Black ranchers, White racism?

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe in part, and in part other things.

Black Country and white racism. That's the gist of a Barbed Wire piece saying that calling Blacks "country" is a general put-down that often has racism behind it.

Well, sometimes white racism, or the claims of White racism, to be more precise, as one of the Barbed Wire's links is WAY more complicated, and probably the Black ranchowners are as much more sinners than sinned against.

The Mallerys’ [the Black ranchers] time in Colorado has been marked by a litany of encounters with neighbors and law enforcement — and it goes beyond the dispute with Clark [the White rancher neighbor]. 

On April 7, 2021, Jake Saksteder arrived at Freedom Acres Ranch to serve Courtney Mallery with civil papers regarding a property case. 

The 24-year-old said he had delivered countless legal documents during his job as a process server. Sometimes people would try and evade him or yell, he told The Post. But he’d never had an encounter like the one at the ranch that day. 

Saksteder told The Post that he walked around the property, knocking on several doors, but didn’t get an answer. 

Nicole Mallery then burst out of the shed with a shotgun pointed at his head, Saksteder said. Much of his encounter is captured on video from his phone, which was released by El Paso County authorities this week. 

“What the (expletive) are you doing?” Nicole shouts at the process server, according to the video. Saksteder tries to tell her several times that he’s there to serve Courtney Mallery with legal papers. 

“I swear to God, relax, I’m leaving!” Saksteder says in the video. 

He told The Post that he saw Mallery cock the weapon and that’s when he took off running, chased by a dog. Audio from the video makes out the sound of a shot fired into the air. 

“It was aimed well above me,” Saksteder said. “It wasn’t a shot to kill — it was definitely a warning. Like, keep moving fast.” 

In statements to El Paso County deputies that day, Nicole Mallery allegedly gave a false date of birth and changed the state of her identification, according to an arrest affidavit. She told deputies that she kept asking the process server to produce identification, demanding he say why he was trespassing on her property.

Result? This:

Mallery was charged with felony menacing, fraud, bribery of a public servant and making a false report, court records show. She ultimately pleaded guilty to making a false report, a misdemeanor, and received two years probation, the documents show. The district attorney dismissed the remainder of the counts.

And, there is another case, that was facing trial as of the time this story was written in early 2023. 

Here's another:

In one event, in April 2021, Nicole Mallery allegedly kicked a sheriff’s deputy repeatedly in his legs and bit him on his forearm, according to a summary of the encounter. She was charged with second-degree assault of a peace officer and received a two-year deferred sentence, court records show.

As for an NAACP person asking why a SWAT team was sent? Well, if early April 2021 was after April 7, 2021, shit, that's easy to answer. 

And this old chestnut:

In body-camera video, Nicole Mallery can be heard calling one of the Black sheriff’s deputies a “field negro” and other personnel “white trash” and Klu Klux Klan members.

Well, there you are. 

Well, let's add in that the sheriff is Hispanic. And that, per other pieces at The Barbed Wire, Taylor Crumpton has a history of going over the top. 

And, the Barbed Wire's editorial staff didn't look through that piece, nor did they note the 2023 pending trial, nor do a follow-up. (The charges were dropped just months later. That still doesn't mean that El Paso County deputies were racist, nor were neighbors. That said, they claim that one neighbor — not mentioned by name —was "disapproving" of their being there from the start. We assume they're talking about Ms. Clark, who reportedly threatened the NAACP's Prescott and reportedly sexualized one interaction with CW Mallery, per this. Another story, from Springs TV, also shows the issue seems to be "complex.")

As for where we stand? The Mallerys threatened a suit when charges were dropped. No way they would have defeated sovereign immunity, if filed against El Paso County. No way they would have beaten Teresa Clark, given Nicole's past history. 

Per this long piece from another Springs TV station, El Paso County Sheriff's Office at one time had some sort of response to The Ark, the online news site beating the drum for the Mallerys, but that's been taken down. Well, except for the Wayback Machine. The SO said it was hiding nothing and asked why the Ark didn't contact it for comment. There's not much on Ark Republic's "about" page. And, it doesn't report on the process server issue at all.

Off the top of my head? 50 percent entitled old rancher privilege, 25 percent racism, 25 percent newcomers not making more effort to fit in from the start, and 85 percent of that 25 percent being Nicole. 

Colorado Springs Gazette has a lot more, including the murder conviction of a man who killed a Mallery ranch hand. Contra the Mallerys' claim, the case seems to indicate drug issues, with the Mallery hand hugely high on meth. He was killed  in 2021, shortly after the process server showed up. Per this piece, the Mallerys bought the land in August 2020. So, it took not much more than six months for everything to explode, per the guesstimated percentages above.

And, it was about an easement mentioned in several stories above, and related items, per this:

The dispute began not long after the Mallerys moved to Yoder in 2020 and set up a video security system along the fence that borders the easement between their 1,000-acre property, Freedom Acres Ranch, and Clark’s land. The easement is a spur of dirt road that, while it technically lies on the Mallery property, was set aside by the county for use by residents, including Clark, who need it to access their properties. A gate along the easement opens to the Mallery land, but it lies more than a half-mile from the main entrance to their ranch and even farther from the couple’s residence and outbuildings.

