America’s 99% are rich by global standards. So what?

Photo: Paul Stein, used with a Creative Commons license. Click photo for info.

I’ll admit that it has crossed my mind: there is a small flaw in the “we are the 99%” slogan adopted by Occupy Wall Street. By global standards, most of us Americans are actually the Richie Riches of the world, even those of us living paycheck to paycheck — or unemployment check to unemployment check.

This has been the source of some criticism of the Occupy movement in the last few weeks. Some have even claimed that America’s 99% is the world’s 1%. Take, for instance, this reddit-style poster linked on The Daily Beast. Suzy Khimm of The Washington Post has tracked down some number-crunchers who showed that, accounting for purchasing power, the idea that the bottom 99% of Americans make up the world’s top 1% is not quite right, but that even the poorest Americans do occupy a privileged income decile vis-à-vis the world.

It’s an interesting and important observation. Global inequality is a serious issue, ultimately far more important to humanity than domestic American inequality. But to the extent that it’s being cited to implicitly discredit the protesters, it stinks like hamburger meat left unrefrigerated beneath a Zucotti Park tarp for a week.

For one, “we are the 99%” is a slogan for a domestic political movement, so it really shouldn’t be held to this global standard. It is a fact that the wealthiest 1% of Americans control 40% of the country’s wealth and the top 1% of income-earners take in more than 20% of the income. Those are horrendous figures (and are, in a sense, made more horrendous by the global picture — a tiny percentage of Americans control a vast amount of global wealth). Pointing out that OWS protesters would be big balling out of control if they moved to a developing country is not very useful — they live here.  It’s akin to criticizing a movement to stop air pollution in LA because Ulan Bator and Peshawar are X times worse. Does that mean Angelenos are spoiled for wanting clear air? Clearly not.

Another important point is that income, even adjusted for purchasing power, is not the sole or even most important indicator of well-being. This discussion has been gathering steam lately, as more economists point out the inadequacy of GDP (analytically similar to income) as a holistic data point. Bhutan has famously pioneered a different measure with its Gross National Happiness.

A more detailed comparison of the average American’s well-being to the world will have to wait for when I have way more time on my hands. But let me explore this anecdotally. I’ve been to a grim locale or two in my day — places that recently emerged from civil war, and some of the poorest countries in the world. But in the contest for grimness, the depressed corners of America are right up there with the shantytowns of developing countries. If you’re a poor American with a service job, you might be able to buy a used car, which is an unimaginable luxury for much of the world. That is little consolation when you live in, say, an American housing project where the threat of violence is ever near, unemployment is rampant, education options unsatisfactory, and — perhaps most importantly — the possibility of upward mobility is very small. This may be an extreme example, but I think it illustrates that subjective factors matter, as do indicators other than income.

Then there is the matter of the burden of poverty in a rich country, which is not a new subject. W.E.B. Dubois put it so succinctly in The Souls of Black Folk that I don’t think I need to elaborate: “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

So the 99% slogan works as a domestic statistic, and it also works as a shorthand for the experience of most Americans, who may be in the world’s top deciles of income earners, but are not necessarily among its happiest — whether you consider happiness as a nebulous term or as a collection of a bigger basket of statistics.

I don’t think most people pointing out the flaw — from a global perspective — in the 99% slogan are doing so to discredit the Occupy protesters as a bunch of whiners. But I can see the observation being marshaled for that argument. And that would be a shame, not only for the domestic movement, but for the push for greater global equality. Whatever you think of Americans, the 99% or the 1%, those protesting for greater equality here are almost surely the most likely to participate in a similar international agenda.

HT Dayo Olopade, without whose tweets and posts today I would have been unaware that this discussion had evolved so much, or read the WaPo post linked above.

Somali-language anti-piracy song from last year

Obviously you read Jeffrey Gettleman’s story in the NY Times Magazine last week, “Taken by Pirates.” Perhaps you were curious about the music video he mentioned, put together by the Somali community in the UK to ask for the release of Rachel and Paul Chandler.

