Michael Maly’s Different Take on Diversity and Integration

Michael Maly profiles three multiethnic neighborhoods in Beyond Segregation.

 

Stories about race and diversity in America generally follow one of two scripts these days.

There is the ‘post-racial’ take. 

This view points to the election of President Obama, who is at once an African American, racially mixed and the son of an immigrant, and says that race no longer matters the way that it previously did.  The election of Obama in a country whose constitution enshrined slavery is a milestone and an indicator that old divisons no longer hold the same power as they once did.

On the other side, there are people who insist on the barriers to full and unfettered participation in mainstream life that continue to exist for many people of color.  

Advocates of this perspective cite the enduring segregation of American cities like Chicago, where the infusion of more than 750,000 Latinos during the past 50 years has not made a significant dent on the city’s residential separation by race.  While unquestionably a milestone, Obama’s election should not be a reason to drop the ongoing struggle for justice and inclusion.

Roosevelt University Sociology professor Michael Maly has a third view that he elaborates on in Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States.

Maly studied the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago, the Jackson Heights community in New York City and the Fruitvale-San Antonio area of Oakland. 

Maly places his analysis of these neighborhoods within the context of gradually lessening levels of segregation nationally. 

He makes it clear both that he considers these developments to be positive-he writes in the introduction that “racially integrated neighborhoods provide the type of interracial contact that can reduce prejudicial attitudes”-and that these neighborhoods can contribute to reducing the overall levels of segregation.

In many ways, the key is housing. 

Maly takes the reader through a brief history of residential policy in America, discussing both the efforts at keeping races separate-in Chicago, this took the form of restrictive covenants that formed a backdrop for Walter Younger’s character-defining decision in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun-and the different ways in which diversity has happened in neighborhoods.

In some communities, like Oak Park, a suburb just west of Chicago, the diversity has happened through consciously inclusive policies designed and implemented by people concerned with reaching higher levels of integration.

But, in other cases like the ones Maly studied intensively during the late 1990s, the diversity happened more by circumstance.

Uptown, Jackson Heights and Fruitvale share other broad similarities.

Each area is richly diverse on many levels: income; race; ethnicity; and sexual orientation are just several of the indicators.  

Each community has distinct geographies and quirks to their development-Uptown had a large number of mentally ill people because of a number of facilities there, for example, while Jackson Heights has comparatively few black people because of the city’s historic practices of discrimination against black people.  Immigration plays a significant role in each community.

And each neighborhood has both a cadre of people for whom its diversity is an asset they would like to retain as well as some people like real estate developers would make the area less so.

Maly devotes a chapter to each community’s development, specific character and challenges before concluding with some general thoughts about the importance of, and difficulties in, maintaining diverse neighborhoods. 

Each chapter begins with a residential testimony that illuminates the chapter’s broader themes.  Each chapter includes a map that illustrates the area’s geography, supplies information about the people living in different parts of the community and places the neighborhood within the larger context of the city.

Maly strikes an effective balance between similarity and difference in his discussion of the different neighborhoods.  He also shows how issues of housing policy and participation  in community groups and can take on larger dimensions.

While the Uptown community is grappling with development pressures and the residents of Fruitvale had animated discussions about business signage for the neighborhood’s emerging commercial area, Maly shows that both neighborhoods are having the same conversation about community composition and future direction.

In his conclusion, Maly writes that integration offers “the possibility of a more inclusive, tolerant and even multicultural society … The challenge for community leaders and policy makers is to find ways to reduce polarization and generate greater recognition of the value of integrated spaces.”

Beyond Segregation has a number of positive aspects.  For a converted dissertation, the book is remarkably accessible, clearly written and largely jargon free.  Maly’s analysis of three neighborhoods throughout the country, including two of America’s largest cities, gives the book a national, rather than local scope. 

Maly’s description of how neighborhoods essentially became diverse through an organic process more because residents were seeking affordable housing than because they were looking for a multiethnic area is particularly effective.  I also liked his point that the number of people in those type of neighborhoods is greater than those living in neighborhoods that are diverse by design.  He also demonstrates clearly that, at some point for a number of residents, that diversity becomes a feature of the community and something worth fighting for in the face of challenges to that diversity. 

Finally, his discussion of the most recent wave of immigration’s impact on the current and future character of neighborhoods is helpful, if not unique. On a basic level, Maly’s work pushes the reader to break through traditional ways of thinking about segregation and to deal with a new and growing set of urban communities that challenge previous assessments about segregation’s workings and deconstruction.

And yet, as useful as Maly’s work is, it does have some limitations. 

How neighborhoods maintain their diverse character in the face of development challenges is not particularly well explained, and Uptown has indeed become less diverse during the past decade as condo conversions have risen and the newer residents have become more white and more professional compared with those who lived before.   