This fits the last 25 percent to a T. You just don't block easements out west. Hell, you don't do that in Tex-ass and they should know that. Also, putting up video cameras as soon as you move in makes it look like you're prepared to be untrusting from the start. 

As for the Mallerys wanting a CAREN Act passed in Colorado? Yes, Amy Cooper was a Karen. And? Jussie Smollett cried wolf. 

The sheriff's page was deleted due to charges being dropped after mediation failed. Contra both the Ark and White wingnuts, it seems like both Clark and the Mallerys were committing lawfare by 911.  Elsewhere, Sheriff Roybal called out Nicole Mallery.

And, that's another half-hour of my life wasted because modern editors are lazy and modern staff writers like to go down the advocacy hole. 

 Also, interesting, High Country News, with both its real "wokefulness" its wrongful version of this decade, has nothing about the Mallerys.

#BlueAnon BS on the Fetterman flap

I'm talking about the Senate dress code, or now lack thereof, and now returned again, flap.

Clothes may make the man, or woman; they do, also make the class distinctions.

And? If you don't want that, you can go to "The Gods Must Be Crazy" and its allegedly possessions-free, seemingly class-free ¡Kung San! or else to Thomas Hobbes' government-free "Warre of all against all."

If not, and contra David Graeber's and David Wengrow's BS spinning, you're in a world of at least some level of class distinctions. And, as part of that, I support the U.S. Senate having a dress code.

Re Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman of "hoodies and shorts" infamy in particular?

Slate, like other Blue Anon, engages in goalpost-shifting and other things re Fetterman and Senate dress.

First, Fetterman dressed like that before he ever had a stroke. This has nothing to do with his current potentially still diminished ability. And, with the official Senate dress code, he donned a suit just fine yesterday, per the photo at left.

Second, it's a form of ableism in reverse to say he can't dress better. Plenty of other stroke victims, many with more longer-term damage than him, do so. And, since misused ableism or reverse ableism is a form of being wrongfully #woke, that's the one tag for this post.

Third, if he really can't dress better due to diminished ability? Shouldn't he join #DropOutJoe, or "Bye Bye Betty Crocker" (Feinstein) if it's also affected his mental ability? (Please, no citing Roman Hruska on Supreme Court nominees.)

Besides, he's just another Democratic Senate warmonger on Russia-Ukraine, and a squish at best, garden Democrat at worst on Israel, so no kid-gloves treatment from me in general.

 

Beyond that, doesn't Chuck Schumer have better things to do as Senate Majority Leader?

When social book reviewers get it wrong — wronger than the book

I just recently finished "The Bright Ages," which as you might guess, is a claim that the Middle Ages weren't all the Dark Ages. Between bad framing, narrow focus and outright errors, I knew halfway through that it probably wasn't even a 3-star book and the question was (since no half-stars from Goodreads after its self-vaunted [can others vaunt you?] website overhaul) was whether it would even hold 2 stars.

It doesn't, and shall also get only 1 even on Storygraph.

That said, what's funny, or more, "funny" with scare quotes, is the preconceptional whiffs of other 1-star reviewers, and a few 2-starrers.

A full one-quarter go full wingnut/Trumpy on their reviews, talking about "woke" presentation of women at this time and more.

And, almost as many of the reviewers on the "other side" (there's more than two sides by far here, per Idries Shah and as I shall show) actually exemplify "woke" (in the wrongful sense) attitudes, using words like "mansplaining" or "whitesplaining" in their takes.

It's neither. And I knew that before I checked it out from the library.

It's Catholic apologetics, or Catholic-splaining to use a modernized mash-up.  And, not getting that is why both the Trumpys and the Wokeys blew it. And, it's Catholic-splaining with a twist. Per a Google, after coming across this Medium piece which was a rejected form of an LARB of the book, David Perry is Jewish. Could have fooled me. The book still reeks of Catholic apologetics. That said, having seen this person's Twitter feed on it, no, the LARB editors were right in rejecting the original. The reviewer seems engaged in check-marking appropriate boxes, like calling out Gabriele and Perry for not mentioning "trans and queer folk," yet, since he has the option of doing so himself on Medium, not doing so! And, his review has other problems. It references "African Europeans," whose book website says: "As early as the third century, St Maurice—an Egyptian—became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion." Yes, true, but you couldn't have gone "up the ladder" to Emperor Septimius Severus? There's also the issue that both St. Maurice (patron saint of the HRE, namesake of St. Moritz) and the the Theban Legion are fictional.

That said, while the book is largely pabulum, it’s NOT pabulum for the reasons Trumpy 1-star reviews claim. (The wrongfully woke are closer to the mark, bad narratives and framing aside.) And, yes, their reviews reek of it, even as they ignore the reeking above because it doesn’t fit THEIR narratives. That then said, the portion of 1-starrers that call it out for "mansplaining" also miss the boat, though not quite as bad as the Trump-splainer types.

What follows is a selected version of my review.

The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Brights book …. Flip side of Dennett’s Brights, it comes off as being!!! But, no historian has called all of the Middle Ages the Dark Ages. That said, if we look at the remains of the Western Roman Empire, the period 843-962, from the end of the Carolingian realm to the start of the HRE, could honestly merit the moniker. Those dates being the Treaty of Verdun ending the unitary Carolingian lands, then the start of the HRE.

