Cultural identity

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South Korea: A lookist society (not the only one)

Oh no, I’m going bald!

Losing one’s hair can be something that changes our appearance, how others view and treat us, and likely how we see ourselves. While that may be a universal experience, a report recently on NPR public radio (also on BBC) about hair loss in Korea indicates that it is a much more significant occurrence there. The President of South Korea wants his country’s national health insurance program to cover hair loss treatment for its citizens. President Lee Jae Myung says this isn’t just a cosmetic issue: he has called it “a matter of survival.” How could that be? No one dies from hair loss, right?

According to Professor S. Heijin Lee (U. of Hawaii), interviewed in the NPR piece,

I think the important part to look at is that he characterizes hair loss as quote-unquote “a matter of survival. ” And this really references this idea that Korea is a very lookist society. That’s not a term that we use too much here in the U.S., but in Korea, it’s very commonplace.

The idea of a “lookist” culture is that looks really matter in that society. While one could argue that such a view is universal (good looking folks get privileged), the situation in South Korea is, according to Professor Lee, that discrimination against those not looking a certain way is allowed and implemented widely. She points to the fact that routinely photographs are included on resumes, so that, she says, “your looks are your credentials”.  Women in South Korea have long complained about that practice and also in general about how Korean society makes extra demands on women in terms of looks. Another reflection of that is the booming industry in Seoul for plastic surgery (centered in the Gangnam district).

Professor Lee claims that the South Korean President is not just looking out for the welfare of men (the ones usually losing their hair). She argues that it is in fact the government of the country that plays a role in shaping beauty expectations that make baldness a “a matter of survival.”  The government doesn’t really want to change the lookist character of Korean society, as “the government benefits from its popular culture industry, which is a purveyor of these beauty standards…K-beauty is, you know, a multibillion-dollar industry.”

K-beauty is the umbrella term for skincare and beauty products, which is a gigantic industry in South Korea. Those products are exported worldwide. Professor Lee points out that it is interesting that the President is not proposing to change any of those areas, “but what he is proposing to do is to cover a very small fragment of a solution”. Of course, beauty products are not alone in terms of popular culture exports from South Korea. K-pop has been a global phenomenon for some times. The tremendously popular movie, KPop Demon Hunters, is a reflection of that.

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Changes in M.L. King Holiday signal shifts on US history

Today in the US is a national holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This year it’s a bit different from the past. One change is the entrance to national parks is no longer free today, as it has been in the past, which is true for Juneteenth as well (June 19th). Through an Executive Order, free entrance instead will be on two other days, Presidents’ Day and Flag Day (happens to also be President Trump’s birthday). That aligns with other changes in official federal perspectives on the role of African Americans in US history since President Trump has been back in the White House, one year ago tomorrow (January 20, 2025). Museums such as the Smithsonian and federally controlled websites have changed information about civil rights struggles and the lives of slaves, minimalizing accounts of conflicts and struggles for equality, formulated as “removing race-centered ideology”.

That reflects changes in how US history is being taught in many parts of the country, with the explanation that historical accounts of this country’s development should celebrate its glories and triumphs (the Declaration of Independence or victory in WW II, for example), contributing to boosting patriotism and promoting national unity, and play down divisive events and the negative interpretations of historical events (slavery, for example). Showing the reality of past events, including the ugly aspects, the argument goes, might upset people and cause white citizens to have feelings of guilt.

That view is echoed in a statement from Vice President Vance that “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being White anymore.” The administration was worked to enforce that perspective, eliminating programs that promote DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), with the justification that their purpose and outcome was not to provide restorative justice and help bring equal opportunities to groups historically discriminated against (black and brown people, women, LGBT+ folks) but rather to disadvantage white people and make them feel they were responsible for past injustices. In preparation for today’s holiday, the President in an interview with the New York Times expressed that opinion in relation to the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, stating that the result of that movement was that white people “were very badly treated.” The emphasis from the White House is entirely on the wrongs Whites have suffered. That point of view dismisses White Privilege as a myth.

Another view of US history might be that the civil rights movement should be a source of pride for all Americans, as it shows that when injustice becomes evident, the US has found remedies. That could apply to other cases where abuse or conflict has resulted in positive change. One example that comes to mind are the dramatic changes in the powers of the presidency put into place after the abuses of President Nixon exposed through the Watergate Affair (now unfortunately no longer in effect).

