Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at December 29th, 2007

I’m aware enough about racial issues to know that I sometimes don’t get it. Part of it is not having a personal experience of racism. Part of it is not knowing the historical experience of blacks and other minorities.

I’m linking to a few blog entries by Pam Noles. In her blog “And We Shall March,” she writes about her life and interests, science fiction/fantasy, movies, and sometimes about the intersection of race and fiction.

I don’t know about you, but I’d always wondered where the word “wog” came from. It’s sometimes used by British people to refer to foreigners, but apparently comes from a doll (that also happens to be a racial caricature). Until reading this series of posts, I’d had no idea what the Golliwog was or how it connected to minstrelsy.

1. “When time was things was looking bright / I started to whittle on a stick one night / Who cried out stop now, that’s dynamite / Not a soul.” ***

2. “One white woman, two white girls, twenty five white men dressed up like women, made up to look like black people to entertain other white people.” ***

3. “The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.” ***

4. “I don’t want to have anything to do with anything black for at least a week.”

5. “In this present moment we are either smaller than we were, or else are on our knees.” ***

Posted by Jim at October 27th, 2007

My kids are looking forward to Halloween. They’ve been spending a lot of time looking through a costume catalog that came in the mail and informing us of what they’re going to be.

As someone who earned the odd graduate degree in sociology, I find that I can’t quite turn off that portion of my brain that automatically analyzes any document that I come across as a cultural artifact.

Hence I couldn’t help but notice that there were no black people in this catalog. After some more browsing I realized that I was wrong and that there actually were black men within its pages. Take a look…

Fortunately there’s no racism any more or that might be offensive or something.

Posted by Jim at February 12th, 2007

Recently I’ve been reading non-fiction books about the daily lives of people in various eras previous to our own. It’s research for my novel. It is interesting in and of itself, but as much as I’m interested in earlier periods, I’m only covering the Victorian era to the present for the simple reason that that’s as early as I have to go to get details related to the story right.

Currently I’m reading a book called Daily Life in the United States 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression by David E. Kyvig.

It covers some topics that I hadn’t expected to think about. For example, I had been aware that in the Victorian era, the standard of beauty was different. Heaviness was a sign of health. The actress Lillian Russell tipped the scales at 200 pounds and was generally regarded to be beautiful.

I’d wondered how American beliefs about weight happened to change.

From reading Kyvig’s book, it seems to be two major things. First off, it represents a change in the understanding of what good nutrition was. During the Victorian era and before, it was hard enough to get enough food much less to worry about what exactly it would be. Thus, when people had the money to get the food they wanted, the typical American meal was starches and meats.

In the Victorian Era in particular, French food became popular. Later on though, people became more aware of vitamins and the fact that what you ate was as important as the fact that you got full. Thus, they started eating more fruit (more citrus…) and vegetables (particularly green vegetables) while eating less starches (like potatoes) and less red meat. As a result, US citizens grew in height while eating 5% less calories.

In addition to the positive pull of a better understanding of food one also had the negative push of World War I. During the first World War, the government had to ration food. It took advantage of people’s growing understanding of nutrition to encourage people to eat less, actively promoting the idea of being thinner while simultaneously being more healthy.

The reason they did this, of course, was to be able to send more food overseas.

Where once men had been encouraged to be plump as a demonstration of how well off they were, the doughboy became the ideal for men while the flapper became the ideal for women.

An interesting wrinkle in this is that even the clothes of the 20’s and 30’s changed to reflect the new ideals. Where the Victorian era’s clothes were multi-layered, the clothes of the 20’s and 30’s had less layers, creating a slimmer figure. Interestingly, this was also the period where cosmetics began to be commonly used.

So anyway, I could ramble on a bit longer, but I won’t. I do find it an interesting topic though. Expect further commentary on past eras as the mood strikes me.

Posted by Jim at September 17th, 2006

I happened to eat dinner at my parents’ house this Sunday. As my mom was preparing dinner, I told her about the Jenison Park amusement park and about the unnerving name of one of the attractions (”Nigger Baby”).

I mentioned to her that I’d asked the author of the book that the map was in about the attraction’s name. He knew nothing about it. I figured that I’d have to go to one of Holland’s assisted living centers and find someone old enough to have gone to Jenison Park during it’s heyday.

I may still do that, but I’m not sure that I’ll have to.