So, yes, from the start, we’re going to be in the lands of strawmanning and cherry-picking. And, all in the service of Catholicism. And, yes, it still seems that way. To me, the whole book reeks of the Catholicism of its authors. While a modern evangelical half of fundagelical Protestants might have written a book like this, a traditional Lutheran, Calvinist or practitioner of Orthodoxy would not, nor would have a secular historian. And, yes, the word “reek” is deliberate. And, yes, it still seems that way.

Interesting to see Myth of Martyrdom author Candida Moss blurb it when the intro talks about a bunch of Catholic saintly martyrdoms that likely didn’t happen. (Sidebar: As people in the book publishing world, or familiar with it, know, this exemplifies one or both of two things. First is, that unless specifically barred from doing so in some way, marketing staff often take blurb comments out of context. Second is that blurbers often don't read the full book.) Those claims start, chronologically, in this book, with Peter in Rome, which certainly never happened.

Then, there’s other fun stuff, like the claim that the Western Roman Empire didn’t end when Odovacer deposed Romulus Augustulus. Oh, yes it did. And, yes, Rome became a sinkhole of population and other decline that was nowhere close to fully replaced.

Then, the claim in a chapter on Charlemagne that the HRE didn’t come until the later 12th century, not 962. Yes, the “sacrum” in Latin didn’t attach until Barbarossa, but any history book will tell you it began with Otto the Saxon.

Then, in the chapter on Vikings, I learned the Dneiper and Volga rivers are in western Asia! Neat! I halfway seriously wonder if this was a deliberate take, to de-Europeanize either Russia or Orthodox Christianity. Given that Slavic lands are nowhere further discussed, nor are details of the rise of Kievan Rus, I’m sure it’s deliberate.

There’s also a weird, and AFAIK, totally untrue claim that the Khazars later became Muslim. (I personally believe the bulk, tho not all, after the fall of the Khanate went on to become PART of Azhkenazi Jews. This is not anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist, contra the likes of Wikipedia, in one of its more iffy entries. The Ashkenazi/Sephardi split is itself a linguistic one, not an ethnic or sub-ethnic one, after all. And, I don't give a fuck if David Perry his own self sees this part. It's true.

First Crusade chapter overlooks cannibalism at the Siege of Ma’arra. Besides the cannibalism, the intolerance of Frankish surrender terms go unnoted. BUT, the authors DO engage in a nice bit of “presentism.” As in, a LOT of it.

Petrarch as in inventor of the idea of Renaissance is mentioned, mainly a an object of polite opprobrium. The earlier 12th-century Renaissance is mentioned in passing.

Weirdly NOT mentioned by two Catholic authors a Catholic author and a fellow traveler is previous reformations before THE Reformation. These surely would have fit the “bright ages” idea.

So, too, would the conversion of the last portions of Europe, the Balto-Finnic lands. Not mentioned.

Other one-star reviews go into more depth. Several go into Trump-splaining, with their takes perhaps even worse than this book.

View all my reviews

Sidebar: Not sure whether the bigger time-waster was this book or the Medium review.

Coronavirus week 132: Yes but on ethnic death differences

It is certainly possible, per the Texas Observer, that minorities have suffered many COVID-related deaths that aren't counted on official statistics. But, when you're extending that to things like suicides or drug and alcohol overdoses, why shouldn't at least some white suicides and fatal overdoses also be counted as COVID deaths?

And, while things like diabetes deaths among American Indians may indeed, at least in part, be a legacy of colonialism, they're not COVID or COVID-related deaths.

What this boils down to, like so-called People's CDC claims about Long COVID, is anecdote being substituted for data. It's happening more and more on both of the "two sides" of what are actually more than two sides, per old friend Idries Shah, in the world of coronavirus.

===

While we're talking COVID, a friendly reminder from someone as "hardcore" as Skeptical Raptor that the XBB 1.5 is no more deadly than other recent subvariants and in fact possibly less deadly. The People's CDC and Walker Bragman probably still won't tell you that, though. Nor will they tell you that the rolling average of weekly deaths is under 1,500, well below their 2,000 a week claim. Even if we make "adjustments" as big as the Observer proposes, it's still under 2,000 a week.

Muslims being targeted in Albuquerque?

Are Muslim men being targeted for murder in Albuquerque? Color me a little bit more skeptical than the Albuquerque Journal reporting, or the Albuquerque PD, which because of being under a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, has reasons to want to pursue the death of four Muslim men as targeted killings and hate crimes.

First, one of the killings happened last November vs the other three in the last month or two. Is this one really connected? 

Second, the three recent ones, in two the victim has the same last name. Now, "Hussain" is of course a common Middle Eastern last name, and even more in the spelling "Hussein," the name of the third victim. Are they related? The Journal's relatively poor story (boy, that paper has declined) says nothing about whether they are, or are not. That should be SOP in reporting a story like this.

Third, maybe they are targeted, but not as hate crimes. Are they all immigrants, or were any American-born? The Journal says almost nothing, eventually noting that the most recent victim became a naturalized citizen a few weeks ago.

Seriously, it's possible all three are from Afghanistan, or Af-Pak, they helped the US in the war in some way, and they're now being targeted by a Taliban hit squad, either official or unofficial. And, it's possible that the victim last November then was a target without this being a hate crime.

Maybe these are hate crimes, tis true. But, I think other options need to be explored.

