Dead Racists Society

If anyone is still reading this but not my new blog, wouldja at least look at this post?

I've moved my blog from LiveJournal over to Blogger. All my posts have been transported over. Enjoy, or suffer my wrath.

The Iowa Independent has a small summary of the recent ruling (which, by the way, the judge stayed, though not before over twenty same-sex couples got married):

The defense presented five interests which they argued were "legitimate governmental interests" served by the current statute. Hanson's decision rejected the fifth interest presented, which was "promoting the concept of fundamental marriage or the integrity of traditional marriage."

Citing Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 decision handed down by the US Supreme Court (based on "its own case law," not Iowa's), Hanson noted that "neither history nor tradition could save a law prohibiting miscegenation from constitutional attack." Preserving tradition for tradition's sake, therefore, is not a legitimate governmental interest.

Using US Supreme Court case law is justified, Hanson explained, "Because the due process and equal protection clauses of the Iowa Constitution are at least coextensive with those found in the United States Constitution."

Therefore, the fifth of the interests presented by the defense -- the protection of traditional marriage -- is not "legitimate." Hanson deemed the first three interests presented, roughly dealing with "responsible procreation," and the fourth interest presented, roughly "the conservation of state and private resources," to be legitimate.

For those interests, Hanson proceeded to the second task before the court: to determine whether the current statute "bears a rational relationship to accomplishment" of the said interests.

Plaintiffs offered admissible evidence intended to prove that denying same-sex couples the right to civil marriage does not bear a rational relationship to accomplishing responsible reproduction. According to Hanson, the defendant did not offer admissible counter-evidence and agreed with many of the plaintiffs' claims.

Citing Iowa precedent, Hanson decided that "If responsible procreation is the goal, then the institution of marriage should be made available to all couples who can responsible procreate, regardless of whether the couple is traditionally recognized one. The traditional make-up of the family has changed."

Further, "by excluding all same-sex couples from marriage, the statute actually defeats the purpose of responsible procreation by excluding qualified individuals from marriage," Hanson wrote. "In addition, their exclusion defeats the state's admitted interest in the welfare of all of its children, regardless of whether they are parented by different-sex couples, same-sex couples or any other family unit."

Well put.

Well, Edna, for a school with no Asian kids, I think we've achieved a grade-A science fair!

Principal Skinner, The Simpsons, "Duffless", episode 4x16

One of the interesting things when reading my dead racists is how stereotypes have changed over time. Today, Asians are stereotyped as the "model minority": studious, industrious, intelligent, successful (see the above quote from 1993). In 2006, Bryant Yang mentioned this in "Seeing Loving in Gay Marriages" (Amerasia, 32:1, pp. 39-40):

Asian Americans have long struggled with the model minority myth since the 1960s. It originated when the New York Times Magazine published a story called "Success Story: Japanese American Style." A few months later U.S. News and World Report published an article called "Success Story of One Minority Group in the United States" on Chinese Americans. The myth portrays Asian Americans as hardworking, intelligent and successful. Many who believe in the myth cites [sic] how Asian Americans have the highest household income of any racial group in the United States.

Yet, as I briefly mentioned last week, a hundred years ago or more Asians were often seen as... impaired, intellectually. They were smarter than Negroes, people would admit, but still below whites. From The Six Species of Men, by John Van Evrie, as reprinted in John David Smith, ed., Anti-Black Thought, 1863-1925 vol. 1, pages 132-33:

This race [Mongolian] is the one nearest to the Caucasian, and has shown a limited intellectual development, but its powers and attainments have been much exaggerated. The Chinese pretend to trace their history back to a period long anterior to our own, but this claim is itself sufficient proof of its own worthlessness. No one will suppose that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or greater breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not, what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was capable of doing that which the aggregate Caucasian mind could not do! The truth is, what is supposed to be Chinese history is a mere collection of fables and impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they can trace their annals back even five hundred years with any degree of certainty.

...

One point seems to be settled in relation to the Mongol race. It cannot advance beyond a given point. It has been stationary for years and years. It can never become an element of modern civilization, and the trade carried on with China is not likely to vary to any considerable extent from what it is now. Its intellectual and moral grasp is limited, and in no exalted sense can the race reach the ideas or virtues of Caucasian civilization.