Jenison Park isn’t the only place that had that particular attraction. Apparently you could find it in Indiana (where my mom grew up) even into the 1950’s. They had it at carnivals and even at fundraisers for the local Christian school system that my mom went to. In fact once she described it, I realized that you can still find it at carnivals accross the nation.

Basically, you had a rack of hinged figures on a wall. You were handed a certain number of balls, and, if you hit enough of the figures over you got a prize.

Since the name of the game was “Nigger Baby,” you would be right to guess that the baby figures that you knocked over with a ball were painted black.

You could never have a game like that now, but as a child my mom never remembered anyone questioning it. Strange to think that something that blatantly racist could be part of the background noise of life. It makes me wonder what we might be doing now that I’ll look back at with shock in the future.

Posted by Jim at September 15th, 2006

Writing a novel involves a degree of research. In this case, research on the city I grew up in–Holland, Michigan.

A trolley system ran through Holland at one point. It had various names. At it’s longest, it ran from Saugatuck up to Grand Rapids. They’d actually bought the right of way to South Haven. Had they actually built, people would have been able to ride from Holland to Chicago by trolley. Bearing in mind that trolleys could reach 80 mph, this would have been more workable than you might think.

Like many other interurban railways of the period, the trolley system also included an amusement park (Jenison Park–located on the south side of Lake Macatawa near Lake Michigan). This way there would be a built in reason to ride the rails. Grand Rapids’ trolley system included a similar amusement park near Reeds Lake.

Jenison Park included a variety of rides and amusements. They included a roller coaster, merry-go-round, penny arcade, the “House of Trouble” and a few other things. One of the “other things” located next to the House of Trouble is simply labeled “Nigger Baby.”

There are moments in doing any sort of historical research when you read something and realize that things have changed since then. Noticing that for the first time was one of those moments for me.

I didn’t know what that exhibit or event was. I still don’t.

If anyone reading this does, write a comment and let me know.

UPDATE: I may have an answer to this one. See the next post for details.

Posted by Jim at July 3rd, 2006

In college, I remember hearing that someone had calculated that all humans living today were descended from everyone who lived before 1200 A.D.

That statistician (Joseph Chang) is referenced an article I recently read that points out some flaws in his ideas and mentions that currently statisticians guess that humanity’s most recent common ancestor lived during the Golden Age of Greece (and probably lived in Asia).

The article’s interesting in that it describes the logic and methodology the study followed (to a limited extent) and describes some of the obvious consequences (today’s Klansmen are undoubtedly descended from Africans).

Posted by Jim at April 20th, 2006

An interesting article called The Rise of the Creative Class. It basically argues that certain lifestyle issues more than anything else determine a city’s affluence and potential.

Grand Rapids, as it turns out, is specifically mentioned in the article.

Apparently, we suck.

Posted by Jim at April 18th, 2006

We hear a lot about how politics is unnecessarily harsh these days. I was reminded of it recently via both Reddit and Digg. Both linked to reports of what happened during a debate between Al Franken and Ann Coulter. Here’s the opening of the speech plus discussion on Al Franken’s web site. You can read another account with discussion on Free Republic.

If you read the comments on each site, particularly focusing on the comments about Al Franken by Republicans or about Ann Coulter by Democrats, you’ll probably note that they can be intensely personal and rather nasty. I’ve seen (in other places) people of both sides note how the other side constantly uses personal attacks. Reading these discussions makes it pretty obvious that no side has a monopoly on that sort of thing.

I can come up with possible reasons pretty quickly. They might include:
1. The blending of the public and the personal that Joshua Myerowitz suggests that technological communication promotes in his book No Sense of Place. Personal attacks on politicians are a logical result.
2. It could simply be that online communication makes it easier to be rude.
3. it could be that political parties and activist groups demonize the other side too successfully, making rational communication hard.
4. It might be that harshness of political rhetoric goes in cycles and soon this too shall pass.

That being said, it may be that imagining our time is somehow abnormal in the harshness of the rhetoric that’s inaccurate. I always heard that a person should avoid discussing religion and politics if you want to have a pleasant conversation.