Meanwhile, Votemonger Joe has bigfooted his way into the hate-crimes killing angle.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

My suspicious were correct. A man of Middle Eastern heritage, and most likely Muslim himself, Muhammad Syed, has been arrested in connection with the killings. He is expected to be charged with two of the three killings of a week ago, and may be charged with the third, as well as the one last November.

The APD says:

Detectives discovered evidence that shows the offender knew the victims to some extent and an interpersonal conflict may have led to the shootings

It adds that a gun used in at least those two shootings where he will be charged was found at Syed's residence, and that he's got a history of legal run-ins. There you go.

But, wrongful wokeness had to raise its head first.

And, another ignorant woke fail by High Country News

The magazine, in talking about what a name means behind Western place names (and going into colonialism behind that, natch) asks a Navajo for the native name of the San Francisco Peaks.

And, never asks a Hopi for THEIR name for the peaks. Nor even entertains that perhaps still today, and definitely hundreds of years ago, the Hopi likely would have seen the Navajo as colonizers.

I commented on their Facebook page, but once again, it will do nothing.

The only time HCN has responded to me was when it had a clear factual error on logistics hubs west of the Mississippi and that was to blame the Salt Lake Trib as originator of the story and saying it would make a correction if and when the SLT would. (I provided them, from my years in Dallas, the clear evidence they were wrong.)

They did and said nothing about the atrocity called a Melanin Base Camp story. They labeled it "opinion" online, something they'd basically never done up to that point in print, probably because they knew the "opinion" was based on factually incorrect information and even at least one outright lie. That was when HCN put the "woke" key in the ignition switch for good.

And, I still won't resubscribe, HCN.

Texas Progressives talk ERCOT, RRC, RU486, Roe more

Lots of stuff to consider on this week's Roundup, so let's dig in. The acronyms and one word in the header should tell you what we're about.

Energy

Contra Strangeabbott, who probably checked the National Weather Service 90-day forecast (expected to be warmer and drier than normal) before saying the Texas energy and power grid was ready for another Winter Storm Uri, it isn't. That's mainly cuz Wayno, Kristi and the new dude at the RRC continue to undercut real winterization of the natural gas pipeline and delivery world. The RRC and ERCOT continue to buck-pass on accountability.

Reproductive choice

The state's ban on abortion-inducing medications after seven weeks is almost certainly unconstitutional on interstate commerce grounds. Sadly, to date (other states have such laws), the feds, in the form of the FDA, have been cracking down on mail providers rather than taking states to court.

So, will the SCOTUS either emasculating or full-overturning Roe be a killer-winner for Dems at the 2022 polls? No. Let me repeat that. NO. Speaking of polls, Politico gets top Dem operatives (many anon) and even an Emily's List spox to admit that. The Emily's spox says, in essence "It polls well, but it does bupkis on actual vote turnout." Nothing new; for years, decades even, abortion has been a voting booth push for wingers, not Dems. That said, beyond even librulz, at lefty Counterpunch, Dave Lindorff (wrong on other stuff in the past) doesn't understand that. 

Other state

Matthew McConaughey isn't running for gov, but Dan Solomon rhetorically asks about any continuing interest in politics.

Mark Cuban just bought the town of Mustang. The Monthly suggests others.

The author of a book banned by Lake Travis ISD talks about the process, including apparent racism.

Chris Collins rounds up the Texas weird. 

Off the Kuff provides a couple of filing updates.

Reform Austin laments how their city became one of the least affordable places in the country.

Texas 2036 warns that the shortage of doctors in the state is getting worse. (Hey, remember when tort "reform" was supposed to fix that?)

The Texas Signal talks to Rep. Michelle Beckley about her candidacy for Lt. Governor, and to Jay Kleberg on his bid for Land Commissioner.

Doctors Junda Woo and Barbara Taylor urge San Antonio to use the tools that it has at its disposal to end HIV in that city

Other national and global

What we know so far on what works, what doesn't, what's unsure, on reducing racial bias in policing. 

SocraticGadfly dives back into COVID gain of function issues, along with Fauci and NIAID's apparent failure to monitor Peter Daszag.

RIP Bob Dole. He's still a Republican, even if possibly better than John McCain and Colin Powell. He just doesn't get tarred with the Iraq War because he was no longer in the Senate. Did he ever apologize for being a Nixon flunky? For talking about "Democrat wars"?

Even CNN is calling out Status Quo Joe's confabulations. Sadly, CNN, re this particular confab, is NOT calling out Status Quo Joe's blank checks to Israel.

Kemp vs Perdue in the Georgia GOP primary? Getcha popcorn!

We're Hispanics, not Latinos and REALLY not LatinX

That's the message from new polling sponsored by Politico. Hispanics nationwide almost totally reject the neoblather "Latinx." Not only that, a large majority reject "Latino" / "Latina." For what? I just said for what: "Hispanic." While there are some differences, the preference for "Hispanic" largely transcends age, country of origin, and political alignment. 40 percent say "LatinX" bothers them; 20 percent A LOT. And, 30 percent say their support for a politico using "LatinX" would decrease; that includes 24 percent of Dems and 30 percent of "independents."

Per another Politico piece, if Dems have any brains, they'll see "LatinX" and the academic activists pushing it as "wrongfully woke." That will include noting that the younger generation dislikes it just about as much as oldsters. And yes, it's far from the only reason that Republicans have started getting more Hispanic votes again, but it's one that Dems should indeed listen to.

