Unusual Words

and their meanings around the world…
http://www.visualnews.com/2015/08/13/14-untranslatable-words-and-their-meanings-beautifully-illustrated/?utm_source=VisualNews&utm_campaign=02647b805e-RSS_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1756fd36de-02647b805e-281927425

What’s in a word? Well… a lot, and especially in these highly unusual examples from around the world. While the English language has something like 1.25 million words, there are plenty from other languages for which we simply don’t have a match. The Portuguese word “Cafuné” is one example: it means “the act of tenderly running fingers through someone’s hair.” See… these are words we need.

What is Culture?

Culture Quotes:

It is the acquired pair of glasses through which we see life. - Mbarek A. 

Culture is us. We make it. We shape it as we love it to be. It is a call for individuals to agree upon some common values that bind them in harmony. - Moustafa H.

The more we know about the cultures of others, the more open-minded, tolerant and global we become. - Samir El A.

Sayings from a culture tell us about that culture's values:

• Haste makes waste
• Walk in Beauty
• Practice what you preach
• To err is human, to forgive divine
• Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
• Don’t beat around the bush.
• Time is money.
• Stand on your own two feet.
• God helps those who help themselves.
• You’ve made your bed. Now lie in it.
• Feed two birds with one bowl
• Don't speak until spoken to
• If you can’t say something nice, don't say anything at all.
• Take time to smell the roses.
• Turn the other cheek
• Everyman for himself
• You should use all the brains you have and all that you can borrow. 
• If a man works hard, the land will not be lazy
• Don’t depend on heaven for food, but on your own two hands carrying the load 

Intent vs. Impact

Example of Intent vs. Impact and  Educational lesson gone wrong

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/underground-railroad-reenactment-field-trip-james-sandra-baker-hartford_n_3956232.html

On Explicit Communication Styles

“The Silenced Dialogue”, by Lisa Delpit

http://faculty.washington.edu/rikitiki/tcxg464sp08/Silenced%20Dialogue%20by%20L%20Delpit.pdf

Websites:

Teaching Tolerance – Fabulous and free curriculum ideas

http://www.tolerance.org/

Videos

Reconsider Columbus Day 

   

Differently Abled

About a differently limbed man (born w/out arms)

www.upworthy.com/this-guy-is-going-to-show-you-one-of-the-most-important-things-you-can-teach-your-kids-10

Inspiring Wheelchair Basketball Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgSVBDeqVs4

Example of Culturally Responsive Teaching

Ms. Toliver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRm0aHNVCuk

Allies

Playing for Change- video on supporting each other  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM

Sportsmanship http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXVk5GBx-s

Inspirational

Boys Playing Soccer in Thailand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Story of a Star Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wuSaNCIde4

Chess Prodigy from Uganda

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/10/world/africa/uganda-chess-teen/index.html

Articles:

Principles of Culturally Responsive Teaching (Brown University)

http://www.alliance.brown.edu/tdl/tl-strategies/crt-principles.shtml

 

“Locating Yourself for Your Students” by Priya Parmar and Shirley Steinberg

“Showing Students Who You Are” by Heather M. Pleasants

Watch:

Culturally Responsive Rap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5eKveSnCNE

7 Principles of Culturally Responsive Teaching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptefRjN4DY

American Intellectuals' Widespread Failure to Stand Up to Billionaires and Authoritarian Power by Robert Jensen

http://www.alternet.org/books/widespread-failure-intellectuals-stand-authoritarian-power-america?paging=off

[This article is an excerpt from We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/148195847X/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER.]

Given the considerable resources in the United States spent to subsidize intellectual work, why are so many intellectuals -- journalists, academics, writers -- not critiquing the many hierarchical institutions and not highlighting the disastrous consequences of these systems? Why are so many intellectuals instead providing support for the institutions and systems? Why is the majority of intellectual work in the United States not challenging but instead helping to prop up the unjust distribution of wealth and power, and the unsustainable extractive/industrial system? Both intellectuals and the people who provide the resources that allow intellectuals to work should ponder this crucial question.

I am not suggesting that to be a responsible intellectual one must agree with me on all these issues, that anyone who does not agree with my approach to these issues is a soulless sell-out. My argument is that if we take seriously the basic moral principles at the core of modern philosophical and theological systems we claim to believe in, in light of the data on social injustice and the serious threats to ecological sustainability, these questions should be central in the work of intellectuals. Based on my experience as a journalist, professor, and political activist -- a life in which I have always worked in intellectual professions and interacted with many other intellectuals in various settings -- I have learned that the story is complicated but that a sharp critique of intellectuals as a social formation is warranted.

First, let’s recognize that intellectual work generally comes with considerable privilege. That does not mean that intellectuals don’t work hard, make sacrifices, or feel stress. But in general, intellectuals are compensated well for work that is not physically hazardous and can be rewarding on many levels. There are many intellectuals-in-training (graduate students) and underemployed intellectuals (adjunct faculty) who face overwhelming workloads and few perks, and so we should be cautious about generalizing too much about the category of “intellectual.” This analysis focuses on those doing intellectual work with the most privilege and the most autonomy.

