Obama's State of the Union

Just ten minutes ago, I finished listening to Obama's first State of the Union Address. It left me with far more questions than answers and the feeling that if he succeeds in even half of what he seems to be promising, I will be compelled (by my own opinoin of politicians) to worship him as the greatest president of all time - he will not succeed, at least not that much. He has promised budget cuts, but never explained where these cuts will come from, so I wonder how he'll keep that particular promise.

While the address left me quite somber as to the prospects of our government, one line of Obama's will leave me laughing for ages. "We cannot wage a perpetual campaign," he said, speaking of Congress; but look whose talking, campaigner extraordinaire! Much of what Obama has done all year was campaign. Any level of hypocrisy, no matter how small, should be avioded at all cost by a political figure as important as the President of the United States.

In class, we were asked to pay atention to what garners applause. Sorry, Bolos and O'Connor, I did a bit of the opposite. I noticed, when Obama spoke of removing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" laws for gays in the military, that the military personnel in the front rows, right up near Obama, didn't raise, didn't applaud, in fact, they were all frowning; and while I have hypotheses as to why, I would still love to know what others think of this.

Racism or Class Prejudice?

Yesterday, in class, we discussed racism in Huckleberry Finn. In the process we touched upon racism against African-Americans in today's America. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) for racism, made by Harvard researchers, was brought up. An African-American friend of another student in our class (Lizzy) apparently, according to the IAT, is racist against African-Americans. One of our teachers, Mr. Bolos, explained this by saying that this friend of her's had probably absorbed our racist culture, while if a white -America got the same result, it means that he/she is racist. I hope I misheard or misinterpreted what he said.

I just took the IAT for racism. It asks you to fill out a questionaire, mostly questions about age, education, and location, and match words and pictures to the correct category. First, you match good and bad words with the categories Good and Bad, then pictures or blacks and whites with the categories European-Americans and African-Americans. Afterwards, they combine Good with European-American and Bad with African-American and have you match words and pictures, then they switch the combination and you match the pictures and words again. Their calculation for your preference for one race over the other is based off how quickly you match the words and pictures in the different combinations. My result: moderate preference for White-Americans.

I am not surprised, but not because I think I am racist. I believe I have a class prejudice against those who live in this country's slums and projects and ganglands; I get uncomfortable, and sometimes scared, around people who dress "gangsta", especially when passing through said areas. This combined with the fact that a large percentage of the people who live in these places have dark skin is the most likely explanation for my results on this test; and, I would argue, a very good explanation for why many people, especially of the population that would take such an online test, have a preference for whites over blacks (54% of participants had a moderate to strong preference for whites).

The Butter Battle Book

Most of my favorite books growing up were Dr. Seuss books. One of them was called the Butter Battle Book. I found it funny how the two sides were stupid enough end up at a stalemate (a word I did not know at the time) where each side had a ultimate weapon that would entirely destroy the other side. This weapon was a small black ball, that if dropped, would detonate. One member of each side was assigned to hold this weapon and drop their's as soon as the other side dropped it. (A full summary can be found at this wikipedia article.)

This sounding familiar?

Looking at the story again, in my mid-teens instead of 4 or 5, I can see a frightfully obvious metaphor for the Cold War and the arms race. The Butter Battle Book has no resolution. Everyone continues to live in fear. It is an anti-war book. The hidden moral of this story is not so hidden...at least to those old enough to understand it. Perhaps I am alone in this, but when I was first read this story, and when I started reading it myself, I simply found the story amusing. I saw nothing wrong with the ultimate weapons, ready to drop. I just found it stupid to hold the weapons forever, wouldn't they get tired? They might drop them by accident. That's just dumb.

The discrepancy between the age at which I first heard the story and the age at which I understood it as an anti-war story makes me wonder just who the 'hidden' message was for; perhaps it was actually meant for the parents reading the book to their offspring? Are there other hidden morals and messages in childrens' stories that may be meant for the parents?