It is interesting to see 9 percent of US-born Hispanics plump for "something else." Would that be "Chicano" or similar, "Mexican-American" or similar, or not being labeled? Growing up in New Mexico, I know many older, American-born Hispanics preferred "Mexican-American" way back when; the more conservative ones vociferously rejected "Chicano." I can tell you that, even today, "Hispanic" is bigly preferred to "Latino."

That said, if you have to do something? Yes, these words have either masculine or feminine gender in Spanish, but words with an "-e" ending sound neutral. Like "Grande," the adjective in "Rio Grande." And, that is "-es" in the plural, again, more neutral-sounding but wholly pronounceable.

I'll pass on High Country News' latest invite to twosiderism

High Country News publisher Greg Hanscom has invited me, along with other former as well as current subscribers, via a mass blast email to participate in the latest installment of what will probably be "wrongful wokeness." It's an invite to the latest installation of an online kaffeeklatsch with its editorial staff. Here's the details:

Our next topic is one that has put HCN on the map in a big way in recent years: a deep reckoning with the history of Western lands, and the Indigenous nations from which they were taken. I’ll be talking with Nick Martin, the head of our Indigenous Affairs Desk, whose recent essay about the ancient footprints discovered in White Sands National Park cast the story in a much different light than we saw in other news outlets, and intern Brian Oaster, who has reported on the nomination of the first Native official to be head of the National Park Service.

My response?

At the same time, will you also report on how American Indian tribes were never "always there"?

Example: The Sioux were only moving west of the Missouri in any numbers at the same time Lewis and Clark were moving up.

Example 2: The Navajo did not enter the Southwest until only about a century or so before Coronado.

Example 3: The Apache also didn't arrive in the Southwest until about the same time, pushed out of Texas by the Comanche, who in turn were moving from elsewhere.

None of this is to excuse Anglo treaty-breaking. None of this is to say that being "woke" is necessarily bad.

It IS, though, to say that: A. Being uninformedly woke and B. Being tribalist (pun not intended) or twosiderist is not good either.

And, if you click that tag of "wrongful wokeness," you'll find plenty of previous HCN examples.

Happy Indigenous People's Day

Some thoughts here, about the reality of American Indian lives, via The Conversation.

At the same time? More thoughts here, here, and here, largely focusing on High Country News' "wrongful wokeness" about American Indians, as a reminder that they're human beings who put their pants on one leg at a time, like anybody else.

Potlatch slavery and culture murders and Aztec sacrifices of still-beating hearts aside (yes, all true), racism, tribalism (pun intended), less than perfect environmentalism, are all parts of being an American Indian. 

As for the "native land" of the top link? WHOSE native land? The Sioux were just moving west of the Missouri River in numbers the same time as Lewis and Clark were going up it, having been booted out of Wisconsin by the Ojibwa / Chippewa. The Navajo? The western half of the Arizona part of their reservation and the Utah sliver weren't occupied by them until the 1800s, either. Those are just two of many examples. Do the Sioux want to "neutralize" the Black Hills or even give it to the Shoshone or Arapaho? Do the Navajos want to give land back to the Utes?

There's also a petard-hoisting here. Most American Indians stress that they didn't believe in the past in individual land ownership. True enough. For that matter, if we're using the word "ownership," they didn't believe in tribal land ownership, either. Control? Yes. Ownership, in the "rule of law" sense or even a rough equivalent? No.

Oh, and no, and contra what a non-skeptical leftist like James Loewen says, the Iroquois weren't behind the U.S. Constitution and Chief Seattle didn't say that.

Reality, on this one? Per this extensive and pretty exhaustive piece, the Iroquois Confederation probably had somewhere between a modest and moderate influence on the Articles of Confederation. It almost certainly had very little influence on the Constitution — and that lack of influence, given the reality, not the legend, of the Iroquois Confederation, is pretty much for the good, not the bad, overall. Given that the Iroquois leaders of the Grand Sachem under the Great Law were all hereditary, that's one good reason to be grateful for the lack of influence.

The Conversation, via Pocket, posted wrongfully woke nuttery, from academics, a week ago. Here's my Twitter thread start.

#WrongfullyWoke for #IndigenousPeoplesDay is problematic at best, false at worst, per this piece, which has 2 big wrongs 1/x https://t.co/8WbfvIM4sC
1. It implies static locations for Indian tribes.
2. It implies land ownership, when tribes say their individual members reject it

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 12, 2021

And carry on. You don't need the whole thread, but I'll give you one more tweet:

Details of what Elisa J. Sobo, Michael Lambert, Valerie Lambert get wrong, re pt 1:
Are you going to ask the Ojibwa to do a land acknowledgement ceremony for the Sioux? The Navajo for the Ute? The Comanche for the Apache? The Iroquois for tribes they dispossessed? 2c/x

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 12, 2021

There you go. That deals with the static locations and hints at the land ownership issue.

ANOTHER woke piece on American Indians from High Country News

HCN must also think that Hispanic Heritage Month is American Indian Month, as for the second time in less than a week, it's been woken about American Indian or Indigenous people.

