Organizing the Race Cards

Stanford University law professor Richard Thompson Ford makes an invaluable contribution to societal discourse about racism with his Slate article today. Spurred to action by a world in which leftists blame every challenge faced by minorities on overt and despicable racism and righties torture logic with claims of "reverse racism," Ford defines several different sub-genres of bigotry, how these sub-genres manifest in society and their legitimacy as examples of true racism.


One might disagree with some of Ford's conclusions - I know quite a few people, for example, who would resolutely insist that "bad people acting with racial animus" led to the pitiful government response to Hurricane Katrina - but that's beside the point. The more essential lesson is that discussion of racial issues is fundamentally undermined by the inflammatory and egregious use of the term "racism," and that we need to take an honest look at what true racism is and where, how and when it still poisons our culture.


It's a convenient thing - and in the heat of a very emotional moment, it may even seem to be an insightful and wise thing - to say that "George Bush does not care about black people," as Kanye West so famously claimed in the wake of Katrina. But while the R-word is useful in identifying heroes and villains, real life is rarely about such clear-cut distinctions. Ford's article is a reminder that the other forces at play, from unconscious biases to poor urban planning to the lingering after-effects of centuries of undeniable racism, are probably more relevant at this point in history than overt hatred. Understanding how these forces work, rather than cavalierly tossing the term "racist" around, is the key to overcoming racial inequality.

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The Infamous Date Rape

That's the title of an old Tribe Called Quest song, but it could also apply to the case of the five Hoftstra University students who were accused of gang-raping a female student in a campus bathroom earlier this month. The men spent two days in jail and were identified in numerous media accounts, but were freed when the alleged victim recanted her story. The case is similar to the Duke lacrosse team scandal of a few years back, but the Hofstra situation included an oddly of-the-times twist - the woman's admission that she had consented to the group grope came after she saw the cell-phone video of the encounter recorded by one of the alleged assailants. While it may be disrespectful, exploitative and just plain gross, filming one's sexual adventures evidently makes some legal sense.


That last point is cribbed from a column by Slate legal writer Emily Bazelon in the female-focused blog Double X. It's just a small note in a piece that goes on to discuss whether the accuser's name, like those of the accused, should be released to the public. Bazelon agonizes over this question and ultimately decides that the false accuser should remain anonymous, although in a later blog post she also acknowledges that perhaps the same courtesy should be extended to those accused of a crime. In doing so, she also acknowledges that the question itself brings into conflict her views on gender solidarity, the imperatives of journalism and the law.


All this, and I'm still dancing around the essential point of the piece and the (non?) lessons of the Hofstra case. Bazelon is wading into the contentious territory of "grey rape," a phrase coined to describe sexual encounters wherein consent is difficult to determine and even the "victim" isn't quite sure whether they've been violated or just feel a particularly stomach-churning remorse about a choice or series of choices. Not surprisingly, the "grey rape" term has been derided in some feminist circles as blame-the-victim terminology and by some men for further muddying the already opaque waters of sexual transactions, particularly those involving alcohol.


The extreme viewpoints are well-represented in the comments section underneath the article, as are more moderate views. But what cuts to the bone for me is an essential question: are women fully equal to men and thus responsible for their own decisions, or are they fundamentally vulnerable and thus dependent on the law to protect them from those decisions.


Let me be clear - on the issue of any sex that results from the application of force or drink-spiking or any other physically assaultive action, I see no grey area. But when it comes to other factors, such as straight-up alcohol consumption, it's a lot murkier. The notion, expressed by some of the commenters, that women are essentially powerless against "manipulative" men who "get them" drunk in order to sleep with them seems to strip women of any kind of power. Coming from women who identify as feminist, I find this to be a bizarre proposition. Of course, sex with an unconscious person is unconscionable, and I'm quite comfortable with the idea that any man who takes advantage of a woman so drunk that she's in blackout, or even unintelligible mode, has committed rape. But what if - as I suspect is the case in a lot of college-campus cases - the man is also drunk out of his mind? Should the law require that he take full responsibility for his actions and the woman none? Again, that seems to violate fundamental feminist principles, at least as I understand them.


I don't for a second believe there's an epidemic of false rape allegations, but cases like these do point to some uncomfortable problems with the way we treat sex and gender equality under the law. Rape cases so often come down to the competing accounts of the accuser and the accused, with only their respective words to guide a judge or jury. It's a legal arena that has always screamed out for more clarity, but I'm not sure that tipping the scales in a way that presumes men to be conscious predators and women to be helpless prey brings any more justice to the justice system or any more gender equality to society.


We want so badly for these things to be black and whites, but the grey remains. Maybe the solution is to videotape everything.


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Travelogue

So let's see. On day one, we arrived at the airport in Istanbul and got in a taxi. It was warm outside...

Okay, I'll go easy on the blow-by-blow. But suffice to say that 10 days in Turkey (and one unexpected bonus night in Frankfurt) is a pretty good tonic for the malaise brought on by the daily grind. As is marriage, a state of bliss that, I have been assured, at no point devolves into anything deserving of the words "daily grind."

But enough of the personal. Some observations about Turkey:

First off, the people there are tremendous. Witty, playful and friendly, always willing to go to extend themselves in order to help out strangers. Even the "aggression" of the carpet-shop salesmen and the ware-hawkers at the Grand Bazaar is for the most part benign and conducted with a self-aware wink. We depended greatly on the kindness of strangers and found it in strong supply at nearly every turn.

Secondly, the food is incredible, and far more varied than menus offered up by many better-known culinary nations. Sure, there are a million different variations on eggplant and the country is well-stocked with kebabs, but the Turks have a long list of multi-flavour recipes. It also doesn't hurt that the fruit and vegetables are fresh and tasty in a way that this particular Ontarian didn't believe was possible.

So much else to say. The weather was mostly great (dodged the deadly floods that hit the Istanbul suburbs), the Mediterranean Sea was eminently swimmable at 22 degrees Celsius and the landscapes - from the mountainous regions to the arid desert in the middle of the country to the mosque-dominated cityscape of Istanbul - were stunning. The only downside was that many areas of the Mediterranean coast were overrun with British and German tourists, such that the only Turks visible were those in service positions.

In other words, Turkey comes highly recommended from this source. 

But this source is not the Lonely Planet, so I'm moved to share another observation. Turkey, of course, has been vying for many years to gain entrance into the European Union. Some people I spoke with there said they'd never be let in for "political reasons." I'm not sure, but the dismissive way they said this led me to believe that the locals don't think these reasons are particularly valid. However, Turkey's EU troubles have to do with its denial of the Armenian genocide and the squabble with Greece over Cyprus - serious business to be sure. I don't know enough about either to come down on one side or the other, but it's a reminder that international politics look very different in the eyes of beholders from different nations. 

This should be obvious, but it's pretty easy, I realized, to wrap oneself in a myopic, North America-centred cocoon. Something to endeavour to avoid as this blog, hopefully, becomes a more regular occurrence again.

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Turkish Delight

It's been awful quiet around here the last couple of months, and it's going to continue to be that way for another couple of weeks. But I'm not sad about it, because I'm off for vacation in Turkey.

I may come back with all kinds of insights about the history of Western civilization, life on the border of Europe and Asia, the inner workings of a secular democracy where 98% of the people self-identify as observant Muslims and the melting of decades of diplomatic ice. But I may not. The plan is to make the mind a blank slate and see what fills it up. 

And if all that gets written on that slate is 11 days of warm sun and crazy sights and sounds, so be it.