JOST A MON: race

Jan 10, 2013

Colours

The boy's been much taken with Hindu mythology. Everyday he comes up with a new question. 'Why did Vishnu push Mahabali into the ground if Mahabali was a good king?' he asks. 'Was Jarasandha alive when he was born in two halves?' he wants to know. 'Who was Krishna's last wife?' he asks upon hearing of his 18,000 brides.

He has been devouring Amar Chitra Katha comics in his quest for complete knowledge of desi myth. Unlike his father who - from youth to this day - is singularly unimpressionable (some might say thick) - the boy is quick to notice and is keen in his sense of nuance. He observed, for example, that all the gods and heroes in the comics are fair, radiant, good-looking, while the asuras and villains are all dark, swarthy, moustachioed, pot-bellied and ugly.

A few weeks ago he said he wished he were a deva. He wanted to be a god of invisibility and speed, he said. He wanted to be white, he added.

I explained that skin colour was unimportant.

'Why are the villains are all dark in the comic, then?" he said.

Those fools at Amar Chitra Katha have much to answer for. Edition after edition has appeared over the years, and the pillocks have not had the sense to change their colour biases.

'Because the cartoonists at Amar Chitra Katha are idiots who think that 'fair' is good and 'dark' is bad,' I said. 'You shouldn't believe everything you see.'

'Okay,' said the boy.

Clearly, he was not entirely convinced.

Today I walked with him to school. On the way he asked about Ghatotkacha. I told him about Bhima and the rakshasi Hidimbi.

'Was she dark?' said the boy.

'Why?' said I.

'That is disgusting,' he said.

'Why?' said I.

'Because she might be drooling and all that. Yuck,' said the boy.

'Is she disgusting because she is dark?' I said.

'Yes,' said the boy.

'But we are dark - are you saying we are disgusting?' I said.

'No, acha,' said the boy. 'We are humans. Dark rakshasas are disgusting.'

If I weren't getting angrier and angrier, I might have appreciated his chutzpah here.

'So a fair rakshasa is not disgusting?' I said.

'No,' he said.

'Why do you think dark is ugly?' I said.

'It is complicated,' he said.

'No, it is not,' I said, positively livid by now.

'It may not be complicated for you, acha,' said the boy, 'But it is complicated for me.'

I am sorry to say that I lost it at this point. I did not handle this well. I raved and I spluttered. I ranted and I choked.

A ten minute walk to school is hardly the occasion to be engaging in a delicate discussion of racism and biases and the like, and my explosion can't have served to convey any useful teaching moment at all.

The boy cringed at first, and then shouted, 'It is complicated, okay?'

Then he looked at my face and calmed down at once.

'Just tell me what happened to Ghatotkacha,' he said softly.

'What do you think happened?' I snapped. 'He was dark, ugly, fought in the war, and died.'

He looked a tad worried that I was still shaking with fury. Is sarcasm wasted on a seven year old?

When we got to school, he said, 'Bye' and went in without a backward look.

[Happy new year, all.]

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Mar 28, 2011

St George in the East

That day it feels unaccountably oppressive to replace an office with a cavernous basement. It is a gloomy day and yet the gym does not appeal. I decide to take a walk to Stepney. There's not a lot going down in Stepney, I don't think, but there is Nicholas Hawksmoor's great church of St George in the East, and that seems as good as any destination.

(My walk takes me from the Bank intersection on King William Street to Eastcheap, to Great Tower Street, to Tower Hill, to Royal Mint Street, to Cable Street, detour to Ensign Street, left onto Wellclose Square, left onto Fletcher St and back to Cable Street, to Library Place, and right onto the gardens of St George in the East. I then walk around the building, get onto Cannon Street Road, turning right onto the Highway and a brief walk up to St Paul's Church and back on the Highway, past St Katherine's Docks to St Katherine's Way, and then onto the Thames Path by the southern end of the Tower of London, back to Tower Hill. The loop is complete and it is a matter of backtracing my steps to Bank, but I prefer to wander off sideways to Lower Thames Street, and up on Monument Street and Pudding Lane and past the Monument to Cannon Street, right onto St Swithin's Lane and left onto St Stephen's Row, and I am suddenly back at the Bank intersection.)

There's always something happening at St-George-in-the-East.

In Victorian times there was a story about a monkey that snatched the vicar's hat at the church. Investigation revealed that it had escaped from a menagerie nearby. This was not entirely surprising - trade in exotic animals was a local specialty. Another time, a Royal Bengal tiger escaped from the menagerie and snatched a boy. The boy was later rescued unharmed - and thereby hangs a tale.

In Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie, the tiger has escaped from Jamrach's, and Jamrach - to make recompense to the boy for his troubles - employs him at his concern. Jamrach's menagerie did exist - it was on the Highway that I walked on earlier. Jaffy grows up to be a responsible and honest animal-keeper, and Jamrach comes to depend on him, and sends him overseas in search of a dragon lizard.

What else happened at St George's? Well, the nearby parochial school - eponymous, of course - is where E.R. Braithwaite taught. You may remember him from To Sir, With Love.

St George's has been in the crosslines of religious and sectarian war for centuries. In 1859, it was the centre of the ritualism riots: local mobs protesting then novel aspects of worship. These days, those rituals would probably appear commonplace - to the few Christians in the area, of course. The church lies in predominantly Bangladeshi Tower Hamlets. There's a lumpen element that prefers the church to be a mosque. A vicar was attacked a few years ago by stoned Muslim youths. In 1936, when there was a large Jewish population in Stepney, the British Union of Fascists under Oswald Mosley organised a rally through the area. Anti-fascists sent in counter-protestors.

The police arrived in force to prevent the anti-fascists from disrupting the rally. The anti-fascists had set up roadblocks to stymie Mosley's goons; when the police tried to clear them up, housewives emptied chamber-pots over their heads. After a series of pitched battles up and down the area, Mosley was persuaded to abandon the rally - to avoid bloodshed, he said. Demonstrators and counterprotestors arrested for affray were badly treated by the police, no doubt specially by those that smelled of shit... In the 1980s, a large mural by Dave Binnington appeared on the side of St George's Town Hall, a few metres' walk from the Church, depicting this 'battle'. It's there to this day.

In 1911, the parish of St George was the venue of another pitched battle: the Battle of Stepney, or the Siege of Sidney Street, it came to be called. A few heavily armed thieves against large numbers of ill-equipped policemen. One W. Churchill, then Home Secretary, got embroiled, and sent in the Scots Guards to sort out the impasse.

It ended in the charred death of two of the ruffians. The ring-leader, Peter the Painter, was never found. To this day, 'tis said, he is an anti-hero in the East End.

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Mar 15, 2011

Emasculation?

A little while ago, the most emailed article on the BBC News website was one about Indian men and condom sizes. In a world obsessed by dimensions, this story was less than flattering to desis. Imported 'regular' sized condoms were too big for the average Indian, said the story.

The comments below that piece were revealing. Many people thought it was a funny story, some thought it exposed yet another deficiency of the subcontinental, and others claimed - as expected - that size was less important than what one did with it. After all, quipped one fellow interviewed in the article, to have the second-largest population in the world meant the men were doing something right.

(Clearly the man confused quantity for quality, but that's an entirely different argument.)

Meanwhile, a recently published book by J. C. Davies (I Got the Fever: Love, What's Race Gotta Do With It?) thumped bruised male egos further into the mud. After bonking men of several 'races', ex-Goldman Sachs employee J. C. Davies decided to write a comparative analysis of their abilities. She claimed that black men like to talk about basketball more than about Al Sharpton; Asian (I presume East Asian) men were materialistic, buying things more for bragging rights than for utility, and rubbish in bed to boot; and Latinos were possessive and obsessed by dancing and music.

Not having read the book, I can't reveal if all Indian men are well-versed in the Kama Sutra, however. Maybe you can find more details at Davies' blog?

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Oct 2, 2010

Clybourne Park

We went to see Bruce Norris's play Clybourne Park at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs today. It is an exploration of old-time racism, and modern-day racism, and considers the meaning of 'community.' Is a community a bunch of like-minded neighbours who watch out for and support each other? Or is it a mix of suffocating mores and mutual espionage that keeps people in line and chokes back resentments?

This play in two parts deals with two time periods - the first, in the 1950s, deals with a white family moving out of their suburban home in Clybourne Park, an all-white neighbourhood. They have sold their house to a black family, and when the neighbours find out, they want to persuade them to sell it to the church instead (at least I think it's the church). The man of the house is on knife-edge, apathetic at one moment, and apoplectic with rage at the next, while his wife, a high-strung woman with a laugh that grates on every nerve ending, tries to keep him calm. It gradually emerges that their son, a Korean War veteran, had committed suicide two years earlier, and they had never quite healed from that loss. They had received no support from the 'community' during those harrowing times, and now, when that self-same community wants them to stop the black people from coming in, they can scarcely hold back their tempers.

