Daily Archives: March 5, 2021

To the editor: In light of the Los Angeles Times irredeemably racist past, I am tempted to cancel my print subscription and relegate the publication to the cancel-culture ash heap. (How the Los Angeles Times shilled for the racist eugenics movement, Feb. 28) I am not in the market for evasive excuses about The Times mirroring the culture and thinking of the day. Prescience remains the standard.

Unfortunately, I cannot cancel. The Herald Examiner and the New Times are long gone. The LA Weekly is a bundle of cannabis ads. The Times is the last newspaper standing.

Instead, I will point out that nothing really has changed, other than the fact that I pay considerably more now for my subscription than I did in 1988. In the 1930s, The Times editors, writers and columnists pandered to racists. In the 2020s, The Times editors, writers and columnists pander instead to the progressives.

James Moore, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Alexandra Minna Sterns op-ed exposed the part played by The Times and its past owners in supporting the racially discriminating eugenics movement some 70 years ago. There can be no excuses for this horrible behavior and The Times needs to be punished for its part in this terrible chapter of history.

First we should cancel The Times in any way possible. All current and past employees should also be canceled, and the children of current and past employees should pay retributions to the decedents of those harmed by actions of the L.A. Times.

This would be a good start. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Paul Salerno, Riverside

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To the editor: I found the article by Alexandra Minna Stern regarding The Times support for eugenics in the 1930s and early 1940s to be surprising. It seems that the more things change, the more things stay the same sometimes in other ways.

Today, children with Down syndrome are routinely aborted. Many Down syndrome children are able to lead fairly normal lives. They express great happiness and joy. Their crime is not being perfect.

Nathan Post, Santa Barbara

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Should the L.A. Times be 'canceled' for its racist past? - Los Angeles Times

A second film adaptation of part of the six-book series Dune by Frank Herbert is scheduled for release in October this year under the directorship of Denis Villeneuve. The new adaptation includes more actors of color than its predecessor. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/Telegram & Gazette via TNS

A second film adaptation of part of the six-book series Dune by Frank Herbert is scheduled for release in October this year under the directorship of Denis Villeneuve director of films such as Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. The new adaptation includes more actors of color than its predecessor, the universally negatively reviewed 1984 Dune, written and directed by David Lynch. However, whether or not the issues within Dune can be resolved by merely including actors of color in the adaptation is another issue entirely. The truth is, we dont really need another futuristic Dune adaptation right now. What we really need is a dramatic rethinking and retelling of the story.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely; absolute power attracts the corruptible. (Dune)

Articles and essays have dealt with the anti-colonial nature of Dune, its problematic use of eugenics, white saviorism and Orientalist tropes. But we will not resolve any of these issues with another film adaptation. The premise of the story is that, many years into the future, House Atreides assumes power of a spice-rich planet Arakkis over a crypto Arab people called the Fremen but is attacked by rival House Harkonnen, supported by the galactic emperor. The white heir to House Atreides, Paul, survives and is also the prophesied messiah (MuadDib) for the Fremen. He wages war against the Harkonnen, eventually defeating them and the emperor with the help of the Fremen. He then becomes the next ruler of the universe. But as he sees into the future, Paul realizes his actions will create a galactic jihad which will kill billions of people. This moment of reflection is meant to complicate his white saviorism.

Paul Atreides role as a white savior cannot be solved so simply. Dune cannot be truly anti-colonial because it still replicates Western ideas about power. Paul supposedly frees the Fremen from galactic colonial rule, but Dune really places the Fremen into a colonial binary. They are either colonized, incapable and unorganized actors without agency or bloodthirsty savages in an out-of-control religious war. Centering a story on anti-colonial rebellion does not make it anti-colonial if the indigenous characters largely adhere to dangerous tropes. Paul is a reformed colonial ruler and white savior who merely seeks the power to create his own larger empire. Any effective anti-colonial take on Dune would have to be a response to Herbert, which means not directly adapting Dune but dramatically retelling it.

