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by Nell Irvin Painter
Illustrated. 496 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $27.95
Review by Linda Gordon
Apr 1, 2010
Mar 31, 2010
Behind the Lines for Wednesday, March 31, 2010
By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly
Dept. of reasonable questions: "How much sense does it make to have the Department of Homeland Security in a city that is a prime target for attack?" . . . Just in case you were wondering: Osama bin Laden "is alive, well, and personally 'giving the orders,' " FBI info shows . . . Boring from within: Police association urges federal air marshal's chief as next candidate for rudderless TSA. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.
---------------------------------
“How much sense does it make to have the Department of Homeland Security in a city that is a prime target for attack?” Dan Walsh asks in a Washington Post plea that “a plan be developed” to shift federal agencies out of the D.C. area. “Every time something scary happens anywhere in the world New York City security officials ‘ramp up security’ here at home,” Jonny Diamond gripes in The L Magazine, concluding, “This is kind of silly.” The Infrastrucurist’s Melissa Lafsky ponders of the post-Moscow transit security surge, “Were all these increased security measures necessary? Or were they a waste of time and money? The answer is neither.”
Feds: “A new FBI terrorism case provides a rare nugget of intelligence about Osama bin Laden: the al Qaeda leader is alive, well, and personally ‘giving the orders,’” Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff learns. The FBI has been training thousands of law enforcers nationwide to identify, disrupt and dismantle IEDs, including bombs made out of ordinary household products, The Associated Press’ Greg Bluestein spotlights. Completely exonerated by the CIA, but convicted as a Hezbollah spy in print, Nada Nadim Prouty is a “counterterrorism heroine,” Post blogger Jeff Stein essays. A former Iranian Revolution Guards officer who spied for the CIA in Iran for nearly decade is telling his story in a new book coming next week, Ken Timmerman alerts for Gather.
Homies: A police association yesterday urged the White House to tap DHS’s federal air marshal director to head the rudderless TSA, CNN notes. DHS’s Janet Napolitano this week “reiterated her resolve to fight terrorism and urged the science and technology community to develop innovative initiatives to help protect the nation from threats,” All Headline News’ Tejinder Singh relates. At ICE detention centers, mental incompetence is routinely ignored by immigration judges and deportation officers, who are under pressure to handle rising caseloads and meet DHS quotas, The New York Times’ Nina Bernstein cites from a new report — and see The Texas Tribune’s Julian Aguilar on the same.
State and local: According to a newly released report there are 27 militia-type groups in Indiana, all against the federal government but “not necessarily racist or hate-oriented,” The Merrillville (Ind.) Post-Tribune reports — and see The Toledo Blade.The National Park Service will award a contract this spring for an $8.5 million two-lane access highway to Pennsylvania’s Flight 93 Memorial, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The National Federation of Independent Business is urging Tennessee employers to get prepared for ICE inspections of their hiring records, The Knoxville News Sentinel says. The Frederick County (Md.) Sheriff’s Office will soon partner with ICE “in another national program to help enforce the nation’s immigration laws,” the News-Post notes.
Follow the money: While al Qaeda has used the Internet primarily to spread its propaganda and rally new recruits, like other terror groups it has also relied on the Web for fundraising, a Studies in Conflict & Terrorism article explores. Authorities are pushing to regulate an allegedly common method of moving money across the border: stored-value cards, The Arizona Daily Star says. Treasury last week levied sanctions against an Iraqi with ties to an al Qaeda-linked support network operating there, Reuters reports. Congress wants the Pentagon to better track funds spent as part of a cash discretionary fund supporting counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Christian Science Monitor mentions. A bill in the Missouri legislature would ban the State Employees Retirement System and other entities from investing in companies doing business with governments that support terrorism, The Jefferson City News Tribune notes.
Bugs ‘n bombs: Al Qaeda has “trained a group of female suicide bombers to attack Western targets including airlines,” IPT News quotes from a new intel assessment — as The New York Times has Monday’s Moscow subway bombings reviving “ a peculiar fear in the Russian capital, one that goes beyond the usual terrorism worries of a metropolis: the female bomber.” A La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology egghead has designed an antibody that will treat people exposed to smallpox during a bioterrorism attack, The Voice of San Diego profiles. Regarding attacks on lawmakers after the health care vote, The Minneapolis Star Tribune judges that whoever sent a “potentially used condom” to Rep. Betty McCollum “could have engaged in bioterrorism; body fluids, if present, can potentially transmit one of several serious diseases.”