Dr. King in his most famous speech hoped that in the US people would not be judged according to the color of their skin, but by the “content of their character”. Unfortunately, today we see that people are being judged by the color of their skin, their religion, their gender, their ethnicity. An article today in USA Today (not a beacon of progressive politics) points to how Somali Americans in Minneapolis have been stigmatized as a group due to alleged fraud by members of that community. The author comments: “A crime committed by Irish American bar owners in Boston wouldn’t lead to persecution of Irish American tavern owners in Ohio”, implying that in fact White Privilege is alive and well in this country.

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Is US work culture making real leisure disappear?

A recent article in The Atlantic points to an interesting aspect of current US culture and lifestyle. It is entitled “The logic of the ‘9 to 5’ is creeping into the rest of the day” and points to “how free time gets conscripted into the service of work”. The author sees evidence in a slew of TikTok videos on the “5 to 9 after the 9 to 5,” namely vloggers documenting their routines after work, from 5 to 9 p.m. According to the article, “some creators also make a morning version, the ‘5 to 9 before the 9 to 5,’ starting at 5 a.m. These routines are highly edited [and] have big to-do-list energy; the satisfaction they offer is that of vicariously checking boxes”. In being a predictable routine carried out in order at specific times, the highly organized evening or early morning activities seem to echo work culture:

Given how many of these videos are made by people in their early 20s, I see in them a new generation entering the workforce and acclimating to the reality that time is limited. But in attempting to take control back from their jobs, many 5-to-9 video creators end up reproducing a version of the thing they are trying to distance themselves from. If you clock out, go home, and continue checking things off a list, you haven’t really left the values of work behind.

The article provides examples of the must-do activities chronicled in the TikTok videos, such as taking a shower, exercising, cooking a meal, cleaning up, etc. Of course, we also need to add to the list social media posting. The author, Julie Beck, points out that typically missing from the list of activities is socializing in person and in real time, reflecting a trend in the US of time spent alone (see my recent post). That reflects as well eating out trends with more and more Americans getting take-out or delivery rather than eating in a restaurant. I was in Europe this summer and in both France and Germany I experienced a very different restaurant culture – take out was widely available but the cafes and restaurants were full (especially those outdoors) with few people eating alone.

The idea that non-work time also needs to be “productive,” is a likely reflection of living in a capitalist society in which work tends to shape personal identity, as pointed out in the article: “For many Americans, work is the focus of life, the place to find purpose and a sense of self.” That is very different in other cultures, and used to be in the US as well, as Beck points out: “It wasn’t always this way. In much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the view was that leisure was the place where we would find the best things in life.” In other cultures, leisure time is still disconnected largely from the work world, a time to relax, refresh, and socialize. A German saying points to that divide: “Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps” (Work is work and schnaps [hard liquor] is schnaps), meaning that at work we focus on work (and don’t prioritize socializing) but after work we enjoy ourselves, i.e. drink with friends and divorce completely from work. At the same time, US cultural trends tend to spread and in other parts of the world (including Germany), the work world (through electronic connectivity) is creeping into leisure and family lives.

Beck ends her article with this thought:

What would need to happen for people to experience their leisure as being in no way connected to labor? Certain policies might make work less central to people’s lives: universal basic income, for example, or a four-day workweek. But the experts and philosophers of leisure would suggest that a collective mindset shift is also required.

That is a tall order and particularly a hard sell under an administration in which hands-off capitalism reigns supreme (see for example no regulation on AI or crypto currency companies). The author cites Jenny Odell’s book Saving Time, “Leisure time is an interim means of questioning the bounds of the work that surrounds it. Like a stent in a culture that can’t stand what looks like emptiness, it might provide that vertical crack in the horizontal scale of work and not-work, where the edges of something new start to become visible.”  That kind of experience is unlikely to be found in a packed schedule: “True leisure,” Odell writes, “requires the kind of emptiness in which you remember the fact of your own aliveness.”

Achieving “emptiness” or celebrating “aliveness” are not likely to be something TikTok videographers will be adding to their 5 to 9 videos.

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Diversity is a strength, not a problem

Multilingal voting sign: a thing of the past?

