Games

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Blurring Race

The first time I read "Snowy Day" to my kid, I thought- what a lovely simple story about snow falling in Brooklyn.  The second time I read it, I noted that the main character, Peter is a black boy and how the story had nothing to do with his race, which is one of the many reasons that this Ezra Jack Keats book is beloved by all, and even the post office made the snowy exploits of Peter into postage stamps.

I don't know why I thought it was Brooklyn, but the illustrations were so soothing, even when the children got into a snowball fight, and life seemed so sweet and simple. When the only conflicts and mysteries of life came from the disappearing of a snowball from his pocket. I must have read this book to Hiro a thousand times.

I always assumed that Ezra Jack Keets was black. He grew up in East New York. Even when he had a retrospective at the Jewish Museum, it did not dawn on me that he was not black.  Even when I saw a photo of him, I was still convinced that he was black.  There are black Jews right? The pictures we create in our minds with ingrained prejudices are hard to break.  But does it really matter if the author of all those books about Peter and Archie and Amy and Suzie and all the pets were black, or white or Jewish or not?

We live in Woodside Queens, where our next-door neighbors are Irish on one side, and on the other side is a Bhutanese Snooker Hall Bar and Restaurant. Also on our block are Mexican, Black, Columbian, Korean, Chinese, Greek, Italian, and Filipino families as well as families consisting of mixtures of several races and cultures.  As an Asian person, when I first moved into the neighborhood, I got spoken to in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalong, and Japanese, when I entered stores and restaurants.  Every culture just assumed I was one of them, and immediately spoke to me in their mother tongue.  And even now, I cannot often tell a Columbian person apart from a Korean person, nor does it really matter. This is what a melting pot does, it blends and blurs racial markers and makes them irrelevant so we can see the uniqueness of every individual.

Hiro also makes colorblind assumptions. He thinks a classmate who has a white father and a Hispanic mother is Chinese because she is taking Mandarin classes...because why else would some kid be forced to take a language that was not her mother tongue?  He also thinks that an Indian classmate is Black because she has dark-ish skin.  I wonder if this colorblindness promotes raising an anti-racist kid, or the opposite?  The great thing about Ezra Jack Keats' images is that they seem so ordinary and that childhood "should" look like that. By sharing these books with children, the construct of a blended race neighborhood becomes ordinary. Black children and white children are in a world where a black teacher is in charge of a pet show, though if you were to watch the news these days, this seems like a fabrication from a children's book author's imagination.

The Game: 
Slow Looking with Peter
 
The Pet Show

I introduced this game a few weeks ago at our Family Friday cocktail hour, with this image by Ezra Jack Keats, after reading the Slow Looking books.  The goal was to get people to look closely and carefully at something and though a Zoom game session with drinks may not have been the perfect setting, it did slow down our time together to create pockets of interesting conversation. At one point, someone commented that a group of adults has probably never stared at this image for so long, which was probably true. 

It can be played in a Museum, through Zoom or anywhere.

Players: 2+

Age: old enough to be able to write the alphabet.

The Gear: an image of some type, pencil/pen, and paper, timer.

The set up: 
If you are playing from home with people in the room with you, find an image from a book or magazine.
If you are playing virtually with others on Zoom: find an image on your computer and share the screen so everyone can see it.
If you are in a Museum (do you remember those?), find a work of art everyone agrees on and sit in front of it. (I really miss going to museums even though most of them symbolize white looting...but anyway ....)

To start: write the alphabet vertically on the left side of your paper. Set a timer for 15 minutes or however long you want to play.  Ideally, pick a time and double it or add 10 minutes to the initial time, long enough so that your mind starts to wander. The point is to look at the image longer than you think you can.
When the timer starts, look at the image and write down things you see that start with every letter of the alphabet. 

The objective: 
You want to find things and write down items that seem obvious that everyone else might see.

Point system: If you want to do this as a meditative activity, you don't need to keep score.  But since everything is a competition in our house these days, after the timer goes off, take turns and report what everyone wrote down.  You get one point for every item that others also wrote down.  For example, if for the letter "A" you wrote down "Afro" and 3 other people also wrote down "Afro", you all get 4 points.  The object is to try to be in unison, not to be unique and cleaver. The goal is empathetic looking.
Everyone keeps their own score and is played on the honor system.

