̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - USA

'Populism' revealed as 2017 Word of the Year by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press

sjr81 — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 14:02:21 +0000

Choosing a winner required looking at not only the most searched-for words but also spikes – occasions when a word is suddenly looked up many more times than usual on or around a particular date.

As Donald Trump, a polarizing candidate was being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 22, 2017, searches for the word 'inauguration' on the online Cambridge Dictionary spiked. But so did searches for the word 'populism' because, on that same day, Pope Francis warned against a rising tide of populism in a widely reported interview with El Pais newspaper. In mid-March, after another high-profile interview with the pontiff – this time with the German newspaper Die Zeit – searches for populism spiked again.

Wendalyn Nichols, Publishing Manager at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press, said: 'Spikes can reveal what is on our users’ minds and, in what’s been another eventful year, plenty of spikes can be directly connected to news items about politics in the US (nepotism, recuse, bigotry, megalomania) and the UK (shambles, untenable, extradite). ̽��ֱ��much-anticipated Taylor Review of working practices in the UK caused the term 'gig economy' to spike in July, and of course the spectacular solar eclipse is reflected in the spike for eclipse on 21 August.

'What sets populism apart from all these other words is that it represents a phenomenon that’s both truly local and truly global, as populations and their leaders across the world wrestle with issues of immigration and trade, resurgent nationalism, and economic discontent.'

Populism is described by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want’. It includes the usage label ‘mainly disapproving’.

Populism has a taint of disapproval because the -ism ending often indicates a philosophy or ideology that is being approached either uncritically (liberalism, conservatism, jingoism) or cynically (tokenism).

Evidence from the Cambridge English Corpus – a 1.5-billion-word database of language – reveals that people tend to use the term populism when they think it’s a political ploy instead of genuine. Both aspects of -ism are evident in the use of populism in 2017: the implied lack of critical thinking on the part of the populace, and the implied cynicism on the part of the leaders who exploit it.

̽��ֱ��word 'populism' has been announced as the Cambridge Dictionary 2017 Word of the Year.

What sets populism apart from all these other words is that it represents a phenomenon that’s both truly local and truly global, as populations and their leaders across the world wrestle with issues of immigration and trade, resurgent nationalism, and economic discontent.

Wendalyn Nichols

̽��ֱ��White House (official Flickr)

President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks at Yokota Air Base | November 5, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

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̽��ֱ��Longing of Belonging: African photography on show at MAA

sjr81 — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 10:53:05 +0000

Kholwa: ̽��ֱ��Longing of Belonging showcases the work of South African photographer Sabelo Mlangeni who dreamt up the exhibition during conversations with Joel Cabrita, a researcher from Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, who is researching the history of Zionism in South Africa. ‘Kholwa’ means ‘belief’ in isiZulu, one of the most widely spoken languages in South Africa.

Approximately 30 per cent of all South Africans are members of a Zionist church. Zionism (unrelated to Jewish Zionism) is the country’s largest popular religious movement but began life as a 20th century Protestant faith healing movement, originating in the small town of Zion (pop. 24,000), Illinois, in the largely white Midwest of the USA.

Cabrita’s work charts the dramatic shift and 20th century expansion of Christianity and seeks to explain how Zionism travelled across the Atlantic Ocean and became one of the most important influences in black communities more than 8,000 miles away. With approximately 15 million members, it is the largest Christian group in the region.

Mlangeni is a member of the Zionist church and his grounding in the religion can be traced in the intimate and person portraits of church members going on display in Cambridge. He and Cabrita are interested in examining what is at stake when a photographer turns his camera on a religious community they are part of.

Mlangeni said: “ ̽��ֱ��biggest question for me is being part of the community, part of the church. How can I point out other people as being ‘amakholwa’ (‘the believers’) when that is what I myself am? This is a body of work that doesn’t ‘look’ at the Zionist church. It is very important for me to emphasise this, I am not interested in exotifying the church.

“I want to look at people gathering beyond church, and the strong spiritual relationships, which also include me. A long time before even studying photography, I made a lot of work about the church and church members. So my camera was in the church for a long time, church people knew me with a camera. When I look at this work, what’s important is the sense of intimacy between me and the church.”

“For me the most important part of meeting with Joel Cabrita is that it brought something new to me, an understanding of where the Zionists came from, what their beginnings were, where the church was really born [in the USA].”

Some of Mlangeni’s images portray the umlindelo amakholwa (the night vigil of believers). This all-night service forms the cornerstone of Zionist worship across South Africa.

̽��ֱ��service consists of long nights of the entire community gathered in longing expectation for the spirit to descend, whether ancestral spirits or the Christian God. Song, prayer, sermons and dance see the believers through the night. Umlindelo amakholwa is the occasion when bonds of solidarity and community are cemented between those who spend the night in expectant waiting. As dawn breaks, the believers make their way home, while some head to a full day of work.

