What’s On My Mind?

It was a Slap

Come on people; it was a slap. We get worked up when an actor loses his temper momentarily and slaps a comedian in response to a cruel joke aimed at the actor’s wife –due to the look of her hair, a condition caused by a disease. Critics from all corners insist “there is no place for violence” on an award show even though those accepting the awards often receive them for behavior glorifying violence.

It was a slap. It’s not as if Will Smith stabbed or shot Chris Rock. We live in a world with thousands of people being killed, millions forced to be refuges and the news and talk shows are obsessed with a slap? We live in a country where those making up our government cannot bring themselves to limit sales of automatic weapons, a country where hundreds of people are killed every day, where mass shootings of innocent bystanders have become common but our concern about violence is focused on a slap?

Let’s put this incident in context. Let’s think about priorities. Let’s think about the frequency of violence in our world and country. It was a slap!

We know what caused the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Yes, the President encouraged the protesters he gathered to support his effort to upend the election results, to “take back America,” to “fight, fight, fight.” President Trump urged domestic terrorism, but he didn’t cause it. The real cause of the violent storming of the Capitol, threatening Vice President Pence and members of Congress, was white rage. Anyone who thinks about it knows that.

First, note that roughly one one one-hundreth of one per cent of Trump’s 74,000,000 voters were among those breaking into the Capitol, probably fewer (I’m guessing that some insurrectionists did not vote at all). The overwhelming number of citizens casting their ballots for Donald Trump supported him for reasons other than those of the white supremacy-driven mob. Most of Trump’s voters preferred him to President Biden because they thought he would be better for the economy, would support the military more strongly, is a political outsider (the Presidency was his first and only attempt at elective office), he speaks his mind and so on. Nearly all of Trump’s voters condemn the violence of January 6 though they may not blame it on Trump.

Why do I say white rage caused the riotous violence? American citizens come in various colors along a spectrum from very dark brown, called “Black,” to very light beige, called “White.” None of us chose the color of our skin, but the color we have has huge implications for how our lives go. Those toward the white end of the skin-color spectrum tend to benefit from being light or white. Benefits decrease gradually as one’s skin gets darker. Those benefitting least are nearly black. White rage arises in various degrees as well, for the most part depending on one’s relative “success” as each of us defines it.

Often, in our consumer society, money is taken to be the measure of success, though relative power, recognition, even personal fulfillment and other measures also come into play. Complicating various measures of success are efforts to level the playing field to make opportunities for success more equal for all, regardless of skin color, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity and other prompts of discrimination. Some individuals resent Affirmative Action and other efforts to foster equal opportunities, again by degrees along a continuum, getting angry with people of color, women and others, as well as with those devising and implementing equal opportunity mechanisms. Sometimes “reverse discrimination” is alleged.

Given that none of us are responsible for our skin color –it’s a genetic product of activities of our parents— where we fall on the benefit scale is arbitrary. The spectrum and resulting advantages and disadvantages are functions of society, not individuals. Racism is real even if there are no racists. Complicating all of this is that in a decade or two people of color will outnumber whites in the US. If there’s truth to what I’m claiming above, none of this bodes well for the racial divide. I think the police homicide of George Floyd, with its huge anti-racism demonstrations world-wide, set the context for the White supremacy backlash at the Capitol on January 6th.

What can be done to soften such collisions? I think most of white America realize that the color of their skin gives them advantages over people of color, especially over Blacks. If Whites could choose the color of their skin I believe it’s unlikely they would choose darker skin and least likely they would choose to be Blacks. This is due to an unexpressed understanding of the relative advantages of being Whites.

Acknowledging skin-color advantage –admitting it to our self– is a good first-step in easing tensions between Whites and people of color, even if that acknowledgement is unspoken. It will help Whites to be more understanding of racial tensions, and such understanding will turn down the heat stoking the racial divide. And it will reduce White rage. Having leaders who do not encourage White supremacy will help too.

