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"Over Forty, Over Educated, and Underemployed" Maybe you know someone who is educated and can't find a full-time position in their field. Chances are this person is a mature adult and has many years of creative and productive work listed on their resume or CV. Recently, however, this person and many others, might have gone from one part-time job to another; One temping assignment to another. As they get older, few ever obtain appropriate jobs. Never being called back for a full-time position regardless of the excellent work they had completed on the emergency or rush assignment, they become “entrepreneurs,” or in desperation get involved with countless Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) schemes. What is wrong with this person? Why can't they find and hold a full-time job? Is it their personality? Their work ethic? The quality of their work? Their race or ethnicity? Their gender or sexual persuasion? Too many years of experience? Their age? Are they an aberration, and one of a small number who just can't get a full-time position in their field at the salary level their experience and education would normally demand? Or are they a part of a growing number of frustrated professionals world-wide who have been squeezed out of the labor market permanently by forces beyond their control? Are they the latest casualties of a dysfunctional economic and political system that places a higher priority on making a profit than on providing decent jobs? A system that no longer has any regard for those who have played by the rules and worked very hard to get the education that was supposed to have guaranteed them a well-paying position. A position leading to a meaningful career with an agency or organization that had some semblance of concern for the welfare of their employees and their dependents. In a recent survey conducted by Information Week of 200 managers, only 2% would hire an applicant with more than 10 years of experience. Only 1% would hire anyone with more than 20 years of experience. Twenty-five percent would prefer to hire recent college graduates. Twenty-six percent would hire a worker with less than 3 years of experience, and an additional forty-six percent preferred to hire someone with four to 10 years of experience. Higher salary expectations of experienced workers are a factor along with a perceived lack of current skills. In the past, almost any degree got you in the door because a degree indicated trainability. It was a screener for initiative and ambition. Today, however, according to the most recent research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 60 percent of unemployed 55-yearolds are unable to obtain work because employers consider them too old. For those over 65 (70-74) the percent of those employed drops dramatically. Indeed, one-third of those over 65 rely on Social Security for virtually all of their income. The underemployment of the more educated is one of the reasons for the much publicized declining unemployment rate; that the education system is turning out graduates who can’t get a job in their field; that modern technology and automation has helped employers eliminate thousands of qualified workers; that age discrimination is real; that downsizing and outsourcing are also a major factor contributing toward the creation of a new subgroup in the nation, "The Affluent Poor." Age discrimination is real. According to professionals in employment agencies, someone 55 or older will typically take three months longer to find employment than the average job seeker. The AARP recently won a case against an executive-search firm that screened out candidates over 45. The dream of a job for life followed by retirement bears little relation to reality. For many older workers, the pressing challenge is how to remain employed until they are ready to retire, or until they can get on Social Security. In a recent survey by ExecuNet, an Internet-based career services center for executives, 58% of the respondents said they had experienced an increase in age discrimination during the past five years. It is more subtly acceptable than gender or racial bias. Until recently, there has been very little evidence to show whether or not age discrimination exists in hiring, but now the number of age-discrimination complaints has soared in the past few years, reflecting corporate America's determination to cut costs by weeding out many of its highest-paid workers. In 2013, over 21,000 people filed age-discrimination complaints with the EEOC; this is up from 14,000 in 2004. Unemployment and underemployment for older workers is not seen by many people as a serious problem. Many workers have actually given in to accepting unsatisfactory jobs in order to escape the stigma of being out of work. A third of retirees cite job loss as the main reason for ceasing their last full-time job. There is also clear evidence that a significant proportion of those who describe themselves as retired only do so because it is more socially acceptable than to announce that they are unemployed or more correctly, unemployable. It should also be noted that 'early retirement', or more correctly, 'early exit' from the work force has increased. Much of this early exit is involuntary and the term 'retirement' can be very misleading. In studies where undergraduates or human resource managers are given resumes that are identical except for age and asked to hypothetically choose between them, they will usually choose the younger of the two candidates. Since most people do not actually put their ages on resumes, age was indicated by date of high school graduation. Is it strictly an aversion to age, however, or is it an attempt by companies to keep salary costs down and skill sets current? A major deterrent to hiring and keeping older workers is also the high cost of employer provided health insurance. Listed below are reasons stated on research reports for not wanting to hire older employees: Shorter career potential (specific human capital investment) Suspicion about competence (Why did they leave job?) Lack energy Costs of health and life insurance and pensions Less flexible/adaptable Higher salary expectations Health risks absences Knowledge and skills obsolescence (Skill Set) Block career paths of younger workers Fear of discrimination suit Some of the reasons listed above are perfectly justified: Often, they do need to upgrade their skills There is a shorter career potential Health cost will probably increase Experienced workers do tend to expect higher salaries They might block a career path of a younger employee Older workers are less likely to get job-related training than younger workers and this policy has seriously disadvantaged older employees in the labor market. When an adult man applies for an entry-level job with only a short work history, the employer is likely to think that there is something wrong with him. In the worst case scenario, the employer might think the man had been incarcerated. John, a 61 year-old former college professor, thought the factory job would just be a temporary solution, just for a few months. But soon he will somberly celebrate his three-year anniversary on the job, where he earns less than half as much as he did at the university. "I've worked a long time for almost nothing. I never thought I'd have to sacrifice as much as I did. I'm out here living paycheck to paycheck, just hoping nothing happens before I can get Medicare. It takes a lot of energy to be ‘treading water’ all the time." Alonzo Miller, Ph.D. is another typical example. A 50-year old research scientist, who has bumped around from one temporary job to another over the past five years, doing junior-level work that slashed the family income from $80,000 to $20,000. He has a sick wife, two dependent children, and no health insurance. According to a recent study, a younger worker is more than 40 percent more likely to be called back for an interview than an older worker, where older is defined as age 50 or older. The study showed that in Massachusetts a younger seeker needed to send out 19 resumes before they got an interview, whereas the older worker had to send out 27. Similarly, in Florida the comparable numbers of resumes are 16 for the younger worker, and 23 for the older. This 40% advantage for the younger worker is important when one considers the time and cost involved in running around to numerous interviews. If we assume that it takes 7-10 interviews to obtain a position (which may be optimistic, since this is the estimate for college graduates), what would you estimate would be the average number of interviews an older worker would have to go through before they are hired? A report from the University of Washington predicted an unemployment rate of 50% for PhDs. Many, the report said, would be employed in positions unrelated to the PhD or locked in temporary positions. The increase in the production of PhD's has not been matched with a corresponding increase in the numbers of available tenure-track faculty positions. A source of concern is reports showing increasing numbers of PhDs are employed in part-time positions, or in positions unrelated to their doctoral degree. Many colleges now only hire adjunct, or part-time professors. This means no benefits, and no possibility of a sabbatical or a pension. It is getting harder to get a full-time university position because of the continued erosion of university budgets, and a decline in the rate of faculty retirements. Increased periods of unemployment or underemployment begin to affect individuals psychologically. They start exhibiting low self-esteem which limits their capacity to play an active part in society during later life. When one is underemployed their social participation can be restricted and severe psychological and physical problems often occur. Underemployment not only drags a person down psychologically, in some ways they are just as bad off as those who are out of work. Their misfortune spills over to their families, often straining relationships. They are more pessimistic and more willing to pick up and move to another area. Rising underemployment is also one of the reasons for the lower unemployment rate reported by the Department of Labor. Many out-of-work people have accepted any kind of work, surrendering to disappointment, desperation and deepening piles of unpaid bills. One former engineer applied for 1,800 jobs around the world and he did not even get one interview! Eventually, he filed for personal bankruptcy. As a truck driver he now works 90 hours per week, racing against time to rebuild his retirement fund. The New York Times reported that a recent survey showed that when companies hired back employees previously laid off, 36% were hired back as consultants and independent contractors without benefits. This is a common practice of IBM since the early 1990's. Also, another 37% of those hired back came on board for part-time or temporary assignments. Often into the same positions, and even the same desk that they had before they were discharged. As the age increases, the applicant will receive fewer and fewer appointments for interviews, and they will receive even fewer job offers after the employer sees the applicant and has a better chance to estimate how old they really are. What’s wrong with Ethnocentrism? Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity. A common idiom for ethnocentrism is “tunnel vision.” In this context, ethnocentrism is the view that a particular ethnic group’s system of beliefs and values is morally superior to all others. Ethnocentrism occurs all over the world and everyday, at both the local and political levels. Historical examples of ethnocentrism are often given as how people wrongly thought in the past. However, there is also plenty of evidence that people today are quite invested in the superiority of their cultures. Ethnocentrism is often exploited to foster conflict, and to promote the power of a particular group. Social conflict and wars usually have ethnocentrism at their core, which over time proves to be self-destructive for all concerned. Efforts to bring advancements to other parts of the world may be well-meaning, but may not be culturally necessary when viewed through the eyes of another culture. One example of this has been the US attempt to “bring democracy” to the rest of the world, which immediately shows US preference that democracy can be the only acceptable or is the best form of government. The US is basing this on long held cultural opinions about democracy. With instances occurring since its conception, the United States has often thought of itself as more powerful, more economically sound, and just generally "better" than other nations. Although the idea of every citizen in the United States belonging to one ethnicity is certainly debatable, since the country has citizens who originally came from all over the world, the feeling of national pride can stand in for a pure ethnicity in this case.  Why is it OK to say “God Bless America” instead of “God Bless the world”? Since it provides a sense of belonging and social cohesion, and it could be a good thing. When taken to extremes of racism or cultural bigotry, it can be a very bad thing. The socio-anthropological concept of ethnocentrism is important because in today's world it is a major source of hostility and inter-group conflict. It is a divisive "us vs. them" mentality. Many groups feel that they alone occupy the central position in the universe and that their culture, race or religion is superior to all others. This can lead to attempts to dominate or even eradicate another group. The functions of ethnocentrism in maintaining order are more apparent than those which promote social change. First, ethnocentrism encourages the solidarity of the group. Believing that one's own ways are the best encourages a "we" feeling with associates and strengthens the idea that loyalty to comrades and preservation of the basis for superiority are important values. A positively view could be that ethnocentrism promotes continuance of the status quo and discourages change. Second, ethnocentrism hinders the understanding of the cooperation with other groups. If the ways of one's own group are best, there is little incentive to interact with inferior groups. In fact, attitudes of suspicion, disdain and hostility are likely to be engendered. Ethnocentrism leads us to make false assumptions about cultural differences. We are ethnocentric when we use our cultural norms to make generalizations about other peoples' cultures and customs. Such generalizations -- often made without a conscious awareness that we've used our culture as a universal yardstick -- can be way off base and cause us to misjudge other peoples. Ethnocentrism can lead to cultural misinterpretation and it often distorts communication between human beings. Extreme ethnocentrism is likely to promote conflict, as the records of past wars, and religious and racial conflicts reveal, such as racism, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing. These views are generally condemned by the world community, but we regularly see such cases in the news. One place where ethnocentrism has become a serious social problem is in Europe with the rise of Islamization. According to the newspaper The Age, “Hatred of Jews pours out on television, newspapers and mosques: Israel is to blame for every wrong that besets Arab countries; the Holocaust is either a lie or didn’t go far enough; the ancient Christian ‘blood libel’, that Jews kill children and use their blood to make Passover bread, is repeated in mainstream newspapers. It is common wisdom that Jews were behind the September 11 attacks, and that Jews persuaded the Americans to invade Iraq.” French journalist and author Alexandre del Valle says, “We see that our society is dividing between those who are Muslim and those who are black and those who are white," he said. "Instead of the state bringing people together, people are dividing." If present trends continue, in some European countries fully half of the population will be Muslim not long after mid-century. At some point sharia law will be introduced. The revolutionary efforts of groups who see themselves as downtrodden have included deliberate efforts to foster ethnocentrism as a means of strengthening themselves. One example is the slogan "black power." Ethnocentrism is one of the main reasons why division exists among member of different ethnicities, religious groups and races. The group members of an ethnocentric group believe that their group is superior or better in a number on ways compared to others around it. Is everyone ethnocentric? Some believe that there is no way not to be ethnocentric, they believe it cannot be avoided, nor can it be willed away by a positive or well-meaning attitude. We make false assumptions based on our own limited experience. This is all we know... what we have already experienced is the basis for our "reality", what we expect. It is normal to assume it is the "natural" basis of reality... because our own ways work for us. Ethnocentrism leads to misunderstanding others. We falsely distort what is meaningful and functional to other peoples through our own tinted glasses. We see their ways in terms of our life experience, not their context. We do not understand that their ways have their own meanings and functions in life, just as our ways have for us. At the heart of this is that we do not understand that we do not understand! So we aren't aware that we can develop more valid understandings about how they experience life. All of this has consequences within our own society and in international relations. An ultimate case of such misunderstandings is warfare, where many people are killed; maimed for life, have their families, subsistence, health, and way of life disrupted, sometimes forever. A lack of understanding can also inhibit constructive resolutions when we face conflicts between social groups. It is easy to assume that others "should" have certain perspectives or values. How often are we prone to address conflicts when others tell us how we should think and feel? “People born into a particular culture that grow up absorbing the values and behaviors of the culture will develop a worldview that considers their culture to be the norm. If people then experience other cultures that have different values and normal behaviors, they will find that the thought patterns appropriate to their birth culture and the meanings their birth culture attaches to behaviors are not appropriate for the new cultures. However, since people are accustomed to their birth culture, it can be difficult for them to see the behaviors of people from a different culture from the viewpoint of that culture rather than from their own.” Examples of ethnocentrism include religiocentric constructs claiming a divine association like "divine nation", "One Nation under God", and Afrocentrism, whose prime goal is to encourage ethnic pride in order to effectively combat the destructive consequences of cultural and universal racism. The African-American professor Clarence E. Walker who teaches history at the University of California, Davis, has described Afrocentrism as "a mythology that is racist, reactionary, essentially therapeutic and is eurocentrism in black face." Dr. Cain Hope Felder, a Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Howard University , has warned Afrocentrists to avoid certain pitfalls, including: • Demonizing categorically all white people, without careful differentiation between persons of goodwill and those who consciously perpetuate racism. • Adopting multiculturalism as a curricular alternative that eliminates, marginalizes, or vilifies European heritage to the point that Europe epitomizes all the evil in the world. Gross over-generalizations and using factually or incorrect material is bad history and bad scholarship The opposite of ethnocentrism is Cultural Relativism. This is the view that individual beliefs and values systems are culturally relative. That is, no one ethnic group has the right to say that their particular system of beliefs and values, their worldview, is in any way superior to anyone else’s system of beliefs and values. What’s right for one culture might be wrong for another and that’s alright. There is no absolute standard of right and wrong by which to compare and contrast morally contradictory cultural values. Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism are mutually exclusive. There is little doubt that most social scientists are biased in favor of peaceful social change and are opposed to conflict. Consequently, they tend even if subtly, to denigrate ethnocentrisms and to imply that students must rid themselves of it if they are to learn effectively. A classic example cultural relativism and of anti-ethnocentric anthropology is Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928),even though her work has been criticized for equalizing all cultures as being moral and correct. Traces of this sense of European ethnocentrism are still evident today. For example, in schools in Europe, world studies courses tend to focus almost solely on the history of the United States and Europe, and largely ignore other parts of the world. One of the most prominent examples of ethnocentrism was the Sinocentric system developed out of the idea of the "Mandate of Heaven" proliferated by the Chinese philosopher Confucius. The "Mandate of Heaven" meant that the Chinese felt that they had received divine power which entitled them to exert heavy rule over the citizens, and that they had power over the rest of the world. In fact, the Emperor was referred to as the "Son of Heaven" exemplifying the intense control he had over the people. While this system of government formally ended in the nineteenth century, some scholars believe that the Chinese ethnocentrism lives to this day. Many nations today promote a kind of “Mandate of Heaven”, including India, Korea, Japan, most of the countries in the Middle East, and scores of others. The “Manifest Destiny” which motivated thousands of Americans to move west and remove the Indians, was another example of a national ethnocentrism. Another well-known and horrible example of ethnocentrism was Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler decided that he hated Jews, as well as Gypsies and Blacks, and had many innocent people slaughtered in concentration camps. They did not deserve the torture that they received, and this was clearly an extreme case of ethnocentrism. While prejudice certainly leads to problems, very rarely in history has ethnocentrism led to the mass slaughter of millions of innocent people. One advantage of ethnocentrism is that it is unlikely to experience many internal conflicts. Given that the group unanimously believes in a particular way of doing things, they abide with them and no opposition is likely to develop. The level of cohesion in such a group is very high and such is essential for developmental purposes. Another advantage is that an ethnocentric group is immune to external influence. For example there will be no diversity within the group and they will miss out on innovation and positive change that it comes along. This will render such a group outdated and out of touch with reality. A disadvantage is that the group may wrongly evaluate the other people outside the group and miss out on the positive aspects that may be of benefit to them. Such a group is likely to prejudice and oppress other groups and cultures different from theirs. Ethnocentrism is important because it leads to cultural separatism and multiculturalism, which is the opposite of integration. Some ethnocentric groups call themselves by a special name used only within the group. For example, the Navajos of the southwestern U.S. know themselves as "dineh," which translates as "the people'" and reportedly makes them feel different from and superior to others. Ethnocentrism can have a divisive effect on national populations, splitting them into subgroups that increasingly do not identify themselves with the whole by hyphenating their labels. Today there are African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and others who separate themselves publicly from other Americans by emphasizing their immigrant cultural heritage over that of their adopted country. This is an important consideration because some Muslim newcomers expect to continue to follow Sharia (Islamic or Koranic) law in the U.S. even when it conflicts with U.S. law. Ethnocentrism can influence the things people buy. In the years after World War II, the slogan "Made in Japan" had a negative connotation because Americans considered products made by the Japanese ill-made and inferior. Since then, however, with the growth and development of Japanese manufacturing, that same slogan has become a declaration of high quality. With the dominance of Japanese-made automobiles and the loss of jobs in the American automotive industry, car buyers in the U.S. are now exhorted to "Buy American." Is it ever possible not to be ethnocentric? And furthermore is it not the normal thing to do? Ethnocentrism may be overt or subtle, and while it is considered a natural proclivity of human psychology, it has developed a generally negative connotation. Ethnocentrism carried to the extreme can lead to the practice of "ethnic cleansing." The most notorious effort by an ethnocentric group to wipe out others was Nazi Germany's massive and determined attempt under Hitler to kill all Jews, along with other less cohesive but identifiable groups such as gypsies, Roman Catholics, Communists and the mentally deficient. This episode of multifocal genocide has become known as the Holocaust. Similar attempts have been made in recent history in Eastern Europe (Bosnia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia) and Africa (Rwanda, Nigeria and Sudan), and throughout the entire Middle East, India, Indonesia, and parts of China. Presently, we are seeing examples of ethnic cleansing in Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine along religious and ethnic lines. As Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” IBM 1960 When I began working for IBM in 1956, right out of high school, I had no idea that for the next four years I would not meet another professional person-of-color at the Poughkeepsie plant or in the “Blue Sky” Research lab. The few Blacks I did see were either among the five custodian staff, or on the assembly line performing some repetitive task. There were probably over 500 people who worked for IBM in Poughkeepsie at that time. How I became the only person-of-color in engineering and research at IBM was due to a representative who visited my high school in Peekskill, NY to get boys (no girls) to apply to the new Apprenticeship Program in Computer Electronics. All of us had heard of IBM, but nobody really knew anyone who worked there. Though it was already spring of my senior year I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation. That I was not heading for college had to do with the specific necessity of earning money for my family, due to my father’s disability. He had been cared for at home for 6 years due to a stroke. My brother had dropped out of college to join the Air Force, and my sister, who was in the National Honor Society, had turned down college scholarships to work as a telephone operator. My mother was a domestic, and we lived in a big house that always needed repairs and landscaping. These were my jobs. Three carloads of us guys raced the 26 miles to IBM the next Saturday, after the recruiter spoke, to take the required test. I had already purchased my first car from money earned doing 4 weekly grass cutting jobs, so transportation was not going to be a problem if I passed the test. Within a week we got the results, and I was the only one that passed from Peekskill. In fact I got 100 on the exam. All the other guys were white, as was 95% of my school. IBM was recruiting from many area high schools, and eventually admitted around 20 graduating senior boys into the Apprentice Program. I did not consider myself ethnocentric in 1956, even though I was the president of the local NAACP Youth Chapter, which had over 400 members and was 90% white. I had also joined the Air National Guard to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. At my first line-up I noticed that I was the only brown face among 1,000 men standing at attention. Of course there were no women in the New York Air National Guard in 1956. So, by the time I got to IBM I was accustomed to being the lone or single person-of-color in a group. During the next 30 months with IBM I learned how to build a 360 mainframe, printer, keypunch, and large 7-track tape drive from scratch. I knew every nut, washer, transistor, capacitor, and wire in a system the size of a small room. These were the computers in those days. The laptop was still on the drawing table. As the first Black, Asian, or Hispanic in the labs I was not under a microscope, I was under an electronic microscope. This is a feeling that prevailed as long as I was there. It was a tremendous responsibility to prove that I was not only qualified for the position, but in many ways superior. The only Asians I ever saw were a small delegation of computer scientists from Taiwan. I had gotten a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT, and on the entrance tests for the National Guard. Upon graduation I was voted “Did most for Student Council,” “Best Artist,” and “Best in Track.” My girlfriend for the past two years was co-captain of the cheerleaders and one of the most attractive girls in the school. I do not mean to brag, but I only mention these past experiences to stress that my self-image was pretty secure. One cannot enter into such a competitive environment with a lack of confidence. I was excited about my new adventure, and looked forward to working at IBM to learn about these new machines called computers. What kind of pressure was I under for 4 years? A great deal. How often did I run into discrimination and prejudice? It never happened. The truth is that I had a very positive experience with IBM. I expected people to act decent and intelligent, and most of the time this is what I encountered. “Some people have a log on their shoulder and are just waiting for another to knock it off.” This kind of person thinks all people are racist and ignorant, and they tend to have great difficulty working with people of another ethnicity, race, culture, or religion. If this person also is not as educated as the others in their class or at work, they, and others, soon realize that they will probably fail or perform poorly. This is why affirmative action is often a bad program. Real integration can only take place between people who are on the same level, or where the minority person is actually more qualified and intelligent. Otherwise, old negative stereotypes will be validated and reinforced, instead of being replaced by a new appreciation of individuals from a different ethnic, racial, cultural or religious group. Two weeks before I graduated from the 30 month program in 1958 I met a new Black student. This was probably my replacement. This was the first person-of-color I saw in a technical position at IBM, besides myself. I do not know if IBM’s positive experience with me encouraged them to become active about increasing their ethnic diversity. Perhaps they began to work with minority organizations looking for minorities that would meet their entrance requirements. I had a very positive relationship with the instructors, students, and other employees at IBM. I never felt like a token, and I felt appreciated and accepted in each of the 16 departments we worked in. Eventually, all 20 of the students in my class, except me, graduated to become computer technicians with the company. After graduation from the school I told my supervisors that I did not want to be a computer technician, like the rest of the men in my class, but rather a research assistant in the “Blue Sky Research” facility, which was designing and planning projects 10 or more years in the future, like the first computer chips and the first desk top computers. I had recently invented a card reader that could read the IBM punch card at 2,000 cards per second, and the card never moved. Because IBM had a small team working on my invention I was allowed to apply for a position in Research. Research assistants at that time had to have at least a bachelors’ degree. However, I passed a series of