Ideally, we pay intellectuals to help us deepen our understanding of how the world works, toward the goal of shaping a world more consistent with our moral and political principles, and our collective self-interest. What are the forces that keep people, especially relatively privileged people, mute in the face of such a clear need for critical intellectual work? The first, and easiest, answer is individual self-interest -- the status and economic rewards that come to intellectuals who serve power. Upton Sinclair put it most succinctly: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

No doubt some intellectuals make calculations about how to use their abilities to enrich themselves, but in my experience such crass greed is relatively rare. I suspect that a desire to be accepted by peers is at least as powerful a motivation for intellectuals to accept the status quo. Humans are social animals who generally seek a safe and secure place in a social group, and there’s no reason intellectuals would be different. Even when concentrated wealth and power do not threaten people with serious punishments, the desire to be a well-regarded member of an intellectual community is a powerful conformity-inducer. When one’s professional cohort works within the worldview that the wealthy and powerful construct, the boundaries of that world seem appropriate. Curiosity about what lies beyond those boundaries tends to atrophy.

Those forces have been in play for a long time, but another potentially crucial factor is the way in which confronting the reality of injustice and unsustainability can be morally and psychologically overwhelming for anyone. As the documentation of human suffering and the threats to ecological sustainability accumulate, in an era when multiple communication channels make it easy to be aware of more and more of this information, that awareness can seem to be too much to face. The desire to rationalize the suffering and imagine an easy escape is easy to understand.

Rationalization #1: Justifying Hierarchy

When humans suffer in extreme situations, such as war or natural disasters, most people in most situations find it easy to care and respond. When the suffering is ongoing and apparently endemic to the systems of the world, staying connected to that suffering is more difficult. In such situations, it can be attractive to find ways to justify hierarchy and the resulting suffering, rather than to challenge power.

There is wide consensus on the values that are central to constructing a decent human society: justice, equality, compassion, honesty, opportunity, sharing. It is difficult to imagine such a society without these basic elements: (1) the belief in the inherent dignity of all human beings; (2) a sense of solidarity with at least those in one’s community, if not beyond; and (3) a commitment to achieving a rough equality so that everyone has access to the material requirements for a decent life. That list does not assume that people are morally perfect or perfectible, but instead articulates common aspirations for ourselves, others, and society.

How do we explain the fact that most people’s stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of equality, solidarity, and the inherent dignity of all people, yet we allow violence, exploitation, and oppression to flourish? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, those who engage in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and without a capacity for empathy. In my experience, the most common way in which people make their peace with that contradiction is to accept the claim that hierarchy and injustice are inevitable, and that the best we can do is try to smooth off the rough edges of such systems. The process can be summed up like this:

--The systems and structures in which we live are hierarchical.
--Hierarchical systems and structures deliver to those in the dominant class certain privileges, pleasures, and material benefits.
--People are typically hesitant to give up such privileges, pleasures, and benefits.
--But, those benefits clearly come at the expense of those in the subordinated class.
--Given the widespread acceptance of basic notions of dignity, solidarity, and equality, the existence of hierarchy has to be justified in some way other than crass self-interest.
--One of the most persuasive arguments for systems of domination and subordination is that they are “natural.”

So, oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchy -- and the disparity in power and resources that flow from hierarchy -- is natural and, therefore, beyond modification. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. If men are naturally stronger and more capable of leadership than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If rich people are naturally clearer-thinking and harder-working than poor people, then economic inequality is inevitable and justifiable. If the strong are, well, stronger than the weak, then the strong will rule.

As John Stuart Mill noted in his argument for women’s rights, “[W]as there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?”  For unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them, maintaining their naturalness is essential. Not surprisingly, people in the dominant class exercising the power gravitate easily to such a view. And because of their power to control key intellectual institutions (especially education and mass communication), those in the dominant class can fashion a story about the world that leads some portion of the people in the subordinated class to internalize the ideology. A social order that violates almost everyone’s basic principles is transformed into a natural order that cannot be changed.

Rationalization #2: Celebrating Technology

Facing the ecological realities is even more overwhelming. People once spoke of “environmental problems” that seemed limited and manageable, but now the questions are about whether a large-scale human presence on the planet will be viable within the foreseeable future. An honest assessment of the state of the ecosphere is frightening, and it is easier to believe that the world’s systems can magically continue rather than thinking about how radical changes in those systems are necessary -- and how even with such radical changes there is no guarantee that we can avoid catastrophe.

That frightening possibility is why the culture in general, and intellectuals in particular, are quick to embrace technological fundamentalism, a form of magical thinking that promises a way out of the problems that the extractive/industrial economy has created. Technological fundamentalists believe that the increasing use of evermore sophisticated high-energy advanced technology is always a good thing and that any problems caused by the unintended consequences of such technology eventually can be remedied by more technology. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is “geo-engineering,” the belief that we can intervene at the planetary level in the climate system to deal effectively with global warming. Given massive human failure at much lower levels of intervention, this approach -- which “offers the tantalizing promise of a climate change fix that would allow us to continue our resource-exhausting way of life, indefinitely”  -- is, quite literally, insane.

