Math Spectrometer

Not In Our Country

(original post and comments here)

When I get back from vacation, I promise I will post some more math posts in the AHSMP.  But for now, you should take a look at this link.  We tend to think that that violence against women is decreasing in our country.  That law enforcement organizations have learned to take rape and domestic violence more seriously.  And perhaps they have.  But not everywhere.  Of course, this situation is a legacy of our awful treatment of American Indians, and part of the problem is that, according to the law, it's not entirely clear if this really is taking place in our country.  But for the sake of the women of South Dakota (on or off of a reservation), let's hope the law enforcement and funds are provided to help that shelter.

Please consider a donation of goods or money—for the women's sake and to send a message that this is unacceptable in our country.

"Alleged"

(original post and comments here)

Yet another public figure is involved in a possible "sex scandal".  Senator Craig from Idaho was arrested for lewd conduct for allegedly engaging in behaviors that indicated to an undercover police officer that he was interested in a homosexual liaison.  I stress the word allegedly not out of sarcasm because I believe he really did it (I don't really have an opinion about that), but because of how that word is used in some of the reports about it.  This article, in particular, bothers me.  It talks about his "alleged homosexuality" and about a blogger who had "accused Craig of homosexual sex".  Using words like alleged and accused is especially harmful here.  It perpetuates the myth that the crime he stands accused of is being gay or bisexual.  That is not his alleged crime.  His alleged crime is engaging in lewd behavior that would have been a crime whether he was soliciting homosexual or heterosexual sex.

The brain science is pretty clear that sexual preference is a biological drive, not a moral choice.  If Craig made any poor moral choice, it was (allegedly) to break the law by propositioning for sex in a bathroom.  Also, if it turns out he is in fact gay, then choosing to oppose equal rights for gay people is at best sad and self-loathing and at worst hypocritical.

Our language often implies more than we think.  Let's use words like alleged and accused for crimes, not for being gay.

Not a Clue

(original post and comments here)

There are some things we white straight males have to learn before the fabric of our society starts to feel a little softer for people who aren't like us.  One of them is how we don't have a clue about what it's like to really be oppressed in our day-to-day lives.  Maybe we can never feel what the oppressed feel, but we can try to understand.

(Thanks to Kung-Fu Monkey for the link.)

A Different World

(original post and comments here)

"A Different World" was the spin-off of "The Cosby Show" where one of the Cosby kids went to college.  The Different World in question was, I guess, two-fold:  living on his own, and being a Black man in the world instead of a Black kid in a familiar neighborhood.  But even that world is not as different as the world of Black kids in urban neighborhoods.

Yesterday and today (and several other times in the past few weeks), I took part in a program that my martial arts school is involved with.  We hold a weekly class for teenagers who have been convicted of drug-related offenses, but not violent offenses.  These kids are free in the sense that they are not confined, but their daily lives are scheduled to the minute, and there are always people keeping track of where they are.  And a few of them take our martial arts class for an hour a week.  For the most part, these are teenagers that are about 2 or 3 lucky breaks away from just being normal, trying-to-make-a-decent-life teenagers.  But because kids in those neighborhoods rarely get breaks, they were caught and sentenced to this program.  It's a triage principle, I guess.  The worst gang-bangers are just locked up.  The law abiding kids are left to fend for themselves.  These kids in the middle get a lot of attention so they won't end up in the first group.  All of the boys in the program are Black.  The girls are of several races*.

Only 5 of the boys stuck with the program for long enough to get to their first promotion test, which was today.  I've been helping teach them for a few weeks (since I have so much more time in the summer).  We practiced with them one last time yesterday.  While I was changing into my uniform in a different room, a large group of these kids was left alone for a while.  By the time I got back, it had degenerated into mass chaos.  They were immensely loud, and 2 pairs of kids were fighting;  they weren't angry, just playing--but the swings were real and could have seriously hurt someone if they had been good enough to actually connect.  I compare this to the Commons at my school where kids are regularly left alone.  Sure, they can get rowdy and there can be some play wrestling.  But nothing like the chaos I saw when I got back.  Society pushes all kids into non-kid behavior...that's the purpose of society, of course.  But a White-dominated society pushes these Black kids so hard that when they let loose, the outbreak is much more extreme.  It was not hard to see how, in a prison, this could turn into a riot.

Of course the 5 boys who tested did very well.  One of them, I'll call him Greg, is a big kid...maybe 5'11" and 260 lbs.  But he learned quickly that brute force doesn't work as well in martial arts as good technique, and when I thanked him for helping put away our mats, he said "no, thank you for coming out here."  None of the other kids had the guts and decency to thank us.  I will go to help out with that program whenever I can this summer, and Greg will probably still be in it by September.  I'll probably never find out what happens to him in the long run.  He's a really sweet guy, and I hope his guts and decency will bring him back from the brink.

Teaching those kids martial arts (even just an hour a week) is so drastically different from the teaching I do every day.  I don't think I could teach them math knowing the kind of apathy that's so prevalent in the classrooms in the city.  I like math, and I can overcome kids' math anxiety, but I have much more trouble with apathy.