What was fascinating about looking for things that started with tricky letters was that several people saw things that were not there.  For example, for the letter T, three or four people saw a Turtle, which does not exist in the painting.  All four said the green hat on the boy who is popping his head into the frame on the left side was a turtle.  Or you really had to look at the picture's narrative to understand what was going on.  Both Philip and I said "Itch" for the letter I- what the boy on the left was doing.  

Friday, June 26, 2020

Do the Math

I was sitting at my desk,  Zoom-working when I heard from the other room;
"Ugh, guess what the idiot said now!?"

So I yelled back:
"I don't even want to know- but ok what did Trump say?"

Reading from the paper, Hiro continues, "the idiot has made five dozen false claims about mail balloting since April"

DO THE MATH- I suggest- so after looking at the calendar and counting how many days have elapsed since April, Hiro announces that the idiot has lied at least once a day since April .  And that's just lies about the Post office mind you!

The Math looks like this
12 days in a dozen
5 dozen x12= 60
30(ish) days in a month
2 months have elapsed
60 divided by 60 
=
one lie a day about mail in ballots.
_______________________________________________
***
I've been working on a games book for kids for a while (as some of you already know).  Most of these word games were originally written to be played on train or bus commutes with your kid but now that we are sequestered in our homes and staying away from public transportation, I've been rethinking these games.  The following used to be the preface to the Math games section:

I teach in an art school. Two actually—I’m an adjunct.  Many of my students hate math. That’s why they are in art school, where SAT scores do not determine their futures. But then, I teach them how to make stuff. I teach them how to make stuff stand up and sometimes hold not only its own weight, but an external weight. They get scared because deep down inside, when they have to make something that is constructed out of a rectangular cube or a truss system out of equilateral triangles, they know math is somehow involved.

 

I have to build their confidence. First, I tell them that in high school, I was good at math and could have gone all the way through AP Calculus if I hadn’t been a slacker. I understood the concepts hiding in the Pythagorean triangles, but what is the point of proving that a shape that is obviously a triangle to be a triangle. I found geometry class to be asinine. I think my students relate better to someone who got a C+ in Geometry than a math whiz. Then I share that what I’ve learned in all these years of teaching is that being good at math is more than knowing equations and memorizing tables. It’s more important to comprehend the world spatially, to be able to recognize patterns. If you play music, you intrinsically understand fractions. If you can read a map, you understand coordinates. If you wait tables, you understand the value of money and calculating percentages. This is what math is. These games will hopefully teach these same lessons and be fun to play as you navigate around the city with your child.

__________________________________________________________

This is a game from that chapter:


The Math Curse

Our New Common Core Math has joined real estate and restaurants as one of the top subjects of party conversation for parents of public school students. No matter what grade your child is in—even kindergarten! —you will have to learn to do a lot of ridiculous word problems in a workbook called Go Math or something similar. This is where Common Core really enters your world. The week my son brought home the Go Math workbook was the same week we discovered Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s book The Math Curse.

 

From the same wacky pair who created The Stinky Cheese Man, The Math Curse uses humor to tackle the serious subject of math and entice children to focus on the trickiest of equations. The book’s fictional narrative begins when the math teacher, Mrs. Fibonacci, tells a young boy that “almost everything can be thought of as a math problem.” Thus begins the “math curse.” Mathematical questions are disguised in history, art, P.E., and even how to divide birthday cupcakes. Smith’s masterpiece of layout and design enhances Scieszka’s story. It uses surreal, collage-like illustrations combined with a dizzying variety of fonts to create diagrams, charts, and multiple-choice quizzes with the answers as silly as the questions. This smart and entertaining book is for every child who dreads math, and every parent frustrated by Common Core.

 

***

And here is another from that chapter specifically written to be played on trains:

Everyday Math

 

I was six when I moved to this country from Japan and I fit the stereotype: pigtailed with crooked teeth, bespectacled, brainy, and ahead in math by at least three grades. This was back in the day when you could excel with numbers even if you didn’t know how to speak, read, or write in English. Recently, I asked one of my Chinese students who had come to this country during high school as an exchange student if she was ahead in math when she entered high school here. She said she wasn’t. I realized then that the new math being taught in American schools is not the same as the math I grew up with. Now math is a whole new monster that has to be mastered through the English language. Math is not about memorizing numbers, tables, or equations. Math is dependent on how well you can read. This new emphasis on literacy puts math in the context of the everyday world. This game builds on that concept.



