tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/us-culture-39077/articlesUS culture – The Conversation2024-02-22T13:44:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238312024-02-22T13:44:20Z2024-02-22T13:44:20ZWith Beyoncé’s foray into country music, the genre may finally break free from the stereotypes that have long dogged it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576856/original/file-20240220-24-x8s4qi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=461%2C17%2C2850%2C1598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, at the 66th Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/beyoncé-and-jay-z-onstage-during-the-66th-grammy-awards-at-news-photo/1986605934?adppopup=true">Kevin Mazur/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Super Bowl Sunday, Beyoncé released two country songs – “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhKNjTb6U1Y">16 Carriages</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=238Z4YaAr1g">Texas Hold ‘Em</a>” – that elicited a mix of admiration and indignation. </p>
<p>This is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11526188/beyonce-country-music-black-roots">not her first foray</a> into the genre, but it is her most successful and controversial entry. As of last week, Beyoncé became the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/beyonce-first-black-woman-number-one-country-song-texas-hold-em-1234970301/">first Black woman to have a No. 1 song on the country charts</a>. At the same time, country music stations like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/arts/music/beyonce-oklahoma-radio-station.html">KYKC in Oklahoma</a> initially refused to play the record because it was “not country.”</p>
<p>Many non-listeners <a href="https://apnews.com/article/country-music-us-news-ap-top-news-lil-nas-x-music-c34fd394a0275f0726cb5bb231f70833#">stereotype country music</a> as being white, politically conservative, militantly patriotic and rural. And you can certainly find <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1229407614/toby-keith-dies-cancer">artists</a> and <a href="https://americansongwriter.com/the-unabashed-meaning-behind-toby-keiths-patriotic-hit-courtesy-of-the-red-white-and-blue-the-angry-american/">songs</a> that fit that bill. </p>
<p>But the story of country has always been more complicated, and debates about race and authenticity in country are nothing new; they’ve plagued country artists, record companies and listeners for over a century.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">In the official visualizer for ‘16 Carriages,’ Beyoncé dons a bejeweled cowboy hat.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As someone who <a href="https://www.middlebury.edu/college/people/william-nash">researches and teaches Black culture and country music</a>, I hope that Beyoncé’s huge profile will change the terms of this debate.</p>
<p>To me, Beyoncé’s Blackness is not the major bone of contention here.</p>
<p>Instead, the controversy is about her “countryness,” and whether a pop star can authentically cross from one genre to the next. Lucky for Beyoncé, it’s been done plenty of times before. And her songs are arriving at a time when more and more Black musicians are charting country hits.</p>
<h2>Cross-racial collaboration</h2>
<p>Americans have long viewed country music – or, as it was known before World War II, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41446344">hillbilly music</a> – as largely the purview of white musicians. This is partly by design. The “hillbilly” category <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/08/23/213852227/race-and-country-music-then-and-now">was initially created as a counterpart</a> to the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-voices-of-race-records-pullman-porters-the-rev-tt-rose-and-the-man-with-a-clarinet-37907">race records</a>” aimed at Black audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s.</p>
<p>But from the start, the genre has been influenced by Black musical styles and performances.</p>
<p>White country music superstars like <a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/carter-family">The Carter Family</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hank-Williams">Hank Williams</a> learned tunes and techniques from Black musicians <a href="https://birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/search-lesley-riddle/">Lesley Riddle</a> and <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15185820/rufus-payne">Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne</a>, respectively. Unfortunately, few recordings of Black country artists from the early 20th century exist, and most of those who did record had their racial identity masked. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/johnny-cash">Johnny Cash’s</a> mentor, <a href="https://www.elderly.com/pages/gus-cannon-celebrating-black-history-month">Gus Cannon</a>, proves a rare exception. Cannon recorded in the 1920s with his jug band, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/locations/lowermsdeltaregion/cannon-s-jug-stompers.htm">Cannon’s Jug Stompers</a>, and he had a second wave of success during <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/american-folk-music/musicians">the folk revival of the 1960s</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photograph of an older, balding Black man wearing glasses and sitting in a chair while strumming a banjo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576840/original/file-20240220-18-kyp71y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gus Cannon was an early mentor to Johnny Cash.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-blues-musician-gus-cannon-circa-1940-photo-by-news-photo/74256463?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Similarly, the genre has always included a mix of Anglo-American and Black American musical instruments. The banjo, for instance, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139880625/the-banjos-roots-reconsidered">has African roots</a> and was brought to America by enslaved people. </p>
<p>In the case of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which begins with a lively banjo riff, Beyoncé has partnered with Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning MacArthur Fellow <a href="https://rhiannongiddens.com">Rhiannon Giddens</a>, America’s foremost contemporary Black banjoist and banjo scholar. (I would argue that this choice alone undercuts objections about the track’s country bona fides.) </p>
<h2>Different tacks to navigate race</h2>
<p>By releasing these tracks, Beyoncé joins performers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/12/arts/music/charley-pride-dead.html">Charley Pride</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/14/mickey-guyton-takes-on-the-overwhelming-whiteness-of-country-music">Mickey Guyton</a> – country stars whose success has forced them to confront questions about the links between their racial and musical identities. </p>
<p>Pride, whose hits include “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’,” “Just Between You and Me” and “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?,” became, in 1971, the first Black American to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award. In 2000, he was the first Black American <a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/charley-pride">inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame</a>. </p>
<p>But throughout his career, Pride resisted attempts to emphasize his Blackness. From his 1971 hit “I’m Just Me” to his <a href="https://andscape.com/features/charley-pride-wanted-to-be-judged-by-his-work-not-his-race/">2014 refusal to discuss his racial “firsts” with a Canadian talk show host</a>, Pride consistently strove to be seen as a country artist who happened to be Black, rather than as a country musician whose Blackness was central to his public persona and work. </p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum is Guyton, who gained recognition and acclaim for songs like her 2020 hit “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/31/entertainment/mickey-guyton-country-singer/index.html">Black Like Me</a>” – a frank, heartfelt commentary on the challenges she’s faced as a Black woman pursuing a career in Nashville, Tennessee. </p>
<p>Both Pride and Guyton reflect the zeitgeists of their respective decades. In the wake of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Pride’s “colorblind” approach enabled him to circumvent <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/racial-tension-in-the-1970s">existing racial tensions</a>. He chose his material with an eye toward averting controversy – for example, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/946727442/theres-only-one-charley-pride">he eschewed love ballads</a>, lest they be understood as promoting interracial relationships. At the start of his career, when his music was released without artist photos, Pride made jokes about his “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/charley-pride-biography">permanent tan</a>” to put surprised white concertgoers at ease.</p>
<p>Guyton’s work, on the other hand, resonated with the national outrage over the murder of George Floyd and tapped into the celebration of Black empowerment that was part of the ethos of Black Lives Matter. </p>
<p>And yet I cannot think of another Black musical artist with Beyoncé’s cultural cache who has taken up country music. </p>
<p>Some might argue that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ray-Charles">Ray Charles</a>, whose groundbreaking 1962 album, “<a href="https://www.wideopencountry.com/ray-charles-modern-sounds-in-country-and-western-music/">Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music</a>,” brought legions of new listeners to country artists, is a forerunner of Beyoncé’s in this regard. </p>
<p>Without diminishing Charles’ significance, I expect that Beyoncé’s forthcoming <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/beyonce-announced-renaissance-act-ii-at-the-super-bowl-and-yes-its-a-country-album">Renaissance II</a>“ <a href="https://www.grammy.com/artists/beyonce-knowles/12474">will outshine</a> Charles’ landmark recording.</p>
<h2>Black country in the 21st century</h2>
<p>Over the past five years, in addition to the buzz over <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/old-town-road-billy-ray-cyrus-fendi-sports-bra-lyric-songwriter-1203294198/">Lil Nas X’s "Old Town Road</a>,” a significant number of Black musicians – including <a href="https://dariusrucker.com">Darius Rucker</a>, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/artist/kane-brown/">Kane Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/celebrities/18228636/who-country-music-singer-jimmie-allen/">Jimmie Allen</a>, to name a few – have charted country hits. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.blackopry.com">Black Opry Revue</a>, founded in 2021 by music journalist Holly G, produces tours that bring together rising Black country musicians, giving each more exposure than performing individually could. </p>
<p>Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” topped the country charts and made Chapman the first Black woman to win the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year award. Their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEqb6xbeuCo">performance of the song</a> at the 2024 Grammys went viral, demonstrating both the fluidity of genres and the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/tracy-chapman-luke-combs-fast-car-grammy-performance/677361/">power of collaboration</a>.</p>
<p>Beyoncé’s loyal fan base, known colloquially as “the Beyhive,” is already propelling “Texas Hold ‘Em” to the top of the pop and country charts. While there may continue to be pushback from traditionalist country music gatekeepers, country radio executives holding sway over national broadcast networks are calling Beyoncé’s new songs “<a href="https://variety.com/2024/music/news/beyonce-country-format-radio-bullish-texas-hold-em-1235913252/">a gift to country music</a>.” </p>
<p>As more and more listeners hear her directive to “just take it to the dance floor,” perhaps the sonic harmony of the country genre will translate to a new way of thinking about whether socially constructed categories, like race, ought to segregate art. </p>
<p>And what a revolution that would be.</p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/1oZI4BarEecGfZd9oVvjI3?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Her new songs are arriving at a moment when country music’s reputation as overwhelmingly white is finally starting to crack.William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2156352024-02-14T13:22:20Z2024-02-14T13:22:20ZBack in the day, being woke meant being smart<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571740/original/file-20240127-21-ngtc3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=494%2C147%2C2904%2C2721&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators march on Jan. 1, 1934, in Washington against the unjust trials of nine Black men falsely accused of raping two white women. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hundreds-of-demonstrators-march-in-washington-d-c-against-news-photo/514685542?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://time.com/6285681/woke-rhetoric-republicans-desantis-trump/">he promised</a> in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/florida-gov-desantis-leads-the-gops-national-charge-against-public-education-that-includes-lessons-on-race-and-sexual-orientation-196369">DeSantis’ war</a> on “woke ideology” has resulted in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/19/ron-desantis-bans-african-american-studies-florida-schools">the banning</a> of an advanced placement class in African American studies and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/02/ron-desantis-block-dei-program-state-colleges-florida">the elimination</a> of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Florida’s universities and colleges.</p>
<p>Given <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy">the origins</a> of the use of the word as a code among Black people, DeSantis has a nearly impossible task, despite his tireless efforts.</p>
<p>For Black people, the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woke-meaning-word-history-b1790787.html">modern-day meaning</a> of the word has little to do with school curriculum or political jargon and goes back to the days of Jim Crow and legal, often violent, racial segregation. Back then, the word was <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jan/08/heres-where-woke-comes-from/">used as a warning</a> to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular. </p>
<p>In my view as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lfBeq78AAAAJ&hl=en">behavioral scientist who studies race</a>, being woke was part of the unwritten vocabulary that Black people established to talk with each other in a way that outsiders could not understand. </p>
<h2>The early days of wokeness</h2>
<p>It’s unclear when exactly “woke” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from">became a word</a> of Black consciousness. Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/freedom-s-journal-1827-1829/">Freedom’s Journal</a>, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper. </p>
<p>In their introductory editorial on April 21, 1827, the editors <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150209163534/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/la/FreedomsJournal/v1n01.pdf">wrote that their mission</a> was to “plead our own cause.” Part of that mission was offering analysis on the state of educating enslaved Black people who were prohibited from learning how to read and write. </p>
<p>Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement. </p>
<p>By the turn of the 20th century, the use of versions of the word “woke” by other Black newspaper editors expanded to include the fight for Black voting rights. In a 1904 editorial in the <a href="https://afro.com/">Baltimore Afro-American</a>, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.</p>
<p>By 1919, Black nationalist <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm">Marcus Garvey</a> frequently used a version of the word in his speeches and newspaper, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84037003/">The Negro World</a>, as a clarion call to Black people to become more socially and politically conscious: “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” </p>
<p>At around the same time, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-31/-woke-culture-has-been-fighting-injustice-since-early-1900s">blues singers</a> were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs. On the surface, <a href="https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/352507/Thomas_Willard">Willard “Ramblin’” Thomas</a> laments a lost love in “Sawmill Moan”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I don’t go crazy,