Those who question such “solutions” are often said to be anti-technology, which is a meaningless insult. All human beings use technology of some kind, whether stone tools or computers. An anti-fundamentalist position does not assert that all technology is bad, but that the introduction of new technology should be evaluated carefully on the basis of its effects -- predictable and unpredictable -- on human communities and the non-human world, with an understanding of the limits of our knowledge. We have moved too far and too fast, outstripping our capacity to manage the world we have created. The answer is not some naïve return to a romanticized past, but a recognition of what we have created and a systematic evaluation to determine how to recover from our most dangerous missteps.

But the technological fundamentalists see no reason to consider such things. They have faith in human cleverness. The title of a recent book by an environmentalist -- The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans  -- sums it up: Technological fundamentalists believe humans can play God and control an infinitely complex universe with enough competence to save not only ourselves but the planet. There’s nothing new about that arrogance. In 1968, Stewart Brand began the Whole Earth Catalog with that famous line, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”  Four decades later, with the evidence of human failure piling up, Brand remained the loyal technological fundamentalist, arguing that his suggestion had become an imperative: “We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it.”

Our experience with the unintended consequences of modern technology is fairly extensive. For example, there’s the case of automobiles and the burning of petroleum in internal-combustion engines, which give us the ability to travel considerable distances with a fair amount of individual autonomy. This technology also has given us traffic jams and road rage, strip malls and smog, while contributing to rapid climate change that threatens sustainable life on the planet. We haven’t quite figured out how to cope with these problems, and in retrospect it might have been wise to go slower in the development of a system geared toward private, individual transportation based on the car and spend more time considering potential consequences.

Or how about CFCs and the ozone hole? Chlorofluorocarbons have a variety of industrial, commercial, and household applications, including in air conditioning. They were thought to be a miracle chemical when introduced in the 1930s -- non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-reactive with other chemical compounds. But in the 1980s, researchers began to understand that while CFCs are stable in the troposphere, when they move to the stratosphere and are broken down by strong ultraviolet light they release chlorine atoms that deplete the ozone layer. This unintended effect deflated the exuberance a bit. Depletion of the ozone layer means that more UV radiation reaches the Earth’s surface, and overexposure to UV radiation is a cause of skin cancer, cataracts, and immune suppression.

But wait, the technological fundamentalists might argue, our experience with CFCs refutes your argument -- humans got a handle on that one and banned CFCs, and now the ozone hole is closing. These gases, which were once commonly used in air-conditioning, were regulated in 1987 through the Montreal Protocol, which has reduced damage to the ozone layer. The oldest and most damaging CFC coolants have been largely eliminated from use, and the newer hydrochlorofluorocarbons that are now widely used have little or no effect on the ozone layer. That’s all true, but unfortunately we now know that the HCFC gases contribute to global warming. Scientists estimate that up to a quarter of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050, so that “the therapy to cure one global environmental disaster is now seeding another.”

So the reasonable question is: If the dangerous HCFCs that replaced the dangerous CFCs are replaced by a new chemical that appears harmless, how long will it take before the dangerous effects of that replacement become visible? There’s no way to predict, but it seems reasonable to ask the question. Society didn’t react to the news about CFCs or HCFCs by thinking about ways to step back from a developed world that has become dependent on air conditioning, but instead continues to search for replacements to keep the air conditioning running.

Intellectuals are in the business of assessing problems and offering solutions. Technological fundamentalism allows intellectuals to offer solutions that don’t threaten existing institutions and don’t make demands on society in general, which allows intellectuals to retain their status and level of comfort, at least in the short term. The obvious problem is that if we look only for “solutions” that don’t disturb existing systems, and those existing systems are unsustainable, then our solutions are at best irrelevant and at worst will exacerbate the fundamental problems and make it harder for people to imagine new systems.

This is not an argument to abandon all attempts to improve technology, stop exploring ways technology can contribute to a healthier planet, or halt research on renewable energy. A sensible approach to our cascading ecological crises is to pursue multiple strategies that mitigate the worst of what exists today while planning for a radically different tomorrow. Technological fundamentalism is dangerous because it encourages us to focus on the former and ignore the latter.

The problem, succinctly stated: When intellectuals limit themselves to inquiry that stays safely within existing systems, they are being unrealistic. That claim turns the tables on establishment intellectuals, who routinely criticize more radical colleagues for not being realistic. But imagine that you are riding comfortably on a train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train should stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone’s way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to guarantee catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, “Everybody likes riding the train, and so telling us to get off is not realistic.”