***

So now that we are avoiding going outside to find math equations, I've been looking at the newspaper where you can make-up thousands of games you can play with your kid. Just the number of lies told in one day can probably be contained in a math workbook for the entirety of a Go Math workbook. 

***
Another idea would be to make a math workbook focusing on social change with word problems using the messed up history of our country. An example problem might look like this:

Number of slaves kidnapped from Africa
and shipped to the US (between 1620-1866)
=472,381
Number of  slaves in the US (according to the 1860 census) 
= 3,953,762
Cotton made up 60% of the US export 
equal to $200 million a year (in the years leading up to the Civil War) 
Which equals $6,178,048,192. in today's amount.

How much back pay (in dollars) would each slave be owed today?
***

And finally...
The following graphs on current Covid cases caught my eye this morning:




Just at first glance the number of new corona cases seem pretty equal between Georgia, Illinois and New York.  However if you look at the numbers on the left, Georgia's cases is counted in 1,000 person increments, while Illinois is counted in 4,000 and New York in 10,000.  I'm not sure if this was an issue of space in the paper, but really they should have put all of the states on one graph to really show the proportion per state. 

So here's a Math exercise for the weekend: Change the numerical increments of new cases to 100 people per state, change the color of each state and overlay them on top of one another.  This could be an art project as well... full on STEAM ahead!



Wednesday, June 24, 2020

MASKS & BEARDS

As we begin the second phase of continuing to spread the virus, I'm surprised more companies have not begun selling masks in full force.  So far, we have the home made ones from March, the white masks given out by cops at Gantry State Park now with sharpie doodles so it doesn't look like we have diapers on our faces,  and I just ordered some Hunter High School masks to support the PTA.  

People are obviously dying due to a virus but yet, some refuse to wear masks in public...like the Asshole squatting in the White House.  Are they so vein that covering half of their faces makes them feel oppressed? I would rather see less of these people's faces.   There are historical, cultural presidents of face covering and most all of them involve hiding women, so it's about time these people of privilege start covering their faces as they sip tropical drinks through their plastic straws.  Western countries have tried and some have succeeded in banning face coverings, citing women's rights as a disguise for xenophobia. 

Hiro read a book titled "The Breadwinner" in fifth grade, and we just watched an animated film based on it.  The story takes place in Afghanistan during the Taliban rule where women had to be covered and could not leave the house without a male relative escort.  The 11 year old protagonist named Pavarna cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy so she can work to save her family.  Ironically, the veil that hides her from the Taliban is the absence of long hair and putting on the mask of confidence of a boy.   Men also had to follow strict facial covering laws, and were required to grow beards of a certain length, and if they did not abide by these rules, could be punished harshly. So if any women wanted to go out, they needed to be escorted by a bearded male.  It's also sad to note another parallel I read about a few weeks back, where an adult black man felt that he needed the accompaniment of his toddler daughter to safely walk around in his neighborhood. 

I wonder if this is where the term "beard" for the person who is used to cover up a person's identity- came from?  As in:  the woman was a beard for her gay friend when they went to his parent's house, to disguise his sexual orientation....makes you wonder about these connections.

So what's your preference these days?????


Different face covering types and reasons for them:
Niqab & Burka- for religious modesty
Cowboys bandanas- for protection from dust and sun
Wedding Veils-  for modesty and obedience, and a way to" hide the prize" for arranged marriages
Litham- in Africa, males wear these to protect from dust and sun.
Sehra- male wedding headdress made from flower or beads.
Isn't this one just beautiful? Apparently it is made of fresh jasmine.  I'd like to see Trump's face covered with this.

Friday, June 19, 2020

Simple Language for Simple Minds

Happy Juneteenth, a holiday I sadly learned of not in a history class but by reading the Food section on the Times.  

A holiday that should be a national holiday.

A holiday that should actually replace July 4th- since all men were NOT free after the hyppocritical declaration of independence was signed.  

I heard the Emancipation Proclamation read this morning and found the document to be a bit of legalize gibberish.  Perhaps if the words were easier to relate to and understand by the common population, Abe Lincoln might have had an easier time relaying his message.  In 1870, about 20% of the entire adult population was illiterate, and 80% of the black population was as well, so even if you had "heard" about Lincoln's proclamation, it was never a document that could be passed around and read by the people it was meant to free, and even if you were literate, there was a slim chance of understanding the contents of all the legal gibberish.