Abdiwali and some others at Universal TV then turned to Abdi Shire Jama, who was a freelance interpreter in London and a talented songwriter. Jama thought a music video would help spread the word, so he produced a song called “Release the Couple,” soon broadcast on Universal and YouTube. It begins with a Somali kid with a British accent saying, “I hope this message gets to the people who are responsible for holding Rachel and Paul Chandler.” Then, after a burst of synthetic drums and some squeaky Somali music, five Somali singers break into song.

“Our people fled their homes. . . . The host countries did not look at the color of our skins. . . . We need to show our debt to them, for it is the donkey who does not acknowledge the debt.”

Well, here’s the song. Interesting stuff.

Hat-tip AK.

Dangriga, Belize: Photos from before the digital age

Before I published my last post, about Aurelio Martinez’s “new” album, I wrote my Belizean-American-San Franciscan (last modifier should really come first) friend, director Ezra J. Stanley, to see if he had some good pics from the Garifuna community where he has family roots.

Well, I didn’t get a response before my post went up, but boy was it worth the wait. It is with humility that I share Ezra’s beautiful photos of children in Dangriga, Belize: Ezra, I’m not worthy! These are some real gems from a visit he paid in 1999 — which, I remind you, was long before the vintage look became so annoyingly popular in photography. Copyright Ezra J. Stanley, all rights reserved. Enjoy.

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Music break: How did I sleep on Aurelio Martinez’s new album?

It’s already been a few months, apparently. Aurelio Martinez is an Honduran Garifuna musician who brought his people’s sounds to international ears in a big way, starting with his 2004 album Garifuna Soul. For his 2011 album, Laru Beya, he traveled to Senegal to record some tracks with Youssou N’Dour and other artists, which gives the songs I’ve listened to so far (still getting through the album) a broader feel — this is worldly Garifuna. (Interesting in itself because Martinez has said that part of the reason Garifuna culture has survived so long is because of its insularity in the past.)

The music is, in short, fantastic. One of the most stirring songs I’ve heard so far is “Wamada,” Martinez’s intense, soulful requiem for Andy Palicio, the famous Garifuna musician who passed away in 2008. Have a listen.

Celebrating Wangari Maathai

On Saturday, Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai passed on. I feel the loss — her mission was yet incomplete, and in the most recent appearances she exuded such youth that you would never expect the end was near. Take a look at this nice three-part CNN bio to get a feel for her character, her grit, and her vision.

Professor Maathai’s championing of environmental rights speaks to me in a special way. Growing up enjoying the forests, mountains, and open spaces of California, I have a deep respect and affinity for the wonders of the wild. But the degree to which our society is divorced from the land in its wild state has meant that the enjoyment of nature has nearly become thought of as a luxury activity (falsely, however — I can put you in the mountains for a week for $100), sought out mostly by upper middle class white Americans. By extension, conservation of the environment sometimes seems a preoccupation of the well-to-do. This perspective seems more obvious in poor countries, where the pressures of daily life make sentimental hang-ups about the view seem almost cruel.

Professor Maathai showed another way: there are more choices than preservation versus prosperity. Indeed, true and sustainable prosperity will only be enjoyed when it is accompanied by good stewardship of the earth. A thriving environment is a right, not a luxury — and one worth fighting for just as much as other basic rights. And she spoke these truths as someone who came from a community that uses land — gains sustenance from it directly, is born on it, lives with it, dies with it. She did not come from a community that builds subdivisions and malls on 95% (or most) of its territory, and rails off a tiny fraction to be saved. That made her message all the more profound.

Thank you, Professor Maathai.

*UPDATE: A reader notes that my 95% figure is a bit off: “the USA has 9.83 million km2 land mass and that the combined area of the National Forests, National Parks, and BLM land is 2.2 million km2 — or about 22% of the total land mass of the US.” Fair enough, and I’m glad the figure isn’t smaller. (The 95% was intended to be figurative, I’ve edited it above.) The point is that the American tendency is to be OK with trashing places that we develop, while maintaining the purity of a small fraction of the land that we have specifically protected. I think a better version of conservation would be one that is more integrated in our lives.