difficult technical interviews with 4 scientists and worked for the next year as a research assistant, with my own lab, conducting experiments on making and testing the first computer chips. Our team of eight consisted of four PhD’s from MIT and Carnegie Mellon, and three technicians who all had at least a bachelors’ degree in physics or electrical engineering. I soon realized that the only difference between myself and the rest of the team was the salary and advanced education. I applied for college and was accepted at Cornell, Antioch, Syracuse University, Howard, Pratt Institute, and Carnegie Mellon. I was accepted at every school I applied for except NYU. I went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio on academic scholarship because of its progressive atmosphere and the ban on fraternities and other secret societies. For two years I majored in Physics and was on a leave-of-absence from IBM and worked in Poughkeepsie during the summers. I got very involved in the Civil Rights Movement while at Antioch, and eventually quit IBM and transferred to San Francisco State to get a degree in International Relations. IBM was a very good experience for me, and the skills and knowledge I learned there helped me get some very good jobs as I worked my way through college. When I finally got my PhD I had no student debt. Fortunately, many of the top colleges today offer full scholarships to qualified students from low-income homes. Unfortunately, many parents and counselors are not aware of this opportunity. If such programs had been available when I finished high school I never would have worked at IBM. Having never encountered any racism or prejudice at IBM, or on my first job in California at Douglas Missile & Space as a Senior Electronic Test Technician, I hope that individuals who presently believe they are experiencing racism or discrimination on the job or in school look carefully at themselves to see if they might have a log on their shoulder, instead of a chip. Ex-Felons Automatically Have The Right To Vote in Vermont! If you ask the average person if they think a convicted felon has the right to vote, most will tell you that they do not believe an ex-felon can vote. This is not true. Anyone who is not in jail, and who is not on parole can vote and hold public office in Vermont. The person does not have to file any kind of a petition or seek a pardon. Released felons are not routinely informed of their right to vote in this state, and often believe—incorrectly—that they can never vote again. In Vermont the person never loses their right. The laws vary greatly from state to state. A person convicted of theft in New Jersey automatically regains the right to vote after release from prison, even if they are on parole. In New Mexico such an offender is denied the vote for the rest of their life unless they can secure a pardon from the governor. Only four states (Maine, Massachusetts, Utah, Vermont) do not disenfranchise convicted felons at all. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have disenfranchisement laws that deprive convicted offenders of the right to vote while they are in prison. In thirty-two states, convicted offenders may not vote while they are on parole, and twenty-nine of these states disenfranchise offenders on probation. In eight states, a pardon or order from the governor is required; in two states, the ex-felons must obtain action by the parole or pardons board. In Mississippi, an ex-convict who wants to vote must either secure an executive order from the governor or get a state legislator to introduce a bill on his behalf, convince two-thirds of the legislators in each house to vote for it, and have it signed by the governor. In at least sixteen states, the only method provided by federal law for restoring voting rights to ex-offenders is a presidential pardon. An ex-offender is relatively lucky in Vermont when it comes to being able to vote and hold public office. In the weeks and months ahead, leading up to our local, state, and federal elections, individuals and organizations conducting voter registration campaigns have an excellent opportunity to bring hundreds of discouraged citizens back into the democratic process. “Does Our Government Have Any Responsibility to Help Our Children Defend Themselves Against Advertising?” An Open Letter to Vermont’s Senate Committee On Education, Department of Education, and Congressional Delegation Is there any way to help our infants and youth defend themselves against the carefully designed messages created to turn them into mindless consumers? Some homes no longer have a television set in the house. Other parents have tried to impose strict limits on what their children can watch, and some have removed the TV and computer from their child’s bedrooms. It is now impossible to monitor the endless stream of ads and commercials that are flashed at our children hundreds of times a day on their electronic devices and social media. Our only hope is to put some control on the advertisers themselves. Why do we not have a national Code of Advertising Standards like they do in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England? In those countries every broadcast advertisement directed to children is pre-cleared before it goes on air by a committee that includes representatives from the broadcast and advertising industry, as well as public representatives, including parents, who meet every other week to review each commercial. At that time the commercial is either approved, rejected or sent back for changes. For commercials that are aired, the Code provides a complaint-based response system for all advertising to children, which states that any individual can register a complaint/concern about advertising to children. It only takes one complaint to trigger a review of an ad. The United States needs to take a proactive approach to educating children about media literacy. Our children need to be given the tools in elementary school to defend themselves against the media that surrounds them. Our children must become familiar with the advertising and programming that is now developed specifically for them and being introduced through a larger media world, satellites, cable signals and online. In this environment, children are exposed to a broad range of programs, commercials and sites that are not always moderated and tailored to their needs and development. Today children’s viewing patterns have evolved to encompass programming not designed for children or not slotted in traditional children’s programming hours. As children watch more and more teen and adult programming, they are also exposed to messages designed for an older audience. These exposures introduce images, ideas and values and – ultimately - choices into children’s homes and lives. To effectively market to children advertisers have educated themselves to know exactly what makes kids tick. With the help of well-paid researchers and psychologists, advertisers now have access to in-depth knowledge about children's developmental, and emotional and social needs at different ages. Using research that analyzes children's behavior, fantasy lives, artwork, even their dreams, companies are able to craft sophisticated marketing strategies to reach young people. This advertising is scientifically designed by scientists, psychologists and marketing experts who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to produce commercials for children and adults. These commercials are aimed to make a person feel that unless they purchase the product they are not attractive, intelligent, or desirable. Advertising is a massive, multi-million dollar project that's having an enormous impact on child development," says Dr. John Kanner, who is a faculty member at a clinical psychology training program called the Wright Institute. "The sheer volume of advertising is growing rapidly and invading new areas of childhood, like our schools." The result is not only an epidemic of materialistic values among children, but also something he calls "narcissistic wounding" of children. Thanks to advertising, he says, children have become convinced that they're inferior if they don't have an endless array of new products. "The information psychologists are giving to advertisers is being used to increase profits rather than help children. The whole enterprise of advertising is about creating insecure people who believe they need to buy things to be happy. I don't think most psychologists would believe that's a good thing. There's an inherent conflict of interest. Psychologists who help advertisers are essentially helping them manipulate children to believe in the capitalistic message, when all the evidence shows that believing in that message is bad for people," says Kanner. "That's unethical." Dr. Kanner and several colleagues were upset about psychologists and others who are using psychological knowledge to help marketers target children more effectively, and with a group of 59 other psychologists and psychiatrists sent a controversial letter protesting psychologists' involvement in advertising to children to The American Psychological Association (APA). The letter asked the APA to: 1. Issue a formal, public statement denouncing the use of psychological principles in marketing to children. 2. Amend APA's Ethics Code to limit psychologists' use of their knowledge and skills to observe, study, mislead or exploit children for commercial purposes. 3. Launch an ongoing campaign to investigate the use of psychological research in marketing to children, publish an evaluation of the ethics of such use, and promote strategies to protect children against commercial exploitation by psychologists and others using psychological principles. The APA established a committee to study the issue, but they did not implement any of the three recommendations proposed. Advertising manipulates children who are too young to understand its intent. Young children are particularly vulnerable to deceit and exploitation because they lack the verbal skills to defend themselves against persuasive advertisements. Marketers have successfully planted the seeds of brand recognition in very young children. According to the Center for a New American Dream, babies as young as six months of age can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. Brand loyalties can be established as early as age two, and by the time children head off to school most can recognize hundreds of brand logos. Advertising can influence children in many ways, such as buying behavior, ideas about eating norms, and the tendency to request purchases from parents. Barbara A. Martino, an advertising executive, has admitted, "We're relying on the kid to pester the mom to buy the product, rather than going straight to the mom." "Pester power" refers to children's ability to nag their parents into purchasing items they may not otherwise buy. Marketing to children is all about creating pester power, because advertisers know what a powerful force it can be. According to the marketing industry book Kidfluence, pestering or nagging can be divided into two categories—"persistence" and "importance." Persistence nagging (a plea, that is repeated over and over again) is not as effective as the more sophisticated "importance nagging." This plays on any guilt they may have and appeals to the time-stressed parent to substitute material goods for time spent with their kids. Advertisers' efforts seem to work. According to marketing expert James U. McNeal, PhD, author of "The Kids Market: Myths and Realities" (Paramount Market Publishing, 1999), children under 12 already spend a whopping $28 billion a year. Teen-agers spend $100 billion. Children also influence another $249 billion spent by their parents. According to the 2008 YTV Kids and Tweens Report, kids influence: • Breakfast choices (97% of the time) and lunch choices (95% of the time). • Where to go for casual family meals (98% of the time) (with 34% of kids always having a say on the choice of casual restaurant). • Clothing purchases (95% of the time). • Software purchases (76% of the time) and computer purchases (60% of the time). • Family entertainment choices (98% of the time) and • Family trips and excursions (94% of the time).  