In the contemporary United States, we are trapped in a similar delusion. We are told that it is “realistic” to capitulate to the absurd idea that the systems in which we live are the only systems possible because some people like them and wish them to continue. But what if our current level of First-World consumption is exhausting the ecological basis for life? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that take that lifestyle as non-negotiable. What if real democracy is not possible in a nation-state with 300 million people? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that take this way of organizing a polity as immutable. What if the hierarchies on which our lives are based are producing extreme material deprivation for subordinated people and a kind of dull misery among the privileged? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that accept hierarchy as inevitable.

The ultimate test of our intellectual abilities is whether we can face the possibility that there may be no way out of these traps and yet continue to work for a more just and sustainable world (more on that later). That is not easy, but to be a responsible intellectual is to be willing to get apocalyptic, and the first step in that process is to give up on the myth of neutrality. Intellectuals shouldn’t claim to be neutral, and the public shouldn’t take such claims seriously.

-----------------

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is also the author of Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue, http://www.amazon.com/Arguing-Our-Lives-Constructive-Dialog/dp/0872865738/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361912779&sr=1-10.
Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html. Twitter: @jensenrobertw.

Maps from Around the World

On any given day, could you say where the most photographs where being snapped around the world?
http://www.visualnews.com/2012/01/04/a-flashy-year-of-snapshots-around-the-world/?utm_source=VisualNews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12e8d5d713-RSS_EMAIL

It would be hard to say, except with this new visualization. Using data from around the web, including a healthy dose of imagery from flickr, Triposo has put together a world map that literally flickers with photographic activity. Different countries light up according to their most significant holidays, events and seasons.

Problems with Coca Cola

Killer Coke:  http://killercoke.org/

Columbia:  http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/colombia0106/

Daddy and Papa

We created DADDY AND PAPA, our multiple award-winning PBS film, to inspire complex and engaged discussion about the daily lives, challenges and triumphs of gay dads and their kids. So as the new session of Congress begins and the debate over DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) heats up, we had to wonder, what will be the effects on children of LGBT couples if same sex marriages are federally recognized? A federal audit revealed approximately 1100 federal benefits of marriage, many of which relate to parenting, including joint parenting rights, joint adoption, status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions, divorce protections such as child support and visitation, immigration and residency for partners from other countries and inheritance and wrongful death benefits.

A documentary exploring the personal, cultural and political impact of gay men who are making a decision that is at once traditional and revolutionary: to raise children themselves. Taking us inside four gay male families, "Daddy & Papa" traces the critical issues that inevitably intersect with their lives. As fathers, these men must take on numerous challengers: from conservatives to the gay community.

Whitewashing Films

Commentary on the film Lucy staring Scarlett Johansson.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/lucy-why-im-tired-of-seei_b_5627318.html

Here's a clip:
I can't accept that. I can't accept that there was only one black woman in the entire film, who delivered one line and who we never saw again. I can't accept that the bad guys were Asian and that although in China, Lucy's roommate says, "I mean, who speaks Chinese? I don't speak Chinese!" I can't accept that in Hercules, which I also saw this weekend, there were no people of color except for Dwayne Johnson himself and his mixed-race wife, whose skin was almost alabaster. I can't accept that she got maybe two lines and was then murdered. I can't accept that the "primitive tribe" in Hercules consisted of dark-haired men painted heavily, blackish green, to give their skin (head-to-toe) a darker appearance, so the audience could easily differentiate between good and bad guys by the white vs. dark skin. I can't accept that during the previews, Exodus: Gods and Kings, a story about Moses leading the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, where not a single person of color is represented, casts Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton to play Egyptians. I can't accept that in the preview for Kingsman: The Secret Service, which takes place in London, features a cast of white boys and not a single person of Indian descent, which make up the largest non-white ethnic group in London. I can't accept that in stories about the end of the world and the apocalypse, that somehow only white people survive. I can't accept that while my daily life is filled with black and brown women, they are completely absent, erased, when I look at a TV or movie screen.

Immigrant Children

Child Migrants Have Been Coming to America Alone Since Ellis Island
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/child-migrant-ellis-island-history
The Immigration Act of 1907 did indeed declare that unaccompanied children under 16 were not permitted to enter in the normal fashion. But it didn't send them packing, either. Instead, the act set up a system in which unaccompanied children—many of whom were orphans—were kept in detention awaiting a special inquiry with immigration inspectors to determine their fate. At these hearings, local missionaries, synagogues, immigrant aid societies, and private citizens would often step in and offer to take guardianship of the child.

Other children journeyed to Ellis Island alone because they had lost their parents, often to war or famine, and had been sponsored by immigrant aid societies and other charities in America.

And of course, many of those kids grew up to work tough jobs, start new businesses and create new jobs, and pass significant amounts of wealth down to some of the very folks clamoring to "send 'em back" today.

Watch: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's Emotional Speech on Child Migrants

"This good nation is great when we open our doors and our hearts to aiding children and diminished when we don't"

10 Things You Should Know About Hate Groups

Hate groups range in ideology from religious bigotry to anti-immigration, and from anti-LGBT to white supremacists and racist skinheads. Most hate groups are short-lived but some, like chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, are active for decades. The most violent are racist prison groups.