There is yet another executive order forthcoming from President Donald Trump, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Politico, this time proclaiming English as the official national language of the United States. It is not that there has been any doubt about what the dominant language of the country is of course, but it’s clear what the point of this order is: to alert those whose first language is not English that they are lesser-class US citizens. It is an invitation to discriminate against non-English speakers, with the additional outcome of instilling feelings of inferiority into families where English is not the primary language. It is likely to accelerate the decline in language learning in the US, which has already been underway for some time. The directive aligns with a growing move towards nationalism and xenophobia in the US, which unfortunately we are seeing in other countries as well.

The executive order joins others dismantling DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts in government agencies. That affects US universities as well, as they have been told to shut down DEI programs or be in danger of losing funding from federal agencies. This has repercussions on academic programs and on educational opportunities for disadvantaged populations (minority groups, LGBQ+ individuals, women, less abled individuals, and more). It also has led to programs and individual faculty members being told to eliminate terms that can be interpreted as pro-DEI from Web sites and other online documents. I’m waiting to see if I will be asked to take down some of the pages of the open textbook I wrote on intercultural communication, as many chapters deal with topics such as racism, intolerance, and white privilege.

In the textbook I also promote the value of learning another language, as it has been shown to increase tolerance and understanding towards other cultures. Being bilingual also opens up new worlds of experience, emotion, and personal growth while providing insight into how language mediates our interactions with others and with our own identity. There was a fascinating interview this week on NPR with Mexican writer, Cristina Rivera Garza, whose 2007 novel La muerte me da (Death Takes Me) was recently translated into English. In the interview, the author talks about writing alternatively in Spanish and in English. She says that for emotionally laden topics (like writing about her deceased sister) she finds turning to writing in English creates a “buffer” that allows her to write with an emotional detachment that she doesn’t have available when writing in Spanish. In that way, she says, having access to a second language “may provide you with opportunities and freedoms that the language that you grew up with could not afford”.

It’s a shame to see government policies that will lead to fewer opportunities for developing bilingualism, and through it the expanded personal experiences that kind of double self creates. Maintaining a diversity of languages in our society, as well as a diversity of lifestyles, beliefs, and behaviors, enriches all of our lives.

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Loneliness and populism

In the US, we have been hearing about an Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation (title of a report released in 2023 by the Surgeon General at that time, Vivek Murthy). A 2024 Harvard study on Loneliness in America found that 21% of adults in the U.S. feel lonely, with many respondents feeling disconnected from friends, family, and/or the world.  This is not unique to the US, as there are ministers of loneliness in Japan and the UK. It is also not a new phenomenon. In 2000 Robert Putnam published the best seller, Bowling alone, which described the loss of community in the US, especially the decline in membership in civic associations and religious groups. This week, there was an interesting interview on this topic on NPR (Fresh Air) with Derek Thompson, the author of a recent article in The Atlantic, entitled The anti-social century. In that article Thompson writes that “Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965… Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America.” While this continues the trend described in Putnam’s book, Thompson sees its growth in part due to the Corona pandemic. He cites, for example, the fact that in the US in 2023, 74 percent of all restaurant traffic came from takeout and delivery, rather than dining in, a development clearly accelerated by the pandemic.

Another cause he cites, and discussed in the Harvard study as well, is technology, i.e. the use of smart phones and social media, a topic addressed in Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together, and regularly lamented in mainstream media. People (across the world) are spending time they used to share in person with family and friends now glued to their smartphones watching short videos and engaging in shallow text exchanges. Attention spans have become short and long-form reading has declined (as my colleagues often lament), a phenomenon discussed in the bestseller by Nicolas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Thompson argues (in the NPR interview), however, that in some cases the online world has deepened relationships, for example, the opportunity to stay continuously connected throughout the day by texting: “So the inner ring of intimacy has grown stronger, or it’s potentially grown stronger for some people, in this age of the smartphone”. At the same time, the Internet provides the opportunity for “networks of shared affinities”, the chance to build community across widely distributed groups based on shared interests.

Loneliness can lead to depression and an unhealthy cycle of withdrawal from social contact, something we as human beings are genetically conditioned to experience. There are also societal and political consequences, according to Thompson. He argues that there is an important social layer that is being left behind, that is situated in between the intimate group of close friends and family and the more distant (mostly) online affinity groups: “The inner ring of intimacy is strengthening, and the outer ring of tribe is also strengthening, there’s a middle ring of what he [Marc Dunkelman, a researcher at Brown University] calls the village that is atrophying. And the village are our neighbors, the people who live around us.” According to Thompson, we have increasingly socially isolated ourselves from our neighbors, particularly when our neighbors disagree with us. Interestingly, he connects this to the rise of political populism:

We’re not used to talking to people outside of our family that we disagree with, and this has consequences on both sides. On – for the Republican side, I think it’s led to the popularization of candidates like Donald Trump, who essentially are a kind of all-tribe, no-village avatar. He thrives in outgroup animosity. He thrives in alienating the outsider and making it seem like politics, and America itself, is just a constant us-versus-them struggle. So I think that the anti-social century has clearly fed the Trump phenomenon.

