Striking a New Chord for Race

Afro-Punk suggests that many of the divisions between punk rock and hip hop are largely artificial. In a certain sense, hip hop could be looked at as little more than punk rock for African Americans.

As numerous cultural theorists have suggested -- and often demonstrated -- music is a key ideological tool for the socialization of youth. Youths are sent key messages about who they are culturally by the kind of music they are expected to listen to.

Music has often proven to be racially segregated. Country music has long been a bastion of the southern and midwestern United States. Rock n' roll was considered offensive within these particular portions of the US because it incorporated elements of soul and blues -- otherwise considered to be "black" music.

Of course those who abhorred rock n' roll for its ethnic roots failed to anticipate what would eventually become known as the "Elvis affect". Elvis Presley would eventually help coopt this music and turn it effectively "white", and in the imaginations of many its ethnic roots would be forgotten.

African American artists who would attempt to break the colour barrier in music genres such as country music would find it extremely difficult. Although extremely talented, Charley Pride spent his career relegated as a fringe performer despite the excellence of his music. When Muzik Mafia member Cowboy Troy attempted to incorporate hip hop stylings into country music, the response from more traditional country music listeners bordered on threatening violence.

Clearly, race was very much a factor in this response. Despite the fact that Tobey Keith had previously tried -- with disastrous results -- to incorporate rapping within some of his songs, and Detroit-area rapper-cum-rocker-cum-country crooner Kid Rock had been embraced within country music circles, the image of a rapping black cowboy proved to be a little too much for many country music listeners.

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, an intriguing element of the metamorphosis of musical genres has long taken shape.

In Japan, country music is mostly enjoyed by wealthy members of the upper class.

Even more interesting however, is a burgeoning Japanese hip hop scene. The subject of race -- omnipresent in hip hop -- is turned on its ear in Japan by conflating traditional Japanese caste systems into de facto races.

Whatever one may have to say about the effective racial segregation of music, it is clearly declining. White rappers like Eminem and Canada's own Swollen Members continue to have increasing successes, and the continuing success of white and black artists alike in R&B are clearly demonstrating a de-racialization of many musical genres.

There is one other key point of interest in regards to the increasing desegregation of genre music, and that is the increasing prevalence of interracial dating, mating and breeding.

It's interesting to note that, as Jane Junn notes, ever since the United States began allowing citizens to be recorded as multi-racial in its annual census, this has been the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States.

The ethnic desegregation of music has built many bridges between people of different races, and so has certainly been a factor in this.

This, of course, begs an important question: if the racial desegregation of music continues to break down these barriers, one has to wonder how people may think of race fifty years from today. Perhaps one should fully expect that modern notions of race and racism will be obsolete within the lifetimes of many people alive today.

Whatever notions of race and racism may predominate in the future, one can only hope that they will be a significant improvement on the racial ideas of today, which in turn are a significant improvement on the racial ideas of 50 years ago.

Once Again, the Difference Between Correlation and Causality

Many Canadian atheists don't seem to understand the difference

Writing in an op-ed article appearing in a recent-ish issue of the National Post -- a position that oddly enough certain individuals would insist is reserved for recpients of "wingnut welfare" -- Center For Inquiry Executive Director Justin Trottier writes about the recent work of the University of Lethbridge's Reginald Bibby and attempts to link key attitudinal changes in teenagers to a rise in atheism among that same age group.

Unfortunately, Trottier makes the same error that many of his atheist compatriots made when they fell head over heels with a study that alleged that regions ranking high in religious belief also ranked higher on indices for various social ills.

Namely, he mistakes correlation for causality.

The article starts out simply enough, with Trottier asking an age-old question.

"Can we be good without god?"

This is an easy enough question to answer.

Many, many atheists live perfectly moral lives. Many, many atheists are excellent people. This question essentially answers itself.