In the second half, the same area in the present day is mainly a black neighbourhood, and a white couple wants to move in as it gentrifies, and aims to do some conversions to a derelict-looking house (which, as it turns out, is the same as the first one we saw). A black couple, representing the neighbourhood association, is not very pleased about their rebuilding plans, thinking it clashes not just with the architectural style of the area, but also its 'history' - namely that of the African Americans who had settled there in the past half-century. The argument for and against the renovation quickly ramifies into name-calling, the issue of race, and the resentments that both whites and blacks feel in modern America.

This is a play that is filled with dark and corrosive wit. There is one particular set-piece when the characters aim to show each other that they are not offended by stereotyped humour by angrily crunching out increasingly vulgar and poisonous jokes that target whites and blacks and, then, in a sudden twist, women. But it also has moments of quietude and stillness. When the father of the dead soldier realises that he can submerge his anguish by getting out of the house to work whereas his wife is always left behind at home with nothing to distract her, the incoherence of his suggestions to her starkly expose his isolation and loss of empathy. While he drowned in his grief, it never occurred to him that his wife was in equal sorrow, and that moment of realisation is one of grace.

At other times, the rest of the characters all appear far too self-possessed and fluent in their mutual recriminations. All sorts of ill-feeling has lurked in the breasts of the residents of Clybourne Park, both in the past and in the present. Bruce Norris is skillful in revealing the divisions that pervade the intellectual discourse on race and modern life. That he does it without taking sides or being didactic is particularly satisfying.

[Catch it while you can at the Royal Court. It's moving to the West End in a couple of months, and you'll be paying twice as much for the privilege.]

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Aug 5, 2008

Fëanor's Law of Communal Cleanliness

Recently, CK had a post recently about cleanliness in Singapore. (One can't see the post anymore because his blog appears to be restricted by invitation-only. Dude, are you going to unlock it? We miss your insights!) He attributes it to a well-developed civic sense, indefatigable street-cleaners, and a punitive regime that discourages littering. In the comment trail, several folks point out that the fines appear to be insufficient because Singapore has been getting dirtier over time. Others blame immigrants. A couple of people mention the inculcation of basic civic courtesies at school, and profess to being horrified at the littering that happens elsewhere. Can't people clean up after their dog doodoos on the footpaths in various European cities? Get a goddamn poop-scoop, for Christ's sake, and use it!

My in-laws lived in England about thirty-odd years ago, and they remember it as a clean and racist place. Now it's less racist and dirtier. About twenty-five years ago, when we passed through Singapore, we found it incredibly neat. We did face quite a bit of disdain from the locals. Shopkeepers laughed at us. I found this rather peculiar, especially because there were Singaporeans of Indian origin who had been there for generations. Perhaps our accents and clothing set us apart. Indians at the time were the country cousins, I guess, thought to be poor and uncouth.

When I went back ten years ago, the situation was much improved. People were a lot politer. Or perhaps my skin was a bit thicker. And I saw that there had been a decided increase in litter between my visits. Meanwhile, my Malaysians friends assured me that Singaporeans were no different from anyone else - as soon as they crossed over the border to Malaysia, they would start littering with as much enthusiasm as their neighbours.

I suspect that there's a relationship between cleanliness (C) and racism (R). Something like:

$C = \frac{\alpha }{R}$

A sociological theory in there, perhaps? A people maintain 'qualities' that they consider important, and resent outsiders that dilute them. This is basic xenophobia, and is possibly intrinsic to human behaviour. But as the outsiders settle among the indigenous, a gruff acceptance leads to decreased xenophobia and increased tolerance of various foibles. Such as littering.

What we need is a reverse experiment: a massive emigration from a clean country like Singapore into a racist litter-zone such as, I don't know, Luton. If Luton then finds itself less dirty and more cosmopolitan, I hope you'll all remember that you saw it here first: Fëanor's Law of Communal Cleanliness.

Or course, now I'm just daydreaming.

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Jul 26, 2008

Ethnicity, Religion and War

This is the sort of interdisciplinary thing that I find fascinating. Murat Iyigun of the University of Colorado has written a paper titled Lessons from the Ottoman Harem (On Ethnicity, Religion and War), in which he brings several ostensibly disparate disciplines into one in his work. Politics, economics, history and statistics are blended with considerable panache.

The Ottomans, a Turkic people who, under the leadership of Osman, conquered much of Anatolia and established one of the great empires of the world, were also inveterate keepers of records. This treasure trove is available to researchers in all sorts of areas. But Dr Iyigun picks up some of the information he requires from the Conflict Catalog, a comprehensive dataset of violent conflicts in all regions of the world from the 1400s to date, and data on the imperial family from such sources as Turkish Wikipedia.

