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In mid 2010, I engaged in a spontaneous conversation in passing with a man who told me that he was the manager of the diving facilities of the Rockford Country Club in Illinois. I was stunned to learn that that country club had only two black members out of what must have been at least a thousand, if not more. He told me there were not many “people of color in positions” in the city. I stood there stunned. In 2010, people still have that mentality? He said the city was twenty years behind.  I would say more something more like forty. Yet strangely, he noted that because families had changed, he had recently changed the dress code in one of the dining areas so kids from the pool could be accommodated. So, we are to believe that the situation of blacks hasn’t changed, but families have. To be sure, the family structure and dynamics had indeed changed in the last quarter of the twentieth century as women entered the workplace en masse and the number (and proportion) of diverces increased. However, it is unclear to me how these changes translate into making a dining area “informal."

The caucasion manager’s selective view of societal change—being no doubt convenient for him—struck me as strange. I got the impression that people in that city must be averse to (or scared of) virually any kind of change. How is it, I thought to myself as he spoke, that people could find so much satisfaction in the status quo? The manager told me that status and race were still important in that city. Relatedly, he characterized the city of 150,000 as a southern town interlarded in the north. His country club was the epitome of consciousness based on status and race.  Moreover, that club evinced what both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson called the artificial aristocrisy, which is comprised of wealth and birth.  This kind of elitism is distinct from the natural sort, which the two American founders took to be based on virtue and talent. Racism, and the segregation that ensues from it, is of the artificial sort.

Lest any kind of segregation be excoriated against, it should be noted that it can be quite natural for polite people to want to segregate themselves from the vulgar. There is indeed a marked difference in how people have been raised, and in how they conduct themselves.  This is not to say, however, that manners are on the side of the country club, for arrogance and elitism are quite rude qualities.  It seems to me that politeness can be reckoned as a virtue, and thus placed in the natural aristocrisy.  Perhaps education too, or at least valuing it, is also akin to virtue. The city in which the country club is located is at least historically heavily blue-collar.  Traditionally, the people holding such jobs felt threatened by education, and thus looked down on it.  Is it not natural that a highly educated person would rightfully want some distance from being disvalued?  There is, I submit, a natural aristocrasy that legitimates the natural grouping tendency of human beings.  We tend naturally to segregate ourselves. It is difficult to generalize against this propensity.  A mother of young kids is apt to segregate her family from a known child molester (one of the Catholic churches in the city had one as a priest). Ex-smokers are apt to segregate themselves from people who impose with their addition.  Furthermore, people with common interests are apt to associate. An apologist for the country club might say that it is composed of members who have common interests and generally get along. In this respect, it seems quite natural. However, it is not clear to me that these qualities cannot pertain to people of different races. Such artificial delimiters are perhaps why artificial aristocrisy is so squalid; there is also a rather significant opportunity cost to it. Sadly, the manager seemed utterly unaware that he subscribed to it at all, yet fully sure of himself nonetheless.

A venture more useful than bashing presumption at a country club involves coming up with a criterion on which “good” from “bad” segregation can be determined. Generally speaking, segregating a virtue from its associated vices is justifiable. Immediately a problem can be detected. Namely, although there are a cluster of virtues on which most people would agree, there is no fixed number. Furthermore, people such as the dining manager at that country club can use a virtue (e.g., gaining a vocational position through talent and effort) to attempt to justify what is really just garden variety racism and elitism.  In short, segregation of virtue from vice, while in itself laudable, can involve a slippery slope that can essentially whitewash segregation that could be considered as a vice.  Can we trust in nature, such that the natural associative instinct can be distinguished from the squalid instances of segregation?  Furthermore, are there certain virtues that can be deemed as legitimate sources of segregation—such virtues being agreed to explicitly or tacitly in a social contract?  In modern society, segregation by race is explicitly excoriated against, though I’m not sure if it is implicitly agreed to by all. There might be a natural instinct to associate with similar people. Just as people include physical appearance in determining whom to date, external features could be part of the mix in how humans are hardwired to associate. Likeness might be associated in evolution with survival as like is not apt to fight with like.  However, external features are an imperfect indicator of whom a person is apt to get along with—though not irrelevant.  So modern man may well have to sometimes choose to override instinct in the knowledge that going by virtue can have more survival value.  Similar values can trump similar skin-color, even if the clubby vestiges of racism make it more difficult to trust across the artificial lines even in the twenty-first century.

In October, 2009, it was widely publicized in the press that a justice of the peace in Lousiana had been refusing to marry interracial couples (what if both people are multiracial?). He was subsequently fired. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, said it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children." As astounding as this sounds in the twenty-first century in a modern society, the case demonstrates the thesis that an empire, or Union of many States, is inherently diverse--incredibly diverse in fact. Europeans tend to view the United States as though it were itself akin to a state (i.e., homogenious). In truth, the United States are indeed as diverse as is the European Union (language is not the only basis of diversity).  A person in Boston reading a newspaper about the justice in the peace in Lousiana could be excused for thinking for a moment that Lousiana is another country. To be sure, the large states in the U.S. are equivalent in size to the large member-states in the E.U. Territory does matter in terms of cultural diversity.