Thompson points out the media have accelerated this process (as I have discussed), with people increasingly only accessing media outlets that carry points of view they agree with, further reinforcing the echo chamber of the “tribe” we belong to. Thompson’s solution?

To connect all of this back to the anti-social century, we all need to get out a little bit more. And if we want to be appropriate and wise consumers of news, we want to be wise consumers of news that make us sometimes feel a little bit uncomfortable about the future…I do recognize there’s a collective action problem here to solve. But I also think it’s really important not to overcomplicate this by suggesting that requires some enormous cultural shifts. I think that our little decisions, the little minute-to-minute decisions that we make about spending time with other people, these decisions can scale. They create patterns of behavior. And patterns of behavior create cultural norms.

So in the end he offers a bit of hope, that increases in individual social connections (including beyond our comfort level) can have positive societal repercussions.

Or maybe we will be going in the opposite direction, establishing connections not with our fellow citizens but with an AI lover (Yikes!). Or maybe connecting with robots? As being tried out in Japan.

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Eggs versus democracy

The cost of eggs is more important than the prospect of ending democracy, promoting xenophobia/misogyny, and destroying the planet. That, unfortunately, is the take-away from this year’s presidential election in the US, which returned Donald Trump to power. In exit interviews with voters, it was clear that pocketbook issues were one of main drivers behind how US Americans voted. Here are some examples:

Inflation is a constant concern. “A dozen eggs used to be 99 cents. Now they’re, what? $2.38 with a coupon?”

“Look, I didn’t like Jan. 6 — and I don’t want it to happen again — but it didn’t affect my life nearly as much as the price of eggs, milk and gas.”

So, having to pay $1.50 more for a dozen eggs overrides other concerns, like the future of American democracy, human-accelerated climate change, or giving women control over their own bodies? To me this is a case of collective amnesia (did we forget Trump’s disastrous first term?), willful ignorance (facts simply ignored), and unimaginable narcissism. Do we care so much for our own short-term creature comforts that we are willing to sacrifice the health of our planet and the well-being of our citizens?

In my course on intercultural communication, one of the topics we discuss is the important signal that leaders in different areas/fields can send in reference to communicating and getting along with those different from us in appearance, lifestyle, language, etc.. Positive examples are those who reach out to underprivileged and under resourced people and communities. Then there is Donald Trump, who regularly demeans women, denigrates immigrants, mocks disabled individuals, and denies equal rights to LGPTQ+ and trans individuals.

The opinions Trump expresses have allowed messages of prejudice and hate to be openly expressed, views that were long considered beyond the pale. Unfortunately, that phenomenon has been enabled and accelerated by our current media landscape, dominated by online influencers who peddle conspiracy theories and outright lies. Joe Rogan’s podcasts, replete with misinformation and distortions, are viewed by many more people than mainstream media.

The irony of the situation is that it is quite likely that Trump’s policies (high tariffs, for example) will move the US towards greater inflation and paying even more for a dozen eggs.

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Is Democracy in Germany in danger?

Björn Höcke of the AfD and Sahra Wagenknecht

There are local elections on Sunday in two different German states, both part of the former East Germany: Saxony and Thuringia. They are to elect the state legislatures (Landtag). Recent polls show a worrying trend for German democracy, two parties in ascendance that are either populist, nationalistic, and extreme right (the AfD or Alternative for Germany) or populist and based on a personality cult (BSW or Bündnis [Coalition] Sahra Wagenknecht). The New York Times recently profiled Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Communist who leads the new party bearing her name, that is only a few months old. Both parties are deeply suspicious of the federal government and tilt pro-Russian. Neither is seen as a friend of German democracy, as seen in a recent documentary on German TV entitled “Machen wir unsere Demokratie kaputt?” (Are we breaking our democracy?).