“Zionism was founded in the in the American Midwest in the 1890s and spread to South Africa in 1904 via missionaries and the circulation of faith-healing literature,” said Cabrita. “From the small town of Wakkerstroom, near the village of Driefontein where Sabelo grew up, Zionism spread across the region with migrant labourers returning from Johannesburg’s gold mines. Today, Zionism has adapted to African understandings of the world, with few traces of its North American roots. Southern African Zionists remain committed to the power of prayer to heal bodily illness as their American forebears.”

Working mainly in black and white, Mlangeni’s photographs focus on capturing the intimate, everyday moments of communities in contemporary South Africa. His work includes ‘Big City’ (2002 to 2015) which focuses on Johannesburg’s history, and ‘Country Girls’ (shot between 2003 and 2009), which focuses on gay communities in rural South Africa, especially in the area of Driefontein, his own village in the province of Mpumalanga.

As a childhood friend of many of his subjects, Mlangeni has been able to create photographs from a perspective of unique understanding and membership of the community he is portraying. Throughout his work, Mlangeni avoids ‘othering’ or ‘exoticising’ his subjects, and instead attempts to show the multi-faceted, intimate reality of daily life of these individuals. While many of them face discrimination due to their sexual identities, or are living in precarious socio-economic situations, Mlangeni’s work does not cast his subjects as ‘victims’ but rather portrays their resilience, joyfulness and dignity as ordinary people.

“His photography continually erases and removes the boundaries between observer and subject,” added Cabrita. “Mlangeni is portraying his own belief as much as he is exploring the spiritual commitments of his photographic subjects.

“They chart his own journey towards belong, and longing for belonging within the Zionist community, a journey that has been mediated through a photographer’s lens. While some photographs reveal open, friendly gazes, others confront us with turned backs, inscrutable silhouettes and hidden figures buried deep in pictures, hinting at anonymity, inaccessibility and profound longing.”

Kholwa: ̽��ֱ��Longing of Belonging – which runs from June 13-September 10 – is free to the public. Visit www.maa.cam.ac.uk for further details and opening times.

A photography exhibition capturing the black South African Zionist community – the most popular religious denomination in the country – opens at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) today.

What’s important is the sense of intimacy between me and the church.

Sabelo Mlangeni

One of Sabelo Mlangeni's images going on display at MAA from today

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One Hundred Days of Trump

ag236 — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 15:30:44 +0000

̽��ֱ��concept of the Hundred Days was first used to describe the period between Napoleon’s return from exile and his final defeat at Waterloo, in 1815. As a marker of the president’s first months in office, a “honeymoon” period when conditions for him to enact much of his agenda are supposed to be most advantageous, it has come to take on a rather different meaning in modern American politics.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in the Oval Office from 1933 to 1945, was the first president to have a period known as “ ̽��ֱ��Hundred Days.” He used it to usher in a series of legislative reforms that began the implementation of the New Deal, a domestic reform program which totally refashioned America in FDR’s image and made his party, the Democrats, the dominant political force in the country for decades to follow.

In American politics, the Hundred Days are meant to be a period of Rooseveltian success, not Napoleonic failure. It is supposed to mark a period of dramatic change so that America comes to reflect the values and goals of its new president. It is not supposed to end in the president’s own Waterloo. Every president wants to be a Roosevelt, not a Napoleon.

Roosevelt’s Hundred Days have become the stuff of legend, and books on the period—including a smart, superbly written account by a noted Cambridge expert of American history, Professor Tony Badger—incorporate the phrase in their title. This is because the Hundred Days had more of a Napoleonic spirit than FDR himself would have liked to admit, conveying a gut-level instinct for action, ambition, and above all grandeur. ̽��ֱ��Hundred Days are supposed to be consequential, a period in which people realize they are living through an important part of history. They are supposed to be a reach for glory.

With the advent of the New Deal, FDR made good on this promise of a dynamic Hundred Days. Roosevelt worked with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to pass legislation on a wide number of problems caused by the Great Depression, from the banking crisis to widespread poverty and unemployment to the collapse of agriculture and industry. Within three months, many of the staples of the New Deal were set up. Not all would last, but Roosevelt and congressional Democrats showed that they had a plan and were doing what they could to enact it, quickly.

Few historians accept that the New Deal cured the Depression—the largest government stimulus program in world history, also known as the Second World War, did that instead. Nor did FDR have a coherent ideological vision: he was too experimental and pragmatic for that.

But by showing that he cared, and that he was willing to do whatever it took to help the American people in their time of suffering, he transformed himself into the most popular president in American history. After Roosevelt’s first victory in 1932, Democrats won six of the next eight presidential elections and controlled both houses of Congress for all but four of the next forty-eight years.

