#roediger

[malbecmusings]

Bernd Roediger flying today in the Aloha Classic.

[christotokos]

“Greasers” and “greaseballs” likewise crossed (and were crossed by) racial and national lines. Originally a class and occupational term, greaser named those who greased sheep in preindustrial England and those who lubricated ships and railroad machinery in the nineteenth century. Both James Joyce’s Ulysses and the English translation of Emile Zola’s Nana, for example, refer to greasers working on the rails. Apologists for U.S. slavery seized on the seeming anomaly of begrimed “free” labor in criticizing the proliferation of “greasy mechanics” in the antebellum North. But the term “greaser” acquired its ongoing status as what dictionaries have called a “real Americanism” in referring to Mexicans who came to be within U.S. borders during this period as the United States annexed land. Many stories of its racialized origins preserve association with dirty, manual work. Greasing oxcart and wagon wheels and the guns of Mexican War artillerymen was “Mexican work” in Texas and California when the word gained currency. Trade in tallow, which functioned at times as a kind of currency, also was said to mark Mexican teamsters as greasers in the vocabularies of whites attacking both their greasy jobs and greasy money.

Poorer Mexicans were particularly racialized as greasers. Bret Harte, the writer of humor and racial tourism, identified greasers as the “lower class of Mexicans.” The supposed presence of the “blood” of indigenous people gave a biological basis to the epithet. The 1855 Greaser Bill in California, for example, was an antivagrant, anti-Native American, anti-Mexican law passed at a time when the landholding Californio ranchero elite was legally, if tenuously, accepted as white. Other stories of origin are equally suggestive. In some cases the alleged greasiness of Mexican food, skin, and hair was connected to Indians who greased themselves and perhaps to black slaves who were greased when sold. Anglo settlers characterized the tejano Mexican American greaser population of Texas as mongrels with African American and Native American “blood.” “Sketches” of the greaser appeared with tremendous frequency in the national press and constantly emphasized mixed-ness and proximity to other people of color. The fullest account, William R. Lighton’s Atlantic Monthly article “The Greaser,” introduced “the mestizo, the Greaser, the half-blood offspring of the marriage of antiquity with modernity” as its “sunbrowned for centuries” subject. J. W. DeForest’s “Overland” has Texas Smith, “an American, a white man,” bristle at a perceived slight from a greaser and worry that he was being treated as “an ‘Injun’ or a ‘nigger.’”

Lighton’s “The Greaser” ends, appropriately enough, on the same 1899 magazine page as the reformer Jacob Riis’s famous account of the life of the immigrant poor, “The Tenement House Blight,” begins. In the twentieth century the terms “greaser” and “greaseball” were applied to many European immigrants, especially Italians and Greeks, as well as to Mexican Americans and to Filipinos. Indeed, the character Nick the Greek is a greaseball in the classic 1932 movie The Smart Money, while an early twentieth-century novelist could be sure his audience would understand his lampooning of grand opera as “a bunch of greasers [singing] a lot of Dago stuff.” In John Fante’s arresting novel Ask the Dust (1939), the connections between Italian American and Mexican American greasers are intricately sketched. The Italian American central character Arturo calls his Mexican American love interest a “filthy little Greaser” and then absolves himself. The slur, he reasons, came not from “my heart” but from the “quivering of an old wound.” That wound, Arturo adds, opened during his childhood in Colorado, where “Smith and Parker and Jones … hurt me with their hideous names, called me Wop and Dago and Greaser, and their children hurt me, just as I hurt you tonight." Mobsters, especially “unassimilated Sicilian” mobsters, were greasers in San Francisco in the 1930s. William Foote Whyte’s Street Corner Society suggests that some Italian Americans applied “greaser” to less assimilated countrymen. When Greenwich Village Irish used the epithet “greasy wops,” the supposed physical greasiness of Italians, whether of hair or face, received emphasis as it sometimes did in the slurs of the socialist writer Jack London, regarding Russian Jews. For immigrants who traded, greasy could imply being “slippery” when transacting business, a characteristic the celebrated sociologist Edward A. Ross imputed to Jews. The Dictionary of American Regional English gives “a Mexican or Mexican American” as greaser’s primary meaning and “a person of Mediterranean background” as the second meaning. For greaseball, Mediterranean origins are in the first meaning, with Mexican below. There is no doubt that greaser was a racialized “fighting word,” as C. A. Barnhart put it. Indeed, in a letter to an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1971, renowned student of U.S. language Peter Tamony identified greaser and greaseball as “bar-room brawl words” in contrast to the class and occupational term “grease monkey,” which can be “caressively” applied to workers in service stations and engine rooms. Attempts to embrace greaser identity awaited the 1950s and 1960s, when the term was conflated with Elvis, cars, gangs, motorcycles, Wildroot hair tonic, and ultimately Sha Na Na’s music to connote white (and, in the Southwest, sometimes Latino) working-class ethnicity. Sometimes, as in Maria Laurino’s fascinating recollection of growing up “labelled by [the] ethnic slur” in Short Hills, New Jersey, Italian American young men were the group most commonly identified with the term as they worked on “beat-up cars” and fashioned an image from “their faint gasoline scent and oiled-down hair.” Stephen A. Buff’s account of hanging with greasers in the 1960s centers on style and class. The neighborhood of Buff’s ethnography includes mostly families of Slavic or Italian extraction. The greasers wore sleeveless undershirts called “dago-tees.

— Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White, by David R. Roediger

[virtue-boy]

[lilflowerpot]

not to be "that person" but the implications of calling half-galra/mixed galra/part galra, "hybrids" feels dehumanizing.

In a real-world context I'd be inclined to agree with you, but within the realms of the narrative there are several elements at play as to why I personally choose to use the term hybrid—chief among them being that race as we define it is a social construct (see below), whereas Keith & Lotor's status as hybrids very much has a biological basis—but let us first start by clarifying the key components of the topic at hand.

A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society.[1] The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations.[2] By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.[3][4] While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.[1][5][6] [1] Barnshaw, John (2008). "Race". In Schaefer, Richard T. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Vol. 1. SAGE Publications. pp. 1091–3. ISBN978-1-45-226586-5. [2] Roediger, David R. "Historical Foundations of Race". Smithsonian. [3] Amutah, C.; Greenidge, K.; Mante, A.; Munyikwa, M.; Surya, S. L.; Higginbotham, E.; Jones, D. S.; Lavizzo-Mourey, R.; Roberts, D.; Tsai, J.; Aysola, J. (March 2021). Malina, D. (ed.). "Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias". The New England Journal of Medicine. Massachusetts Medical Society. 384 (9): 872–878. [4] Gannon, Megan (5 February 2016). "Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue". Scientific American. Springer Nature. ISSN0036-8733. Archived from the original on 14 February 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023. [5] Smedley, Audrey; Takezawa, Yasuko I.; Wade, Peter. "Race: Human". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Retrieved 22 August 2017. [6] Yudell, M.; Roberts, D.; DeSalle, R.; Tishkoff, S. (5 February 2016). "Taking race out of human genetics". Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 351 (6273): 564–565.

The dictionary definition of a hybrid is pretty clear-cut across the board, but I've included several different sources, for the sake of both clarity and peace of mind.

​Oxford: [1] (of an animal or plant) Having parents of different species or varieties.​ [2] That is the product of mixing two or more different things. Cambridge: [1] A plant or animal that has been produced from two different types of plant or animal, especially to get better characteristics. [2] Something that is a mixture of two very different things. Merriam-Webster: [1] An offspring of two animals or plants of different subspecies, breeds, varieties, species, or genera. [2] A person whose background is a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions. [3] Something heterogeneous in origin or composition. Collins: [1] A hybrid is an animal or plant that has been bred from two different species of animal or plant. [2] You can use hybrid to refer to anything that is a mixture of other things, especially two other things.

So yes, the term hybrid is much more commonly used to refer to plants and animals than humans, with Merriam-Webster's definition alone being the only one to specify "people", but all the above agree that it is a term that references anything that is a mixture of two different things (heterogeneous). Scientifically speaking, humans are never this; we are all of the same species—homosapiens—and our perceived "race" is actually a societal construct born of phenotypical traits. So while objectively we can argue that Keith as a character was written as biracial, within the narrative he is very explicitly born of parents of two different scientific species: the term hybrid isn't being used to other him, it's,,, literally a genetic fact.

But let's approach this from Lotor's perspective. Our favourite galra prince is a scientist with "a modest background as a geneticist, [his] particular field of study being the rather niche subject area of galra hybridisation" (LB:ch13), meaning it's hardly surprising he'd feel comfortable using the scientific terminology. If ever the term hybrid was used in imperial circles as a slur intended to dehumanise (degalranise?), then Lotor as a hybrid himself has reclaimed it in much the same way that n-slur has been reclaimed the black community. I, myself, am not black, so I can't really speak to that experience, but I do not imagine the reclamation of that word to be dissimilar to that of queer by the queer community. Approaching it from this angle, I am personally happy to identify as queer, and equally happy for other people to identify me as queer; that being said, there's still intent to consider. Though I've no problem with (and in fact quite like!) the word queer, if a homophobe were to throw it at me with obviously malicious intent, it would still sting—not for the word itself, but the fact that the person using it is aiming to other and dehumanise, which begs the question: does the Empire consider hybrid to be a slur?

Personally, I don't think so. I certainly don't write LB with that in mind, but what I do do is apply that sort of a weight to "half-breed" given that canon made particular use of it as a derogatory term, most notably with Throk in s3ep01—"Worse than that, [Lotor's] top generals aren't even pure galra, they're half-breeds at best. He has no honour."—and Haggar in s5ep04—"The blood that so bolsters your claim is also what quells it! You are not full galra, you are a half-breed."—both of whom put a distinctly unkind spin on this term with both their tone and the context within which they use it (to discredit the inherent "worth" of hybrids). In Little Blade, it has thus-far been used twice, both by Lotor and both when he's evidently echoing cruel sentiments that he himself suffered in the past:

“Impure half-breeds we may be, but weak we are most certainly not.” It’s a cold sort of pride. - Lotor, Little Blade, chapter 15 “Any commander worth his quintessence would be able to subdue a mere cadet with ease, especially one so small as you.” the amused lilt Lotor says this with fades in favour of something sweet and deeply saddened, “As for the rest of it—the neglect you suffered as a child—that would never have happened had you been raised galra. Even if we are half-breed whelps, our value is in our blood: it is an irrefutable part of us.” blue eyes turn baleful, “The Empire, for all its faults, would not have forsaken you.” - Lotor, Little Blade, chapter 24

So no, within the context of LB, hybrid is not a derogatory term, but a scientific one that Lotor, his generals, and Keith all identify with and use to encompass the rather unique experience of their lineage in a universe where both sides of their parentage are likely to other them for simply existing as they are.

