Black In The Age of Obama - Part 2

Something strange happens to my submissions to the New York Times so I submitted a new text as comment to Charles Blow's column in the NYT on December 5th - Black in the Age of Obama. I am making it my blog post for Sunday morning here in Sweden because every such submission by me refers to the comparison of Infant Mortality statistics in Sweden (best or 2d best in the world) with those in the USA (30th in the world.)

Comment submitted to the NYT
December 6 2009
10:01 am Swedish Time

Sad to say, I must agree completely with the final lines in Charles Blow’s excellent column: \"The Age of Obama, so far at least, seems less about Obama as a black community game-changer than as a White House gamesman.\"

The most recent example is the president’s decision to turn his energies from the passage of universal health care, which would provide major benefit to both disadvantaged blacks and whites, to concentrate on expanding an unwinnable war whose costs can only worsen the situation of black America.

The Obama gamesman chooses to make human and financial commitments in Afghanistan that are most satisfying to the Republican Party that actively opposes the one Obama initiative that clearly is a black community game changer - universal health care.

One need only look at infant mortality in the black community – see CDC publication reported on in the Times – to see where game change is needed. The US is ranked 30th concerning infant mortality in that publication and a major contributor to that low ranking is premature births among black mothers. The potential for “Black game change” has been shown in one county in Wisconsin (also reported in the Times) where infant mortality in the black population has been reduced to the same low level as in the white - an indication that the difference is not so much genetic as it is societal. That level is close to the level in Sweden which is best or second best in the world as concerns this health statistic.

Universal pre-natal care in America is a Game Change that will ensure that fewer black babies die, something that one assumes would be welcomed by all, even Right-to-Lifers. Expansion of the war in Afghanistan can only be negative for Black America. But universal medical care will perhaps not insure many more votes from black Americans in a future election, but war in Afghanistan may well insure more votes from white America.

It was the worst of times.

Larry Lundgren – Linkoeping SWEDEN – only-neverinsweden.blogspot.com for more on this subject.

You can read it in the times (NYT)
Jag har kopierat här mitt inlägg i dagens (5/12 eller 12/5 om du är Amerikan) New York Times opinion article by Charles Blow. Eftersom jag läser NYT OnLine jag får alltid vara först att lägga in inlägg eftersom jag lever på svensk tid. Texten nedan är bara en kommentar till en artikel men jag vill se till att något finns och hoppas att jag skriva mer senare.

Barack Obama had two chances to do something for "blacks" (I explain the quotation marks below). 1) He could have concentrated all his energy on seeing to it that new health policy is passed that provides for universal health care. 2)To do this he could have decided that "winning" in Afghanistan will cost more in deaths incurred, souls (US military and Afghanis)destroyed, and deficit exploded than his announced decision is worth.
On the medical front one need only look at infant mortality in "blacks" (presumably mostly African Americans)and the dramatic exception in one county in Wisconsin (reported in the Times)to see how important universal medical care - here specifically during pregnancy - is for the black population. On the war front one need only consider the financial cost that George W. Bush never wanted to meet via increased taxes and that his successor is likely to find impossible.
Why "blacks" in quotation marks? I write from Sweden as retired American citizen where for a striking percentage of "ethnic Swedes" blacks are ALL who do not have the skin color of an ethnic Swede. I commend Charles Blow in a sense for using the simple term black since the use of this term includes, for example, the Somali immigrants (Bantu clan) in Burlington, Vermont. Furthermore, use of the simple term black emphasizes that it is not genetics (except as determines skin color) but rather skin color alone. Note, however, that according to the Times African Americans are not willing to accept Somali immigrants as African Americans because the Somalis are muslims.

Finally, let it be known that many of my Somali, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish friends here in Sweden who had hope with the election of Barack Obama now ask me daily - Why does the USA always continue warring? And many - yesterday Somalis - said one by one "I am disappointed in Barack Obama". So am I. (De frågade mig då jag var på Rödakorset här i Linköping).

Things I Should be Writing About

I have no time these days to write the things I should be writing about, but I want to post a note about my good intentions. Today was a free-for-all discussion at Rödakorset since there was an extreme lack of students needing help and an extreme richness of bright strikingly individualistic conversationalists - yes, even in Sweden - who provided an abundance of riches. Things to think, research, and even write about.