The pace of the growth of these neighborhoods compared with the enduring segregation of America’s cities bears noting, too.  

More basically, though, as effective as Maly’s work was, it did not completely convince me that these three neighborhoods represent a new wave of urban neighborhoods. 

Rather, his description reminded me of books I have read about German resistance during the Hitler era or works that talk about moves toward inclusiveness that the Catholic Church could have taken during earlier periods of its history. 

While important to note in their own right and because they give the lie to the idea of history’s inevitably and people’s powerlessness, these examples to me often demonstrate the larger direction the institution ultimately took.

Still, the wave of immigration continues in America’s cities and suburbs, Obama did win and Uptown still is by far one of the city’s three most diverse communities. 

Beyond Segregation is worth reading to get a bead on a little- chronicled aspect of some American cities and what it may bode for our country’s future.

More on Charles Payne’s School Reform Analysis

Charles Payne's latest work tackles the challenges of school reform.

I know I mentioned this book in yesterday’s post about a potential reading list for new Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman, and I wanted to spend some time today talking about Charles Payne’s book, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.

I want to do so for several reasons.

To begin, it gives me a chance to mention one of Payne’s previous books, I’ve Got The Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.  This is an absolute gem of a book that should be very high up on any list of books about the civil rights era.  I’ll give a lengthier discussion of that work next month, when I’ll focus on books related to black history.

Second, and perhaps more relevant, So Much Reform deserves more space because of the richness of its contents, its balance of guarded optimism and bracing honesty, and its honesty in the final chapter.

Payne’s concern for, and commitment to, the children in urban schools anchors the work.   While he does acknowledge some positive movement during the past 30 years, he also talks about the stubborn persistence of low-performing schools that thus far have eluded reform efforts and are populated disproportionately by people of color.

Unfortunately, this is hardly earth-shattering news.  Still, Payne deserves credit for showing how even well-intended reforms have often had little effect because they have not been a smooth fit with students’ and teachers’ lived realities.

While unquestionably a child-centered and progessively-oriented educator, Payne does not shy away from taking on both liberals and conversatives for their misguided suppositions. 

Indeed, one of my favorite parts of the book comes toward the end, in a section called, The Dance of Ideology. In this part, Payne lists the “Holy Postulates” of the left-items like “Thou Shalt Never Criticize The Poor,” “The Only Pedagogy is Progressive Pedagogy and Thou Shalt Have No Other Pedagogy Before It,” and “Test Scores Don’t Mean Thing” are all there. 

This is followed by a parallel list for the right, on which statements like, “Money Doesn’t Matter,” “It Only Counts If It Can Be Counted,” and “The Path of Business Is The True Path” all make an appearance.

As someone who spent 15 years as a full time educator, during which time I occasionally espoused items from the first list while railing against the thinking behind the second, I had to smile ruefully at seeing my youthful convictions articulated so clearly and with such biblical overtones to boot.

Payne’s analysis of the impact of school climate on the interrelated teacher expectations and student peformance is insightful, as is the section when he talks about different types of bureaucratic structure. 

Here he makes the point how urban schools headed by harried and overworked principals often pervert Max Weber’s definition of bureaucracy as a rational organization, instead creating irrational and arbitrary work places that ultimately do not serve their charges well.  

In typical fairminded fashion, Payne does not demonize school leaders, but rather spends time showing the pressures they experience while still emphasizing the negative consequences for children.

A third noteworthy aspect of the book is the range of its contents.  Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘If’,about the trials of manhood, makes an appearance (Payne learned this poem from his father, who would gather with other black men who were childhood friends.).  But so does a quote by the late Guayanese historian Walter Rodney, who wrote about the ills of imperialism embodied in Kipling’s injunction, “Take up the White Man’s Burden.” 

Readers are as likely to encounter a statement by teachers’ union leader Reg Weaver as a quote by British novelist G.K. Chesterton, as likely to read a school reformer’s code of school conduct as a nugget expressed by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Not only are these quotes engaging in their own right, but, taken in concert, these at times seeming disparate thoughts also suggest a model of education in which meaningful connections are drawn and in which no subject is beyond comprehension or off limits. 

This sense of education as a process whereby an organic, unpredictable yet expanding and forward-moving body of knowledge  develops seems to be at the heart of what Payne wishes for all children.  

That they do not have access to this type of education is immoral;  to explain these barriers and pose someideas about how to change them is the focus of Payne’s work.

As with many social ills, diagnosing the problem can be far more straightforward than proposing workable and enduring solutions.

If So Much Reform can be faulted on any account, it would be on this one. 

Payne’s descriptions of different types of bureaucracy and the characteristics of schools where effective implementation of reform occur are helpful, for example, but, as always with the issues, the question of how to bring about and sustain these changes is much less clearly explained. 