While the diversity befitting an empire-scale political union must be given breathing room, it is also not the case that a Union can or should tolerate absolutely everything in an “anything goes” relativism if a practice violates the fundamental ideational or volitional tenets of the Union. For otherwise there would be no foundation to the union; the parchment would be a farce.  Yet at the same time, stifling the inherent diversity is a recipe to disunion.  There is a balance to be struck, and ironically even in calling for limits to the diversity, I am pointing to the need for diversity legislatively precisely because the U.S. is on the empire-scale.

Both  the U.S. and E.U., being on the scale of empire (e.g., containing republics), must allow for a certain degree of tolerance because one size can’t fit all where diversity is natural.   The difficult question is of course where to draw the line, and this is why I have raised the case of interracial marriage.  If we draw the line too close to our own values at the expense of those of others in another region of the continent, we risk the Union exploding from the pressure of “one size fits all.”    That is, if we require every official to marry interracial couples, the Union will feel oppressive to those who oppose the practice. An ongoing habit of imposing a “progressive” agenda on the entire Union is apt to push the more conservative regions out and therefore compromise the Union.  However, some may argue that there really is too much difference between Maine and Arkansas for them to be in the same political Union. One could argue that there should be a lowest common denominator that must be met in any given State for it to be in the Union.  To take two hyperbolic examples, a lot of people would object today to being in a Union that includes a State where slavery based on race is legal.  Yet for a long time, the practice was not a motive sufficient to kick out the slave States—actually it was some of them that decided to leave the Union.  In a way, we can be too accommodating.

In short, there is a balance involved in a federal empire remaining viable owing to the nature of the thing.  In my view, prohibiting interracial marriage is extrinsic to what our Union stands for. At the same time, I see the slippery slope because everyone has his or her own insufferable that could be added to the list—and pretty soon we are left with one size fits all and the natural diversity stifled and pressurized for future expressions.  Overall, I believe far too much “one size fits all” exists through the agency of the U.S. Government.  Congress, one might say, is acting like a State legislature.  Sandra Day O’Conner, who served on the US Supreme Court, made that remark several years ago to a small group where I was present.  I think it would behoove us to look at the EU in terms of the governance system enabling both uniformity and cultural diversity via a balanced approach to multi-level governance. The trick for us will be devising institutional or governmental safeguards that would keep one level—that of the Union—from dominating the levels that are more protective of the innate diversity.  That is to say, the State governments can play a greater role in domestic (and foreign!) policy such that they could be a check on a runaway US Government—while the latter should not be eviscerated so it can provide a check on the excessive democracy, or diversity, at the State level.  So this is not “States’ Rights”; rather, I am pointing to the need to balance institutionally and governmentally the common principles and natural diversity that form any empire.

See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33332436/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/

The 2010, the U.S. census reignited the question of racial identity among multi-racial residents.  “I can’t fit in a single box on the census form” was the typical refrain among the fastest growing segment of the US population.  According to The New York Times in February, 2011, "when it comes to keeping racial statistics, the nation is in transition, moving, often without uniformity, from the old “mark one box” limit to allowing citizens to check as many boxes as their backgrounds demand." The number of mixed-race Americans was at the time rising rapidly, largely on account of increases in immigration and intermarriage. In 2010, for example, one in seven new marriages was interracial. Yet it is not as simple as counting people as "multi-racial." Politically, the use of a catch-all category was believed by some racial interest groups to marginalize particular minority races. As a result, the Census Bureau created 63 categories of possible racial combinations (a typical bureaucratic solution to a political problem). Regardless of how the U.S. Goverment slices the deck, the reality on the ground is that the United States was finally turning the corner in the beginning of the twenty-first century--having gone from states outlawing miscegenation (the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations) as late as the 1960s to the multiracial segment being the fastest growing, such that America would undoubtedly look rather different in even a few generations.  Life is a fluid thing, and the world today will undoubtedly be morphed by life's forces into another world tomorrow. Governmental restrictions in the face of natural forces are ultimately like sandcastles facing a rising tide.