̽��ֱ��Hundred Days started something pretty special. It’s no surprise, then, that presidents from both parties who followed in Roosevelt’s wake have sought their own dynamic start. Most haven’t been successful, and many have seen their presidencies nearly ruined from disasters right at the outset.

John F. Kennedy oversaw the humiliating debacle at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, his 94th day in office, while Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed on March 30, 1981, his 69th day. Neither tragedy did much damage to presidents regarded, at the time and ever since, as popular and successful. On the other hand, the president who self-consciously strived hardest to emulate FDR’s rapid achievements, Lyndon B. Johnson, saw the early hopes of his presidency destroyed by the war in Vietnam and the deterioration of race relations at home.

In other words, the Hundred Days marker is a poor gauge of presidential success. Roosevelt set an example of a quick-start, dynamically successful presidency, yet it remains pretty much the only example. President Donald Trump, who, despite Republican majorities in Congress, has accomplished virtually nothing of his agenda so far, may have had a good point when he recently tweeted to complain about being held to “the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days.”

̽��ֱ��problem is, it was Trump himself who set that standard. All through the presidential campaign last year, and then during the transitional period between the election in November and the inauguration in January, Trump not only promised quick action but quick results. ̽��ֱ��wall along the border with Mexico, supposedly adverse trade deals, ISIS—all were going to be solved “immediately” or “on day one.” At a campaign rally in Florida, in October, he said he would begin to repeal and replace Obamacare on his “first day in office. … It’s going to be so easy.”

It hasn’t been so easy, of course, certainly not for President Trump. Only time will tell whether that means his presidency will ultimately end with him as a Roosevelt or a Napoleon. But he’s not off to a good start.

Andrew Preston, Professor of American History, is the author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (Knopf, 2012)

Professor Andrew Preston examines the origins of the first hundred days as a measure of presidential success in American politics.

In American politics, the Hundred Days are meant to be a period of Rooseveltian success, not Napoleonic failure.

Andrew Preston

Andrew Preston on Trump's 100 days

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#ICYMI - Trump’s First Hundred Days

ag236 — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 14:41:16 +0000

“I don't think that there is a presidential period of time in the first 100 days where anyone has done nearly what we've been able to do.” So declared President Donald J. Trump in a recent interview, offering a characteristically bold interpretation of American history.

Since his inauguration on 20 January, Trump has certainly been active. On the international scene, he has played nice with Vladimir Putin, fallen out with Vladimir Putin, bombed Syria, and sent the US Navy to rattle North Korea. He’s wined and dined the Chinese president, overcome his germaphobia long enough to hold hands with British Prime Minister Theresa May (while refusing to shake German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s), and variously attacked and embraced NATO.

At home, he has struck a defiant tone – against the media, Meryl Streep, assorted nay-sayers, and his own intelligence agencies. He has played musical chairs with his advisors in the West Wing, and accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. Amid the sturm und drang he has managed to get a Supreme Court nominee approved, but his much-vaunted healthcare proposal was dramatically shelved when support failed to materialize, and his travel bans targeting Muslims have been suspended by the courts.

Perhaps his rollback of Obama-era environmental protections amounts to the biggest formal change thus far, but as a new executive order undoing older ones, it required only the stroke of a pen. He signed another order withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but NAFTA still stands. And there are not, as yet, any bricks in the border wall. In sum, in substantive terms, Trump’s administration has not done nearly as much as he claims, or promised.

̽��ֱ��idea of the “First 100 days” as a benchmark of presidential success dates back to the early months of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency in 1933. And Roosevelt, as with much in presidential history, set the bar high. Amid the grave crisis of the Great Depression, and with a landslide electoral victory just behind him, Roosevelt promised “direct, vigorous action” to meet the economic emergency – and delivered.

With a potent combination of charisma aided by circumstance, he persuaded Congress (sitting in a special session lasting 100 days) to pass fifteen major pieces of legislation – restructuring major industries, regulating banking and finance, providing subsidies to farmers, and offering some relief to the unemployed and destitute. He explained these actions in “Fireside Chats” – using the new technology of radio to speak directly to citizens in their own homes, connecting president and populace in a new way. His plain speech and folksy manner served to revolutionise presidential rhetoric, and in the most laudatory accounts, transform the mood of the country too. From despair came determination and a new positive outlook, courtesy of Roosevelt’s winning personality and can-do attitude (never mind that the Depression itself didn’t lift for a decade).

No other president can match Roosevelt’s speedy legislative achievements, or the mythical aura that has grown up around his presidency. Most presidents rack up a success or two: Bill Clinton got his budget through in the first 100 days, Barack Obama signed the $800 billion stimulus into law, and George W. Bush’s tax relief plan was on its way to approval. But their most significant legislative accomplishments came later.