Anyway, here’s a list of what I like in a conversation about politics:
1. Discussing the pros and cons of an issue, but, allowing for the possibility that you might be wrong or haven’t considered certain aspects of a problem.
2. Avoiding excessive language. By this I’m not meaning swearing. I mean overly broad statements about the worth of an idea or the worthlessness of a particular perspective (”Well of course you think that, you’re a Republican/Democrat/Scientologist…” or “Bush/Clinton is evil/has no morals/has bodies buried under the East Lawn”).
3. Allowing people to save face. Saying “I told you so” or making it clear that someone with a particular perspective is an idiot means it will take that much longer (if ever) for them to tell you that they’ve changed their mind. Who wants to admit to being a fool?
4. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Politics is something people feel passionate about. Sometimes they say something stupid while promoting their beliefs. So does everyone.

I don’t write this under the illusion that it will change anything, but would very much like to talk about politics without having other people go into massive rants in front of me.

Posted by Jim at March 4th, 2006

PVP is a webcomic that generally focuses on interpersonal relationships, work, role playing games, geek culture, and computer gaming. It does not generally focus on social issues.

Last week Scott Kurtz did an interesting thing in that he let us into his head as he was trying to write a black character, something that he’s apparently not entirely comfortable with.

If you read the two comics I just linked in the preceding paragraph you’ll know exactly what I mean by that. If you didn’t you might want to because what follows will assume you did, possibly ruining the humor in the process.

Anyway, I can understand why Kurtz might feel uncomfortable writing a black character. I’m writing a novel–one that includes a black character–and I’ve sometimes felt a little nervous as I do it. There are a number of reasons that a white writer might feel nervous about writing a black character.

The first and best one is simply the need to have the character feel authentic and real to to the reader. If you’re black you will have experiences and assumptions that are different from those of your average white writer. If you are a white writer and you’re realistic, you know that you can only guess as to what those experiences might be. How are you going to avoid screwing things up and making the character feel fake?

Unfortunately for the realistic writer, however, there’s more of a risk than simply having the character feel not quite right. There’s also the risk of having the character come off as a racial stereotype. Having the character feel fake is merely a technical failure. Having the character turn out to be a racial stereotype (unintentional as it might be) opens you up for public humiliation.

To me this underlines something about current moment in the US experience of race and racism. As a society, we’ve come to the point where most people agree that racism is wrong, but it’s still such a raw wound that it’s hard to talk about it publicly.

The obvious and best solution is to write a person of whatever race (or gender) as first of all a person and hope that common humanity will carry the day. I think about Michael Bishop who included a gay AIDS patient in his novel Unicorn Mountain. Michael Bishop isn’t gay, doesn’t have AIDS and doesn’t obviously have a lot in common with the character.

He made the person feel like a real human being and his gay character seemed as real to me as Samuel R. Delany’s various gay characters (Delany, incidentally, is gay). Of course, I’m not gay so I may have missed something there.

I am, however, a US citizen of Dutch descent and though that’s far from a persecuted minority, it has been interesting to read books in which people of Dutch descent appear. For example, at least in the books I read, the primary association with being Dutch is sailors and traders. Farmers and immigrants to the US barely ever appear–and when they do it seems that they turn out to be sailors.

I remember being particularly irritated by one alternate history which imagined that England never conquered New York City/New Amsterdam. It irked me that in an alternate version of the US with a strong Dutch presence I found little awareness of Dutch Reformed thought or much of a sense of Dutch history other than “sailors and traders.”

There were also structural problems with the novel, but I won’t get into that here.

Making your characters human doesn’t always quite work either and Scott Kurtz is right to be uncomfortable, but as my comments about the above book indicate, writing about white Europeans isn’t as easy as you might assume either. I’m hoping Scott sticks with the character. Even if he makes mistakes in the process, I think he’ll eventually get the character right.

Of course, if he sticks in a character who’s descended from Dutch sailors, I’ll be cranky.

Posted by Jim at February 10th, 2006

I just thought I’d link to what I’ve been working on for the last week of so. Summit on Racism is a yearly conference devoted to changing the experience of race in Grand Rapids and the surrounding area.

It attempts to do more than just talk about race. The Summit is designed to promote action. People get into groups and then sign up to do things during the coming year. Mind you, not everyone continues to be involved for the year, but that’s okay too.

In any case, this year the speaker’s Bobby Moresco, the writer of the movie Crash. Also, (and more importantly) we’ll be deciding the direction of Summit on Racism and GRACE’s Racial Justice program for the next few years.

It should be interesting.