The House of David

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Co-ed boarding school hijinx

No, I'm not link whoring. Okay, just a little bit, because Ace's trackbacks deserve it.

That is, in fact, what my high school is planning as of 2007: Shrewsbury School Welcomes Sixth Form Girls.

In 2008 they're going to kick everyone out of Moser's Hall (Prior's if you, like my grandfather, sat out the First World War in it) and fill it with 16-18 year old chicks. Moser's is outside the Moss Gates, uniquely, so it's easier to defend against the boys' hormones.

My Zionist side is most impressed with this phrase: "the boys who currently occupy Moser's Hall". Yep. That's us. The neocon settlers of Occupied Severn Territory.

For those inside the gates, this makes it even harder to justify sneaking off site for a nip down the pub. There goes another benefit.

Back when I was there, and they were finishing off the Grove, we'd predicted a co-ed institution. During my Fifth Form year there were already a few Sixth Form girls from the downtown all-girls high school (actually called "the high school") who were starting to take the occasional course at the school. The only question was when they'd let them live on campus; and whether they'd use the aforementioned Grove, or Ridgemount / Severn Hill, or the two day-boy houses; all of which were nicely isolated.

I'm just surprised it took this long and that they chose Moser's. Moser's is in close proximity to the houses [transl., dormitories] which cluster around that gate, Ingram's in particular. At least, according to this, the place isn't attached to the music school anymore; it used to be that you could hear every note through the wall at the house library.

posted by Zimri on 16:39 | link |

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Beyond Countless Doorways

I thought I'd post some thoughts on Monte Cook's excellent supplement, Beyond Countless Doorways. In particular I thought it could use a map. So here is Beyond Countless Doorways, Indexed. When I have time I'll see about adding new stuff to that page. Hopefully all you DMs out there may find it helpful.

posted by Zimri on 13:45 | link |

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Rome's collapse

Oxford University Press has published two new books on the transition in western Europe between the Late Roman Empire and the Dark Ages. One is Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History, which I have leafed through; the other is Bryan Ward-Perkins's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, which I haven't come across yet.

Most reviewers have been looking at both together: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Asia Times, and The Spectator. The Times and The Telegraph also reviewed them, but here Tom Holland and Peter Jones ended up writing "Torygraph" pieces on behalf of both.

According to the reviews: both books hold a bias toward Rome, or at least toward its values of preserving trade, law, and order; they argue that the Roman system did fail; and they propose that the "barbarians" north of the frontier were the villains in this drama. They differ among themselves primarily in focus. Heather, the "paleo-con" in this coalition, is interested in the power relations between a multi-ethnic empire and a proud nation of would-be immigrants. Ward-Perkins, the "neo-con", is interested in life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the bloody demise of these three when empires fail.

James J. O'Donnell's review at Bryn Mawr is the most trenchant. He lets on during the course of it that he has a jones for 1970s supergroups like The Band, and he gratuitously likens 476 AD Byzantium to 2001-2003 AD America; both of which tell us that he is not likely to be predisposed to histories written on the right side of the aisle. From what I have scanned of Heather's book, O'Donnell's bias has manifested itself into outright unfairness. O'Donnell claims that Heather "deal[t] with almost nothing that happened anywhere east of the great land walls of Constantinople". In fact, one of Heather's main lemmas concerns a review of the Battle of Adrianople 378 AD, which he argues was affected by Rome's prior shifting of military resources to its Persian frontier as a result of Persian activities across it. Leading up to that section was a discussion on why Rome had beefed up that frontier in the preceding century. (Heather also points out Syrian archaeology providing proof for a fourth-century CE Roman prosperity, apparently too insignificant a finding for O'Donnell.) O'Donnell further claims, confusingly, that Heather made "almost no mention of the effusion of work on late antique 'nation-building'", but with so many exceptions and provisos that it is hard to know what O'Donnell expects of a book of this type. According to O'Donnell, Heather also "almost" noticed this statement: "The failure of Rome to understand or imagine what was happening across the Rhine and the Danube as indeed civilizational advance and its failure to co-opt, capitalize upon, or support such development perpetuated and hardened an adversary relationship past the point where Rome could sustain it. "; but it seemed to me that Heather noticed this just fine. To defend O'Donnell's three "almost" statements would require an effort in redefinition so profound as almost to deserve the monicker "Clintonian". But then, in O'Donnell's words, the moral of Heather's book is "immigrants can be very bad for a society"; therefore Heather is a racist who deserves no better treatment. And so it goes.