Even for Presidents who have gained their own mythic status, the First 100 Days weren’t always easy. John F. Kennedy’s start was marred by the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. Ronald Reagan faced, and survived, an assassination attempt in March 1981. Reagan’s demeanour in adversity, though (he quipped that he hoped all his doctors were Republicans), sent his approval ratings sky high – helping him pass a major economic recovery programme, and laying the foundation for his later tax and budget cuts.

Trump has presented outlines of his budget and proposed tax reforms, but Congress still needs to take action. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has twice pulled votes on healthcare reform, and Trump is yet to affix his signature to a major law.

And then there’s that FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, lurking in the background but threatening to upend his administration altogether. With all thatin mind, Trump’s claims of extraordinary action and achievement undoubtedly fall short. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Trump has responded to a spate of negative “100 days” assessments by turning on a dime, and now pronouncing this benchmark to be “an artificial barrier” that isn’t “very meaningful.”

Of course, all politicians over-promise and under-deliver, but for a president who defined himself in opposition to typical politicians, this is a dangerous game. His job approval rating in the Gallup poll stands at 41% on average for the first quarter of 2017 – the lowest accorded a new President since polling began, and the first below 50%. And yet, a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll suggests that Trump voters aren’t displaying any “buyer’s remorse.”

For now, his supporters are still willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. In this, the pragmatic side of Trump’s political persona may be working to his advantage – his claims to be a “dealmaker” providing some cover when backing away from his more strident stances. But his deals need to bear fruit, and soon.

In mid-April, the White House Instagram account captioned an image “#ICYMI President Donald J. Trump is continuing to Make America Great Again!” “ICYMI” – text-speak for “In Case You Missed It” – was apt. For all the bombast, any return to “greatness” as Trump sees it, has indeed been easy to miss. ̽��ֱ��mood of the country has not been transformed (Trump’s Twitter musings have not proven to be the new “Fireside Chat”).

̽��ֱ��United States remains a deeply polarized nation, where politics has become an ever-sharper scythe, defining and dividing friendships, families, communities and regions. Yet the sky has not fallen. American political and civic institutions have not collapsed, as some darkly predicted in November. Outrage has fuelled and followed him, the spectre of impeachment hovers over him, but as his first 100 days draws to a close, Trump may yet have a more successful second act. At the very least, it is unlikely to be dull.

Dr. Emily Charnock is a Lecturer in American History and a Fellow of Selwyn College

Dr Emily Charnock, Lecturer in American History, delivers her verdict as the Trump presidency reaches its first major milestone.

̽��ֱ��idea of the 'First 100 days' as a benchmark of presidential success dates back to the early months of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency in 1933. Roosevelt, as with much in presidential history, set the bar high.

Emily Charnock

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̽��ֱ��lady is for turning (and reversing) – Thatcher archives for 1986 open to the public

sjr81 — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 14:54:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��Prime Minister’s personal papers for the year 1986, held at Churchill College, reveal the significant and ongoing fallout from the Westland affair – which prompted the resignation of Defence Minister Michael Heseltine, who went on to challenge Thatcher for the Tory leadership in 1990.

̽��ֱ��affair was bruising disagreement between Thatcher and Heseltine over a proposed rescue package for the UK’s last helicopter manufacturer – Westland. Heseltine favoured a European-based rescue package, while the PM favoured a US deal, with both sides using the press to brief against the other. Heseltine famously stormed out of a Cabinet meeting and resigned on January 9, 1986, accusing the Prime Minister of having lied during the course of the conflict.

Included in the 1986 papers is the text of a letter Thatcher drafted to Heseltine just three weeks before his eventual resignation – but did not send; an ultimatum to either toe the line or give up office. It ends bluntly: “In this situation, no Minister should use his position to promote one commercial option in preference to another – so long as he remains in Government.”

“ ̽��ֱ��important thing about this letter of course is that it was never sent,” said Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. “Throughout the crisis, Thatcher was wary of any course of action that might finally provoke Heseltine’s resignation or gather sympathy for him once he actually had, putting her in an uncomfortably and uncharacteristically defensive position. She knew she was dangerously isolated in Cabinet and among the Tory press where Heseltine had many friends.”

In many respects, 1986 was defined by Westland. Much happened in its shadow or was judged a consequence of it. It was also a genuine contest for power in the Conservative Party, one that Thatcher came close to losing.

“It’s no accident that Westland anticipated her final demise in 1990,” added Collins. “Many of the people were the same, the issues too. An argument in cabinet could not be contained and blew out into the street – with rivals chancing their arm against a dangerously isolated leader. ̽��ֱ��truth is that she was deeply conflicted, angry as hell but painfully aware of her vulnerability.”