There appear to be two not quite mutually exclusive theories to explain Ottoman conflicts with their neighbours. The Gaza theory states that religion was a driving force for Ottoman bellicosity, leading them to initiate war against Europe, whereas eastern conflicts were started by others, their co-religionists for the main part. What fueled the energies of the early Ottoman conquerors was essentially their commitment to Gaza, and 'ideology of Holy War' in the name of Islam. Ottoman power was built on that commitment... (Paul Wittek.) Another theory is that as the Ottomans became a multiethnic empire, the Imperial Harem wielded considerable influence on the Emperor and determined to a large extent the direction of his wars. Various historians averred that members of the Harem with different ethnic or religious backgrounds often lobbied the Sultan to influence the geography of Ottoman conquests.

Dr Iyigun finds that the Gaza theory was an important but not sufficient cause for Ottoman war, but that the ethnicity of the Valide Sultan was an important and independent determinant of whether the Empire engaged in military conquests in Europe versus North Africa or the Middle East.

It appears that conversions into Islam, even among the elite in the Harem who were influential in policy matters, was insufficient to promote the cause of holy war. The ethnic roots seemed to dominate over the religious, and subverted the Sultans' ambitions toward the Middle East and North Africa.

A look at the genealogy of the Ottomans shows the varied maternal ancestry of many of them. [Source: Shaw, Peirce, Turk Vikipedi, http://turkboard.com]

Name	Period of Reign	Mother's Name	Ancestry
Beyazit I	1389-1401	Gulcicek Hatun	Greek
Mehmet I	1413-1421	Devlet Hatun	Turkish
Murad I	1421-1444, 1446-1451	Emine Hatun	Turkish
Mehmet II	1444-1446,1451-1481	Huma Hatun	Turkish
Beyazit II	1481-1512	I. Gulbahar Hatun	Albanian
Selim I	1512-1520	II. Gulbahar Hatun	Turkish
Suleyman I	1520-1566	Ayse Hafsa Sultan	Turkish
Selim II	1566-1574	Hurrem Sultan	Polish
Murad III	1574-1595	Nurbanu Sultan	Venetian
Mehmed III	1595-1603	Safiye Sultan	Venetian
Ahmed I	1603-1617	Handan Sultan	Greek
Mustafa I	1617-1618,1622-1623	?	Albanian
Osman II	1618-1622	Mahfiruz H. S.	Serbian
Murad IV	1623-1640	Kosem Sultan	Bosnian
Ibrahim I	1640-1648	Kosem Sultan	Bosnian
Mehmed IV	1648-1687	Turhan Sultan	Russian
Suleyman II	1687-1691	Saliha D. Hatun	Serbian
Ahmed II	1691-1695	Hatice Muazzez Sultan	Polish
Mustafa II	1695-1703	Emetullah R. G. S	Venetian

The Conflict Catalog comprises violent conflicts on five continents, with Richardson ratings exceeding 1.5 (a logarithmic scale, such that a value of n implies 2ⁿ fatalities). The number and identities of the participants in each listed conflict, the common name for it, and its date and geographical location are the primary data in the catalog. The duration of the conflict, and the number of fatalities are also available for about a third of the sample.

The crux of the paper is the following linear regression, used to estimate the impact of ethnic identities on Ottoman military operations.

OTTOWAR_t = L₀ + L₁ EUROMOM_t + L₂ X_t + e_t

where OTTOWAR is one of four alternative dependent variables, EUROMOM is a dummy variable for whether the sultans had a European maternal link, and X is a control variable including trend (TIME), the lagged variable OTTOWAR_t-1, estimates of Ottoman and European populations (OTTOPOP_t, EUROPOP_t), and an indicator variable for each of the three centuries (CENTURY_t). 300 annual observations in the period 1401-1700 are used in the regression.

What are these four alternative dependent variables? 1) the number of newly initiated conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and European powers at time t, OTTOMAN_t; 2) the count at time t of the newly initiated number of Ottoman conflicts with its non-European neighbours, OTHEROTTOMAN_t; 3) the aggregate number of conflicts the Ottoman Empire had with continental Europeans at time t, both that began at t and began earlier, AGOTTO_t; 4) the aggregate number of Ottoman conflicts with non-European foes, AGOTHER_t.

The reason for including 3) and 4), of course, is that medieval warfare was a seasonal affair: hostilities would be postponed at the onset of winter. Therefore, all unresolved military confrontations were renewed every year. Also, Dr Iyigun wanted to know if matrilineal ancestry determined not only the short-running wars, but also the longer ones.