In addition,  Payne’s near wholesale endorsements throughout the book of work generated by the Consortium on Chicago School Research seem to suggest that he has cast his generally critical eye less closely on that organization’s work than others. 

To be fair, Payne himself directly addresses about the absence of clear solutions to the at times seemingly intractable problems of school reform.

After recounting briefly his family’s educational history and writing about legendary black educator William Moore, Payne offers the following concluding thoughts:

“At first glance, the issues of contemporary urban education seem far removed from the world of William Moore and his children. I’m not sure that’s really true, though.  The search for prescriptions can be dangerous if we let it, but I don’t know that all our work has given us a better model for educating children from the social margins than William Moore seems to have had in 1895. Give them teaching that is determined, energetic, and engaging.  Hold them to high standards.  Expose them to as much as you can, especially the arts …

“Recognize the reality of race, poverty, and other social barriers, but make children understand that barriers don’t have to limit their lives; help them see themselves as contributing citizens of both a racial community and a larger one.  Above all, no matter where in the social structure children are coming from, act as if their possibilities are boundless.”

Based in his considerable humility, Payne’s words appear to encapsulate several of his core beliefs: the honoring  of traditions of educational excellence within the community; an acknowledgment of the reality of race and other barriers that impact, but need not determine, children’s futures;  and an intertwined belief in a broader social community and commitment to a common humanity expressed through the arts. 

These stirring thoughts conclude an intriguing book.

Ron Huberman would do well to study them and Payne’s work  as he moves forward in his new job-the top position in an area of staggering need with vital consequences, and in which he has no previous experience.

R.I.P., John Updike

A young John Updike in 1955. The great author died yesterday at 76.

 

First order of business today: acknowledge the passing of John Updike. 

The two-time Pulitzer winner set a goal early in his career of writing a book a year, and kept the pace until his final days. 

He was amazingly versatile, writing literary and art criticism as well as short stories in The New Yorker for more than 50 years, creating memorable characters and series in his 23 novels, which included protagonists like Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, and also writing poetry and children’s books.  

I remember reading Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, about Red Sox slugger and icon Ted Williams’ final game atFenway Park, when I was a kid-the line “Gods do not answer letters” about Williams’ refusal to emerge from the dugout, even after hitting a home run in his final at bat, made a deep impression on me- and have read quite a few of his later New Yorker pieces. 

I have not read his novels, but will make a point of doing so now. 

Updike  was a giant in American letters and will be missed.

Ron Huberman’s Reading List

CTA President Ron Huberman is slated to become schools chief today; here are some reading suggestions for him.

In a surprising move, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley apparently is going to appoint Chicago Transit Authority President Ron Huberman to head the Chicago Public Schools today.

The 37-year-old Huberman, who has no education experience, will replace U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Huberman clearly will not be lacking for things to do in the upcoming days, weeks and months. 

Still, in order to familiarize himself with the field in general, and with inner-city education in Chicago in particular, he might consider reading the following:

1. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, by J. Anthony Lukas.  Set in Boston, this absolutely classic work traces the lives of three families-one Yankee, one Irish-American, and one black-during the decade that starts in 1968 with Dr. King’s assassination.  In addition to reading like a novel and emphasizing the importance of class, Common Ground has extensive sections on children’s education, the intersection of internal and external social forces, and the factors that promote or hinder achievement.

2. So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, by Charles Payne.  This recently released book by acclaimed historian Payne provides a ‘guardedly optimistic’ if sobering look at urban school reform during the past 30 years. 

Payne’s central contention is that school reform efforts often do not address the lived realities of students in the hardest to impact schools, and thus have little chance of truly helping those students reach their potential. Heavy in references to the work of the Consortium on Chicago School Research and Chicago Reporter sister publication Catalyst-Chicago, the book is stronger on diagnosing than solving the problem, but is a useful orientation to school reform efforts in Chicago as they relate to the national landscape. 

3.Maggie’s American Dream: The Life and Times of  A Black Family, by James Comer.  Yale psychiatrist Comer has developed a highly successful method of collective adult involvement in students’ lives to boost achievement and build community.  In this book, he tells the story of his mother Maggie, who helped inspire and form his vision.

4. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, by Jonathan Kozol.  This 2005 book returns to the subject of education, which Kozol first tackled 40 years ago in his National Book Award-winning Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, and offers a bleak assessment of the state of education nationally 50 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

5. Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing People’s Minds, by Howard Gardner.  The MacArthur Award-winning Gardner pioneered and developed the concept of multiple intelligences.  In this book he writes about how business leaders, politicians and advocates can go about changing public consensus. 