Up in the air: An American Eagle flight from Chicago was diverted Monday night from Reagan National to Dulles by a suspicious person report, NBC Washington notes. “All selected children will have to go through the new full-body ‘naked’ scanning machines being introduced at airports,” The Daily Mail hears the Brit government ruling Monday — while The Guardian learns from defense sources that RAF jets have been scrambled twice this month in response to terrorist alerts on airliners flying over the U.K. Two breaches occurred at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport over the weekend, both involving suspects scaling walls to enter restricted areas, The Hindu relates — as the Times of India reports two security inspectors under suspension.
Coming and going: For the first time in recent years, Canada has put its subway networks on “extra alert” in the wake of Monday’s Moscow metro blasts, IANS notes — while AP has Prague’s subways boosting security for the April 8 summit where Obama and his Russian counterpart will sign an arms accord. Amid security warnings, Port of Corpus Christi commissioners will hire only half the marine patrol staff originally planned, the Caller-Times tells. The ongoing saga of Coast Guard demands on inland Minnesota fishing guides continues, but state officials recommend guides start applying for TWICs, The Duluth News Tribune relates. “Could a national identity card help resolve the heated immigration-reform divide?” Time Magazine wonders.
Terror tech: “As threats to Pentagon computer networks . . . continue to grow, the Senate Armed Services Committee is holding up creation of a new Cyber Command,” The Washington Times tells. Britain’s MI5 security agency “is launching an unprecedented round of redundancies to improve the overall level of computer skills among its staff,” The Daily Telegraph records. DHS’s First Responder Technologies program has created a virtual platform where first responders and . . . officials can “collaborate on team projects and critical homeland security initiatives,” News Blaze relays. Researchers have developed a technique to ascertain the “chemical fingerprint” of compounds such as mustard gas, rat poison and VX, providing vital clues to responders, Wired Science says. By mimicking biological tissues that respond to shifting environments, a multifunctional polymer developed by a U-Pittsburgh researcher can decontaminate a range of bio-agents and chemical toxins, Popular Science reports.
Gizmotronica: A U.K. biotech consortium has developed a gadget that trains groups of bees at a time to smell out explosives, obviating costly and time-consuming individual coaching, New Scientist notes. A hand-held version of a Pentagon-developed beam weapon that subjects recalcitrant targets to an ostensibly “harmless” burning sensation could end up being used by police to control rowdy civilians, Homeland Security Newswire relates — while Danger Room reports Israeli boffins’ development of a loud-hailer/weapon so ear-piercing it could kill. “Some of New York’s newest high-tech weapons in the war on terror look like ordinary blankets,” but they’re made of “state-of-the-art material that can protect civilians and rescuers against chemical, biological and radiological attacks,” The New York Post spotlights — as NBC Dallas-Fort Worth sees North Texas business owners turning to an innovative weapon long used in Canada and Europe to foil burglaries: fog combined with a strobe light.
Over there: Monday’s twin suicide bombings in Moscow included an attack on a subway station just steps away from secret police headquarters, The Washington Post reports — while The New York Times sees the blasts presenting “a grave challenge” to P.M. Vladimir Putin’s record of curbing terrorism. Moscow authorities say they will step up security measures, not just on the subways, during Orthodox Easter (April 4) and Victory Day (May 9) celebrations, RIA Novosti notes. A pipe bomb explosion in Athens on Sunday night killed a 15-year-old Afghan boy, injuring his mother and sister, Kathimerini recounts. “As if South Africa’s own high crime rate and the threat of European football hooligans weren’t enough, World Cup planners are also bracing for a possible terror attack,” AP leads.