If the AfD wins in Thuringia, then the new prime minister of the state is likely to be Björn Höcke (profile in the New York Times), the controversial former history teacher who has been fined this year repeatedly for using Nazi slogans. The centrist parties, who are part of the coalition running the federal government (SPD, FDP, Greens) are way behind in the polls. Some of them may not even reach the 5% of the vote needed in Germany to be eligible to have elected representatives. Many Germans are deeply worried over the increasing popularity of parties that threaten democracy and possibly the rule of law in Germany. One of the groups fighting extremism is called “Omas Gegen Rechts” (Grandmothers fighting right extremism), which originated in Austria and has now spread to a number of cities in Germany. Then group was profiled recently on NPR. They worry about whether there will be a democratic Germany for their grandchildren. Given the fact that the Nazi party gained power legally through winning elections, the grandmothers may be right to worry.

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Irish in Dublin

Percentage of Irish who speak Irish daily

I am currently in Dublin. My last visit to Ireland was nearly a decade ago. At that time I was in Limerick and wrote about the status of the Irish language. Unfortunately, since then the language situation has not improved, with currently only around 2% of Irish reporting in the last census that they speak Irish as their main home language. On the other hand, there is an increase in the overall number of speakers of the language, although many have only a basic level of proficiency. That is due to the fact that Irish is a core subject in the primary school curriculum (in the Republic of Ireland, not in Northern Ireland). In Dublin, street signs and names of shops/restaurants are in both English and Irish, often with Irish given first. In fact, Dublin is one of the bright spots for Irish, with more than 50 Irish immersion schools (Gaelscoileanna). In the 2021 UNESCO’s Atlas of World Language Irish is listed as “definitely endangered” but it seems nonetheless to have a prominent presence in Ireland. As Welsh is in Wales, Irish is an important identity marker and source of pride in Ireland, a way to distinguish itself from England.

We were hoping to hear some traditional Irish music here and today went to the most famous pub in Dublin, the Temple Bar Pub, which advertises 24/7 music. We wanted to avoid the crowds so went there at 11 a.m. and sure enough there was music playing: a small band playing John Denver classics and other pop/rock songs – no Irish tunes. Tonight, the big news here in music is a concert happening near our hotel: Taylor Swift. Tickets are going for $1400 each – we will pass and try and again for a pub with Irish music.

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Politicians visiting China: Practice your chopstick skills

Janet Yellen eating in China

Despite the frosty relations between the United States and China these days, occasionally government officials from the two countries meet. Recently U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited China for talks with Chinese officials. A recent story in the New York Times did not report on the substance of the talks (the newspaper did elsewhere) but instead talked about something more perhaps equally important for visiting diplomats, namely what and how they ate while in China:

Where, what and how American dignitaries eat when they visit China is a serious matter. Choices of restaurants and dishes are rife with opportunities for geopolitical symbolism, as well as controversy and mockery. Chopstick skills — or a lack thereof — can be a sign of cultural competence or illiteracy.

American officials are closely observed, and their meals are widely reported on in Chinese social media. If they order what Chinese people normally eat, they are praised, particularly if the food is “authentic”, i.e. not modified for Western palates. Ms. Yellen has turned out to be somewhat of a sensation in the food department. She eats in a variety of different Chinese style restaurants (Cantonese, Sichuan,Yunnan), orders the right dishes, and, most importantly, is very good with chopsticks. In fact, her chopstick skill were on display in a video shared widely in China on Weibo. She also won points for not eating in a private room, but in the open with other diners. Her popularity even led one restaurant where she ate to create a set menu based on what she had eaten there: it’s called the “God of Wealth menu” (after all she’s in charge of the US Treasury).

My experience in China is that the Chinese are (justifiably) very proud of their cuisine and find it important for foreigners to try authentic Chinese food, and to like it. They are also very appreciative if foreigners make a effort to learn Chinese, and quite surprised when a Westerner can speak even a little Chinese. I wrote a while back about my positive experience when ordering beer in Chinese and getting the pronunciation correct. US diplomats would be even more warmly received in China if they not only were able to use chopsticks but also could speak a little Mandarin.