Yeah, it's a different world.  But really, of course, it's not a different world.  I can drive there in less than half an hour.  So many White people live in fear of individual Black people they meet, and so many Black people live in fear of the overwhelming mass of White people who don't understand their frustrations.  We're both afraid of each other, and yet it's so easy to find a place (the martial arts mats, for instance) where race really just makes no difference at all.  At a recent weekend seminar for our martial art (drawing about 70 people from around the country--even a few from Japan and Israel--who study our branch of it) I was almost finished with it before I realized that this was really one place where nobody cared at all about race.  My roommate was Black, the instructors were Chinese-American, Japanese-American, White, Filipino, Latino.  I don't think this is just me failing to see racism because I don't want it;  I've been trained to see racism.  All it took was to take the focus off of race and put it onto something we all had in common.  It seems so easy.  But it's not easy.

Sad and encouraging at the same time.  A different world, yet not a different world.  Doesn't exactly follow the logic of math.

*I use the word "race" in its socially defined sense.  Genetically, there is more variability within a "race" than there is between "races".  So the word doesn't really describe any biological reality.  But it certainly describes a social reality.

Another part of Poly

(original post and comments here)

So, the reason I named my site "Polymathematics" [the name of the original blog on which this appears] is that the things I do (my life, my hobbies, my politics) are so varied that I wanted to see all (or most of) the parts of it in one place.  I'm still not sure if it will work.  But here's another part of my polylife...a big one.

In about April or May of next year, my wife and I will be adopting a baby from China.  Let's get some common questions out of the way first:

1. So you're at the end of your fertility treatment options?  No, actually, we haven't tried conceiving;  adoption is our first choice.  Neither my wife nor I have any serious emotional attachment to passing our actual DNA to a new generation--my life is my loves, views, desires, interests, etc.  I can pass those on sans DNA.
2. Do you know if it will be a boy or a girl?  Due to the political situation in China, our baby will almost surely be a girl.  Chinese culture and law are asymmetrical in how they treat boy and girl children--girls are fine, but boys (supposedly) take care of you when you're old.  If the Chinese government says you can only have one (or two if you live in a rural area and your first one is a girl), you might have to give up a girl so you can have a boy for your old age.  Sad, but true.
3. Do you know how old she'll be?  Probably 9-12 months, no younger than 6 months, possibly as old as 2.
4. Why aren't you adopting an American kid who needs a home?  (Smart-ass answer for a lot of people:  Why aren't you?)  Real answer:  We (mostly my wife, to be honest) did the research, and this choice works for us.  And we kinda resent the implied rebuke in the question.  So please just accept our decision.

We're currently awaiting our final document from the U.S. government, which could arrive any day now.  We will "be DTC" (Dossier To China) by mid-August.

Amazingly, in the middle of writing that very sentence, my wife informed me that the document came in the mail!!!

So in addition to all the normal preparing-for-a-baby stuff (which we're doing a bunch of over the summer because it's less busy than during the school year), we've been talking a lot about where we want to live when she starts school, since the school systems around here are enormously varied.  Which brings up one of the central issues of this adoption:  Our child will be of a different race than us.  We are Caucasian, she will be Asian.

What's it like growing up Asian in America?  Well, I have Asian students and acquaintances and friends (although not especially close friends).  I've done some reading about growing up as an Asian adoptee.  I've spent time learning about how racism works.  I can't know for sure what it's like, but here's what I know:  Asian-Americans experience race very differently from African-Americans.  The stereotypes are not as blatantly negative, but they are at least as strong.

• Asian kids do well at school.
• Asian kids work really hard.
• Asians are non-confrontational.
• Asian families are male-dominated.
• Asian culture is "exotic".
• Asian women are highly sexualized, but submissive.
• Asian straight men are asexual.
• Asian gay men are very sexual.
• Chinese people are sneaky, inscrutable.

There are lots of them.  And they hurt.  Teachers might be less likely to help a struggling Asian student if they think it can't be a serious problem.  Standing up for beliefs might be more likely to be punished if it is viewed as unnatural.  Will our daughter ever be sure that romantic interest in her isn't a fetish?  And since many of these stereotypes contribute to the "model minority" image, the pressure on kids to conform to the stereotypes is huge (if you could be pretty sure that certain non-academic behaviors would cause people to look at you as brilliant and hard-working, wouldn't you behave that way?).

So....what does that mean for our daughter?  Should we find a school that has enough Asian kids to make her feel more at ease?  If many of the non-Asians are Black, would that help her learn to cope better with racism?  What about the reported anti-Asian sentiment in the Black communtity.  Is that a stereotype, too?  What if it's not?

I know, I know.  All you Asians and African-Americans and Latino/as reading this are thinking "welcome to my world, Mr. Oblivious White Guy."  Having been a teacher for a while now, I hope I'm more sensitive to the insidious effects of racism than most Oblivious White Guys.  And I'm painfully (and guiltily) aware of my White privilege--in particular, the fact that Whiteness is basically neutral in American culture.  My wife said it well when she pointed out that having an instant interracial family will force us to shed this racial neutrality.  Of course it would be good for a lot of people to be forced to do this.  Probably good for me, too.

I don't have answers.  You know how some people think that math is hard?  I'm sure it is for some people who's minds don't think of it in the right way.  But I think race is hard.  That's because America doesn't think of it in the right way.

Welcome to America, daughter.  We love you.  I'm afraid that won't always be enough.