Of course, this isn't enough for Trottier. He'd rather ask if atheism actually makes people morally better. And as many people have managed before him, Trottier manages to find more or less precisely what he so wants to find:

"This may become a defining question for our time. University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby has written a new book, The Emerging Millennials, which, while clear on the unprecedented rise of atheism, seems to suggest two irreconcilable answers to this fundamental question.

Bibby polled Canadians on the significance they placed on certain key values, and found that believers rated as more important values like forgiveness, patience and trust. But at the same time, he found that teenagers — the demographic group that has witnessed the highest rise in non-belief since 1984, from 12% to 32% – are increasingly less permissive and more mature regarding issues like alcohol and drug use, smoking or sex."

Trottier seems awfully quick to suggest that these changes in values are due to increasing levels of atheism.

But Trottier is clearly mistaking correlation for causality -- one of the most basic mistakes anyone makes in interpreting any phenomena.

These numbers could be placed in greater context by examining any number of the other things that have changed in the same period of time, from the increase of expendable income for teenagers to the ever-increasing spread of consumer electronics.

Not to mention that in the time period in which Trottier specifically alludes -- post-1984, there have been a lot of other social changes in the world. Teenagers during this period were growing up in an era in which AIDs was becoming a global pandemic.

Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug program became something of a standard of anti-drug education.

It shouldn't be said that atheism absolutely cannot or is not a factor in the changes that Trottier and Bibby are referring to. But it certainly isn't the sole factor, and to attribute causality to it is hasty in the extreme.

"The question then becomes: Is the rise of atheism among youngsters going to lead to civil anarchy, or are we actually improving? As Bibby himself said: 'The thing that really surprised me were the positive results that point to the fact that we're making a lot of progress with teens.'

To reconcile these two patterns, let me suggest that actions speak louder than words. As unlikely as it sounds, perhaps those polled do not live up to their own high standards. A person can claim to be any number of things; televangelists, for example, would certainly score high on Prof Bibby’s test of values."

To top that off, one wonders if the values of which Bibby and Trottier speak are even values that Trottier wants to attribute to atheism or secularism.

Less permissive attitudes toward sex, drugs and alcohol have historically been associated with religious conservatism. In many cases -- such as 1920s prohibition -- these were a reflection of regressive attitudes amongst those who promoted these policies.

Making alcohol illegal was looked at by some as a method of clamping down on the feminist "flapper" movement of the roaring '20s. That particular brand of feminism may seem quaint and even anti-feminist by today's standards, but there['s little question that the religious conservatives of the day were extremely troubled by this new breed of woman who drank and had sex casually.

These don't seem like the kind of values that a secularist movement would want to embrace. One has to expect that Trottier almost certainly wouldn't. This is mostly because of the nature of the values he describes as "secular values":

"When comparing the values of an atheist to those of a believer, one must bear in mind just which values we are talking about. Many, including Bibby, who claim religious upbringing is necessary to guarantee social values consistently choose exclusively biblical values on which to base their statements."

But it's amazing how quickly Trottier actually fails this particular test:

"Kindness, politeness and courtesy are important, but so are social justice, equality, freedom of expression, accountability and commitment to democracy. These are the sorts of secular values I would wager atheists would score high on. But they are rarely used for such comparisons."

Certainly, many atheists would score high on these values. There is simply no question about that.

We also know that many atheists, both today and throughout history, would not.

For example, would Joseph Stalin have scored high on these values? Absolutely not. Many atheists continue to sputter in outrage every time Stalin and his atheism are mentioned within the confines of the same sentence, even at the expense of historical fact.

Furthermore, to describe "social justice, equality, freedom of expression, accountability and commitment to democracy" as secular values -- a thinly-veiled attempt to appropriate these values to atheism -- over looks the historical context of action in favour of these values.

Tommy Douglas was a Baptist Minister for whom the foundation of his political action was the Protestant Social Gospel.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr -- apparently unbeknownst to atheist rapper Greydon Square -- was also Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. Dr King used religiously-inspired prophetic language in his campaign to win civil rights for African Americans.