Ian Garrick Mason's Heather review at The Spectator is better. In what I read of the book, Heather had noticed Rome's internal squabbles and mutinies, and further noticed that the Goths noticed. In what I hadn't read of the book, namely its conclusion, Mason did manage to read; and Mason decided from it that Heather had not creditted these factors with sufficient weight. It seems to me that if Heather had devoted even more space to the leadup to Adrianople, with further discussion on the cross-border "telegraph", he could have delivered a stronger case for his thesis that Gothic sophistication was more to blame for Adrianople than was Roman weakness. (Heather also would have fended off O'Donnell's claim that the book had reworked much the same field as Heather had done earlier in "The Goths".) Mason also "reviews" Ward-Perkins in his article, but that part of it is just an approving summary.

Spengler's review at Asia Times concentrates on Ward-Perkins, and treats Heather to a summary view and a dismissive one at that. Spengler clearly sees Ward-Perkins as a rival theoretician: while the two agree that a strong economy makes for happy citizens and is worth fighting for, Ward-Perkins assumes that prosperity is a gauge of national power against adversity, and Spengler assumes that demographics and sexual ethics are a better gauge and that prosperity often weakens these supports.

From these reviews, I must conclude that Ward-Perkins has proven his central point: that a Roman Way of Life one existed, that this ended in the West as of the turn of the fifth century CE, and that this end was a calamity. What remains unresolved is, still, why this empire proved so resilient against the powerful Persians yet so ineffectual against the bumpkin Goths. (Byzantine studies face a parallel, if underappreciated, problem: why the New Rome lost so much to the semiliterate Arabs 630-670 CE and so little to the Islamic Caliphate 670-1030 CE. Nevo and Koren are the "Peter Heathers" of this field, and get the predictable brickbats lobbed at them too.) To me, it would appear that Heather, Spengler, and Mason have offered worthwhile contributions to this debate; and that O'Donnell and Jones as yet have not.

posted by Zimri on 20:30 | link |

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Past flu epidemics

I've often wondered: how come the influenza / grippe / what-have-you started making news in 1918, and remains such a recurrent pain to this day; yet the flu doesn't seem to exist in history prior to 1918.

Searching in Google doesn't turn up much, but it does turn up that the influenza indeed was known prior to the "H1N1" strain of 1918. J Moodie of the University of Cape Town lists a chart of Influenza A Evolution, which makes clear that H3N8 hit in 1874, H2N2 in 1890, and H3N2 in 1902. More searches reveal that H2N2 was taken seriously in 1890, and also H3N8 prior to that but a little less so.

One possible reason is that there were other, more serious plagues at the time like tuberculosis, malaria, and whooping cough, and more primitive doctors; so when someone fell to a "chill" or "cough" the docs didn't make enough note of it (although they did make enough of a record for Moodie to track it). Also the First World War was running in 1918, another apocalyptic event, so accounts of H1N1 ended up in the same history books.

Maybe genetic research will pinpoint other outbreaks prior to 1874 and their effect, if any, upon history.

posted by Zimri on 11:55 | link |

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Where Loewen makes good points

James Loewen, author of Sundown Towns, wants to integrate the nation's whites-only neighbourhoods. To that end, he suggests revoking the mortgage deduction from whatever federal income taxes derive from sundown communities. He also points out that Social Security acts as a transfer program from those with shorter life expectancies to those with higher, and so disproportionately robs from Blacks to give to Whites. And lastly, he points out that local funding of school systems encourage sifting of social classes from poor neighbourhoods to richer; this contributes to exclusive neighbourhoods which will act as "sundown" at least vis-a-vis social class.

1. Playing with the mortgage exemption is an exercise in social engineering, anathema to libertarians; but if society has already decided to encourage home ownership then it surely has the right to decide on which homes to encourage. The town, county, and state government might also look into how much the neighbourhood, town, and county (respectively) are costing it in other ways. Personally I think the ultimate aim for the nation should be to abolish the exemption entirely, and to find more direct methods to punish or to reward any given community.

2. Social Security is a boondoggle which requires reform for its future solvency. Prez Bush offered up an idea earlier on this year, when he'd hoped that no-one was paying too much attention, but it didn't help. But it's worth a shot.

3. I support school vouchers for non-religious academies. This alone would desegregate the school system, as minorities would be able to attend whatever school their bus could reliably reach. This should be coupled with a national allowance for any university receiving federal funding, that they are permitted to discriminate against any religious belief save atheism. Sundowners who opt for the local Baptist madrassa on account of there being no Negroes present, will then find their options for higher education to be limited on account of their dearly-held unscientific beliefs.

