A confession

How tightly do you hold to your political and social values? To what length would you go to defend them? It's easy enough to preach to the converted, easier still to write passionate speeches in your own head. Easy, of course, to lob rhetorical grenades anonymously from behind the digital wall of a blog. But when confronted by a person whose values you abhor, when faced with the (duty? opportunity?) to venture into the teeth of an argument you disagree with, what are you willing to risk? Defeat? Discomfort? Physical injury?

Any progress we've made as a society has been a result of people willing to risk everything. And yet so many of us, even those who profess to believe very strongly in certain principles, can shrink in the face of a challenge. 

With much regret, I have to report one of my own such failures. While in Mississippi, I was welcomed with textbook Southern hospitality by a family that allowed me and my travel-mates to spend significant time in their home. This time was almost uniformly pleasant, but there were a couple of instances of profound ugliness. Specifically, the casual use of the word "nigger."

Even the well-traveled and well-educated among our hosts dropped the n-bomb a few times. Most shockingly, they didn't feel it was racist to do so. They explained in patient, vaguely condescending voices that they had no problem with black people, but disliked "niggers" - a distinct sub-group, they said, that was chronically unemployed, sexually irresponsible and violent. The word was okay to use, they said, because it's meant as a descriptor equivalent to "white trash" and because black people used that word all the time to refer to each other.

The ridiculousness of these arguments is evident on their face. It's no more defensible to hate poor people than it is to hate members of a particular race. And the use, by black people, of a word that exemplifies the sickest kind of racism, does not excuse its use by members of the race that perpetrated (and perpetrates) this racism.

An ignorant argument, easily defeated. And yet I didn't defeat it. When the n-bombs dropped, I sat there in stunned silence. 

Maybe it was the surprise factor, maybe it was the fact that these were people that had opened their home to me and I didn't want to offend them. But it doesn't matter. When I was confronted with a (duty? opportunity?) to stand up for cherished values, I choked. I wasn't even able to risk an escalation of the discomfort I was already feeling. It was an utterly shameful non-performance.

It is often said that the worst prejudices are allowed to survive and flourish not so much because of the people who speak the horrible words and do the horrible deeds, but because of the people who fail to speak and act against them. I would like to think of myself as a principled person and a positive actor in the world. Down South, I discovered an uncomfortable distance between this self-image and my ability to live up to it.

I have to do better.

Boarding school

You've got to hand it to Christopher Hitchens. Whatever you think of his positions on the Iraq war or the fight against terrorism (he's an infuriating - and infuriatingly persuasive - hawk), you can't deny his bravery. To appreciate why, check out this Vanity Fair story, wherein Hitchens relates his first-hand encounter with the torture technique known as waterboarding.

I have a feeling that Hitchens went into this experiment hoping to reach the conclusion that waterboarding wasn't really that bad. Instead, he ends up making one of the more honest and informed cases against the practice that I've read.

Good to see one of journalism's most provocative commentators throw plug in some high-voltage perspective on U.S. use of waterboarding, a story that's been drained of its shock value through repetition in the media.

Out of the frying pan...

One thing that makes suffering through a Toronto heat wave more bearable is the knowledge that it's not half as stifling as New Orleans. Three years ago that city almost drowned. Now I think it might melt.

The heat and humidity of Louisiana's Gulf Coast was just one of the things I learned about during my recent week-long sojourn through the Southern U.S. It wasn't so much about learning brand-new facts - anyone can guess that New Orleans is hot and most people have some idea that middle America is fraught with racial and class tension and extremely devoted to both God and guns - but the trip brought these facts to life in a way that only first-hand experience can.

There's too much to unpack for one blog post, so expect stuff to trickle out over the next few days and weeks. But I thought I'd lead off with a couple of small insights I got from talking to folks about the upcoming U.S. election. I didn't dedicate as much time to this research as I thought I might, but did get a couple of points of view that I thought were worth noting.

At a flea market in Ohio, I bought an Obama for President baseball cap from a vendor and decided to chat him up a bit. It turned out that Ousmane was from Senegal and, though he'd lived in the States for more than a decade, wasn't a citizen with voting rights. Nevertheless, he had lots of opinions on Obama, race and the election. A year ago, he wouldn't have taken a bet that a non-white candidate would have a chance to be president, but his thinking on that has shifted since Obama won the nomination. Ousmane said he'd talked to many people - black, white and other - who planned to vote Democratic, so he liked Obama's odds. And rather than race, he thought Obama's biggest challenge would be meeting the toughness test.

"I think people think he won't fight," said Ousmane. Getting out of Iraq might be a good move for the country, he said, but he felt that more militaristic members of the electorate would see it as weakness. "You know McCain will fight," Ousmane added.

Down in Columbus, Mississippi, however, I talked to a middle-aged male with strong Republican leanings who nevertheless blamed the current administration for "making a mess of the country." Stephen believed the Iraq war was folly and didn't much like McCain. But he didn't have much love for Obama, either. He thought Obama would be a weak commander-in-chief and that terrorist foes would be inclined to take advantage of him. It's an argument that I think illustrates the lack of understanding so many people have of 9/11 and terrorism in general. Bin Laden doesn't give a rat's ass about which person or party's in power. I'm not sure I was able to convince Stephen of that, but he did seem to mull the idea over.

In contrast to Ousmane, Stephen thought Obama had no chance at all. When push came to shove, he said, America just wasn't ready to elect a black president. To which I responded, "I guess we'll find out."

I would have liked to find out more about what people thought, but hey, it was a vacation. One that churned out enough fodder to sustain a few more posts, I'm sure.

Bayou Bound

Headed off on what should be a spectacular road trip through the hot and dirty South, with stops in Memphis, New Orleans and Mississippi. For someone fascinated with U.S. politics - and especially the race issues linked to the upcoming election - this is an excellent chance to find out what the people from the country's most racially charged (at least historically) region feel about the whole thing. I may even take the time to chat with some of the locals to come up with some kind of barometer, which could be the basis of a mag article. It would definitely be the basis for a few blog posts.

It's also a fantasy trip for a music lover...Graceland, New Orleans jazz and Delta blues. I can't wait to hear the words and music of the South and report back.