Gardner discusses seven levers to change and six realms in which they occur (Two are classrooms and diverse groups like a city or nation).   Although a bit vague on specifics, the book could be useful for Huberman to consider both in terms of his work within the schools and the public perception of him as having dubious qualifications for his job.

Impending Auschwitz Liberation Anniversary, Mommsen’s Analysis.

The entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where more than 1 million people were killed during World War II. Tomorrow marks 64 years since its liberation, and Hans Mommsen's book, From Weimar to Auschwitz, sheds light on the build up to the site of ultimate evil.

 

Tomorrow marks 64 years since the Russian Army liberated the few survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The view of the train tracks leading up to the red brick building that marked the entrance, the cynical sign on the iron gates with the words, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Brings Freedom,” the gas chambers where Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people, the chimnies that belched smoke from the crematoria, Dr. Josef Mengele making his selections and conducting experiments on human subjects are all images that have been seared into our collective consciousness.

My great-grandfather, Joseph Lowenstein, our family patriarch and the man for whom  I am named, was one of the victims. 

Since its liberation, Auschwitz has become a worldwide symbol of genocide, evil and hatred. 

It also has been the subject of many books, art and film.

Claude Lanzmann’s epic, nine-plus hour documentary film, Shoah, has shots of trains rumbling up to the camp’s front gates and interviews with survivor Rudolf Vrba.

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton wrote about the concept of ‘psyching doubling’ by which one creates a separate persona who commits unspeakable atrocities during the day and returns home as a loving father at night in The Nazi Doctors.

Italian chemist Primo Levi wrote about his struggle to make it through his time in the camp in Survival in Auschwitz, while Tadeusz Borowski made his experience there the subject of This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. 

Both men killed themselves. 

Poets like Charlotte Delbo have written about the place that many consider the symbol of ultimate evil. 

And Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, in his memoir Night, a large section of which focuses on his survival at Auschwitz, wrote the following, oft-quoted description:

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never”

With such a rich collection of sources, it’s hard to imagine an additional work adding much to our undersanding, but I recently read German historian Hans Mommsen’s From Weimar to Auschwitz: Essays in German History, published in 1991,  and felt that my knowledge and historical understanding expanded.

Mommsen’s collection of essays takes the reader from late 19th century German through the rise of the Nazis , their ascent to power, dismantling of the fledgling Weimar democracy and gradual move to genocide-a move that is most vividly embodied in Auschwitz.

For many, this is familiar territory, and Mommsen’s work is noteworthy in several regards.  To begin, he begins earlier than many accounts, which start with the Treaty of Versailles, the punitive pact that wrapped up “The War to End All Wars,” later known as World War I. 

From there, the analyses proceed in a chronological direction, with the hyper-inflation that peaked in November, 1923, Hitler’s beer hall putsch in Munich and subsequent nine-month incarceration, during which he dictated what became Mein Kampf, and the Nazi’s growth in popularity following the stock market crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression all playing significant parts.

Mommsen includes these elements, too, but in a much richer  and textured description of the German social and political context than one might find in books like Paul Bookbinder’s Weimar Germany: Republic of the Reasonable. 

In one chapter, Mommsen demonstrates convincingly the generational divide between the Social Democrats and the youth who eventually became a key Nazi constituency by showing the average of the Social Democratic leadership, for example. 

Indeed, Mommsen’s detailed look at internal Nazi party politics is an integral element one of the book’s most enduring contributions: an incisive look at the workings of the Nazi bureaucracy.

This issue has been the subject of intense debate among historians, who have generally fallen into one of two camps. 

The intentionalists, among them the late Lucy Dawidowicz, asserted that Hitler planned the genocide of the Jews from as early as the end of World War I-a 1918 document in which he talks about the need for rational antisemitism is an important one in this formulation-and spent the next 27 years working to carry out his evil plan.

The functionalists paint a different picture.  They talk about ‘the crooked road to Auschwitz,’ a path that was filled with dips and turns and possible directions not taken.  These historians emphasize how there was no central order from Hitler, talk about the conflicting factions within the upper levels of Nazi bureaucracy and note that the killing was carried out on the ground, and cite discussions in top Nazi circles of a forced emigration of Jews to Madagascar as far along as the late 30s for evidence to support their point.

Mommsen is one of the influential functionalists who stresses in his work both the chaotic workings of the Nazi bureaucracy and Hitler’s lack of day-to-day involvement in government action.   

Other historians like Yehuda Bauer have criticized the distinction between intentionalists and functionalists, arguing instead for a synthetic interpretation that includes both elements in the society’s ‘cumulative radicalization.  Bauer has also criticized Mommsen’s work as overstressing the continuity in values and action between the traditional German bureaucracy and the Nazi bureaucracy.  

Bauer’s critiques have some merit, and Mommsen’s contribution to the debate should not be ignored, nor should his courage as a German historian who has been raising these issues within German society for more than 40 years be ignored. 