That the multiracial “category” is the fastest growing is, I believe, the natural solution to the racial problems that have plagued North America since the time of the colonies.  Whereas New Spain quickly mixed the Indian, black and caucasian races, the British colonies kept the three distinct.  The United States followed the British tradition until into the second half of the twentieth century. That tradition has resulted in some mistakes in how race is labeled because the tradition held that some races are better than others.
Cheryl Contee, for example, writes in a CNN opinion piece, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot. I can’t ignore the pale skin of my white forebears, the slanted eyes of my Indian relatives nor the full lips and curly hair of my African blood.”  However, because there are many white Africans (e.g., in South Africa), her distinction of “white” and “African” is a false dichotomy.  She is treating two different categories as though they were one.  Better stated, Cheryl has white, black and Indian ancestors, hence she is multi-racial.  Better stated still, “caucasian” should be substited for “white” and “negroid” would be used for “black,” but Americans are not fond of technical terms even in polite conversation.  “White” and “Black” are at least of the same category, namely race, even if the explosion in interracial births will render "white" and "black" obsolete as primary descriptors. Instead, there will be a bell curve with "white" and "black" fading out to the ends. As Cheryl writes, “When I look in the mirror each morning, my face epitomizes the American melting pot.”  Her melting pot constitution is something for her to be proud of, as instantiates the natural (rather than governmental) solution to what has been an intractable  problem.  Her great grandchildren will likely look at old pictures of Blacks and Whites as strange book-ends.
Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/30/contee.who.am.i/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/us/10count.html?pagewanted=2&hpw

Thousands of Romania’s Roma, also known as Gypsies, have been heading for the relative wealth of Western Europe, and setting off a clash within the European Union over just how open its “open borders” are. Migration within the 27 nations of the European Union has become a combustible issue during the economic downturn. The union’s latest expansion, which brought in the relatively poor nations of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, has renewed concern that the poor, traveling far from home in search of work, will become a burden on wealthier countries. The migration of the Roma is also raising questions about the obligations of Romania and Bulgaria to fulfill promises they made when they joined the union. Romania, for instance, mapped out a strategy for helping the Roma, but financed little of it.

Nicolas Sarkozy of the state of France has demanded that the Romanian government do more to aid the Roma at home. He vowed to keep dismantling immigrant camps and angrily rejected complaints from EU Commission officials that the French authorities were illegally singling out Roma for deportation. Mr. Sarkozy has tried to revive his support on the political right by deporting thousands of them, offering 300 euros, about $392, to those who go home voluntarily, and bulldozing their encampments. The European Commission has threatened legal action against Paris over the deportation, calling it disgraceful and illegal.

This case illustrates the problem the EU has in enforcing compliance of the terms of the accession talks of new states. In addition, this case puts the power relation between the EU and its state governments under palpable pressure. Lastly, the case showcases the difficulty involved in integrating Europe.  More than a common market, the EU states have open borders.  This appreciably decreases the power, and indeed sovereignty, of the state governments such as France and Germany—governments that were hitherto used to being in the driver’s seat.  So it will be interesting to see whether Sarkozy bows to the EU government or the ECJ (the EU’s Supreme Court) when he is under what must be strong domestic pressure to get rid of the Roma.

Relative to Arizona’s new immigration law, France’s deportation of a race of people is radical. Yet whereas in the US France’s policy would produce a vitriolic response from the media and the left, in the EU it is largely the EU government that is objecting. This difference points to a difference between American and European culture.  Perhaps due to the relatively recent history of racial slavery in some of the American states, there is more sensitivity to race in the US—yet there is also racism in the US. Perhaps the racism in the US is one on one now, whereas the racism in the EU is in some state policies.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17roma.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Before the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords in early 2011, it had been quite some time since there had been a major assassination attempt on American soil.  The attempt on President Reagan had been almost thirty years earlier.  During this time, I suspect that many Americans had developed the naive view that American politics (or at least the security protection) had developed sufficiently to make the barbaric acts of political violence obsolete, or at least impractical. We may also have had the view that U.S. House Representatives are not of the stature such as of U.S. Senators and the President, and thus would not be the targets of assassination. So I believe shock was the natural reaction that many Americans had upon hearing the news of Gabrielle Giffords.  Most people may have assumed that the shooter had been ginned up on Tea Party rhetoric and was carrying the political tactic to its logical conclusion. To be sure, the debate over health-care had been heated, but I believe the violence reflects something deeper, and therefore on-going, in any society.  To put the matter bluntly, "there are some real whackos out there."  If you have ever been to a public political speech or event, I would be surprised if you didn't notice a few people who seemed unseasonably animated or perhaps simply odd--their oddity being brought out by the political nature of the event, irrespective of the speaker. I am not referring to simply voicing a different point of view, or even expressing some emotion, which could be reasonably expected given the political context. So I am not pointing simply to people exercising their first amendment right of free speech--a right that cannot insist on conformity of opinion. Rather, what I am getting at is the inordinate expression of emotion, which doesn't seem to fit with what one would make sense in coming from the political context. It is only natural in observing a person evincing odd behavior to suspect something else in play--something idiosyncratic to the person's psychological condition. The interaction of certain emotional problems with politics might be in play for certain people, and it could contribute to our understanding of the phenomenon of assassination. Indeed, the dynamic might be a fruitful area of research for scholars of political psychology.