As a result, industry spending on advertising to children has exploded over the past two decades. In the United States alone, companies spent over $17 billion doing this in 2009 – more than double what was spent in 1992. The Internet is the ultimate medium for marketers who are targeting children: • Parents generally do not understand the extent to which kids are being marketed to online. • Kids are usually online alone, without parental supervision. • Unlike broadcasting media, which have some codes regarding advertising to kids, the Internet is unregulated. • Sophisticated technologies make it easy to collect information from young people for marketing research, and to target individual children with personalized advertising. • By creating engaging, interactive environments based on products and brand names, companies can build brand loyalties from an early age. • The main ways that companies market to young people online include: 1. Relationship building through ads that attempt to connect with consumers by building personal relationships between them and the brand. 2. Viral ads that are designed to be passed along to friends. 3. Behavioral targeting, where ads are sent to individuals based on personal information that has been posted or collected. What Must Be Done • The Federal Government should denounce the use of scientific research to mislead or exploit children for commercial purposes. • Curriculum and strategies must be developed to protect our children against commercial exploitation by social scientists and others using advanced psychological principles. • There should be a national competition, sponsored by the Federal Government, between private companies, various boards of education, and state governments to develop the most effective programs and courses for children K-12 to defend themselves against commercial exploitation and manipulation. “So, are you an Alien?” Some people joke about being aliens. But others actually believe they are from a distant galaxy. Do you think you are really an alien? Following are some beliefs and feelings that might indicate that your inner spirit came to this planet on some sort of a mission. How many do you identify with? • A feeling of being very different from most people. • You feel as if you are here as an observer or reporter. • You feel transcultural toward any race, nationality, political party, ideology, organized religion, or country. You are not ethnocentric. • Aversion to mundane employment, repetitive tasks, "dead-end" jobs. Not satisfied with working for others, but more than willing to work doing something that really helps people. You may still be searching for this vocation. (What are you going to do when you grow up?) • A very deep inner pull that seems to constantly make you aware that you are more than you are and you need to be finding out what and why. • Never motivated to be financially rich, but to gain enough wisdom to help and improve the living conditions of the poor and oppressed. • Have a desire to try to "save the world" or straighten out problems in the world. • A nagging suspicion that you are more than your parents offspring, that you have some unfulfilled mission, and that the implications of these matters have powerful and eternal consequences for both yourself and the Earth. • Never had any fear of death, because of an inner feeling that your spirit or soul would live on in another life here or elsewhere. • An obsession with the stars and/or outer space. • A driving need to get away from "normal" people to either be alone, or seek out someone who shares your interests in spiritual matters. • An inner desire and knowing to "do what is right" even though these things were never taught to you. • Dreams involving flying in bodily form or astral projection. • Prophetic dreams, visions, or mental suggestions that later come to pass. • Having a desire to heal. • A solid belief that there is an all-powerful positive force that we should try to get in harmony with, even though you may not believe in any "God." • Having a nagging feeling that most organized religions are missing some key elements in their teachings. • An almost obsessive desire to search out the missing elements of spiritual teachings not found in religion. • A connection to animals that is above average. • A special attraction to cats - all cats seem to be your friend. • Aversion to city living - strong desire to live in a rural and natural environment. • Knowing something is gravely wrong with society without having this knowledge preached to you by doomsday prophets, or conspiracy theorists - you see it yourself and evaluate it within your own mind. • Extreme aversion to violence, fighting, and war. • Having a very high IQ. • Attraction to powerful things in nature, such as thunderstorms, lightning, waterfalls, and surf. • Attraction to ancient symbols. • Being an avid reader who "drinks in" knowledge quicker than the "average" person. • Having an interest or attraction to such fields of science as archaeology, astronomy, or physics. • Aversion to sexual joking, racial joking, or foul language. • Expectation of great changes upon Earth in the near future. • An attraction to the Pleiades Galaxy. “The Uniqueness of the Trans-Cultural Awareness Institute” The Institute is a membership organization dedicated to promoting dialogue and the exchange of information between individuals from different ethnic/racial groups, and various social-educational-economic classes. The difference between this organization and many others is that it does not use the buzzwords "multi-culturalism" or "diversity training." It also does not assume that the major social problem in the world is racism. Of course it acknowledges that racism does exist, but the Institute believes that the larger problem is one where conflicts and misperceptions about life-styles must be examined and discussed. We propose trans-cultural dialogue in distinction to mere inter-cultural dialogue. This points to the capability of transcending (and, thereby, transforming) one’s own horizon of understanding towards other forms of cultural self-realization, and not merely of relating and comparing abstract contents of one’s own cultural environment to other such environments. The term signifies the fact that our own cultural awareness is shaped by the interaction with other cultures, that it reaches a level beyond its original setup. This approach, versus one with a Euro centric orientation, is one of dialogue on the cultural, and of partnership on the socio-political level. Based on a concept of culture as "a system of interconnected values, perceptions, and modes of interaction" this approach requires a new doctrine of public education which should, although based on a particular cultural tradition, make understandable the values and world views of other civilizations, doing away with any form of cultural exclusivism, tribalism, or ethnocentrism. The educational system in any given cultural environment must reach beyond the exclusive interpretation of the collective cultural awareness on the background of that very culture’s specific traditions that, in turn, shaped the very understanding (self-comprehension) of that culture. This has to be transcended towards the inclusion of other (genuinely different) traditions that have been shaped independently of one’s own culture into the cultural understanding of any given community (civilization). We must have an understanding of the other, of that which is different from ourselves. This implies a more profound awareness of our own culture; it allows us to define ourselves more adequately in distinction from the other(s). The consequences in the field of education are obvious: European curricula should not only include the teaching of Greco-Roman and Christian traditions but should also convey the knowledge of non-European traditions and religions such as Islam and Buddhism. Total Euro centric ignorance of other cultural environments that have been shaped outside of Europe and the United States has been the main breeding ground of cultural chauvinism and the root cause of imperialist aggression over the centuries up to the present age of a prematurely declared "New World Order." Trans-Cultural Awareness requires a reorientation of the information and media sector in regard to the stereotyping of other civilizations (the most drastic example being the present stereotyping of the Islamic civilization by the West). On the level of international relations, this approach towards cultural self-comprehension requires a new method of cultural diplomacy, abandoning the propaganda-style presentation of one’s own civilization and promoting genuine trans-cultural encounters. The traditional crusader spirit has to be overcome in trans-cultural encounters, and the hegemony of Euro centric worldviews and life-styles in the international media and entertainment sector has to be counterbalanced by the unbiased presentation of other civilizations. A truly transcultural environment should be the goal on the local and global level. One has to get out of the vicious circle of self-affirmation that has characterized the Euro centric approach to cultural encounters for so long, and that has so greatly discredited the Western tradition of Enlightenment. Each event of the Institute is designed to bring together people to discuss a subject of common interest. By placing individuals in discussion groups with others from differing backgrounds we hope to broaden the perceptions