I’m sure gonna lose my mind
‘Cause I can’t sleep for dreamin’,
sure can’t stay woke for cryin’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But instead of a love song, <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/jan/08/heres-where-woke-comes-from/">some historians</a> have suggested that the lyrics were a veiled protest against the atrocious conditions faced by Black workers in Southern sawmills.</p>
<p>The song given the most credit by historians for the use of the word woke was written and performed in 1938 by Huddie Leadbetter, known as <a href="https://www.songhall.org/profile/Huddie_Ledbetter">Lead Belly</a>. He <a href="https://www.snopes.com/articles/464795/origins-term-stay-woke/">advises his listeners</a> to “stay woke” lest they run afoul of white authority.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://folkways.si.edu/lead-belly/scottsboro-boys/track/music/smithsonian">archived interview</a> about the song “Scottsboro Boys,” Lead Belly explained how tough it was at the time for Black people in Alabama.</p>
<p>“It’s a hard world down there in Alabama,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy">Lead Belly said</a>. “I made this little song about down there. … I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Lead Belly explains his “stay woke” advice to Black people at the 4:30 mark.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And that’s the message that came out in <a href="https://genius.com/Lead-belly-scottsboro-boys-lyrics">the song lyrics</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Go to Alabama and ya better watch out
The landlord’ll get ya, gonna jump and shout
Scottsboro Scottsboro Scottsboro boys
Tell ya what it all about.” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A miscarriage of justice</h2>
<p>On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/who-were-scottsboro-nine-180977193/">Victoria Price and Ruby Bates</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/21/justice/alabama-scottsboro-pardons/index.html">falsely accused</a> a group of
<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/who-were-scottsboro-nine-180977193/">several Black young men</a> of rape. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Several white men dressed in uniforms and carrying shotguns walk in front of a group of Black men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572179/original/file-20240130-19-izdwno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">National Guard troops protect members of the Scottsboro Boys as they enter an Alabama courtroom on Jan. 1, 1932.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/judge-james-e-horton-presiding-over-the-court-at-decatur-news-photo/514902380?adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Based on their words, the nine Black men – <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/scottsboro-boys-who-were-the-boys/">ages 12 to 19 years old</a> – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white woman is sitting on a chair as she answers questions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571743/original/file-20240127-15-l3dk8x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One of the alleged victims, Victoria Price, testifies on April 4, 1933, against nine young Black men in the Scottsboro case.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/victoria-price-one-of-the-alleged-in-the-scottsboro-case-of-news-photo/514678766?adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
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<p>All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1932 <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/287us45">Powell v. Alabama</a> decision, the court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/287/45/">overturned the verdicts</a> in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial. But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again. </p>
<p>There were four more trials, seven retrials and, in 1935, two landmark Supreme Court decisions – one requiring that defendants be tried by <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scottsboro/SB_norus.html">juries of their peers</a> and the other requiring that indigent defendants receive <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/287us45">competent counsel</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/scottsboro-boys-who-were-the-boys/">nine young men</a> spent a combined total of 130 years in prison. The last was released in 1950. By 2013, all were <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/scottsboro-boys-exonerated-troubling-legacy-remains">exonerated</a>. </p>
<h2>How woke became a four-letter word</h2>
<p>Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188543449/what-does-the-word-woke-really-mean-and-where-does-it-come-from">staying woke</a>. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. used a version of woke during his commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965. </p>
<p>“The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution,” <a href="https://www2.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.html">he said</a>.</p>
<p>In recent times, use of the word has ebbed and flowed throughout Black culture but became popular again in 2014 during the protest marches organized by Black Lives Matter in the wake of the shooting death of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/police-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-darren-wilson-dd31d221489e40989f61908a59c685bf">Michael Brown</a> by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Two years later, a documentary on the group was called “<a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/show/stay-woke-the-black-lives-matter-movement/umc.cmc.1nh2deranlyif6yjxa57esu5k">Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement</a>.” </p>
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<img alt="A white man waves to a crowd from a stage that has the words awake and not woke in large letters in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572184/original/file-20240130-23-mjtlna.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a conservative political conference on Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/florida-gov-ron-desantis-speaks-at-the-conservative-news-photo/1372591565?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/woke-conservatives/story?id=93051138">for GOP lawmakers and conservative talk show pundits</a>, such as DeSantis, “woke” is a pejorative word used to describe those who believe that systemic racism exists in America and remains at the heart of the nation’s racial shortcomings. </p>
<p>When asked to define the term in June 2023, <a href="https://time.com/6285681/woke-rhetoric-republicans-desantis-trump/">DeSantis explained</a>: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism. It’s about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth.”</p>
<p>DeSantis couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that being aware of America’s racist past cannot be dictated by conservative politicians. Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215635/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Conservative politicians have launched attacks against the use of the word “woke.” If they knew the history of the word, they might stop wasting their time.Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2163542024-01-10T19:13:24Z2024-01-10T19:13:24ZIn The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch excoriated his self-absorbed society – but the book’s legacy is questionable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563787/original/file-20231205-27-b9jmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C4633%2C3953&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sum+It/Pexels</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Our cultural touchstones series looks at books that have made an impact.</em></p>
<p>A cultural critic rails against a society that worships celebrity and prizes images over ideas. A progressive intellectual attacks the dominance of corporate elites. A curmudgeonly academic condemns his society’s ignorance of its past and the dumbing down of public education. A psychologically astute writer explores the conflicts eddying around gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>Who are these disparate thinkers, you ask? Not four contemporary pundits, but a single controversialist, writing almost half a century ago. </p>
<p>The American historian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch">Christopher Lasch</a>, who died in 1994, authored a series of books that established him as one of his nation’s leading public intellectuals. The most influential of these, first published in 1979, was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Culture-of-Narcissism">The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations</a>.</p>
<p>This blockbuster earned Lasch audiences with President Jimmy Carter, a National Book Award, and a spread in People magazine, where he shared top billing with Olivia Newton-John. The book was contentious in its time, drawing flak from feminists and Lasch’s erstwhile friends on the Left. It received qualified support from some conservatives, who were otherwise antagonistic to his anti-capitalist principles. Reissued in 2018, this important work warrants a new look.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism’s era now seems very distant. The Vietnam War had ended in American failure only four years earlier. Carter’s presidency was lurching toward its own failure in the midst of an energy crisis, soaring inflation and Cold War tensions. The Reagan revolution was yet to take the nation rightwards. A spirit of decline prevailed as the nation’s pride, confidence and optimism were under threat.</p>
<p>Lasch’s book gave this diminished condition a new diagnosis. The United States was in the grip of a narcissistic culture, a malign transformation of its individualist traditions. Whereas the individualist aspired to the Protestant virtues of self-reliance and self-discipline, the narcissist was self-absorbed and self-indulgent, seeking shallow sociability, pleasure and packaged self-awareness. Modern narcissists have a therapeutic sensibility, Lasch argued, seeing mental health as “the modern equivalent of salvation,” but they feel empty and inauthentic.</p>
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<p>Narcissism can mean many things, and Lasch was at pains to distinguish his understanding from popular alternatives. In an afterword written in 1990, he dismissed the idea that narcissism is a synonym for selfishness or that his book was just another critique of the 1970s as the “me decade”. </p>
<p>Laschian narcissism is not, he says, a moralistic concept for savaging the failings of a society or generation, nor is it another word for arrogance. </p>
<p>Narcissism should instead be understood within a psychoanalytic framework. It is embodied not only in anxiously preening individuals, but in the institutions that produce and nurture them. Following Freud and leading American analysts of his time, Lasch views narcissism as a condition of grandiosity and inner emptiness, in which the person sees the world as their mirror. Narcissism reveals itself in compulsive self-surveillance and fantasies of fame, power and beauty. Its dark side is repressed rage and envy and a tendency to engage in superficial and exploitative relationships.</p>
<p>Lasch equivocated on the extent of this new narcissism. Arguing “every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology”, he asserted that candidates for psychotherapy in the 1970s no longer complained of traditional neuroses, with their alienated obsessions and phobias. Instead, they presented with disorders of the self. He proposed that many high profile public figures were narcissists, but backs off the claim that narcissistic personalities were more prevalent in the general population than in earlier times. </p>
<p>Lasch saw the reverberations of narcissism throughout American life. Most of his book offers a critical analysis of the manifestations of a narcissistic culture in several domains.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-types-of-narcissist-are-there-a-psychology-expert-sets-the-record-straight-207610">How many types of narcissist are there? A psychology expert sets the record straight</a>
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<h2>Family, sex, education, ageing</h2>
<p>Reflecting the preoccupations of his previous book, Haven in a Heartless World (1977), Lasch sees the traditional family as the endangered foundation of society. Under pressure from hedonistic cultural trends and mass consumption, parenting has become indulgent. Mothers and fathers abdicate their authority to child rearing fads, the state, and the therapeutic professions. Authority itself has been discredited, although hierarchies remain as strong as ever in “a society dominated by corporate elites with an anti-elitist ideology”.</p>
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<p>Lasch’s critique of the “appropriation of parental functions” by therapeutic institutions is part of a broader denunciation of a “new paternalism”. He sees a troubling rise in the popular use of therapeutic jargon and in the regulation of private and public behaviour by helping and welfare professions. </p>
<p>There is a gentle irony in Lasch’s use of the concept of narcissism to criticise the “popularization of psychiatric modes of thought” in American society, but his fundamental concern is that understanding deviance as illness erodes self-reliance and personal responsibility. </p>
<p>Lasch’s account of the effects of a narcissistic culture on relations between the sexes is equally pessimistic. It trivialises close relationships and undermines marriage, as women and men flee deep emotional entanglements in search of less demanding forms of connection. </p>
<p>The decline of traditional gender roles brings with it an intensified “sexual warfare” of mutual resentment. Lasch sees feminism as a contributing current in these developments, “often mak[ing] women more shrewish than ever in their daily encounters with men”. In a not entirely convincing show of balance, he also skewers men’s “deeply irrational” feelings of being imperilled by changing gender arrangements.</p>
<p>Mass education is another of Lasch’s targets, excoriated for creating a “spread of stupidity”, an “atrophy of competence” and “new forms of illiteracy”. A progressive might be expected to celebrate the expansion of access to higher education, but Lasch sees a wholesale lowering of standards and a rising ignorance of history, literature and civics. Meanwhile, universities are plagued by grade inflation, commodified degrees, swollen administrative bureaucracies and cafeteria-style curricula.</p>
<p>Behind these grim developments, Lasch sees a decline in the social value placed on personal achievement, a narrow emphasis on relevance and the vocational mission of higher education, and an anti-elitism that erodes the quality and ambitions of education across the spectrum, from community colleges to the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Narcissistic culture also reveals itself in shifting views of ageing. Lasch bemoans a rising “cult of youth” and a dread of getting old, expressed in obsessions with physical appearance and desperate striving for longevity. </p>
<p>Behind this panic is a more basic “cult of the self”. Narcissistic adults cling to the illusion of youth because they are over-invested in personal image and appearance and feel no connection to a future beyond their lifespan.</p>
<p>Lasch is an avid collector of cults: his book also proclaims cults of authenticity, celebrity, compulsive industry, consumption, expanded consciousness, friendliness, intimacy, growth, lost innocence, pragmatism, privatism, self-culture, sincerity, sports, the strenuous life, teamwork, victory and womanhood.</p>
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Read more:
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<h2>The book’s legacy</h2>
<p>In an introduction to the 2018 edition, the political commentator E.J. Dionne writes that “The Culture of Narcissism seems to leap across the decades” carrying enduring truths for our time. Just how prescient it was – how much it leaps rather than stumbles – is a matter for debate. The book sounds an early warning for several trends that have endured and intensified, but in other respects it seems dated. </p>
