A Labor Day Salute to Diversity

Recently,  Corrine Bauer and Pat Melody, members of my Mindfulness Meditation Group,  held a vigil on behalf of Hispanic immigrants locked up in the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center. Thanks to Corrine and Pat for being mindful of the welfare of others.

I'm re-posting the text below from Labor Day 2007 as it continues to be relevant in the context of the status of immigrants in this country and around the globe. Too many Americans oppose immigration as they fear competition for jobs from immigrants seeking safe haven within US borders. The success of an initiative by my employer a few years ago should lay those fears to rest. Nevertheless, we continue to harass Hispanic immigrants in the US, while around the globe, Syrian refugees are too often turned away.

Picture this: I’m a young WAF assigned to clerical duties in an office on Scott Air Force Base, near East St. Louis, Ill. On this particular morning I overhear an Air Force major and a colonel, both Caucasian, discuss the qualifications of a civil service employee under consideration for promotion; the colonel apparently likes her resume. Then he asks, “Is she Caucasian?”

“Negative,” the major replies.

Here's the deal: I’m a Caucasian who grew up in lily-white, rural northwestern Ohio, and this was the first time I’d seen up close the ugliness of racial discrimination. Stunned, I sat there at my typewriter, trying to focus on my work.

(In the weeks that follow, I notice the employee in question is not promoted.)

On the upside, my stint in the military provided my first opportunity to make friends with members of other races and ethnic backgrounds.

I’ve not forgotten Hispanic Maria Venegas; African-Americans Katie Harmon, Annie Terry, and Adeline Lincoln; Parisian French Caucasian Monique Horlaville; and New Orleans French Caucasian Priscilla Bertrand.

Years passed before I encountered a comparable diversity in civilian life ― diversity fostered intentionally in the regional office of a large corporation located in a thriving upscale suburb.

Admittedly, the company’s motives were more practical than altruistic. At a department meeting, Tony, our African-American assistant manager, asked if any of us knew what was behind the diversity initiative. He rolled his eyes when I suggested that our company supported diversity because it was the right thing to do.

Tony then explained the business case for diversity: “If we want to sell our products to the Hmong community, African-Americans, Hispanics, Gays, women, or other minority group, we’d best include their members in our workforce.”

Altruistic or not, it’s amazing how quickly people can adapt to an inclusive environment when their livelihoods are at stake and before long, the 2000 plus employees in that huge office building formed a genuine community featuring many of the amenities and rituals of a small town.

Sad to say, our community ― by then a model of diversity ― became a casualty of corporate downsizing when, thanks to technology, our work was moved elsewhere. But for quite a few years each of us had good cause for celebrating Labor Day.

Perhaps the time will come when a majority of Americans will have matured sufficiently to create similar communities, whatever their context, purely because it’s the right thing to do. 

 

Posted by VIRGINIA BERGMAN at 6:44 AM No comments: Links to this post

The dark future foretold by drones: detaching brutality from humanity

The Reaper drone. Photo credits: Public Domain.

In A Brief History of Drones at The Nation, John Sifton points out the frightening linguistics associated with America’s unmanned aircraft:

The weapons’ names suggest ruthless and inhumane characteristics. The first drone aircraft deployed by the CIA and Air Force after 2001 was the Predator, a rather coarse name even for a weapons system, suggestive that the enemy was not human but merely prey, that military operations were not combat subject to the laws of war but a hunt. (Some of the computer software used by the military and the CIA to calculate expected civilian casualties during airstrikes is known in government circles as Bug Splat.) The Predator’s manufacturer, General Atomics, later developed the larger Reaper, a moniker implying that the United States was fate itself, cutting down enemies who were destined to die. That the drones’ payloads were called Hellfire missiles, invoking the punishment of the afterlife, added to a sense of righteousness.

Sifton continues:

But the real issue is the context of how drones kill. The curious characteristic of drones—and the names reinforce this—is that they are used primarily to target individual humans, not places or military forces as such. Yet they simultaneously obscure the human role in perpetrating the violence. Unlike a missile strike, in which a physical or geographic target is chosen beforehand, drones linger, looking precisely for a target—a human target. And yet, at the same time, the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present. Observers are drawn toward thinking that it is the Predator that kills Anwar al-Awlaki, or its Hellfire missiles, not the CIA officers who order the weapons’ engagement. On the one hand, we have the most intimate form of violence—the targeted killing of a specific person, which in some contexts is called assassination—while on the other hand, the least intimate of weapons.

This characteristic, the distance between targets and CIA executive officers at Langley, is the defining characteristic of drones. They are the zenith of the technological quest that runs back to the invention of slings and arrows thousands of years ago, efforts of the earliest perpetrators of violence to get away from their victims. That process, which brought catapults and later artillery, reached its first peak with the development of intercontinental nuclear missiles; but those are weapons of limited tactical use and have never been used. Drones allow all the alienation of long-range missions but with much more flexibility and capacity for everyday use. The net result is everyday violence with all the distance and alienation of ICBMs. This is disturbing perhaps because alienation is disturbing.

Sifton concludes:

The issue is not that armed drones are more terrible or deadly than other weapons systems. On the contrary, the violence of drones today is more selective than many forms of military violence, and human rights groups recognize that drones, in comparison with less precise weapons, have the potential to minimize civilian casualties during legitimate military strikes.

Nor is the issue the remote delivery of weapons: alienation from the effects of violence reached a high-water mark in World War I. What makes drones disturbing is an unusual combination of characteristics: the distance between killer and killed, the asymmetry, the prospect of automation and, most of all, the minimization of pilot risk and political risk. It is the merging of these characteristics that draws the attention of journalists, military analysts, human rights researchers and Al Qaeda propagandists, suggesting something disturbing about what human violence may become. The unique technology allows the mundane and regular violence of military force to be separated further from human emotion. Drones foreshadow the idea that brutality could become detached from humanity—and yield violence that is, as it were, unconscious.