Mommsen’s emphasis on intra-bureaucratic rivalry may be excessive, and his analysis’ leads to the debatable conclusion of a confluence of factors creating a nearly inevitable outcome.

Still, From Weimar to Auschwitz is a rich collection of essays that push against the idea of a people in the grip of a mad dictator and instead point toward the individuals who carried out transformative evil being accountable for their actions and being able to be judged as such.

With genocide continuing in Darfur and Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga going on trial today at the International Criminal Court for recruiting child soldiers he sent into battle, that’s a thought worth remembering, too.

Tribute to Kay Yow and the history of women’s basketball.

 

Kay Yow died yesterday after a valiant fight against cancer; a book about the history of women's basketball deepens the understanding of her life.

The game of basketball has one less legend today.

Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow  finally lost her more than 20-year battle with breast cancer.  The 66-year-old North Carolina native was one of the most accomplished coaches in women’s basketball history.

ESPN repeatedly showed her career highlights: the 737 career wins, which left her sixth on the all-time list; the 21 20-win seasons and 1998 Final Four appearance with the North Carolina State Wolfpack; and Olympic gold medals as a head and assistant coach in 1988 and 1984, respectively.

Yow was also hailed for the courageous way she battled cancer without complaint for more than two decades.  When Jim “Jimmy V” Valvano, the late former coach of the Wolfpack’s men’s team, first contracted cancer in 1992, he contacted Yow for guidance and support. 

In a highly emotional 2007 awards ceremony, Yow received the first Jimmy V ESPY Award after coaching her team to the Sweet 16 despite having the third and final recurrence of breast cancer. 

Yow’s grace, dignity and resolve in fighting and fund raising to combat the disease that ultimately claimed her life all received signifcant commentary in the tributes that issued forth after her death.

But none of them pointed out that in 1960, after a stellar high school career, despite a profound love of basketball, Yow quit the sport, as authors Pamela Grundyand  Susan Shackleford write, “Without a protest, without a whimper.”

Yow’s decision came from a lack of options and was typical of many women’s choices during that time.  Grundy and Shackleford trace the history of women’s basketball from the game’s inception in 1892 to the 21st century in Shattering The Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball, an informative and accessible book.

The book is aptly named. 

Scholars Grundy and Shackleford start at the game’s beginning, describing how  basketball initially was the province of elite women’s colleges like Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Smith was the institution my wife Dunreith attended while we were first dating, but that’s a story for another time! 

Unlike many sports books, though, Shattering the Glass is more than a sports history that in this case would be a service in itself for documenting the thousands of women who paved the road for modern day stars like Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley, who graces the book’s cover, and Diana Taurasi. 

In each of the book’s four sections, the authors talk about the broader social context in which the women lived and struggled to play.  

Grundy and Shackleford write in the introduction, “Battles for women’s sports have gone hand in hand with those for women’s rights. Both athletes and activists have worked to highlight women’s physical and mental abilities, to win women greater roles in public life and to push views of womanhood beyond fixed definitions of distinctly “feminine” appearance and behavior. 

While there has been progress, the authors note, it has not been linear.  Rather they compare the development of the women’s game to a basketball game itself, “a collection of shifting strategies and challenges, hot shooting streaks and scoreless slumps.”

One of the hotter periods comes during the 20s, 30s and 40s, when the women’s game rose in popularity and scope among high school students during the 20s, 30s and 40s. 

The game was particularly popular in in Midwestern states like Iowa, where the annual tournament provided an outlet for the hometown pride many felt in their female players.

Yet this period of comparative advancement was not universal. Grundy and Shackelford write about how America’s segregation at the time meant that black and white women, despite each having tremendous talent, did not compete against each other.

The post-World War II period also saw retrenchment as a cultural conservatism rose in America, leading to diminished options for women.  This era coincided directly with the late Yow’s graduation from high school mentioned earlier.

Fortunately, things did not stay static.  In the book’s final two parts, Grundy and Shackleford trace the ultimately successful push for Title IX and the emergence of the modern college and professional games.  

Staley, the 2004 Olympic flag bearer for the U.S. Olympic team who learned the game playing against boys in inner-city Philadelphia, offers a fitting summary when she talks about how far the game has come and how long it has to go.

Shattering The Glass has many strengths.

Throughout the book Grundy and Shackleford demonstrate the cultural and legal obstacles women have confronted in their efforts to play the game.  These barriers have ranged from unequal funding and worse facilities to continually pushing up against others’ definition that being athletic and muscular is by definition unfeminine.

They also show effectively how even today, while the woman’s game has gained a large amount of acceptance, lesbian players and coaches often feel compelled to downplay or even deny their sexual orientation.