Included in the archives, a day after the resignation, is a warning from her Political Secretary, Stephen Sherbourne, that she must be seen to be in control of events as they unfolded, not merely a bystander. “People want Prime Ministers to be in charge and they expect that from you,” says his letter.

Also among the papers being released today are those which reveal the scale of opposition for her support of President Reagan’s April bombing of Libya – including that of Norman Tebbit, Conservative Party Chairman, and historically one of Thatcher’s key supporters.

̽��ֱ��clear and continuing discord between the pair makes for uncomfortable reading according to Collins, with Tebbit and other leading figures such as Deputy PM Willie Whitelaw, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and Chancellor Nigel Lawson among those vocal in their opposition to giving the US administration what they considered to be a ‘blank cheque’ in prosecuting its bombing campaign against Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya.

American F-111 bomber aircraft stationed at RAF Lakenheath were used in the raids on the Libyan capital Tripoli, which proved highly controversial in Britain. ̽��ֱ��raids gained major exposure thanks to the reporting of BBC journalist Kate Adie who was considered to have covered the story coolly and critically from Tripoli.

̽��ֱ��BBC coverage enraged Tebbit who launched a prolonged counterattack which alarmed Number Ten in both its style and substance. Once among Thatcher’s closest allies, by 1986, their relationship had deteriorated remarkably.

“Number Ten was keen to fight the next election at least in part on the issue of defence where Labour was vulnerable,” added Collins. “Anything that kept Libya in the headlines jeopardised that plan.”

Tebbit’s attacks on the BBC became so severe, and riled Home Secretary Douglas Hurd so much, that Nigel Wicks, Thatcher’s Personal Private Secretary, warned the PM that Tebbit’s ‘obsession’ with the BBC coverage risked repeating elements of the Westland affair all over again – going against the collective responsibility of the Government when things had appeared to be settling down.

Alongside larger worries about national and international affairs, the papers for 1986 also record the concerns of Mrs Thatcher’s advisors when it to plans for the Prime Minister to test drive the new Rover 800 in Downing Street – all in the name of lending a hand to the ailing car manufacturer British Leyland.

“There were predictable worries,” added Collins. “Her press secretary Bernard Ingham remembered a previous Rover test drive when the firm had delivered a red car. Officials were also worried that the Prime Minister’s driving skills might not be up to scratch!”

A quiet rehearsal was arranged at Chequers, with the car towed secretively under cover, while plans for the Downing Street drive were formalised. In the end, perhaps buoyed by her experience at Chequers, Mrs Thatcher not only drove the car along Downing Street, but also reversed it, pulling off the manoeuvre flawlessly in front of the assembled press.

Rover, rather cackhandedly, later attempted to sell her a discounted car under their “VIP Preferential Purchase Scheme”. ̽��ֱ��offer was never taken up.

Andrew Riley, Archivist of the Thatcher papers at the Churchill Archives Centre, said: “Margaret Thatcher’s personal papers for 1986, released for the first time today at Churchill Archives Centre, provide unique insights into a year which ultimately proved to date a little over half way into her Premiership. Of course, no one knew in 1986 just how long she would stay at Downing Street but for the first time the issue of “succession” had been dramatically raised.

“Her political troubles are well documented in the release, especially the dramas of the Westland crisis and her isolation within Cabinet on a number of key foreign policy issues. ̽��ֱ��release gives a chance for a fresh look at the major political news stories of 1986 and a chance to understand something of the stress of the Prime Minister’s year.”

Margaret Thatcher’s isolation over Westland and the US bombing of Libya – as well as fears about the standards of her driving – are among the subjects revealed within 40,000 pages of her papers opening to the public today at the Churchill Archives Centre.

For the first time the issue of “succession” had been dramatically raised.

Andrew Riley

Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College

Portrait of Margaret Thatcher

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Opinion: Racism in the US runs far deeper than Trump's white supremacist fanbase

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 14:32:18 +0000

Donald Trump’s astonishing rise to the presidency has put racism at the heart of American politics. From the very start of his campaign, Trump called Mexicans “criminals” and “rapists” while pledging to build a wall between the US and its southern neighbour. He shocked the world by promising to ban Muslim visitors from the US, and is now reportedly considering a “Muslim registration system”. He dismissed the concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement and refused to disavow the support he received from white supremacists.

Among his supporters is David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who described Trump’s triumph as a victory for “our people”. A week after Trump’s victory, a white nationalist group met in Washington DC to “hail Trump” with Hitler salutes and decry the mainstream media with the Nazi-era term “Lügenpresse”, or “lying press”.

After the symbolic breakthrough of Barack Obama’s presidency, this feels like a shocking step backwards on the issue of race. But it’s important not to overstate America’s progress during the Obama years, nor to ignore the ways in which racism extends far beyond the “whitelash” of Trump’s improbable rise.