we have of others, and reduce the number of stereotypes we all have of people we normally never socialize with as peers. Events have been held in New Jersey, New York and in Atlanta, Georgia. Trans-Cultural Awareness is not limited to racial or ethnic awareness. This approach can be used to sensitize individuals from different nations, different classes, different age groups (the "Generation Gap"), or between male and female. It would be especially useful for individuals who must work in tense situations with others who are products of an entirely different, and often conflicting, lifestyle or subculture. Policymakers and planners, government officials, teachers, law enforcement personnel, employers, supervisors and others in important positions of authority and power would greatly benefit from non-threatening encounters between themselves and the recipients of their decisions and actions. Transcending the horizon of one’s own tradition is the precondition for a better understanding of that particular cultural tradition. For those who are concerned about the future of the human race, a universal dialogue of civilizations is of crucial importance for the future of mankind, because such a dialogue is a basic condition of peace and stability on both the national and the transnational level. As stated by UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in 1974: "No nation, however large or powerful, can escape from the fundamental reality of our interdependence." “My Next Time Around” I will make my “transition” in 2031, at the age of 93. I will be reborn in northern Nepal, in the Mustan District, near the border with Tibet. For this incarnation I will choose an affluent Asian family to help me fulfill my karma and continue my evolution. The present experience with a working-class Black family in the United States has been very helpful and eventful, but I must now shift my perspective and sharpen my focus. My father, who will be Chinese, will have been trained as an international banker, with an MBA from Harvard. My mother, a Tibetan, is a poet. They will have met in undergraduate school at the Singapore Institute of Technology and Design. She will have earned an MFA from the Sorbonne in Paris. My father and mother are both tenured professors at the Kathmandu Model College. Because of the backgrounds of my parents, I will be raised speaking Chinese, English, French, and a Central Tibetan dialect. My first formal education outside our home will be at a boarding school in Dharamsala, India, where the Tibetan government–in-exile will still be in existence. The current Dalai Lama, who will be five years older than me, will also be a student at the same school. I will attend Princeton and earn a bachelors degree in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with the class of 2051. From there, I will follow my father to Harvard and MIT where I eventually will acquire a doctorate in political psychology. One year will be spent at Oxford University concentrating in International Affairs. Coming back to my family in Kathmandu I will then be prepared, as my family and I will have previously planned, to enter the Shaolin Monastery in China in 2057 to become a Buddhist Monk, and take my vows to be celibate, (while sometimes remembering, as an ordinary man, the scores of conquests and good times in the United States and Europe). I will have maintained my close relationship since boarding school with the Dalai Lama. We both share a core belief that the purpose of life is to be happy. His sense of humor and incredible discipline will continue to inspire and encourage me. Although he is only the spiritual head of Tibet, he is still the figurehead of the struggle for autonomy for Tibetans, and he will be important in the long negotiations with the Chinese government for establishing a small new nation on the southern border of Greater Tibet. My role in this process is to become the primary translator between the Tibetans in exile, including the Dalai Lama, and the principle negotiator from the Chinese government in Beijing, the grandson of Mao Tse-tung. China by this time has become the most powerful nation on earth, with the United States in third position after the European Common Market. The major struggles between nations are now economic, not military. The United States has no foreign bases abroad, and has focused its priorities on improving its educational system and increasing the standard of living for its citizens. The Hispanic president will be the second female to hold the office. The United Nations now has the largest army in the world. As I am completing my five years of study at the monastery I will continue to become more and more involved in the development of the new Tibetan nation. At the age of 31, in 2062, I will become the first ambassador to the United Nations for the new democratic nation between Nepal and Tibet, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. The Tibetan exile movement which has been based in India since 1959, over 105 years ago, will finally migrate from their Diaspora around the world and come home to the New Tibet. People should determine their own Ethnicity We are asking that a person-of-color be given a choice to self-identify their own ethnicity or race. A parent or older relative could make this determination for a child or incapacitated adult. This has nothing to do with the elimination of all ethnic or racial markers on applications or government forms. These boxes can still remain on forms, but the boxes should only be checked by the individual themselves. No one will be allowed to identify the ethnicity or race of another simply by a visual determination of the person’s color, facial features, hair, speech, or mannerisms. If the individual refuses to self-identify their ethnicity or race, the box can be checked by another person as “other,” “person-of-color,” or “multi-ethnic.” This procedure will not create any problem with various government agencies who believe ethnic and racial data is mandatory information for classifying individuals by race, ethnicity, color or national origin for any purpose pertaining to public education, public contracting or public employment. This will not prohibit the federal, state government and local governments from still using ethnic or racial classifications in most of its business in its efforts to provide services and identify and correct ethnic or racial disparities. A government agency will still be able to classify any individual by race, ethnicity, color or national origin in the operation of public education, public contracting or public employment. Also, this procedure does not amend any state constitution to prohibit state and local governments from using race, ethnicity, color, or national origin to classify current or prospective students, contractors or employees in public education, contracting, or employment operations. It also does not change the way an agency compiles it medical data; law enforcement descriptions; prisoner and undercover assignments; and actions maintaining federal funding. This procedure will not result in any fiscal impact on state and local governments. Academics at state universities can continue to gather information and do research about ethnicity or race. A medical school professor, for example, could still research whether African-American and Latino children are more likely than white children to suffer lead poisoning, or whether AIDS continues to disproportionately ravage minority communities, or whether teenage smoking is a greater problem among certain ethnic groups. A law professor at a state school could still gather data about housing discrimination based on ethnicity or race. A political science professor could continue doing research on voting patterns of particular ethnic or racial groups. Affirmative Action should be based on Need not Race 
 The recent Supreme Court decision to remove race as a remedy for integration was a good one. Isn't it racist to assume all Blacks need affirmative action? Affirmative action was originally intended to give an advantage to Blacks because they were generally considered academically inferior to Whites and others. All Blacks were labeled as "disadvantaged." Is the term ''disadvantaged'' still synonymous in some people's minds with African Americans or blacks, American Indians and Hispanics? Isn't it about time we let the term only apply to those who are subjected to severe economic and social disadvantages, unfavorable living conditions or circumstances and vastly unequal levels of preparation for higher education? If we could do this, race would not be a factor in the definition, but lifestyle would. I am a person of partially African descent. Sometimes called Black or African American. Many people make the tragic mistake of believing all individuals who are identified with a specific ethnic or racial group share the same worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth. My perceptions and reactions to events in the world are very different from most who consider themselves spokespersons for all Black people.

 As far as affirmative action is concerned, there are many youth who have benefited from this program and have gone on to accomplish great deeds. I believe, however, that if the special consideration had been based upon need instead of upon race, most of these good students would still have been admitted and still have gone on to successful careers. Academic standards should never be lowered for any specific racial or ethnic individual or group because of their ethnicity. Without affirmative action the minority enrollment at many colleges would drop from 15 percent to 4 percent. Why would this be a bad thing if the remaining 4 percent did as well as their peers and went on to compete successfully in the work world? The drop-out rate for Black males at some community colleges is over 90%! Is this good for the youth who were told they were “college material”? (Try to find out the drop-out rate for minorities at any college in the country.)

 Aren't we tired yet of seeing black athletes exploited on the basketball courts and on the football fields? Does it help race relations in this country to reinforce negative stereotypes about the academic inferiority of certain ethnic groups? Who is being helped when students are put into a situation where the odds are high that they will fail?

What about the ''advantaged'' black students? Would Condoleeza Rice or Cornell West have qualified as disadvantaged blacks deserving preferential treatment merely because of their perceived ethnic identity? Would it have been logical to have treated either these two brilliant individuals as needing any kind of special help or treatment because of the color of their skin? Or would it have been highly insulting to them and their parents? Will Obama’s daughters need Affirmative Action?