Some of these things had in one way or another to do with identity so I will just write some reminders in the form of (rhetorical ?) questions:

Where does your nationality rank in the list of identifiers that would tell us something about you?

Why did so many "ethnic Swedes 2alive during World War II wish to identify with and support the idea that they were part of some kind of Aryan "master race" and support Adolf Hitler?

Vad menas med "Hon är svensk"?

And last a rough quotation from an interview I heard yesterday on Sverige's radio and then some questions. In both Swedish and English. "Jo, jag är sekuliserad muslim och jag har 100 procent svenska värderingar, jag är precis som vilken svensk tjej som helst." Yes, I am a secularised Muslim and I have 100 percent Swedish values, I am exactly like any other Swedish young woman.

Questions arising from the above:
Vad menas med svenska värderingar. What did she/you mean by Swedish values?
Vad menas när en tjej (detta exempel) säger jag är precis som vilken svensk tjej...? What does a young woman (this example) mean when she says she is just like any other ("ethnic") Swedish young woman?

Varför skulle hon säga sådana saker? Why would she say these things?
Tror du att hon vet vad hon säger? Do you believe she knows what she is saying?

Not me! Önskar att jag kunde kontakta henne och fråga. Reportern bodde ha ställt någon fråga men det gjorde hon inte. Not good.

Over abundance-Try Thomas Friedman NYT

Back in early November I had the naive belief that I would actually compose something on at least one of the subjects I named there. And now as we approach American Thanksgiving - Even in Sweden - I can only admit to myself that I have composed nothing for this blog.

All the composing has gone in to following some significant discussions in the New York Times and Dagens Nyheter and in some cases commenting and even trying to draw conclusions about the distribution of opinions in comments.

Should you be so crazy as to try that, keep in mind that the comment world is a bottomless pit. I cite two articles mostly to use this "inlägg" as "dagboks inlägg" since I really would like to go further with both.

I Dagens Nyheter - kanske 16de november - kunde man läsa debattartikel om att 14 åringar inte fick gå på alkoholfri fest eftersom så skulle inte unga muslimska svenskar i Malmö göra. Jag återkommer med bättre käll hänvisning.

In the New York Times 18 November and excellent column by Thomas Friedman - What Do They Really Believe? Friedman has the most sane views I can find on the changes in thinking about energy sources and uses that could have changed the world and might still do so. I contributed the first comment on that column, but since I was doing so from Sweden before the NYT "comment checker" swings into action the first comment appeared for a time at the top of each listing of 12 or so comments and then disappeared. My comment was made at 4:14 Eastern Standard Time (USA) so I have learned not to enter comments in the NYT until later in the endlessly dark and rainy Swedish morning. The comment nevertheless survived in the listing of comments recommended by two or more readers. I think it is at level 10 readers recommended.

Nevertheless that single comment elicited a quick response from a reader in America who was in the process of contracting to have a ground-source heat pump system installed in his home in Pennsylvania. The near total absence of this technology in my part of the USA has troubled me, so my correspondent's two Emails so far have stimulated my determination to write about that subject.

But that requires research, careful composition, and time - in other words, not today.

Happy Thanksgiving - I will be celebrating that fine day on a little island on the Swedish west coast.

Islam i Sverige or Medical Care in the USA?

Det var länge sedan dvs it was long ago, more than one month, that I wrote something here. There is a good and sufficient reason: This is such an exciting time intellectually that just trying to keep up superficially demands time and energy. So this brief remark - read only by myself as usual - is to state what is so exciting. Then I can only hope that I manage to start writing here about each of the following, if only for my own satisfaction.

Health Care Reform Legislation in the United States - For someone who has had the best of medical care in both Sweden and the USA, even during a single year, the fierce debate about Health Care legislation in the United States has had a special attraction. To date I have been adding comments in the New York Times and in blogs in the USA maintained by bloggers who are ill informed about Sweden. One facet of the debate that became the focus of the an ill informed Harvard educated blogger is what she called the "failure to take race into consideration" in comparing infant mortality in the USA with the rate in EU countries. That leads to the second major subject.


The importance of "race", genetic difference, ethnicity, culture and of mixing different such. This is a gigantic subject brought to the fore by the election of Barack Obama and then emphasized in the Health Care debate and now on the BBC in programs on the conceiving of children by parents of contrasting "race". (I will explain why "race" always appears in quotation marks once I write separate entries.