[kheelcenter]

Labor Organizer Spotlight, Archie Green

#LaborOrganizerSpotlight Archie Green, a Labor folklorist, historian, carpenter, union organizer, and shipwright.

Green was a pioneer in documenting the cultural traditions of working people and he influenced a generation of scholarship on occupational culture and working life. He called himself first and foremost a worker and a union member, especially as a union activist in San Francisco. He is credited with revolutionizing occupational folklore and winning Congressional support for passage of a bill that established the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

He also helped edit a book called "The Big Red Songbook",where he compiled over 250 songs from the various editions of "Little Red Songbooks" published over the years 1909 to 1973 by the Industrial Workers of the World. The cover is displayed above. See Collection 5189 Labor Songbooks for various editions of "Little Red Songbooks" that we have in our collections.

Pictured: Book cover that reads "The Big Red Songbook, 250+ IWW Songs by Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, Salvatore Salerno, Editors. Foreword by Tom Morello, Afterword by Utah Phillips".

Each #LaborOrganizerSpotlight is designed to highlight historical figures who have participated significantly in the labor/labor organizing movement who are also featured in our collections. To learn more about Archie Green visit https://rare.library.cornell.edu/finding-aids-for-archival-and-manuscript-collections/ and search #5641 AV. This is an interview with Archie Green where he talks about the legends and myths of the labor movement, including songs of the American Labor Movement.

[angstbotfic]

note that "white" is therefore a backformation. they had classified Black, and then had to figure out "oh well then wait, what are we?" whiteness is fundamentally a construct for enabling racism.

some more sources:

Dyer, Richard. 1997. White. London, UK: Routledge.

Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Harris, Cheryl I. 1996. “Whiteness as Property.” In Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, 276–91. New York: The New Press.

Hill, Mike. 1997. “Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors.” In Whiteness: A Critical Reader, edited by Mike Hill, 1–18. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish Became White. 1st edition. New York: Routledge.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1999. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Newitz, Annalee, and Matt Wray. 1997. “Introduction.” In White Trash: Race and Class in America, edited by Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, 1–12. New York, NY: Routledge.

Roediger, David R. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London, UK: Verso.

Roediger talks about the above history in particular, but they're all good.

okay so one of the most interesting/relevant things my current history class has taught me

I learned in high school that the first African slaves were brought to America in 1619. But here’s the thing. We don’t actually know if they were slaves or indentured servants.

And here’s why that’s significant: Slavery hadn’t really fully become racialized back then. Likewise, there wasn’t yet the idea that African=slave, necessarily. In the years following 1619, there were African slaves, indentures, and free people in North America. In the 1600’s, race wasn’t really even a fully mature concept. From my reading, people didn’t necessarily see skin color as constituting “race” or see “race” as an immutable, biological quality.

What changed? European countries wanted to maximize their profits from their colonies in the Americas, and it was most profitable to own people as slaves. Literally what caused it was just that life expectancy in the colonies increased and it was more profitable to own a person’s labor for life.

It’s insane; in Virginian laws in the 1600’s you can see the transition to a racialized view of the world. In 1643 laws regulating the behavior of “servants” didn’t even mention race. Punishments for indentured servants, for things such as running away, often involved having more years added to their servitude.

In 1661, a law is passed in Virginia that uses the term “negroe.” In 1680, the law regulates the behavior of enslaved people further, making it illegal for any “negroe or other slave” to move about freely without a permit or to carry a weapon. Runaways who resist being apprehended can now be punished with death. The 1680 law has a bit that is interestingly worded: “...if any negroe or any other slave shall presume to lift up his hand in opposition against any Christian...” This is an echo of the viewpoint that religious identity was the most important part of a person’s identity. Watch what happens:

In 1691, the law punishes and prohibits “negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white” people, and prohibits people from setting “negroes” and “mulattoes” free. The law has fully constructed the idea of racial identity (notice that “white” exists now). Words denoting a person’s status of servitude have become increasingly replaced by “racial” indentifying terms (the law doesn’t say ‘you can’t free slaves,’ it says ‘you can’t free black people.’) IIRC, around this time laws were passed making enslaved status hereditary as well.

(All of these can be found in the book Colonial and Revolutionary America by Alan Gallay (it’s a textbook and I don’t particularly recommend it but it has some good resources) who in turn is quoting from The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619.)