 Isn’t it boring to expect everyone to follow a "party line" about affirmative action or anything else? The insecure leaders of many minority organizations have a disproportionate amount of power and influence over the minds of the many good people in the country, especially white liberals, who are afraid to voice their true beliefs in fear of being called a "racist." Whatever happened to freedom of thought? Is everyone out there afraid of being branded "politically incorrect?"

 Digital/Device Detoxing is Common Sense It is estimated that today (2014), some 93 per cent of American teenagers are online and 75 per cent use mobile phones, according to figures from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Marketing data shows that 92 per cent of teens own an iPod or MP3 player, while upward of two-thirds own their own computer (and access to one at home is near-universal). These researchers calculated that the average American teenager was spending 8.5 hours a day in some form of mass-mediated interaction. It is an environment: pervasive, invisible, shrink-wrapped around pretty much everything children do and say and think. This past July, a highly regarded research team from Sweden led by Dr. Lennart Hardell reported that the risks of developing a tumor on the hearing nerve from using cellphones regularly for more than two decades are greater than previously reported. It is important to note that the Hardell team is also the only team that has reported on the risk of acoustic neuroma from cordless phone use along with cell phones, as cordless phones emit microwave radiation just like cell phones. Last summer, a team of psychologists from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the University of Leuven in Belgium found that Facebook use correlated with a low sense of well-being. “The more people used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time,” they said. “Rather than enhancing well-being… these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it.” If you're feeling bummed, researchers did test for and find a solution. The prescription for Facebook despair is less Facebook. Researchers found that face-to-face or phone interaction — those outmoded, analog ways of communication — had the opposite effect. Direct interactions with other human beings led people to feel better. Do some of you think it is time to take the iPad away from your kid? In the U.K., a four-year-old girl believed to be the country’s youngest iPad addict has been getting treatment at a rehab center specializing in digital addiction. The Canadian Pediatric Society says kids younger than two should not be indulging in any screen-based activities, including TV, computer, and mobile devices. The association recommends older kids spend no more than one or two hours a day glued to a screen. Cris Rowan, a pediatric occupational therapist, said kids today are in front of screens four to five times that amount. “Overuse is an issue,” she said. “Tech is very addicting. Never in the history of humankind do we have kids with addictions, and now one in 11 kids (age eight to 18) are addicted to technology. This is the tip of the iceberg here.” Vancouver psychologist Dr. Joti Samra writes that the children are losing social development that’s important, like non-verbal communication and physical interaction. Kids brought up with iPads and their one-swipe access could also fail to learn about delayed gratification, she said. “You put something in front of a child that can easily access everything they want or need, that important life skill is not being fostered in the way it would be.” The most simple advice, she said, is for parents to switch off their screens and play with their kids. She and other professionals say we’ve lost our way here. We need to get back to play. Author Sharon Meers says that her family bans phones after 6:30 p.m. "We try hard to preserve 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. as a sanctuary so we can relax and hear about the day from each member of the family." Just because you're physically in the same room as your loved ones doesn't mean you're spending legitimate time with them. Your child should not have to compete with your smartphone for attention, says Sharon. "I have been to homes where one parent is glued to an iPad, laptop or phone. What’s the message their kids get? 'I care enough to be home with you, but not enough to give you my full attention.” For those who still don’t think there is anything to worry about, how many are aware that Internet addiction treatment programs are on the rise for internet addicts? At the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, the staff has been treating clients with internet addiction since 1996. The Bradford Regional Medical Center in Bradford, Pennsylvania recently announced the launch of the first hospital-based Internet addiction treatment and recovery program in the United States. At the Bradford program, they utilize cognitive-behavioral therapy-Internet addiction (CBT-IA), a model designed for treating Internet addiction by applying CBT with harm reduction therapy (HRT).  A 2007 Kaiser study found that nearly one in five parents believed there was no need to monitor their children’s screen time closely, while the Pew research showed an astonishing 30 per cent of parents believe that media has no effect on their children one way or the other. It was like saying the food we eat, or the air we breathe, or the communities we live in have no effect on us one way or the other. Or it could be these parents simply had a hard time imagining life outside the technological bubble? It’s important to recognize the resources that are available. Larry Rosen, in his book Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on U’ describes the personality disorders that can develop in people who have grown up with video games and digital media. Susan Maushart, who wrote Digital detox: Why I pulled the plug on my family, said that our home had become dominated by electronic equipment. Computer screens flickering. Televisions blaring. Games consoles bleeping. She said that her children didn’t remember a time before email, or instant messaging, or Google. And were utterly without consciousness or curiosity as to how they got there. “There's so much that's wonderful, and at the same time nauseating, about that.” So she decided it was time to give herself – and her children – a digital detox. She said that “Our digital detox messed with our heads, our hearts, and our homework. It changed the way we ate and the way we slept, the way we "friended", fought, planned, and played. It altered the very taste and texture of our family life. Hell, it even altered the mouth-feel. In the end, our family's self-imposed exile from the information age changed our lives indelibly — and infinitely for the better.” She wrote that, “As The Experiment went on I watched as my children awoke slowly from the state of cognitus interruptus that had characterized many of their waking hours, to become more focused, logical thinkers. I watched as their attention spans sputtered and took off, allowing them to read for hours – not minutes – at a stretch; to practice their instruments intensively; to hold longer and more complex conversations with adults and among themselves; to improve their capacity to think beyond the present moment, even if that only translated into remembering to wash-out tights for tomorrow morning. But they all completed their schoolwork far more efficiently, far more quickly, and with visibly greater focus. At the most basic level, The Experiment forced us to notice food more—just as we noticed music more, and sleep, and each other. Before, eating had been a side dish. Now it was the main course, or at least one of them.” Following is some sound advice from Susan Maushart, author of 'The Winter of Our Disconnect: How One Family Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell/Text/Tweet the Tale' is published by Profile Books. The Ten Commandments for using modern media * Thou shalt not fear boredom * Thou shalt not "multitask" (not until thy kingdom come, thy homework be done) * Thou shalt not text and drive (or talk, or sleep) * Thou shalt keep the Sabbath a screen-free day * Thou shalt keep thy bedroom a media-free zone * Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s upgrade * Thou shalt set thy accounts to "Private" * Thou shalt bring no media to thy dinner Thou shalt bring no dinner to thy media. Do we really have a caste system in America?! We aren’t supposed to have a caste system in America! In fact, we aren’t even supposed to even talk, or think, about a caste or class system in this country! Everyone is supposed to be equal, and opportunities are unlimited for all. Doesn’t the election of a Black president prove this? Well, sort of. But there are still a few things wrong with this picture of Utopia. Merely outlawing caste, as the United States Constitution does, has not put an end to caste prejudice in the country. What else is white privilege except the tacit acknowledgement of a caste system in this country? For a white person to be “color-blind” is merely an attempt to maintain this white privilege without appearing racist. There is only one fundamental difference between a caste and a class system. If there is a caste system in a society, and there is one in almost every society on earth, one is a member of a particular caste at birth. One has no choice or opportunity to move from one caste to another. Class is a social grouping that a person can move into, or out of. Depending on such factors as money, education or lifestyle. People move up and down in class all the time over a lifetime. Sometimes this is determined by our families, other times we are in control of this movement because of choices we, or others, make about our career choices or forces beyond our control such as illness or unemployment. Discrimination because of gender, sexual persuasion, ethnicity, or physical and mental abilities also are factors determining our social class. The caste system in the United States is based entirely upon ethnicity, or as some people say, race. Race is really a meaningless invented concept that was created in Europe several hundred years ago. According to a position paper by the American Anthropological Association, entitled Statement on "Race" in May 17, 1998: “As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought. Today scholars in many fields argue that "race" as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor. How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories. Sociologist and former American Sociological Association president Joe Feagin has argued that the United States can be characterized as a "total racist society" because racism is used to organize every social institution.” According to Norman D Humphrey in his book American Race and Caste. “Race is a biological concept, equivalent in meaning to variety. The