Dr. Nancy Holland, Professor of Philosophy Emerita at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, was born on September 3, 1947, and died peacefully January 25, 2020, two years after her cancer diagnosis. She said she was not in pain through her months of treatment. She kept reading, enjoyed time with her family and friends, and worked to outline two fantasy novels she didn’t live to finish. Nancy is survived by her husband Jeffery Koon, daughter Gwendolyn Koon, and son Justus Koon.

I met Nancy Holland during her interview at a Boston meeting of the American Philosophical Association in1980. She was one of nine candidates being interviewed for a position in the Philosophy Department at Hamline University. I was Chair of the department at that time and consequently chaired the hiring committee of two: my senior colleague, Joseph Uemura, and myself. The two of us constituted the department from 1976 through 1980 and were pleased to be authorized to hire a third philosopher, and for a tenure track position.

Our search process was for each of us to read half of the applicant dossiers, that is, we each read 151 files (we had 302 candidates in the fall of 1980, three-fourths of them fully qualified). We each kept a list of those we would like to interview at the upcoming APA meeting. We then swapped files and each of us read the other 151 dossiers. We compared lists. I think Joe came up with fifteen; I had twelve. We had nine candidates in common, so we interviewed them. With her BA from Stanford and PhD from UC Berkeley –her dissertation with Bert Dreyfus and involving John Searle—Nancy’s application quickly rose to the top. After interviews we invited our top three candidates for two-day campus visits. We offered the position to Dr. Holland. To our good fortune, she accepted our offer…and she stayed for thirty-six years.

Joe Uemura was an Aristotelian with interests in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy. My interests were Plato, ethics and aesthetics. We were looking to diversify the department. Nancy brought phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and feminism. Who could ask for more?

As it turns out, Nancy brought something else, something badly needed not only in the philosophy department but across the College of Liberal Arts as well. She brought a presumption that every academic anywhere must do serious scholarship, that is, present work at professional conferences, publish in refereed journals, work on books, all while teaching, advising, serving on committees, and, oh yes, raising a family. Her expectation of serious scholarship –for herself and every colleague on campus—may have been her greatest gift to the institution. She set the bar high. Her modeling of professional work beyond the campus supported, encouraged, and inspired so many of us that conference presentations, research, and published material of the college faculty grew quickly in quality and quantity.

Professor Holland’s major works include Heidegger and the Problem of Consciousness (2018), Ontological Humility: Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers (2013), Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger (2001), The Madwoman’s Reason: The Concept of the Appropriate in Ethical Thought (1998), and Is Women’s Philosophy Possible (1990).

I could recite items from Nancy’s personnel file: her awards for teaching excellence and for scholarship, her service on faculty committees, often as Chair, her role in creating our women’s studies program and the importance of her leadership in developing our social justice major. And then there’s her professional leadership off campus with the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), and the American Philosophical Association. Of course there’s more.

Rather than go further with professional accolades, let me say that Nancy was a superb colleague. She did whatever was needed in the department, and she did so at high quality, on time, and without complaint. Sure, Nancy was criticized along the way. Several faculty members rolled their eyes when she took the floor at faculty meetings to correct, and make more precise, minutes from previous meetings. In fact more than one faculty colleague took me aside asking me to counsel her to cease and desist on précising minutes; such behavior might impact a tenure committee negatively. That was in her early years. She soon learned that no one took minutes of faculty meetings very seriously.

I will close on a more personal note. Nancy was a good friend, one that could be trusted. She kept confidential matters to herself, tried to damp-down gossip, and she avoided the inevitable campus cliques. She was always frank, a rare trait among academics in my experience, and Nancy had principles by which she lived and worked, another trait seldom encountered…anywhere. Her sparkling but very dry sense of humor would demand that I quit now, before I gush. Thanks Nancy. You are missed and will be for many years

Duane L. Cady
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
Hamline University

Reparations Considered

Now that reparations have entered the 2020 presidential campaign, it’s time to have a serious look at who, what, and why. What about when and where? When has been put off for hundreds of years already, so don’t hold your breath. Where? Here, in the US.

The notion of reparations has been cycling politically since the Emancipation Proclamation and before. What might reparations look like for descendents of slaves and descendents of American Indians? (I follow AIM with the latter name.)