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What’s in a name? Maybe getting elected

Chinese ballot in San Francisco

Interesting piece recently in the New York Times on politicians in San Francisco, using Chinese names to help them get elected. That city, in fact, has itself an interesting Chinese name: 舊金山 (Jiù Jīn Shān), which translates as “Old Gold Mountain,” referencing the 19th-century gold rush in California. San Francisco has one of the oldest and best-known “Chinatowns” in the US, with many residents speaking Cantonese or Mandarin as their first language. Due to the large number of Chinese-speaking residents, San Francisco has mandated since 1999 that names for political candidates in local elections appear in both English and Chinese. That is no problem for candidates with a Chinese heritage; they likely already have Chinese names. For non-Chinese candidates, they can simply transliterate their English (or Spanish) names. Foreign names are usually transliterated into Chinese by phonetically selecting characters that approximate the sound of the name, as explained in this post from “Fluent in Mandarin.”  So “Anderson” becomes 安德森(Āndésēn). It’s not an automatic process, as there are often different characters that can be used for a specific sound.

As pointed out on that site, “The problem with ‘transliterating’ foreign names into Chinese is that they can often sound very unnatural, and not like a native Chinese name.” It’s also the case that the actual meaning of the name (through the characters used) chosen for phonetic similarity may be quite strange (for Chinese speakers). The Chinese transliteration of “Anderson” (安德森)means Install-Virtue-Forest. For foreigners in China, it’s sometimes better to come up with some kind of nickname, as those are frequently used informally in China. In China, I go by the name 老牛 (Lǎo niú), meaning “Old Bull”; that references my age but was particularly chosen as my oldest son (who’s married to a Chinese woman) is “Young Bull” in China.

In San Francisco, it used to be that non-Chinese politicians could come up with their own Chinese names. As it turned out, many did not simply use transliterations of their names, but instead came up with Chinese names that made them sound good. That has now changed, so that Chinese names can only be used if you were born with that name (i.e. are from a Chinese background) or have publicly used that Chinese name for at least 2 years. Otherwise, your name will be transliterated into Chinese phonetically by the election authorities. This has resulted in some candidates having to change the Chinese versions of their names. According to the Times article,

Michael Isaku Begert, who is running to keep his local judgeship, cannot use 米高義, which means in part “high” and “justice,” a name that suggests he was destined to sit on the bench. And Daniel Lurie, who is challenging Mayor London Breed, must scrap the name he had been campaigning with for months: 羅瑞德, which means “auspicious” and “virtue.” Mr. Lurie’s new name, 丹尼爾·羅偉, pronounced Daan-nei-ji Lo-wai, is a transliterated version that uses characters closer to the sound of his name in English but are meaningless when strung together.

According to a piece in the San Franciso Standard, this rule may actually disadvantage ethnic Chinese Americans: “American-born Chinese candidates may be unintended victims of the law, if they don’t have a birth certificate in Chinese that proves they were born with Chinese names.” They may have to supply alternative proof, which meant, according to the article, candidates, “were scrambling to seek old Chinese newspaper articles, Chinese school homework or Chinese family books to find the appropriate records.”

San Francisco is not the only US locale printing ballots in more than one language. According to the Timesarticle:

Certain towns in Alaska must translate ballots into Yup’ik, an Indigenous Alaskan language, while some counties in Arizona must do so in Navajo and Apache. Hundreds of jurisdictions around the nation must translate their ballots into Spanish, while 19 must print them in Chinese, 12 in Vietnamese and four in Korean.

It would be interesting to know if politicians in those areas who have English names also come up with names in those other languages, and whether in the process they try to play language games to make themselves sound good.

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A Confederate hero finally gone

Robert E.Lee’s head about to be melted down

This week the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, (just down the highway from me in Richmond, VA, the capital of the Confederacy) was melted down, to be later transformed into a new statue of some kind, likely representing ideas and beliefs very different from those Lee’s statue represented. The statue was built during the Jim Crow era and was designed to champion the “lost cause,” the claim that the  cause of  the Confederate States in the Civil War was just, heroic, and not about maintaining slavery in the South (which it was). An article in the New York Times puts the Confederate monuments (many of which were here in Richmond until recent times) into context:

Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. It does no good to simply reveal the secret — in this case, to tell people that most of the Confederate monuments were erected not at the end of the Civil War, to honor those who fought, but at the height of Jim Crow, to entrench a system of racial hierarchy. That’s already part of their appeal. Dr. Taussig has argued that public secrets don’t lose their power unless they are transformed in a manner that does justice to the scale of the secret. He compares the process to desecration. How can you expect people to stop believing in their gods without providing some other way of making sense of this world and our future?