I love basketball and considered myself relatively well informed about the game’s history, but learned about many athletes I had either heard about in different contexts, like the amazingly versatile Mildred ‘Babe’ Didrikson, or had never known about before, like Nera White, the first woman’s basketball player selected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.  

I also had not known that some of the game’s most accomplished coached, like C. Vivian Stringer, cheered, rather than played, basketball in high school during the 60s.  Similarly, I winced when reading after University of Maryland men’s basketball coach Charles “Lefty” Driesell, after many conversations with women’s coach Chris Weller, declare, “These girls are real serious.”

My only quibble is a minor one, and stems from the book tending more toward academic structure and language.  While Grundy and Shackleford capture the feel of the game in the different eras they discuss, the game descriptions they include to begin several chapters serve more as introduction to that section’s larger analytical point than a real rendering of the game’s action. 

On a related note, I would have liked to learn more about many of these fascinating women, but understood that the work was a survey that of necessity touched on, rather than explored in depth, many women’s contributions.

That said, Shattering The Glass is an important contribution to an all-too-often underexplored aspect of women’s basketball-its roots and continual struggle to survive and expand. 

Readers of the book are likely to gain an even deeper and richer appreciation of the late Kay Yow, her life’s work on and off the court and the legacy she leaves behind.

Stephanie Behne on another FDR biography

Stephanie Behne shares her thoughts about a new FDR biography.

Chicago Reporter intern, dedicated mother and wife, and emerging career changer Stephanie Behne posted the following in response to a recent post about President Obama and a biography about Franklin Delano Roosevelt by James MacGregor Burns  (Again, the added links are mine):

“I, too, am a little envious of your ability to feast on books. But I’m chomping on a good one now, the Brands biography of FDR you mentioned, Traitor to His Class. I’m just a little over halfway through, but there’s so much in the 430 something pages I read so far, I should mention a couple things while I still remember them!

Brands’ book is reminiscent of Burns, it sounds like, in showing FDR’s true talent as the consummate politician. Congenial, even charming, he not only won the average person over personally but had the ability to reach out and create a sense of understanding with his radio audience, too. A fine use of the technology of the times, really, to further his own political aims. But people responded to him in person, too, so is that so wrong? Politics and technology–sound like anybody we know today?

Another strategy that FDR used that stuck with me was when he’d put rivals together to work out issues, while he mostly stayed out of the way. One example was workers and union reps during the establishment of the NRA and the “planned economy.” Amazingly, it worked over and over with different people and agreements reached to fulfill a variety of political goals.

I could go on and on. FDR and his battle with his polio diagnosis was compelling in Brands’ hands. Roosevelt’s extraordinary handling of the crisis and establishing a sort of a rehab spa for polio victims from across America in Warm Springs, GA–at his expense, he brought them there and encouraged and exercised right alongside of them–was a surprisingly inspiring section. For a period of several years, he recuperated, strengthened, and entertained wonderfully, even fishing, boating and driving a hand-controlled car around the countryside on his own and with groups of friends regularly. In letters, he reported feeling better than he ever had in his life!

Brands goes on to say of FDR: “…for years afterward he credited his experience in Georgia with providing insight into this aspect or that of politics, economics, or the American dream.”

Also, too, there are many striking similarities to our new 44th president, aside from the shrewd use of technology, that it would take at least another comment space to mention them.”

Terrific post, Stephanie! I look forward to borrowing the Brands book after you finish it!

Everyone else, keep the comments coming!

Jeff

Dany Fleming adds Mike Milken and Lance Armstrong to the open source conversation.

Dany Fleming shares how Mike Milken and Lance Armstrong are pushing for medical research to become more open.

For those who have not yet read the comments, friend, former high school teammate of Ralph Sampson and fellow hoops aficionado Dany Fleming wrote the following in response to the open source post I wrote yesterday (The links added are mine): 

Here are a couple of thoughts about open-sourcing.

One current open-source debate is being pushed by Mike Milken – who’s a fascinating character. Milken has been pushing for medical research to become more open-source. He contends that the research to medical journal to product cycle is intentionally slow and antithetical to producing the real cures and innovation that is possible. This process also restricts much research to the small set of financially and institutionally able groups. According to Milken, the major obstacle to cures for many diseases is the greed and ego that keeps most research under-wraps until the medical establishment ultimately – and often belatedly – offers its “blessings.” Milken, who’s been joined now with the ardent support of Lance Armstrong, is advocating for a medical research system that pushes out more information much earlier. As you would imagine, the major medical journals are pushing back at the idea they could lose their status as the medical research gate-keepers.

Here is my response:

Thanks, Dany, for weighing in and adding to the conversation. The “Junk Bond King” can never be accused of standing still! Seriously, though, he has done a lot of interesting work since his short stint in white-collar prison.

