The Image America Creates

I frequently check the news on the Francinfo website, partly to practice French, but partly to hear about European and world news that frequently gets overlooked by American news outlets, even by NPR. Recently, I have begun to realize that it is a good place to discover what Europeans think about America.

And the French news about America is nearly all bad. One day recently, the top headline was about the racist videoposted by frat boys at the University of Oklahoma. American news outlets that I saw did not indicate what the offensive lyrics of the chant were; the French news did. This event was so spectacularly offensive that the response that the University of Oklahoma made to the problem—essentially terminating the fraternity—kind of got lost. The image that is left is of a stupidly racist Oklahoma. (I say stupidly because the offensive lyrics were not exactly Shakespearean in their quality.)

And then there is Missouri. The French news has carried numerous items about Ferguson, and how the American federal government has identified pervasive elements of racism in the operation of that municipality. Here is one example.

All of this came within a few days of the historic commemoration of the Selma March. Franceinfo ran an article in their Expliquez-nous (explain to us) series about these historic events. Anyone reading the French news, and seeing these items in close proximity, can be excused for thinking that America was and remains a hotbed of racism.

Even if it is not true. In my experience, the vast majority of Americans are not racist. The college students I see every day—in rural Oklahoma—have interracial friendships, and it comes naturally: they are not making a point by it. But the slow work of building up goodwill is easily overpowered by the highly visible evil of a few people. In my own field—teaching biology, especially ecology and evolution—I find that the vast majority of students either accept some form of evolution and global warming, or else do not get vocal in their opposition. But a few vocal evolution and climate denialists create the impression that the whole country has of Oklahoma and the whole world has of the USA. You can say all you want to that this image is unfair, but there it is. I almost feel that I have to apologize to the people of the world for things that I do not do and which, in some cases, are done to me (e.g. the occasional creationist attacks). A Facebook friend posted that a friend of his who frequently visits Europe has repeatedly encountered the European view that Americans “are a bunch of gun toting, ultra-conservative, and self-centered bigots. Not to mention just plain nasty people.” This image, too, is created by a relatively small number of loud tourists who think that everybody should accommodate their every whim and for God’s sake speak English. I fear that the French visitors I have met may think that I and my family are among the relatively rare Americans who are nice.

This is a big problem. Terrorists recruit a lot of people who are convinced that most Americans are evil people who are perfectly happy to kill a hundred civilians to get one militant and who are perfectly happy to keep the vast majority of people in the world poor so that we can have cheap materials to import. They think that we think that we can create goodwill in the world by bombs and drones. No amount of military power—and we already have more military expenditure than all other major countries combined—can keep us safe if the world hates us. I think that Barack Obama has created a lot of goodwill (despite Congress telling the world that they are unwilling to support any of that goodwill, and asking the world to disregard anything Obama may say that is not militaristic), though even his overseas friends sort of look uneasily over his shoulder to see if there is a drone hovering there.

If only, if only the voices of good Americans had an equal impact to those of the evil ones. But this is not the case. Humans have the capacity to create reciprocal altruism on an individual level, but we have seldom been successful on a societal level, and the voices of selfishness seem to be making sure that any chance of goodwill solving any world problems will fail.

Despite Science and Despite Humanitarianism, Racism Continues

I am writing this in late August, 2014, even though I am posting it later. (As of the posting date there have been no new developments.) The flames of racial unrest are burning in localized pockets across the United States right now. In three separate incidents—Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis; Staten Island, New York City; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I live—white police officers have killed unarmed black men. (The black man shot even more recently in Berkeley, Missouri, appears to have been armed.) Wait; you haven’t heard about the Tulsa one? I guess I will have to tell you about it, since Tulsa has no violent protests such as in Ferguson and no Al Sharpton as in New York. You expect this sort of thing—police killings of unarmed citizens—once in a while, but three at the same time seems a bit unlikely.

A Tulsa policeman, Shannon Kepler, and his wife (also a police officer) adopted a girl with a troubled past. After many years, the girl’s troubles were apparently too much for the couple to handle. They took her to a shelter for homeless adults and left her there. Things like this happen sometimes. But what happened next was astonishing. The young woman went the house where her boyfriend, 19-year-old Jeremey Lake, lived. What would you expect her to do? And if you have just kicked your adopted daughter out of the house, you at least need to let her decide where she is going to live.

But Shannon Kepler did not do this. He drove over to Jeremey Lake’s house and shot and killed him, and then shot in the general direction of the young woman also. Was Lake’s killing murder or was it manslaughter? And was Kepler actually aiming for his stepdaughter with the second shot? That is, was there premeditation? Police investigators found that the step-parents had, in their home, a copy of Lake’s arrest records, on which they had written his address. This would seem to be premeditation. Kepler’s defense attorney said that the shooting was understandable because Lake was a sexual predator, which as far as I can determine was not the judgment of any court. So the defense attorney asked for a bail of only $50,000. The prosecutor asked for a bail of $1 ½ million. The prosecutor’s request that Kepler be fitted with an ankle bracelet for monitoring his location was denied by the judge, who imposed a bail about halfway between the two requests. The judge must have considered that this police shooting was not much of a continuing danger to the community. This decision was issued August 22, the same day that Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri were in the news.

What the Tulsa World newspaper article of August 22 did not mention—and which I had to locate finally in the New York Daily News—was that Jeremy Lake was black.

I know that if I were a young black man I would be worried right now, especially if I lived in Oklahoma, a state where apparently police shooting young black men does not get noticed very much by national media.

When are we going to stop thinking of white police shootings (or, in Staten Island, strangling) of black men as normal? (The authorities seem to have thought that the Staten Island victim was manifestly guilty of a dangerous, dangerous crime: selling untaxed cigarettes. That deserves getting someone killed, they seem to think.)

As most readers of this blog will know already, there is no biological basis for considering one race inferior to another. Pseudoscientific claims of black inferiority have been repeatedly discredited. And even if there was such evidence, it would not justify members of one race killing members of another and having it treated lightly by authorities.