The Racist Asshole Trump  has used the word "bad" 950 times in speeches since the beginning of this year.  This is a word we teach to toddlers and dogs. 

Just doing a quick thesaurus search, there are about 50 synonyms that can replace the word BAD- meaning something that is of poor quality, add another 22 synonyms if you mean BAD as something that is immoral or harmful.  But yet the RAT does not use those words often, if ever at all in his limited vocabulary. 


I looked at some "grown-up" words used in the Emancipation Proclamation to see if RAT had used any of them in his speeches this year.  Here are a handful, never uttered by the manchild with a toddler's vocabulary:

to wit                        rebellion            considerate            henceforward            respectively

countervailing           suppressing         accordance            enjoin                        faithfully

garrison                    Emancipation

As an exercise- in reverse from the earlier game of RAT Edit.  The following text takes the words of Abe Lincoln and makes it understandable to the RAT's fan base:


Jan 1,1863

An announcement by the president.

On September 22, 1862, I said that all slaves in the bad states fighting the good states are free forever.  Everyone needs to know this, and if anyone tries to say otherwise, they are wrong and bad.

My name is Abraham Lincoln and as president I am telling you that all slaves are free, in the states of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, but some areas within those states can go on with business as usual so congress won't try to have me killed.

If you are free, please don't do anything violent unless its in self-defence, and from now on you should get paid for your hard work. 

Now that you are free, you can join the army and use all the army stuff like guns and ships.

I'm telling you this because it's the will of God.  This is what I am telling you today in Washington on January 1, 1963 

Abe Lincoln


here is the actual document

January 1, 1863

A Transcription

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Nature of Compromise and the Specificity of Language.

There's a children's word game that we used to play called "Would You Rather", and every parenting book has a version of it. It is meant  to give your child the power to make their own decisions and limits the choices when creating a way to compromise.

Would you rather...
  • have pizza or pasta for dinner?
  • have the power of flight or the power of invisibility?
  • go to college or go to work after high school?
  • be the only black CEO of an all white company, or be a white manager of a minority owned company?
  • die for a good cause or live as a Nazi?
  • defund the police or increase police spending?
You pose a dilemma in the form of a question and the other person must chose one choice over the other.  But the "Would You Rather" form of choosing A over B is never fair because the person making up the options always has the upper hand... as in the Slave Trade Compromise or the Three-Fifths Compromise from 1787.  Do you think Slaves had a say in any of the proceedings of these compromises. I don't think so.

A variation of "Would You Rather",  comes up often in our house when trying to compromise with one another, when one person wants the other person to do something and makes up a list of things to chose from.  So instead of would you rather...it now plays out as:
 If you do__________ I will do ___________.
As In:
If you take a shower tonight, I will let you sleep in for an extra 15 minutes tomorrow.
or
If we can get a dog, I will do aerobic exercise every day.

It's a form of bartering, which I feel will make a comeback as society  enters into an economic depression, and without a visionary leader who can create something like the New Deal, it will be necessary to have this skill.

Hiro and I have taken these skills to a new level of haggling and bartering (with crazy side deals) to the extent that our nephew Phillip refuses to play Monopoly with us. But isn't Monopoly about the art and skill of persuasion?

If you give me Boardwalk, I'll give you my Pass Go $$ for the next two turns, and you never have to pay rent on all my Green properties AND I'll clean my room tomorrow.
or
I'll give you all my orange properties if you practice violin 2 times a day this month and take a shower every night.

There is a lovely folktale called "The Girl Who Would Be King" where as usual, a childless king is looking for an heir and poses a challenge to any who is brave enough.  He sends three people, (a scholar, a thief, and a young girl) off on a quest to buy something to fill his grand hall with less than a penny.  Of course the girl succeeds, not only once, but she fills the room three times.  The one thing that stuck with me about that story was the creativity of the girl as well as her mama telling her "when you trade and barter, make sure that both parties are pleased in the end to ensure that the trade is good."