Last Friday, as I just blogged, it was "woken" about American Indian land issues for National Public Lands Day, and it was wrongly woken on its framing, wrongly woken to some degree on recent facts of which American Indians were the main ones at a site, and wrongly woken on assuming the American Indians of today held the same lands 500 or 1,500 or 5,000 years ago.

Tuesday? It got "woken" about the White Sands fossilized footprints discovery. (Note, per the original paper at Science, and per some caveating researchers, it is possible that the seeds squished beneath the footprints and used to date them could have fallen into the ground millennia earlier; one researcher called the land involved "a dynamic landscape."

And, Nick Martin was as wrong as HCN staffers before. The footprints prove pre-Clovis is right. (That said, this is just the latest of several nails in the Clovis coffin.) It does NOT NOT NOT prove that American Indians have been here "from time immemorial," whether Martin claims that, or Vine Deloria with his university PhD. 

A good piece from the Smithsonian, from early 2020, notes specific archaeological exploration of pre-Clovis sites in British Columbia. It doesn't go back 25,000 BP, but it does go back more than 15,000 BP. It also notes that evolutionary population geneticists have provided research evidence that indicated the ancestors of (the first wave of?) American Indians had separated from Paleosiberians by around ... wait for it, wait for it .... 23,000 BP.

Martin's also wrong in a framing issue. Especially as time frames for the "entrada" have been pushed back, he assumes that "we" is who it once was. This opens the door to additional waves of migration. As part of that, it opens the door for a higher likelihood of migrations from the east, across the Atlantic, as well as Beringeria.

That Smithsonian piece discusses this at the end.

As scientists debate the peopling of the Americas, it’s worth noting there could be more than one right answer. “I think current evidence indicates multiple migrations, multiple routes, multiple time periods,” says Torben Rick, an anthropologist at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Very interesting. If archaeologists have been willing to entertain multiple migrations pre-Clovis but without the ancient footprints, I think this opens that up even more. (That said, besides the 

That, in turn, means that "we" is not always "we." Outside of it being all folks here before 1000 CE and the Norse contact, the "we" is not.

Finally, Martin himself approaches racism when he assumes that White anthropologists who have attacked pre-Clovis claims made in the past by American Indian archaeologists have done so because of racism.

Anybody who knows much of anything about New World archaeology and anthropology knows that Whites have battled each other for decades over the Clovis/pre-Clovis issue.

Then, there's this, at the conclusion:

Scientists and reporters could save themselves a lot of time by simply listening to Indigenous experts next time.

As in, assuming American Indians are always right?

Nope.

HCN really, REALLY does not want me to renew my increasingly-lapsed subscription.

And, per my comments above? Yes, people of any "race" can be racist. (I've seen anti-Black American Indian racism, too.)

These aren't the only pieces of wokeness HCN has done that invoke alleged American Indian wisdom. Some 18 months ago, in relationship to COVID shattering the globalized neoliberal economy, HCN claimed that the wisdom of American Indians who stayed in place could provide special insight. That claim, that they stay in one place, was of course wrong.

Meanwhile, while being "woke" on identity politics, HCN is quite capitalistic after all, or at least refuses to challenge it, on things like its annual photo contest.

And, it's perfectly willing to support a mix of wokeness and capitalism, even when that mix clearly involved many lies and half-truths. I even invented the tag "wrongful wokeness" for all of this. (Being alert to systemic racism, if one wants to use the term "woke," is not itself bad, and certainly, acting well on this knowledge is good. It's when one either tries to exploit this via capitalism combined with bashing as "unwoke" anybody who gets in your way, like Melanin Base Camp and its lies and griftings printed by HCN, or when one gets into reverse racism, which is itself racist, that we have the "wrongful" portion.

That's why, when in the middle of the first wave of COVID last summer, when it offered a one-year digital subscription for just $12, I passed. I've seen plenty since then to convince me this was the right decision.

That's because HCN refuses to admit that these repeated bad editorial decisions on its part are actually bad editorial decisions.

National Public Lands Day, High Country News woke version

National Public Lands Day is a good day for celebrating our public lands, even though Ken Burns was wrong and they're NOT "America's greatest idea" or that close, and even though, as Olympic National Park shows, as I blogged earlier today, the Park Service looks good only when compared with the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service. I forgot that six years, ago, in the run-up to the NPS centennial, I had tackled various other shortcomings of the Park Service.

So, it's nice of High Country News to have staffers reminisce about access to public lands.

Or, when I clicked the link, I found out it was "nice."

Two problems with noting the American Indians who once had possession of the land.

First, as Al Runte noted years ago, and I blogged about, being American Indian is no guarantor of being a good environmentalist.

Second, the American Indians in possessions of the land at the time the U.S. government made treaties with them, then broke them, weren't always the possessors. In fact, in the case of Comb Ridge, it was NEVER part of any Navajo Reservation, not the main part and best known part in Utah, vs the southern tip in Aridzona. It's arguably got a better claim from Utes. And Sarah Tory should know that, and she specifically mentions the Utah portion.