Benazir Bhutto insisted that democracy was divinely mandated by God in the religion of Islam.

If individuals such as Douglas, King Jr and Bhutto -- each in excellent company to say the least -- can find inspiration for these values within their religion, to describe them as "secular" values is more than just a little bit of a fallacy. These are values that virtually all but the most extreme people on either side of the modern ideological divide value. They are neither inherently religious or inherently secular values.

But although Trottier stumbles over the conclusions of Bibby's work, there is little question that his ultimate conclusion is both sound and admirable:

"Instead of wondering where society would find its ethical moorings in the absence of religion, the more interesting question is where our youth are already finding such alternatives and how they can be encouraged. As church membership fades, society should grant the same funding opportunities to secular and humanistic community groups who can fill the void in a way that ignores religious differences."

Those distressed by the rise of atheism -- whether cloaked as secularism or otherwise -- don't seem to understand that those who are increasingly turning to atheism are doing so for a very good reason.

It's clear that many people are finding that their own spiritual needs are not being met by traditional religions. This doesn't change the fact that they have spiritual needs, but rather reflects the fact that their own spiritual needs are different from those of Christians, Muslims, Jews or members of any other religion.

"Let us also not forget that many atheists do not need a building with a partisan logo on the front to engage in building strong communities. Many parents sit on school councils, coach sports teams or form community groups at animal shelters, blood clinics or food banks, and in other countless ways atheists blend anonymously into the secular volunteer community. Atheists have always found ways to improve society while passing on civic virtues to the next generation. It’s time those researching society’s trends figured out how to measure that."

If secularist organizations are going to provide the same level of community service as religious organizations -- and the Centre for Inquiry very much does, providing services such as substance abuse programs specially-tailored to atheists, they very much should receive the same treatment as religious organizations under Canadian tax law.

Justin Trottier may not firmly understand the difference between correlation and causality -- or at least seems to have properly applied it to the phenomena he discusses here -- but when it comes down to one of the most important secular values -- the equal treatment of all religions, as well as nonbelievers, before the law -- he certainly is on the right track.

Fearing the Future in the Urban Environment

The Terminator was written at a time when North American society was still coming to grips with the number of urban serial killers and disturbed "spree" killers breaking out in major cities. For many people, urban environments had become -- and remain -- extremely frightening environments, with danger lurking around every corner.

Contrasted to this was the ambivalence and anomie of people more accustomed to living in those urban environments. Emile Durkheim defined anomie as, essentially, normlessness. In order for social norms to break down social complexities and the industrial division of labour had to break down traditional social value systems.

Anomie reduced the constraints on the ways one could pursue their goals. As some individuals became more and more predatory those who adhered to more traditional social norms could more easily be victimized -- whether it be through crime or ruthless business practices. That sense of victimization could manifest itself in various social problems, including domestic violence, societal withdrawal and suicide.

This anomie led to the development of truly frightening urban landscapes. Street gangs, transient substance-users and homeless people provided for an intimidating vision of a society gone horribly awry. The urban landscape was seen as hard on the mental health of its inhabitants.

The Terminator played off this concept of the urban environment. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cybernetic pseudo-character and Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) are initially framed against the image of a serial killer knocking off Sarah Connors in the very order in which they appear in the phone book.

Even after Reese saves Connor (Linda Hamilton) from the Terminator's first attempt to kill her she regards him with suspicion. The social disconnect of the urban environment -- resulting partially from the supplanting of traditional social values -- sewed deep mutual suspicion in city-dwellers.

In The Terminator James Cameron suggests that the most frightening prospect of urban life isn't necessarily the other people living that life, but rather the ultimate result of the industrialism that led to the development of the urban environment. In The Terminator's futuristic and constantly-changing future, this is a computer capable of making the decision to destroy mankind.

Cameron mixed the latent terror of the urban environment with futurism, a philosophical idea that muses about not only the potentially threatening or dehumanizing capacity of technology. Futurism is prevalent in the modern wave of neo-horror films in which technology is used to terrorize the film's protagonists.