Pamela Geller’s subway ad (not pictured here)

Today, Gothamist highlighted the ad Pamela Geller most recently wants to put on New York subways. It’s not the kind of thing I want to post on my blog, but have a look here to know just what we’re talking about. And, as Gothamist also invites you to do, please compare it to the “pro-Palestinian” ad that a few people were so enraged about appearing, also, on the subway.

Maybe it would actually be a good thing if Geller’s thing went up and appeared next to this. We’d finally a get a crystal clear picture of two points of view on the intractable conflict–and not in the way she hoped for.

Music break: a song for the hypocrites

“Kigeugeu” by Kenyan artist Jaguar. This song has been around for a few months, but I just started listening to it. (Clearly, urgency is not this blog’s forté!)

Kigeugeu means “changing” in Kiswahili — as in the way chameleons change color (Google translate says “vascillating”). The saying is kigeugeu kama kinyonga – changing like a chameleon. The characters in this video — the pastor, the wife, the politician — change according to their circumstances.

I think the song bumps, and is kind of soulful, too.

Apparently, Raila Odinga is also a Jaguar fan.

HT LL

Music break (sort of): Ravid Kahalani

There’s a standard speech I give when people ask me about the Middle East, and in particular the Arab-Israeli conflict. I have shied away from writing on the subject in this blog for some time — it often seems that all the arguments have already been made, and every discussion devolves into a screaming match that brings out the worst of the blogosphere, which is tiresome.

But today, in light of the news and a recent musical discovery, I gently put forth the crux of my standard speech, which is: From a cultural perspective, it doesn’t have to be this way. The division between Arab and Jew is an inorganic one. The precolonial Middle East and eastern Mediterranean were dazzlingly diverse. Major cities contained the three “religions of the book” in equal parts, and among these were many sects. But identities had as much to do with the city one called home — Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Istanbul, Salonica, Jerusalem — as they did one’s religion. (I have written about this more here.)

And yet, the mainstream media constantly tells us or implies that the “Arab-Jewish” conflict is an age-old one. Not only is this inaccurate — it is a 20th century phenomenon — it’s a confusion of terms: Arab and Jewish are not exclusive categories. In my view, one essentially describes an ethnicity and the other a religion or religious heritage that may overlap with many different ethnicities. You may disagree with this — and indeed, I know there are many people that do — but the thing is, we continue to have evidence that one may be both Arab and Jewish.

Take Israeli-Yemeni singer Ravid Kahalani, whose music I just found out about.

“Most of the people are like, are you Arab or Jew?” Kahalani says. “I am Arab, I am Jew.”

There. You. Go. (The link is from a February podcast on Kahalani by The World’s Marco Werman — I can never seem to beat him to an international music discovery.)

I could write a whole essay about what I like about Kahalani’s music, which a friend introduced me to a couple of days ago. There’s the lovely pentatonic scale; the combination of oud and darbakeh (Arabic drum); the evidence in his voice of his background as a synagogue cantor; that rolling trance-like feel to his rhythms that reminds me of Ali Farka Touré and makes me picture the desert. His album is called Yemen Blues.

Anyway. To bring my speech back to current events. I woke today to images of unarmed marchers setting out from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank, attempting to to cross the border into Israel. Troops of the latter opened fire, killing at least a dozen and injuring scores.  Many of the protestors were reportedly Palestinian refugees — there are nearly 5 million of them in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

In my standard speech, I make my point about identity because I think, however one evaluates incidents such as these, it is important to remember that they are a result of political grievances that have their roots in the events of the last 100 years. (Specifically, many of those Palestinian refugees continue to carry the keys to the homes their families were kicked out of 63 years ago when Europeans escaping persecution wanted a place to live.) Age-old religious animosity does not really factor in.

I certainly do not have Kahalani’s permission to entangle his music in this argument, but as I sit back and listen to him sing “Um min al Yaman” (Arabic for Mother is from Yemen), I can’t help thinking — and hoping — that alive out there still, is another vision for the Middle East.

