My article on White Privilege: What It Is and How to Incorporate the Topic into your Class Sessions was published by NISOD, an organization of community and technical colleges, on June 4, 2020.
I did a Webinar on White Privilege for NISOD on January 31, 2020.
Please contact me to arrange for a seminar or workshop on White Privilege for your organization and to receive a PDF of my article on White Privilege which includes links for further information and cases.
I find it amazing and deeply disturbing that in the 21st century state legislatures in the United States are being inundated with bills (many of which have passed and been signed into law) that seek to restrict a woman’s right to control her own body and well-being. Without these rights, women will find it very difficult to partake fully in politics and in the economy. Perhaps that is exactly the goal of this type of legislation: to drive women back into the home where they are trapped by unwanted pregnancy and under the control of their spouse.
We know that the best way for women and children to escape poverty is for the women to have control of their reproduction. Being able to decide if and when she has children provides a woman with the opportunity for education, which allows her to find better-paying work. Wherever women have control of their reproduction, the birth rate has declined and economic well-being has improved. Why would legislatures in the United States wish to reverse this trend? The only reason I can think of is fear. Fear that women will gain too much power. Fear that men (particularly white men), will have less of a say in the future. Fear that they will lose control. Fear is repressive and destructive.
As a counterpoint to fear, Melinda Gates gave a great TED talk this month about the need for contraception. Granted, her talk primarily dealt with women in developing nations. But it is clear that what she says also relates to the current political climate in the United States. It will be quite ironic if NGOs such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are able to bring reproductive freedom to women in other nations while here in the United States those same freedoms are being whittled away.
As I discussed previously, we humans are who we are in part because of a fish/shellfish diet that allowed for advanced brain development. Without these items in our diet, I think it is doubtful that our hominin ancestors would have advanced much beyond the bonobos/chimps. What will happen if we no longer have access to these food sources?
Given that we live on an ocean planet, this fear would seem pointless. The world ocean is vast and immensely deep. And yet, we are destroying its productivity at frightening speed. The 1990s saw the total collapse of what had been one of the most productive fisheries on Earth: the cod fishery of the Georges Bank off Newfoundland. Almost overnight, families who’d produced fishermen for generations were suddenly out of work. A great book on the story of cod is Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. Cod were once so large and numerous that they could be scooped from the sea with buckets. Now they are so scarce and tiny, that fishing for them is under extremely strict regulation and management. Without such management, cod have little chance of rebuilding a healthy, sustainable population.
But it isn’t just cod. Factory ships are scraping the seabed clean of everything, whether they want it or not. Unwanted sea life is dumped overboard becoming sea death. These ships are devastating the seas and the livelihoods of traditional fishing groups, and destroying the life of the seabed. They are also threatening the survival of seabirds who rely on these same sea food sources the factory ships are harvesting or destroying with abandon. More information on the problems associated with overfishing can be found at Oceana.org.
Tuna and salmon are especially problematic fish whether wild caught or farmed. Farmed salmon develop lice that spread to wild salmon. Catching wild tuna and salmon with factory ships has all the problems mentioned above. The best thing to do is to quit eating tuna and salmon. Switch to sardines. Get all the brain and health benefits of eating fatty fish without the problems associated with tuna and salmon. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has developed Seafood Watch which gives guidance on the best fish and seafood to eat and which should be avoided in order to preserve ocean productivity.
We still have so much to discover about the world ocean. How can we continue to support activities that will destroy it before we are truly able to explore the Deep in all its glory?