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  • Recommended Reading for Those Thinking about “The Help”: Like One of the Family

    Over the past couple of weeks, the reaction to the novel and film The Help has made for some illuminating reading regarding race, history, and literature. Among the most thoughtful pieces we've read this week was from the Association of Black Women Historians, who said:

    [T]his statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism. 

    They outline their substantitive objections to the film in the statement, and conclude by saying, "In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment."

    The statement includes a recommended reading list, which we reproduce below.

    Fiction:

    Like One of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress (Beacon Press)

    The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James (Riverhead)

    Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley (Penguin)

    The Street by Ann Petry (Mariner Books)

    A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight (Anchor)  

    Non-Fiction:

    Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph (Cambridge University Press)

    To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter (Harvard University Press)

    Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones (Basic Books)

    Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis (Smithsonian)

    Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody (Dell)

    Like one of the familyThe first book on the list, Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life by Alice Childress, is excerpted below. The novel is comprised of a series of conversations between Mildred, a black domestic, and her friend Marge. The book was originally published in the 1950s by a small publisher in Brooklyn (Independence Press), but Beacon Press brought out a new edition of it in 1986 with an introduction by the literary and cultural critic Trudier Harris.

    The conversations in the book were first published in Freedom, the newspaper edited by Paul Robeson, and later in the Baltimore Afro-American. Childress is probably best-known for her book A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, and was also an accomplished playwright as well as a Tony-nominated actress. Before her success as a writer, she lived a life without economic advantages. In the introduction to the Beacon Press edition of Like One of the Family, Harris writes:

    Chidress's upbringing and struggles in New York effectively influenced the kind of writer she would become. She says of herself: "I attempt to write about charactes without condescension, without making them into an image which some may deem more useful, inspirational, profitable, or suitable." She has also commented that she concentrates "on portraying have-nots in a have society, those seldom singled out by mass media, except as source material for derogatory humor and/or condescending clinical, social analysis."

    Before these ideals could be realized, however, Childress had to serve a long apprenticeship. … She pursued a variety of jobs, including assistant machinist, photo retoucher, saleslady, and insurance agent as she worked relentlessly to gain audiences for her work as a playwright, actress, and novelist. She also did domestic work for a few months; the day she quit she surprised her employer by throwing her keys at her head. The woman later asked her to return to work. This "only work" that Childress could find turned out to be valuable, for it provided her with firsthand experienece of the job situation she would later depict in Like One of the Family.

    If You Want to Get Along With Me

    from Like One of the Family by Alice Childress (Beacon Press, 1986)

    Marge, ain't it strange how the two of us get along so well? . . . Now you see there! Why do you have to get so sensitive? . . . No, I was not reflecting on your personality or making any kind of digs! . . . Well, if you'll give me a chance I'll try to explain what I mean . . . I've known you for years and although you've got your ways . . .Yes, yes, I know I've got mine . . . but the important thing is that we go right on being friends . . . for example, remember the time you borrowed my best white gloves and lost them? . . . I know that I spilled punch on your blue satin blouse! . . . Now, wait a minute, girl! Are we goin' to have a big argument over how friendly we are!

    I said all of that to say this. Today I worked for Mrs. M . . . and she is an awful nice lady when she wants to be, but she can get on my nerves something terrible. . . . No, I do not mean that you get on my nerves too, and if you keep pickin' up on every litte thing I say, I'm gonna get up and go on home. . . . Well, gettin' back to Mrs. M . . ., she can make me downright uncomfortable! . . . Yes, you know what I mean, she turns my workaday into a real socializin' session, and her idea of socializin' is to ask me a million questions. . . . "What do you do after work, Mildred?" and "Do you have a lot of friends?" and "Are you married?" and "Do you have a boyfriend" and "Do you save your money?" and "Do you like to read?" and "Do you people like this or that?" . . . By you people she means colored people… and I can tell you she can wear my nerve-cells pretty near the breaking point. . . . I know you know!

    Well, at first I tried to get used to it because she is so nice in other ways . . . I mean like not followin' me around and dippin' into every thing I'm doing . . . yes, I appreciate that. . . . She lets me do my work, and then if anything isn't quite pleasin' to her she will tell me afterwards but it usually turns out that she's satisfied. Also I like the fact that she is not afraid of a little work herself, and many a day we've worked side by side on jobs that was too much for me to handle all alone. Also she makes the children call me Miss Jonhson. . . . Sure, whenever anybody has so many good ways, you hate to be pointin' out the bad ones. . . . But question, question, question… and it wasn't only the questions. . . . Honey, she could come out with the most gratin' remarks! . . . Honestly, she made such a point of tellin' me about how much she liked and admired Negroes, and how sorry she felt for their plight, and what a fine, honest, smart, and attractive woman was workin' for her mother and so forth and so on and so forth until it was all I could do to keep from screamin', "All right, back up there and take it easy!"