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/07/10-things-you-should-know-about-hate-groups-154712

Immigration

Great video about immigration facts.  http://www.upworthy.com/this-aint-no-ellis-island-the-top-5-immigration-myths?c=ufb1

Myth 1: "It's easy to gain legal status in the U.S." The reality is that it can take 20 years (largely due to backlogs!).
Myth 2: "Undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes." In 2010, they paid $10.6 billion in state and local taxes.
Myth 3: "Most new immigrants come from Latin America." Yeah, ummm ... no. And, no. And once again, no.
Myth 4: "DREAMers affect the U.S. economy negatively." More like they'd add $329 billion and 1.4 million jobs to the economy by 2030. (FYI, here's who DREAMers are.)
Myth 5: "Most immigrants are undocumented." In fact, two-thirds are documented.

An Important Mesage (and great song)

Every 30 seconds, someone somewhere in the world takes their own life.

Kids Can Change the World

Bio Fuel -

What's In A Name?

12 Typical Baby Names That Are Banned Around The World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/24/banned-baby-names_n_5134075.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

Click the link to read more tidbits like this one:
In Morocco, it’s no for the Sarah spelling, viewed as the Hebrew version, but yes for Sara, as that is the Arabic version: for the most part Arabic names must be used in Morocco—although a fee can be paid to use certain off-list names, such as Adam.

Sweatshops

Women's work" THEN (garment factories)…

And NOW (Rana Plaza, Bangladesh)…

QUESTIONS:

• What is "fair trade"?
• What laws were put into place to protect workers after Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire?
• Where are factories located now (there are NONE in the U.S.)?
• How much were people paid (or not paid) in the past and now?
• What is made at the Bangladesh factory (Gap jeans was a major company)?
• Which companies were involved in Bangladesh (Walmart wouldn't increase pay to 35 cents!)?
• What can YOU do?

(Nudity) A model's response - BUY AMERICAN
http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/03/topless-american-apparel-ad-goes-after-sweatshop-labor-nudity/

World War II Perspectives Lesson

TOUR OF WWII * focusing on multiple perspectives

KEYPOINTS:

• We need to consider all the possible multiple perspectives and actively seek them out.  Then we need to make choices and think about why we want to include or exclude particular perspectives and what that means to the topic and to our students.
• When books don’t exist, it is our job as activists to find additional resources (internet) in order to present “missing voices” until a suitable book exists.
  
• Teacher-created summaries can meet the need of a more inclusive story AND also make the topic accessible to children with language limits – e.g., teachers can adjust language, print size, and readability level, computers can read text to students.
• See the summary samples below.

BOOK EXAMPLES:

The Unbreakable Code – Sara Hoagland Hunter

Passage to Freedom:  The Sugihara Story – Ken Mochizuki

I Am An American – Jerry Stanley

So Far From the Sea – Eve Bunting

The Bracelet – Yoshiko Uchida & Joanna Yardley

Those Incredible Women of World War II – Karen Zeinert

The Invisible Thread: The Powerful Memoir of a Girl Consigned to a Concentration Camp by The U.S. Gov’t – Yoshiko Ushida

Aleutian Sparrow – Karen Hesse

The Tuskegee Airmen – Jaqueline Harris

Baseball Saved Us – Ken Mochizuki

Number the Stars – Lois Lowry

Anne Frank:  The Diary of a Young Girl  – Anne Frank

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs – Jon Scieszka (example of multiple perspectives)

WWII - Native Americans

Carl Gorman died in February, 1998, he was 90 and the oldest of the 400 Navajo code talkers.  He was the father of artist R.C. Gorman from Taos, N.M.  He spent much of WWII in the Pacific on his belly at the front lines, a radio rather than a rifle in his hands, just as other Navajo volunteers did, making sure that the Japanese code crackers, who broke the Army, Navy, and Air Corps. codes, would never learn anything from intercepted Marine radio messages. 

Navajo is a language without an alphabet and with such a complex, irregular syntax that in 1942 it was estimated that outside of the 50,000 Navajos, no more than 30 other people in the world had any knowledge of it, none of them Japanese.  It was a wonder that Mr. Gorman or any other Navajos still spoke Navajo at all in the face of a long and concerted Federal campaign to suppress Indian languages.  He had once been chained to an iron pipe for a week because he insisted on speaking his native tongue. 

When the Japanese figured out that Marine radio operators were speaking Navajo and tried to torture a captured Navajo soldier, unfamiliar with the code, into translating messages, he was as much in the unknown as his Japanese captors.  He could tell them that cay-da-gahi meant turtle, but he had no idea that turtle meant tank.  The Navajo code, which was never broken, was considered so valuable that code talkers were not allowed to talk about it until 1969.