As you can see, part of this was simply white chauvinism and racism--whites must be better than any other race, and any claim otherwise is absurd prima facie. Similarly, several people decided that any Asian civilization cannot be what it looks like, because they knew that only white people create civilizations. Hence, Charles Carroll wrote in The Tempter of Eve:

When the whites are all destroyed, their country, with its national name, wealth, religion, their knowledge of the arts and sciences, is inherited by their mixed-blooded descendants; when the white blood largely predominates in them, they may, under favorable circumstances, retain more or less of their inherited civilization for an indefinite period, but they add nothing to it; and when they lose an art, or any part of their inherited knowledge, they never regain it; such was the case with the Mexicans, Peruvians, Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos, Greeks, Turks, Egyptians, etc.

Emphasis mine. Whites created the civilization in China and Japan, but now it's deteriorated and they're just clinging on to what was handed down to them--holding on, but never adding on. In fact, in Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, the author approvingly quotes "The Aryan Race: its Origins and Achievements" to say:

The white race has great physical vigor, capacity and endurance. It has an intensity of will and desire which is controlled by intellectuality. Great things are undertaken, readily but not blindly. It manifests a strong utilitarianism, united with a powerful imagination which elevates, enobles and idealizes its practical ideas. The negro can only imitate, the Chinese only utilize, the work of the white; but the latter is abundantly able to produce new works. He has a keen sense of order as the yellow man, not form love of repose, however, but from the desire to protect and preserve his acquisitions. He has a love of liberty far more intense than exists in the black or yellow races, and clings to life more earnestly. His high sense of honor is a faculty unknown to other races, and springs from an exalted sentiment of which they show no indications. His sensations are less intense than in either black or yellow, but his mentality is far more developed and energetic.

Emphasis mine. So Asians cannot invent anything new, though they are clever enough to use white ideas.

This isn't to say that everyone believed that Asians were buffoons. Some were a bit more fair, respecting their cultural achievements. In fact, the Reverend Theodore Parker (cited in Josiah Nott's The Negro Race: Its Ethnology and History) listed almost every historical achievement as the accomplishment of Caucasians, and his sole exception (that he bothered mentioning, at any rate), was Confucius:

The Caucasian differs from all other races; he is humane, he is civilized, and progresses. He conquers with his head as well as his hand. It is intellect, after all, that conquers--not the strength of a man's arm. The Caucasian has been often master of other races--never their slave. He has carried his religion to other races, but never taken theirs. In history all religions are of Caucasian origin. All the great limited forms of mon[pg 15]archies are Caucasian. Republics are Caucasian. All the great sciences are of Caucasian origin; all inventions are Caucasian; literature and romance come of the same stock; all of the great poets are of Caucasian origin; Moses, Luther, Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, Budha, Pythagoras, were Caucasian. No other race can bring up to the memory such celebrated names as the Caucasian race. The Chinese philosopher, Confucius, is an exception to the rule.

And then again, there was that chauvinism I spoke of above, which forced John Van Evrie to conclude that, since Confucius was a great man, he must have been white:

There is little doubt that Confucius was a white man; indeed it is known that the leaders of those Mongol hordes which swept over Europe, shortly after the Christian era, were of Caucasian blood.

So much for that. Another stereotype we have today is that of the sexless, emasculated Asian male. Helen Zia wrote in "Where the Queer Zone Meets the Asian Zone", (Amerasia 32:1, p. 4):

Of all the multiple identities that humans possess, the combination of queer and Asian seems especially perplexing to many people. On the one hand, there are the gendered, racial archetypes: ...the demasculinized, buffoonish Long Duk Dong, the Asian man who never gets the girl--or guy.

But before that, Asian men were portrayed as licentious sexual predators, out to ravish all de white wimmin. In February/March 1905, the San Francisco Chronicle blazoned the headline "JAPANESE A MENACE TO AMERICAN WOMEN". And Megumi Osumi wrote in his article "Asians and California's Anti-Miscegenation Laws" of the Chinese:

Another popular attitude which contributed to the passage of the amendment [which outlawed Chinese-white marriages in California] was the prevailing belief that Chinese were sexually promiscuous and perverse. Miller believes that this racist stereotype derives ultimately from early nineteenth century anti-Chinese propaganda from Protestant missionaries. They wanted to exploit China as an example of the evils of paganism and the benefits of Christianity. Thus, their writings especially impressed on the minds of the American public this negative misconception of the Chinese as lascivious and immoral. Missionary Samuel Wells Williams declared that the Chinese were preoccupied with lechery and were "vile and polluted in a shocking degree."