Frank Herbert claimed in 1980 that Dune shows that humans with unlimited power will inevitably make mistakes, but the (super)human in question is white. Herbert wants to show how white, Western modes of power are inherently broken, but he cannot imagine anything other than whiteness as the dominant mode of power. The insistence that good intentions absolve heinous actions is not acceptable; it is apologist. We must understand that an unaltered Dune will merely replicate the same racial systems of our current predicament and limit its characters to the same fates.

The importance of eugenics in Dune is another irreparable element that needs to be rethought or abandoned. Here Dune is not alone other franchises such as Star Wars have also experienced the pitfalls of eugenics in the midichlorians and the Skywalker/Palpatine bloodlines. Paul Atreides is the product of selective breeding; he is the Kwisatz Haderach, or a super-being, who is destined to control the entire universe. The fact that we continue to cast white, male actors as Paul Atreides is troubling. We cannot ignore the atrocities forced sterilizations and abortions of women of color, the mass murder of Jewish people, gay people, people with disabilities, etc. committed in the name of eugenics. Eugenics is a racist and ableist theory, and it is still used in the U.S. by white supremacists, fascists and the far-right. Eugenics is not an ethical plot device; it never was.

He who controls the spice controls the universe. (Dune)

Herbert claimed he was inspired to write Dune in Oregon while studying destructive waves of sand, but he was writing during the Sahelian droughts of the 1960s80s, when myths about desertification blamed local people instead of global climate changes. In the Dune universe the spice allows for space travel, but the Fremen are unable to use it on their own. These environmental undercurrents point to neo-colonialist ideas about the preservation of the natural world. Paul, the environmental shepherd, is the only one who can save the sandworms who produce the spice. Environmental conservation language has long been used by colonial powers, and the informal empires that came after them, to justify foreign interventionism in the Global South. This parallels ideas about conservation today.

Although Herbert was great at conceiving how white, Western systems of power are inherently flawed, he was not able to imagine any better alternative. A way to move beyond the issues within a traditional Duneadaptation would be to more seriously consider Afrofuturism. A more deeply thought retelling of Dune could benefit from exploring the Fremens long-standing indigenous engagement with the science of their own natural world what values did they place on the spice and why? How did they imagine their own futures and in what ways had they been attempting their own liberations?

Dune in its entirety need not be forsaken; we must imagine new ways to remake it. The 2020 TV series Lovecraft Country is a great example of how to use classic sci-fi stories to make meaningful anti-racist ones. Lovecraft Country was not an adaptation of Lovecrafts work; it is a strong response to Lovecraft. Sci-fi writers of the future would do well to ask Afrofuturist questions about the kinds of writing they produce: Who benefits from future technologies in the worlds we imagine? Who builds these possible futures and to what end are these futures constrained by current power structures? The real questions for the 2021 version of Duneare Will we ever truly commit to holding sci-fi novels accountable for the racial environments they grew out of and the types of worlds that they create? Or will we continue to remake fantasy worlds in our own fragmented image?

Katherine (Hyun-Joo) Everett, ne Mooney, is a Ph.D. candidate of African history at the Ohio State University and has published an essay in Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. Follow her on Twitter: @hyun_joo_kim

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Opinion: Reckoning with and remaking 'Dune': The limitations of world-making in sci-fi - OSU - The Lantern

INFINITE COUNTRY By Patricia Engel

To someone who grew up reading the giants of the Latin American Boom generation in translation Vargas Llosa, Garca Mrquez it was surprising that Patricia Engels third novel, Infinite Country, was not translated from the Spanish: The book sounds like Edith Grossman but with a borrowed amp and feedback. The prose is serpentine and exciting as it takes the scenic route to nowhere. There is a compliment in that. Her writing sets out to be majestic, and it is, like an overflowing souffl.

The novel follows a mixed-status family as they struggle to survive and reunite after a fathers deportation from the United States. The teenage Talia, American-born but raised in Colombia, escapes a reform school in the Andes and races to make her plane to rejoin her mom and siblings in New York. Twenty years of page-turning family history are told as she rushes to catch that plane.