In most of these films the threat was purported to be not technology itself, but a malevolent force that instead manifested itself through that technology. The danger was not necessary technology, but the omnipresence of it.

In the flashback scenes of The Terminator, Cameron spins this idea. Technology remains threatening, but is no longer omnipresent. Children huddle together in an underground bunker and stare into a television set in which a fire has been lit -- watching it as children did before Judgement Day. There seem to be very few telephones, no computers, and very little electricity of any kind. When a terminator arrives to clean out the bunker of human life, the danger posed by technology arrives from outside, as opposed to from within.

In The Terminator, James Cameron combined a latent suspicion of the unintended consequences of technology with the latent terror that had long become a part of urban environments.

As the one Terminator film actually produced during the Cold War it's actually rather intriguing that the political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union would remain largely absent from the film itself. Those tensions wouldn't find a role in the franchise until the sequel.

Heavy Metal and the Culture of Censorship

In Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Canadian film maker Sam Dunne traces the historical development of heavy metal music. Applying the discipline of anthropology to heavy metal, Dunne turns up some intriguing elements to this music long wrongfully written off as "unsophisticated" and "stupid".

While its amusing to hear Dunne describe Val Halen as metal, and even more amusing for Dunne to treat Victoria, BC as some kind of musical backwater, Dunne turns up intriguing links with more standard "sophisticated" fare like Wagner or Beethoven.

Considering the nature of heavy metal, the film should also provoke deep questions about the nature of the censorship directed at it.

Many would have people believe that conservatives are the driving force behind censorship. But the involvement of Tipper Gore -- while her husband, future Vice President and future Democratic Presidential nominee, Al stood quietly by -- puts the lie to this.

In fact, the Parents' Music Resource Centre, the group under which Gore organized her famed campaign against heavy metal -- which, interestingly enough, drew the ire of John Denver of all people -- was formed by Tipper Gore, Susan Baker (wife of Reagan-era Republican James Baker), Pam Howar and Sally Nevius.

The PMRC was largely a non-partisan affair. And while conservatives would later target artists like the Dixie Chicks for political purposes, and liberal activists would frequently target Ted Nugent, Gore made it apparent that it isn't merely conservative partisans who raise the flag of family values.

It can even be said that the moral panic that Tipper Gore raised over heavy metal staged something of a prequel for the moralization of the climate change panic that her husband would later promote.

Unlike the targeting of musicians like Ted Nugent and the Dixie Chicks was based on issue politics -- the Dixie Chicks drew ire for appealing to the anti-war movement, and Nugent continues to draw ire for his opposition to gun control -- the censorship directed at heavy metal must go deeper. This is because heavy metal is more than just music -- for many people it's a lifestyle. In countless ways the music is almost cult-like. More than a mere subculture, heavy metal is a culture all its own.

Because the subject matter of heavy metal is so intense and so extreme, it's simultaneously incomprehensible and threatening to people who don't share that intensity. When heavy metal bands make political statements, they make them in terms so extreme that the message can often be lost. Few individuals who aren't frequent listeners of Metallica recognize the anti-war message at the heart of "One". If not for the music video, featuring clips from Johnny Got His Gun, even some regular listeners may have missed the message. Many may still.

Not that the stereotypes don't have any credibility. Many of the bands featured in Headbanger's Journey play directly into the sterotypes that characterize shows like Metalocalypse, such as Mayhem, who wear necklaces made of skull fragments from their former lead singer, who killed himself with a shotgun.

Certainly, these bands do appear to lend credence to the condemnation of reactionaries. But to judge an entire culture based on its most extreme few examples always leads to the folly of narrow profiling.

Censorship is always based on whatever culture aspires to dominance, and is an effort to try to enforce those values on other cultures that don't share them. It's the last sad act of reactionaries who cannot tolerate cultural dissent.