This observation and many other missionary castigations of alleged Chinese licentiousness and perversion prepared the way for later popular acceptance of this negative stereotype. As early as 1856, the New York Tribune accused the Chinese as "lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order." In 1876, various papers stated that the Chinese men attended Sunday school in order to debauch their white, female teachers. In the same year, a writer in Scribner's Monthly warned that "no matter how good a Chinaman may be, ladies never leave their children with them, especially little girls." As we will see later, becoming an article of faith for most Americans, this stereotype was broadened to include other Asian groups.

And indeed, later he writes:

The public's fear of miscegenation expressed itself in two forms. One was Californians' belief in the familiar stereotype, first applied to the Chinese and then the Japanese, of an immoral, sexually aggressive Asiatic. This stereotype was especially exploited in anti-Japanese propaganda seeking school segregation. Dennis Kearney warned that the Japanese students knew "no morals but vice, who sit beside our sons and daughters in our public schools that they may help to debauch, demoralize and teach them the vices which are the customs of the country whence they come." Conservative Republican leader, Governor Johnson, stated before the California Assembly that he was appalled at the sight of white girls "sitting side by side in the schoolroom with matured Japs, with base minds, their lascivious thoughts...." The second manifestation of this fear was hostility against intermarriages between whites and Japanese. The anti-Japanese advocates exploited this sentiment with inflammatory propaganda. The Grizzly Bear, the official paper of the Native Sons, warned that Japanese were "casting furtive glances at our young women. They would like to marry them."

And later yet, he writes of the Filipinos (which he spells "Pilipino"):

Again the racist stereotype of the lascivious, aggressive Asiatic who chased lustfully after white women reared its ugly head, while anti-Pilipino spokesmen and their groups exploited it publicly. In the 1930 Congressional hearings on immigration, Secretary McClatchy testified that "you can realize, with the declared preference of the Pilipino for white women and the willingness on the part of some white females to yield to that preference, the situation which arises." Anti-Pilipino spokesman Judge D. H. Rohrock of North Monterey County engaged in the most reprehensible kind of racist stereotyping when he described the Pilipinos as "little brown men attired like 'Solomon in all his glory' strutting like peacocks and endeavoring to attract the eyes of young American and Mexican girls."

And Leti Volpp writes in "American Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California":

The President of the University of California testified before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in 1930 that Filipino problems were "almost entirely based upon sexual passion." While Chinese and Japanese were also considered sexually depraved — and, perhaps, more sexually perverse — Filipinos appeared to be specifically characterized as having an enormous sexual appetite, as more savage, as more primitive, as "one jump from the jungle." Their sexual desires were thought to focus on white women.

Funny how things change.

Keen:

An ape in central Iowa is showing researchers just how smart primates can be.

Panbanisha, a bonobo at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, has given names to two trumpeter swans nesting on the center's 230-acre campus in Des Moines — an achievement researchers say shows how important collaboration is to learning.

"As we bring something into the bonobos' environment that's very different, we need to collaborate with them rather than impose changes on them," said Dr. Karyl Swartz, a scientist involved in the study of memory, problem solving and self-recognition in apes. "It has to do with our philosophy that we collaborate in every way possible — from research to everyday activities."

...

Motivating the bonobo to name the swans was complex, said researcher Liz Rubert-Pugh. Over the last few months, researchers made references to the swans while communicating with the bonobo — showing the ape they were interested in giving them names. They displayed pictures of the swans, played videos of them and took Panbanisha on a walk to find them.

Iowa's ban on gay marriage has been struck down:

Gay rights advocates won a major victory Thursday when a Polk County District Judge ruled the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Iowa Constitution.

The ruling, which will almost certainly be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, says the law must be rewritten in a gender neutral manner to allow same-sex couples to enter into civil marriage.