The United Nations has a protocol for redressing human rights abuses against groups by governments or individuals. It calls for meeting five conditions to achieve full reparations:

1. The abusing party must acknowledge the abuse and restore victims to their pre-abuse situation;
2. Compensation must be offered to abuse victims. This may take the form of increased opportunities, goods, services, financial transaction, etc.;
3. Abusers must provide rehabilitation for the abused;
4. Those abused must express their satisfaction that the above conditions have been met; and
5. Abusers must offer a guarantee of non-repetition of the abuse.

Many Americans believe reparations consist only of cash payments, and they reject such governmental action saying, “I didn’t own slaves” and “I didn’t steal Indians’ land.” “I wasn’t even born when those abuses took place and neither were the descendents of slaves nor the descendents of displaced American Indians.” “Since I didn’t abuse them, nor has our current government, why would anything be owed to them?”

Many of us forget that all Americans have benefitted from abuse of slaves and Indians. For example, the US Capitol, other federal and state buildings, roads, bridges, and more were built by slaves. The benefits to all citizens continue to this day. Regarding the case of American Indians, land acquired by homesteaders wasn’t the government’s to give away, yet it provided stability to families whose descendents continue to benefit.

President George Washington, “the father of our country,” and President Thomas Jefferson, author of several founding documents of our country, owned and abused slaves. Jefferson had frequent sexual relations with slaves yet provided for his white offspring very differently than for his children born of women he owned.

American Indians were not bought and sold as property in the same ways as were African American slaves, but their displacement and abuse is well known. As descendents of ancestors pushed to poorer and poorer land, they continue to be left out of American equality and prosperity.

We Americans need to acknowledge the history of our own country and better understand our nation’s role in exploitation and abuse in ways that constitute human Rights violations. And we need to accept responsibility as a nation for redressing human rights violations committed against African-American slaves and American Indians. We need to acknowledge abuse and accept responsibility not only for victims but for our own sake, to begin healing from moral injury, the hurt brought on ourselves by being complicit with wrongdoing.

Rather than react to suggestions of reparations with anger born of ignorance, all of us will be well served by understanding what constitutes reparations, and by reflecting on how our ancestors and we have benefitted from historic abuse of African-American slaves and American Indians.

I met Mulford Q. Sibley in the fall of 1972. A colleague and I were working to start a new chapter of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, one near our college in rural Minnesota, so we invited Professor Sibley of the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus. He was kind enough to come, spoke on civil liberties to a packed hall, and helped us raise awareness and money to get the Minnesota Valley Chapter of the MCLU underway.

I crossed paths again with Dr. Sibley in the summer of 1984 when I was a participant in his National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on Utopian Literature. I got to know Mulford well in this setting. My research project for the seminar was a paper arguing that Plato’s Republic was a dystopia, not a utopia. While Mulford disagreed, he appreciated my work and suggested that I send it to a journal for consideration. His encouragement led to my first publication on Plato.

Mulford Q. Sibley was already notorious when I met him. He was an outspoken opponent of the US war in Vietnam, often speaking on the campus green, bullhorn in hand, at U. of M. anti-war rallies. Mulford, a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), was a life-long pacifist-activist who had spoken against WW II as well. Born in 1912, he earned his PhD in1939 and taught at Stanford before moving to the University of Minnesota in 1948.

Having been a socialist from his youth, Sibley was often accused of being a communist, especially during the McCarthy era –when Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led a public witch-hunt for communists on behalf of the House Un-American Activities Committee. While Sibley never was a communist, the frequent accusations led him to begin wearing red ties, just to keep everyone guessing. The red tie became his signature attire. He once told me that if he was expected to wear a tie in academic circles (as academics were in those days), then it might as well be red, and it always was.

Sibley was a prolific writer and speaker on pacifism, civil disobedience, and utopianism. His many publications include articles and books on these topics. My favorite is his highly respected The Quiet Battle: Writings on the Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Resistance, an anthology of major –as well as less well-known—sources on pacifism and nonviolence, meticulously edited, with rich and insightful Introduction and Concluding Reflections by Professor Sibley.