Instead, to properly confront America’s racist reality, we need a properly nuanced way to think about it in all its complexity and intractability. Broadly speaking, we can divide racism into three categories: structural, unconscious and unapologetic.

Structural racism refers to the ways racial inequality endures across generations. Racial gaps in household wealth, homeownership and unemployment rates are still enormous. According to the federal government, America’s schools are more segregated today than they were a decade ago. Unarmed African-Americans are substantially more likely to be physically harassed by the police, and around six times as likely to be incarcerated as whites.

Playing into these problems is unconscious racism. This term describes the ways people unintentionally discriminate against others on the basis of race. We know from extensive research that many employers treat people of colour differently from whites when they apply for jobs or promotions, even though they insist that they aren’t personally racist. Social scientists call this “unconscious bias”, and many US government agencies, public institutions and companies have only recently begun to tackle it.

With such stark differences at the root of black and Latino experience, why don’t white people see racial equality as an urgent national imperative? Unconscious racism shapes and sustains structural racism, and leads white people away from the facts of persistent inequality. This interplay helps to explain how American society fails to prioritise racial justice despite the existence of these enormous divides.

From implicit to explicit

̽��ֱ��third form of racism is what we’ve seen in the Trump campaign: overt efforts to stereotype or rank people on the basis of race, and “dog-whistle” racism which uses coded language to achieve the same effect.

Overt racism is alarming and dangerous, and has the potential to set back race relations considerably. But to solve the deeper problem of race relations, the US’s leaders must not only condemn the unapologetic racists of the far-right; they must tackle racism’s structural and unconscious dimensions. This can only happen if the past and the present are kept in sharp focus.

American racism is not just history. EPA/Jim Lo Scalzo

Black people in America were denied the opportunity to own property for centuries; in fact, they were themselves held as property, and exploited to produce enormous wealth for their white owners and for the nation more broadly. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, African-Americans were subjected to another century of open discrimination in housing, employment and every other aspect of communal life.

As did the emergence of a black middle class in the 1960s and 1970s, Barack Obama’s rise to the White House has had a huge and positive effect on American society. But Obama’s election also enabled some (mostly white) commentators to declare that the US had “moved beyond” race – that the debts of slavery and racism had been paid in full, and that anyone still complaining was guilty of “racial entitlement”.

Armed with this mistaken assumption, many white conservatives have dismissed black complaints of police misconduct as spurious or entitled, insisting that Obama’s victory proved there is no ceiling for people of colour in America. With this cynical twist, they can frame any action against racial inequality as a form of undeserved special treatment.

Obama himself has addressed the question of race sporadically and cautiously, no doubt reasoning that white conservatives would seize on a full-scale assault on unconscious and structural racism as evidence of “bias” or self-interest. With Donald Trump in the White House, Democrats and progressives have a fresh opportunity to attack the problem of racism in all its guises.

They won’t have the support of the president or a Congressional majority, until the 2018 midterm elections at least. But racism has always run deeper than the electoral cycle. Solving it demands education, dialogue, protest, activism and energy. These resources will be in limited supply given the sheer number of challenges thrown up by a Trump presidency, but they will be vital to the work of healing the deepest division in American life.

Nicholas Guyatt, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in American History, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Racism in the US has always run deeper than the electoral cycle, writes Nicholas Guyatt, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in American History. Solving it demands education, dialogue, protest, activism and energy.

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̽��ֱ��fall and rise of Native North America

sjr81 — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 14:46:12 +0000

Blood and Land by Jonathan King, the Von Hügel Fellow at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, is the story of how Native North America has shaped the United States and Canada, and vice versa.

̽��ֱ��product of decades of study, Blood and Land seeks to move beyond the traditional ‘feathers-and-failure’ narrative to interrogate the myriad and multi-layered histories of North America. King takes an unflinching look at the many successes, desperate struggles and threats to the very existence of Native populations.

“So much of what we know about America today is tied up in its history and treatment of Native North Americans over the last few centuries,” said King. “No understanding of the USA is possible without first comprehending the story of its original inhabitants.

“My book provides a different perspective. General histories are often presented as a progressive fall from grace. But the true story is actually one of how Indian people continually recovered and made the country their own again, whether that is through the growth of casinos or mineral exploitation. Each time recovery occurs, new difficulties emerge to threaten the status quo.

“When you look at the challenges Native Americans have faced over time – right through to Eisenhower trying to legislate them out of existence, and the forced sterilisation of Indian women in the 1970s – Native Americans are not only surviving, but thriving as a phenomenon in both the imagination and the intellect. In the early part of the 20th century, very few wanted to be identified as Native American. Now, there is something of a clamour to identify Native blood in one’s family tree, often met with disbelief. Look at Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose early intimation of Cherokee ancestry was met with derision.”

