Category Archives: Sociology

The Charitable-Industrial Complex By PETER BUFFETT

Posted on by
Reply

(Shared by Dr. Ehtisham)

Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.

Philanthropy has become the “it” vehicle to level the playing field and has generated a growing number of gatherings, workshops and affinity groups.

As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.

But this just keeps the existing structure of inequality in place. The rich sleep better at night, while others get just enough to keep the pot from boiling over. Nearly every time someone feels better by doing good, on the other side of the world (or street), someone else is further locked into a system that will not allow the true flourishing of his or her nature or the opportunity to live a joyful and fulfilled life. Click link for full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/opinion/the-charitable-industrial-complex.html

‘IN DEFENSE OF PROFILING’ By Shoeb Amin

Posted on by
1
All of us have heard enough of that word over the last 2-3 weeks in reference to the Trayvon Martin case. Did George Zimmerman profile Trayvon Martin? I strongly believe he did. Did he profile him because he was African-American and that he was wearing a hoodie? Again I strongly believe he did. Were there other factors in Zimmerman’s targeting Martin? May be his previous experience with young African Americans in his neighborhood? But was Zimmerman practically wrong so far? Ethically or morally we may say he was wrong but was he practically wrong so far?  What he did after this stage was, in my view, wrong. He followed Martin even after being told not to. Very likely he felt emboldened by the fact he had a gun on him and may be even with the knowledge that state laws would protect him if he had to use his gun. So he followed Martin and challenged him in spite of having a size disadvantage. And I think it was his post-profiling actions of Zimmerman that caused this terrible tragedy.
But coming back to the main question. Was Zimmerman practically (the operative word) wrong in profiling Martin? Is it really unfair for non-Blacks to click their car doors locked? To cringe when you encounter a Black teenager on a somewhat deserted road? Even though it is politically incorrect to say it, my answer is no. My feeling is that some Blacks themselves profile some Black teenagers. You’d say but I am not Black and I don’t understand the hurt that profiling causes and what right do I have to say that such profiling is justified? I am a dark-skinned Muslim and I have some moral grounds to say that.  I feel I have been profiled – not for criminal activity – but as a less important person, not deserving of the same prompt, courteous service that other clients got. So I know how hurtful that is. In the last few years Muslims, especially from certain countries, were profiled at airports. Was that wrong? Again ethically may be wrong but practically my answer would be “no”. There were enough incidents of Muslims from certain countries causing significant havoc to arouse that suspicion of anybody that fit that description.
Coming back to Black teenagers, even the President, in his speech 2-3 days ago, said, and I am paraphrasing “the African American community is not naive to know that black teenagers commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and Trayvon was more likely to have been killed by another Black teenager than by a Zimmerman”. Just Google the crime statistics of Black teenagers; different sites have their own spin to what those statistics mean but I have chosen one where there could be no question of racial bias. http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_5567.shtml. Having that knowledge in the back of your mind what should one do when you encounter a black teenager on a deserted road? Walk away; cross the street or say to yourself “I know he is a Black teenager but he likely comes from a dysfunctional family, he is poor, he was himself subject to violence and there is the history of slavery in this country; and in consideration of those factors, one should not profile this teenager and act the same way as if you had encountered Mark Zuckerman wearing a hoodie (a common comparison used these days). I think I would certainly cringe in that situation and even cross the street. A lot of very nice folks would do the same too. It is regrettable but it is a survival instinct.
So we are asked to have a dialogue about race between the races. I think the dialogue should be among Black leaders in particular and may be the rest of us as to how to improve the reputation of Black teenagers. The answers lie in improving the state of dysfunctional families; decreasing the incidence of deadbeat fathers and single/unwed mothers; decreasing the number of fatherless children; and improving poverty, education and violence in the community.

Immigration: Assimilation and the measure of an American; Submitted by Nasik Elahi

Posted on by
Reply

Immigration reform, making its way through Congress, and the Boston Marathon bombings – allegedly committed by two Chechen immigrants – has raised heated debate about how we measure the assimilation of newcomers civically, culturally, economically, and even patriotically.

For the rest of this interesting article click on the link below.

http://m.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0707/Immigration-Assimilation-and-the-measure-of-an-American/(page)/3

The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.) By Oliver Sacks

Posted on by
Reply

LAST night I dreamed about mercury — huge, shining globules of quicksilver rising and falling. Mercury is element number 80, and my dream is a reminder that on Tuesday, I will be 80 myself.

Elements and birthdays have been intertwined for me since boyhood, when I learned about atomic numbers. At 11, I could say “I am sodium” (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold. A few years ago, when I gave a friend a bottle of mercury for his 80th birthday — a special bottle that could neither leak nor break — he gave me a peculiar look, but later sent me a charming letter in which he joked, “I take a little every morning for my health.”

Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over. My mother was the 16th of 18 children; I was the youngest of her four sons, and almost the youngest of the vast cousinhood on her side of the family. I was always the youngest boy in my class at high school. I have retained this feeling of being the youngest, even though now I am almost the oldest person I know.

I thought I would die at 41, when I had a bad fall and broke a leg while mountaineering alone. I splinted the leg as best I could and started to lever myself down the mountain, clumsily, with my arms. In the long hours that followed, I was assailed by memories, both good and bad. Most were in a mode of gratitude — gratitude for what I had been given by others, gratitude, too, that I had been able to give something back. “Awakenings” had been published the previous year.

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”) I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”

I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done.

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever “completing a life” means. Some of my patients in their 90s or 100s say nunc dimittis — “I have had a full life, and now I am ready to go.” For some of them, this means going to heaven — it is always heaven rather than hell, though Samuel Johnson and James Boswell both quaked at the thought of going to hell and got furious with David Hume, who entertained no such beliefs. I have no belief in (or desire for) any post-mortem existence, other than in the memories of friends and the hope that some of my books may still “speak” to people after my death. Click link for full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-old-age-no-kidding.html?src=me&ref=general

Posted By F. Sheikh