Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet XC

Here's an excerpt from a book I am reading, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History," by Chris Kyle:

The Marines sent a patrol over to pull us out.  As I watched them coming from the post, I spotted an insurgent moving in behind them. I fired once. The Marine patrol hit the dirt. So did the Iraqi, though he didn’t get up. “There’s [an insurgent] sniper out there and he’s good,” their radio man called. “He nearly got us.” I got on my radio. “That’s me, dumbass. Look behind you.” They turned around and saw a savage with a rocket launcher lying dead on the ground. “God, thank you,” answered the Marine. “Don’t mention it.” 

The Iraqis did have snipers working that night. I got two of them—one who was up on the minaret of a mosque, and another on a nearby building. This was a fairly well-coordinated fight, one of the better-organized ones we would encounter in the area. It was unusual, because it took place at night; the bad guys generally didn’t try and press their luck in the dark. Finally, the sun came up and the gunfire slacked down. The Marines pulled out a bunch of armored vehicles to cover for us, and we ran back to their camp. I went up to see their commander and brief him on what had happened. I had barely gotten a sentence out of my mouth when a burly Marine officer burst into the office. “Who the hell was the sniper up there on Seven Story?” he barked. I turned around and told him it was me, bracing myself to be chewed out for some unknown offense. “I want to shake your hand, son,” he said, pulling off his glove. “You saved my life.” He was the guy I’d called a dumbass on the radio earlier. I’ve never seen a more grateful Marine.

Inclusive Urbanism

I am not a planner, nor am I the first to use the phrase, "inclusive urbanism," but I did want to elaborate on what it means from where I'm sitting.

First, I think it's important to make sure that what we're advocating for in cities isn't seen as making them urban playgrounds for the elite.  To be sure, we should want people who have choices to choose the city.  But bike lanes and reclaimed waterfront space and traffic calming is of use to all.  A hat tip to my colleagues at 5th Square in Philadelphia, who in pushing for an urbanist agenda in local elections were always mindful to couch both ends and means in inclusive ways.  For all of us benefit when our streets are safer, recreational amenities are freely available, and families can circulate through the city without a car if they want to or have to.  Indeed, sometimes anti-urbanist efforts are proposed for the very purpose of excluding others, in terms of not wanting "those people" to access "our" neighborhoods and recreational assets.

Second, public engagement, that bread and butter tool of the urban planner, must in fact engage the whole public.  Seems obvious, but walk into any random public meeting and sadly you will often find not much diversity in terms of skin color, age, physical ability, and wallet size.  Inclusive urbanism by definition cannot exclude any.  No matter how good the urbanist ideas are, they must come from the grassroots.  Again, seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many in this space (either explicitly or implicitly) feel that their ideas are so profoundly spot-on that they can and should be accepted from on high.  (I literally once had someone tell me, regarding opposition towards a controversial development in a gentrifying neighborhood, "these people don't know what's best for them...we just have to come in and do this for them.")

Third, as the public that is being engaged must be diverse, so must the professionals who are doing the engaging and the planning and the advising and the implementing.  And not just diverse on the surface, as if token representation will suffice, but diverse to the core, so that the work can benefit from a multiplicity of perspectives and dreams and grievances and pangs.

This is the hard and necessary work, and I hope to see more of it in the days and years to come.

The Privilege of Opting In and Out

Picking up on yesterday's post, and continuing to speak honestly from my heart, I have to say that parenting Asher has been an extraordinary window into issues of privilege and race.  Obviously, being Asian-American I have my whole life dealt with the notion of race in general as well as issues specific to Asians in America.  But just as obviously, the African-American experience in this country is a different matter, and (the point of yesterday's post) one that is now an "all the time" matter for me because it is a family matter that affects our son.