<p>One dated feature is the book’s heavy reliance on psychoanalytic ideas. Outside of small remnant communities of analysts, it is now profoundly unusual to see Freudian jargon littered so freely and unapologetically through works of social criticism, or to come across references to castrating mothers. Lasch wrote at a time when the cultural prominence of psychoanalysis in the literary Anglosphere had reached its peak, only to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01489/full">fall off a cliff</a> in the 1990s. </p>
<p>Intellectual fashions come and go, of course – Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut are no longer literary icons either – but sections of The Culture of Narcissism now speak an almost foreign language, occasionally peddling arrant psychoanalytic nonsense, such as the familial origins and narcissistic basis of schizophrenia.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism’s positions on sex and gender now seem reactionary and almost quaint. The conflicts Lasch examines continue in struggles over gender inequality and sexual violence, and in the manosphere backlash, but few would see them as being in a state of crisis: more a constant low hum of ongoing friction than signs of impending disaster. The idea that feminism has turned women shrewish now seems risible, emanating from a time when inequality at work and in the home still appeared to be the natural state of affairs. </p>
<p>Lasch’s critical remarks on mass education also seem retrograde, especially coming from a time when participation in higher education was much lower and more limited to a social elite than it is today. The proportion of Americans with college degrees is now well over double the proportion in 1979, when it was below one in six. </p>
<p>The declinist view that educational standards are slipping long preceded Lasch’s critique. It persists to this day around the globe, often in reaction to broadened access. With the complaint being so generalised across time and space, it seems questionable to attribute a decline specifically to rampant narcissism in 1970s America, especially as the excellence and scale of the nation’s universities were the envy of the world at the time.</p>
<p>But Lasch was surely correct in identifying narcissism as a major American cultural trend before others had made the connection. Narcissism is now a vastly more popular concept in everyday discourse than it was in 1979. It has become the focus of an enormous psychological literature. Repeated surveys of young Americans have demonstrated steadily <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Narcissism-Epidemic/Jean-M-Twenge/9781416575993">rising levels</a> of the trait, and it is indispensable in making sense of public figures, recent presidents included.</p>
<p>Equally precocious is Lasch’s emphasis on the rise of images in the social world. His language is anachronistic, but his sentiment resonates in this digital age:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors.</p>
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<p>Lasch could not have foreseen how social media and the internet would saturate us with alluring images, amplify our narcissistic concerns with appearance and self-curation, and foster the shallow and diffuse social relationships and obsession with youth that his book condemned.</p>
<p>More generally, The Culture of Narcissism’s critique of the then new therapeutic mindset rings even truer today. Lasch offered an early diagnosis of the prevailing tendency to frame problems of meaning in psychiatric terms and to identify mental health with personal authenticity. </p>
<p>At a time when therapy-speak is rife, when concepts of mental ill-health <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25934573-900-why-being-more-open-about-mental-health-could-be-making-us-feel-worse/">continue to expand</a>, and when “authentic” has been crowned as 2023’s <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year">word of the year</a>, it is clear Lasch’s book foretold a psychologised future.</p>
<p>The Culture of Narcissism is a product of its time: what book is not? Even so, it remains an important work of criticism. Whether its central concept can bear the explanatory weight Lasch loads upon it can be queried, but narcissism serves as a novel point of attack on an ambitious range of cultural targets. In this regard, the book still deserves to be read. </p>
<p>In our polarised times, readers might also appreciate a work of criticism that resists political categorisation. Lasch is radical on some issues, but socially conservative on others. He is fierce in his attack on corporate elites, but unabashed in his cultural elitism. He is critical of feminism, but bracing in his attack on male insecurity. He is favourable towards restoring authority and the traditional family, but keen to build new local “communities of competence”. </p>
<p>Lasch’s voice is usually sharp-tongued and dyspeptic – he is against much more than he is for – but it is always interesting.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Christopher Lasch’s sharp-tonged a critique of American society was a product of its time, but has things to say about the present.Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153442023-11-20T19:56:06Z2023-11-20T19:56:06ZIn America, national parks are more than scenic − they’re sacred. But they were created at a cost to Native Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559946/original/file-20231116-17-i13sy3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C1%2C1017%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Valley of the Yosemite' by the 19th-century artist Albert Bierstadt, owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/albert-bierstadt-valley-of-the-yosemite-oil-on-paperboard-news-photo/544274100?adppopup=true">VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Abraham Lincoln has an almost saintly place in U.S. history: the “Great Emancipator” whose leadership during the Civil War preserved the Union and abolished slavery. </p>
<p>Often overlooked among his achievements is <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-30">legislation he signed June 30, 1864</a>, during the thick of the war – but only marginally related to the conflict. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-30">The Yosemite Valley Grant Act</a> preserved the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in California as a park “held for public use, resort, and recreation … for all time.”</p>
<p>It was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/yosemite-turns-150">the first time</a> the federal government had set aside land for its scenic value, and it created a model for U.S. national parks, which are themselves hallowed sites in American culture. Originally granted to the state of California, Yosemite formally became the third U.S. national park in 1890, joining a system of picturesque lands that hold spiritual and patriotic significance for millions of Americans.</p>
<p>At the same time, however, the establishment of national parks had severe consequences for Native American peoples across the continent. <a href="https://www.rhodes.edu/bio/tom-bremer">My research</a> on the <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/religious-and-spiritual-appeal-of-national-parks/">religious history of U.S. national parks</a> illustrates how religious justifications for establishing parks contributed to the persecution of Indigenous tribes, a reality that the National Park Service has begun to redress in recent decades. </p>
<h2>US civil religion</h2>
<p>With <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/annual-visitation-highlights.htm">more than 300 million annual visitors</a>, the U.S. National Park System is a much-valued treasure. It encompasses stupendous scenery, opportunities for encounters with wildlife, outdoor recreation and commemoration of important places and events.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows two men standing on a tiny ledge above a deep valley." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559948/original/file-20231116-22-vugh67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The scenery of Glacier Point in Yosemite Valley has awed visitors for centuries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/glacier-point-yosemite-valley-california-usa-stereoscopic-news-photo/463954611?adppopup=true">The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But the parks’ significance goes beyond this. The national parks, historic sites, battlefields and other sites of the National Park Service are sacred places <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Formed+From+This+Soil%3A+An+Introduction+to+the+Diverse+History+of+Religion+in+America-p-9781405189279">in U.S. civil religion</a>: the symbols, practices and traditions that make the idea of a nation into something sacred, seemingly blessed by a higher power.</p>
<p>First brought attention by <a href="http://www.robertbellah.com/">sociologist Robert Bellah</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/001152605774431464">civil religion</a> flourishes alongside conventional religious traditions, like Christianity or Buddhism, with its own sacred figures, sites and rituals. In the U.S., these include George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. flag and Pledge of Allegiance, and national holidays such as Independence Day. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religious-and-Spiritual-Tourism/Olsen-Timothy/p/book/9780367191955">I have observed</a> that many of the most sacred places of the nation’s civil religion are found in sites cared for by the National Park Service, from Independence Hall in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty in New York to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.</p>
<p>In addition, the National Park System is a testament to Manifest Destiny, a prominent feature of U.S. civil religion. This 19th-century notion held that Americans had divine blessing to expand the borders of the nation. As historian <a href="https://history.columbia.edu/person/anders-stephanson/">Anders Stephanson</a> writes in his <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809015849/manifest-destiny">book about Manifest Destiny</a>, it became “a catchword for the idea of a providentially or historically sanctioned right to continental expansionism.” </p>
<p>This westward expansion came at the expense of Native Americans and other groups that previously inhabited the territory. For many Protestant Christian Americans, the superlative scenery of natural sites like Yosemite and Yellowstone affirmed their belief that God intended for them to conquer and settle the American West in the decades following the Civil War – as I write about in <a href="https://www.sacredwonderland.us/sacred-wonderland-book/">my forthcoming book</a>.</p>
<h2>Products of Manifest Destiny</h2>
<p>The earliest national parks were established <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1999.00041.x">as products of Manifest Destiny</a>, amid the national push to bring land from the Mississippi to the Pacific into the United States, which many white Americans viewed as a mission to expand settled Christian society.</p>
<p>Beginning with <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1706-the-yellowstone-story-revised-edition-volume-i">Yellowstone in 1872</a>, followed by Sequoia, Yosemite and Mount Rainier, the early parks created in the 19th century had symbolic significance for U.S. civil religion. In many Americans’ eyes, the sites’ beauty affirmed their belief that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/inherit-the-holy-mountain-9780190230869?cc=us&lang=en&">the U.S. was exceptional and divinely favored</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small wooden church with a steeple stands against trees, with tall mountains in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559945/original/file-20231116-29-2ehxau.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The chapel in Yosemite, photographed in 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/la-chapelle-de-yosemite-dans-le-parc-national-de-yosemite-news-photo/947872774?adppopup=true">Tripelon-Jarry/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Westward expansion had severe consequences for American Indian nations, and the earliest national parks played a role in forcing their removal, as historian <a href="https://oregonstate.academia.edu/MarkSpence/CurriculumVitae">Mark David Spence</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.001.0001">has documented</a>. Transforming lands into national parks for visitors’ enjoyment meant dispossessing communities whose ancestors had valued those places for generations.</p>
<p>Following the creation of Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, a band of Shoshone people who had been there for generations – the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/the-tukudika-indians.htm">Tukudika, or Sheep Eater</a> – were relocated to a reservation in Wyoming. A similar situation involved the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.003.0006">Nitsitapii, or Blackfeet people</a>, whose treaty rights were abrogated with the establishment of Glacier National Park in 1910. </p>
<p>In contrast, the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/historyculture/their-lifeways.htm">Yosemite Indians</a> of California, who were mainly a band of Miwok people known as the Ahwahneechee, remained in Yosemite long after it became a national park. By 1969, though, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195142433.001.0001">they had been eliminated from the park</a> through decades of onerous regulations, economic pressures and attrition.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small lean-to structure made out of sticks sits in front of a glade of trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555291/original/file-20231023-15-75sfob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The site of a former Miwok village in Yosemite Valley is now an outdoor museum display of traditional shelters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas S. Bremer</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Over the past few decades, the National Park Service has made progress in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/america/national-parks/2022/03/09/national-parks-aim-boost-tribal-nations-role-land-management/9442146002/">acknowledging Native American connections to parklands</a>, beginning to address the history of Manifest Destiny and Indigenous peoples’ exclusion.</p>
<p>The agency is a key contributor to the Interior Department’s recent initiative to facilitate <a href="https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/ar-esb46-009795-doi-and-tribal-co-stewardship-20221125.pdf">tribal co-management of federal lands</a>. Though much still needs to be done, national park managers are increasingly consulting and cooperating with tribal authorities on a range of issues.</p>
<p>Deb Haaland, the first Native American in U.S. history to hold a cabinet position, initiated a process to <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/secretary-haaland-takes-action-remove-derogatory-names-federal-lands">review and replace derogatory names</a> on federal lands – one of her earliest actions as secretary of the interior. For example, she specifically identified the term “squaw” – a slur often directed at Indigenous women – as offensive, declaring that “racist terms have no place in our vernacular or on our federal lands.” Within a year of her directive, <a href="https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2022/09/new-place-names-dot-national-park-system-government-removes-derogatory-names">24 places in the National Park System</a> had new names.</p>
<p>Other issues on which the park service is collaborating with tribal communities include adopting <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-shape-our-land.htm">Native American strategies of using deliberate fires</a> to maintain <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-western-states-can-learn-from-native-american-wildfire-management-strategies-120731">healthy, thriving ecosystems</a>. These Indigenous traditions have become a regular part of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1965/wildfires-prescribed-fires-fuels.htm">fire prevention and management efforts</a> throughout the park system. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several teepees stand in a row as the sun rises over a prairie." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555293/original/file-20231023-19-rpznkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Teepees included in the ‘Yellowstone Revealed’ project by the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yellowstonenps/52308221241/in/album-72177720301553119/">National Park Service/Jacob W. Frank via Flickr</a></span>
