By John Ballard
Reader advisory: This post is yet another "Sunday Reading." It's long and tedious, meant more for my own edification than yours. But anyone is welcome to come along. The rest is after the jump.
Calendars have a way of overlaying events in unexpected ways. Official holidays are moved to a convenient Monday in eternal remembrance of long weekends. (Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays were melded into a single Monday in February.) So far no one has figured out how to get Thanksgiving Day to a Monday or Veteran's Day from "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of the year but their new assignments are apt to come about some day, almost certainly in response to yet another economic reason.
Today is Easter Day. As my mother taught me, Easter is always the "First Sunday after the first full moon following the Vernal Equinox", which establishes an anchor point for other liturgical observances, Lent being the forty days preceding Easter and Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent, following Fat Tuesday -- otherwise known as Mardi Gras -- last sinful fling before forty days of recovery. Outside the US what we call Mardi Gras is an extended season known as Carnival(e). Places like Brazil and Italy don't mess around. They understand sinful revelry much better than American Puritans.
For liturgically observant Christians today (as well as all the Sundays in Lent) is a "feast day," meaning if they have been denying themselves meat, today is the day to celebrate their birthright as carnivores. For forty days the word "Hallelujah" has gone missing from the services but today the Easter greeting of "Hallelujah! Christ is risen!" elicits the ancient response, "The Lord is Risen, indeed! Hallelujah!"
But amidst the joy this year we are apt to forget that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was on April 4, 1968. The holiday remembering King is in January, appropriately meant to remember his birthday (January 15, 1929) but it was his death that forever sealed his place in history. So in the midst of Easter my memory of King is stirred and I want to repost something from my old blog very important to me personally.
Remembering the King family
January 21, 2008
It was my honor to serve part of the King family in my early days as a cafeteria manager in training. The location has been closed for years, but the old Piccadilly Cafeteria at Cumberland Mall in Atlanta was where I worked as trainee and associate for the better part of twelve years before being assigned my own unit.
Occasionally on Sunday afternoons a party of four or five, sometimes as many as seven or eight, would come for lunch which included M.L. King, Sr., whom everyone called Daddy King, and Mrs. Coretta King. Their visit was always a low-key event. By then -- this would have been in the years between 1976 and 1980 -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was over a decade past, public racism was no longer acceptable, Daddy King's wife and Mrs. King's husband had both been killed and all the family seemed to want was a quiet place to enjoy a Sunday meal together.
The first time they came Daddy King sent for the manager on duty and wanted me to know that when they left they would be paying by check and he didn't expect to have any trouble. He made it clear that he wanted to pay the bill and leave quietly just like any other party, with no special attention. Of course a quiet word to the cashier ahead of time was all that was needed.
I resisted the temptation to make conversation, as much as I would have liked to do so, because I had the feeling that the best service I could provide was seating them quietly where they would be least likely to attract attention and allowing them to enjoy their meal without interruption. I know my staff was proud to have them as customers and after a few visits they got used to the idea and didn't make a big deal out of it.
At that time we were living in downtown Atlanta. Our neighborhood, Virginia-Highland, was racially balanced enough that the local elementary school was pretty well integrated. It was situated between two other neighborhoods that were not integrated. At that time the Atlanta Public Schools were busing students to balance the racial composition of the schools, so an elementary school in Bedford-Pine, which was nearly all black, was paired with another school in Morningside which was white. The same buses that took white first-, second- and third-graders from Morningside Elementary to C.W. Hill Elementary in the black neighborhood returned with black fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders to integrate Morningside Elementary.
My wife and I noticed that our youngest daughter was not learning to read in the first grade. By the first of second grade we heard that C.W. Hill had a good reputation and might be a better place for her to attend school. Looking into it, we learned that since we were white and that school was majority black (51%) we were eligible to transfer our child to that school in accordance with the "M to M program" (Minority to Majority). I suppose had we been black she would not have been allowed to go there, but since we were white, it was approved. Sure enough, when she started she was tested and paired with a "team-teacher" and before the second grade was half over she was reading out loud and we were well pleased. (We didn't expect that when she got to Morningside as a fourth-grader we would run into an old-fashioned teacher who didn't believe in learning disabilities and we had to put her in a private school instead...but that is another story.)
While at C.W. Hill our child was invited to a birthday party of a classmate who was a nephew of the late Dr. King, but again we didn't make a big deal of it aside from telling her how very special that was. Children often accept one another at face value much better than their parents. We tried to rear our children to select their friends according to how they live rather than who they are. They are grown now and I think it worked.
This year's contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama underscores the racial divide that remains nearly three decades later. I am amazed at the man's equanimity and grace as he walks a narrow line to win support from both white and black constituencies. I am equally impressed with the passive-aggressive politics by which Hillary Clinton and her organization are able to exploit the race card to her clear advantage.