Courts and rights: A Chicago cabdriver charged with trying to send money to an al Qaeda-linked Pakistani terrorist leader will remain in custody after deciding Tuesday not to contest detention, The Chicago Tribune tells. A federal appeals court has ordered a Rhode Island judge to hear more arguments on whether to vacate a $116 million judgment against the PLO over a 1996 terror attack that killed a U.S. citizen and his wife, The Providence Journal reports. Cracks are beginning to appear in the military’s prosecution of three Navy SEALs accused of striking a most-wanted terrorism suspect they had captured in Iraq, The Washington Times leads. An alleged leader of a violent cross-border drug gang believed involved in the slayings this month of three U.S. consulate employees in Juarez was arrested Monday, the Post relates.
This just in, from The Onion: “2,000 MILES BENEATH BAVARIA, GERMANY—Mytron the Fifth, Illuminati ruler and secret mastermind of the entire human race since the year 8449 on the world’s true calendar, died yesterday in his subterranean bedchamber. He was 112. Mytron, who assumed clandestine dominion of the planet upon the sudden withering of Hemmonphanes the Ancient, was perhaps best known for engineering more than 200 wars, economic catastrophes, and famines, and for having psychokinetic control over the inner thoughts of every man, woman, and child on earth. ‘He’ll be missed,’ said a longtime friend and Roman Catholic archbishop who declined to be identified. Mytron is survived by 251 offspring, primarily from his human wives.” Read, also in The Onion: “Computer Company Started In Garage 30 Years Ago Now In Smaller Garage.”
Source: CQ Homeland Security
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Angola Press - Timor e Moçambique defendem maior difusão do português dentro das suas fronteiras
(Use the Quick Google Translator gadget in the sidebar if you can't read Portuguese.)
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Mar 30, 2010
Mar 28, 2010
Book Review - The History of White People
THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
Nell Irvin Painter’s title, “The History of White People,” is a provocation in several ways: it’s monumental in sweep, and its absurd grandiosity should call to mind the fact that writing a “History of Black People” might seem perfectly reasonable to white people. But the title is literally accurate, because the book traces characterizations of the lighter-skinned people we call white today, starting with the ancient Scythians. For those who have not yet registered how much these characterizations have changed, let me assure you that sensory observation was not the basis of racial nomenclature.
Some ancient descriptions did note color, as when the ancient Greeks recognized that their “barbaric” northern neighbors, Scythians and Celts, had lighter skin than Greeks considered normal. Most ancient peoples defined population differences culturally, not physically, and often regarded lighter people as less civilized. Centuries later, European travel writers regarded the light-skinned Circassians, a k a Caucasians, as people best fit only for slavery, yet at the same time labeled Circassian slave women the epitome of beauty. Exoticizing and sexualizing women of allegedly inferior “races” has a long and continuous history in racial thought; it’s just that today they are usually darker-skinned women.
“Whiteness studies” have so proliferated in the last two decades that historians might be forgiven a yawn in response to being told that racial divisions are fundamentally arbitrary, and that deciding who is white has been not only fluid but also heavily influenced by class and culture. In some Latin American countries, for example, the term blanquearse, to bleach oneself, is used to mean moving upward in class status. But this concept — the social and cultural construction of race over time — remains harder for many people to understand than, say, the notion that gender is a social and cultural construction, unlike sex. As recently as 10 years ago, some of my undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin heard my explanations of critical race theory as a denial of observable physical differences.
I wish I had had this book to offer them. Painter, a renowned historian recently retired from Princeton, has written an unusual study: an intellectual history, with occasional excursions to examine vernacular usage, for popular audiences. It has much to teach everyone, including whiteness experts, but it is accessible and breezy, its coverage broad and therefore necessarily superficial.
The modern intellectual history of whiteness began among the 18th-century German scholars who invented racial “science.” Johann Joachim Winckelmann made the ancient Greeks his models of beauty by imagining them white-skinned; he may even have suppressed his own (correct) suspicion that their statues, though copied by the Romans in white marble, had originally been painted. The Dutchman Petrus Camper calculated the proportions and angles of the ideal face and skull, and produced a scale that awarded a perfect rating to the head of a Greek god and ranked Europeans as the runners-up, earning 80 out of 100. The Englishman Charles White collected skulls that he arranged from lowest to highest degree of perfection. He did not think he was seeing the gradual improvement of the human species, but assumed rather the polygenesis theory: the different races arose from separate divine creations and were designed with a range of quality.