"This court has yet to hear any convincing argument as to how excluding same-sex couples from getting married promotes responsible reproduction in general or by different-sex couples in particular. So far as this court can tell (the law) operates only to harm same-sex couples and their children," said the ruling from Judge Robert Hanson.

...

In his ruling, Hanson rejected the county's arguments about the possible harm of same-sex marriage.

"The defendant has produced no evidence indicating that precluding men from marrying other men and women from marrying other women will promote procreation, will encourage child rearing by mothers and fathers, will promote stability for opposite sex marriages, will conserve resources, or will promote heterosexual marriage," Hanson said.

He said he those kinds of arguments are "specious at best."

Damn straight.

The people in Iowa who argue that same-sex marriage will ruin marriage but apparently can't provide any evidence of this are now clamoring for an amendment to their constitution to get around this ruling. But that apparently isn't going to happen any time soon:

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a Council Bluffs Democrat, issued a statement saying "the prudent approach" is to wait until the case works its way through the court system.

Pam of course already has a reaction to the ruling, from James Dobson. In addition to the standard "activist judge" claptrap, he says this:

"By striking down Iowa's DOMA, Judge Robert Hanson has shown he believes the desires of adults should trump what's best for children. His ruling represents social engineering at its worst."

Yes, of course. Gay marriage hurts children. Why then couldn't they provide any evidence of this in a court of law? Maybe because it's a fantasy concocted by right-wing homophobes like Dobson?

Anywho. Lambda Legal has a PDF of the decision.

The moment word hit my inbox about dangerous chemicals being found in one of the U.N. offices, I knew that someone would claim this was "proof" that Iraq had WMD. And I figured there would be more to it, because, if you had chemical weapons, why would you suddenly leave them on the desks of U.N. inspectors?

And... surprise, surprise.

I had forgotten about this. Well, I'd never actually seen this video clip, but I recall Alan Keyes claiming that allowing gays to marry and have children would lead to incest because said children wouldn't know who their siblings are. Which is a perfect example of the above mock-definition.

Anyways, hearing about this "argument" again just put me in mind of this:

It becomes necessary, at this point, to protect your daughter from your own history in the field of race relations. She must never learn that you have been a firm believer in segregation in the streets and integration between the sheets, because your arguments in favor of racial purity might become suspect. The late William E. B. Du Bois once expressed it thus:

The rape which you gentlemen have inflicted on helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two million mulattoes, and written in ineffable blood.

It would be interesting to know what your daughter would think if she realized that a few of the black boys toward whom she now throws flirtatious glances are actually her blood brothers. Here is where I join you in fearing interracial marriage. Such a marriage might be incestuous. Wouldn't you agree?

This was written mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think, as an open letter to all white people who fear that their daughters might marry a Negro, providing them with "tips" on how to avoid such a catastrophe. Published in Clotye Larsson, ed., Marriage Across the Color Line, p. 37.

President Bush apparently plans to ask for $50 billion to fund the continuing surge in Iraq.

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing [David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker] argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.

But as we all know, David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker won't be arguing any such thing--the "Petraeus" report is being written by the White House itself (so it should come as no surprise that they already know what will be in it).

So the White House writes its own report saying that things are going great but they need more money, and then ask for money based on the matter of this report.

For a horror movie:

They heard we were hilarious.

They found we were delicious.

And for some kind of team-up between a dentist and a hardcore cop:

One scrapes the scum off of teeth.

The other knocks the teeth out of scum.

Wow. Gays are so dangerous that you can't even allow a straight person who recognizes that they're people to be allowed into your country:

Leading members of Malawi's Parliament are demanding Britain recall its new ambassador, before he even sets foot in the African nation.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced last week he was appointing Jack McConnell to be the UK's high commissioner to Malawi.

But members of all of Malawi's political parties say McConnell is unsuitable because he has been an ardent supporter of LGBT civil rights - something that Malawi opposes.

...

"To have a man who supports gay rights to come to Malawi is dangerous for us," Friday Jumbe, presidential candidate for the main opposition party - the United Democratic Front - told the Scotsman newspaper.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Africa, Ethics Minister James Buturo of Uganda tells gays that they need to "change to a normal way of life" or get out of his country:

My view is that of the majority of Ugandans. All people who have participated in this debate are denouncing the act. What else do these gays want? The message has been clear that their acts are not accepted in our society. They are wasting their time to claim that they are advocating for their rights. We shall not allow them to mislead our young generation. Shame on them. Our laws are clear, homosexuality is illegal.