I guess my point here is that it tends to be taught like “Europeans thought Africans were inferior so they thought it was ok to enslave them” but it seems to be closer to the truth that “slavery was profitable so Africans were increasingly considered inferior so enslaving them could be justified.” Like the belief in race didn’t create racialized slavery; it was the other way around. People think of the idea of “race” as being obvious and racism being a Just How It Was In Ye Olden Days, but “race” as we know it? Was literally just constructed as a justification for evil. It’s not something that people naturally construct in their understanding of the world.

Likewise before like 1650 or so, we don’t see English eyewitnesses to Native American nations assigning the idea of “race” to them. English people literally thought that if English people were born and brought up in the Americas, they would look like Native Americans because they thought characteristics like skin color were at least partially environmental. (The book I read about this is Indians and English by Karen Ordahl Kupperman and I highly recommend it.) Kupperman goes so far as to argue that it’s likely that English depictions at the time showed Native Americans as having more “European” features not because the artists were intentionally white-washing them, but because from their perspective a person’s features were not important in portraiture for depicting who they were; it was their clothing and posture and dress and the objects they were portrayed with that was supposed to depict that. (She then goes into a tangent about English portraiture at the time and it slaps.)

I don’t know. I have a problem with how racism in the past is treated with “they didn’t know any better” or painted with ignorance. The idea of race isn’t even that old.

Like, literally, the Europeans didn’t think it was okay to pillage and exploit the Americas because of their belief in race. The idea of “race” was formed out of their desire to pillage and exploit.

[cyparissinos]

Kasotakis, G., Roediger, L., & Mittal, S. (2011). Rectal foreign bodies: A case report and review of the literature. International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, 3(3), 111–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijscr.2011.11.007

available here

A 41-year-old HIV+ Caucasian male presented to the emergency department (ER) complaining of severe pelvic pain from a large oval-shaped marble he had inserted in his rectum approximately 2 h prior to presentation. The patient reported that multiple attempts to remove it at home failed, even with use of marijuana (in an effort to relax the anal sphincter) prior to his arrival at the ER.

On examination, his abdomen was soft, non-distended and non-tender to palpation, without sings of peritonitis. Bowel sounds were decreased. An X-ray of the lower abdomen revealed a large, ovoid-shaped object in the rectum (Fig. 1). The foreign body was palpable in the rectum, but due to its shape, large size and its smooth surface it was impossible to retrieve with simple maneuvering, including simultaneous application of suprapubic pressure. Proctoscopy was not attempted, as the anal canal was well dilated and the foreign object and distal rectal mucosa were easily seen and examined with a rectal speculum. Mild mucosal hyperemia was noted, but there was no evidence of tears or ischemic compromise to the rectal mucosa. As the patient was very uncomfortable with our maneuvers, despite maximal intravenous analgesia, we elected to proceed with an examination under anesthesia and possibly surgical exploration.

After fluid resuscitation and preoperative intravenous antibiotics, the patient was brought to the operating room, where he was anesthetized and intubated, and placed in the lithotomy position. An attempt to remove the foreign body manually with lubrication and more aggressive manipulation was fruitless, as the foreign body's greatest diameter appeared to be wider than the patient's pelvic outlet. We attempted use of delivery forceps but were unsuccessful. A decision was made to proceed with laparotomy. We felt at attempt at laparoscopy would have been inadequate for extraction, given the size of the foreign item. An 8 cm midline incision was made infraumbilically and was deepened through the midline subcutaneous tissue and fascia with electrocautery, until the peritoneal cavity was entered. The distal sigmoid and rectum were identified and the foreign body was palpated below the pelvic brim, tightly wedged in the pelvis. It seemed that the marble was pushed into the rectum with force that transiently relaxed the pelvic ligaments and allowed its slightly wider diameter to pass through and wedge within the lesser pelvis. Unfortunately, due to the android shape of our patient's pelvis, we were unable to perform the same maneuver with downward force from the abdomen. As the proximal rectal wall was sliding over the apex of the foreign body, not allowing significant force to be applied uniformly onto it, and in order to prevent mucosal injury by compressing it against the foreign body with excessive pressure, an enterotomy was made through which the foreign object was again pushed downward toward the anus, again without results. An attempt at pushing the egg upward, from the rectum into the peritoneal cavity was similarly unsuccessful.

At this point we felt that it was the patient's pelvic anatomy that prevented us from retrieving the tightly wedged object and we consulted orthopedic surgery. A separate Pfannenstiel incision was made just over the superior edge of the pubis at the insertion of the rectus muscle. The incision was carried down through the subcutaneous tissue all the way down to the superior border of the symphysis. The dissection extended along the superior pubic rami in both directions laterally, the anterior and undersurface of the symphysis pubis anteriorly and posteriorly respectively, while care was taken to prevent bladder injury, transposing a protective wide malleable retractor between the urinary bladder and the pubic symphysis. The latter was divided longitudinally with an osteotome and stretched open to approximately 4 cm in width with a laminar spreader. Obstetric forceps were again used transanally to grasp the foreign body and pull it out, with the simultaneous application of downward manual pressure from the peritoneal cavity. The specimen, an egg-shaped, marble ornament measuring 12 cm × 8 cm × 8 cm, was sent to pathology for examination (Fig. 2).