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<p>Tribes have also cooperated with a variety of national parks to restore bison herds. Historically, these animals were central for many tribes not only as a source of food and materials for tools, clothing and blankets but also in <a href="https://theconversation.com/bison-are-sacred-to-native-americans-but-each-tribe-has-its-own-special-relationship-to-them-211252?">traditional spirituality</a>. The Interior Department’s <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bison/upload/BCI2020-2020_05_06_508-Compliant_508.pdf">2020 Bison Conservation Initiative</a> and partnerships with the <a href="https://itbcbuffalonation.org/">InterTribal Buffalo Council</a> have helped begin to restore herds on Native American lands with bison from national parks, including <a href="https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/management/bison-management.htm">Yellowstone</a>, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/badl/learn/news/2022-11-7_bison_distributed_to_tribes.htm">Badlands</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/bison-reduction-efforts-complete-for-2022.htm">Grand Canyon</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most noticeable initiative, from visitors’ perspective, are the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/photosmultimedia/gcid-05-dvwt.htm">stories of Native American culture and history</a> in displays, ranger talks, roadside exhibits and the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/taas-indigenousheritage-intro.htm">National Park Service website</a>, <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/2016npstribaltourismhighlights.htm">amplifying Native voices</a> in the parks. These programs have begun the process of reconciliation and healing – working to make a more inclusive and democratic civil religion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas S. Bremer has conducted historical research for the National Park Service as a consultant at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.</span></em></p>The idea of Manifest Destiny inspired Americans to push west, leading to the creation of the first national parks. But those beliefs spelled removal for many Native American groups.Thomas S. Bremer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, American Religious History, Rhodes CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2065672023-06-30T12:37:59Z2023-06-30T12:37:59Z3 myths about immigration in America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533017/original/file-20230620-16-augfut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1168%2C307%2C3950%2C2713&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A family of Syrian refugees arrive at their new home in Bloomfield, Mich., in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-haji-khalif-family-arrives-at-their-new-home-on-july-24-news-photo/632671648?adppopup=true">Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. is – and long has been – <a href="https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2021/09/01/america-cultural-pluralism-horace-kallen-alain-locke/ideas/essay/">a pluralistic society</a> that contains large immigrant communities. </p>
<p>Yet migration is an actively debated but poorly understood topic, and much of the conventional thinking and political rhetoric about migration <a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2011/ten-myths-about-immigration">are based on myths</a>, <a href="https://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/articles/se_8206348.pdf">rather than facts</a>.</p>
<p>For these reasons, migration policies and strategies for easing <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psychology/biological-psychology/acculturation-personal-journey-across-cultures?format=PB&isbn=9781108731096">acculturation</a> – which refers to the psychological process of assimilating to a new culture – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019330">usually end up being ineffective</a>.</p>
<p>I often work with immigrant populations <a href="https://thecouplesclinic.com/our-staff/april-ilkmen/">in my job</a> as a family therapist and as an acculturation scholar. </p>
<p>Here are a few of the most common misconceptions I come across in my work.</p>
<h2>1. Immigrants don’t want to learn English</h2>
<p>The U.S. is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries – Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United Kingdom – combined, <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2020_international_migration_highlights.pdf">according to 2020 data</a> from the U.N. Population Division. While the U.S. population represents about 5% of the total world population, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states">close to 20% of all global migrants</a> reside there.</p>
<p>An overwhelming number of these immigrants are learning English, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210315579547">despite public perception to the contrary</a>.</p>
<p>Immigrants and their children learn English today <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00217">at the same rate</a> as Italians, Germans and Eastern Europeans who emigrated in the early 19th century.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2022/acs/acs-50.pdf">According to U.S. Census data</a>, immigrant adults report having better English skills <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024609320391">the longer they’ve lived in the U.S.</a> And from 2009 to 2019, the percentage who could speak English “very well” <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/23/u-s-undocumented-immigrants-are-more-proficient-in-english-more-educated-than-a-decade-ago/">increased from 57% to 62%</a> among first-generation immigrants. </p>
<h2>2. Immigrants are uneducated</h2>
<p>Contrary to popular belief that immigrants moving to the U.S. <a href="https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/immigration/study-destroys-myth-of-uneducated-immigrants/">have minimal education</a>, many of them are well educated. </p>
<p>Over the past five years, 48% of arriving immigrants have been classified as highly skilled – that is, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-brain-waste-analysis-june2021-final.pdf">they have a bachelor’s degree or graduate degree</a>. By comparison, only 33% of those born in the U.S. <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html">hold a bachelor’s degree or higher</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, the pursuit of higher education is valued and encouraged in immigrant communities, particularly those that arrived from collectivist societies, which are commonplace in the countries of South Asia. Immigrants from these places tend to prioritize <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00056">the virtue of the learning process</a> and the joy that comes from attaining an educational milestone. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean highly educated immigrants can easily slide into high-paying jobs. Many of them find themselves working in menial jobs that don’t require a degree, <a href="https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2823&context=capstone">and underemployment among highly educated immigrants</a> remains a key issue in the U.S. today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People waving U.S. flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533015/original/file-20230620-21-8lo1cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd celebrates after being sworn in as U.S. citizens at a naturalization ceremony in 2007 in California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/immigrants-wave-flags-after-being-sworn-in-as-u-s-citizens-news-photo/75710241?adppopup=true">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>3. The best way to adapt is to embrace US culture</h2>
<p>For decades, acculturation studies have highlighted the importance of immigrants’ embracing American culture. Policymakers, therapists and educators who offered services to immigrants adhered to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.1.49">a narrow understanding of acculturation</a>, which encouraged immigrants to adapt to their host country by severing themselves from the culture of their homelands. </p>
<p>Then, in 1987, psychologist John Berry proposed <a href="https://doi.org/10.22329/csw.v9i1.5762">an acculturation model</a> outlining new strategies. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.07.013">According to Berry</a>, immigrants should strive to retain elements of their original cultural identity while also adopting a new cultural identity that folds in American culture and values.</p>
<p>Today, Berry’s model is the most commonly used to understand acculturation. </p>
<p>However, although the model acknowledges that acculturation strategies may evolve over time, it doesn’t take into account the emerging forms of <a href="https://www.studysmarter.us/explanations/human-geography/population-geography/transnational-migration/">transnational immigration</a>, which refers to immigrants who live in another country but also maintain strong ties to their home country. </p>
<p>Technological advances have made it far <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2022.04.004">easier for immigrants to maintain ties with their original culture</a>. There are also U.S. cities, neighborhoods and towns where immigrant communities <a href="https://backgroundchecks.org/cities-largest-immigrant-population.html">are the demographic majority</a> – places like Hialeah, Florida, where Cubans and Cuban Americans <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/hialeah-fl-population">make up 73% of the population</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144214563509">parts of the Detroit metro area</a>, which has growing numbers of Indian immigrants. </p>
<p>For immigrants living in these “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144214563509">immigrant islands</a>,” there’s less of an obligation to undergo a transformative process of acculturation, whether it’s by <a href="https://theconversation.com/jewish-americans-changed-their-names-but-not-at-ellis-island-96152">Americanizing foreign names</a> or not teaching children their home country’s language.</p>
<p>Still, many immigrants nonetheless feel pressured to downplay their backgrounds. While conducting interviews with members of the Turkish community in Chicago, I spoke with many people who admitted that they weren’t comfortable flaunting their Turkish culture. This didn’t surprise me. Immigrants are often exposed to new sets of prejudices and biases, and they fear not being able to access services such as medical care and education.</p>
<p>This fear reinforces the urge to assimilate into the dominant culture’s values – which, in America, <a href="https://www.up.edu/iss/advising-services/american-values.html">includes individualist principles</a> like independence – and suppress their own cultural values, such as being family-oriented. It’s essentially <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214561306">a strategy of self-protection</a>.</p>
<p>In my work, I found that immigrants who engaged in what’s called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017393">cultural innocuousness</a>” – behaving in ways that may soften their ethnic and cultural expression – had the hardest time adapting to their new home.</p>
<p>For those reasons, it is crucial for social workers, therapists, teachers and policymakers who work with immigrant families to focus on the tensions among acculturation, ethnic identity and well-being.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>April Nisan Ilkmen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US is home to more international migrants than any other country. But even though immigration is an actively debated topic, immigrants are poorly understood.April Nisan Ilkmen, PhD Candidate in Couple and Family Therapy, Adler UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2018432023-05-31T12:39:54Z2023-05-31T12:39:54ZStreet scrolls: The beats, rhymes and spirituality of Latin hip-hop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528174/original/file-20230525-27-wjzwiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1014%2C674&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Puerto Rican singer Residente performs in Havana in 2010. His back reads, 'We receive flowers and bullets in the very same heart.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/puerto-rican-singer-rene-perez-aka-residente-of-hip-hop-and-news-photo/97987551?adppopup=true">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a first-generation college graduate and a Latino from a family that constantly scrambled to make ends meet, there was very little in my upbringing that foreshadowed my current life <a href="https://religion.arizona.edu/people/nava">as a religion professor and scholar</a>. I didn’t grow up surrounded by books, and I spent many more hours in childhood dissecting hip-hop and shooting hoops than doing schoolwork. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until late in college, when a couple of teachers lit a fire in my bones, that I became hungry for the stuff of books and ideas. Learning about the world’s religions instilled in me a newfound passion for all the existential questions and conundrums of the human condition, connecting me with a truth beyond myself, a sublime pattern that brought the world into greater focus.</p>
<p>But if the study of religion swept me up into the stars, hip-hop brought me back down to earth. It was my first love, and its beats and rhymes schooled me in things closer to home. Hip-hop had its finger on the pulse of Black and brown lives on the frayed edges of the Americas, lives like my father’s and his father’s before him: cleaning trains, floors and toilets, doing whatever they could to support their families.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Teens stand in a schoolyard as a young man does a high back flip." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528173/original/file-20230525-29-q6zck0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rock Steady Crew members break-dance in the yard of Booker T. Washington Junior High School in New York on May 8, 1983.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-rock-steady-crew-break-dance-in-the-yard-of-news-photo/159723630?adppopup=true">Linda Vartoogian/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>There is an unstudied wisdom in the defiant, dirty beats of hip-hop, and even religious dimensions – <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo145420021.html">a focus of my research today</a>, which explores the prophetic and even mystical elements in the genre. Its lyrics can be sweet like honey, as the biblical prophet Ezekiel <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+3&version=KJV">describes the scroll of the Lord</a>. Yet they can also be bitter, like the herbs of Passover – a remembrance of pains and indignities. Hip-hop turns 50 this summer, and throughout its history, Latinos’ experiences have been important threads in this music’s cries for justice.</p>
<h2>‘Latins goin’ platinum’</h2>
<p>Back in the day, my brother was a b-boy – a break dancer – and his group, the Royal Rockers, convinced me that in this fresh new culture, Black and brown youth had a story to tell. </p>
<p>Making their feet flutter like centipedes, their tails rise up like scorpions in a battle, these Tucson kids thrust themselves into public view, refusing to remain invisible. Their body language flipped the prevailing narrative about our battered neighborhoods, turning them into places of pride rather than shame. </p>
<p>Latinos beyond the U.S. borderlands were also very much part of <a href="https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/rap-hip-hop">hip-hop’s history</a>. While there is no doubt that its inventors were Black Americans, <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292718036/">Latinos added new colors</a> to the prevailing palette of hip-hop. Whether in the South Bronx or East L.A., brown-bodied youth embraced hip-hop as <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/from-bomba-to-hip-hop/9780231110778">an ingenious instrument of self-expression</a>: <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/reggaeton">a perfect medium to assert, define</a> and even reinvent ourselves.</p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6QQMRgqK5kFp5yaDUVFC4p?utm_source=generator&theme=0" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p>When it came to emceeing, rap in Latino circles started experimenting with Spanish words and slang by the 1980s. Artists peppered their verses with shouts of Latin pride, and my friends and I heard it loud and clear.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with a faint mustache wearing a Los Angeles baseball cap points at the camera close-up." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kid Frost, born Arturo Molina Jr., in New York City in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rap-collective-group-latin-alliance-and-kid-frost-appear-in-news-photo/1273387989?adppopup=true">Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives</a></span>