If God is against homosexuality, who are we to legislate for it. We would be bringing a curse on Uganda, God forbid. They have no place in our country. They should change to a normal way of life. They should know that they are not free to do whatever they want. Homosexuality is not part of our values. As government we shall do everything possible to help them change and those who don't want to change would be arrested. We shall not act under pressure. It's nonsense to say that their acts are natural.

...

There are no rights for gays and lesbians in this country. Let them go anywhere else if they don't want to change to normal life. They have rights as Ugandans and human beings but not the right to be gay or lesbian. We pray that they accept Jesus so that they can discover that they are in the wrong. Either they change or the law catches up with them. If gays are demanding for rights, then rapists, defilers and those who sleep with animals should do the same.

Because, y'know, there are no gay Christians. And consensual same-sex relationships are completely equal with rape, defilement, and bestiality. Not to mention necrophilia.

David Neiwert, commenting on Sean Hannity's willingness to not only defend Ted Nugent's calls for murdering Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama but to also attack what he sees as instances of hate speech or violent rhetoric by liberals, notes:

Of course, I've pointed out previously that this sort of behavior is part of Republicans' projection strategy: If they accuse liberals loudly enough of a certain kind of behavior, it becomes a permission for them to do so themselves -- though of course, liberals are at worst marginally guilty of this behavior, and the conservative immanation of it is exponentially more egregious.

I think that's part of it, but there's more. In the vein of "the best defense is a good offense", you accuse your opponents of doing what you are actually doing, and you get in there first. That way, if your opponents try to point out reality--"No, you're the ones doing that!"--it makes them seem weak, unimaginative, and childish. It brings to mind the taunt "I know you are, but what am I?" from grade school. So it's an attack on your opponents, which puts them on the defensive, while at the same time removing that same attack from their arsenal to use against you. And then we get back to what Mr. Neiwert says: even if they point out that you're the one actually doing it, it has become permissible for you to do it anyways because "they did it first."

I'm not sure that made any sense, but meh.

Michael Behe--author, hack, and Intelligent Design advocate (but I repeat myself)--once said that in order to prove to him that an "irreducibly complex" system evolved naturally, he would need to be shown not only a complete step-by-step list of mutations,

...but also a detailed account of the selective pressures that would be operating, the difficulties such changes would cause for the organism, the expected time scale over which the changes would be expected to occur, the likely population sizes available in the relevant ancestral species at each step, other potential ways to solve the problem which might interfere, and much more.

Which, of course, is more detail than any other scientific principle, and a hell of a lot more than they require for I.D. About the only person who would require more evidence is Kent Hovind, who offers a phony $250,000 challenge to prove to him that evolution is true. How does one do this? By recreating the Big Bang in a laboratory. And it's a good thing that Behe requires all this information to accept that "irreducibly complex" systems can evolve, or else he'd realize that he himself has already proven that they can do so.

But let's ignore their double standards for now. O happy days, there's a new paper out that actually gives all this information! So, naturally, Behe has dropped all his objections, shut down the Uncomment Descent website, and apologized to all biologists for wasting their time up until now, right?

Of course not. He was given all that evidence and declared that it's proof of intelligent design instead. Ah, well.

One of the common arguments in favor of Bush's taking down Saddam Hussein was that he was financing terrorist groups, and that taking him down removed a large pillar of support from their operations. So we did. And it hasn't seemed to stop them from blowing shit up just fine. So where are they getting their funds from?

Us.

Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they’ve extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.

The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.

The website for the book A Practical Guide to Racism is up now, here.

"But what is this strange book?" you say. It's written by Sam Means, who has written for Saturday Night Live, The Onion and currently The Daily Show. Means writes as the fictional professor C. H. Dalton (played by Dan Bakkedahl), who has his own website here. I'll let Dalton describe his book:

In the grand tradition of Josiah Nott's 1854 Types of Mankind, A Practical Guide to Racism (APGTR) attempts to provide a comprehensive picture of the different races and how they interact. This volume goes one step further, however, by cataloguing the history and practice of racism and racial studies, with the hope of providing a single source for final knowledge on this entire subject.