Sigmoidoscopy was next undertaken and revealed minor mucosal bleeding over the areas that were compressed by the foreign body against the non-compliant bony pelvis. The enterotomy was closed with interrupted absorbable suture in two layers and checked with insufflation. After removal of the laminar spreader, a 1.5 cm gap remained at the symphysiotomy. No internal fixation implants were used due to contamination of our field from the enterotomy.

By this time, blood-tinged urine was noted in the Foley catheter, and bladder injury ruled out with intravesical irrigation followed with no evidence of extravasation, as the bladder was visualized through the opening in the symphysis pubis. The balloon of the urinary catheter was easily palpated and so was the prostate. Cystoscopy was deemed unnecessary due to absence of any obvious bladder injury on irrigation. No bleeding was noted from the venous plexus in the area and the Foley catheter was put to dependent drainage. Incisions were closed in layers.

The patient had an unremarkable recovery and was discharged on post-operative day 4 with some discomfort with ambulation.

[cyprianscafe]

A Marca de Caim: Contexto Histórico

Para entender melhor as implicações de visibilidade e raça na e para a igreja, algum contexto histórico é útil, já que uma das principais questões que a Igreja SUD teve que enfrentar em termos de sua má/compreensão pública tinha a ver com raça. Nos primeiros dias da igreja, antes da morte de Joseph Smith em 1844 e antes da divisão SUD/FLDS, as tensões sociais eram frequentemente devido à permissividade percebida dos mórmons e à simpatia geral para com pessoas de cor, especificamente africanos e afro-americanos mantidos em cativeiro. Antes da Guerra Civil, pessoas negras — tanto escravizadas quanto livres — eram admitidas como membros, e homens negros podiam ter autoridade do sacerdócio. De fato, Joseph Smith era um abolicionista público, e parte de sua plataforma presidencial em 1844 incluía a erradicação nacional da escravidão. Foi em grande parte, embora não exclusivamente, devido a essa postura sobre a escravidão que os mórmons provocaram tanta animosidade generalizada no estado pró-escravidão do Missouri no final da década de 1830.

Deve-se notar, no entanto, que Smith e os primeiros fundadores da igreja eram altamente racistas pelos padrões de hoje. Considere, por exemplo, que em 1836, quando os mórmons estavam localizados principalmente no Missouri, Smith entrou na retórica racial carregada do Sul pré-guerra ao escrever uma declaração de posição que favorecia uma alforria com liberação de tempo de quase vinte anos. Smith não apoiou a abolição imediata e universal devido a preocupações de que ela “soltaria sobre o mundo uma comunidade de pessoas que poderiam, porventura, invadir nosso país e violar os princípios mais sagrados da sociedade humana, castidade e virtude” (Smith 1836). Oliver Cowdery (1836), o primeiro santo dos últimos dias batizado e escriba de Joseph enquanto ele interpretava as tábuas de ouro que se tornariam o Livro de Mórmon, foi mais desdenhoso em sua antipatia racial: Que os negros do sul sejam livres, e nossa comunidade seja invadida por indigentes, e uma massa imprudente de seres humanos, incultos, incultos e desacostumados a prover para si mesmos as necessidades da vida — colocando em risco a castidade de toda mulher que por acaso possa ser encontrada em nossas ruas — nossas prisões cheias de condenados, e o carrasco cansado de executar as funções de seu ofício! Este deve ser inevitavelmente o caso, todo homem racional deve admitir, que já viajou pelos estados escravistas, ou devemos abrir nossas casas, desdobrar nossos braços, e dar a esses filhos degradados e degradantes de Canaã, uma calorosa recepção e uma livre admissão a tudo o que possuímos! . . . E insensível ao sentimento deve ser o coração, e baixa de fato deve ser a mente, que consentiria por um momento, em ver sua bela filha, sua irmã, ou talvez, sua companheira do peito, no abraço de um negro¹!

Portanto, embora Joseph e os primeiros líderes da igreja pudessem estar abertos à conversão daqueles de pele escura, os irmãos governantes dificilmente estavam convencidos da igualdade de pessoas negras.

Isso é um tanto surpreendente, dado que, como W. Paul Reeve demonstrou de forma convincente, os primeiros membros da igreja — os herdeiros de uma linhagem anglo-escandinava de pele branca — foram eles próprios racializados e denunciados como retrocessos históricos em um Estados Unidos emergente desafiado por sua própria pluralidade vertiginosa. Reeve argumenta por meio de acadêmicos como David R. Roediger que “a raça operava como um sistema hierárquico projetado para criar ordem e superioridade a partir da desordem percebida da confluência de povos na América” (Reeve 2015, 3). Como tal, os mórmons predominantemente de pele branca (assim como os irlandeses e judeus) eram percebidos como subumanos racializados na imaginação americana do século XIX, uma “nova raça” de pessoas degeneradas. A devolução mórmon estava ligada aos rumores de poligamia e endogamia, e os santos eram frequentemente retratados como “forasteiros distintos, peculiares, suspeitos e potencialmente perigosos” (Reeve 2015, 14). Quando seus costumes polígamos foram confirmados publicamente em 1852, Reeve observa que “o mormonismo representava um declínio religioso e racial”, solidificando assim a noção de que os santos dos últimos dias simbolizavam atavismo em vez de modernidade. É notável, dados esses laços com a racialização e a devolução, que os mórmons de hoje possam estar ligados tanto à branquitude hiperbólica quanto à modernização.