In many ways, the issue of technology’s potentially democratizing effects is being played out in many different fields and arenas, with Wikipedia and citizen journalism being some of the examples with which I am most familiar.

I don’t know if you’ve read Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, but it’s a terrific scholarly meditation on pain, the impossibility of conveying pain through language and how political regimes use pain through torture and other means. It’s a tough book on several levels and I highly recommend it.

In any case, Scarry talks about how the advent of machine guns created what I consider to be a similar dynamic to what you are describing with medical research and what the open sourcers have been doing with software. Rather than being the exclusive domain of a few people who had gone through rigorous training for many years and operated on a local scale, killing’s capacity expanded and become open to anyone who could point the new gun and pull the trigger.

While there are obvious differences between weaponry, medical research and an online encyclopedia, I would argue that there are underlying similarities in the question of what happens to existing practices when technology creates the capacity for them to become more open.

Great comment, Dany.  Keep the thoughts coming!

The early open sourcers, or how the atomic bomb relates to software development

Richard Rhodes' book sheds light on open source software philosophy.

 

Thus far in the blog I’ve not written in depth about books that I haven’t completed.

Today, though, I’m going to make an exception.

I’ve been having a great time reading Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 

In the book, which, as the title suggests, tell the story of the science, history and politics behind Little Boy and Fat Man, the names of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

It is a very rich text, filled with lyrical phrases, vivid descriptions, a vast cast of characters in many countries, a wide sweeping historical scope and an impressive ability to convey a sense of life lived forward, rather than backward.

I very likely will write about another aspect after I’ve finished the work, and today, while reading about a concern expressed by Danish Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr, an insight hit me.

Now, I’ll be honest and cop to the fact that a lot of the physics that Rhodes lays out in great detail has eluded me, not because of any shortcomings on his part, but because of my own limitations in understanding at the moment.

What I have gleaned is that physics has both practical and theoretical branches, that physicists’ understanding of atomic structure went through extensive revision and increasing accuracy, that eventually they hit on the idea by applying Albert Einstein’s famous formula that a whole lot of energy would be released by splitting an atom, and, ultimately, that that energy could easily be channeled into highly destructive outlets, i.e. a bomb.

But that wasn’t the insight.

That arrived when I read about the bellicose ambitions of the Nazi government becoming apparent in the late 1930s.  Hitler’s regime’s interest in harnessing atomic power into a bomb made Bohr push for secrecy in future physics development.

Even though he understood its necessity, the move pained Bohr, Rhodes writes, because he had worked for years to create an internationally open society of ideas. 

In this society membership was gained not by pedigree but by quality of thought. 

In this society, people drove themselves hard while working on the same topics.

In this society, people sought to break new ground, but always incorporated the new knowledge when it was produced.  

That’s when it hit me.

The nuclear physicists were early open sourcers, each seeking to make their mark, but accepting the best available knowledge or solutions, the individuals or groups being guided more by fidelity to ideals of experimentation and truth seeking rather than by ego fulfillment. 

In his 1997 essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, open source advocate Eric S. Raymond  compared the traditional method of development computer software was like building a cathedral, “carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation”.

Raymond suggested that all software should be developed using the bazaar style, which he described as “a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches.”

In truth, the physicists with whom Bohr labored so extensively operated more under the cathedral than the bazaar model. 

The qualifications to earn a doctorate and be able to seriously study physics and the  financial resources and institutional backing necessary to conduct meaningful experiments ensured that only a very narrow band of unusually educated, driven and gifted group of people, mostly men, belonged.

And yet there was an element in which Bohr and others helped cultivate the bazaar style, in which information exchange was organic and pure and science advanced because of it.

Of course, the product they helped create, the atomic bomb, ushered in a whole new era of unprecedented terror and devastation.  That destructive capacity and accompanying arms race led many of the very physicists who had either pushed for the weapon’s development, or done the theoretical work to make it possible, rue their participation and, even, their hard-earned knowledge.

I don’t know of a comparable set of regrets for open source software developers, but, then again, I haven’t yet finished Rhodes’ book.

Maybe things will seem different then.

Obama’s start, Teddy Roosevelt’s final great adventure.

Candice Millard uncorks a winner in The River of Doubt.

Today marks Day Two of the Obama presidency and almost exactly a century since William Howard Taft replaced Teddy Roosevelt as U.S. president.

For Roosevelt, his departure from the land’s  highest and most powerful political office marked the beginning of a period in which he struggled to find meaning and purpose. 

He initially channeled his prodigious energy  into big game hunting in Africa, but eventually found that he missed the stimulation, constant interaction and limelight that politics provided. 