What can you expect in APGTR? For starters, there is a chapter devoted to each of the nine races: Hispanics, Jews, Whites, Blacks, Asians, Indians (and Injuns), Arabs, Gypsies, and Merpeople. In these chapters, I offer a simple, easy to reference guide to the race, as well as a history of their oppression, and a Mythbustin'™ guide to the stereotypes about them. For example, are Swedish women really able to suck the chrome off of a trailer hitch? No, of course not, but the stereotype is rooted in their extraordinary talent for oral sex.

In addition, I provide a comprehensive glossary of racial epithets, including my own suggestions for additional slurs, based on my research. There is also an appendix on the so-called "sexual races," like Gays and Women, and one on ancient races like Phoenicians and Doozers.

They're just beginning to add content, but you can watch some videos in lieu of lectures by Dalton here, and read an excerpt from the book here.

...but you also need to add that the Free Market will solve everything.

This may be a little old, but....

Top military lawyers have told senators that President Bush's new rules for CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists could allow abuses that violate the Geneva Conventions, according to Senate and military officials.

The Judge Advocates General of all branches of the military told the senators that a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators' objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses.

...

...[T]he JAGs told the senators that a key part of the order opens the door to violations of the section of the Geneva Conventions that outlaws "cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment," officials familiar with the discussion said.

The JAGs cited language in the executive order in which Bush said CIA interrogators may not use "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual." As an example, it lists "sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation."

Among lawyers, "for the purpose" language is often used to mean that a person must specifically intend to do something, such as causing humiliation, in order to violate a statute. The JAGs said Bush's wording appears to make it legal for interrogators to undertake that same abusive action if they had some other motive, such as gaining information.

Other law-of-war specialists agreed that this part of Bush's executive order creates an escape clause allowing abusive treatment.

Two former Reagan administration officials, Robert S. Turner and P.X. Kelley, wrote an op-ed page piece in The Washington Post on July 26 criticizing Bush's order as a violation of the Geneva Conventions that could endanger captured US soldiers by eroding respect for the treaty. Among their criticisms, they also singled out the "for the purpose" wording.

"As long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not 'done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual' -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in 'willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse,' " the two wrote.

And the White House's response?

Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, yesterday rejected that interpretation of the order. In an e-mail, he said the order "simply requires AN intent to humiliate and degrade the individual" -- for any reason -- before an interrogator's conduct would be considered a war crime. He said this standard was consistent with how international war crimes tribunals have interpreted the treaty.

Um, how is that a rejection of that interpretation? He seems to be confirming exactly what they feared--that there needs to be an intent to humiliate and degrade before torture can be considered a war crime. Which leaves an out for people to claim that wasn't their intention, they just wanted information, or whatever.

In a great deal of the literature that I've read, the authors create a "scale" of the races, ranking them--usually according to perceived mental abilities. Often the scale would be: blacks, Native Americans, Asians, and whites. Sometimes they would have Malays in there somewhere, and sometimes they would have "Hottentots" below the regular blacks. But the idea was generally that blacks were the worst and whites were the best. Native Americans were held a little bit higher--there was the idea of the "noble savage" and the myth of Pocahontas, many of the oldest families in America had Native American blood in their veins (and were quite proud of it), and even the civilizations in Central and South America made people believe they were "better" than blacks. There was also a degree of bias in the people doing the judging, I'm sure--they would claim that Indians were so proud that they would die before being enslaved, unlike those slovenly obeisant Negroes. This, while giving Native Americans a bit of a higher position in the scale of races, also blamed the slaves for their positions (they surrendered to the idea too readily), but also gave the whites an excuse for exterminating Native Americans and not enslaving them.

Asians--specifically Chinese and Japanese, usually--were held just below whites in terms of ability. Both countries had ancient civilizations of their own, and especially with the Russo-Japanese Wars, it was clear that they were the equals of some of the Western powers. Japan especially was looked on with favor by certain writers, such as James Denson Sayers and Theodore Roosevelt. Whereas other Asians were decaying, Japan was growing, imitating the West and absorbing their culture. Often, though, Asians were discussed as though their glory days were behind them, and that though they were smart enough to use white technology, they could not invent it, or built upon it, or innovate it.