Runte also tackled that, quoting T.H. Watkins:

In short, if compensation in 1974 was the proper policy, why limit it to people of European descent? For example, Watkins asked: “If the descendants of nineteenth-century white Americans have a moral obligation to the descendants of nineteenth-century Navajos, do not the Navajos have a similar obligation to the descendents of the Pueblo Indians, whom they forced from their lands in the thirteenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Chippewas (or Ojibways), do not the Chippewas have a moral obligation to the Lakota Sioux, whose lands they appropriated by warfare in the seventeenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Blackfeet, do not the Blackfeet have a moral obligation to the Shoshoni, who were driven out of their hunting territory by the Blackfeet in the seventeenth century? If white Americans have a moral obligation to the Cherokees, do not the Cherokees have a moral obligation to the Shawnees, whom they vanquished in the early nineteenth century in a war over which tribe would have a monopoly selling Indian slaves to the South?”

There you go.

I think this is about Reason No. 116 why I haven't, and won't, renew an HCN subscription that's been lapsed for years. (This also is not the first time it's gotten American Indian land issues wrong.)

Sidebar: I do NOT agree with everything Runte writes at National Parks Traveler and elsewhere about preservation in the modern U.S. in general and the modern NPS in particular. I do NOT want light rail, let alone light rail run by traditional rail companies, in the parks, contra his plea. Instead, I want more buses at sites that already have them, with smaller buses running more frequent routes, and buses at places that don't already have them, and I want these buses to be all-electric. No more propane buses. His critics are right that his idea almost certainly means "more development." They're also right about the worrisomeness of him first writing that piece for a "more development in the parks" site. Things like that undercut some of his other insights and make them look politically motivated.

Nope, trees still aren't intelligent let alone woke

Both High Country News and the New York Times have written recently about research on trees as "social creatures" and not just individuals, focusing on the work of Suzanne Simard, with HCN's piece being a review of her memoir.

It's true that it was a bad step for scientists not to see trees as part of social groups and rather, only as individuals, to the degree that was actually the case. Per Jane Goodall and others, we would never view chimpanzees or other primates that way. We would never view ourselves that way. We would never view, say, wolves that way. (That said, before Goodall, chimps weren't viewed the way they are today, so to claim that this is ages-old "plant discrimination" doesn't fly.)

And, surely, at least the possibility of some of this evidence being available for trees and other plants was available before Simard.

Unfortunately, both push the anthropomorphizing gas pedal a bit hard at times. 

Worse than "unfortunately," HCN even ventures toward woke / SJW angles by talking about Simard learning from indigenous wisdom.

Contra Robin Wall Kimmerer, trees don't have a common "language." Not as language is understood for us, and to the degree some primates have been able to learn it from us to a limited (yes) degree.

IMO, even Ferris Jabr at the NYT is overreading Simard's research. And so may be other scientists.

First, on things like carbon dioxide exchange, there is ZERO indication trees are "helping" each other.

Rather, it's mycorrhizal fungi that facilitate the flow of CO2 between tree species, and it's only natural that if two species have different flowering and sapping times, the flow goes one direction in spring and the other in fall.

And, missing from the HCN story, and partly from NYT? What benefit fungi get. And they do. Jabr does, eventually, get into that.

“Where some scientists see a big cooperative collective, I see reciprocal exploitation,” said Toby Kiers, a professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “Both parties may benefit, but they also constantly struggle to maximize their individual payoff.” Kiers is one of several scientists whose recent studies have found that plants and symbiotic fungi reward and punish each other with what are essentially trade deals and embargoes, and that mycorrhizal networks can increase conflict among plants. In some experiments, fungi have withheld nutrients from stingy plants and strategically diverted phosphorous to resource-poor areas where they can demand high fees from desperate plants.

Oops! Sadly, there's still a bit too much anthropomorphizing language in Jabr's explainer of Kiers et al after the direct quote, but this is better than nothing.

Here's a counterexample. Doctors et al already talk about the human microbiome in our colons, but nobody oohs and aahs over it. Jabr eventually gets to that, but only way at the end, in bad editing.

So, what we have is Simard, who rightly notes that science of her long-ago student ways was rejecting and blocking her to some degree, setting up a potential future where more and more woke forest biologists then reject more traditional evolutionary takes on the role of fungi.

And, this ties in with environmentalism in general.

The woke and New Age types can ooh and aah over big Douglas fir allegedly "talking" to one another, let alone helping one another.

A subterranean fungus that's like roots of grass? Different story.

In short, what we have is the environmental world, just shifting a focus from charismatic megafauna to charismatic megaflora.

To his credit, Jabr does do some degree of call-out of Simard for her use of New Agey language about trees. That said, he then uses words like "socialism," and on the SJW side, the idea that Native Americans were Rousselean noble savages with magical environmental wisdom. (Rousseau actually originally proffered this as a thought experiment which he then rejected and was then framed by his hater, Voltaire; the idea was revived under 19th century Anglo-Saxon racialism.) And, the idea that Indigenous peoples have magic environmental wisdom?

Taint so.

Stuff like this, in addition to things like the Georgia GP dust-up as well as party mismanagement, are why I am an independent leftist, not a Green.

As for High Country News? When writing four months ago about rejecting their dollar-a-month digital subscription offer, I said I had a love-frustration relationship with the magazine. The love continues to fade; the frustration continues to grow.

 

Update: Contra Nautilus, which is about to get deblogrolled, trees don't see, either.

White fragility, SJW Manicheanism

That was the snappiest title I could think of for my review of Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility." I've not added much to the Goodreads review of this book, written in 2018 but newly trending after George Floyd's death.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A deeply problematic book, for both better and for worse, but primarily for worse.

