wasn't X supposed to be behind us?

Some interesting columns have appeared lately asking why there's so much racial unrest at a time that we have a Black (or in any event, mixed-race) President and more interracial contact than ever.  Wasn't this supposed to be behind us?   Maybe not.

There's a theory that there is sometimes a "last gasp" of racism at the very point when it seems to have disappeared.   The theory is that people see the last vestiges of their racial/cultural identity disappearing and are moved to act in the opposite direction.   The theory--really a hypothesis, since it's more or less impossible to test--is sometimes used to explain the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, which began in a country (Germany) that had a relatively high degree of racial mixing.

It's interesting, although not especially heartening, to think of the implications of this theory for the gay community.   Many people are saying that, if the Supreme Court supports same-sex marriage, the issue will be "over" for the foreseeable future.   People said the same thing about race in 1964/65, and antisemitism a generation earlier.   But these things are rarely "over."   Groups that win A ask for B, while majorities frequently find backup strategies to use against assertive minorities.    Not a terribly cheerful view, I realize, but I think a pragmatic one.  

In the Passover Seder, it says that you have to relive the Exodus every year, the implication being that otherwise it will be reversed.     I think something like this applies to all social changes.   It's an easy lesson to forget, but one history conspires to remind us of.

The South Carolina Case

I don't know how the case will come out, although I suspect it will be harder to convict the cop of anything beyond manslaughter or the S.C. equivalent.   He looks to me like someone who panicked rather than someone really evil.  Then again, the guy is still dead.

I do find some of the outrage from white liberals hypocritical.   People have been cheering the
"reduced crime rate" and the "improved policing" that caused it for at least two decades.  They knew, or should have known, what it involved: more or less systematic intimidation of population groups who were perceived, rightly or wrongly, as potential criminals.   It's like the North, which made a fortune from the slave trade, turning around and saying, "the slaves in the South were mistreated?   We had absolutely no idea."

Without this debate, this kind of thing will keep happening, prosecuting the individual cops is unavoidable but it won't change the result.

she's in . . .

I found the Clinton announcement, or what I saw of it, to be slick, well-presented,   . . . and almost wholly insincere.  I think she's basically trying to be a softer version of Elizabeth Warren: "the deck is stacked against you, I'll help you compete," that sort of thing.   Where were they for the last 20 years while the deck allegedly was stacked in this way?

I still think the Democratic primaries will be more interesting than people think.   People need a story, and a coronation isn't a story.   Look for someone--O'Malley, Webb, Warren as a write-in, whoever--to be the next story and see what happens.

history, memory, and yet another museum

I spent my second to last day in Moscow at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, in an outlying district right next door to the building where the Passover Seder was held.   The museum is very impressive and up-to-date--I noticed that one Vladimir Putin was among the contributors--and it certainly has a story to tell.   By and large it's honest, mentioning pogroms and Soviet antisemitism alongside the happier aspects of the Russian Jewish story.   It's a shorter story than you might think, since there weren't many Jews on Russian territory until the Polish Partitions, although they certainly made up for it afterwards.    And it isn't over yet: notwithstanding a vast emigration, there are still perhaps a million Jews in Russia, about half of them in Moscow, and others in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, and so on.  It's even possible that they'll outlast the American Jewish community, although that may overstate things.  

It was interesting how the museum integrated Russian and Jewish life (the audience is mostly Russian and the English translations are somewhat incomplete).   There are predictable things like
shtetl life, the Holocaust, and so forth.   But there's also a whole section on Soviet Jewish war correspondents, like Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg, who are largely unknown in the west, and recorded statements from war veterans, complete with a T-34 tank.   I suppose this is no different from the American Museum of Jewish History, which includes some unhappy themes but tries to make the case that "we're Americans too."   Another example, I suppose, that after a time there's no history but only memory, which is inevitably what you make of it.

The "tolerance" part was rather limited--mostly a film and some interactive iPad material--and seemed more or less modeled on the MOT (Museum of Tolerance) in Los Angeles, which has essentially the same goal.