Last night's bartering tactics looked like this:
What I do:  Get HBO

What Hiro will do:  
  • won't watch Marvel movies until August
  • Stop bugging me about getting HBO
  • Stop bugging  me about getting a dog until August
  • stop bugging me about getting a PayPal account
  • go on a long bike ride tomorrow
  • will give me 5 points (long story on the point system)
  • infinite glitter pounds.
So I signed up for an HBO one week free trial last night so Hiro could watch some mind-numbing X-men movie.  When I asked him to go on a long bike ride with me, he casually told me that all of those demands were for getting HBO monthly, not just a one week trial, but being the generous person that he is, he will abide by all the rules except the biking one.  Specificity of language is so important when haggling with an eleven year old, as they tend to take EVERYTHING literally. I have to keep reminding myself to proofread his language. In the end, was I happy?  Not really, because I didn't catch the loophole...and I'm just exhausted from these back-and-forth deals.   His tactic now is to wear me down until I say yes.  

The marches and riots are the wearing down of the establishment, until people get what they want.  But the big problem is how the word DEFUNDING is being defined. 

Does it mean UN fund? Not to fund? Stop funding?  or Reduce funding?  Anyone using this word needs to first define it clearly: 
We all know what the verb to FUND means:
To FINANCE
BANKROLL
ENDOW
PROVIDE CAPITAL 
PAY FOR...

but what it gets really murky when you add DE in front of those words.   Biden needs to reverse his stance, get his ass in gear and define what he means when he says he will not support defunding the police. 

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Check Your Own Biases

Last week, a friend posted a powerful story on Facebook about an incident that happened to her on the train.  She described the scene and told the story of someone who had been wronged, outraged, spurting profanity and racial slurs, being ignored, and how bravely she came to the person's aid.  She  cleverly told this story without any mention of the persons race and at the end of the story, asked what the person looked like in our mind's eye.  She also asked us to fill in the blanks for the racial slurs he had spurted.  Maybe because of the current BLM climate, I assumed the person was black, which was wrong.  In fact the scene she described and the picture in my mind was very different.  We often incorrectly label things in our minds to try to make sense of things...

And we make assumptions. This is what jumping to conclusions will do.  When people make decisions with their emotions and fears.  My mother and I immigrated from Japan and I grew up in St. Louis.  I learned about this country from a southern states perspective.  I learned English while using racist vocabulary against black people without knowing I was doing it. It was learned.  I knew that when people called me "chink" or told jokes such as "how do you name a Chinese baby?  You drop a metal bowl down the stairs", it was hurtful and wrong, but in my eight year old mind, it was more hurtful because I was being called Chinese.  And in the learned racist mind of a Japanese child, the Chinese are inferior to the Japanese. The levels of racism are very complex.  

Racism is learned and ingrained. It happens when one group of people think they are better than another.  My mother moved us out of University City so that I could go to a "better "school.  Sure, Ladue looked good on paper, but in my mind, the diversity of the U-City school system was much better.  We lived in a lower economic neighborhood than most of the other Ladue High School students, but there were always worse.  The worse was a neighborhood within walking distance called Indian Meadows- renamed as "Indian Ghettos" by local kids probably so we could feel superior. Indian Ghettos was primarily a black neighborhood, and I never though twice when referring to it by that name.  There are so many things we've said and say still that we are clueless or and have nefarious origins.  If you are curious there is actually a website" http://www.rsdb.org/ though some of them don't make sense to me.  For example why would it be bad for a white person to be called Abe Lincoln? 

I took an American History summer school class between my Junior and Senior year, and was fascinated and sickened by the Civil war.  What stood out for me at the time was how even poor white people in the North actually supported slavery, because if there were slaves, they would never be the lowest man on the racist totem pole. White trash trumps having dark skin apparently, which seems to be a thought most Racist Asshole supporters have.   Privilege comes in so many forms and no matter how small that privilege is, one tends to hold onto it at all costs. It's like the ridiculous separations that airlines make with cloth stanchions to make one group feel more superior than another.  You are fooling yourself if you feel superior because you get to walk down the left side of the barrier 30 seconds before everyone else.

Over the weekend on NPR's Weekend Edition, there was an interesting discussion on race, racism and allyship, with commentators Jay Caspian Kang and William Garcia-Medina.  Where do Asians and Hispanic American's fit in the BLM movement?  

People tend to say,  "I cannot be a racist because...
I have dark skin
I have been discriminated against
my wife is black
I have black friends

etc...but is that enough to be an ally?