My remembrance and this post were inspired by an excellent essay I came across in this morning's reading by David Darlington at Josh Clayborn's blog, In the Agora.
Racial mistrust is still very real in this country, even if the days of widespread violence are mostly in the past, and because of that mistrust the Clintons may have stumbled on a way to marginalize and defeat the first African American candidate with a serious, realistic chance at the White House. I do hope that Barack Obama finds a way to keep his cross-racial appeal and win the Democratic nomination though -- not just because it would mean the defeat of the Clinton machine, and not just because of the historical triumph of the first nomination of an African American by a major party, but also because Hillary Clinton is just plain wrong about Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. Politicians who try to impose their will on a republic from the top down without the public being prepared for it get kicked out of office, and rightly so. Men (and women) like MLK Jr are essential to seed the public mind with ideas of change and what a new, improved society can look like. The pols that people like the Clintons love so much can only reap what the visionaries have sown.
This was written in January, 1008 and the campaign for the nomination was hot and heavy. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were the only two contenders remaining and both were campaigning hard. In retrospect it is important to recall these allusions to the matter of race. The Clinton campaign was not advancing the issue, but neither could they help noticing how it puzzled together to their favor.
Only after Obama won the election, inviting people from many parts of the political landscape to help him lead the country did Hillary Clinton accept his invitation to become his Secretary of State.And in spite of endless openings since to play "the race card" the president has never yielded to what has to be an almost daily temptation.
Via a Peter Daou tweet we have this from Wired Magazine.
Kindness Breeds More Kindness, Study Shows
In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who�s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.
Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.
In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were �tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,� wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.
Their findings, published March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the latest in a series of studies the pair have conducted on the spread of behaviors through social networks.
In other papers, they�ve described the spread of obesity, loneliness, happiness and smoking. But there was no way to know whether those apparent behavioral contagions were actually just correlations. People who are overweight, for example, might simply tend to befriend other overweight people, or live in an area where high-fat, low-nutrient diets are the norm.
The latest research was designed to identify cause-and-effect links. In it, Fowler and Christakis analyze the results of a so-called public-goods game, in which people were divided into groups of four, given 20 credits each, and asked to secretly decide what to keep for themselves and what to contribute to a common fund. That fund would be multiplied by two-fifths, then divided equally among the group. The best payoff would come if everyone gave all their money � but without knowing what others were doing, it always made sense to keep one�s money and skim from the generosity of others.
Only at the end of each game did players find out what the rest of their group had done. The game was run again and again, each time mixing group members and keeping their identities anonymous, so that decisions were never personal.
When one person gave, others in their group tended to be generous during the next two rounds of play. Recipients of their largess became more generous in turn, and so on down the chain. When a punishment round was added � players could spend their own money to reduce the rewards of selfish players � generosity lasted even longer
�It is often supposed that individuals in experiments like the one described here selfishly seek to maximize their own payoffs,� wrote Fowler and Christakis. �The equilibrium prediction is to contribute nothing and to pay nothing to punish noncontributors, but the subjects did not follow this pattern.�
According to the the researchers, the explanation lies not in calculations of odds and rewards, but in simple behavioral mimicry: Monkey see, monkey do, human style. When people are irrationally generous, others follow suit.
The network described by Fowler and Christakis doesn�t necessarily replicate natural group dynamics, but suggests a general model for how behaviors spread. They suggest that researchers of altruism and cultural evolution study how different group configurations promote or limit the spread of behaviors.
However, the findings aren�t just a feel-good story. Selfish behavior spreads easily, too.
Somehow I like the juxtaposition of these two links. It helps me remember the profound impact King had not only on me as an individual but on others who never saw or made contact with the injustices he faced and overcame with non-violent direct action. I see the Obama administration as an extension of that same spirit of conflict resolution. It would be crazy to suggest that any president advance a "non-violent" approach to everything, but Barack Obama is investing far more political currency in that direction than any president in living memory. Even in formulating war policy his approach to both Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates an almost unrealistic expectation of lower casualties in the long run. I never expected to hear uniformed American soldiers speak sensibly about getting the support of foreign civilians rather than blowing up where they live but that is exactly what I heard last week on the radio.
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So before I stop today, the juxtaposition of two videos stands out in this week's You Tube surfing and referrals.
Back in January I posted the story of General Larry Platt, a card-carrying veteran of the Civil Rights Movement whose appearance on American Idol singing and performing "Pants on the Ground" became the first You Tube viral sensation of 2010.
Since that time the video I embedded has been removed due to selfish, short-sighed copyright laws, but the diligent searcher can find copies anyway.
Meantime, here is his appearance on The View as his fame spread following that timeless original showing.
Now compare what you just saw with this...
New York State Senator Eric Adams may not be cool but he's on the right track.
I have nothing but admiration for what he is doing. Maybe between him and General Larry Platt sagging pants can be made into a fashion stigma.
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