Os mórmons de 1800s também foram racializados devido aos seus laços comerciais e sociais próximos com os povos nativos americanos, a quem eles percebiam como seus "irmãos vermelhos" e os herdeiros restantes da raça escura dos lamanitas, que tinham sido, de acordo com o Livro de Mórmon, "amaldiçoados pela pele escura" por seus caminhos traiçoeiros contra os nefitas, a raça branca piedosa no livro sagrado de Joseph. De fato, algumas tradições cristãs e o mormonismo atribuem a Maldição de Cam como a marca da censura de Deus pela iniquidade (Gênesis 9:25–27; 2 Néfi 5:21–23). De acordo com a teologia SUD, os lamanitas eram um "povo escolhido caído em decadência"; a sua escuridão tornou-os suspeitos — a marca de Caim — mas a sua escolha também os tornou dignos de simpatia e salvação (Reeve 2015, 55; ver também Bushman 2005; Givens 2002; Skousen 2009; Mauss 2003).

Sob Brigham Young, a relação mórmon com “pessoas de cor” se intensificou na posição racista que marcaria a igreja por quase 130 anos. Em 1849, Young anunciou que os homens negros não tinham permissão para atingir o status de sacerdócio. Young não era mais nobre em sua consideração pelos nativos americanos: “Há uma maldição sobre esses aborígenes de nosso país que vagam pelas planícies e são tão selvagens que você não pode domá-los. Eles são da Casa de Israel; eles já tiveram o Evangelho entregue a eles, eles tinham oráculos da verdade; Jesus veio e administrou a eles após sua ressurreição e eles receberam e se deleitaram no Evangelho até a quarta geração, quando se afastaram e se tornaram tão perversos que Deus os amaldiçoou com esta condição sombria, ignorante e repugnante” (Journal of Discourses vol. 14, Discourse 12, 87). A justificativa de Young para a intolerância racial derivou da eugenia social tão popular entre as elites brancas no século XIX. Young observou que “algumas classes da família humana que são negras, grosseiras, indecorosas, desagradáveis ​​e de hábitos baixos, selvagens e aparentemente privadas de quase todas as bênçãos da inteligência que geralmente é concedida à humanidade” foram propositalmente marcadas por Deus como pecadoras. “O Senhor colocou uma marca nele, que é o nariz achatado e a pele negra. Rastreie a humanidade até depois do dilúvio, e então outra maldição é pronunciada sobre a mesma raça — que eles deveriam ser os ‘servos dos servos’; e eles serão, até que essa maldição seja removida; e os abolicionistas não podem evitar, nem alterar o mínimo esse decreto” (Journal of Discourses vol. 7, 290–91).

De forma semelhante, nativos americanos, polinésios e outros povos escurecidos suportaram a punição de Deus, argumentou Young, de modo que a cor da pele indicava a punição de longa data de Deus por um pecado antigo, embora os homens das ilhas do Pacífico pudessem manter o sacerdócio dentro da igreja, em oposição àqueles com linhagem africana. À medida que esses povos se tornavam mais santos, eles também se tornariam “um povo branco e agradável” (Journal of Discourses vol. 7, 335–38), literalmente ficando mais claros à medida que seus compromissos com o mormonismo aumentavam, o brilho sagrado substituindo a marca de Caim.

O decreto de Young permaneceu como política oficial da igreja de 1849 até 1978, 129 anos de racismo formal — muitos acreditavam que inspirado por Deus. Os irmãos do século XX mudaram o tom das invectivas de Young contra os povos de pele escura, de modo que não era mais o pecado herdado que trazia a marca de Caim, mas um motivo mais neoliberal de falha pessoal. Em 1954, Mark E. Petersen, membro do Quórum dos Doze Apóstolos, colocou esses sentimentos em palavras quando fez referência a um grande ensinamento da igreja — que todas as pessoas que vivem na Terra viveram em uma preexistência onde há livre arbítrio. “Poderíamos ser preguiçosos lá ou poderíamos ser industriosos. Poderíamos ser obedientes ou descuidados. Poderíamos escolher seguir a Cristo ou seguir Lúcifer” (Petersen 1954, 6). Como tal, a pele escura marcava escolhas ruins na preexistência — uma punição individual por um erro individual. Escreve Petersen: “Não podemos escapar da conclusão de que, por causa do desempenho em nossa pré-existência, alguns de nós nascemos como chineses, alguns como japoneses, alguns como indianos, alguns como negros, alguns como americanos, alguns como santos dos últimos dias. Há recompensas e punições, totalmente em harmonia com Sua política estabelecida ao lidar com pecadores e santos, considerando todos de acordo com suas ações”. Essa lógica estabelece os termos para o neoliberalismo espiritual, na medida em que impõe uma lógica de mercado recalibrada não apenas trabalhando em conjunto com a religião, mas usando um ethos religioso como seu ponto final para o racismo.