Latinos And Asians Grapple With Racism, Allyship Amid Ongoing Protests



Friday, June 12, 2020

Rethinking the Hero Complex

Americans are totally obsessed with Heroes; We make hundreds of superhero films, praise the "heroic" efforts of the military, put up monuments for fallen war "heroes".  The world is split between good and evil, thus when it comes to policing, we need "New York's Bravest" to keep us in check.  The nicknames for the Police and Fire Departments originated around the Civil War, derived from phrases already in use to praise the valor of soldiers.  

So it's no wonder that the police have access to millions of dollars of surplus combat equipment because we have been equating the police with solders.  When army troops are pulled from actual war torn countries, the same equipment used to fight Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram are being used against 75 year old peace activists in Buffalo NY.  This is why we need to demilitarize the police. They are not patrolling a war zone as they are trained to believe. 

The police motto in most states is something akin to "Protect and Serve" and with this another line should be added- "do no harm". 

Taking our obsession with superheroes, we need to revamp the police and take all that money saved by making cops wear superhero outfits.  They need to look more like protectors and less like military.

So let's look at some fictional figures that protect: 

Spiderman 
Dr. Strange
Iron Man
Jessica Jones
Captain America
Ninja Turtles
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Black Panther
Robin Hood
Captain Underpants.
to name a few....



It only makes sense to take off the blue military uniforms and make them dress in tights and onsies with a flowing cape.  They could get Marvel to sponsor them instead of taking the money from tax payers.

Thursday, June 11, 2020

It's all in the Education


Zootopia
I just read something completely ludicrous, and insanely frightening at the same time.  That police squads in Minnesota watch Disney's Zootopia as part of their anti-bias training. No f*cking wonder we are where we are.  So for those of you without children who might not know this, Zootopia is an animated movie that takes place in an animal metropolis.  Apparently the cops in training were supposed to learn about bias from these furry creatures, and that stereotyping is bad. Examples such as, just because you are a fox doesn't mean you are shifty and sly- though the con artist in Zootopia just happens to be a fox.  This film should be used for an exercise in a 2nd grade classroom to discuss ethics to seven year olds- not to dudes who carry guns. 

Let's look at some more children's shows that have been criticized lately.  "Paw Patrol" uses a Dalmatian for a firefighter, bulldog for a construction worker, and a German shepherd as the cop, which has been criticized for making cops fluffy and cute.  This is in the same line of thinking as all cats are female and all dogs are male in cartoon land.  This is that same short sighted thinking that let teachers show Disney's Pocahontas in my child's 5th grade classroom during a lesson on Native Americans.  
Is it racism?  
Is it ignorance? 
Is it laziness?  
Lack of creativity?  
Lack of education?  

When there is a problem, we should always look to the top tier...and of course you know where the idiocy comes from. 

Here's a comparison image  that shows the correlation between the amount of training and the number of murders committed by police taken from 2018 (validated by Snopes)

So defund the police and put that money into education please!









The Game:
Choose any children's cartoon or animated series and find the stereo types.  Even if you think it may not be a stereotype, do a bit of research.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Is Cancelling Cops enough?

A lot of statues most of them tied to the Confederacy, have been relocated to museums, cemeteries or watery graves in the past few weeks; some removed by the city, and others set on fire, defaced, lynched, destroyed or thrown into a river by angry mobs.  I say good riddance- though the sculptor in me feels this is a waste of good bronze.


This is a short incomplete list of statues no longer standing :
  • Confederate monument- Birmingham Alabama
  • Robert E. Lee- Montgomery Alabama
  • Edward Carnack- Nashville Tennessee
  • Confederate Solder Appomattox- Alexandria Virginia
  • Christopher Columbus- Richmond Virginia
  • Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes- Mobile Alabama
  • Frank Rizzo, racist Mayor and police commissioner-Philadelphia, PA
  • Edward Colston (17th Centruy Slave Trader)- Bristol England
  • John Breckenridge Castleman (Confederate)- Louisville Kentucky
  • Plaque commemorating confederate Solders- Jacksonville Florida
  •  King Leopold II, whose forces seized Congo in the late 19th C-Antwerp Belgium
  • Robert Milligan, an 18 century slave owner- London, England
The 33 season TV reality show "Cops" was also cancelled yesterday, due to its brutal glorification of the police. It was supposed to be unbiased, but in reality the show had "built a profit model around distorted and dehumanizing portrayals of black Americans and the criminal justice system.”  But I wonder is just cancelling the show enough?  Why not keep the show on air, but have it produced by Black Lives Matter, to show the actual reality of what goes on on the streets, where all police are being required to wear body cams and depict that side of "cops". It's all in how you tell the story.