There has been a lot of discussion about the Confederate statues since 2017, when the Alt-right marches happened in Charlottesville (in large part to protest the planned removal of the Lee statue) and even more since 2020 and the murder of George Floyd. Some have argued the statues should be kept as a historical record, perhaps with more in-place context provided (information on the origins and intended meaning of the statues). The NY Times article argues that the fate of the Lee statue was appropriate, given that no possible recontextualization or relocation (to a museum) would please everyone and that the original statues were erected with great fanfare:

That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities.

The city of Charlottesville has awarded the remains of the Lee statue to The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which leads Swords Into Plowshares, a project that will turn bronze ingots made from the molten Lee into a new piece of public artwork to be displayed in Charlottesville.

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Hip hop worldwide and social change

Afghan rapper and activist Sonita Alizadeh (Bryan R. Smith/AFP)

This year, 50 years of hip-hop or rap music is being celebrated. While recently country music has been in the news (particularly Try that in a small town and Rich men north of Richmond – see my blog post) due to controversial positions on social and political issues, hip hop has since the beginning integrated into its lyrics themes of social inequality and discrimination against African Americans. “Gansta rap” of the 1990’s dealt largely with violence and drug use, while also being accused of promoting misogyny and gun use.

Although identified with the US and inner-city Black communities, hip hop has in its 50 years spread across the world, used often as a tool for social change. A recent piece in the public radio show, Here and now, discussed a number of examples, as shown below. It would be easy to find examples from other cultures. The story points out that “the genre has been the voice of various generations demanding social change and even revolution: Rappers in Tibet are using hip-hop to preserve the traditional language. And in Tunisia, hip-hop even helped launch the Arab Spring.”

While the musical style of hip hop remains anchored in its North American roots, the language and culture of rappers adapts to the local conditions. This is imperative if the music is intended to carry a social message and effect societal change.

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l général, “the voice of Tunisia”


‪Dekyi Tsering‬ ལམ Road “yang sal དབྱངས་གསལ། ”


Sonita Alizadeh “Daughters For Sale”

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“Rich men north of Richmond” and Dylan’s “Only a pawn”

Oliver Anthony in 2023

The Republican debate this week of presidential candidates (minus Trump) began in an unusual way, with an exchange over a song, “Rich men north of Richmond,” by Oliver Anthony. The country-music-style song has hit the top of the Billboard charts, despite the singer being unknown. It’s an angry workingman’s anthem complaining about the “rich men” north of Richmond (i.e. politicians in Washington, D.C.) over low pay (overtime hours for bullshit pay), lack of respect (cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down), and control over people’s lives (they all just wanna have total control / wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do). There are also complaints familiar from right wing US politics such as welfare cheats (taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds) and over-taxation (your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end). Included as well are conspiracy theories such as the QAnon pedophilia story (I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere). Since then, the singer has insisted that his views have been misinterpreted (despite the song lyrics) and complained over the use of the song in the debate.

“Rich men north of Richmond” is not a call to action, but a cry of frustration:

Lord, it’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is

The popularity of the song taps into the sense of grievance felt by many in the US that the mainstream economic, social, and political systems in the US are against them; a perspective that Donald Trump rode to the presidency in 2016.

Bob Dylan in 1963

Interestingly, this is the 60th anniversary of the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in 1963, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Music was a big part of that event, with folk singers Joan Baez leading the crowd in “We shall overcome” and Bob Dylan singing protest songs such as “Only a pawn in their game”. The latter song was about the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi in 1963. The target of the song is racism, portrayed as leading not only to discrimination but to the existence of violent groups such as the Ku Klux Khan. Dylan portrays Medgar Evers’ assassin as a “pawn”, a poor white man manipulated by the “game” played by white supremacists:

But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

As in Oliver Anthony’s song, politicians too are to blame:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin, ” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train

The persona in Oliver Anthony’s song is part of the aggrieved population (people like me and people like you); the emphasis is on victimhood – we are being trodden down by the elites. Dylan’s perspective is less personal, from the outside, reporting on injustice, calling for civic engagement. The most widely sung protest song of the 1960’s was “We shall overcome”, which invites the singers to celebrate solidarity with all groups and to believe in a future better, more just world. That reflects Dr. King’s message from the March on Washington, a vision of a society free of racial prejudice: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The March on Washington was instrumental in leading just months later to new civil rights legislation. The sentiment expressed in “Rich men north of Richmond” may or may not be harbinger of things to come but it certainly has resonated widely in the US. It remains to be seen whether that might lead to an aggrieved former president finding enough support to reclaim the White House.