What conclusions can be derived if we assume that the Valide Sultan's ancestry mattered for the patterns of Ottoman conquest? Well, we would expect L₁ to be negative and statistically significant when 1) and 3) are the dependent variables; and L₁ should be positive and significant, or insignificant and of any sign, if 2) and 4) are dependent variables.

Dr Iyigun uses other control variables as well, e.g. the Sultan's age at ascendancy to the Sublime Porte, the length of his reign, and whether he reigned before or after the great military defeat of the Ottoman navy at Lepanto. For the most parsimonious specification, though, he finds indeed that L₁ is negative and statistically significant at the 5% level. Hence, statistically at least, the sultan's tie to Europe via his mother reduced his military ventures in Europe by more than 70%. In fact, a subsequent regression implies that having a Venetian mother resulted in almost no aggression towards Europe on the part of the Sultan concerned. Meanwhile, on the other front, there is almost no relation between the maternal ancestry of a Sultan and his conflicts with his Oriental neighbours. In fact, having a European mum didn't affect an Ottoman's fights with his coreligionists to his east. A truly remarkable finding.

Couple of minor points: the older a Sultan was on ascending the throne, the likelier he was to engage the Europeans rather than other Muslims in battle. Likewise, the longer he reigned ,the less likely he was to fight on his Eastern fronts.

Dr Iyigun addresses all sorts of subtleties in his paper. One interesting point: considering that the average age of ascension was 22 years, the reason that the younger Sultans were less likely to engage the Europeans in battle could have been because their mothers had been absorbed into the Harem two decades earlier upon a previous Ottoman victory. By a suitable lagged variable in his regression, Dr Iyigun is able to show that this effect is negligible.

A very enjoyable paper, indeed.

References

1. Shaw, S (1976). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol 1, (Cambridge University Press).

2. Peirce, L. P. (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press).

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Jul 29, 2007

Putta's Landing to Fulla's Settlement

Amazing how rough-and-tumble old Saxon sounds. Somehow I doubt that the residents of Putney would have paid through their noses to buy property there had their borough retained its old name of Putta. And wealthy Fulham today, once having started life as a fishing village, can scarce be connected with the demesne of Fulla, or indeed the criminal syndicates that ran the suburb till the 1960s.

Continuing our recitation of the various bridges over London's Thames, we find that other interesting facts abound. We speak here of the crossings connecting Fulham with Putney. At least initially, ferries were used to traverse the river. Indeed, ferries from Putney are mentioned in the Domesday Book (which recorded in 1086 that they yielded twenty shillings annually to the Lord of the Manor). The first plans to build a bridge in 1671 were scuppered by the jealousy of the City Corporation, and it was not till 1726 that an Act of Parliament authorised its construction. (You can purchase the original documents at de Freitas Books.)

This first bridge was designed by Sir Joseph Acworth, and was made of timber, supported by 26 arches. Being low-slung, ships often collided with it, and it needed constant repair. An engraved map by John Rocque names it 'Fulham Bridge'. In 1879, the Metropolitan Board of Works purchased this bridge, and decided it was time to build a new one. That is the one currently standing, called Putney Bridge - unique in being the only one in Britain to have a church at either end - and is the first of Sir Joseph Bazalgette's bridges in London (1886).

That famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft allegedly tried to commit suicide by jumping off Fulham bridge. She had been earlier thwarted at Battersea by the large crowds; when she leapt into the river at Putney, she proved to be equally inept in the attempt and was fished out of the water by a boatman.

It appears that the only person compensated when the Bazalgette bridge was built was the landlord of the Eight Bells tavern, whose trade was affected because the pub was no longer at the end of the bridge. This is in exact opposition to previous payoffs, which were made to boatmen and the scullers whose livelihoods would have been permanently affected by the construction of any bridge across the river.

A railway bridge standing adjacent to the Old Fulham Bridge is used by the District Line is a wrought-iron lattice girder bridge placed on two piers. Designed by William Jacomb, it was completed in 1889. Once it was called the iron bridge although its abutments are dressed with Portland Stone. It has a pedestrian route, which seems barely used.

Meanwhile, the rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford universities resulted in the annual Boat Race (1845). Starting from the Putney Embankment and ending at Mortlake, this is the most famous and popular of the races on the river. Sadly, though, the ancient Doggett's Coat and Badge race, or the Head of Rivers race, or the yearly contest between the London Fire Brigade and the River Police are hardly attended.

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JOST A MON

The idle ramblings of a Jack of some trades, Master of none