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<p>Kid Frost, to take a West Coast example, put in rhymes what we felt but didn’t have the courage to say. While he had the thuggish pretense of the gangster rap era, his body teetering to the side like the Tower of Pisa and his mouth riddled with threats, Kid Frost’s bars were also <a href="https://remezcla.com/features/music/tbt-30-years-dropping-la-raza-remains-historic-part-hip-hop-history/">filled with cultural knowledge</a>. Echoing the unruffled cadences of Latino subcultures around him – from kids cruising in lowrider cars to the <a href="https://www.laits.utexas.edu/onda_latina/program?sernum=MAE_82_15_mp3&header=Identity">street speech of caló</a>, a coded argot from zoot-suit culture in the 1930s and 1940s – Kid Frost used barrio language to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4488380">rewrite the story of hip-hop</a> with Indigenous and Chicano lives as significant characters.</p>
<p>Meanwhile on the East Coast, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xpbpa/el-general-pioneered-the-sound-of-reggaeton-then-disappeared-entirely">the Panamanian reggaeton pioneer El General</a> brought even greater visibility to Latin-accented hip-hop, as did Fat Joe and Big Pun. </p>
<p>“Cause everybody’s checkin’ for Pun, second to none / ‘Cause Latins goin’ platinum was destined to come,” he announced to the world, like a boxing ring announcer before a prime event, in “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibdvIKLgtg8">You Came Up</a>.” </p>
<p>Both Fat Joe and Big Pun were big in stature and big in lung capacity, but Big Pun was the better rhyme-spitter; his flows spilled off his tongue in torrents of alliteration and assonance, rarely pausing to take a breath or gulp, as if he didn’t require as much oxygen as other humans.</p>
<p><a href="https://untappedcities.com/2014/02/13/daily-what-big-pun-place-guerilla-street-sign-goes-up-in-the-bronx/">In his hood, the South Bronx’s Soundview Projects</a>, social and psychological stresses seemed to weigh heavily on residents. In <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0B8drtTSp68pZdkmVrG9ZA">one memorable rap, “Twinz</a>,” he painted a picture of himself holding his “rosary as tight as I can,” fingering it to keep evil away on streets that swallowed the weak. Big Pun and his rap progenitors – from Big Daddy Kane and Fat Joe to Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep – projected violent images of oversized badness: of being the predator, not the prey.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white picture, taken from below a stage, of two large men rapping into microphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Big Pun and Fat Joe performing on May 13, 1998.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/big-pun-and-fat-joe-performing-at-les-poulets-on-may-13-news-photo/547402273?adppopup=true">Hiroyuki Ito/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>La nueva religíon</h2>
<p>Fast forward a couple of decades, and today’s Latino rappers and reggaetoneros are breaking new ground, frequently adding more sensitive, introspective and socially conscious touches to hip-hop. </p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://ledgernote.com/blog/interesting/most-streamed-artists-ever/">most-streamed artists in the world today</a>, the Puerto Rican hitmaker Bad Bunny, is representative of this new style. Raised in a Catholic home, <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2018/08/28/bad-bunny-cover-story-conejo-malo-interview">his voice nurtured in a church choir</a>, Bad Bunny’s breadth – reggaeton, cumbia, boogaloo, trap, bomba, salsa – owes a lot to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014211817/no-boundaries-on-the-island-the-music-of-puerto-rico">the musical diversity of the island</a>. </p>
<p>Like so many artists of Latin American and African American heritages, he slips on religious sentiments, then drops them for bawdy ones in a beat, changing his mood like a stage performer between acts. Unlike R.E.M., Bad Bunny hasn’t exactly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtdhWltSIg">“lost” his religion</a> as much as he’s reformed it, adding in dance rhythms, folk motifs, feminist sensibilities, LGBTQ rights and barrio experiences. </p>
<p>“El diablo me llama pero Jesucristo me abraza – amén,” he sings in his verse for the viral hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLFNgKOPS50">I Like It</a>,” a trap version of Pete Rodriguez’s 1967 “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiM9GqZG9kE">I Like It Like That</a>”: The devil calls me but Jesus Christ holds me.</p>
<p>He named his first major tour “La Nueva Religíon,” a fitting name for <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/08/25/bad-bunny-spirituality-243615">the eccentric combinations of spirituality</a>, sexuality, dance and pan-Latin motifs in his music. Since the tour in 2018, the term has endured, referring not only to Bad Bunny’s fans – devotees of this “new religion” – but also a generation that is questioning traditional gender roles, chasing new spiritual experiences and raising their fists in support of human rights. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd outside, with men on a truck holding Puerto Rican flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rapper Bad Bunny (holding flag), singer Ricky Martin (black hat) and rapper Residente (blue hat) join protests against the governor of Puerto Rico in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-bad-bunny-singer-ricky-martin-and-rapper-residente-news-photo/1162646990?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Ever since Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria in 2017 – when over 300,000 homes in Puerto Rico <a href="https://spp-pr.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2018/07/HUD-Housing-Damage-Assessment-Recovery-Strategies-6-29-18.pdf">were damaged or destroyed</a> – Bad Bunny has produced anthems and rally cries as much as songs. Take “El Apagón,” “The Blackout,” a rebellious <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-latin/bad-bunny-releases-documentary-for-el-apagon-1234594915/">condemnation of the government’s inaction</a> on power outages that have swept the island since Maria, and locals’ sense that their own needs go unmet while wealthy outsiders flood in.</p>
<p>He’s not alone: Many of today’s rappers are sampling some of the more righteous trends in the history of hip-hop. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP9Bto5lOEQ">The Cuban rap song “Patria y Vida</a>,” for instance – a collaboration between Gente de Zona, the Orishas, Descemer Bueno and other artists – appeared in Cuba like a storm in 2021. Capturing feelings of widespread discontent with the Cuban government, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2021/07/19/1017887993/explaining-patria-y-vida-the-cuban-song-defying-an-evil-revolution">the rap reclaims and revolutionizes</a> the classic slogan from the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, “Patria o Muerte” (“Homeland or Death”). In the hands of these Cuban rappers, the phrase becomes “patria y vida”: “We no longer shout homeland or death, but homeland and life instead.”</p>
<p>Further south in the Americas, consider MC Millaray, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/world/americas/mc-millaray-chile-mapuche-rapper.html">a 16-year-old Indigenous rapper</a> from Mapuche lands in Chile, whose fierce raps swing between Spanish and Indigenous languages. She wields her words like incantations to summon Mapuche ancestors and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pWmhrsAKPI">defend the dignity of Indigenous lives</a> throughout the Americas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young woman's face, with a serious expression, lit up against a dark room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chilean Mapuche rap singer MC Millaray records at a studio in Santiago on March 25, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chilean-mapuche-rap-singer-mc-millaray-records-at-a-studio-news-photo/1250034416?adppopup=true">Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Romp and grace</h2>
<p>Now <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hip-hop-has-enhanced-american-education-over-the-past-50-years-from-rec-rooms-to-classrooms-202794">50 years in the making</a>, hip-hop continues to be a powerful amulet against powers that try to silence the young and underprivileged. It’s eloquent proof of an enduring truth: that hardship can fuel ingenuity and cunning, and that poetry can be fashioned out of society’s scraps. </p>
<p>For my brother and his breaking crew, hip-hop was a lesson in grace: how the body can find the still point in the midst of spins, leaps and flying arms and legs. For me, always drawn by the rapping, it was also a lesson in grace: the emcee’s adroit arrangement of syllables and syntax, the way they sculpted their bars, making language bounce, dance and romp. </p>
<p>For both of us, it was like a first love, making us feel rapturously free yet connected – liberating and revelatory at once.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alejandro Nava is affiliated with Casa Alitas, a non-profit organization that works with refugees and asylum-seekers. </span></em></p>Latino artists have been forging their own paths in hip-hop for decades, giving voice to young peoples’ pain, faith and demands for change.Alejandro Nava, Professor of Religious Studies, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856612022-08-05T12:12:37Z2022-08-05T12:12:37ZParenting styles vary across the US<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476739/original/file-20220729-13683-uha9wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C42%2C5640%2C3745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parents take different approaches to raising their kids.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-sitting-by-teenage-son-studying-at-home-royalty-free-image/1321465605">Maskot via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most people agree that children <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402020/">should have enough to eat</a>, not be sexually molested and never be punished in a way that requires medical treatment. But beyond those basics, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=erA8gbIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my research</a> has found that parenting styles in the United States <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0749-x">vary by region</a>.</p>
<h2>Differing styles</h2>
<p>I have found that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0749-x">parents in the South</a> were more likely than parents in central Florida to demand obedience and respect from their children and believe that children should be treated strictly. Parents in central Florida, which is demographically and culturally different from other parts of the South, were more likely to discuss family decisions with their children, allow disagreement and let children make their own decisions. </p>
<p>Wider-ranging research I conducted with two doctoral students, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3mdvHHIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Melanie Stearns</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EUky6d4NRBwC&hl=en">Erica Szkody</a>, found differences in how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0192513X211055114">young adults in the Northeast, Midwest, South and West</a> are parented.</p>
<p>Overall, there were some commonalities. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">style of parenting</a> called “authoritative,” in which parents are both responsive and demanding, providing support alongside rules and limits while encouraging communication, was most common across the U.S. Also relatively common was a different parenting style called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">authoritarian</a>,” in which parents are less responsive but still demanding, providing rules and limits without as much support and requiring more obedience to authority.</p>
<p>Less common was “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030372">permissive</a>” parenting style. That’s when parents are responsive but less demanding, tending to be warm and caring but perhaps without consistent rules and indulging children more often than other styles.</p>
<p>But there were key regional differences.</p>
<h2>Regional variations</h2>
<p>In the Northeast, Midwest and South, some young adults said their mothers were more supportive and caring, while their fathers were more demanding and obedience-driven. In general, this could reflect <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1185-8">traditional gender roles</a> of a responsive mother and a strict father, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01014-6">other research</a> has also found. This combination was less common in the West.</p>
<p>In the Northeast and West, small but significant groups of young adults reported parents who were more supportive and even indulgent, without a lot of insistence on obedience. We believe that this finding could be related to how parents in these regions might be <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.279">more individualistic</a> and encouraging of communication and equality than parents in other regions of the U.S.</p>
<p>The South was the only region where some young adults stated that they had stricter mothers but more responsive fathers. This is a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/parenting-in-america/">difference from overall national trends</a>.</p>
<h2>Potential causes</h2>
<p>Many forces influence parents’ approaches, including <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/3-parenting-approaches-and-concerns/">demographic factors</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fjcpp.12705">religious traditions</a>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/17/parenting-in-america/">economic status</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/07/28/parenting-children-in-the-age-of-screens/">technology</a>. </p>
<p>Typically, the <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/Bronfenbrenner.html">most important factors</a> are family, friends, neighborhoods, schools, economic status and access to resources. Those obviously can vary widely even within a region of the U.S.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13539">Cultural attitudes and laws</a> are also key factors in parenting styles that are more broadly shared – and that <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Traditional-regions-of-the-United-States">vary by region</a> across the country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Stearns received the APA Division 36 Student Research Award ($500), which funded participants fees for the study on regional differences in parenting we conducted.</span></em></p>In some regions of the country, mothers and fathers have different approaches than their counterparts in other regions.Cliff McKinney, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641282021-07-08T12:37:55Z2021-07-08T12:37:55ZFrom flying boats to secret Soviet weapons to alien visitors – a brief cultural history of UFOs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410220/original/file-20210707-19-bmhwxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C116%2C5412%2C3137&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The worldwide fascination with UFOs started in the late 1940s after a few incidents made the news in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/roswell-ufo-museum-sign-royalty-free-image/6117-000980?adppopup=true"> David Zaitz/The Image Bank via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On June 25, 2021, the U.S. government released a nine–page preliminary report on UFOs, or, as it is now calling them, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. The report is the latest notable event in what has been a renaissance for UFOs in recent years. Greg Eghigian is a historian of science at Penn State who has published research and is writing a book on the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662515617706">history of UFOs in the U.S.</a> We spoke with him for The Conversation Weekly podcast the day before the new report came out to better understand the cultural history of UFOs in the U.S.</em> </p>
<iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/60087127b9687759d637bade/60dc8ee702a6470012b996d6?cover=true" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay" width="100%" height="110"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-561" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/561/4fbbd099d631750693d02bac632430b71b37cd5f/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><em>Below are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.</em></p>
<h2>When did the idea of UFOs first emerge?</h2>
<p>The idea of aliens and that other worlds might be inhabited actually goes back to ancient times. The question was a <a href="https://store.doverpublications.com/0486145018.html">matter of real debate</a> among philosophers, scientists and theologians in the Western world by the 18th century and it was widely accepted that alien civilizations existed. </p>
<p>But something changed in the 19th century. That’s when you first start to see these reports of people seeing what they say were <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/ufos-alien-contact-two-centuries-of-mystery/oclc/38061605">flying ships overhead</a>. The things people describe back then sound a lot like the things they were familiar with – they literally saw <a href="https://www.readex.com/blog/ufo-fever-americas-historical-newspapers-mysterious-airships-1896-97">ships and vessels that would normally float on the sea in flight</a>. Some people would see steam-powered ships. </p>
<p>But it’s really not until the summer of 1947 that people began to regularly speak of seeing flying objects that some attributed to extraterrestrials.</p>
<h2>What happened in 1947?</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A grainy black and white photo showing a flying saucer in the sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410222/original/file-20210707-21-wemgmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1122&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the years following Arnold’s story, UFO sightings and reports – like this purported photo of a UFO from 1952 – exploded in number.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PurportedUFO2.jpg">George Stock/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Portrait-of-American-pilot-Kenneth-Arnold-1915-84-taken-by-the-photographer-of-the_fig1_304652761">pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold</a> was flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state. As he was flying around he said he saw some sort of glimmer or shine that caught his eye and was concerned that maybe he was going to have a collision with another aircraft. When he looked, he saw what he described as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kenneth-Arnold">nine very odd-shaped vessels flying in formation</a>.</p>
<p>After Arnold landed, he reported his sightings to authorities at a nearby airport and eventually talked to some reporters. When a reporter asked Arnold to describe how the things moved, he said, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_UFO_Files/PC_6or5kQ9EC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=kenneth+arnold+%22flew+like+a+saucer+would+if+you+skipped+it+across+water%22&pg=PA30&printsec=frontcover">they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.</a>” Some very clever enterprising journalists came up with the headline “flying saucers” and from that point forward they were flying saucers – even though Arnold never uttered the phrase himself.</p>
<p>A Gallup poll six weeks after the event discovered that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230361362_12">90% of Americans had heard the term flying saucer</a>. This was the beginning of the phenomenon that some call the flying saucer era and the contemporary idea of UFOs. </p>
<p>Within days other people in the country began reporting having seen <a href="http://www.project1947.com/fig/1947b.htm">similar things in the sky</a>. Within weeks the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Sign">U.S. Air Force decided to look into the reports</a>. Arnold’s story also triggered a lot of press interest and soon the international media were covering this story. It was a worldwide phenomenon within months.</p>
<h2>Who starts to look into UFOs?</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old magazine cover showing a hand–drawn flying saucer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410221/original/file-20210707-13-14il5p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By the ‘50s, UFO hobby groups began to emerge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amazing_Stories_October_1957.jpg#/media/File:Amazing_Stories_October_1957.jpg">Amazing Stories Magazine/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two things happened in parallel: First were government-sponsored investigations in the U.S., specifically within the Air Force. Starting in 1947 the Air Force <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos">set in motion a number of different projects</a> all basically interested in one question: Do UFOs represent a national security threat? The government wasn’t interested in a deep scientific analysis of these things.</p>
<p>On the other hand, from 1947 to 1950 you had a lot of the <a href="https://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/libraryufomagazinearticles.html">general public who were just utterly fascinated</a> with the mystery of flying saucers. What are they? Are they real? If they are real, who’s behind them? Some people threw around the idea of aliens, but that’s not really the major theory that people bought into. Most people – if they thought the sightings were real – believed they were either <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14794012.2014.928032">secret weapons of the U.S. military or secret weapons or secret aircraft of the Soviets</a>.</p>
<p>So out of this fascination developed what you could call the equivalent of fan groups – flying saucer clubs. Those became the seeds of growth in the 1950s and 1960s for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFO_organizations">UFO organizations</a> first at the local, then the <a href="http://www.nicap.org/papers/hall-IUR1994.htm">national</a> and then the <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/aerial-phenomena-research-organization-apro">international level</a>. </p>
<h2>How did government programs fit into the UFO ecosystem?</h2>
<p>A lot of what the Air Force did was behind closed doors and supposed to be clandestine. The government has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30943827">released files over many years</a> that show that a considerable number of UFO sightings were people seeing secret airplanes like the U2. It’s no surprise that the Air Force would try to keep strict control over what’s revealed to the public. </p>
<p>But that strict control is one of the many things that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._Greer">fed conspiracy theories over the years</a>. The idea among UFO believers became “The government isn’t shooting straight with us. Somehow we’ve got to get these people to disclose all the information they know.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Navy aircraft video of a UFO." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410223/original/file-20210707-15-1op4nu4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=638&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2017, a number of videos and reports from former U.S. military personnel rekindled a fading interest in UFOs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/documents">U.S. Navy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is the modern American perspective on UFOs?</h2>
<p>Up until the ‘90s the Cold War played a really fundamental formative role in how people in the U.S. imagined UFOs – both in terms of how we think about humanity’s prospects technologically, but also relating to the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/watch-the-skies-a-chronicle-of-the-flying-saucer-myth/oclc/33474120&referer=brief_results">fears and anxieties surrounding the Cold War</a>. But when the Cold War ended, interest fell off. From the late 1990s into the early 2000s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662515617706">media coverage was nominal</a>.</p>
<p>That all changed with the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html">2017 revelations about the secret UFO project in the Pentagon</a>. This spurred on a resurgence of interest in UFOs. The way the media were talking about UFOs had lot of the same elements from before: Are these things alien? If they’re not alien, are they from our military or somebody else’s military? Are the people who were pushing the narrative and stories of sightings operating in good faith or are these con men? </p>
<p>In so many ways this was all really reminiscent of the 1940s and 1950s.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our best science, health and technology stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-best">Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p>
<h2>Do you see a shift in how scientists think of UFOs?</h2>
<p>In my conversations with scientists I’ve been seeing some movement toward a willingness to say, “This stuff is <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-intelligence-report-on-ufos-no-aliens-but-government-transparency-and-desire-for-better-data-might-bring-science-to-the-ufo-world-163059">maybe worthy of looking into more seriously</a>.” The important change since the 1990s – specifically for astrophysicists and astronomers – has been the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nasas-tess-spacecraft-is-finding-hundreds-of-exoplanets-and-is-poised-to-find-thousands-more-122104">discovery of so many planets around other stars</a> that could possibly support life. </p>
<p>I’m excited by the prospect of deeper study – both as a phenomenon that needs to be investigated by physical scientists but also as a social and cultural phenomenon. Mystery breeds speculation, and the UFO phenomenon is not a puzzle that can be easily solved. The mystery part gives people an opportunity to ask big questions about not just humanity’s place in the universe, but about the limits of technology and knowledge. I think that’s why people keep returning to the question of UFOs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Greg Eghigian has received funding for his research on UFOs from the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, NASA, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.</span></em></p>The history of UFOs weaves together public fascination, government secrecy and cultural phenomena. Recent news and shifts in the government’s stance on UFOs are giving new life to the mystery.Greg Eghigian, Professor of History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1389002020-05-21T12:20:03Z2020-05-21T12:20:03ZThe Scripps spelling bee is off this year, but the controversy over including foreign words is still on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336091/original/file-20200519-152298-ty7qju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=145%2C50%2C4041%2C2686&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Co-champions celebrate at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, on May 31, 2019. The winning spellers made history with eight co-champions, most ever in spelling event's history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-champions-sohum-sukhatankar-of-dallas-texas-saketh-news-photo/1152757579?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a normal year, millions of Americans would be following closely this week as preteens showcase their knowledge of words most of us have never heard of. </p>
<p>The contestants and their families may be devastated by the cancellation of the <a href="http://spellingbee.com/">Scripps National Spelling Bee</a>. As a <a href="http://huc.edu/directory/sarah-bunin-benor">linguist</a> who studies <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/263681">languages</a> that <a href="https://becomingfrum.weebly.com/">draw</a> from multiple <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/projects/hebrewatcamp.html">sources</a>, I’m disappointed our country is missing its annual lesson in English linguistics.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/shalini-shankar/beeline/9780465094523/">social and professional benefits</a> of spelling bees are hard to ignore. The participants, including many from immigrant families, develop skills of grit and performance, and they and their parents form new social networks. An entire industry has emerged surrounding the preparation of elite contestants.</p>
<p>But it’s also worth recognizing spelling bees’ contributions to the public’s awareness of world languages. Even if the acceptable spellings of many international words are debatable, their presence highlights the multicultural past and present of the English tongue.</p>
<p>In a millennium of global expeditions and conquests, English has cast its net in diverse linguistic habitats. It has captured words from many languages, often for concepts not previously expressed in English. Linguists call these words “<a href="https://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Ekemmer/Words/loanwords.html">loanwords</a>,” which does not mean English eventually returns them.</p>
<h2>English loanwords</h2>
<p>Many loanwords have been part of English for centuries and are not considered foreign at all. Unless they’ve studied linguistics, most people would be surprised to learn that “skirt” entered English from Old Norse, “beef” from French and “expensive” from Latin.</p>
<p>With more recent loanwords, English speakers sense their language of origin but still see them as part of English. This is especially common in the domains of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Language-of-Food/">cuisine</a>, as with “jambalaya” (from Louisiana French, originally Provençal), natural phenomena like “tsunami” (Japanese) and specialized terminology such as “fortissimo” (Italian) in music. </p>
<p>Although there is no English language academy that makes official rulings, the spellings of such loanwords are standardized, as they are frequently used in English and have been for many years. Nobody would question their inclusion in the spelling bee.</p>
<p>Most English loanwords borrow from languages that, like English, use the <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/borrowed-words/">Latin alphabet</a>. These words usually maintain their original spellings, such as “schadenfreude” (German: pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) and “coup d’état” (French: violent overthrow of a government). </p>
<p>Other examples, which showed up in the <a href="https://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Multiple%20Champs%20declared%20for%202019%20Scripps%20National%20Spelling%20Bee%205-31-19.pdf">2019 national spelling bee</a>, include “tjaele” (Swedish: frozen ground), “imbirussú” (Portuguese: a South American tree) and “geeldikkop” (Afrikaans: a disease among southern African sheep). Some viewers might wonder if words like these should be included in the bee, but nobody would question their spellings.</p>
<p>However, English – and therefore spelling bees – also includes many words from <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-do-spelling-bee-words-come-from/">languages</a> not historically written in Latin characters. Sometimes the English spellings of these words adhere to conventionalized phonetic transliteration. </p>
<p>Examples include “makimono” (Japanese: a horizontal ornamental scroll), “namaz” (Persian: Islamic prayer) and “teledu” (Malay: a Javanese skunk-like animal). In other cases, many possible transliterations are used within English, even if the dictionary provides only one spelling. Is it “falafel” or “felafel”? “Pad thai” or “phad thai”?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHPxDsLQxg">Last year’s competition</a> featured several such ambiguous loanwords, including “chaebol,” which could be “jaebeol” (Korean: a family-controlled industrial conglomerate) and “kooletah,” which could be “kuleta” (Greenlandic Aleut: a caribou-skin coat). In fact, four of the five most <a href="https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/1133783192861847553/photo/1">difficult</a> languages of origin in spelling bees are written in non-Latin letters.</p>
<h2>Wrangling over loanwords</h2>
<p>Of course, difficulty should not disqualify a word from being included in spelling bees. But such loanwords have generated <a href="https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/">controversy</a> in recent years, especially from <a href="https://thewordmavens.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/spelling-bee-mishegoss-yiddish-for-craziness/">word mavens</a> in the Jewish community upset about the spellings of the bee’s many <a href="https://forward.com/news/national/425240/yiddishkeit-scipps-spelling-bee-yiddish-jewish-words/">words from Hebrew and Yiddish</a>. </p>
