On my Facebook page, Michael Cooke posted the latest challenge along these lines. Let's (try to) put this issue to bed once and for all.
How does any educator measure results? Do schoolteachers judge themselves by test scores? By following their students' careers after they graduate? Maybe, but probably not.
I say education is self-evidently good and I don't need to defend it. If you disagree, go ahead and tell us why it's a waste of time. Post arguments explaining why educators should be dispensing food and medicine rather than words and ideas. If you come up with something better than your own anti-education opinion, I'll address it.
Measuring success
You want measures? Give me the measures used by teachers, librarians, and journalists and I'll apply them to my situation.
What about creative types such as writers and artists? Are you seriously arguing that their work is useless to society? That we should close bookstores, shutter theaters, and empty museums? And devote all those intellectual and artistic resources to fighting poverty instead?
Until you come up with measures for these people, here are the measures I use for myself:
Sorry none of this has changed the world yet. But it's certainly doing more than my previous job as a corporate computer programmer did. And probably more than whatever you do for a living does.
2) Encourage people to see things from a multicultural perspective. To overcome their preconceptions and biases. To see things rationally and think about them critically.
3) Address Native issues to help a) Native people in particular and b) all people in general with more of item 2.
Has Rob changed history yet?
FYI, I'm one of millions of liberal activists working for a series of related causes. Our efforts are having a cumulative effect; witness the election of Barack Obama, for instance. If activists pressure Texas to revise its textbooks again, I'll be happy to take a millionth or whatever of the credit. No more and no less.
You want results? Give me the money and I'll do a poll of people's awareness and knowledge of Indians. I'll do a study of how their awareness and knowledge increases after exposure to stereotype-free lessons, products, and entertainment. Once they learn Indians aren't dead, do pay taxes, aren't rich from casinos, etc., I'm guessing they'll be more willing to help.
This is another way of saying education produces results. Indians understand this, which is why they form trade organizations and hire lobbyists. They make the same points I make here--Indians aren't dead, do pay taxes, aren't rich from casinos, etc.--to influence government, business, the media, and the public.
As I've said many times, I'd be happy if people didn't argue with me when I point out problems. I'd be thrilled if racism and stereotyping dried up and I could go out of the criticism business. I'd be as overjoyed as I am whenever we eliminate a mascot or a stereotype. I'm not getting big rewards for any of this, believe me.
You're beginning to sound like the apologists who claim racism isn't the problem but talking about it is. Is that your position? Then go to that posting and address the points there.
Rob the poverty fighter?
You want me to do something "real" such as fighting poverty? You understand that my background is in computers, not social work...right? If I were to "fight poverty," it probably would be in a back room somewhere managing an organization's website or database. I wouldn't be much more involved in the fight than I am now.
Let's review my skill set. The things I'm not particularly adept include: 1) anything physical; 2) organizing and managing projects; 3) raising funds; 4) working with people. Given these limitations, what employment would you suggest?
Actually, I'll give you the answer this time. I'm already doing what I do best: thinking, analyzing, and writing. Anything else would be a waste of my talents.
And I spend the final third of my time commenting on a wide range of issues: politics, race, economics, the environment, education, culture, religion, etc. I review movies, books, and other works of art to steer people to the best products. And occasionally I criticize things that deserve it.
You want me to do more? Stop challenging what I'm already doing and forcing me to defend myself. I have plenty of ideas for comic books, novels, and screenplays if only
You can argue whether my artistic efforts will help society any more than my educational efforts. But so far you don't have the shred of an argument against education as a worthwhile, effective, and noble calling. Address that first and then we'll go from there.
Conclusion
Coincidentally, the same day Mike posted his queries, a teacher on Facebook said she was going to show a stereotype posting to her class. This isn't a posting I originated; it's something I merely shared. But I'm a world-class disseminator of news and information, so I did my part.
So roughly 30 youngsters will be thinking about Native stereotypes in the next few days because of one of my postings. Who know...maybe it'll influence or change their thoughts on the subject. Maybe one of them will go from being a callow youth to a dedicated activist. I can think of worse legacies.