The most unforgettable scenes in the novel are the intimate and meticulously rendered descriptions of Andean landscapes and mythology, of Colombias long history of violence. Engels capacity to dive deep into history and folklore extends also into her narration of the life of Talias father and the family patriarch, Mauro. One senses Engel building a mythology around him, too.

The novel captures the romance of the immigrants first days in America with a visceral tenderness. Their skin darkens in the Texan sun. They see the ocean for the first time. I feel sorry for their lost youth, then angry at their gullibility. For Talia and her family never lose their innocence, even as they withstand unimaginable systemic violence, and find phantoms of intergenerational trauma like buried mines inside themselves. Such windup dolls exist, to be sure, but most undocumented immigrants I know are being held together by faith and rubber bands.

Talias young mother, Elena, in particular, is presented as a saint, nave and eternally suffering an exquisite new iteration of a noble savage in the hands of a writer who is not herself undocumented. When the white owner of the restaurant where Elena cleans bathrooms rapes her, she feels guilty for her infidelity. The narrator points out that until now, she has been with no man besides her husband, a testament to her purity.

Elenas body, it seems, has integrity only when it is uncorrupted by knowledge and awareness. When she is in the hospital giving birth to her third child, a nurse tactlessly inquires how she plans to take care of three kids on one income. Elena thinks about forced sterilizations in Colombia, how they lured women to clinics offering free gynecological services and the women came out unaware they could no longer have children. To her, babies are not burdens. The scene implicitly links the American nurse with the centuries-old record of colonial eugenics imposed on Indigenous and Black women, and our brave Elena champions her reproductive rights.

But does she really know her reproductive rights? After her rape, she prays and panics until she gets her period. When my undocumented mother gave birth to my brother in this country, the nurses, always Afro-Latina or Mestiza, waited until my father was out of the room to discuss family planning not to talk about children as a burden, but to suggest social services that could help my poor family. But they knew sex was taboo for my mom, and that this might be her only chance to make a choice. Elena quotes the Colombian saying that a baby arrives with a loaf of bread under its arm as a sort of rebuttal. Such earnest, romantic repetition of ancestral wisdom in Latino art is often done by American artists who have choices, privileges and resources that our subjects, fictional or not, do not have. Literature about undocumented people in this country is too rare and too often written by writers whove never been undocumented for the literary world to continue to act as if we all still lived in Macondo.

This is a compulsively readable novel that will make you feel the oxytocin of comfort and delusion. The ending reads like child-of-immigrant fan fiction. Id hire Engel to ghostwrite my nightmares. Mauros love for his daughter motivates him to overcome alcoholism and homelessness, cross the border safely and reunite with the wife he still loves. The siblings whove never met yet smell familiar to one another. The novel closes as husband and wife are dancing, their bodies in perfect sync.

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In This Novel, Immigration Status Is Part of the Family Drama - The New York Times

An unexpurgated edition of Chips Channons diaries has finally been published

Mar 4th 2021

IN AUGUST 1936 Henry Chips Channon and his wife, Lady Honor Guinness, went on an official visit to the Berlin Olympic games along with a bunch of other British grandees. They had a simply wonderful time. They didnt pull off the ultimate social coup of having dinner with Hitlerthe closest they got to the Fhrer was when he visited the Olympic stadium and one felt as if one was in the presence of some semi-divine creature. But the rest of the Nazi elite went out of their way to entertain the visiting Britons.

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Hermann Gring was flirtatious, gay and charming. Frau Gring was tall, handsome and nearly naked. The Ribbentrops party lent dignity to the new regime. Just as thrilling was the spectacle of daily life. Everyone kept raising their arms and saying Heil Hitler! in a thoroughly captivating manner. And what about the rumours of terrible things going on in labour camps? Being a responsible MP Chips took a trip to one such camp and was impressed by what he saw. It looked tidy, even gay. The purpose of the camps was to wipe out class feelingnot something Chips was normally in favour of getting rid ofand such feeling has become practically non-existent in Germany. Chips concluded that England could learn many a lesson from Nazi Germany.