To be candid, there have been times (and I'm sure there will be more times) when, through tears, I have wanted to take away Asher's blackness, scared that I am for what it will mean for how he is treated in the future.  I know I cannot do this, and I know I do not want to do this, for it is who he is and it is why he is who he is.  But, I know what his skin destines him to suffer, and so I have moments when I wish otherwise for him.

It is telling to me that the topic of conversations with friends and family about Asher differ greatly depending on if I am talking with someone who is African-American or who has African-American family members, versus not.  The issue of race in America comes up way more; in fact, it is borderline that it always comes up, versus it never comes up.  I think it is because people for whom such issues are an "all the time" matter will naturally consider it something of great relevance to Asher's life and to our journey as his parents.

It is a form of privilege when we are able to opt in and out of such matters, and it saddens me that we often use that privilege to opt in when it is expedient to do so and to opt out when it gets uncomfortable.  Loving Asher is inextricably tied to loving him into and through an adulthood in which he will be a big black guy, and as nerve-wracking as that is for us it is of course something we embrace with all our hearts.  It is my hope, though I will invariably fall short sometimes, that this journey also steels me to stand with all my African-American sisters and brothers, even and especially when doing so is uncomfortable and inexpedient.

O God, Keep All Our Babies Safe

I wrote the post below over a year ago but it bears repeating.  Every night at bedtime, I pray for Asher's future safety, sometimes through tears.  He is so precious to me, and the thought of his being harassed or harmed weighs heavily on me.  As does the fact that there are millions of other black boys (and girls) who are also being fretted over by moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grands and coaches and neighbors, whose future safety is also not assured.  God, have mercy on us all.



#AllTheTime

The almost-daily juxtaposition of falling deeper in love with my sweet Asher and of reading about yet another senseless shooting of a black man weighs heavily on me.  The sting of the tragedy is sharper, and heavier is the knowledge of the near-universal harassment experienced by African-American males.

I am embarrassed to admit that it took bringing an African-American baby into our family to feel these things at this level.  Because that means that despite the fact that prior to Asher I had black friends, black neighbors, and black co-workers, their struggles used to be things I could opt into or out of as I saw fit.  They were burdens I would carry at times but at other times I would set them aside.  If I am honest, pre-Asher I surely did give casual assent to the sentiment that #BlackLivesMatter, and yet in my own life they did not have to matter all the time, so fluidly was I able to free myself as needed from the pangs of tragic shootings or the injustice of constant surveillance. 

Post-Asher, the violence hits home a lot more, as does the inescapability of his eventually being harassed, harmed, or worse.  I am newly aware of the constant peril faced by my African-American brothers (and, in different but no less hurtful ways, sisters).  I can now more easily appreciate just how much it hurts and how hard it is, a big part of which is that the pain is felt all the time. 

To my friends and colleagues for whom this has been a lifelong struggle, I am sorry.  I know you will not begrudge me for caring for Asher more than I care for you.  But I regret that I did not previously care for you enough that I would wear some of your burden with you at all times.  I now do, but I once put it on or took it off as suited me, not appreciating the privilege I had to be free to do that while you couldn't, and not valuing you enough to be more fully with you at all times rather than just when it was expedient for me. 

There is so much commentary that one often feels is necessary to add to the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.  Today I'll simply append ...#AllTheTime.  From pre-Asher to post-Asher, that to me makes all the difference.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet LXXXIX

Here's an excerpt from an article at The Ringer that I recently read, "Can Real Life Compete With an Instagram Playground?" 

“We live our lives mostly on screens, and I think all of the generations of people are looking to connect in the real world,” he said. “From our perspective, all we’re trying to do is just be in a place that people, as a natural part of their life, are willing to stop by and have an experience.” What’s left unsaid in that logic is that for many people wired into the Instagram circuit, taking a photo is the experience itself.

Then They Came for Me

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.


My daughter and I saw this quote at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier this month, and it is oft repeated in times like these.  But this article reminds us that its author was a complicated figure.  