    Well, the upshot of it all was that I began to pick her up a little here and there in order to put her on the right track. For example, I'd say to her, "What's so strange about that woman being honest and attractive?" Well, Marge, she'd look so stricken and hurt and confused that I'd find myself feelin' sorry for her. . . . No, I didn't stop altogether but I'd let things go along a bit and then I'd have to pick her up on something again, and over a period of five or six weeks I had to jack her up several times. . . . Girl! all of a sudden she turned coldly polite and quiet and I can tell you that it was awful uncomfortable and strained in the house.

    I guess I could have stood the strain but it began to tear me up when she'd say things like "May I suggest" and "Do you mind if I say" and "If it's all right with you." . . . When I had my fill of that I came right out and asked her, "Mrs. M . . ., what is the matter, you look so grieved and talk so strange 'til I don't know what to think?" She looked at me accusingly and said, "I'm afraid to say anything to you, Mildred. It seems that every time I open my mouth something wrong comes out and you have to correct me. It makes me very nervous because the last thing I want to do is hurt your feelings. I mean well, but I guess that isn't enough. I try to do the right thing and since it keeps coming out wrong I figured I'd just keep quiet. I . . . I . . . want to get along but I don't know how."

    Marge, in that minute I understood her better and it came to my mind that she was doing her best to make me comfortable and havin' a doggone hard go of it. After all, everything she's ever been taught adds up to her being better than me in every way and on her own she had to find out that this was wrong. … That's right, she was tryin' to treat me very special because she still felt a bit superior but wanted me to know that she admired me just the same."

    "Mrs. M …," I said, "you just treat me like you would anybody else that might be workin' for you in any kind of job. Dont' be afraid to talk to me because if you say the wrong thing I promise to correct you, and if you want to get along you won't mind me doing so. After all, if I got into all your personal business and wanted to know everything about your life and your husband and your friends, pretty soon you would be forced to correct me even though it might make me uncomfortable." "Oh, Mildred," she says, "I didn't realize . . ." "Of course you didn't," I cut in, "but can't you see that it's unfair to push a one-sided friendship on me?" "Mildred," she says, "I wanted to be friendly." "Now of course you did," I answered, "but, for example, when you told me the other day that you're going to drop by my house and see me sometime I don't appreciate that because I never invited you, and you never had me to your house except to do a day's work." She looked down at her hands as I went on, "I don't think it's fair that you can invite yourself to my house and I can't tell you that I'll be over here for tea on Sunday afternoon."

    Marge, she shook her head sadly. "You mean that there is nothing that we have in common, nothing that we can talk about?" "I didn't say that at all," I sad, "but let's just relax and feel our way along and not try to prove anything, and before you know it everything will go along easy-like."

    She smiled then, "You mean you don't want to be treated special?" "Well, I do and I don't," I answered; "because I knew a woman once who was awful rude to me and said that was the way she was with everybody, no matter what color, and she didn't want to treat me special. I told her that if that was her general way then I'd appreciate her treatin' me special and I'd bet that other folks would like the change, too." Marge, Mrs. M . . . fell out laughin' and says, "Mildred, people are the limit!" … And I guess she's right too. . . . No indeed, I don't take that time and bother with most folks because when I run into a mean, hateful one who comes chatterin' around me about "What do you do after work?" I just give her a short smile and say, "Oh first one thing and then another." And by the time she's figured that out, I'm in another room busy doin' something else! . . . That's right, but, as I said, Mrs. M . . . is a nice person, so I told her. 

  • Threatening Messages and Student Speech

    Today's post is from David L. Hudson, Jr., author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools, which was released this week by Beacon Press. Hudson is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law and blogs at the First Amendment Center, where this post originally appeared.

    Book cover for Let the Students Speak! by David L. Hudson Jr.Administrators didn’t violate the First Amendment when they expelled a Nevada high school student who sent instant messages containing an alleged hit list, a federal judge has ruled.

    In 2008, Landon Wynar sent messages to a friend known in court papers as J. In his messages, Wynar threatened violence against some female students. One message read: “that stupid kid from vetch, he didn’t do shit and got a record.  I bet I could get 50+ people, and not one bullet would be wasted.”