Source:  The New York Times, Obituary 2/1/1998

 

WWII - African Americans - Tuskegee

Adhering to its own policies of racial segregation, the U.S. Army Air Force had only one facility for Basic and Advanced Flight Training for Black pilots and that was at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, near Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which existed only as a result of a lawsuit brought by an African American who was refused for pilot training because of his race.

The “Tuskegee Experiment” was expected to “prove” racial deficiencies in intelligence and concentration, yet the Tuskegee Institute graduated 926 African-American pilots.  The 332nd Fighter Group was comprised of the 99th, 100th, 301st, and 302nd Fighter Squadrons of the U.S. Army Air Corps.  The Red Tail Angels of the 332nd would end the war as the only fighter group in over 1,578 missions throughout Europe and North Africa to NEVER lose a bomber while escorting over 200 bombing missions.

American pilots were not expected to fly more than 50 missions or so before returning home, yet the Black American pilots - due of “lack of replacements” flew closer to 100 missions. They retuned home, the finest pilots in the U.S. and found themselves back in “Colored Only” lines.  In one case, more than a hundred Tuskegee Airmen Officers were arrested and court martialled for refusing to leave the segregated Officer’s Club at Freeman Field in Indiana.  Three years later (1948), President Truman officially desegregated the Armed Forces.

Sources:  http://www.grunts.net/afamerican/332ndfdg.html

http://www.world-wide-net.com/tuskegeeairmen/

WWII - Japanese Americans - Camps

As a result of the war with Japan, many people in he U.S. did not trust people of Japanese ancestry.  Even Japanese-Americans who were born in this country were mistakenly thought to be loyal to Japan.  On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible removal of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps.  More than two-thirds of those relocated under this order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty.  In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan, all of whom were White.

The definition of concentration camp is a place of confinement for political prisoners, which is what happened during WWII to Japanese Americans. To not use this language maintains the mythology that the U.S. has never had these types of prisons (and maintains the ideology that the U.S. is better than many other countries).  In addition, the term concentration camp is the one that was used by U.S. officials, including FDR, at the time.  The government quickly changed its *public* language in order to make the camps more acceptable. Roger Daniels (in his book "Japanese Americans: From relocation to redress") states, "internment is a well defined legal process by which enemy nationals are placed in confinement in times of war."  As he notes, the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and non-U.S. citizens immediately after Pearl Harbor was internment.  The imprisonment of almost 100,000 U.S. citizens because of how they looked and a more powerful group’s desire for economic gain does not fit the definition of internment. (Information in this paragraph from: Karen L. Suyemoto, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts - Boston)

On August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that provided a Presidential apology and symbolic payment of $20,000 to the internees, evacuees, and persons of Japanese ancestry who lost liberty or property because of discriminatory action by the Federal government during WWII. 

Sources:

http://www.lib.Utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/9066.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/kidspage/crt/redress.htm

WWII - Japanese Americans - Soldiers

The 100th Infantry battalion of Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-Americans) volunteers was formed in May, 1942.  By September, 1943, they were sent to Italy where they saw fierce combat and came to be known as the “Purple Heart Battalion” because of their high casualty rate.

Due to the stunning success of Nisei in combat, the draft was reinstated in January, 1944 for Nisei in the detention camps to bolster the ranks of the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team.  The 100/442nd became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service.  There were over 18,000 individual decorations for bravery, 9,500 Purple Hearts, and seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations.

It was the 100/442nd that liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

Source:  www.nikkeiheritage.org/research/442html

WWII - African Americans - Overseas

Like other Allied forces that landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, they faced the German enemy on the beach in front of them. Their role on D-Day isn't well-known. One black face appears briefly in the movie "The Longest Day"; none is seen in "Saving Private Ryan." Most histories of the climactic assault on Normandy also fail to notice that black soldiers were there.

In fact, blacks were among the assault troops that June 6, and one unit was responsible for maintaining barrage balloons over the beachhead that protected troops landing.

The Stars and Stripes newspaper in 1944 reported that the unit suffered casualties setting up the balloons, which were floated across the English Channel on invasion day. Army photographers recorded black troops in operations liberating French villages around the beaches, and stories of the time cited black troops who were awarded medals for bravery and meritorious duty.

The exact number of blacks involved in the D-Day landings is unknown, as is the number of casualties. He estimates that from 1,500 to 2,000 of the 57,000 troops involved were black. The Army didn't record racial or ethnic differences when counting the dead.

Sources: 

startribune.com

Remembering Role of Black GIs on June 6, 1944 by Lance Gay

Scripps Howard News Service, Published May 30, 2004

  

WWII - Mexican Americans - Bracero

On August 4, 1942, the U.S. and the Mexican governments instituted the Bracero program.  Thousands of impoverished Mexican farm workers abandoned their rural communities and headed north to the southwestern part of the U.S. to work the fields once harvested by Americans who were off to war.  The Bracero could return to their native lands in case of an emergency, only with written permission from their boss.  When their contract expired, the Bracero were required to turn in their permits and return to Mexico.   The Bracero suffered harassment and oppression from extremist groups and racist authorities.