However, Native populations still face many of the struggles connected with racism, poverty and access to the same life chances as non-native populations.

One remarkable example of the ‘otherness’ still ascribed to Native peoples came in 2011 when the War on Terror was compared, by a legal representative of the United States Government, to the early 19th century wars on Indian nations.

In a case against a Guantanamo Bay suspect, United States vs Al Bahlul, it was said that the trial and summary execution by General Andrew Jackson of two Scots in Spanish Florida in 1818, traders with the Seminole, was legal and correct and provided precedent for contemporary behaviour by the USA in the war against Al-Qaeda. ̽��ֱ��Scottish traders had been providing weapons to terrorists. In a non-ironic manner, the Seminole were themselves compared to Al-Qaeda.

̽��ֱ��National Congress of American Indians took exception to the comparison, pointing out that Seminole efforts to defend themselves from an invading genocidal army could be termed as ‘unlawful belligerency’ by only the most jingoistic military historian.

“ ̽��ֱ��case sought to use genocide as a justification for misbehaviour in the wider world in the 21st century,” said King. “It was that same US strategy and behaviour against Indian nations that helped determine US behaviour in dealing with 21st century terrorism. Specifically obnoxious to Native people in 2011 was the fact there were around 24,000 Indian people serving in the military that year, and approximately 383,000 American Indian veterans.”

That there are so many veterans is testament to the 20th century recovery in fortunes that King frequently refers to in Blood and Land. In 1900, there were just 237,196 Indians. In 2010, 5.2 million people recorded themselves as American Indian and Native Alaskans, 1.7pc of the total US population, with an expectation of growth to 8.6 million by 2050 (2pc of the total projected population). In 2010 there were more than 15 states with more than 100,000 American Indian or American Native people, with California (732,225) leading the way.

In Canada, 1.4 million people identified as Aboriginal in 2011, some 4pc of the population. In 1900 that number was thought to be around 100,000. However, compared to a map of the USA’s settlements, the size and scale of Canadian First Nations’ reserves appears to make a much, much smaller footprint on the map of Canada. Outside of the north they have remained just ‘small dots on the map’ according to King.

̽��ֱ��growing strength of Native America has also been symbolised by the removal of racist sporting logos in the last few decades with one major exception: the Washington Redskins have steadfastly stuck to a name considered derogatory by many.

While King rightly points to the many success stories for Native Americans in the 20th century, he does not shy away from tackling subjects such as alcohol abuse and gender violence that are often swept under the carpet by communities and commentators alike in the US.

Although problems with alcohol and substance abuse are well-known if not well discussed, the role of gambling in Indian life – both as a profit-making business enterprise and a social ill for Native communities – has been more visible. Today, Indian gaming is responsible for nearly 612,000 jobs worth more than $27.6 billion. It is estimated that almost half of America’s native tribes operate casinos despite some studies suggesting that the immense tribal gaming revenues can actually make poverty worse in their local communities.

However, although King argues that casinos have largely been a force for good, he does believe gambling in reservation casinos may have reached its high water mark. Beyond casinos he also warns of the impact of declining natural resources and climate change.

“Casinos should not be seen as a blight, even if gambling can be seen as a highly destructive vehicle of achievement,” added King. “They have provided wealth and income to communities on an incredible scale, and much gambling wealth has been put into providing police forces, schools and hospitals. But this decade is likely to be the climax of Indian gambling. What will happen when these casinos disappear in favour of online gambling which is accessible without the need to travel?

“However, the long centuries of change for Native people have resulted in a resilience that ensures survival. This in part is to do with the uniqueness and hyper-diversity of Indian culture, its ability to recreate and rethink identity and circumstance, architecture and art; but it is also to do with the way in which Nativeness is embedded in the United States and Canada.

“Indians are unique in their contribution to world history. Whether it be kayaking, canoeing, snow- shoeing or lacrosse, Blood and Land repeatedly outlines the innovation of Indian society and its huge contribution to global culture, far outweighing the number of Native people there are today. That is the truest measure of their success.”

̽��ֱ��story of Native North America – from its vast contribution to world culture, to the often taboo social problems of drinking, gambling and violence – is the subject of a sweeping new history by a Cambridge academic and authority on the subject.

No understanding of the USA is possible without first comprehending the story of its original inhabitants.

Jonathan King

Anton Gag

1904 painting "Attack on New Ulm" by Anton Gag

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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California’s sudden oak death epidemic now ‘unstoppable’ and new epidemics must be managed earlier

jeh98 — Mon, 02 May 2016 19:02:00 +0000

Sudden oak death – caused by Phytophthora ramorum, a fungus-like pathogen related to potato blight – has killed millions of trees over hundreds of square kilometres of forest in California. First detected near San Francisco in 1995, it spread north through coastal California, devastating the region’s iconic oak and tanoak forests. In 2002 a strain of the pathogen appeared in the south west of England, affecting shrubs but not oaks, since English species of oak are not susceptible. In 2009 the UK strain started killing larch – an important tree crop – and has since spread widely across the UK.