There are many tales to be told of Sibley’s adventures as a pacifist in the academy from the early 1940s to the late 1980s. One particularly telling episode is sufficient to describe the character of this man.∗

Among the most popular teachers at the University, Sibley openly advocated leftist, pacifist, freethinking causes. As an outspoken critic of the US war in Vietnam, Sibley was the faculty advisor of the Student Peace Union, a campus club. This small role led to controversy in the summer of 1963 when a legionnaire attending the annual state American Legion Convention in Minneapolis introduced a resolution demanding that the Minnesota state legislature investigate the Student Peace Union for possible communist influences. The Minneapolis Tribune reported “a roar of aye votes.” The resolution was sent not only to the state legislature but also to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Neither rushed to investigate.

That fall The Minnesota Dailey, the student paper, editorialized about the hunt for communists on campus. The editorial argued that while there may be a communist or two in the group, the Student Peace Union was not “a communist front organization.” Professor Sibley was annoyed by the apologetic tone of the editorial defending the SPU. To Sibley, the point was academic freedom, period. He wrote to the Dailey, “I would like to see one or two communist professors on the faculty, plus a Student Communist Club, the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, a Society for the Promotion of Free Love, a League for the Overthrow of Government by Jeffersonian Violence, an Anti-Automation League, and, perhaps, a Nudist Club. “We need students who challenge orthodoxies. Planting seeds of doubt and subversion help create moral and intellectual progress.”

To many, the list was an obvious tweak at the narrow mindedness behind the resolution, but to others it was proof of subversion by a faculty member of the University. Sibley’s remarks were reprinted widely in Minnesota papers generating predictable outrage. One of Sibley’s neighbors, a member of the St. Paul City Council, wrote the state legislature demanding that Sibley be fired. On campus Sibley’s popularity grew. Students wore “Nudist Club” pins and invited the councilman to debate Sibley on campus. Twelve hundred students attended the televised debate, students hooting at the councilman and cheering Sibley. Public sentiment urged the legislature to act.

The Minnesota Education Committee held hearings. The Lt. Governor reminded everyone that Regents governed the university gaining national attention. William F. Buckley weighed in titling his column “The Professor in Left Field” asking, ‘why not add a couple of Nazi’s advocating genocide to the campus?’ By spring of ’64 the House Un-American Activities Committee decided to hold hearings on “the growing threat.” In June seventeen administrators from the U of M including President Wilson and Regent’s Chair Dr. Charles Mayo went to the state capitol to testify on university policies for hiring, promotion and firing faculty. The Lt. Governor again reminded everyone that Regents governed the U of M.

Professor Sibley never apologized and went on teaching popular classes. The issue had pretty well blown-over by the spring of 1965 when he was invited to speak on the war in Vietnam in Winnipeg, Canada. Canadian immigration denied him entry because he advocated the establishment of campus clubs promoting communism, atheism, free love and nudity. Publicity led to the involvement of Minnesota US Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey as well as outrage in Canada. Eventually reason prevailed and Sibley was invited to return to speak in Winnipeg.

When Professor Sibley turned 70 he was faced with mandatory retirement from the U of M. Lucky for me, he was hired to teach jurisprudence by the Law School at Hamline University where I was teaching in the College of Liberal Arts. This allowed for weekly luncheon-discussions about pacifism, my then-current writing project. Mulford disagreed with my ‘backing into pacifism by degree’ –for him pacifism was the result of a conversion experience and then radiated outward from the individual into the world—but, once again, he encouraged me to seek publication for what became my first book.

In 1987 Mulford traveled to India to teach Gandhi’s politics. Unfortunately he became ill while there and had to return home before finishing the academic year. He was increasingly frail, but I was thrilled to get an advance copy of my book on pacifism to him, and to have a discussion about it, a few months before his death in 1989. At his funeral I was one of a dozen out of a hundred attendees wearing a red tie, including Mulford’s son Martin.