    J. forwarded the messages to R., another student, who suggested that they tell Douglas County High School authorities.  After J. and R. told school officials, Wynar was suspended for 10 days and then expelled for 90 days.

    In October 2009, Landon and his guardian, Mark Wynar, sued school officials claiming that they violated Landon’s constitutional rights, including his First Amendment right to free-speech when he was punished for his off-campus speech.

    On Aug. 10, U.S. District Judge Larry R. Hicks rejected these claims in Wynar v. Douglas County School District. Hicks reasoned that even though the speech originated off campus, most courts would apply the “substantial disruption” test from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District if the speech were brought to the attention of school authorities. Under the Tinker test, school officials can restrict student speech if they can reasonably forecast a substantial disruption of school activities.

    “Where a student’s speech is violent or threatening to members of the school, a school can reasonably portend substantial disruption,” Hicks wrote, adding that “the court finds that defendants had a reasonable basis to forecast a material disruption to school activities.”

    Hicks noted that Landon Wynar specifically referenced April 20 — the anniversary of the infamous school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., as a date for the shooting and “made specific references to girls and the school by name.”

    Wynar insisted that the messages were only jokes, not real threats. But Hicks said that even if they were jokes, school officials “still had a reasonable basis to forecast a substantial disruption to school activities.”

    The Wynars’ attorney, Jeffrey S. Blanck, said his clients hadn’t decided whether to appeal the ruling.

    “I am not happy with the decision because this was purely off-campus speech and the kid did not intend to harm anyone and didn’t convey an intent to harm anyone,” Blanck said. “This was joking between friends and the friend joked back.

    “This kid spent 33 days in jail before a juvenile court judge tossed out the criminal charges.”

    Requests for comments from the school district’s attorney went unanswered.

  • A PGA Champ Who Had a Real Childhood

    Mark Hyman is a sports journalist with special interests in the business of sports, sports and law and sports for children. He is the author of Until It Hurts: America's Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids, and is currently writing a book about the business of youth sports. He blogs at youthsportsparents.blogspot.com, where this post originally appeared.

    HYMAN-UntilItHurtsKeegan Bradley, the new PGA Championship winner, set himself apart in so many ways last week. He won one of golf's four major championships in his first season on the PGA Tour. He won with an improbable back nine that included a triple bogey (to drop him five shots off the lead with three holes to play) followed by back-to-back birdies. Even more remarkably, he won the first major championship he ever played in. 

    There's one more biographical footnote that separates Bradley from other tour pros. He had a childhood. 

    More accurately, he had a normal childhood. Bradley grew up in Vermont, the son of a teaching golf pro. His aunt, Pat Bradley, was one of the most successful player on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in the 1970s and 1980s. The adults in Keegan's life had a the good sense to allow golf to be a part of his life, not his whole life. 

    Increasingly, that's an unusual way for kids with sports talent to grow up, as Bill Pennington explained in the New York Times.

    Although he is the son of a club teaching pro and the nephew of the L.P.G.A. Hall of Famer Pat Bradley, he did not specialize in golf as a youngster. He did not enroll in a hundred golf camps or travel away from home, boarding in a golf academy. He did not follow the path that is now so common to precocious athletes in most sports across America, which is to say he spurned suggestions he should quit all other sports and play golf year-round. 

    Bradley grew up in central Vermont. He was a ski racer in the winter and a golfer in the summer. 

    “People ask me all the time how I could be a pro golfer from Vermont, and they assume I must have went south a lot,” Bradley said Saturday. “But the truth is that when it started to snow, I put my clubs in the basement and didn’t touch them.”

    In Until It Hurts, I write about kids who become early specialists. By eight or nine years old, they are full-time soccer goalies or tennis players. A small percentage of these children become fabulous players. They become varsity college athletes, attending school on full athletic scholarship. A few even become professional stars playing in big stadiums and earning millions of dollars a year. 

    Sadly, most do not. They advance as far as their talent will take them, usually high school sports– and no farther. Or the steady diet of one sport–spring, summer, fall, and winter–eventually wears them down before they even get that far. As I write in Until It Hurts, they become victims of overuse injuries, ruptured ligaments, growth-plate injuries and the like. Or the sport ceases to be fun. Or what they want to do. So they quit before ever reaching their potential. 