Who Speaks for Islam? I have written about this in various settings but in an effort to go further, I had to take a time out and read the book "Who Speaks for Islam?" which I have now done. Even this subject was discussed, wonder of wonders, on Sveriges Radio P1 today 8 October, thanks to a discussion being carried out on the BBC via Maajid Nawas.

To the Gang of Seven-Vad jag vill ha

Litteraturmanifestdebatten (LMD) tar aldrig slut. I DN 3/10 skriver Moa Matthis ”Man blir inte klokare av att läsa litterära manifest men det är spännande att se författare reflektera över sitt yrke; vad och hur det bör göras, och kanske mest intressant, för vem?” Matthis skriver också ”Höstens LMD har inte handlat så mycket om läsarna och det är kanske klokt…”

Men jag, som en av ”läsarna” accepterar inte den tanken.

The Gang of Seven fick plats i DN till att publicera Manifest 1 (656 ord) och ytterliggare en chans att publicera Appendix (763 ord) som varken gjorde mig klokare (som Matthis) eller fångad av reflektioner över författarnas yrke (till skillnad från Matthis).

Vad jag fick lära mig av dessa ungefär 1400 ord kan förkortas till: ”Vi är och förblir Story Tellers. Vi anklagar kritiker, förlag, och författare som inte tänker som vi – kanske även professorer för att ”…de alla har drivit den unga svenska prosen allt längre ut i en periferi…” Vi anklagar även ”Alarmerande många läsare (som) har i dag vänt ryggen åt den unga svenska prosan…”

Med andra ord det är vi alla som måste bära ansvaret för att samtliga sju ”unga” inte blivit lästa till den graden de önskar. Ni sju visade oss att Ni var arga mot alla men det hjälper inte.

Matthis ville påminna oss om att giganterna - Eliot, Joyce, Stein, och Hemingway - var ”ytterst världsliga i sitt manövrerande på marknaden” och ville bli lästa. Så ville The Gang of Seven (Axmacher till Wolff) som betraktar sig som representanter för ”den unga svenska prosan.” bli lästa.

Men allt som de kunde komma med var ”Vi skall skriva.” Men goda föresatser räcker inte, som min mor lärde mig – The road to hell is paved with good intentions.. Mina förslag, delvis till dem ”unga”, delvis till tidningar och universitet, som jag lägger fram - om Ni sju skulle vilja nå mig – är:

1) Skriv noveller och romaner, 2) Skapa en ”Unga svenska prosans” webbsajt där alla 7 med flera finns, 3) Använd webbsidan för att göra det lätt för mig att få smaka av vad Ni skrivit, 4) Fråga tidningar som DN om det är så läservänligt att ägna 4 hela sidor (3/10 t ex) åt två franska författare – en levande, Claire Castillon, en död, Simone de Beauvoir - om det finns nya böcker av unga svenska författare som förtjänar 250 ord var. 5) Kom ihåg att det kommer nya böcker från alla världens horn varenda dag och att jag som läsare får fiska på Amazon och Google och AdLibris där det finns - varje gång jag tittar - böcker som lockar – nyligen Monika Fagerholms Glitterscenen (från Finland) – och köper.

Och en sista kommentar – synd att det svenska universitetet inte har någon Liberal Arts tradition (jfr Yale, Harvard, Brown mm) som innebär att varje student får chansen att läsa litteratur samtidigt som de läser psykologi, kemi, eller annat och inte bara det utan också att varje universitet anställer författare som hinner undervisa och skriva och blir kända. Joyce Carol Oates är en sådan.

Litteraturmanifestdebatt-DN har glömt läsarna

Jag har bidragit många kommentarer under manifestdebattens lopp i DN och har tänkt att det var konstigt att ingen har skrivit om läsarna. I dag 3/10 har Moa Matthis gjort det i sin krönika men tyvärr kan man inte läsa krönikan OnLine. Man kan läsa recensioner av Björk, Danius, och Börtz och jag har därför lämnat en kommentar under Danius recension för att lova att jag skall skriva här i morgon bitti 4/10 om läsarna. But not tonight, which hardly matters since only I read this blogg! (se tidigare post 12/9 mm) Note added 4 October 2009 kl. 12.30: I have composed a document for Dagens Nyheter and sent that to them. Later today I will draw from that document to put my thoughts out here in my lonely blog.