In a study published today in PNAS, researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have used mathematical modelling to show that stopping or even slowing the spread of P. ramorum in California is now not possible, and indeed has been impossible for a number of years.

Treating trees with chemicals is not practical or cost-effective on the scales that would be necessary for an established forest epidemic. Currently the only option for controlling the disease is to cut down infected trees, together with neighbouring trees that are likely to be infected but may not yet show symptoms. “By comparing the performance of a large number of potential strategies, modelling can tell us where and how to start chopping down trees to manage the disease over very large areas,” explains Dr Nik Cunniffe, lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences.

̽��ֱ��authors say that preventing the disease from spreading to large parts of California could have been possible if management had been started in 2002. Before 2002 not enough was known about the pathogen to begin managing the disease. Their modelling also offers new strategies for more effectively controlling inevitable future epidemics.

In close liaison with colleagues from DEFRA and the Forestry Commission, models developed in Cambridge are already an integral part of the management programme for the P. ramorum epidemic in the UK. ̽��ֱ��models are used to predict where the disease is likely to spread, how it can be effectively detected and how control strategies can be optimised.

Sudden oak death is known to affect over one hundred species of tree and shrub, presenting a significant risk to the biodiversity of many ecosystems. ̽��ֱ��death of large numbers of trees also exacerbates the fire risk in California when fallen trees are left to dry out. There is now concern that the disease may spread to the Appalachian Mountains, putting an even larger area of trees at risk.

“Our study is the first major retrospective analysis of how the sudden oak death epidemic in California could have been managed, and also the first to show how to deal with a forest epidemic of this magnitude,” explains Cunniffe.

“Even if huge amounts of money were to be invested to stop the epidemic starting today, the results of our model show this cannot lead to successful control for any plausible management budget. We therefore wanted to know whether it could have been contained if a carefully-optimised strategy had been introduced sooner. Our model showed that, with a very high level of investment starting in 2002, the disease could not have been eradicated, but its spread could have been slowed and the area affected greatly reduced.”

̽��ֱ��model also indicates how policymakers might better plan and deploy control when future epidemics emerge.

“It is a tool by which we can make a better job next time, because it is inevitable that there will be a next time,” says Professor Chris Gilligan, senior author and also from the Department of Plant Sciences. “With this sort of epidemic there will always be more sites to treat than can be afforded. Our model shows when and where control is most effective at different stages throughout a developing epidemic so that resources can be better targeted.”

“It can be tempting for authorities to start cutting down trees at the core of the infected area, but for this epidemic our research shows that this could be the worst thing to do, because susceptible vegetation will simply grow back and become infected again,” explains Cunniffe.

Cunniffe, Gilligan and colleagues found that instead treating the ‘wave-front’ – on and ahead of the epidemic in the direction that disease is spreading – is a more effective method of control. They also found that ‘front-loading’ the budget to treat very heavily and earlier on in the epidemic would greatly improve the likelihood of success.

“Unlike other epidemic models, ours takes account of the uncertainty in how ecological systems will respond and how the available budget may change, allowing us to investigate the likelihood of success and risks of failure of different strategies at different points after an epidemic emerges,” says Gilligan.

“Whenever a new epidemic emerges, controlling it becomes a question of how long it takes for us to have enough information to recognise that there is a problem and then to make decisions about how to deal with it. In the past we have been starting from scratch with each new pathogen, but the insight generated by this modelling puts us in a better position for dealing with future epidemics,” he adds.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the next step in dealing with well-established epidemics such as sudden oak death is to investigate how to protect particularly valuable areas within an epidemic that – as they have demonstrated – is already too big to be stopped.

̽��ֱ��methodology is already being applied to create related models for diseases that threaten food security in Africa, such as pathogens that attack wheat and cassava.

This research was enabled by funding from the BBSRC, DEFRA, NSF, USDA and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Inset image: Extensive control starting in 2002 could have greatly slowed epidemic spread (map shows risk of infection in 2030 under no control on left; control on and ahead of wave-front on right) (Nik Cunniffe).

New research shows the sudden oak death epidemic in California cannot now be stopped, but that its tremendous ecological and economic impacts could have been greatly reduced if control had been started earlier. ̽��ֱ��research also identifies new strategies to enhance control of future epidemics, including identifying where and how to fell trees, as “there will be a next time”.

It is a tool by which we can make a better job next time, because it is inevitable that there will be a next time

Professor Chris Gilligan

David Rizzo

Large-scale tree mortality in northern Sonoma County, California

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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