    Keegan Bradley's parents played it right. They allowed their son to have a childhood, to explore many interests and eventually to excel at one. Keegan is the hero this week. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley deserve their own slice of the spotlight.

  • Just Published: Let the Students Speak! A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools

    Book cover for Let the Students Speak! by David L. Hudson Jr. Released Today: Let the Students Speak! details the rich history and growth of the First Amendment in public schools, from the early nineteenth-century's failed student free-expression claims to the development of protection for students by the U.S. Supreme Court. David Hudson brings this history vividly alive by drawing from interviews with key student litigants in famous cases, including John Tinker of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Joe Frederick of the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, Morse v. Frederick. He goes on to discuss the raging free-speech controversies in public schools today, including dress codes and uniforms, cyberbullying, and the regulation of any violent-themed expression in a post-Columbine and Virginia Tech environment. This book should be required reading for students, teachers, and school administrators alike.

    David L. Hudson, Jr. is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law. Read his posts on Beacon Broadside.

    Let the Students Speak! Excerpt

  • Slumber Parties and Student Speech: Judge Rules That School Can’t Punish Girls for Racy Pics

    Today's post is from David L. Hudson, Jr., author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools which will be released tomorrow, August 16th, by Beacon Press. Hudson is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law and blogs at the First Amendment Center, where this post originally appeared. 

    4454“Not much good takes place at slumber parties for high school kids, and this case proves the point.” Despite that observation, U.S. District Judge Philip P. Simon found that Indiana school officials exceeded their authority when they punished two high school girls for posting provocative pictures of themselves online.

    In 2009 during summer vacation, 16-year-old T.V. and 15-year-old M.K. posed for photos during a sleepover then posted them in what the court called a “saucy online display.” The court noted that several photos featured the girls pretending to lick a penis-shaped lollipop and wearing lingerie with money stuck in “stripper-style.”

    The girls did not bring the images to school and all the activity took place off-campus. However, another parent brought printouts of the photos to Steve Darnell, superintendent of Smith-Green Community School Corp. The parent claimed that the images were causing divisiveness on the volleyball team — a squad which included T.V. and M.K.

    Darnell took the photos to Austin Couch, principal of Churubusco High School. Couch suspended the girls from several volleyball games for violating the school’s “Extra-Curricular Code of Conduct” and student handbook. The handbook states: “If you act in a manner in school or out of school that brings discredit or dishonor upon yourself or your school, you may be removed from extra-curricular activities for all or part of the year.”

    Couch also said the girls were suspended because their online photos had the potential to cause disruption at school.

    In October 2009, the girls, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, sued in federal court, arguing that school officials violated the First Amendment by punishing them for purely off-campus conduct.

    Judge Simon agreed with the students in his Aug. 10 opinion in T.V. v. Smith-Green Community School Corp.

    The school defendants initially argued that the online photos were not expression and therefore did not trigger First Amendment protections. Simon disagreed, writing: “The record supports the conclusion that, although juvenile and silly — and certainly not a high-minded effort to express an idea such as burning a flag or wearing a black arm band — the conduct depicted in the photographs was intended to be humorous to the participants and to those who would later view the images.” In other words, the photos were speech that conveyed a particularized message sufficient to trigger First Amendment protections.

    The school defendants then argued that they had the power to discipline the students under the U.S. Supreme Court precedent Bethel School District v. Fraser (1986) — a case in which school officials suspended a student for his sexually laced speech at a school assembly. The Fraser standard provides that school officials can punish students for lewd and vulgar speech. The defendants in the Indiana case argued that because the girls’ photos were lewd and vulgar, they should evaluated under Fraser. Simon disagreed, finding that Fraser did not apply to off-campus student speech.

    Simon then addressed the seminal student-speech standard from the Supreme Court’s black armband case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). Under the Tinker standard, school officials can prohibit or punish students for speech if they can reasonably forecast that the student speech will cause a substantial disruption of school activities.

    “Defendant’s showing of actual disruption is extremely weak,” the judge wrote. “In sum, at most, this case involved two complaints from parents and some petty sniping among a group of 15 and 16 year olds.”

    Simon concluded that “no reasonable jury could conclude that the photos of T.V. and M.K. posted on the internet caused a substantial disruption to school activities, or that there was a reasonably foreseeable chance of future substantial disruption.”

    He also ruled that the school policy which permits school officials to punish students for any conduct “that brings discredit or dishonor” on the school or student is too broad and vague.

