Which lives matter?

[pnwmom]

Why some lives count more than others.

I can’t do this article justice with snippets. It’s worth the time to read the whole thing.

From the National Catholic Reporter:

http://ncronline.org/news/peace-justice/which-lives-matter

In Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Berkeley professor Judith Butler asks why some deaths are a cause for public outrage and others are not. She argues that societies construct a "differential distribution of public grieving," and that some dead bodies are merely counted, while others "count."

Those that count are memorialized in public ceremonies, buried in well-tended graves, publicly commemorated on anniversaries. (Since 1906, Confederate graves have been honored with headstones paid for by the federal government; in the last decade alone, the Department of Veteran Affairs has spent $2 million for these headstones.)

SNIP

Butler's argument starts with the assertion that is obvious when stated, but obscured in daily life: Every person's life is precarious, and we are all subject to starvation, illness and early death.
But only some lives are seen as precarious, and are treated as such. The people in these groups are more likely to be embedded in systems of social caretaking, including access to healthy and abundant foods, medical plans, hospitals, adequate education, jobs, infrastructures that work. These are the lives that are protected, not threatened, by the police. And because their lives matter when they are alive, they are more likely to be grieved by society when they die.

According to Butler, a racist frame produces "iconic versions of populations" -- some of whom are "eminently grievable, and others whose loss is no loss, and who remain ungrievable."

[brer cat]

1. A good read, pnwmom.

The rush to pronounce the victims of police murder as "thugs" is part of the desire to place them outside those that "count." It goes beyond excusing the force used to end their life to excusing those who do not grieve, giving them escape from any possible guilt. It permits some to dismiss #BLM; after all they are forcing us to give names to those who should not be worthy of a moment of our time or a shred of our compassion.

Thanks for sharing this.

[kwassa]

2. I kinda agree, and kinda don't.

The lives that are seen as precarious are the most like those that run media outlets.

Part of this comes from universal human narcissism. We are interested in ourselves, or people very much like us. The media lords also look at the world through that lens. Missing white girls are a story; missing black girls, not so much.

and one local death is much more newsworthy than the death of thousands on the far side of the world. We are more interested in news that is close to us.

The majority is interested in the majority, not the minority, not the far away.

[pnwmom]

4. That's all true. But what are we doing still spending millions of dollars

even in the last decade, paying for headstones on confederate graves?

Why are those graves worth that special honor?

[kwassa]

5. all the graves get that special honor.

Here is a fabulous article, in depth, on this very subject. It talks a lot about the politics of the laws in the interaction with Confederate heritage groups, and the influence of nostalgia movements


http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/government-spending-confederate-graves/277931/

It wasn't until the 20th century, though, that Confederate veterans were included in this tradition. It started with legislation passed in 1906, at first providing headstones for a very limited number of Confederate veterans, specifically prisoners of war, "who died in Federal prisons and military hospitals in the North and who were buried near their places of confinement." That mandate for the Department of War was expanded to all Confederate graves with a law passed in 1929.

Responsibility for headstones was transferred to the VA in the National Cemeteries Act of 1973, which declared, "The Administrator shall furnish, when requested, appropriate Government headstones or markers at the expense of the United States for the unmarked graves of" a number of categories of veterans and those who'd served the country or were buried in a national cemetery, including specifically, "Soldiers of the Union and Confederate Armies of the Civil War."

[pnwmom]

6. Why do we honor any confederate graves? Why are we honoring

those who chose to serve in the war for slavery?

[BlueMTexpat]

7. That's a good question, but

not all soldiers of the confederacy chose to serve in that war. As always, it's the political leaders who were most responsible. The laws likely were meant as a generous gesture because whoever and whatever the dead were, their survivors were all citizens of the Union.

Not all confederate soldiers were volunteers and at least some few were fighting for reasons other than pro-slavery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_Army#Control_and_conscription

Many union soldiers were also not volunteers and fought for motives other than anti-slavery. Many were and remained extremely racist throughout. We also need to remember that awful as slavery was/is (and I can only even begin to imagine for myself the awfulness, inhumanity, and dehumanization involved when human beings are considered as "property" when I consider the legal history of women), the practice was prevalent in the North as well as the South during the early years of the USA.

The earliest known immigrant on my maternal grandmother's side came from Wales and immigrated to Pennsylvania where there was apparently a sizable Welsh community. I was horrified to discover as recently as last year that his estate as recorded when he died actually listed slaves. And this was in Pennsylvania! I believe that many of us whose ancestors came to the US in its early years would not be able to hold up our heads about our own family's participation in the institution of slavery if the whole truth were known.

In fact, slaves, freed or otherwise, who managed to make it out of "slave states" were barely better treated than they had been as slaves in the South. That is a total national disgrace, IMHO. See, e.g., The Freedmen's Bureau http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedmens-bureau See also http://www.civilwarhome.com/freedmen.html One fictional look at post-Civil war treatment of freedmen can be found in the AMC series, Hell on Wheels, where they were treated worst of all among those who helped build the Union Pacific RR west. http://www.amc.com/shows/hell-on-wheels/talk/2011/11/freedmen-experience One can like or dislike the series for various reasons, but the interaction among all freedmen/immigrant groups is very interesting to see depicted, especially in the anguish and destiny of Elam Ferguson, a mixed-race freedman played by Common, who is literally caught between a rock and a hard place.

In the final analysis, the War Between the States and its aftermath were complex situations that don't lend themselves to easy description. In fact, with the renaissance of overt racism - and even worse its seemingly being considered acceptable - in the US, they both continue to permeate our society. That will likely continue for years to come. Each of us must do our part to help elevate the discourse so as to find solutions. We can't change history, but we can impact the present and the future.

In my extended family today, I am proud to count AA cousins and their offspring, just as I am to have other ethnicities/cultures represented in my own children/grandchildren. It is our children and theirs who will literally change the world for the better.

[Person 2713]

3. Good read .... "iconic versions of populations"