In this sense, drones foretell a future that is very dark indeed.

Mother’s Day Musings: "I Was a Stranger and You Took Me in"

Tomorrow, May 10, is Mother’s Day, and the kids are taking me to the movies. I’ve been promised either Slumdog Millionaire or the new Star Trek, depending on what’s available. After reading Garychapelhill’s recommendation this morning, I’m kind of hoping for the new Star Trek.

I love being remembered on Mother’s Day, but this afternoon, I’m thinking of my own mother who died several years ago. A particularly poignant memory involves an incident that occurred in the 1950s when our family lived on the outskirts of a small village in northwestern Ohio.

Our house was perched on an embankment across the street from the Mt. Blanchard railroad station. My nephew David and I, ages eight and 10 respectively, often waved from the yard as the trains rumbled by, and we usually got a friendly wave or two in return.

That summer afternoon a one-armed man paced up and down the tracks as he waited to hop a freight. He was obviously one of the homeless wanderers who followed the rails through our small town from time to time.

Mama watched from our living room window. She was a mountain woman, transplanted a few years earlier with my father and their several children from Appalachia to northwestern Ohio. She brought with her from the hollows of southeastern Kentucky few worldly possessions and an indestructible faith, often citing a favorite passage of scripture:

“For I was hungry, and you gave me meat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in.

“Naked and you clothed me, I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came unto me.”

Others might have labeled the one-armed man a hobo, but to Mama he was a war veteran. This was the 1950s, and two of my three brothers were in the military: Kenneth was on combat duty in Korea, and Don was stationed at an airbase in Germany.

Mama rolled up a set of Don’s old work clothes and put them in a paper bag. On top of the clothes, she placed a couple of bologna sandwiches wrapped in heavy wax paper. She then instructed David and me to take the bag to the stranger.

Accepting our gift, the one-armed man smiled down at his scrawny, barefoot benefactors and said “God bless you.”

The next time the whistle blew, David and I beat Mama to the window. The train screeched to a stop, and our war veteran pulled himself up with his good arm, holding the paper bag tightly beneath the stub.

The sound of a train whistle every few hours during our years in Mt. Blanchard imprinted in my psyche a longing to travel. Following the example of my brothers, I enlisted in the Air Force right after high school. After basic training and tech school, I was stationed at Scott Air Force Base near St. Louis the first time I took the train home.

Enlisted personnel weren’t paid very much in those days, and I didn’t have a dime left after buying a round trip ticket to Toledo. In any case, I was too excited to worry about food or renting a pillow to rest my head.

As the train lurched forward, a five- or six- year old boy slid into the seat next to me. He never spoke, but nodded agreeably when I asked if he’d like to hear a story. My Appalachian heritage assured a knack for storytelling, and I’d polished my skills in long hours of babysitting nieces and nephews back home.

Every so often my young companion would get up and leave but he’d return within minutes — still without speaking — and I’d resume my tall tales. After dark he disappeared for longer than usual, and I figured he’d rejoined his parents for the night.

All was quiet that evening when the conductor came by to thank me. He explained the little boy I’d entertained throughout the day was his son. He handed me a thick steak sandwich and a glass of milk, and he gave me a pillow.

I finished my meal and got comfortable. As the train sped through the night, I heard above the engine’s roar Mama’s soft, southern-accented voice: “For I was hungry, and you gave me meat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in.”

A Labor Day Salute to Diversity

Picture this: I’m a young WAF assigned to clerical duties in an office on Scott Air Force Base, near East St. Louis, Ill. On this particular morning I overhear an Air Force major and a colonel, both Caucasian, discuss the qualifications of a civil service employee under consideration for promotion; the colonel apparently likes her resume. Then he asks, “Is she Caucasian?”

“Negative,” the major replies.

Here's the deal: I’m a Caucasian who grew up in lily-white, rural northwestern Ohio, and this was the first time I’d seen up close the ugliness of racial discrimination. Stunned, I sat there at my typewriter, trying to focus on my work.

(In the weeks that follow, I notice the employee in question is not promoted.)

On the upside, my stint in the military provided my first opportunity to make friends with members of other races and ethnic backgrounds.

I’ve not forgotten Hispanic Maria Venegas; African-Americans Katie Harmon, Annie Terry, and Adeline Lincoln; Parisian French Caucasian Monique Horlaville; and New Orleans French Caucasian Priscilla Bertrand.

Years passed before I encountered a comparable diversity in civilian life ― diversity fostered intentionally in the regional office of a large corporation located in a thriving upscale suburb.

Admittedly, the company’s motives were more practical than altruistic. At a department meeting, Tony, our African-American assistant manager, asked if any of us knew what was behind the diversity initiative. He rolled his eyes when I suggested that our company supported diversity because it was the right thing to do.

Tony then explained the business case for diversity: “If we want to sell our products to the Hmong community, African-Americans, Hispanics, Gays, women, or other minority group, we’d best include their members in our workforce.”

Altruistic or not, it’s amazing how quickly people can adapt to an inclusive environment when their livelihoods are at stake and before long, the 2000 plus employees in that huge office building formed a genuine community featuring many of the amenities and rituals of a small town.

Sad to say, our community ― by then a model of diversity ― became a casualty of corporate downsizing when, thanks to technology, our work was moved elsewhere. But for quite a few years each of us had good cause for celebrating Labor Day.

Perhaps the time will come when a majority of Americans will have matured sufficiently to create similar communities, whatever their context, purely because it’s the right thing to do.