    Ken Falk, the ACLU of Indiana’s legal director, told the First Amendment Center Online: “The students and parents are very happy that the court recognized that there is a clear line beyond which a school cannot go in punishing students for expressive conduct.”

    W. Erik Weber, an attorney for the school district, told the Associated Press that he believed the school officials were justified in their actions in this “unsettled area of the law.” He said it was too soon to determine whether the district would appeal because the judge did not rule on whether the school corporation was immune from damages under the 11th Amendment, which often prohibits citizens from suing states for monetary damages.

     

  • Just Published: Playbook for Progressives

     

    PlaybookAn organizing manifesto for the twenty-first century, this comprehensive guide is a must-have for the activist's toolkit.

    An organizing manifesto for the twenty-first century, Playbook for Progressives: The 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer is a must-have for the activist's tool kit. This comprehensive guide articulates pragmatically what is required in the often mystifying and rarely explained on-the-ground practice of organizing. Here, Eric Mann distills lessons he learned from over forty years as an organizer, as well as from other organizers within the civil rights, labor, LGBT, economic justice, and environmental movements.

    Eric Mann is director of the Los Angeles–based Labor/Community Strategy Center and cofounder of the Bus Riders Union. He is the author of several books on social movements and organizing theory and has worked extensively with many organizations, including the Congress of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society, and the United Auto Workers. 

    Read an excerpt of Playbook for Progressives here or on Scribd.

  • Prayer Service or Tea Party Rally?

    Today's post is from David R. Dow, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Houston and the litigation director at the Texas Defender Service. Dow is the author of The Autobiography of an Execution and Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row.

    RickperrySomewhere between the parking lot and the entrance to Rick Perry’s prayer-fest at Reliant Stadium, before a female security guard waved me through the turnstile rather than pat me down after her male counterpart had deserted his post in the blistering heat that felt hotter than the 102 degrees my dashboard thermometer warned, I saw a black guy wearing a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, over his shoulders and head, standing in the shade cast by a solitary tree, blowing a ram’s horn, known in Judaism as a shofar. I learned how to blow one when I was in Jewish day school. It takes practice, more like playing a trumpet than a kazoo. I asked him how long it had taken him to be able to get such good sound. He said, Not very long. It is a gift from God.

    He was the last black guy I saw for a while. In Houston this is surprising. When I ride my bike at lunch-time from my office at the eastern edge of the University of Houston’s sprawling 700 acre campus over to the student center, I hear a dozen languages and see people from twenty countries. Houston’s population has nearly as many blacks as whites, more Hispanics than either, and one of the most rapidly growing Asian populations in the U.S. Inside Reliant Stadium, I could have been in Maine or Montana. After the guy blowing the shofar, I didn’t see another black face until a female pastor talking too softly for me to hear gave the morning’s second sermon.

    News reports claim there were 30,000 people there, but I don’t think so. I’d put the number at half that. People walked out and came back in – I did twice. But either way, it wasn’t the number I noticed. It was the complexion. The woman on stage doing a very impressive job of simultaneous Spanish translation had no listeners. In a state where non Hispanic whites make up less than half the population, 90 percent of the people inside Reliant were white folks. If this demographic is the future of the Republican Party, the Republican Party has no future.

    Outside there were some protesters, but not many. (It cost $15 to get into the parking lot.) A single engine plane circled overhead pulling a sign extoling the first amendment. One guy stood on the perimeter waving a huge Israeli flag, and three or four people stood in the draft trying to keep cool. I spotted a couple carrying a hand-written sign reading Separation of Church and State Protects Religious Liberty.

    Inside the mood was tentative. Nobody seemed quite sure whether this was supposed to be an innocuous Sunday morning service at a megachurch or a fiery Tea Party insurrection. After a long introductory musical set, the program stuck to a routine: a short sermon, then a song, another sermon, another song. During the music, maybe five percent of the people would stand and sing along, or just sway, arms raised in a V, the Protestant expression of piety roughly equivalent to Orthodox Jews rocking back and forth, eyes closed, before the Torah.

    Of course, if any Jews were there to pray, much less any Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Sikhs, they would have had to select their own biblical passages. The pastors on stage seemed locked in a competition to see who could mention Jesus the most times in a single sentence.

    By that measure, Rick Perry himself fared pretty well. When the Governor took the stage, about two hours in, you could feel the crowd straining to create energy, like a baseball game where the home team is trailing by a run in the bottom of the ninth, but it fizzled. More than half of the Governor’s remarks were readings from Scripture, and his cadence is designed for the stump, not the pulpit. People cheered at every twanged mention of Jesus, but he never gave the crowd the red meat they’d come for. When he finished, hundreds streamed for the exits, like there were two outs, two strikes, and nobody on base.