Duane L. Cady
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
Hamline University

I had a chance to see he HBO biopic on the life and death of rapper Tupac Shakur (b. 1971; d.1996). It came out a couple of years ago but has been available only on HBO so access has been limited. I wanted to see the film because my son was a fan while in high school in the early ’90s and his mother and I never understood his fascination with a rapper using the language he did to express himself. When challenged, or son always defended Shupac for his social justice message and suggested we “get past” the words he used.

Tupac Shakur (aka 2pac, Pac, and Makaveli) was deeply influenced by his mother, a member of the Black Panther Party, his step-father, a black supremacist, and his biological father, an anti-racism revolutionary. Tupac went to te Baltimore Arts High School and fell in love with Shakespeare, landing a role as Hamlet while a junior. He never played the part because his family moved to Los Angeles.

On the significance of Shakespeare, Shakur once said in an interview:

I love Shakespeare. He wrote some of the rawest stories. I mean
look at “Romeo and Juliet.” That’s some serious ghetto shit. You
got this guy Romeo from the Bloods who falls for Juliet, a female
from the Crips, and everybody in both gangs is against them. So
they have to sneak out and they end up dead for nothing.

His analysis of Macbeth follows the same line.

Tupac started in the music industry at16, as a side man; he went solo at 19. His first album, “2Pacalypse Now,” shows his social consciousness, focused on inner city problems (injustice, poverty, and racism). It went platinum. Music journalist Chuck Phillips called him “brave, wise, and smart, wickedly smart.” Shakur was known for his clever rhymes, impressive rhythms, cadence, attitude, and protest message.

Tupac had more than his share of problems in his short life. He was brutalized by two cops for jaywalking. He sued for $1 million, won his case, and received $45,000, most of which went to his lawyers. He was involved in a street skirmish in which a six year old took a random bullet to the head and died. The gun was registered to Shakur but he was aquited. He was a ladies man, broke up with a girlfriend, but she seduced him three days later and cried rape (Tupac: “I didn’t rape nobody”); he was found not guilty of rape but was convicted for sexual assault. His sentence: 4-12 years.

Tupac was the first recording artist in history to release an album while in prison. It sold 250,000 copies the first week, setting a record. An old black inmate, a “lifer,” advised him to “survive” rather than get in constant skirmishes with felow inmates. His mother asked him “where’s your spirit?” and said “they can destroy your body but not your mind. Above all, to thine own self be true. Hold your head up.” He ended up serving less than a year of his sentence.

Out of prison he partnered with MC Big to manage the east coast rap scene while Big maneged the west coast. The idea was to reduce the rivalries, mostlyover money, and the subsequent violent conflicts. He was “robbed” and shot five times in the lobby of his studio. He “checked himself out” (i.e., pulled the tubes and IVs) and left the hospital after three days. It was never clear who was responsible for the shooting. Pac never thought it was robbery since the gunmen took his necklace but not his Rollex watch.

In prison Tupac had become interested in philosophy, especially philosophy of war, and military strategy, studying The Prince by Machiavelli (the source of his adding the nickname “Makaveli”), and The Art of War by Sun Tzu. His first album after prison was “The Don Killuminati: the 7 Day Theory.” Followers took it as a stark contrast with his early work. It was seen as emotionally dark, focusing on pain and aggression.

Vice President Dan Quayle lumped Tupac with “gangsta rappers” on national TV, suggesting that the government would put an end to rap due to the vile language. Tupac’s mom: “They’re afraid of your message, not your language. You’re a black leader.” Shakur represented rebellion pure and simple.

While pop music is poetry put to melody, rap is poetry put to rhythm. Tupac Shakur is the most copied MC of all time. Nine of his albums went platinum while he was living, seven more after his death. More than 75,000,000 recordings of Tupac Shakur have sold, and his work is still selling. There are murals of him around the world and statues in both the US and Germany. In 2012 a “hologram” of Tupac Shakur performed in concert with Snoop Dog at the Cochella Music Festival, so his influence –and popularity– continue. Perhaps substantive social criticism stands the test of time while entertainment seeking wealth is fleeting.