These are points where Loewen has identified middle-class subsidies from the US government; pork by any other name would smell as sweet. #1 and #2 don't require more meddling from los Federales; but I will go with #3, as enabling working families to do the meddling, without federal interference except in outcome.

posted by Zimri on 17:45 | link |

Questions for Professor Loewen

James Loewen has proposed further questions for sundown-town researchers, perhaps including his competitor on this subject, which Loewen did not address and which he feels should be.

In that light, I have questions of my own. These do not cover the existence of sundown towns (they do exist), nor the need to integrate them with the rest of America (there is such a need). These questions deal with Loewen's further extrapolations. These end, as one might expect, at the normative university-sociology-department opinion that America requires yet another Reconstruction / Great-Society movement, paid for out of workers' salaries rather than out of sociology department funding, to cure the ills of Black America.

1. We will need to discuss starting assumptions. Loewen correctly identified The Bell Curve by Charles Murray as a central text justifying White supremacism, and noted its popularity in sundown suburbia (p. 319). He further noted that the early SAT failed to take into account innate cognitive ability, as witness the mismeasurement of Jews (p. 126). Even if SATs have improved since then, which he refuses to accept, he pointed out studies from Steele and Aronson that running down a student's belief in his own intellect will depress that one's SAT score (pp. 352-3). From that, Loewen argued that the SAT should either have its bias "factored in", somehow, or else the SAT should be replaced with the GPAs of local schools (p. 435). But Steele and Aronson started with a baseline of no SAT difference! Loewen takes Steele and Aronson as the last word, which it is not; although Loewen lacked access to the April 2005 issue of American Psychologist, and to Murray's followup in Commentary magazine, Sept 2005, Loewen failed his readers in leaving out mention of any controversy. Loewen should reveal, from the basis of biology, what he knows about genetics, the workings of the human brain, and computer science; and he should argue from that exactly how much one's personal background will affect performance, versus objective measurements of that one's brain processing power.

2. Now, we need to discuss the nature of reparations. Loewen has approved of the reparation payments to Black victims of sundown pogroms at Rosewood, and to the Sicilian victims at West Frankfurt. He stated that this should be expanded to the Blacks of West Frankfurt, Tulsa, and elsewhere (pp. 426-9). Loewen is no doubt aware that reparations movements involve wealth transfer and not creation; and that there is no shortage of people of any race who are keen to take money from those who have it with scant regard for desert. For instance, Rainbow / PUSH has earned widespread notoriety for shaking down corporations for cash and then dispersing the booty to Jesse Jackson's cronies. Even when the proper recipients are identified, cash payouts are not always delivered wisely. There was recently a racist outrage at Tulia, TX; the victims were compensated with cash, and although there was a financial planner some of the recipients at Tulia bought SUVs instead. When undeserving men loot a community, or even when deserving men fail to maintain their inheritance, that is money not available to deserving and responsible people; and when that money is frittered away, the recipients are left still destitute and, if unscrupulous, still making demands upon the wider community. Loewen should explain how this will improve race relations. Either that or he must follow up any claim to reparations with an explanation of how to deliver the proceeds.

Some will take the above questions as "a typical complaint of those who oppose justice and fairness". I expect rather more from Dr Loewen and from fans of his work; among whom I count myself, despite Loewen's clumsy forays into biology and social policy.

posted by Zimri on 16:55 | link |

Sundown Towns

Lately I've been bothering the local chain bookstores by sitting around reading the latest Jim Loewen book, Sundown Towns. Anyway I've since bought the book. It should be required reading in all history and sociology classes.

Loewen is a Vermont sociologist, and in his sociology he's typical of what you'd expect of a Vermont sociologist's moral priorities (about which, more below). This book however deals with history and not sociology, and must be reviewed as history.

Loewen holds as a point of ethics that sociology must be based on facts about the communities under study, and as a point of opinion that the fastest way to the facts is through the smoldering ruins of legend. His most famed prior books, Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, are collections of vignettes, each summarising specific incidents. They are meant not for historians so much as against them (at least the bad ones). Sociologists then can use Loewen's anecdotes to challenge bad history texts and demand better ones.

With Sundown Towns, Loewen has attempted a history text of his own. He reminds me of Richard Abanes (One Nation Under Gods): another non-historian, biased against his subject, who approaches his subject as a journalist. Abanes disapproves of the Mormon faith, and Loewen disapproves of racial exclusion.

Sundown Towns is about white-only towns, neighbourhoods, and counties whose citizens enforce that status. Not all the citizens need to do this, and those who do have no need for a formal ordinance. It is enough that the municipal government decides not to hinder the vigilante actions of, say, the Ku Klux Klan or the Council of Conservative Citizens. These towns typically allow[ed] non-whites into town if they were passing through or shopping during the day, but around dusk the local mob would gather and let it be known that there would be no protection for non-whites after sundown.