Martin Niemöller, a German Protestant pastor, was a supporter of Hitler, an anti-Semite, and a member of a far-right group.  It was only when fellow pastors were pledging allegiance to Hitler and
Niemöller resisted and was sent to a concentration camp that his thinking evolved.  Here is, in some ways, an even more powerful quote from him that also ought to be etched in a museum:

… it was not at all clear to me what only dawned upon me later in the concentration camp: that, as a Christian, I must conduct myself not according to my sympathies or antipathies, but must see in each human being, even if he is unsympathetic to me, the fellow human being for whom Jesus Christ hung His cross as much as for me. This simply precludes any form of rejection and action against a group of human beings of any race, any religion, any skin color.

People who espouse hateful sentiments that do not allow others to freely exist deserve our condemnation.  But they also must be given room to change, for history proves that people can in fact change, sometimes in profound ways.  We are worse off if we don't make space to make that possible.

Where Abortion Seems Particularly Wrong

This article, on the near-eradication of the birth of children with Down syndrome in some countries, caught my attention, and in particular this quote near the end (emphases are mine):

Over at Landspitali University Hospital, Helga Sol Olafsdottir counsels women who have a pregnancy with a chromosomal abnormality. They speak to her when deciding whether to continue or end their pregnancies. Olafsdottir tells women who are wrestling with the decision or feelings of guilt: "This is your life — you have the right to choose how your life will look like."

She showed Quijano a prayer card inscribed with the date and tiny footprints of a fetus that was terminated.

Quijano noted, "In America, I think some people would be confused about people calling this 'our child,' saying a prayer or saying goodbye or having a priest come in -- because to them abortion is murder."

Olafsdottir responded, "We don't look at abortion as a murder. We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication... preventing suffering for the child and for the family. And I think that is more right than seeing it as a murder -- that's so black and white. Life isn't black and white. Life is grey."

Of course, gender-selective abortion is practiced in many countries, including China and India.  And, of course, advancing technologies promise to provide expectant parents even more information and potentially more reasons to decide whether or not to proceed.

It seems to me that if we condemn racial supremacy and gender inequality, and if we choose to be accepting of all irrespective of physical/intellectual ability, sexual orientation, and gender identity, if we desire to be a society in which all are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, if all of that...then we must find this line of thinking abhorrent.

I agree on one level that life isn't black and white.  But I also believe that life is precious.  These lives matter.  Shame on us if we continue to go down this path.

Perfect Love

I really like something Christian author John Piper talks about when it comes to love.  Love on this side of glory is constrained in three ways.  First, there is nothing perfectly worthy of our love.  Second, our capacity to love is flawed.  Third, everything comes to an end.

But in heaven, there are no such constraints.  We will behold God face to face.  We will love perfectly.  And we will love forever.

There are, of course, wonderful expressions of and opportunities for love in our lifetimes.  I am truly blessed to enjoy them every day.  But I am reminded they are but down payments on an even greater experience that awaits.  To paraphrase the apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 2:9, eye, ear, and heart have not begun (and on this side of glory cannot begin) to perceive all of what God has prepared for us.  Wow!

Lazy Linking, 195th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

195.1 Tebow shakes hand of autistic fan & then homers es.pn/2vtqaCq @espn

195.2 David Brooks calls Google CEO coward for firing engineer over memo nyti.ms/2fC1BgV @nytimes

195.3 Shades of precogs in "Minority Report": vetting immigrants on predicted future behavior bit.ly/2ujtLnn @theintercept

195.4 Buy experiences over stuff? Maybe not...or maybe what's the difference bit.ly/2uRXNgL @guardian

195.5 Scary thought (unless you're a Bucks fan): Greek Freak will make another leap next yr bit.ly/2uz05mi @bballbreakdown

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet LXXXIII

Here's an excerpt from an article I just read, "What A Jewish Journalist Saw And Heard In Charlottesville," at Forward.com:



“Duke, Duke, Duke,” the crowd chanted, as David Duke, the former KKK leader and poster boy of modern American neo-Nazism, walked straight into the supportive audience and stepped up to the bench-turned-podium.