<p>Some Hebrew and Yiddish sounds have multiple possible transliterations, and Jews of different backgrounds have different spelling preferences. To represent this diversity, when I moderate Hebrew and Yiddish entries in the crowdsourced <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/">Jewish English Lexicon</a>, I list several spellings – sometimes more than a dozen.</p>
<p>A Hebrew example is “keriah” (Jewish ceremonial garment rending), spelled “correctly” by 13-year-old Rishik Gandhasri, one of the eight champions in 2019. This word has <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/1473">many attested spellings</a>, including “kria,” “kriyah” and “qeri’ah.” “Kriah,” according to Google, is the most common spelling in English. But the E.W. Scripps Company, which has run the bee since 1941, allows only “keriah.” Why? Because that’s the spelling espoused by Merriam-Webster, <a href="http://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/Contest_Rules_of_the_2018_Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee.pdf">Scripps’ authoritative dictionary</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhasri advanced to another round in the bee with the Yiddish-origin word “yiddishkeit” (Jewishness). In a <a href="http://www.yiddishwit.com/transliteration.html">standard system</a> for transliterating Yiddish words, it’s spelled “yidishkayt.” However, a Yiddish culture organization in Los Angeles spells it “Yiddishkayt.” These spellings represent different ideologies regarding Yiddish and its relationship to German. And many who use them believe wholeheartedly that only their spelling is correct.</p>
<p>In the 2013 bee, the winning word was also from Yiddish: “knaidel” (Passover dumpling). I <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/229899/linguists-take-knaidel-kneydl-controversy/">wrote</a> then that, if I had been a contestant: “I would have given 10 possible spellings, explained what various spellings indicate about the people who write them and then protested the English spelling bee’s use of loanwords from a language that does not use Latin script. Clearly, I would have lost.” </p>
<h2>Benefits of a growing lexicon</h2>
<p>Since then, I have recognized the benefits of including such loanwords. First, while contestants must learn the spelling and transliteration conventions of dozens of languages, the major skill tested is who can memorize more of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/spellpundit-scripps-spelling-bee.html">472,000 words</a> in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. The competition emphasizes this skill by including loanwords without standardized English spellings.</p>
<p>Second, the ubiquity of loanwords expands Americans’ awareness of new cultural domains. The broad media coverage of recent spelling bees has introduced Americans to a Brazilian drum, “atabaque” (from Portuguese, influenced by Arabic), a Norse merman, “marmennill” (from Icelandic) and a Polynesian chief or noble, “alii” (from Hawaiian).</p>
<p>Even when the dictionary’s one accepted spelling is debatable, members of immigrant, indigenous and religious groups <a href="https://www.kveller.com/this-yiddish-word-kicked-off-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee-finals/">are generally proud</a> when spelling bees feature their community’s language in such a public way. </p>
<p>Although 2020 news headlines won’t feature 13-year-olds’ spelling feats, we can still marvel, not only at the accomplishments of our youth, but also at the richness of the English lexicon. Whether loanwords are from Icelandic, Korean or Hebrew, they remind us of the layered history of our language and the increasingly interconnected nature of our world.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bunin Benor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Scripps National Spelling Bee highlights the richness of the English lexicon by picking some tough entries with foreign roots.Sarah Bunin Benor, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1228862019-09-12T09:47:37Z2019-09-12T09:47:37ZBruce Springsteen: an Aristotle for our times<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291485/original/file-20190909-109943-z454vx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C997%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Born to run: Bruce Springsteen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antonio Scorza via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the recently released film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/08/blinded-by-the-light-review-springsteen-bend-it-like-beckham-gurinder-chadha">Blinded by the Light</a>, Pakistani teenager Javed discovers commitment and courage through the music of Bruce Springsteen. Based on journalist <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/greetings-from-bury-park-9780747592945/">Sarfraz Manzoor’s 1980s memoir</a>, the dreams and frustrations of a working-class boy from Luton, north of London are given wings by the experience of another working-class boy from Freehold, New Jersey. Inspired, Javed shares his writings and his feelings.</p>
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<p>The difficulty of retaining hope and virtue remains as much a feature of Springsteen’s work in 2019 – when he has just enjoyed his 11th UK number one album – as it did when he <a href="https://calendar.songfacts.com/october/27/9017">made the covers of Time and Newsweek in 1975</a>.</p>
<p>Much has been written about Springsteen – but as far as I know, nobody has suggested a connection with the ancient <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/">Greek philosopher Aristotle</a> (384-322 BC). But connections are there – in the centrality of virtue, friendship and community to lives well led.</p>
<h2>The Philosopher</h2>
<p>From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Aristotle was often simply known as “The Philosopher”. His ideas were central to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/13/religion-islam-aristotle-philosophy">development of Islamic and Christian philosophy</a> and interest in his work <a href="https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/whats-the-next-big-idea-neo-aristotelianism">has revived</a> over the past decades.</p>
<p>Aristotle’s works <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/260886/the-politics-by-aristotle/9780140444216/">The Politics</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/355/35503/the-nicomachean-ethics/9780140449495.html">The Ethics</a>, are central to this revival. Two critical features distinguish these works from their Enlightenment successors. The first is that thinking rightly requires us to reason towards the good – not just towards whatever we happen to want. The contrast with neoliberal economics, which presupposes that the individual be free to pursue their preferences, is stark. For Aristotle, desires must be directed towards genuine goods if they are to have legitimate claims on us. </p>
<p>The second is that ethics and politics go together – humans are “political animals” for whom a good life both benefits from and contributes to the community. The contrast with neoliberal politics, in which communities only have the claims that individuals grant them, could also not be starker.</p>
<p>The connections between Aristotle and Springsteen are best evidenced through the lens of contemporary moral philosopher <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/mac-over/">Alasdair MacIntyre</a>. More than anyone else, MacIntyre has revived the idea that good lives require virtues that were central to Aristotle: wisdom, self-control, justice and courage – as well as the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity. </p>
<p>But in most working lives – such as those in the rug mills, motor plants and plastics factories in which Springsteen’s father worked – such virtues were beside the point. As Springsteen writes in The Promised Land (1978):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve done my best to live the right way<br>
I get up every morning and go to work each day<br>
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold<br>
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Born to Run</h2>
<p>According to <a href="https://brucespringsteenstore.com/products/born-to-run-paperback">his autobiography</a>, the young Springsteen wanted none of this – instead, he wanted a life of creativity and freedom: he was born to run. But while the working lives lived in his community alienated him, the community itself drew him back – he now lives just ten miles from his original hometown.</p>
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<p>The music that enabled him to escape a life of industrial labour required him to develop both virtues and skills: the focus to spend thousands of hours practising; the courage to risk failure, and the wisdom to seek partners and friends of the calibre of the E-Street Band, a working community of friends. For Aristotle, true friendship is only available to the virtuous, those whose mutual regard goes beyond mutual enjoyment and usefulness, beyond death even. Springsteen <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bruce-springsteens-eulogy-for-clarence-clemons-62867/">captured this in his eulogy to Clarence Clemons</a>, the longtime saxophonist in the E-Street Band, when he said that: “Clarence doesn’t leave the E-Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die.” </p>
<p>Such commitment to one’s practice – and the enduring relationships this commitment requires – demands adherence to the virtue of justice. So Springsteen’s recruitment of Clemons had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the magic that happened when they played together. But the novelty of their friendship in 1970s New Jersey was not lost on either of them. Prioritising the excellence of your craft means that race, gender, sexuality and anything else is irrelevant to your choices. Aristotelian commitments to equality are all about excellence. </p>
<p>Springsteen’s advocacy of social and especially racial justice – particularly in songs such as <a href="https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=americanskin">American Skin: 41 Shots</a> – are married to his commitment to the defence of local communities, especially notable in <a href="https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=deathtomyhometown">Death to my Hometown</a> where the bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis are described as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The greedy thieves who came around<br>
And ate the flesh of everything they found<br>
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now<br>
Who walk the streets as free men now.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>An American story</h2>
<p>According to MacIntyre’s account, <a href="https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268035044/after-virtue/">After Virtue</a>, we need to understand our lives as being embedded in inherited narratives – and most of these, for most of us, and certainly for Springsteen and for Javed, are narratives of conflict. MacIntyre writes: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?‘” </p>
<p>Springsteen’s characterised his work in just this way in his <a href="https://www.netflix.com/my/title/80232329">autobiographical Broadway show</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wanted to hear, and I wanted to know the whole American story. I wanted to know my story, your story, felt like I needed to understand as much of it as I could in order to understand myself.
Who was I and where I came from and what that meant, what did it mean to my family and where was I going and where were we going together as a people, and what did it mean to be an American and to be a part of that story in this place and in this time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For MacIntyre, the development of such narrative accounts is an essential part of Aristotelian self-understanding – one in which ethics and politics are inseparable. Springsteen’s insistence that his characters’ lives be understood as part of their wider stories reflects the same insight.</p>
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<p>At July’s conference marking his 90th birthday, MacIntyre recommended the work of Albert Murray, whose book <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/119000/the-hero-and-the-blues-by-albert-murray/9780679762201/">The Hero and the Blues</a>, argued for “kinship between fiction and the blues. Both … are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences”. And so it goes with Bruce Springsteen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122886/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ron Beadle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bruce Springsteen is The Boss, Aristotle is The Philosopher. And they have a great deal in common, if you know where to look.Ron Beadle, Professor of Organization and Business Ethics, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1209372019-07-26T10:09:29Z2019-07-26T10:09:29ZCatch 22: TV adaptation is slick, but can’t quite capture Joseph Heller’s terror<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285588/original/file-20190724-110179-s75dtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Channel 4</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>George Clooney’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48394921">TV adaptation</a> of the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Catch-22-50th-Anniversary-Joseph-Heller/dp/1451626657">Catch 22</a> lingers tenderly on the fragile scenic beauty of Italy, where the novel is set. The filming sustains a ravishing sense of the country’s peaceful loveliness – the stage for Joseph Heller’s caustic and bitter narrative of the insane absurdities of World War II. </p>
<p>Heller as a novelist does not aim to conjure such beauty. He concentrates more on the crazy business at hand – the sexual liaisons, the military technology, the gruesome violence, the evil bureaucracy and black economy of total war. </p>
<p>And on the page, Heller is far more effective at drumming up the hero bombardier Yossarian’s abject fear, caught in the engines of the war machine:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He was trembling steadily as the plane crept ahead. He could hear the hollow <em>boom-boom-boom-boom</em> of the flak pounding all around him in overlapping measures of four, the sharp, piercing crack! of a single shell exploding suddenly very close by. His head was bursting with a thousand dissonant impulses as he prayed for the bombs to drop. He wanted to sob. The engines droned on monotonously like a fat, lazy fly. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The TV series fails to convey that fear, despite the horrors of the deaths, the tragic cock-ups, the violence – because it looks too damn good, the flak puffing quietly away around the beautiful bombers in the Italian skies. </p>
<p>Neither can the adaptation make one feel the sickening blend of relentless fear and the flights’ endless boredom, which Heller’s prose is all about. Yossarian is trembling steadily, time itself drones on like the plane engines, so slowly, as if transporting him to his death monotonously. </p>
<p>At the same time, the prose is alive to the shocks of the flak, captured here as a manic force that has rhythm, that can explode within Yossarian’s consciousness like modernist music. The flak and droning fly of the machine he is in create a terrifying environment that is unremittingly, nightmarishly alien. </p>
<p>But most of all, Heller’s prose captures this mechanical hell with dark comedy. The prose bristles with zany mood shifts, word choices, surreal clashes – like a good stand up comedy routine. </p>
<p>In comparison, Clooney’s adaptation is not quite funny enough. The series has great performances from its leads, with excellent relish to the madness of the command, and routines that shade suddenly into horror, as with a stupid dive-bombing episode. </p>
<p>But Heller is funny and hates that he is. His very powers of entertainment, his ability to take us into Yossarian’s desperate malingering, his ferocious fear, and the rich comic absurdity of it all, are signs of the evil he experienced during the war.</p>
<p>It is the crazy comedy of the war’s violence and the staggeringly grotesque officer class that are Heller’s chief targets. Captain Black, for instance, whoops with delight that the bombardiers are going to be sent to certain death in the unbelievable “flak-fest” of Bologna. </p>