Lest I not be misunderstood, I'll use another example. If you have ever taken a subway, or perhaps a bus, in a large city, you may well have witnessed a person making strange facial expressions (or making odd comments) that seem to come out of nowhere.  That is, no source for the person's behavior can be identified, so we tend to assume the person is crazy. Although perhaps less extreme, the same dynamic could be in play for some people when they interact in a political context; the source of their odd behavior cannot be accounted for by the immediate context--in fact, the behavior seems out of place, and thus sourced in something sui generis in the person, which has an interaction effect with politics. If I am correct, then psychologists may be able to identify conditions that could manifest as assasins. 

Of course, I could simply be observing that society contains people who are not of the familiar norm. Perhaps going to a political rally or speech proffers a chance to see just what our society looks like, beyond one's circle of friends, co-workers and family.  Coming out of our homes and work environments, away from our friends and family, we find that there exist people in the broader society who are "different" from us. That is to say, we realize that not everyone is like us psychologically. Of course, this doesn't mean they are crazy. "Different" must be distinguished from "emotionally disturbed." Even so, it must be admitted, I think, that there are disturbed people who react in a political situation much as an alcoholic might in being at a party. Most people at a party chat and laugh, dance and eat, but then there is the person who loses control and behaves in a way not accounted for by the context.

In the public square, it is as though a few people decide it is ok to unleash their rantings (i.e., psychological anxiety) publically. It may be the existence of such people that makes entering politics so scary to many people who would otherwise enter out of a deontological sense of public duty. Being in a public role, such as an elected office, opens one up to having to deal with people who treat the public square as an extension of their houses, where they might yell at the news or otherwise carry on in private to relieve themselves of an underlying anxiety. In short, the political realm can bring people out of the woodwork whom the rest of us would not suppose are even in our society.  Presuming a license inherent in politics to manifest their inner psychology publically, they may be giving us an indication of what they are capable of in that domain--namely, violence as an expression of their underlying psychology. Booth, for example, may have shot Lincoln not from any deep-rooted sense of retribution for the war; instead, this rationale could simply be window-dressing...an excuse...for what was really a psychological condition that found a particular expression.  
In the case of the assassination attempt on Rep. Giffords, the suspect is by several accounts a troubled man. The New York Times describes the suspect in court as being "wide-eyed." At the defense table, "his eyes darted back and forth and his mouth curled up at one point into a quick smile." He had been kicked out of college after having been disruptive in several classes. Being a public official opens one up to being the target of whatever pathology is going on in such a person.  I think the problem is much deeper...and permanent...than simply blaming the Tea Party. Perhaps one policy implication is that counseling ought to be made available for more Americans regardless of income.  We ought to know by now that we are all affected aversely from other's unresolved issues. Perhaps part of the requirement for practicing as a counselor or psychologist could be a certain number of "pro bono" patients who have been flagged as potentially dangerous.  Just a few days before the violence against the congresswoman, I heard a local report of a black high school student on a bus who yelled at and threatened a caucasion man because the latter had joined in a conversation in which "nigga" was used.  Apparently the use of that word is limited by race upon pain of getting hit or worse.  The bus driver reportedly did nothing in spite of the kid's on-going shouting and threats (and racism). Perhaps it was not poltically correct so the behavior was ignored even as the other passengers must have been disturbed.  My reaction on hearing this story was that the student's high school should be notified, and that he should have to receive therapy, for something more deep-rooted than simply a word was troubling him (the word itself was apparently used in a friendly tone). 

In conclusion, public displays, in short, can be taken as expressions of something psychological in nature that, in the last analysis, really doesn't have anything to do with the politics of the moment. We, as a society, need not accept the presupposition that the political domain is a viable excuse for people to display their dirty laundry in public--that the domain is predisposed for intimacies to be displayed. Furthermore, we need to question the right of untreated mental illness to manifest in society, as though there were a right to be sick, where there is risk to others. In the case of the local bus, the driver should not have allowed the emotionally troubled high school student to go on shouting and threatening; the student did not have the right to continue disturbing the other passengers. The driver should have warned the student and followed up by calling the police if necessary. Simply presuming a right to "go off" on a bus might be politically correct, but I contend that it is misplaced and erroneous. I do not believe the student was mentally ill; rather, it sounds like he was a troubled youth. Either way, if psychologists are not required to treat malcontents in society pro bono as part of the licence to practice, society will continue to experience incidents such as political assasinations and shootings in schools. We have been turning a blind eye to the psychologically dangerous in society, preferring to presume that shoots are isolated cases--viewing political assasinations as reactions to particular policies or platforms and school shootings as particular students being angry at particular school officials.  If we are not careful, our narrow perspective could be reckoned as pathological!

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11giffords.html?_r=1&hp