These vignettes are all taken from the first of what promises to be three volumes of the diaries of Channon, a rich American who climbed the heights of British society in the 1920s and 1930s and also became a Tory MP. The diaries were first published in 1967 in heavily redacted form: many of the subjects of Chipss indiscretions were still alive and able to sue. Simon Heffer, a journalist and historian, has taken advantage of the passage of time to produce an unexpurgated edition.

The diaries do more than merely titillate. They demonstrate just how many members of the British upper classes were either infatuated with Hitler or at least regarded him as a useful bulwark against Bolshevism. In one entry, Chips described a visit by his uncle-by-marriage, Lord Halifax, a Tory grandee, to Germany to go fox-hunting with the leading Nazis. He liked all the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels!He thinks the regime fantastic, perhaps too fantastic to take seriously. But he is v glad that he went and thinks nothing but good can come of it. (Halifax almost messed up the occasion by mistaking Hitler for a footman.) The diaries also provide yet more evidence of the vital role Winston Churchill played in saving Britain from the pro-Hitler sympathies of the upper classes and the cynical calculations of appeasing politicians. Thatfarceur would stir up trouble anywhere, Chips wrote, luckily for England and the peace of Europe he has no following whatsoever in the House [of Commons].

It is becoming fashionable on the left to dismiss Churchill as a racist. A vandal spray-painted the word on his statue in Parliament Square. During a recent discussion on Churchill and race held in, of all places, Churchill College, Cambridge, panellists competed to denounce him as a racist, white supremacist and eugenicist. Churchill certainly said some repugnant things about race. But by the standards of his time he was relatively moderate: he was much less enthusiastic about eugenics, for example, than many heroes of the left such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Harold Laski. He was mercifully free of the common vice of anti-Semitism. And as Channons diaries make clear he led the battle against the worst racist in history at a time when other members of his party and class thought labour camps wonderful innovations.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Nazi parties"

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A chronicle of the British establishment's flirtation with Hitler - The Economist

EditorsNote:All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. Letters to the Editor reflect the view of a member of the campus community and are submitted to the publication for approval.

My name is Marley Lerner, and I am a junior studying womens studies and ethnic studies here at Colorado State University. I work for The Brazen Project, which is a student group on campus that works to remove stigma from abortion by talking about it boldly and without shame. A majority of what we do is host trainings and educational programs for turning abortion access advocates into activists.

Because we are a student group, we host a club meeting each month. Our club meetings are themed, so each time we meet we are discussing a different topic. Our meetings this semester are special because we have created a space for creative outlets. Each conversation we have can be heavy, so at the end of our discussion we have time for folks to create an art piece. Whether this is a playlist, a poem, a collage, a drawing or anything else, we have our club members submit them to us to go on our online scrapbook, also known as Tumblr.

Our first club meeting was on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. Because of this, we decided to dedicate the conversation to the experiences of Black folks with eugenics and abortion and how that intertwined. We talked about the origins of birth control and Planned Parenthood, which were based in eugenicist ideology and other eugenicists that were infamous during that time. There is a history of white feminism in reproductive rights, meaning pro-womens equality in a white supremacist lens. It is important to make this distinction because white feminism actively impacted the eugenics movement. Because of this, one of The Brazen Projects biggest values is centering the voices of people of color.

The Brazen Project has a partnership with an organization called Soul 2 Soul Sisters. Soul 2 Soul Sisters is a Black womxn-led, faith-based response to the anti-Black violence in the United States. Their organization does a great deal of amazing work, some of which include artistic videos. We shared one titled Black Woman Body to showcase how reproductive rights impact Black womxn in a Black womxns narrative. After we watched the video, our club members mentioned that they got chills and that certain lines from the video were sticking with them. It is a very powerful video that is bound to leave an impact on anyone.

After we shared our initial reactions, one of our cohort members, Ellen, posed some thought provoking questions. The questions that burgeoned the most conversation were why are we watching this? and why is this important? The general consensus of the group was that this video and other art pieces like this are vital to the discussion of reproductive rights because it is amplifying Black voices and sharing a true insight into the realm of reproductive rights. This is not something that just impacts white women. This impacts all types of individuals capable of getting pregnant, and it is important for us to show those experiences in the best way possible.