The modern concept of a Caucasian race, which students my age were taught in school, came from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach of Göttingen, the most influential of this generation of race scholars. Switching from skulls to skin, he divided humans into five races by color — white, yellow, copper, tawny, and tawny-black to jet-black — but he ascribed these differences to climate. Still convinced that people of the Caucasus were the paragons of beauty, he placed residents of North Africa and India in the Caucasian category, sliding into a linguistic analysis based on the common derivation of Indo-European languages. That category, Painter notes, soon slipped free of any geographic or linguistic moorings and became a quasi-scientific term for a race known as “white.”
Some great American heroes, notably Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, absorbed Blumenbach’s influence but relabeled the categories of white superiority. They adopted the Saxons as their ideal, imagining Americans as direct and unalloyed descendants of the English, later including the Germans. In general, Western labels for racial superiority moved thus: Caucasian → Saxon → Teutonic → Nordic → Aryan → white/Anglo.
The spread of evolutionary theory required a series of theoretical shifts, to cope with changing understandings of what is heritable. When hereditary thought produced eugenics, the effort to breed superior human beings, it relied mostly on inaccurate genetics. Nevertheless, eugenic “science” became authoritative from the late 19th century through the 1930s. Eugenics gave rise to laws in at least 30 states authorizing forced sterilization of the ostensibly feeble-minded and the hereditarily criminal. Painter cites an estimate of 65,000 sterilized against their will by 1968, after which a combined feminist and civil rights campaign succeeded in radically restricting forced sterilization. While blacks and American Indians were disproportionately victimized, intelligence testing added many immigrants and others of “inferior stock,” predominantly Appalachian whites, to the rolls of the surgically sterilized.
In the long run, the project of measuring “intelligence” probably did more than eugenics to stigmatize and hold back the nonwhite. Researchers gave I.Q. tests to 1,750,000 recruits in World War I and found that the average mental age, for those 18 and over, was 13.08 years. That experiment in mass testing failed owing to the Army’s insistence that even the lowest ranked usually became model soldiers. But I.Q. testing achieved success in driving the anti-immigration movement. The tests allowed calibrated rankings of Americans of different ancestries — the English at the top, Poles on the bottom. Returning to head measurements, other researchers computed with new categories the proportion of different “blood” in people of different races: Belgians were 60 percent Nordic (the superior European race) and 40 percent Alpine, while the Irish were 30 percent Nordic and 70 percent Mediterranean (the inferior European race). Sometimes politics produced immediate changes in these supposedly objective findings: World War I caused the downgrading of Germans from heavily Nordic to heavily Alpine.
Painter points out, but without adequate discussion, that the adoration of whiteness became particularly problematic for women, as pale blue-eyed blondes became, like so many unattainable desires, a reminder of what was second-class about the rest of us. Among the painfully comic absurdities that racial science produced was the “beauty map” constructed by Francis Galton around the turn of the 20th century: he classified people as good, medium or bad; he categorized those he saw by using pushpins and thus demonstrated that London ranked highest and Aberdeen lowest in average beauty.
Rankings of intelligence and beauty supported escalating anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism in early-20th-century America. Both prejudices racialized non-Protestant groups. But Painter misses some crucial regional differences. While Jews and Italians were nonwhite in the East, they had long been white in San Francisco, where the racial “inferiors” were the Chinese. Although the United States census categorized Mexican-Americans as white through 1930, census enumerators in the Southwest, working from a different racial understanding, ignored those instructions and marked them “M” for Mexican.
In the same period, anarchist or socialist beliefs became a sign of racial inferiority, a premise strengthened by the presence of many immigrants and Jews among early-20th-century radicals. Whiteness thus became a method of stigmatizing dissenting ideas, a marker of ideological respectability; Painter should have investigated this phenomenon further. Also missing from the book is an analysis of the all-important question: Who benefits and how from the imprimatur of whiteness? Political elites and employers of low-wage labor, to choose just two groups, actively policed the boundaries of whiteness.
But I cannot fault Nell Painter’s choices — omissions to keep a book widely readable. Often, scholarly interpretation is transmitted through textbooks that oversimplify and even bore their readers with vague generalities. Far better for a large audience to learn about whiteness from a distinguished scholar in an insightful and lively exposition.
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