First, let me “qualify” myself.

I am a White leftist. Not liberal. Leftist, at least for America. Related, while I don’t go as far as Doug Henwood and claim that issues of race almost always, and almost completely, reduce to issues of class, I believe they often do at least to some degree.

Second, while I don’t always use the phrase “social justice warrior” pejoratively, I do often have healthy skepticism about those who might be characterized as such.

Third, I reject the author’s definition of racism, period. Here’s why.

Individuals of any so-called race can be racist, first, and with racist, sexist, ageist, and “religionist” (more on that in a moment), the “-ist” is always the adjective to the “-ism.” Period. So, good linguistics and philosophy of language says reject her definition on that grounds alone.

Part two of that? Minorities can be and indeed are racist, not just to Whites, but to other minorities. I’ve seen and heard instances of this.

Part three? Contra her claim that only Whites have the power to induce what we might call “sociological racism,” since I need a qualifier to her definition of racism (pace Wittgenstein) to talk about it, this is not true. First, to go to “religionism,” the religious-based parallel to racism? The anti-goy stance of certain ultra-Orthodox Jews plays out sociologically, and to some degree legally, in a place like Kiryas Joel. Anti-White (or anti-Jewish) racism by Nation of Islam plays out within in neighborhoods within Black-majority areas where NOI “patrols” have degrees of control over the neighborhood.

So, no, racism is a mindset, a mentality, a psychology, not a structure. That said, a majority group with overall national power (but see point three above) has the greatest possibility of making sociological racism systemic. I don’t argue with DiAngelo on that at all. That said, with that said, “systematic racism,” not “racism,” is what she’s talking about. Eventually, it would become tiresome to repeat that over and over, but it should have been done at the start, and on occasions after.

Of course, I’m sure she’d reject my definition as much as I reject hers.

Near the end of Chapter 2, she does around the edges cherrypicking on some stats. She also either does cultural cherrypicking or shows cultural ignorance when lumping “Chinese food” with everything else. Most Chinese food in the US that is not historically in mainland China was invented by Chinese Americans not Whites. Crab Rangoon is the only notable exception. She also totally misframes Jackie Robinson, claiming that no whites have ever seen his becoming the first Black in baseball as she says it actually was.

Chapter 3? Most examples of what she cites as things that fall under so-called “new racism” aren’t new. Well, they may be new temporally, but the ideas aren’t new. Second, without stereotyping, yes, Blacks may apply for some jobs in fewer numbers. We know that Religious Right types don’t pursue jobs in secular academia, then have people like Jonathan Haidt claim this is an example of bias in academia. Next, more of her data points are snapshots, not synchronous views of changes, and possible improvements.

I skipped the next chapter because an N=1 anecdote from her personal life isn’t data.

Chapter 5? She talks about “good-bad binary” while ignoring the irony or more, as in hypocrisy, that her whole book is about making “White fragility” into one half of a binary, one end of a polarity. This includes a presumption that “color-blind” statements are always wrong and that only “color-celebrate” statements are allowed. At this point, per John McWhorter’s review (below) I had to wonder how much of this book was coming from a place of huge lake of self-awareness.

And for all her white liberal (not leftist) earnestness? A John McWhorter, no radical (actually, overall, a Black conservative, but not a Tim Scott wingnut) says she still comes off as talking down to Black people.

“I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract,” McWhorter says.

McWhorter totally agrees with me on Robinson and other things.

One biggie is calling her a “shape shifter,” noting how she can claim at one point that most Whites are unaware of their “privilege” but, just a few pages later, describing them in general as tribalist.

He makes a couple of other good points. One is that DiAngelo seemingly wants to have all White people wear hair shirts, saying that for her, it’s about the suffering, not the solutions.

The second, per my “introduction,” is that she writes class out of the issue entirely. McWhorter admits he has suffered “at the margins” from racism, but that in general, with the civil rights movement, he’s not done too badly.

A third point is one that, being White, I can’t speak to directly, but he says that she “infantilizes” black people.

Finally, per McWhorter’s observation that his book reads like a diversity seminar training manual, maybe that’s what it IS! There’s plenty of gold in them thar hills! From Melanin Base Camp making boatloads of false accusations in a High Country News piece to other things, can and do minorities (as well as “woke” librul Whites) with money to make off this issue lie? Well, is a bear a Presbyterian? Does the pope shit in the woods?

Speaking of, why is DiAngelo a former professor and current consultant? Did she screw the pooch at university and get her tenure bid rejected? Or, per grifting, is there more money in diversity training? That then gets back to race and class issues.

That said, while McWhorter is honest enough to admit that he has benefitted a fair amount from socioeconomic class, he fails to note the obvious corollary: Many non-White people, including Blacks, haven’t. The “why” of that is itself, per Idries Shah, an issue with MANY more than two sides.

THAT then said, this gets back to a big problem with the book: the issue IS, contra guilt-trips DiAngelo wants to put on fellow White librulz, more than two-sided.

This is one of those books that I eventually gave two stars not one, and in part for one big reason: its revelation of the author’s mindset. The other reason it gets two stars not one is that, even at 25 percent of face value, her anecdotes remind us there is still plenty of work to do in America on racial issues, even though she and people like her are NOT the ones, White or Black — or Hispanic, South Asian, East Asian or American Indian — that we need to be leading the effort.


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