A lógica insidiosa da causalidade, virtude/vício e raça indica claramente que se a pele escura é a punição pelo pecado, a pele branca deve ser a recompensa pelas boas ações. Faça o que é certo e seja branco. Ou nas palavras do Livro de Mórmon sobre os lamanitas que se convertem: “E então se regozijarão; porque saberão que é uma bênção para eles da mão de Deus; e suas escamas de escuridão começarão a cair de seus olhos; e muitas gerações não passarão entre eles sem que sejam um povo branco e deleitoso” (2 Néfi 30:6).

Para ser justo, devo observar que há alguma diferença de opinião sobre a formulação aqui. A frase “branco e agradável” foi incluída na tradução original de 1830. Em 1840, a frase foi alterada para “puro e agradável”, embora as edições europeias tenham usado “branco e agradável” até 1981. Na minha opinião, há pouca diferença nas conotações por trás das palavras “branco” e “puro” — ou, nesse caso, minha palavra “justiça” — já que essas palavras frequentemente naturalizam os significados racializados que ligam pureza com leveza e virtude com pele pálida. Na ideologia do mormonismo mediado, “puro e agradável” servem como adjetivos para bondade, iluminação e bênção de Deus, enquanto aquelas coisas escuras indicam impureza, pecado e conluio com Satanás.

Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism - Brenda R. Weber

¹ - Termo considerado ofensivo para afro-americanos. O uso da palavra negro em inglês é considerado imposto por brancos e referente à ideias de superioridade racial. O termo equivalente a “negro” com a conotação que tem em português é Black people. Note que só o uso do plural de Black - Blacks - pode ser controversial. 

[2blogornot2blog]

Let's Change Some Things!

The first thing we should change is pandering to the experiment called "white"!

The next thing we should change is allowing ourselves to be divided by a false social construct called race!

The third thing we should change is allowing ourselves to be divided by liars, thieves, convicts and other criminals.

The fourth thing we must change is our system of justice that allows a criminal to run for the highest office in the land.

We must change how judges are confirmed in the so-called highest.

We must ensure the supreme court never again grant criminal immunity to an already convicted criminal!

The truth is, there is only one race - the human race!

The experiment called "white"! This is an experiment developed in the 18th century as a racial term at a time when the enslavement of African Americans was widespread.

Roediger argued that the construction of the "white race" in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves!

According to this article in Wikipedia entitled "Definition of whiteness in the United States",

The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to any alien, being a free white person in at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people!

The article goes on to note that by 1923, courts had vindicated a "common knowledge concluding that scientific evidence was incoherent.

Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a performance-based standard, relating to religious practices, culture, education, intermarriage, and a community's role in the United States!

So you see, those of you under the moniker of "white" were not always known as such!

Your ancestors were originally defined by the country of their origin!

The 'white" construct is more about having origins in Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa and it does not conform to any biological, anthropological or genetic criteria!

According to Wikipedia, European colonists use of the word 'white" to refer to people who looked like themselves, grew to become entangled with the word "race" and "slave" in the American colonies in the mid-1660s! End of use of article in Wikipedia!

In practice, those in power in the US, feared the unification of formerly enslaved people and poor Europeans who lived, worked and shared neighborhoods becoming more powerful than those in power.

So they sowed division by convincing those European immigrants that they were better than their Black neighbors because of their pigment, thereby putting a wedge between the ethnic groups to maintain power!

The next installment will address the next two issues raised in the beginning of this writing!

[christotokos]

If, for example, an immigrant from Sicily walked about in a city long enough or frequented universities and governmental institutions, she could accumulate racial labels indefinitely, finding herself part of the Latin, mixed (with Africans), new immigrant, southern European, Mediterranean, Italian, south Italian, Catholic, non-English speaking, Caucasian, white, and dark white races. She might have heard the slurs “guinea” and “greaser” uttered more frequently and with greater emotion than any of the flatter designations. A similarly circulating east European might have learned himself to be a member of the Polish, Slavic, (semi) oriental, Asiatic, Catholic, new immigrant, non-English speaking, Caucasian, and white races. But he would have felt the sting of the slur “hunky” more often than any other racial label. Either immigrant might have been flattered, tutored, or threatened regarding entry into the “American race” or invited to become naturalized as a white citizen and vote. At the same time, they would have heard, especially through the immigration restrictions of 1924, persistent political invective putting their races among those whose unfitness for citizenship threatened the very racial fiber of the nation.

Scholars are no friends of such messiness. Present political motivations—from the right, center, and left—feed preferences for projecting the firm distinction between race and ethnicity back in time. But also important in framing how such big stories of the nation are told is the way that such a clear and simple distinction—one that helps authors reduce race relations to a black-white binary—makes historical material more manageable. Such stories capture drama by being leaner and easier to follow than those that describe the changing contours of a mess. Even the introduction to Working Toward Whiteness began with a discussion framed around a firm distinction between “nation-races” and “color-races,” and largely trimmed its sources to intellectual and political ones that make it possible to reduce complexities to a pair of categories, at least for a while. As we now turn to consider how race was spoken about and lived on the ground, how such a binary unravels becomes just as compelling as how it is sustained.