    The closest the day came to controversy was when a speaker warned against tolerating sexual immorality. He could have been talking about divorce or premarital sex, I suppose, but I got the sense it was code for gays. Yet even he couldn’t stir up the crowd. Maybe it was the poor acoustics. Between musical sets, except for when the Governor was talking, people paid about as much attention to what was happening on the stage as frequent fliers pay to the flight attendants when they tell you how to fasten your seatbelt. Or maybe even the Evangelicals are more concerned about unemployment than who is sleeping with whom. 

    After nearly four hours I’d had enough and headed back to my car. Under that same scrawny tree I saw that same black guy still blowing the shofar. I asked whether I could take his picture. As he said I could, a security guard rolled up in an electric cart and told him he had to move along. 

    Rick Perry photo by Gage Skidmore. Used under Creative Commons. 

  • A Cross or a Crossbeam?

    Frederick S. Lane is an author, attorney, expert witness, and lecturer who has appeared on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the BBC, and MSNBC. He is the author of six books, including The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court, American Privacy: The Four-Hundred-Year History of Our Most Contested Right and the just-released Cybertraps for the Young.

    4424As any sports fan will tell you, even the best umpires and referees sometimes blow a call. Every Red Sox fan over the age of 40 remembers the name Larry Barnett and can tell you how his inexplicable failure to call Ed Armbrister for interference helped cost the Sox the '75 series. But hey, blown calls are part of the game. Regrettably, as in sports, so too in punditry.

    There are few members of the media that I admire more than Jon Stewart. For the past 15 years, he has nearly single-handedly waged war against the forces of ignorance and stupidity that have all but overwhelmed the so-called mainstream media, Washington, and much of American society. Even better, he was kind enough to invite me on his show in August 2006 to discuss my third book, The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American. For a struggling and (still) largely unknown writer, that's the equivalent of a Papal benediction; even five years later, it's usually the first thing that people mention when they introduce me to a lecture audience.

    As a smart, passionate, and unabashedly scatological moral arbiter of American society, Stewart calls 'em like he sees 'em, and to this resident of the People's Republic of Burlington (VT), his accuracy is pretty impressive. But during his show on August 4, 2011, he made a mistake of Joycean proportions. In a segment labeled Culture War Update, Stewart lambasted the American Atheists organization for filing a lawsuit to prevent the installation of a cross-shaped fragment of steel beams at the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Here's the beginning of his diatribe:

    "[A]theists, why do you give s**t? That cross is an artifact. It was found at Ground Zero. It has come to mean something to people who view it as a symbol of comfort. If it really bothers you, why not just think of it as a metal t-shaped thingy? Or purely in architectural terms: it's not a cross, it's a crossbeam. Don't think of it as an ode to Jesus, the Christian savior; think of it as an homage to Jesus, the Canaanite with the relatively unsuccessful carpentry business. But you know what, that's fine, that's fine. That's our system. You can file lawsuits. Just because there's a lawsuit doesn't mean that it will be successful. Everyone's entitled to their day in court. It's not like the atheists are being total dicks about it. [Segue to Fox News clip featuring an inflammatory quote from American Atheists president David Silverman.]"

    The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
    Culture War Update – The Dividening of America – American Atheists vs. Ground Zero Cross
    www.thedailyshow.com
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    Any one who has watched Stewart regularly over the years knows that he feels particularly strongly about issues surrounding the events of 9/11. He has been heroic in his advocacy for medical coverage and compensation for the city's first responders, and I couldn't agree more. To paraphrase one his more poignant lines, I don't care if a first responder spends the rest of his or her days sipping asbestos martinis while sitting unsunscreened on frayed vinyl chloride beach chairs downwind from a nuclear plant, all the while using copies of Silent Spring to put a nice dark char on their hormone-laden t-bone steaks — if they get sick, they deserve full medical coverage regardless of the cause.

    But Stewart's reaction to the atheist lawsuit against the Ground Zero cross demonstrates the peril of allowing emotion, however justified, to trump logic and reason. It's precisely the same impulse that led Congress to hastily pass the Patriot Act, which in turn has led to secret and unchallengeable domestic surveillance, FBI raids on library records, and invasive TSA pat-downs of senior citizens and toddlers (all of which Stewart and his colleagues at the Daily Show, needless to say, have ruthlessly and justifiably mocked).