Measure that if you can, buddy.
For more cultural debates with Mike, see Stereotypes Disappear "Organically"? and Stereotypes Okay in "Cultural Commons"? For more on criticism, see Clarifying My Comments Policy and Why Does Rob Keep Criticizing?
Below: An insurmountable problem because of "cultural inertia"? Or the Stanford Indians mascot successfully eliminated in 1970?
The conservative and Christian movements that were revived and peaked during the Reagan and both Bush presidencies stopped America in its tracks and even took a few steps backwards with the political, social and economical progress the country was making in the early 1980’s.
ReplyDeleteIf we review the incidents of racial hatred in communities across America; police brutality; the rise of militias based on white supremacy and anti-government movements; the push for religious rights in government and schools; the lack of oversight and accountability in corporate America as well as government agencies with the aftermath of Katrina, the absence and apathy in pursuing Osama Bin Laden after 911 and the current incompetence of handling the Gulf oil spill, where in this do Americans stop and say, “what are we doing wrong?”
I sincerely believe that this country has not yet been traumatized enough to the point of honestly asking themselves that question. Looking at the trends and popular entertainment of our times I see America trapped in a soap opera that is in constant rerun.
Rob, you are ahead of your time. You have tapped into an area that is untouched and intentionally ignored for the obvious quick fixes and erratic behavior of the American and indeed, the world’s mental consumption of flamboyant and loud profanity it so greedily hungers for on a daily basis.
The American Indian is poverty, but it is the non-Indian Americans that are in poverty spiritually. The whiteman has no edge on material wealth anymore as we see with many of our African American and Latino brothers whom buy into the American dreams illusion of money, cars and bling bling. Those riches are not real because they are not permanent.
Yet in Indian country, there is a rich and vibrant culture that has yet to be seen or heard for the masses of Americans that truly to seek a heritage with the land they claim as a home that is sacred and aboriginal.
I am optimistic that perhaps a hundred years from now, Americans will understand that the Indian was not an ancient relic of the past to be a toy and tool for entertainment, but rather a legitimate culture that lives and breathes for all to claim as human beings whom truly know, understand and respect the land they walk, eat, sleep and rest upon into eternity versus a land in which to rape, pillage and destroy for temporary profit.
Rob, you are the last of your tribe. A tribe of non-Indians that stands for something nobody gives a darn about in a time when the ridiculous and mundane is popular, but the real issues and problems are shut down.
Keep up the good work and know that there are many of us out there that have roots dating back thousands of years whom value and understand that you just might be the only human being left or beginning within the white race.
I agree with what was said above by A Fellow Warrior. We need more people like Rob.
ReplyDeleteJust popping by to chime in with the above commenters. I also appreciate what Rob's doing. It makes me glad to know that there is a non-Native out there reading, blogging and thinking about the struggles that play out in Indian country, the issues which affect Indians today and the accomplishments in Native communities. So there ya go.
ReplyDeleteReading Rob's special site here for almost 2 years now, I wouldn't exactly recommend Rob to work for the benifit of Native communities. That would be like asking Micheal Jackson to babysit your 12 and 13 year old sons. Long time readers will know that Rob is a somewhat of a psuedo-hypocrite. More than half of his articles in here admonishes Natives in general--very politely. Or in other words--"Microaggressive Racism" on Natives.
ReplyDeleteSure, he attacks other Whites who attack Native, but in his mind, its only okay for him to attack Natives.
I would warn others of Rob's hypocrisy.
~GENO~
Well GENO, that is why Rob has my support and you do not!
ReplyDeleteYou can babble on with your psychoanalytical theorys and secular terminology, but in the end, you do not have the insight, hindsight or the website, to bring the issues to us as Rob does.
How can you know what is in the mans mind and align him with pedophilia?
Fix your own hypocrisy.
You suck, Rob. You could be making more of a difference if you actually got outside and did something in the community rather than type random rants against some supposed stereotype sprung from your delusional mind.
ReplyDelete