Across the street from the museum was a Jewish grocery which, this being Passover, was selling primarily matza and a few related items.   Like everything else in Russia, the matza was big, coming in boxes twice the American size.   I bought one box, why I don't know, mostly for the cover with Cyrillic writing I suppose.   If I'm lucky I'll eat half of it before I go home.   At least it stopped snowing, a nice metaphor for a population that has seen tough times but somehow keeps on going.

more from russia: museums and memories

Taking a break from conferencing, I spent Saturday morning at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Pobedy (Victory) Park.   It was rather different than an American war museum, rather as if the war had ended, say, last Thursday afternoon.   There were streams of kids in one kind of another of scout uniform listening to speeches that had words like pobedy (victory), narod (nation/people), and so forth sprinkled through them.   You could buy models of every conceivable Russian and even German tank, plane, or ship at the store downstairs.   There's even an Orthodox Church, added later, on the way in and supposedly a synagogue down the hill, although it wasn't too easy to find.

It's odd, but the museum reminded me less of the Mall in Washington and more of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, complete with a large memory hall, books with the names of the dead, and a large tower overlooking the building.   The themes are somewhat inverse--it's the hall of Remembrance and Sorrow, i.e., victory then lamentation, whereas Yad Vashem puts the Shoah before the Ge'vurah, although that too is occasionally reversed.    But the sense of immediacy is there, as if it could all happen with insufficient vigilance tomorrow, as if no one is quite complete without going there.

Not that there isn't another side to things.   For everyone raising money for Donbass there are twenty people sitting in cafes listening to American music and playing with their iPhones.  (I've seen the same video about Los Angeles seven times.)   Restaurant entrees have English-sounding names and McDonald's, rather more upscale than at home, does a brisk business.   And even a sense of humor about history: several different pairs of people, one dressed as Lenin and the other as Stalin, meander through Red Square posing for photographs which they don't usually bother to charge you for.

It's hard to get out of your own culture and sometimes you shouldn't try.   When I see celebrations of Putin or when conference speakers talk about the need to protect Russian "sovereignty" and administrative discretion I inevitably wince.   I suppose many foreigners felt that way about Reagan, Bush, and so forth.   But I do think it's possible to maintain  your values without necessarily feeling superior to others or thinking you're necessarily smarter than they are.   Certainly the art, music, and architecture here, especially in the older areas not rebuilt in the '30s and '40s, are second to none.

The other night I attended a Passover Seder in an outlying area near the Jewish Museum.  It was mostly expatriates--the rabbi was from New York--but still had something of a Russian flavor.   Afterward I staggered out into the snow and marveled at the randomness of things.   With a couple of different moves couldn't I be living in Moscow, my father a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, and myself  going to websites where Stalin was Roosevelt, Putin was Reagan, and Gorbachev was a Russian Jimmy Carter?   It's an interesting thought.

more from moscow

A long conference in Russian with running English translations.   Today it's mostly quasi-official speakers so hard to know how representative.   Still a few comments:

1.   The principal theme is state sovereignty and the rule of law, which means that the west should stop interfering in Russian affairs.  Whatever one thinks of this, if the goal of sanctions, etc. was to get Russia to think more like the west, that isn't happening, at least not at the top.

2.    The effect of historical memory is as salient here as in the street.   Someone was announced as a war veteran and received prolonged applause.  There's a breakout panel on legal innovations resulting from The Great Patriotic War.

3.    They don't seem to have gotten the memo on gender equity--not many women on the podium--but a lot more at the younger levels.

All in all the breakfast buffet at Cafe Tchaikovsky, including a full pot of Russian Tea, was a pretty good bet even if cheaper alternatives were available.   I'll be back with more tomorrow.

first day russia

The first thing that strikes you in Russia is that nothing is small.   There are forests on the way in from the airport to Moscow, and traffic jams that pile up regardless of the hour.   What looks like a short walk on the map . . . isn't.

The second thing is that, even more than the American South, it's the proof of the adage that the past isn't over . . . it isn't even past.   Airport ads show pictures of victorious Soviet soldiers in 1945.   Electronic billboards advertise movies about Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and other 70-year old battles.    Even the war against Napoleon feels like it ended last Thursday.

But tradition has a softer side, too.   Tea still comes in a pot that's placed over a slow burner at the table.   Even the Starbucks-type chains have nicely dressed waitpersons and are scrupulously polite.   The one I'm sitting in now has a poem about writers and coffee on the wall (my Russian is always good enough to know what people are talking about but never to know what they're saying).

The oddest thing to me is the similarity to that other pseudo-western country that I spend time in, the one in the Middle East.   I guess it's no surprise since the original Israelis basically came from here.   But the atmosphere, the mix of warmth toward those inside the circle and at best ambivalence toward those outside it, is oddly reminiscent of north Tel Aviv.   Wait, next you'll tell me the collective farm isn't really a Jewish concept, that Tolstoy talked about it decades earlier, and . . .

More tomorrow.