The exact time and form of this harassment varied. At Villa Grove, IL, there was a whistle at 6 PM that signalled when visiting Blacks ought to prepare their exit. At Syracuse, OH, the locals informed such visitors on entry into the town and again at dusk but backed by a mob of stone-totin' children. Most such towns sported signs with either or both of the "witty" slogans, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In This Town" or "Nigger, Read And Run; If You Can't Read, Run Anyway". When a Black man or woman broke this ordinance, the citizens resorted to violence.

Loewen thinks that the sundown syndrome started in the North and along the Western coast during the 1850s. The Whig Party had collapsed, and the Democrats began campaigning for the white supremacist vote against such rivals as the "Know-Nothing" American Party. Justice Taney authored the Dred Scott opinion, which injected an anti-Black caste definition into the Constitution. Residential communities in the Pacific territories began expelling their Chinese populations. I would argue that the roots of such ideas stem from expulsion orders against Indian nations and Mormon communities, and Loewen hints as much but does not concentrate on such actions prior to the Compromise of 1850.

President Lincoln and the Radical Republicans after him fought to prevent sundown policies from infecting mixed-race-but-mostly-White communities outside the far West, but after President Garfield's assassination in 1881 the Republicans gave up this fight.

At this point, Blacks in majority-White towns lived at the sufferance of their neighbours. When these neighbours were Democrats, it only took a spark for a sundown policy to go into effect. At Comanche County, TX, in 1878 a Black man went mad and committed interracial murders, and the White community then decided that this was a one-time occurrence; but in 1886 another such crime caused the White community to remove its Black population.

By "removal" and - in most cases - "institution of sundown policy", if this wasn't clear enough already, I mean "pogrom". Loewen has confirmed that many of his sundown towns, if incorporated prior to 1850 or so, started out with a minority free Black population: living with the same rights and working in the same jobs as their White neighbours. When the sun set on this state of tolerance, White mobs expelled their Blacks (or Chinese) who then had to go somewhere else. But since other towns had already gone sundown or were about to go sundown, the Blacks ended up in inner-city ghettoes, at least in the North.

People think of sundown towns as a Southern disease. If you asked a New Yorker to provide examples of sundown enforcement, if he has not read Loewen's book he is almost certainly going to list, and probably in this order: Vidor, TX; Rosewood / Cedar City, FL; Tulsa, OK (as a failed attempt); and if he thinks he's smart then maybe Alba, TX and the Ozarks and Appalachians. But Loewen has proven that the sun set in the West first, and then the idea spread through the Midwest and Northeast. People should be associating sundown with Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. As for the tolerant, Kerry-voting Northeast, Loewen repeatedly points to Darien, CT and Tuxedo Park, NY. Hollywood is complicit in downplaying the true home of sundown: movies like Hoosiers and Grosse Point Blank feature Black school alumni in schools which never admitted Blacks. Sundown struck in the South only well into the 20th century, and then almost entirely in the planter-free highlands. There were a few sundown suburbs down South but they mostly passed in and out of that status over the space of a generation or less (usually from 1950 to 1980 as a result of desegregation; e.g. Sheridan, AK).

The book is an eye-opening tour de force. It exposes what most sundown towns are trying to hide: when they became sundown (either through expulsion or terms of incorporation), and how they continued to enforce this status.

As a point of nitpicking, Loewen has admitted to the board of Washington Independent Writers that he rushed this book into print, due to competitive pressure. I have noticed a few awkward passages here and there; and much of his evidence is stated as "suspected" or "unconfirmed" as of the time he quit gathering information and started organising it. At several points the book pulls from oral hadith of the form "so-and-so told me: yadda yadda yadda and she also said: blah blah". It comes off like Imam Malik's Muwatta or - better - Shafi'i's Risala. Of course Malik and Shafi'i were trustworthy in their quotes from hadith, and I see no reason to doubt the word of Imam Loewen. At any rate Loewen is currently asking for confirmation or nonconfirmation of his findings, and I expect a paperback edition will clear up what awkward passages are there, remove errors, and further footnote those towns which were suspected as sundown in 2002 but have been confirmed as of 2005 or 2006.

Again like the Muwatta and the Risala, Sundown Towns is a vital work for vital historical topics. Just as reading the Muwatta and the Risala has not converted me to Malikite or Shafi'ite Islam, I think that Loewen's book falls short where it suggests what we should do in the future; but that is a topic for another time.

posted by Zimri on 15:15 | link |