I hope he doesn’t mind me doing this, but I have a stepson who is going through some stuff right now. And while on my walk yesterday, I felt God put this message on my heart for him. I’d like to post it here as well because I know that there are so many young men who need to hear it. I realize that young … Continue reading A Letter to a Young Black Man
Alright, alright, enough of the hiatus! Let’s get back to this here thing.
I recently ran across a story which mentioned a variety of studies that have found that imposing financial fines for poor behavior can actually increase that behavior. For example, studies at day care centers have found that when schools impose fines for parents who pick their children up late, they actually see an increase in the frequency of late pick-ups. It turns out that parents were more lax about picking their children up on time when they saw their obligation as financial rather than social. The social obligation to respect the time of the child care workers who would be inconvenienced by a tardy pick-up was a far more powerful motivator to good behavior than economic consequences.
Social scientists have observed this dynamic at work in a variety of settings and places around the world. Yet, over the last few years we have been trained to assume that economic issues are at the root of everything from social problems to the behavior of corporations to foreign policy affairs. Which to a certain extent makes sense. After all, economic concerns obviously have real effects on people’s behaviors and choices. For example, there was a sharp drop in the birth rate during the great depression as having a large family became more difficult economically. And we have all benefited from the increased prosperity which has resulted from our free market system where the only objective is to increase economic gain (without breaking the law, hopefully).
However, the simple truth is that humans have been social creatures much longer than we have been economic creatures. It really is difficult to overstate the power that social norms and expectations can have on people. Continue reading “The power of culture or the power of economics?”
Tonight I was listening to This American Life on NPR. The story I was listening to was about 2 middle class guys who became homeless in New York City and lived in the streets for a couple of years while becoming writers. While being asked about what it was like to be homeless, the men noted that there is no such thing as a hungry … Continue reading What Liberals Don’t Get
The Barna Group just put out the results of a survey of Americans asking about their ideal life. According to the findings, over 75% of us view the following things as “very important” parts of our ideal life:
Have good health (85%)
Living with a high degree of integrity (85%)
Having one marriage partner for life (80%)
Having a clear purpose for living (77%)
Having a close relationship with God (75%)
Having close personal friends (74%)
More than half of Americans also listed “having a comfortable lifestyle (mentioned by 70%), having a satisfying sex life with their marriage partner (66%), having children (66%), living close to family and relatives(63%), being deeply committed to the Christian faith (59%), and making a difference in the world (56%).” At the bottom of the list were achieving fame or public recognition (7%), owning the latest household technology/electronics (11%), owning a large home (18%), working in a high paying job (28%), traveling the world for pleasure (28%).
I can’t help but think when I see something like this that there is a large gap between what people say they want and what they are actually doing with their lives. On one hand, it could be that it’s so easy to say the “right” things to a poll taker. OTOH, I wonder if a big part of the problem is that while people want the right things, they do not have the tools or know-how needed to actually live them out. This is my personal theory.
It reminds me of a question I asked a bunch of people I know a couple of months back: “Do you think that most people want to be good people and are willing to put in the work it would take for them to be good people?” Continue reading “American Dreams”
Gather ’round, folks. Auntie Becky is going to tell you a story. A metaphor really, about race in America. And about the American Dream.
Imagine for a moment, a long relay race where for generations it has been considered acceptable and in some cases even required to break the limbs of a one group of people trying to run the race. The people thought this was OK. After all, it wasn’t long ago that this group of people had been used as horses to pull everyone else’s carts around the track. At least they were free of that back-breaking work. Now, they just had to contend with some needed cobbling. Anyone who resists the “in group’s” right to break bones is killed, so that keeps everything on an even keel. Not a bad system, really.
Of course, people with broken bones do not do very well in the race. Pretty quickly there are people lying all over the place with broken bones and deformities from past breaks which were never set properly. Many people in that group will simply stop trying to participate in the race. Maybe even set up little shanty towns around the track to do the best that they can outside of the race. A few will be fast enough to elude those who would break their bones, but these would be few and far between. The track is littered with those who tried to be one of the fastest few but got caught. Their broken bones and mutilated corpses remind the out group not to try to hard or rebel against the natural order of things.