sociological concept of caste is defined as an endogamous status grouping. There are no known significant functions for behavior flowing automatically from race, hence race has no significance for cultural behavior. Caste obviously is highly determinative for behavior. The term race should be discarded entirely in the cultural reference and the more appropriate term caste be applied in its stead. The term race should be retained in its biological context.” A caste can also be defined as a combined social system of occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power. We are born into a caste, and one does not move in or out of it. Caste should not be confused with class, in that members of a caste are deemed to be alike in function or culture, whereas not all members of a defined class may be so alike. The caste system in the United States is based upon ethnicity and racism. All white people are automatically members of the top rung of the caste system in America. This is the only explanation for the fact that any poor and uneducated white person, even if they are sitting up in some prison, still knows in their gut that they are better than President Obama, Oprah, or Michael Jordan in this society. (Please read below how white ethnics were taught to believe this.) And in one sense, they are correct. It is interesting that most well educated Americans, regardless of ethnicity, have a blind spot about their own caste system. One is considered un-patriotic when the terms class and caste are suggested as pertaining to life in America. How many people know that the designers of the Apartheid system made a 1949 visit to Mississippi one of their first research trips because they said the United States had already perfected what they wanted to do to the Blacks in South Africa. Most of the world has been taught that the Indo-European culture in Europe and the United States swept away the native caste system and replaced it with a system based on class. This is not true. We continue to say that caste only persists in countries like India where the caste system is explicitly codified, whereas in America social structure by ethnicity or family lineage remains uncodified and subliminal. The closest we came to codifying our caste system was the Jim Crow System in the South. The advantage of the uncodified, invisible and often denied phenomenon of the American caste system is that since most people who use it deny its very existence, it becomes difficult to have an honest debate or examination. This is the situation in America today. On the other hand, something subliminal rather than explicit is more dangerous as it gets applied arbitrarily. However, like every society, we must admit that we have social stratification and ethnic groups. These are called “demographic segments.” Such as “inner city African Americans”, “rural Hispanics”, “suburban whites”, “Asian immigrants,” etc. So if we do have a caste system, how did it come to include all those who now call themselves “white, regardless of class? In the book The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen gave an interesting insight into how the demographic group we now call 'white' emerged. He wrote that until the 17th century white skin privilege was recognized neither in the law nor in the social practices of the labor classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and Blacks would continue to suffer under its yoke for more than two centuries…African bond-laborers were turned into chattel slaves and were differentiated from their fellow proletarians of European origin. Rocked by the solidarity across racial lines exhibited by the rebellious laboring classes in the wake of the famous Bacon's Rebellion, the plantation bourgeoisie sought a solution to its labor problems in the creation of a buffer control stratum of poor whites, who enjoyed little enough privilege in colonial society beyond that of their skin color, which protected them from enslavement …Such was the invention of the white race. America's color-coding was based on the category of labor that one was placed into. This is further elaborated in the book How the Irish Became White, written by Noel Ignatiev, a lecturer at Harvard. He describes how the Irish, who were branded for centuries as the underclass in Europe, came to America and used the labor color-coding system of the American society to get reclassified as the white class. Especially in places where the slaves had been freed, it became important for European immigrant groups to make sure that they were distinguished and protected through labor unions that were racially exclusivist. Blacks often became factory workers in large centralized environments, whereas construction jobs such as plumbing, electrical, masonry, and carpentry became the turf of specific European ethnic labor unions. Another useful book is How the Jews Became White Folks, authored by Professor Karen Brodkin at the University of California, Los Angeles. A Jewish woman herself, she tells the story of how the Jews started this climb up the caste ladder of America just fifty years ago to reach their present position, mainly by taking control of specific professions. Why would anyone want to continue our present ethnically-based caste system? There is one group of academics who have come up with a theory called ideological hegemony. It states that there is a relationship between the capitalist relations of production and the maintenance and perpetuation of racial stereotypes. (Can you imagine anyone thinking such a thing?) According to this left-wing theory, racialized stereotypes, as a product of the mass media, are maintained as methods of ideological control. Ideological hegemony theory states that the dominant class rules the masses by controlling their beliefs. (Shut your mouth.) Below is a diagram of my understanding of how caste is a combination of several factors. The diagram clearly shows that each of the six factors of ethnicity, class, education, nationality, income, and gender are interrelated to make up the identity of an individual. The culmination of these factors determines a person’s caste in the society. Many whites, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, will have difficulty accepting the assertion that they are by birth a member of the ruling caste in America. Most people-of-color, however, of all classes, will have no difficulty accepting this conclusion.  Lifestyle Matters, More than Race, Ethnicity, or Economic Class! The only way to understand and accept the demographic shifts from the inner-cities to the suburbs is to stop classifying people by race or ethnicity, and to accept the fact that there are vast differences within all ethnic groups. As obvious as the above title may seem, this truth is generally denied or beyond the comprehension of the general public. People have been categorized or generalized by race or ethnicity for centuries with the erroneous assumption that these vague and unclear classifications would yield correct and meaningful information to formulate successful policies and programs to solve a multitude of social and political problems. There are certain standards and patterns of behavior in our society that are admired and respected. There are others that are not. These patterns cut across lines of socio-economic class and even education. Even among the least educated and less affluent there is an awareness of when a person “has no class.” The lifestyle of an individual is a more accurate indicator of the values, morals, ethics and even problems of an individual than their race or ethnicity. Adults in the past were miss-educated to believe that various ethnic groups were either inferior or superior intellectually and morally. This is what we call racism. Certain aspects of a group’s culture; their music, their diet, their religion, their speech, their dress, the way they walked, and even their art, were deemed inferior and sometimes almost sub-human. The group in power tends to set the standards of what is considered civilized or uncivilized behavior. Whatever they do and like is correct, and everyone else is lacking in terms of proper conduct. (If the minority groups had been in power, the classifications would have been reversed, and the lifestyles of the dominant group would have been labeled as inferior and ignorant.) In some societies people are even killed or put in prison for simply violating manmade social norms. Drinking alcohol was once a crime in the United States! So was gambling, fornication, not believing in a God, homosexuality, and interracial marriages! Today, this lack of tolerance for variations in behavior includes the current laws against the use of certain drugs, and the persistent belief that time in prison improves human behavior. Conforming to the lifestyle of the group in power usually assures individuals of more acceptance and less discrimination. People like to associate with people who are as much like them as possible. We feel more comfortable with those who share a common language, religion, culture, and worldview. On the one hand we preach diversity, but in reality, we want to be with people who are just like us. This could be intellectually, spiritually, or who dress as we do, like the same past-times or hobbies, sports, music, or even art. The Obama phenomena can be understood better if we view his acceptance as an acceptance of a preferred lifestyle. Highly educated, financially successful, articulate, clean-cut and “nice looking,” moderate in his politics, somewhat religious, and a good family man. This is the perfect image America wants to project to the world, and to itself. In the past, his color and his ethnicity simply meant that he was a member of a race that was generally uneducated, poor, inarticulate, unattractive, a follower of a primitive and emotional religion, and either born out of wedlock, or the unmarried parents of children being raised in poverty and ignorance. Obama transcended the racial issue by having the perfect lifestyle that we all desire! This far over-shadowed his mixed ancestry. His equally intelligent and successful wife even gave up her $250,000 a year job to be at his side as the First Lady! Is there any woman in America, of any color, that cannot fanaticize about having such a choice? My point here is that we reject certain groups or individuals because of their speech, their mannerisms, their behavior, their lack of interest in education, and their appearance. The amount of money they make does not move them up one notch in social acceptance, as long as they continue to act like immoral and ignorant clowns. We have always discriminated by lifestyle throughout history. Only recently have we become confused and introduced race or ethnicity as primary factors in determining human behavior, and forgot that lifestyle is really much more important than race.

Open Mind Season 1

September 1, 2014 at 1:16 PM

 
 
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