    I'm not an atheist (I'm actually more of an agnostic tree-hugging polytheist with a fondness for Yiddish), but having studied these issues in depth for my book The Court and the Cross, I think I can answer Stewart's fundamental question.

    Atheists give a s**t because in matters of religion (or race, gender, national origin, creed, etc.), our government is not supposed to take sides or express a preference.

    The very first clause of the First Amendment makes this perfectly clear: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, OR prohibiting the free exercise thereof …" There were no professional sports teams kicking around in the late 18th-century, but the Founding Fathers implicitly understood this basic premise: the arbiters of society — whether referees, umpires, judges, or even bureaucrats — are supposed to neutral and even-handed.

    Stewart seems to be arguing that the atheists should simply figure out a way to ignore the seventeen-foot-high, multi-ton cross, much in the same way that the Supreme Court has ordered them to ignore the use of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" on our currency, or the daily benediction that (somewhat futilely) opens Congress each day.

    I'm closer to the absolutist end of the First Amendment spectrum than not, but I don't have much of an issue with a little benign deism in American political life. When I was chair of the Burlington School Board, I cheerfully led the Board and attendees in the Pledge of Allegiance. And every Fourth of July, I re-read Jefferson's magnificent Declaration of Independence, including the optimistic phrase "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." Just as the rebels did then, we need all the help we can get right now.

    The Supreme Court's tolerance for the use of "God" in the pledge and on currency stems in part from the fact that the word is open to interpretation. When we pledge that we are "one Nation, under God," each of us can can insert our own working definition of "God." (Atheists are SOL because of the historical practice argument — since our nation has invoked a higher power in one form or another for two centuries, the Court says, it's part of the fabric of our lives.)

    As Stewart's own comments make clear, however, a cross is not a benign symbol of a inchoate national Deism opposed by only the most cantankerous First Amendment absolutists. His own description of the so-called "artifact" underscores the precise problem that atheists and most other non-Christians have with the installation of crosses on government property. It's not just a t-shaped metal thingy, and it's not merely a crossbeam (after all, it's not as if a "+" sign, or an "x" would generate as much enthusiasm). Regardless of whether one views the cross as a enduring symbol of one man's martyrdom on behalf of a sinful humanity, or merely as a homage to the world's most-quoted rabbi, it is still intended to represent Jesus Christ, the central figure of one religion.

    By its very nature, the installation of a cross at the Ground Zero memorial is an exclusionary act, one that implicitly suggests that the sacrifices of some victims deserve more recognition than those of others. Nearly 150 years ago, when President Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, he closed his remarks by noting that the sacrifices made there were to insure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He did not say "of Christians, by Christians, for Christians."

    If the Ground Zero memorial is truly intended to honor all of the individuals who died on that tragic day, then it should reflect our highest ideals — equality, fairness, liberty, and justice for all. The Supreme Court has made it clear (and I agree) that our government does not have to be faithless, but it can't favor one faith over all others. Let's find a new, non-governmental home for the cross, and let each visitor to Ground Zero bring their own personal beliefs to honor the dead and find increased devotion to the task of making this a more just and tolerant nation.

  • A Midwife’s Lessons from Her Patients

    Patricia Harman, Certified Nurse Midwife, is the author of Arms Wide Open and The Blue Cotton Gown. Harman has published in the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health and the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, as well as in alternative publications. 

    HarmanThe exam room is like a confessional; I’ve thought this before, so intimate, patients tell me their secrets. 

    “So, how you doing?” I ask Verona Jenkins, a 50-year-old high school teacher. Her straight brown gray hair is cut in a bob and she sits on the end of the rose vinyl exam table in her blue cotton gown with two strings in the back, swinging her legs like a girl. She has a few small red varicose veins on her calf, but her ankles are tan and slim.

    “Ok, I guess. Better.” This interests me. I have her lie down to check her breasts and her abdomen.

    “What’s your stress level lately between 1 and 10?” I smile. “Ten means you are about to check into the psych hospital.”

    “It was eleven last year, but I’d say only a seven now,” the patient gives me a short laugh, indicating this is a joke, but not much. That’s when our real conversation begins.

    The exam room is also like a classroom, a place where I learn countless lessons, and these women, my teachers.

    I study Vernona’s face as I palpate her lower pelvis, “Any pain?” She shakes her head no. Occasionally I find a tender ovary or sore uterus that needs further attention, but more often in these encounters I find pain in the heart.