The Bracero were a very experienced farm labor who became the foundation for the development of North American agriculture.  The program under which more than three million Mexicans entered the U.S. to labor in the agricultural fields ended in 1964.

Source:  http://www.farmworker.org/bracerop.html

WWII - American Women - Soldiers & Nurses

An average female clerical salary was only $850 per year, few could afford the $750 required for obtaining a pilot’s license, unless they had family backing. Over 25,000 women applied to be WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilot), yet only 1,839 of that number were accepted and only 1,074 received their silver wings.  Although all of those applying had some previous flight training and many were already licensed pilots, few survived the rigorous screening and training standard set up for the WASP.

WASPs flew U.S. military aircraft during WWII in a special program designed to free male pilots for overseas duty.  Female pilots utilized their skills to transport new war birds from the factories to needed airfields.  With the enormous losses of male aviators, there were now more planes available than pilots to fly them, especially for ferrying duties.  These women often transported top secret documents, including parts for assembling the world’s first atomic bomb.  They offered both basic and instrument instruction to men and even flew highly classified experimental aircraft such as the first jets. 

Many female pilots were mistaken for mail carriers, flight attendants, boat captains, doormen, and even as members of another country's military because uniformed women soldiers were so rare.

Women were also military nurses.  With a nudge from Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy began authorizing a Women’s Naval Reserve and the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.  These women were WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services).  The WAAC (Women’s Army auxiliary Corps) was changed to the WAC establishing it as part of the Army and not an auxiliary by a second bill in July of 1943, signed by President Roosevelt. 

In July of 1944, WACs landed on the beach at Normandy.  There were over one hundred thousand women in uniform at this point in time.

Sources: 

http://www.womenofcourage.com/guide.htm

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets5.html

WWII - Mexican Americans - Soldiers

On March 14, 1944, President Roosevelt agreed to accept the participation of one or two Mexican air squadrons.  This event marked the first time the Mexican troops were trained for combat.  

Although only in the Philippines for six months, the squadron actively participated in 59 combat missions totaling over 1,290 hours of flight.  They successfully participated in the Allied effort to bomb Luzon and Formosa in an attempt to push the Japanese out of the islands.  Assigned to the 58th Fighter group of the U.S. 5th Air Force, the “Aztec Eagles” were also used as ground support after the aerial threat from Japan weakened.

Source:  http://www.utexas.edu/projects/latinoarchives/narratives/vol1no2/ESCUADRON_201/ESCUADRON_201.HTML

WWII - American Women - “Production Soldiers”

In July 1941, the American Red Cross called upon “every woman and girl in Huntsville and Madison County, Alabama who knits, crochets, or sews“ to cooperate in meeting the deadline for completing the area’s assigned quota of sewing.  In addition to sewing and winding bandages, the female inhabitants were active participants in the civilian defense effort.

In April 1942, the University of Alabama offered a course in chemical laboratory techniques for-women-only; those who desired to qualify for jobs in defense laboratories.  While many male factory workers went to war, at the Huntsville Arsenal, black and white men did the heavy work, while white females were employed for production work.  No demand was made for large numbers of black females until the local labor market was exhausted of white females.

Pay was not equal.  For examples, men who worked in mustard gas production were paid $5.76 daily, while women were paid $4.40.  The principle of “equal pay for equal work,” adopted by the War Labor Board in 1942 was subsequently implemented at arsenals as part of the basic War Department philosophy of wage administration.  Even lingering doubts about the suitability of hiring black women for defense work were soon overridden by the pressing need to meet production demand.

The movement toward all female work crews was a gradual one, particularly in those areas where women had never been assigned duty.  But by 1943, a women supervisor and her “all female crew of 15” had acquired the reputation for being “one of the most efficient crews at the arsenal.”  By May 1944, Huntsville peaked in employing 6,707 men and women, 63% male (11% were black, 52% white) and 37% female (11% were black, 26% white)

Redstone Arsenal implemented its first reduction in force in June 1945, when about 200 employees were terminated, mostly black women.  By October, the number of female production employees was reduced to zero.  Huntsville Arsenal placed 500 operations employees, almost all women, on a 90 day furlough in August 1945, then continued a layoff through September. The reason given for this decision was based on the belief that women were “not suited for transfer to the heavy work.”

Source:  http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/women/welcome.html

WWII - Jewish Experience in Germany

The beginning of the Second World War brought millions of non-German Jews under German rule, mostly in Poland. But still no clear concept existed about what to do with them. In Poland the SS often forced Jews to live in ghettos, most prominently in Warsaw and Kracow, and resettled them in big cities or along railroad lines. The official policy was still expulsion and exclusion from the rest of society, not extermination, but shootings occurred, and living conditions in the ghettos were so terrible as to produce a high mortality.