 

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Barbie’s origin story: Lilli, the German sex kitten doll

Barbie and Bild-Lilli

The Barbie movie comes out this week and has been heavily hyped in the media (lots of pink!). Barbie has been a controversial figure, representing a stereotypical male-gaze version of women (blond, thin waist, oversized breasts). Reacting to criticism from feminists in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the toy company marketing the doll, Mattel, tried to counter the Barbie image with the release of black and Hispanic dolls. I commented on “Treetop Barbie” in 2019, which portrays the doll as a forest canopy researcher. That was better received than the 2014 book, Barbie: I can be a computer engineer, in which Barbie is shown having the idea for a video game, but has to have her male friends actually do the coding. Apparently, Greta Gerwig’s movie will feature many different versions of Barbie in various professions.

It may be that it has been difficult for Mattel to change the image of Barbie due to its origin, as a heavily sexualized doll, Lilli, who first appeared in a comic in the German tabloid Bild Zeitung in 1952 and was then released as a doll in 1955. In the comic strip Lilli, a secretary, appeared scantily clad and portrayed in provocative poses.

Known as “Bild-Lilli” in Germany, the doll was particularly popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s with men. According to a recent article in Business Insider, “Men got Lilli dolls as gag gifts at bachelor parties, put them on their car dashboard, dangled them from the rearview mirror, or gave them to girlfriends as suggestive keepsakes” (citing the Robin Gerber biography of Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler). Handler had seen the Lilli doll on a trip to Europe and on her return to the US convinced Mattel to create Barbie. The striking similarities between the two dolls led to multiple lawsuits between Mattel and the German company producing Lilli, Greiner & Hausser. BTW, Lilli too spawned a movie, Lilli – ein Mädchen aus der Großstadt (Lilli, a Girl from the Big City) released in 1958.

In an interesting contrast, this week is also the start of another high-profile event featuring women, the World Cup; in this case highlighting athletic prowess rather than appearance

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A multicultural sash: opening the floodgates?

The Mexican-American graduation sash

At a high school graduation in Colorado, a student of Mexican-American heritage wanted to wear a sash to celebrate her bicultural identity. The school’s administration refused her permission with the justification that “allowing that regalia would ‘open too many doors.’” The student, Naomi Peña Villasano, sued the school but a federal judge last Friday upheld the decision barring her from wearing the sash. According to an article in the New York Times, at the graduation on Saturday, Ms. Villasano flouted the ruling and wore the sash anyway, apparently without incident. The article points out that Ms. Villasano’s case comes amid disputes elsewhere about what is protected free speech at commencement ceremonies. In Oklahoma on Thursday, the State Legislature overrode Gov. Kevin Stitt’s veto of a bill allowing students to wear Native American regalia at high school and college graduations.

In fact, schools in the US have recently become flashpoints for disputes that reflect the stark polarization in the political climate in the country as a whole. In Virginia, that was seen recently in new standards for teaching US history, with a first version of the standards downplaying the mistreatment of Native Americans, who in fact were described as the first “immigrants” to America. In many states, history curricula have been changed to align with Republican views opposing teaching the less savory sides of US history, such as the effects of slavery on the situation of African Americans today. Discussing sexual orientation in schools has also been a target, especially any introduction of topics related to LGBTQ+. That has led to book bans in many localities, including in the county next to mine in Virginia, Hanover County. There a local organization recently gave the school board a list of around 100 books it wanted banned. According to a news report from a local TV station, the group who submitted the proposed ban-list highlighted reasons ranging from content like “alternate gender ideologies” and “controversial social and racial commentaries,” to “alternate sexualities” and “self-harm.” A parent in the report commented, “We have seen this before. The Nazis have tried to burn books and erased the contents of those books.”

Indeed, the trend is very worrisome, as removing books from circulation stifles the ability of children to learn from the experiences of fictional characters (or of historical figures) that might mirror or illuminate their own lives and help them with the development of their personal identities. On a more positive note, I heard today that the English Department at my university (VCU) is seeing an uptick in the number of declared English majors entering the institution. The reason, according to the Department Chair: young people’s opposition to book banning.