is like shooting a paperclip at a taxiing 747 and hitting an open window and landing it in a seat in first class. Or: Imagine you are driving cross-country at top speed tomorrow morning. Let’s say you are in Texas and the road is wide-open; it is like the world belongs to you. You hear your cellphone ring, try to locate it, find it but bobble it awkwardly in your hands; you accidentally bounce it out your open window, and then learn that it landed in someone’s hands while they were on top of the Eiffel Tower. Sounds silly, but it does not come close to matching the feat that the European Space Agency successfully accomplished today.

And now comes the science-y part.

____________________________________________
The WordPress Daily Prompt for November 12 asks, “Today you can write about anything, in whatever genre or form, but your post must include a speeding car, a phone call, and a crisp, bright morning. (Wildcard: you can swap any of the above for a good joke.)”

* * * *
Please subscribe to The Gad About Town on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thegadabouttown

Inequality for No One

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“The Mexicans here, they’re better than the ones in California. They’re polite here. I like our Mexicans: they work hard and don’t make me think about them.”

This was small talk, office talk. It always surprises me how quickly people get comfortable enough with me that they gush out their own prejudices, as if they think/assume I have similar sympathies. I had no idea what to say in reply to something that was no longer small talk, so I mumbled that I was suddenly hungry and was going to the lunch room, immediately. “Our Mexicans” was the only phrase in my head. It kept clanging around in there.

The conversation took place in our shared office cubicle in a factory in Iowa; four of us occupied the space and one joined me in the walk to the cafeteria.

“‘Our Mexicans?'” I repeated. “That’s a concept?” He said he was surprised, too. I suggested that maybe when we returned to the cubicle, I would ask her opinion about Iowa vs. California Jews or other groups of people. I did not.

(In the years since, I have heard “our black people” spoken. By an African-American man. Regional prejudice trumped the more traditional kind, and it got the expected laugh from the white people in the room.)

The speaker who had stunned me was a woman who had moved with her family from California to Iowa—on purpose—to escape from California’s California-ness (read: liberal politics and “awful regulations” on cars and guns) and prevent her young daughters from growing up in the Golden State. No jobs had turned up in Nebraska, which was her and her husband’s first choice, so Iowa it was. Both states are 97%-98% white in population.

* * * *
Every woman I know, including the one from California, has reported that she has experienced sexual harassment. Every woman walks through a different day than any man does: she is gauged and judged for her appearance. Young and old, woman are called tarts or teases, or a phrase like “she must have been a looker when she was younger” is used. I dated a woman who had been raped, except she was puzzled when I called it that; in her description she said the guy had “come on strong” and that she should have said “no” more forcefully. “Did you say ‘No’?” I asked. She had, and he had penetrated her. That is rape.

Several women friends have described unpleasant encounters in which anonymous men have exposed themselves; one woman found a man rubbing his open-zippered self against her on a crowded subway, another was given a private show while she was seated on a crowded bus.

* * * *
It is not a nature vs. nurture matter that many people seem to think in this progression of loyalties: Self > family > tribe/extended family > neighborhood > region > population type (color or creed) > interest group > nation. I am conscious that I have not included income, but maybe “interest group” covers that. Humans are tribal, but this is not something we are born with; it is taught. We teach each other to find and use power over others, or to act like we have it.

My family inculcated in my sister and me a sense that we all were pretty lucky, blessed even, to be middle-class and white in America of the 1960s and ’70s. And that luck, simple luck, is not something to brag about or wield like a privilege.

Oh, but I am a member of a minority, you see, many of them. I am the product of a “mixed” marriage, Jewish and Baptist. I am disabled, living with a rare neuromuscular disease. Perhaps some breaks can be given to me. Give me some breaks, universe! This thinking is attractive, insidiously so. I deserve something, something more than I have. Say it with me.

I am a part of the uncomplaining majority, which makes me a minority. Reward me now.

It is indeed insidious, and in my lifetime it has become sickeningly popular. Call it the appeal of the self-declared minority, or the privilege of being underprivileged. The majority, the lucky blessed majority, has appropriated the language, and what it thinks is the mindset, of being underprivileged or even a victim. The powerful majority population decided that enough has been asked of it over time and has started to regard each activist minority population demanding mere equality as another squeaky wheel that gets oil. If finding a way to be the squeaky wheel means getting more privileges and benefits, well, how could they be against being the squeaky wheel? It can be one more way to more power.

Justice and fairness are not equal, but they are just and fair. We should do all we can—I should do all I can—to increase those two things.

* * * *
Today is Blog Action Day. It is estimated that there are more than 250 million blogs published around the world and spread among many hosting companies, many of which are publicly traded. That is a lot of voices, and if they could be united for one day about something other than the universal appeal of cats, they could direct attention in some productive areas. Public attention is not as productive as action and changing minds, but it is better than no action at all.

Blog Action Day is an annual event that was started in 2007. A topic of activist concern is selected and announced in advance. This year’s topic is “inequality.”

2014bloggerbadge

____________________________________________
The WordPress Daily Prompt for October 16 asks, “Did you know today is Blog Action Day? Join bloggers from around the world and write a post about what inequality means to you. Have you ever encountered it in your daily life?

* * * *
Please subscribe to The Gad About Town on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thegadabouttown