“The courage you showed today in Charlottesville,” he told his supporters. “This is a first step toward making a realization of something that Trump alluded to early in the campaign — this is the first step toward taking America back.” And he explained: “European Americans face massive discrimination. Truth is that we’re being ethnically cleansed in our own nation.”

Love Your Enemies

Picking up on yesterday's post, I was struck by this quote from Kesha.  I'd heard the song and I knew the terrible back story, but I was pleasantly surprised at how honest and healthy her perspective was about healing and prayer.

The Bible teaches us to love our enemies, and while there is surely some self-sacrifice and self-discipline in that, there is also a considerable amount of self-love.  It is healing and freeing to not only forgive but to love those who have hurt us.  God, of course, demonstrated this in the most profound of ways, and opportunities that we have to do that on a much smaller scale are truly windows into the divine.

More of that, please!  For our own good, let's say no to vengeance and schadenfreude and grudges.  Let's say yes to forgiving, praying for, and loving others. 

Make Praise Normal Again

I don't swim in particularly mean circles, but a general unkind sentiment seems to have settled over this generation like a foul cloud.  Rather than celebrating kindness we seem to have elevated the opposite.  We revel in "dragging" others and cheer a good "sick burn."  My older son has taken to saying "roasted!" when he gets me good.

Maybe this is all in jest and I should take it as such, and I do.  But it does reveal a dark delight in putting down others.

I have an idea.  Let's praise each other too.  It's too bad that kind words are taken as kissing up, seeming fake, or being weak.  It doesn't need to be this way.  Think about the people in your life.  They are worthy of your praise!  People who have helped you get where you are, people whose presence in your life makes life wonderful, and people who are just stone cold awesome...tell them to their face, "hey, I want you to know that I think you rock!"  Let's Make Praise Normal Again!

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet LXXXII

Here's an excerpt from a book I read earlier this month, "Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens," by Steve Olson:

Perhaps the greatest failure of the monitoring effort at Mount St. Helens was the insufficient attention devoted to the worst things that could happen. Though lateral blasts were not well understood at the time, geologists knew that volcanoes could explode sideways, but no one systematically explored that possibility and explained it to the public. In their internal discussions and their public communications, the geologists stuck largely to the most likely things that could happen, not the outliers. A large event was possible but unlikely, and scientists still have difficulty dealing with low-probability high-consequence events. But without some knowledge of what could happen, the people around the volcano that Sunday morning were unprepared for what did happen.

We Have to Do the Hard Things

It may often seem like all hell is breaking loose and people are just the worst, but actually we've never had it better and we're by and large on our best behavior as humans as we've ever been.  So says the data, on things like poverty and child mortality and infectious diseases.  And so say books like Steven Pinker's fantastic "Our Better Angels," which shows how much less violent and how much more humane we have become over time. 

But this recent piece in the Guardian and this commentary about the piece at kottke.org argue, just because we've moved in the right direction so dramatically doesn't mean we'll continue to do so without effort, and in fact if we're not careful we can grind to a halt or even move backward.  We tend to think of history as a fait accompli, but of course it is anything but.  Things had to happen for history to happen.  For us to make progress in medicine and sanitation and health care delivery, we had to do those things, and it wasn't always easy and in fact was often hard.  For us to become more civilized and less brutish, we had to do those things, and it wasn't always easy and in fact was often hard.

And we have to continue to do those things into the future, if we want all of this progress to continue.  We have to invest and innovate and try and fail and succeed and expand.  We have to rein in our darker impulses and say no to closing our minds and say yes to loving one another.  We can't ride the momentum of past successes and assume that future successes are assured.  We have to do these things, individually and collectively.  It won't always be easy and in fact it will often be hard.  But we have to do them.  We have to do the hard things.