But in the fall of 1941 the SS constructed death factories with gas chambers. A Europe-wide extermination program started. In the following three years the remaining Jews from Germany and all occupied countries were rounded up, put into freight trains, and driven across Europe to the death camps in Poland, most notably Auschwitz, Maidanek, and Treblinka. There the survivors of the transports were led to a ramp on which Nazi doctors separated the most fit and sent them to the work camps right next to the extermination camps. The others were led into windowless chambers. After they had undressed (presumably to take a shower), gas dropped in from the ceiling and killed them within minutes. Most of those who had to work did not survive either.

Besides Jews, the "death factories" also killed opponents of the regime (German and non-German), Gypsies, Russian prisoners of war, and many other innocent people. The gruesome mass murder intensified toward the end of the war, as Hitler believed that the extermination of the Jews would be his lasting "achievement" in history and that future generations would be grateful. The Holocaust claimed roughly six million Jewish victims. Around five million other people were killed as well, including between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war, many gypsies, German resisters, communists, homosexuals, and other groups. The death machinery worked as long as German troops held Poland. When the Russians advanced in late 1944, the SS destroyed the death camps and the relating documents (making the task of historians to establish exact numbers and procedures more difficult).

Sources: 

http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyE4.html

http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/Holocaust.html

WWII - Aleut Internment

In response to Japanese aggression in the Aleutians, U.S. authorities evacuated 881 Aleuts from nine villages. They were herded from their homes onto cramped transport ships, most allowed only a single suitcase. Heartbroken, Atka villagers watched as U.S. servicemen set their homes and church afire so they would not fall into Japanese hands. 

The Aleuts were transported to Southeast Alaska and there crowded into "duration villages": abandoned canneries, a herring saltery, and gold mine camp-rotting facilities with no plumbing, electricity or toilets. The Aleuts lacked warm winter clothes, and camp food was poor, the water tainted. For two years they would remain in these dark places, struggling to survive. Illness of one form or another struck all the evacuees, but medical care was often nonexistent, and the authorities were dismissive of the Aleuts' complaints. Pneumonia and tuberculosis took the very young and the old. With the death of the elders so, too, passed their knowledge of traditional Aleut ways.

Despite their poor treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, twenty-five Aleut men joined the Armed Forces. Three took part in the U.S. invasion of Attu Island, and all were awarded the Bronze Star.

The Attuans suffered severe deprivation during the war. For three years, they were imprisoned in the city of Otaru on Hokkaido Island, subsisting almost soley on rice. What the war had not done, a stroke of the pen had accomplished – four communities had met with extinction. Those villagers allowed to reoccupy their homes found them ravaged by the weather and vandalized by U.S. servicemen, the windows smashed, doors and furniture gone. Worse still was the theft of religious icons and subsistence equipment – boats and rifles. Some Aleut worked until their hands bled to repair the damage that had been done, but it would take years to recover, to fashion new communities and a new order for themselves. Politicized by their stay in the camps, the Aleut began the long battle for restitution. The evacuation had taken place for humanitarian reasons, but racism too had played a role in their abrupt evacuation and poor treatment in the camps.

It would be forty years until restitution would be made, but on August 10, 1988 Public Law 100-383 was signed calling for financial compensation and apology from Congress and the President in behalf of the American people.

Source:  http://www.nps.gov/aleu/ForKids.htm

WWII - Gay/Lesbian Experience

The history of the pink triangle begins before WWII, during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Paragraph 175, a clause in German law prohibiting homosexual relations, was revised by Hitler in 1935 to include kissing, embracing, and gay fantasies as well as sexual acts. Convicted offenders -- an estimated 25000 just from 1937 to 1939 -- were sent to prison and then later to concentration camps. Their sentence was to be sterilized, and this was most often accomplished by castration. In 1942 Hitler's punishment for homosexuality was extended to death.

Each prisoner in the concentration camps wore a colored inverted triangle to designate their reason for incarceration, and hence the designation also served to form a sort of social hierarchy among the prisoners. A green triangle marked its wearer as a regular criminal; a red triangle denoted a political prisoner. Two yellow triangles overlapped to form a Star of David designated a Jewish prisoner. The pink triangle was for homosexuals. A yellow Star of David under a superimposed pink triangle marked the lowest of all prisoners -- a gay Jew.

Although homosexual prisoners reportedly were not shipped en masse to the death camps at Auschwitz, a great number of gay men were among the non-Jews who were killed there. Estimates of the number of gay men killed during the Nazi regime range from 50,000 to twice that figure. When the war was finally over, countless many homosexuals remained prisoners in the camps, because Paragraph 175 remained law in West Germany until its repeal in 1969.

In the 1970's, gay liberation groups resurrected the pink triangle as a popular symbol for the gay rights movement. In the 1980's, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) began using the pink triangle for their cause. They inverted the symbol, making it point up, to signify an active fight back rather than a passive resignation to fate.

One additional note:  Alan Turing was a gay mathematician and THE founding father of computer science who was instrumental in the British war effort during World War II. After the war, he was convicted of having homosexual sex and forced to undergo drug and hormone treatments.

Source:  http://www.wright-counseling.com/Safezone/safezonesymbols.htm