So far, our Tumblr submissions have received a watercolor painting and a collage. We are hoping to get more pieces as the semester continues so that by the end, we can look over our online scrapbook and see physical representations of the conversations we had. If you are interested in The Brazen Project, you can follow us on Instagram @boldandwithoutshame, Twitter @_BrazenProjectand Facebook.com/brazenproject. We also have this link bit.ly/brazencc that you can sign up with us through!

Marley Lerner

Junior womens and gender studies student

The Brazen Project

Letters may be sent toletters@collegian.com. When submitting letters, please abide by theguidelines listed at collegian.com.

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LTTE: A message from The Brazen Project The Rocky Mountain Collegian - Rocky Mountain Collegian

The COVID-19 pandemic has been around for one year. It has been a devastating disease particularly in the Black community. During this time, there have been over 28 million documented cases in the United States and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Sadly, although Blacks make up 12 percent of the population and 12.2 percent of cases of COVID-19, they account for 16 percent of COVID-19 deaths. This level of disparity is not seen in other ethnic groups. Thus, medical intervention is needed to mitigate this disparity.

There is no cure or treatment for COVID-19. To stop the spread of COVID-19, governmental policies are needed to address the inequities in the physical environment, housing, occupation, education, and economic stability that increase the risk of exposure to COVID-19 for racial and ethnic minority groups. On an individual level, hand washing, social distancing and face covering are necessary. The recent emergency use authorizations of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines provide new tools to prevent COVID-19.

Many Blacks are reluctant to take the COVID-19 vaccines for good reasons and false information. The medical mistreatment of Blacks is well documented in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and the Eugenics program, both done from the 1930s to the 1970s.

I am here to say that much has changed in medical research. Informed consent is now required prior to research, and transparency is ongoing during the research. In the past, there were no Black researchers. Today, both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were developed by Black doctors. Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, a native of Hillsboro and chairwoman of the Vaccine Research Center at NIH, not only developed the Moderna vaccine, but fine-tuned a new technology to expedite vaccine making. She made Warp Speed possible. Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu, director of COVID-19 research at Yale Medical Center, developed the Pfizer vaccine. The process of making the vaccine was very transparent, and research protocols were followed without the omission of any steps. The rapid release of the vaccine occurred because of the research of Dr. Corbett.

False information on social media should be ignored. Dont believe that COVID-19 is 5G toxicity, or the vaccine inserts a microchip for controlling and tracking your every move. I urge you to listen to Dr. Fauci and his team, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the health department and other credible physicians.

We are further reassured about the safety and quality of the vaccine because our own Dr. Pennie Hylton of Warren County directs Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, the HHS Agency that is responsible for the quality and safety of every batch of vaccine that is made in the US.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines are 94/95 percent efficacious with minimal temporary side effects. Individuals with severe allergic reactions should seek individual care from a physician. To date, over 26,000 vaccines have been administered without a single death reported. Compare this to COVID-19. There are over 28 million cases and over 500,000 deaths. The vaccines are very effective in preventing COVID-19, while the risk of dying from COVID-19 is high if not vaccinated. Thus, the benefits of the vaccine clearly outweigh the risks.

For these reasons, I decided to be vaccinated. I received my COVID-19 vaccination on Feb 5. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated. It is easy to schedule an appointment to get vaccinated, although you may have to call more than once or leave a message for a return call. Phone numbers to call for an appointment: Warren County: 252-257-1185; Vance/Granville: 252-492-7915; Franklin: 919-496-2533.

In a pandemic, everyone can become infected. If over 70 percent of the population is vaccinated, a state of herd immunity will exist and, thus, the community/country will be protected from the disease. The health of everyone is interconnected. Thus, the health of the least of us determines our health.

Get vaccinated to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community!

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Why Blacks should be vaccinated against COVID-19 | Opinion | warrenrecord.com - warrenrecord.com