We started watching Gone With the Wind a few weeks ago in hour long sections (total 4 hours!) and just finished it last night, my attempt to explain America's skewed history to my kid; and  how people in the South supported slavery by fooling themselves.  In the film, I point out how Scarlett calls Mammie, Pork and Prissy servants, when in fact they were slaves.  Big Sam is listed as a field foreman in the credits, when we all know he was no such thing, but a slave.  In the 1088 page book by Margaret Mitchell, the word slave only appears 52 times, all of which is used in the context of property.   When HBO rereleases the film, they said it "will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions." Edit and commentate all you want, it still won't change an asshat like Trump's understanding of history, unless they are forced to watch 12 Years a Slave or Roots along with it.  What's another few more hours tacked onto your viewing time?

I also would like to make note of the fact that slavery was an abomination that was going on long before the Civil War, way before any Confederate solder hoisted the Southern cross of old Dixie up the flag pole.  In her young adult books: Seeds of America trilogy, Laurie Halse Anderson, describes the disgusting historical irony of the young American colonists' fight for freedom while at the same time they traded, owned, and abused African slaves. 

How about tilting the scales in the other direction by melting down all the bronze of the Confederacy memorials and figurines to recycle the metal and recast monuments in honor of prominent slaves. If you must take down every statue and plaque that has a whiff of injustice against a Black person, there's a lot of work to be done.    Oh, but guess what, people need jobs right now, so there you go.


I can't think of a Game for today, but I'm sure there is an editing/rewriting of history exercise in here somewhere.

Monday, June 8, 2020

Radical ideas for radical times.

Manhattan Bridge bike path on this morning's ride.
The Minneapolis city council have pledged to dismantle the police department.  This is the most radical form of defunding the police I heard this morning.  Just take it apart and get rid of it.  What would this look like?  This prompt would be a great writing assignment in every Social Studies and English Language Arts classroom across America.

At first, the naysayers would say that a city without police will erupt in chaos.  Where and how the money gets dispersed is really the crux of the solution to this complex problem.
In yesterday's times, there was an illustrated piece by  Julia Rothman & Shaina Feinberg, in the Business section that breaks down what the total cost of all the gear worn by three men policing the protests.  If it were not for the color blue of the uniforms, these meant could easily have been lifted out of the desserts of Afghanistan.

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The total spent, at first glance is around $222, 000 for three guys.  This is gear necessary to keep them safe against a bunch of civilians equipped with cardboard signs, fabric banners, water bottles and iPhones.  The police are fighting a war.  A war that was fabricated in the minds of the politicians, to prolong systemic racism.

So where could this money be spent? Schools, Mental health, communities, housing, homelessness. ... The list is endless.  Time and again, there is call for neighborhood policing.  There needs to be education and conversation.  I keep thinking about  white Amy Cooper, who called the cops on black Christian Cooper, who asked her to put her dog on a leash.  There should have been civil dialogue which could have diverted involvement of the police.

My radical idea of the day would be to dismantle the police all over the country as Minneapolis is hopping to do.  Take the money and disperse it to all the places that need it.  I would follow the structure  of the Israeli army and make it mandatory for every male and female citizen of the US to serve in some type of social community service organization, some of which may resemble the police.  This service would last at a minimum for two years.  This would be seen as their "gap year(s)" in between high school and college.  We as parents would still support them, and claim them as dependents- hell, we can have children under our health insurance until they are twenty-six years old anyway.

I teach  the 18-20 year old contingent, and I could easily say that 50% of my students are not ready for college.  They lack common sense, discipline and time management skills to navigate living alone far from home.  But, I have had a handful of students that were 20-22 years old as freshmen who had served the requisite military time in Israel or South Korea, before coming to Art & Design schools.  These students were always the best students in the class.  They were thoughtful, disciplined, great problem solvers, great communicators, and unlike our prejudice that people in the military are conservative gun nuts, because they came from a place where it was mandatory to be in the army, this was not the case.

The Game (more like a social studies/ELA assignment):
Age range: any
Writing Exercise for the day:
What would your community look like if there was no police?
What could go wrong?  How would you fix the things that could go wrong?

Math Research:
how much does it cost to have the police in your community.
salaries, gear, equipment, insurance to cover lawsuits, training, etc...


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