Making sense of Mortenson

All day long I have been utterly fascinated with the revelations about Greg Mortenson’s falsehoods and mismanagement of his organization, the Central Asia Insitute, which he created to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I vowed to write a lengthy essay tonight to get out all the thoughts this episode has provoked — but it’s 1:00 AM and I still haven’t finished the esteemed Jon Krakauer’s 75-page exposé, “Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way.” Thus, I offer just a few disjointed comments, pending my completion of the article and, ahem, the book.

First, let me suggest a partial reading/watching list, which my Twitter feed should continue to augment in the next few days:

• Ideally, at least one of Mortenson’s books, especially Three Cups of Tea. In fact, I haven’t read them, though they have been recommended and gifted to me on numerous occasions.
• The 60 Minutes episode from Sunday, 4/17/11.
• Mortenson’s response in an Outside magazine interview.
• CAI/Mortenson’s response to 60 Minutes’s questions (I believe they came too late to make it into the program).
• A blog of the Economist parsing of one of at least two insidiously racist assertions in Mortenson’s Outside responses: that the “archaic” Balti language makes locals unfit to retell the dates of his arrival in their village. As a friend who is an anthropology professor specializing in this region wrote to me: “I find that claim to be rather dubious. Even if their language is an archaic dialect of Tibetan, Baltis have been Muslim for centuries and are presumably well acquainted with the Islamic clandar. Also presumably there would be at least one or two teachers or officials in even the smallest village who would be invested in being modern. Or there would be in China at any rate…”The other insidiously racist passage (and shameless passing of the buck) is Mortenson’s suggestion that there is something called a “confidence trick” in “Africa and Asia” whereby local staff take advantage of donors after years of gaining their trust. While certainly possible, this is not limited to Africa and Asia (dude, I’ve heard about some stuff working for the San Francisco city government, believe you me), and is just a lazy reference to a trope, which is an artifact of colonial times, about the dangers of the wily native.
• Finally, and most importantly, read Krakauer’s article (downloadable for free for about the next 48 hours). It’s astonishing –  even if I haven’t finished it yet — not least because the CAI/Mortenson fabrications occurred in plain view for a decade and a half.

This affair illuminates an intersection of many social and political issues. It’s about much more than the individual, Mortenson. I’m thinking here of the narratives of GWOT; the fundamental problems with accountability of private nongovernmental work overseas; the unquestioning of the American public when we are spoon-fed facile stories of foreign lands populated with casts of wild-eyed fundamentalists, noble savages, and their helpless babies, who need us oh so much.

More deeply, it makes me suspicious of charity as a solution to complex problems. The violence and inequality in regions such as AfPak — and indeed the world — are political in origin and demand political solutions. To the extent that we can ameliorate problems with charity, without also reforming the power imbalances, laws, and crippled economies beneath them, we sometimes risk simply whitewashing, and we will necessarily create cases like Mortenson/CAI.

And the truly saddening thing is that a lot of evidence shows we want to continue believing fairy tales like Mortenson’s rather than face the difficult necessity of reforming our relationship with the world. A saccharine story and a donation are exponentially easier to digest than the systemic reform that is truly needed for any lasting change.

Take the fan base’s responses to Krakauer and 60 Minutes. Monitoring the comments to the articles above and the #Mortenson Twitter feed, it is easy to see that many, many people are ready to forgive Mortenson, without further ado.

His heart was in the right place. He really raised awareness about the need for education. Sure, some money was wasted, but a lot of it ended up in good places. The media is sensationalist. It’s a beautiful vision.

Please, please, don’t take our easy, breezy bedtime story away from us…

Update on China-TZ relations

The excellent Tanzania-focused blog Swahili Street kindly linked to my last post, and brought my attention to some important updates. Apparently, those tensions I mentioned between Tanzanians and Chinese traders in Dar have reached new heights. Seems the delicate balance has tipped somewhat, at least for now. Please have a read of the well-sourced article here.