    This time Verona looks right at me. “Remember my exam last year? It was the first time I’d seen you.” I finish her internal, take off my exam gloves and settle myself on the rolling stool. The patient sits up and primly straightens her blue cotton gown. “I was a real mess. My seventeen-year-old daughter was out of control. She’d dropped out of school and moved in with her boyfriend. I was so scared; this was my baby, now out of my reach, running hell-bent toward disaster. She was using drugs, marijuana and ecstasy. She told me right to my face…no birth control. She wanted to get pregnant.”

    Verona stops and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I was so frightened for her. We were fighting all the time, and my husband was no help. He just withdrew into his work, even told me once, if I mellowed out and got off her case, things would be better.”

    “And now?”

    Verona smiles, lets out her air and wipes the few tears with the back of her hand. I reach over and offer her a tissue. “Better. The boyfriend didn’t last long and she came home. She was treated for an STD at the health department, but never got pregnant, thank God.”

    “So, is she back in school and everything alright?” I am waiting for a happy ending.

    “No.”

    “Home School?”

    “No.” Verona tips her head to the side with a little regret. “She doesn’t do much of anything. Sleeps late, watches TV, reads a little; sometimes she cooks.”

    I squint. This would be difficult.

    “So isn’t that hard for you?”

    “At first, it was, but I was just so glad to have her home and safe, I decided to give up on the lectures and just accept her for who she is.” The voice in my head goes quiet. “Just accept her for who she is.”

    “And guess what?” the patient goes on. “The other day, the three of us went out to dinner and Kayla said to us, ‘You know Mom and Dad. You are my favorite people. You accept me unconditionally.’ Twelve months ago we were wolverines at each other’s throats.

    “Just the way she said it, unconditionally. I knew she had been reading or maybe only watching Oprah, but she was going to be ok.”

    Now I have tears in my eyes. Just accept them for who they are. I’ve read of the miracles it brings when you just love someone unconditionally. I do that with my patients, but with my own boys, Zen, Mica and Orion, I must constantly be shepherding, trying, with my wooden crook, to steer them away from cliffs, lead them down into the green valleys. And does it work? No. I just meet resistance.

    I write Verona a script for her hormone replacement and give her a hug. The woman can’t know the gift she has given me. Outside the exam room, I place my hand on the cherry wood door, palm open, fingers spread. I look down the carpeted, hall, and seeing no one, bow from the waist.

  • The First Amendment and Student Speech Online

    Today's post is from David L. Hudson, Jr., author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight For Free Expression in American Schools. Hudson is a First Amendment Scholar with the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He teaches at Vanderbilt University Law School and Nashville School of Law and blogs at the First Amendment Center, where this post originally appeared. 

    Team_avery A former Connecticut high school student punished for speech critical of school officials on her public Internet journal has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her appeal. If the Supreme Court takes Avery Doninger’s case, it could offer much-needed guidance on when or whether school officials can punish students for online speech created off campus.

    Doninger, the former class secretary of Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington, became upset with Principal Karissa Niehoff and Superintendent Paula Schwartz in 2007 over the cancellation of a proposed student event called Jamfest. In an online message, Doninger referred to Niehoff and other school officials as “douchebags.” As a result of the message, Niehoff barred Doninger from running for re-election for student office. Later the principal also prohibited students from wearing “TEAM AVERY” T-shirts.

    Doninger sued in state court, contending that the principal violated the First Amendment by punishing her for off-campus, online speech and for censoring the T-shirts. The defendants had the case removed to federal court.

    In a protracted battle in the lower federal courts, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with school officials on both the Internet free-speech claim and the T-shirt issue. The 2nd Circuit ruled that the principal and other school officials were entitled to qualified immunity.

    4454 Now Doninger takes her case to the high court. “This case presents important and compelling first amendment issues which impact millions of students and thousands of school officials,” reads her cert. petition in Doninger v. Niehoff.

    The petition points out that the 2nd Circuit’s decision conflicts with a pair of en banc decisions issued last month by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals —Layschock v. Hermitage School District and J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District. In those decisions, the 3rd Circuit ruled that school officials exceeded their authority in punishing students for off-campus, online speech that did not cause a substantial disruption.

    The petition adds that school officials, students and others need guidance in this area of student online speech: “The lack of guidance by this Court to address students’ internet speech, or indeed any kind of off-campus speech, combined with school officials’ inflated fears of school violence, have resulted in improper punishment of many students for otherwise protected off-campus speech.”

    Tshirt from Cafe Press.