Disappointed in Taft, Roosevelt entered the 1912 presidential race.  He memorably finished a speech after he was shot by a would be assassin-saved by his glasses case and his manuscript, Roosevelt uttered his famous remark, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose“-but ended up losing to New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat who benefited from the Republican vote that split between Roosevelt and Taft.

The defeat wounded Roosevelt deeply.  His response to shattering loss throughout his life had been to seek out grueling physical challenges, and this time was no exception.

So, in October, 1913, Roosevelt set out for South America.  He had been invited to give a number of well-compensated speeches in Argentina and would have the added benefit of seeing his son Kermit, who had set up shop in Brazil.

While there, though, the elder Roosevelt changed his plans and decided to join an expedition headed by famed explorer Candido Mariano da Silvan Rondon as he ventured down an uncharted area of the Amazon River-the River of Doubt.

Former National Geographic editor Candice Millard tells the story of the team’s ensuing harrowing adventure in The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, an absolutely spellbinding book that one can’t wait to get through, but is disappointed when it ends.

The journey starts out badly and rapidly gets worse.  The group falls behind schedule on a grueling cross-land journey in which many supply-carrying oxen die. 

Millard shows that the decision to go down the river was not given sufficient thought, and the river exacts a punishing price.  Powered by a team of camaradas, men who do the team’s physical work, the expedition falls further behind schedule due to the difficulty in traversing rapids. 

This raised concerns for the men because their food supplies were limited and could run out before the team completed its journey.

The River of Doubt itself more than earns its name in the book, Millard’s first.  The work is replete with morbid detail about the river, from the canoe destroying rapids to the relentlessly hungry, razor-toothed piranhas to fish that swim up urethras. 

The book opens  late in the journey.  

Millard instantly grabs the reader’s attention withher description of Roosevelt’s  hovering  between life and death.  The mighty former Rough Rider was reduced to watched over anxiously by his son while endlessly repeating the opening lines of Samuel Coleridge’s Xanadu.

Millard’s decision to start at a critical and perilous moment is an effective one.  From there, she moves back in time to the 1912 election, Roosevelt’s shattering defeat and decision to go to South America, his time in the region before the trip and his unexpected decision to take on the River of Doubt.  The journey down the river constitutes the bulk of the book.

The narrative structure is just one of many laudable aspects in the book; The River of Doubt is rich in  memorable, complex and vividly drawn characters. 

The steadfast Rondon,  who wavers neither from his generosity and insistence on respect toward the unseen Indians who inhabit the area around the river, is one such presence; Millard speculates that the gift the intrepid yet respectful explorer left for the Indians may have save the crew’s life.  The romantic Kermit, who emerges in strength and force as the book progresses, especially relative to his previously indomitable father, is another. 

Then there is Roosevelt himself.

Millard does not shy away from showing the former Rough Rider’s colonial mentality, but also describes his unbounded energy, his physical decline and his unflinching adherence to a code that no man, even a former president, must hold up the group.

To her credit, though, Millard’s sense of character, the period, and the physical environment are not limited to the work’s major characters. 

Bit players like Father Zahm, who is not allowed by Roosevelt to go on the trip or Anthony Fiala,who made sure the ex-president had a different meal each day, bothhave depth in their own right and illustrate the journey’s colonial dimensions.

With such strong personalities and trying circumstances, conflict is inevitable. 

Three men die during the journey down the river, including the murder of one of the camaradas at the hand of another, provisions run low and the group’s hope of survival ebbs dramatically. 

Millard shows the dimunitive Rondon and Roosevelt at  increasingly bittercross purposes, for example; Rondon’s desire to survey the river is unquenchable, while Roosevelt wants the journey to advance. 

Roosevelt’s desire to be left behind and Kermit’s determination to save him is also well told, as is the decision to leave Julio, the murdering camarada, to a certain death in the jungle while spending large chunks of time searching for Kermit’s lost dog. 

In the end, the group does make it through, but only after exacting a heavy toll. 

Roosevelt has a final moment or two of gloryafter the journey in which he once again stares down critics who doubted the journey before dieing in 1919.   

Millard’s skill at showing the momentary and ambiguous nature of this and another experience comes through at the book’s very end when she gives updates on some of the trip’s participants. 

Rondondies a national hero in his 90s, while Kermit Roosevelt, who was so heroic during the journey, cannot recover from his father’s death and takes his own unfulfilled life at 53.  Even the journey has a murky legacy; as great an exploring accomplishment as it is, the expedition ultimately leads to the Indians’ territory being exploited for its natural resources.

In short, The River of Doubt is an exquisite book.  Millard beautifully blends the physical description of the Amazon’s beauty and danger, the indvidual character’s personalities and motivations and the larger context of the early 20th century.

I know it’s early in the year, and I have a strong sense that this will be on my Top 10 list for 2009.