That was the usual scheme of things in works I've read. Then recently I found this:

[Prominent phrenologist George] Combe was particularly scathing toward the American Indians. In Africa, he argued, some of the inhabitants had at least advanced beyond "the savage condition," to create ". . . cities, rude manufactures, agriculture, commerce, government and laws; and in these respects they greatly excel several of the tribes of native Americans, who have continued wandering savages from the beginning to the end of their existence." Though there were some exceptions among the Indians, ". . . speaking of the race, we do not exaggerate in saying, that they remain to the present hour enveloped in all their primitive savageness, and that they are profited extremely little by the introduction amongst them of arts, sciences and philosophy." If Indian "savageness" stemmed from a conformation of the brain, attempts at civilization had little hope.

In a more popular work, Combe argued that a comparison of the heads of a Negro and a North African Indian demonstrated that the Indian intellect was weaker, but his pride and firmness were larger. Thus Negroes ". . . were able to appreciate the superior moral and intellectual powers of the European race, and are content in some measure to live under their guidance. The Indian, on the contrary, has refused to profit, to any great extent, by the arts or literature of the Europeans and has always preferred death to servitude." The great popularity of the phrenologists in the midnineteenth century ensured a wide dissemination of these racial theories.

--Reginald Horsman, "Scientific Racism and the American Indian in the Mid-Nineteenth Century." 27 American Quarterly 2, pp. 157-58.

So apparently some people at least thought that Indians were lower than blacks.

Well, no, they're not.

Instead, they're setting up a commission to determine whether they should upgrade from civil unions to full-blown gay marriage. Their first task is, apparently, to convince people that they haven't already made their decision:

A new commission set up to study whether Vermont should move from civil unions to full marriage for same-sex couples laid out its first goal Thursday: Convince the public it is open-minded enough to hear from both sides on the issue.

Several members of the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection insisted during the panel's opening meeting that they could put aside their own feelings on the topic and listen to Vermonters with open minds.

"While I have personal beliefs around civil unions and the right to marry ... I think it's pretty clear that the Legislature needs to reflect majority opinion ... and recognize where the state and society are willing to go," said commission member and former lawmaker Helen Riehle.

Gah, I hate all this talk about letting the "majority" decide what rights gay people have. Yes, a democracy is supposedly "majority rule", but... well, I'll let James Polk say it:

By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

Although maybe in Vermont the majority can make the right decision:

The 2004 exit poll asked respondents to choose between three options for legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships: full marriage, civil unions or no recognition. Forty percent said they support marriage, 37 percent civil unions and 21 percent neither.

Meh. Anyways... some people aren't too convinced about the gesture the commission is making:

Not everyone was buying the commission's promise to be open-minded, though. Two groups that opposed the first-in-the-nation civil union law when it passed in 2000 and oppose gay marriage now called for their supporters to boycott hearings scheduled for this fall out of fear the commission was stacked in favor of gay marriage.

Because then their opinion gets counted more, right?

At least according to UNICEF, that is:

The United Nations Children's Fund is running damage control after its new German advertising campaign was not so-well-received. Someone had the not-so-clever idea to splash four blond child models in mud to create blackface.

The public service announcements intended to draw attention to the education crisis in Africa by appealing "for solidarity with their contemporaries" in Germany. The adverts appeared in, among other places, the most respected publications in the nation, such as Die Spiegel, Stern and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

You can follow the link to see two of the ads, though the translation of the German in the second one is incorrect. It actually means something like, "In Africa, many kids would be glad to worry about school."

UNICEF's reply, when outrage predictably ensued? "We apologize if you feel irritated by the make up of the children."

I suppose it could be that Germany, not having the same experiences as America did, simply doesn't have the same sensitivity to blackface, so they didn't really see anything wrong. On the other hand, Black Women in Europe is probably right:

...[T]he kids' statements ignore the existance of millions of african academics and regular people and one again reduces a whole continent to a village of muddy uneducated uncivilized people who need to be educated (probably by any random westerner). This a really sad regression.
Bottom lines of this campaign are: Black = mud = African = uneducated. White = educated. We feel this campaign might do just as much harm as it does any good. You don't collect money for helping people by humiliating and trivilaizing them first.

Via Pam's House Blend.