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The Light in Double Equivalents

The outrage that greeted Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich’s recent comment about poor people stemmed mostly from his condescension, and not from the fact of his assertion. Speaking at a campaign in Iowa last week, two weeks after he had called the labour laws in America “truly stupid”, Mr. Gingrich said:

Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.

Coming from a middle-class background and growing up in Nigeria’s lousy economy of the 90s, I relate with much of what he said with regards to the habit of working. The disingenuity of the argument he makes, however, is in the way it casually omits the truth in a similar argument for the other side. Read below:

“Really rich children in really affluent neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s for partying.”

Did you see what I did there? I substituted the words “poor” for “rich” and other “negative” equivalents for “positive” ones. Does that little trick change the truth in the assertion of Mr. Gingrich? No. The problem however is that he did not make this balanced claim. By focusing only one side and demonizing poor children, he pits himself on one side of the argument, and thus muddles the issue he was supposed to be solving. If the focus of his comment was to breed a culture of working, is there a particular reason why it should focus only on poor children?

Let me make a second example, also from Mr. Gingrich’s attempt at political commentary. While speaking with a Jewish television last week, Mr. Gingrich said that Palestinians are, after all, “an invented people” who didn’t exist as a nation until after the exit of the Ottoman empire. Of course, he was right. The people now referred to as the Palestinian people, now craving for a state of their own, are just Arab people living in the middle east. However, so are the Jewish people as well! The Jewish State of Israel (at least as we know it today) was just as well “invented” in self-determination after the Second World War. So why did Newt Gingrich not state the second equivalent truth of his assertion? Because it is not politically expedient, and – like other Republican candidates – all he wanted to do was to sound Pro-Israel than the incumbent president whose job he seeks.

Now, to my final two examples on this matter, this time on race. I found out to my chagrin that the most popular post on my earlier wordpress blog (before moving to this domain) has remained this one where I wondered if oyinbo – a Yoruba word for “white person” was a racist word. I knew it wasn’t, but I was interested in reader perspectives on the way a word conditions the way we look at the world and other people. I got feisty, energetic responses. But what struck me earlier this morning however is a fact that I had overlooked for too long: that more than half of what is considered racist – even here in the United States – were anything but. Here are two quotes, the first by Donald Trump: “I have a great relationship with the blacks,” said a few months ago to public outrage, and Ann Coulter’s “Our blacks are so much better than their blacks” – a reference to African-Americans in the Republican party as opposed to those in the Democratic party.

It is easy for me as an African to take umbrage at each of these statements (as I undoubtedly did for a few days without being able to lay my hands on why the statements seemed so jarring). A few months removed from the uttering of those words however, I finally got it. It took a short memory trip back to the sociopolitical environment of my home country. “I have a great relationship with the whites” would not have elicited such a public umbrage in Nigeria but it would have raised eyebrows of social awkwardness. There is a consensus that there is something awkward with a citizen who felt the need to associate himself with a particular race for political advantage. “Our whites are so much better than their whites” would have elicited a similar response of awkwardness, albeit with a heavy dose of scorn and derision. It definitely would take some self-loathing and inferiority complex to make such a public proclamation. Implicit in these statements however is the acceptance of the “otherness”, and thus the problem. In Nigeria, this “otherness” is accepted, considering our colonial history The “whites” are not one of us. In America, it is not, because of the country’s history of slavery and civil rights. The “blacks” are also Americans, and undeserving of such “otherization,” thus the outrage. If Mr. Trump had said “I have a great relationship with the Nigerians”, or Ann Coulter, “our Nigerians are better than their Nigerians,” no one would have taken notice.

There is something to be said for double equivalents. Some things don’t make much sense until we put them in front of a mirror of polar equivalents. Some don’t make sense at all, eventually, of course, but it sometimes helps to pare them off all their political overtones. Mister Trump and Miss Coulter get a pass from racism but not from bigotry, and Speaker Gingrich gets all the blame he very well deserves.

The Light in Double Equivalents was published on December 14th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , , under the Uncategorized category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

On Vain Newspeaks

One of the few things that irk me the most about comments by American government officials from the Bush administration reflecting on their role in the post 9/11 America is the claim that they had kept America safe ever since. Watching an interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney with Chris Wallace on Fox today, I kept wondering whether the interviewers who endure this kind of response merely never think about it, are equally as blind, or just don’t care. The fact that such responses come when asked about the justification of heinous interrogation practices makes it even more disgusting. Let us see how the argument holds up.

Before 9/11, there was only one attack on American soil for fifty years, and that was the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Since 1945, there was no other attack on American soil until the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. By that stupid logic of claiming to be a grand protector of the country just because the days of danger are far between one another, the Clinton Administration could have made a badge for itself for not having endured another attack between 1993 and 2001. But what sense would that have made? I have found it as laughable (if not naively tragic, and a stupid political gimmick) that the right wing commentators, particularly the administrative officials of the Bush administration, would claim this as their legacy: “After all, we have never had any other attack. We kept the country safe since then.” What kind of an excuse is that? Oh yes I let the house burn once, but look I have made sure that it hasn’t happened again since seven years ago. Don’t I deserve a cookie?  Or like the man in Yoruba fables who had just returned from a witch doctor and then claiming that he is now invincible from all bullets simply because he is wearing a juju amulet. The witch doctor may take credit for this “safety” from now till eternity and get paid handsomely for it too, but he would do well to warn the man to stay away from a shooting range!

I feel very strongly about 9/11. I never lost anyone there (a family friend was in one of the building earlier in the morning and left before the planes hit) but the enormity of the attack, the scope of the damage and the terrible fall-out from that heinous act changed me totally and the way I look at the world. The sight of brave firefighters going up the stairs as wounded and panicking people came down to safety is one that I would never forget. I watched the movie 9/11 some time in 2002 and was heartbroken. The movie examines the bravery and sacrifice of the firefighters from one of the fire stations in Manhattan and the way they gave themselves to save the lives of others. I have never been able to digest the magnitude of their brave sacrifice and commitment. And to think that some politicians in Washington almost totally dismissed the even braver commitment of living first responders by refusing to give them adequate medical care, one wonders where humanity is sometimes headed.

In any case, politicians never kept America safe. Former Vice-President Cheney certainly never did with his enhanced interrogation techniques that has put the country’s soldiers in more harm than ever before. (And he did manage to get an arrest warrant for himself in Nigeria albeit for a different reason). Ten years after the fatal negligence that caused the death of over 5,000 people, we would do well to work for a safer world than celebrate the mediocrity of vain chest-thumping. Mark Twain has one appropriate quote about keeping quiet when speaking would have an adverse effect on the perception of one’s wisdom. I’ll also add “a sense of shame”, and “humanity”.

I’m pissed. Can you tell?

On Vain Newspeaks was published on September 5th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.