A couple of liberal political things:
May. 7th, 2008 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniHeard this on the radio, yesterday, and here's a brief post about it in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
quakers: Not again... (Another Quaker teacher has been fired because of the loyalty oath)
First, it goes against one of tenets of the Society of Friends to sign or make oaths, of any kind (the devout among us "affirm", rather than "swear;" I think because the latter implies some sort of outside magical agency to the piece of paper you're signing, rather than promising to act through listening to the Light within you).
And second, they wouldn't let her change the wording to "affirm" that she would defend the California State constitution "nonviolently," saying that one word goes against the integrity of the oath... But they also argue that making her sign the oath is not an infringement on her own religious rights to be a Conscientious Objector... Um... Is it just me, or does the logic of their argument break down somewhere between point A and point B?
Oh, and I kind of hate to say this, because I wish it weren't true, but:
Of course race (translation: blackness) is an issue for the older, less educated, working-class people who keep voting for Hillary.
I remember becoming politically aware in the 70s -- starting when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I started to actually hear, and begin to understand, what was being said and shown on the dinnertime news (before that, it was all Charlie Brown-like "Wah-wahwah-waaah."). And I remember the tensions and rallies being shown back then, as white, working-class people protested against school bussing programs, to bring black kids into predominantly white schools, and vice-versa. I remember stories, around that same time, of realtors "red-lining" districts, and not selling to black families. And how really radical the sitcoms "The Jeffersons" and "Diff'rent Strokes" were for simply showing black and white people living side-by-side.
The people who are in their sixties, now, and are voting for Clinton, are the same people who were protesting integrating their kids through busing, and who were afraid that black people were stealing their jobs at the factory, thirty years ago. Tensions were high, back then, and feelings ran deep. Today's 60+ voters didn't just drop out of the sky this year, to be an "important demographic" in this year's election. They've been here all along. Tensions may have eased, a bit. But the deep feelings are still there. The fact that Obama is "having trouble overcoming that hump" is not a weakness on his part, per se, it's just that "hump" has close to a 85% grade...
And why would college education make a difference? Here's my theory: People who stop their education at high school and go straight to work have, I believe, just as much natural wit and intelligence as a Doctoral candidate. But going to college gets you out of your home town, and you meet others from home towns even farther away. College doesn't make you smarter, or more moral, but it does give you a broader range of experiences, and the self-knowledge that you can handle working with someone who is different. So the idea of "Change" is not so scary.
Anyway, that's my two bits...
quakers: Not again... (Another Quaker teacher has been fired because of the loyalty oath) First, it goes against one of tenets of the Society of Friends to sign or make oaths, of any kind (the devout among us "affirm", rather than "swear;" I think because the latter implies some sort of outside magical agency to the piece of paper you're signing, rather than promising to act through listening to the Light within you).
And second, they wouldn't let her change the wording to "affirm" that she would defend the California State constitution "nonviolently," saying that one word goes against the integrity of the oath... But they also argue that making her sign the oath is not an infringement on her own religious rights to be a Conscientious Objector... Um... Is it just me, or does the logic of their argument break down somewhere between point A and point B?
Oh, and I kind of hate to say this, because I wish it weren't true, but:
Of course race (translation: blackness) is an issue for the older, less educated, working-class people who keep voting for Hillary.
I remember becoming politically aware in the 70s -- starting when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I started to actually hear, and begin to understand, what was being said and shown on the dinnertime news (before that, it was all Charlie Brown-like "Wah-wahwah-waaah."). And I remember the tensions and rallies being shown back then, as white, working-class people protested against school bussing programs, to bring black kids into predominantly white schools, and vice-versa. I remember stories, around that same time, of realtors "red-lining" districts, and not selling to black families. And how really radical the sitcoms "The Jeffersons" and "Diff'rent Strokes" were for simply showing black and white people living side-by-side.
The people who are in their sixties, now, and are voting for Clinton, are the same people who were protesting integrating their kids through busing, and who were afraid that black people were stealing their jobs at the factory, thirty years ago. Tensions were high, back then, and feelings ran deep. Today's 60+ voters didn't just drop out of the sky this year, to be an "important demographic" in this year's election. They've been here all along. Tensions may have eased, a bit. But the deep feelings are still there. The fact that Obama is "having trouble overcoming that hump" is not a weakness on his part, per se, it's just that "hump" has close to a 85% grade...
And why would college education make a difference? Here's my theory: People who stop their education at high school and go straight to work have, I believe, just as much natural wit and intelligence as a Doctoral candidate. But going to college gets you out of your home town, and you meet others from home towns even farther away. College doesn't make you smarter, or more moral, but it does give you a broader range of experiences, and the self-knowledge that you can handle working with someone who is different. So the idea of "Change" is not so scary.
Anyway, that's my two bits...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 11:39 pm (UTC)Anyway, I think what really got the hackles raised in this particular case was the teacher's desire to insert the word "nonviolently" into the oath...
Do they really expect their public school teachers to pick up arms and join a war?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 11:49 pm (UTC)Bearing in mind the number of school shootings in the US, I could, hypothetically, understand a requirement for a teacher to defend their children, i.e. human lives, -nonviolence but, coming from a country without a written constitution, the legal necessity of a teacher swearing to defend a piece of paper +potentialviolence is mindboggling. Possibly California has confused education with military service. o_O
::ironic icon::
no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 11:53 pm (UTC)::sincere icon::