Now, let’s say that after a very long time, once most of the people who are able to run the race are pretty well ahead, that people start to come to their senses and decide that it is wrong to break the limbs of the out group. So they ban limb breaking. From that point forward, a person’s success or failure in the race will depend on their efforts and abilities. Except, many of the people from the out group still have broken arms or deformities from past injuries. Some of them were born after their forbearers gave up the race as a lost cause and have never run a day in their life. Many of them have never left their shanty towns to deal with the people in the race before.
Instead of offering training and rehab and counseling and medical care, the people in the race resentfully offer a selected few a slight head start to make up for the fact that they haven’t been able to get a fair shake at competing. Some do-gooders head into the shanty town to paint the walls of the homes of those who are least prepared to compete in the race in order to make them a little more comfortable where they are. A few people who are willing to train people stuck in the shanties make timid efforts at offering their assistance, but the do gooders painting the walls come out and say nasty things to them. So the potential trainers go back to the race and content themselves with yelling out helpful advice about moral bravery and perseverance as they run past. Continue reading “The American Race and Race”
So, I’m reading an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning about the whole Miley Cyrus debacle. If your hiking party left you stranded in a cave for the last week and you have been blessed not to hear about it, young Ms. Cyrus is age 15 and star of Disney’s hit show Hannah Montana. She appears in a Vanity Fair photo shoot this month … Continue reading Who’s your role model?
Northwestern University just put out a study which found that white people avoid dealing with black people or discussions of race out of fear of doing something which will cause them to be accused of bigotry. This is probably one of those “We need researchers to tell us this?” things.
As many of my readers know, I am married to an African American man, so we’ve had many of those conversations which most white people avoid like the plague. I’ll just say that it’s been interesting.
Over time, I’ve come to see the relationship between white Americans and black Americans as being like a bad marriage. Neither side trusts the other, each attributes the worst possible motivations to anything the other side does, neither is willing to listen to the other but continually demands that their concerns be taken seriously, etc., etc. The solution to a bad marriage generally requires the two parties to stop being so self defensive, listen to each other, avoid responding negatively at all costs, be willing to do the right things for the relationship irregardless of what the other person may or may not do, etc. I believe that it will take the same sorts of actions between white and black Americans to actually move past the distrust and hostility which we generally deal with each other with.
I think that one of the biggest problems with the black-white relationship is that we fail to understand or appreciate how things look from the other’s perspective and then insist on assigning the worst possible motivations to what the other group does (or does not do). I believe that if we are willing to start making a real effort to understand the other group’s perspective (not necessarily agree with – just understand that POV as sincere and real), it would allow us to stop being so defensive and hostile with each other.
I bring this and this study up because my husband recently shared an idea he has about just the sort of “white persons inadvertently messes up, black people go ballistic” interaction which seems to have made white people so nervous that they avoid race at all costs. Continue reading “Black-White Conversations We’re Afraid To Have”
Be sure to check out this fantastic column over at Slate by Emily Yoffe (aka Dear Prudie) on the disaster of normalizing single parenthood. Continue reading While I’m gone . . .
My goodness. A high school outside of Chicago has recently decided to move a piece of pornographic work (“Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (Parts 1 & 2)”) from it’s “required” to its “optional” reading list for an AP Literature class after parents and an advocacy group spent months complaining. How good of them. I suppose that simply having access to porn … Continue reading Pornification goes to high school!
There’s a story in the Chicago Tribune about scientists who have figured out how to get a computer to “read” brain scans to figure out which picture out of several choices a person has viewed. This is considered one of the first steps towards eventually figuring out how the brain works, which I suppose if good. However, it could also the be the first step … Continue reading This seems creepy to me
The Upside Down World 