Fortunately for the historian, rich and varied evidence from popular speech, labor struggles, literature, mass culture and social service providers, immigrant letters, and more survives to remind us of the thoroughly complicated ways that new immigrants saw their racial fitness questioned, both through denigration of their place in the hierarchy of European races and through discrimination connecting them with African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans. In choosing to emphasize such variety, this book proceeds in frank defense of messiness as a central characteristic of the racial order in which new immigrants were placed and they placed themselves. Moreover, messiness contains its own uncertainties and dramas, and it is indispensable in helping us encounter the harrowing and confusing aspects of how new immigrants learned of race in the United States. Such trauma was not that of being made nonwhite but of being placed inbetween.

— Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White, by David R. Roediger

[nicolanlang]

Make It Stick: The Ultimate Guide to Supercharging Your Learning - A Review

“Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel is a transformative book for anyone looking to enhance their learning capabilities. This comprehensive guide delves into the cognitive psychology behind effective learning strategies, offering readers practical techniques to improve memory retention and overall knowledge…

[the-wormwormworm]

Deliberate Practice

Deliberate Practice #FOANed #nurseeducator #nursing #deliberatepractice #simulation

Image hereDownload Resources Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick. Harvard University Press. Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363. Nursing Education Network. (2017). Deliberate Practice: Practice Like You Play. Nursing Education…

[mixandra14]

"We tend to think of our memory as a tape recorder, but that's wrong. It's a living structure, a scaffold of nearly infinite size. The more we generate impulses, encountering and overcoming difficulties, the more scaffolding we build. The more scaffolding we build, the faster we learn."

"Struggling in certain targeted way - operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes - makes you smarter."

"There was an experiment by psychologist Henry Roediger at Washington University of St. Louis, where students were divided into two groups to study a natural history text. Group A studied the paper for four sessions. Group B studied only once but was tested three times. A week later both groups were tested, and Group B scored 50 percent higher than Group A."

- Daniel Coyle, from The Talent Code

[ali-esperanza]

02/dic/2023: Un pequeño pensamiento

Es muy complicado ser rara en tantos sentidos. Soy una persona trans, lesbiana, no tradicionalmente linda, con una discapacidad, etc. Me he puesto a darle vueltas y vueltas a esto, porque me hace sentir realmente mal el hecho de que, por todas esas cosas, no puedo involucrarme en actividades que hacen otras personas, y tampoco sea considerada dentro de lo que es normal...

Para muchos no soy ni una mujer ni un hombre. El ser una persona trans me saca de las posibilidades de ser atractiva para muchas personas, y me siento en un limbo sobre lo que los demás piensan de mí. Quisiera poder ser tradicionalmente bonita, quisiera ser normativa para no sentirme como una extraña excluida del mundo amoroso.

Si hablamos de lo que yo pienso acerca de mí misma, genuinamente veo cosas muy positivas. Creo que soy amable, cariñosa, e incluso me atrevo a decir que sí, sí soy muy bonita. Pero esto no parece importar, considerando que la percepción que yo tengo de mi persona no va a cambiar el hecho de que sea rara y no bonita para los demás. Eso me hace sentir triste.

Y aparte de eso, ni siquiera puedo involucrarme en la mayoría de las actividades de las personas de mi edad, el ser discapacitada hace muy difícil hacer cosas como ir a fiestas o salir seguido. Incluso si no fuera una gay torpe, no podría evitar el aislamiento al que mi condición me somete.

Quisiera sentirme un poco normal, quisiera sentir como que pertenezco con el resto del mundo, pero no se suele sentir así.

Las únicas personas que me hacen sentir parte de algo son mis amistades. Amo mucho a mis amigxs: a Mario; a Daphne; a Liz; a Meli; a Nihil; etc. Adoro su presencia y me hacen sentir muy feliz, pero no puedo evitar sentir que también necesito ese algo más, un te amo y muchos besos y abrazos, por favor. Quizás esté pidiendo demasiado, pero pues es la verdad. Así me siento.

Pero bueno. Hoy me siento un poco mejor al respecto, dormir ayudó. Anoche me sentía aún peor. Ahora estoy leyendo un libro que se llama Make It Stick, de Henry L. Roediger III y colaboradores. Es sobre estrategias basadas en evidencia sobre cómo aprender y estudiar. Henry fue lo que más me llamó a leer el libro, debido a que ya había leído un artículo que escribió sobre el conductismo, que me gustó mucho. Se llama What Happened to Behaviorism?, y básicamente tira muchos de los mitos sobre la idea de que el conductismo es una corriente muerta en psicología, y bobadas por el estilo.

Quizás luego debería contar que me va pareciendo el libro por acá. Pero pues ahora solo quería descargar un poco este sentimiento de soledad y exclusión que pasaba por mí.

Ya es diciembre chicuelos, tengan felices pascuas.

[isurfit]

Antoine Martin wins the 2023 Aloha Classic

http://isurf.it

[learnfasttips]

Expand Your Mind: 5 Must-Read Books on Learning for Personal Growth and Professional Development

Learning is an essential part of personal growth and professional development. Whether you’re a student looking to improve your study habits or a professional seeking to enhance your skills, the following five books are must-reads for anyone interested in effective learning strategies. “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A.…