<p>“Oh boy! I can’t wait to see those bastards’ faces when they find out they’re going to Bologna,” he cries. “Ha, ha, ha!” He enjoys his laugh, and then seeks out the bombardiers in order “to wring the most enjoyment from the occasion”. </p>
<h2>Violence and beauty</h2>
<p>The dark comedy Heller deploys in the novel is actually the <em>modus operandi</em> of the whole command, allied to the simpler brutalities of plain bullying by officers eager to please superiors, and to the grotesque sadism associated with the exercise of power – all those taunting smiles, the malicious gloating and sarcastic laughs. </p>
<p>If the novel’s beats are determined by the acts of violence, then its comedy is shaped by the bullying logic of military command as a vicious joke – the true meaning of Catch-22.</p>
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<p>The TV series is faithful to the book. It has purpose, comic determination to capture the ways sexual feelings of love, desire, and sadism fuse with capitalist greed to run the show. It revels in the dark joke of war’s violence in such splendid beauty. </p>
<p>But it cannot capture, quite, Yossarian’s abject fear, or the ruthless sense that the monsters of the war machine rule by the very dark comedy that is Heller’s stock in trade. When Joseph Heller returned home to New York after the war, he could no longer enjoy the roller coaster rides of Luna Park which he had relished as a boy. They <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Now-And-Then/Joseph-Heller/9780743240086">reminded his body too much</a> of the lurching bombers that had driven him out of his mind. </p>
<p>That is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But it also signals how the joy of comic movement and a boy’s relish of comic delight had been poisoned – by the war’s recruitment of those very energies to its lethal cause.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Piette does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Catch 22 as seen by George Clooney is just far too good looking.Adam Piette, Professor of Modern Literature, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/917622018-03-14T09:29:45Z2018-03-14T09:29:45ZTom and Jerry – why they’re a cat and mouse double act for the ages<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210123/original/file-20180313-30983-1bk88tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/70344776@N04/6387951013">momokacma via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>They’ve been part of the backdrop to our lives for so long that it’s easy to forget that – in cat and mouse years anyway – Tom and Jerry’s running conflict must qualify as one of the longest double acts on record. Last month, the pair celebrated their 78th anniversary with the news that they are <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/willy-wonka/270970/willy-wonka-meets-tom-and-jerry-in-new-animated-movie-exclusive">teaming up in a new animated movie</a> with, of all people, Willy Wonka and his Chocolate factory.</p>
<p>Their career goes back to the MGM cartoon department where animators Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera first met in around 1937. In 1939, after working on a number of ultimately unsuccessful cartoons, Hanna and Barbera decided to collaborate on a new animated series for the studio. Hanna was an impressive and fast-working storyboard artist, while Barbera had an expert eye for direction. Their pitch – about the conflict between a cat and a mouse – was put in front of their unconvinced boss, Fred Quimby. Quimby begrudgingly greenlit the project. The result was Puss Gets the Boot (1940) featuring the duo under the stage names Jasper Cat and Jinx Mouse. </p>
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<p>The cartoon features the playful rivalry between cat and mouse we would all grow to love – although there is a sinister undertone to the piece, especially in the rendering of Tom. But the real star of the show is the distinctive musical score. The short animation featured no dialogue from the main characters so this score was key to the storytelling success of the animation. </p>
<p>The original musical director of the series was Scott Bradley. Bradley used the skills of the MGM cartoon orchestra, which consisted of between 16 and 45 musicians. The score was written before any animation work was completed, although the “beats” of the animation were planned out by Hanna and Barbera in advance of putting pencil to paper. </p>
<p>The animation style cut no corners, although the character designs were not yet set in stone. Jasper (Tom) was more rough around the edges (he looks in severe need of a grooming). This first effort sets out the premise of Jinx getting one over on Jasper – with the poor cat taking the rap for the wanton destruction left in their wake. The film was a success, and a second episode appeared: The Midnight Snack (1941).</p>
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<p>This animation opens with the correct title card of “Tom and Jerry”, naming the double act for the first time. It also features a directorial credit for Hanna and Barbera and the “Produced by Fred Quimby” signature, which would become synonymous with the golden era of the cartoon. Tom looks a little cleaner in this episode – his outline is more refined and he is not quite so sinister looking. Again, the visuals do the talking and the soundtrack is seamlessly synced to the animation work.</p>
<h2>Golden years</h2>
<p>As the 1940s progressed, the animation became slicker and the characters more refined – although the action is somewhat more violent. Tom was often on the receiving end of quite brutal “comedy” attacks from Jerry, and other supporting characters who appeared over the years, such as Butch, Toodles Galore, Spike and Tyke. Tom and Jerry won an Oscar for The Yankee Doodle Mouse in 1943. </p>
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<p>During this golden era, the cartoon <a href="http://www.tomandjerryonline.com/oscars.cfm">won seven Oscars and received six other nominations</a>. With America at war, the short takes on a “military” theme, and could be seen as a thinly veiled piece of propaganda for the war effort in the Pacific.</p>
<p>In 1955, after 96 short films, Quimby left his role as producer. This did result in a slight dip in the quality (the films were also hit by the rise of television) and unfortunately, despite battling on, Hanna and Barbera were informed by a phone call to stop production and had to let the entire animation team go. Hanna and Barbera left MGM in 1957 to set up the hugely successful Hanna Barbera Productions Inc.</p>
<p>The pair returned in 1961, this time directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0215126/">Gene Deitch</a>. The first episode of this new era, Switchin’ Kitten (1961), shows a marked decline in the quality of the animation. A drastically reduced budget resulted in a series of films which look and feel significantly different from the original run. The franchise was given a boost when <a href="http://www.chuckjones.com/">Chuck Jones</a>, of Bugs Bunny fame, joins as producer in 1963, however these cartoons do very much feel of their time and do not capture the essence of the Hanna Barbera era. The plug was finally pulled on this version after Purr-Chance to Dream (1967).</p>
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<p>They returned again under the watch of Hanna Barbera in 1975, with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSnWUBsgI10">The Tom and Jerry Show</a> produced for ABC television. Again, even with the involvement of the original creators, this is far removed from the first series. There was a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGmWEjRk3o">series produced by Filmation in 1980</a>, which tried to capture the slapstick comedy of the originals – but even this was deemed a failure. Further reinventions appeared in 1990, 2005 and 2013/14, with some degree of success. But if you want to fully appreciate the genius of these characters, it’s best to watch the films made in the their heyday, between 1940 and 1955.</p>
<h2>Branching out</h2>
<p>The characters live on to this day and are heavily merchandised across different mediums. In 2001, I worked on the Playstation 2 video game <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/gamecube/tom-jerry-in-war-of-the-whiskers">Tom and Jerry in War of the Whiskers</a> for Dundee-based <a href="http://www.fasttrack.co.uk/company_profile/vis-entertainment/">VIS Entertainment</a> and US gaming company <a href="http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/NewKidCo">NewKidCo</a>. We took most of our references from the classic Hanna Barbera era – and the game was a success. Surprisingly, gameplay videos of this are hugely popular on YouTube – some have been viewed more than 7.5m times.</p>
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<p>It’s a form of entertainment I don’t really get – but it shows how popular these two are. Who knows what’s next for Tom and Jerry? It’s safe to say the appeal of their cat and mouse antics endures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip Vaughan receives funding from ESRC.</span></em></p>The cat and mouse comedy duo have been locked in conflict for more than 78 years now.Phillip Vaughan, Senior Lecturer: Director MSc Animation and VFX MDes Comics & Graphic Novels, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778802017-05-26T12:27:50Z2017-05-26T12:27:50ZHappy 100th birthday, Mr President: how JFK’s image and legacy have endured<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171113/original/file-20170526-23260-yjeh85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">JFK remains among the most charismatic presidents in US history.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Florida Memory, State Library of Florida</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>John F Kennedy was born 100 years ago on May 29, 1917. While the achievements of his presidency and the content of his character have been subjects of contestation among historians and political commentators since the 1970s, there is little question regarding the enduring power of his image. As the youngest man to win election to the presidency, entering the White House with a beautiful wife and young children in tow, he projected the promise of a new era in American politics and society.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/">Norman Mailer’s sprawling, seminal essay</a> about Kennedy, published in Esquire in November 1960, Kennedy was the embodiment of what America wanted to be: young, idealistic, affluent and cosmopolitan. When America was faced with the choice between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, Mailer posed the question: “Would the nation be brave enough to enlist the romantic dream of itself, would it vote for the image in the mirror of its unconscious” – or would it opt for “the stability of the mediocre”?</p>
<p>Kennedy knew the importance of his image, which is why he placed so much emphasis on his performances in the televised debates. His success in this arena arguably tipped the very close election in his favour. <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-President-Perennial-Political-Classics/dp/0061900605">According to journalist Theodore White</a>, television transmogrified Nixon into a “glowering”, “heavy” figure; by contrast, Kennedy appeared glamorous, sophisticated – almost beautiful.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170315/original/file-20170522-25068-tlblek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Kennedy and Nixon TV debate, Associated Press, Creative Commons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<h2>Master of the medium</h2>
<p>Carrying this success into his presidency, Kennedy used television to communicate with the people to great effect through broadcast press conferences and interviews. As demonstrated by the miniseries Kennedy (1983), where Kennedy was played by perennial screen politician Martin Sheen, JFK’s presidency can be reduced to a series of televised moments: his oft-quoted inaugural address (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”); his tours of France and West Germany (“Ich bin ein Berliner”); and his calm, assured broadcasts to the nation during the civil rights demonstrations and the Cuban Missile Crisis.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674001855">As American historian Alan Brinkley wrote in 1998</a>: “Even many of those who have become disillusioned with Kennedy over the years are still struck, when they see him on film [or on television], by how smooth, polished and spontaneously eloquent he was, how impressive a presence, how elegant a speaker.” </p>
<p>Most of the Kennedy miniseries is in colour. But in its reconstruction of monochrome images of Kennedy on television, it employs the medium as a means of memorialising him, infatuated with his image in its nostalgic reverie for a more stable and prosperous time.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170306/original/file-20170522-25027-1ks0u6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Kennedy (1983), DVD, Carlton International Media Ltd.</span>
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<p>Kennedy’s image on television (and in newsreel footage) is so seductive it is unsurprising Oliver Stone used it in the opening sequence to his controversial debunking of the official theories behind the president’s assassination in the film JFK (1991). <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kennedy-Obsession-American-Myth-JFK/dp/0231107994">As John Hellmann suggested</a>, this footage establishes Kennedy “as the incarnation of the ideal America in the body of the beautiful man”.</p>
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<p>The moving image played a fundamental role in establishing Kennedy as the image-ideal president. <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/power_of_image/">As I have argued elsewhere</a>, other presidents have sought to establish their own images in relation to Kennedy’s, from Bill Clinton in 1992 to Barack Obama in 2008 and beyond. Kennedy is a seductive figure – not because of what he did or achieved, but because he cultivated the notion that he reflected the best the United States could be if it dared to dream.</p>
<p>Towards the conclusion of Oliver Stone’s Nixon, the eponymous president, played by Anthony Hopkins, stumbles drunkenly around the White House on the verge of resignation. He looks up to the portrait of Kennedy and says, rather forlornly: “When they [the people] look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” </p>
<p>Stone is here acknowledging Nixon’s frail humanity as the “ego” to Kennedy’s “ego-ideal”. Where Nixon is deficient and ordinary, Kennedy’s image retains the illusion of perfection in the collective memory.</p>
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<span class="caption">Nixon (1995), Buena Vista Pictures Ltd.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Film International</span></span>
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<h2>Politics as reality TV</h2>
<p>The 100th anniversary of Kennedy’s birth allows us to reflect upon this legacy. If Kennedy was the superhero and Nixon the flawed human, then Donald Trump is a compendium of some of the worst qualities a politician can have: impulsive, arrogant, narcissistic. In a chaotic, ephemeral and often trivial media environment, Trump, a man with an insatiable appetite for the spotlight and no discernible ideological convictions, has thrived. He believes – and he has not been disabused of this notion – that he can perform the presidency as he performed on reality television in The Apprentice, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/comey-fired-trump-found-out-tv-screens-while-talking-fbi-la-a7727346.html">most recently firing the director of the FBI on television</a>.</p>
<p>We may bemoan the idea that politics has become a television show, but it has. Is that Kennedy’s fault? Yes and no. His polished performances on television hid many questionable tactics and character flaws beneath the surface, but it is often said that we get the politicians we deserve, and in allowing politics to become messily intertwined with the discourses of celebrity and, subsequently, the values of reality television, human beings fostered the conditions that created Kennedy and Trump. </p>
<p>If Kennedy was alive today would he be horrified by what politics has become? No, he’d be on Snapchat.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Frame does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A century after his birth, John F Kennedy’s celebrity shines as brightly as ever.Gregory Frame, Lecturer in Film Studies, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.