Trayvon is Our Son Too

Our legal system presumes innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I for one am in no position to declare the guilt or innocence of George Zimmerman, accused of but not yet charged in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Unless you live in a cave, you know by now that Mr. Zimmerman was an armed neighborhood watch captain and a half-white, half-Hispanic man, Mr. Martin was a black teenager armed with Skittles and an iced tea. While the details of what exactly happened are the subject of an investigation, one detail is known and is a familiar story here in the United States: an unarmed black man was killed by an armed (presumed to be “white” man) under the guise of self-defense.

We white folk pat ourselves on the back and point to the election of Barack Obama as president as the beginning of a post racial world, but for black teenagers who are singled out for random searches, nothing has changed. The list of racial travesty is long and one does not have to go back far in history to point it out. After the election of Obama as president, Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard (black) was arrested by Sgt. James Crowley (white) for trying to break into his own house when he forgot his keys. Sgt. Crowley said Professor Gates was being belligerent and he probably was, because had Professor Gates been white Sgt. Crowley would not likely have been as suspicious of him.

Only after years of complaints has the City of New York modified its law regarding possession of small amounts of marijuana, which heretofore had been disproportionately meted out to black men. None other than Ron Paul, running for President as a Republican has stated that one is more likely to be sentenced for a capital crime if one is black or poor. A recent study had determined that applicants for jobs with “black” sounding names are twice as likely to be turned down for employment than those with white sounding names. The list unfortunately goes on.

The pundits, radio talking heads and many politicians try to frame racial issues every which way, especially when it comes to any sort of racial preferences. I see it as one issue only, basic decency. Decency cannot be mandated — it is a function of the home and one’s upbringing. The truth is that we all have prejudice, it is unfortunately human nature but like many other urges and feelings it is left to us to overcome them and let our conscience be our guide, not our bias.

It is still possible that we learn that Mr. Zimmerman did in fact feel threatened and perhaps had reason to draw his weapon. One thing will not change, Trayvon Martin has joined an all too long list of unarmed black men; Amadieu Diallo, Sean Bell among them, killed because they were black. It is time for us to have an open dialogue about race in this country, but the dialogue has to begin at home. Race is a values issue and until we take personal responsibility about how we treat those different than us we can never end bias and hatred. President Obama said that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon, he was spot on. Today, Trayvon is all of ours son and we should not rest until the truth and justice prevail.

Financial Arrogance

I read with great interest the op-ed by Greg Smith in the NY Times a little over a week ago. In it he announces his resignation that day from venerated financial giant, Goldman Sachs. He claimed that “the integrity problem” at the firm became too big to ignore. While he was at the firm for twelve years he only now came to the conclusion that the ethical environment was so toxic that he could no longer look at the candidates he was recruiting from top college campuses and tell them with a straight face that Goldman was a great place to work.

While I admire Mr. Smith’s stand I am frankly miffed at what took him so long. For a bright guy who was recruited to Goldman out of Stanford he should have realized that he was about to wade in a swamp of immorality, deceit and ruthlessness otherwise known as the financial services industry. Goldman, proud to always have the “smartest guys in the room” certainly tried to appear to be above the fray, but the bottom line always was that they were in the same game as the rest of the banks. They have but one objective; make money, lots of it. Deregulation of the industry helped prod along a culture of greed and one thing remained a constant, the objective of making money at all cost, morality and ethics be damned.

As a young broker at a Wall Street firm I remember being told at a sales meeting “you don’t work for your clients, you work for us.” The implication was that the best interests of the client were the farthest things from our objective. That culture has been around for a long time and won’t change anytime soon. Certainly we free market supporters, believers in capitalism don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with making money. Perhaps it’s the road taken that needs rethinking.

Let’s face it, success breeds’ arrogance; it is inherit in human nature. The more we have the more we feel we deserve. We see it in everyday life and I’ll give you, my neighbors, a test to prove it. Next time you see a car parked illegally say in a cross walk on Central Avenue, check out the year, make and model of the vehicle. Chances are it’s a late model Porsche, not a 02’ Camry. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s institutional arrogance like that being displayed at Goldman or individual arrogance – it is a sense of self-importance and entitlement.

I’m not knocking success, what I am pointing out is that the financial crisis of 2008 and the years that led up to it were chock full of arrogance, enough for thieves to believe that their stolen treasure was earned through superior intelligence and hard work. What we learned was that anybody can make money if the deck is stacked in his or her favor. No doubt some pretty smart people work at Goldman but the fact is that institutional arrogance forced them to do some pretty slimy things like selling clients securities they themselves thought were crap. Illegal? Probably, but the government seems to be giving them a pass on this crime. Ethical? Of course not! Ramifications? Close to none.

Power in the world has shifted from governments and thinkers to corporations and a select few who run the major corporations. Power is never given up easily but our country has a history of reformers from Andrew Jackson to the two Roosevelt’s. Reform need not be radical but it has to be concrete. The interests of corporations must go beyond just the interests of the shareholder. In our current system, most shareholders are represented by agents; fund managers, insurance companies, retirement funds and the like who are thus at odds with the interests of those they represent. Think about it, the guy that manages your 401k gets paid no matter how your account preforms. While many of us saw the value of our portfolios diminish, those agents cashed undeserved bonus checks while the taxpayer bailed them out from their reckless behavior. Greg Smith’s public outing of Goldman is a good step towards change, but really he is a day late and dollar short

Lead Us Barack!

Barack Obama has been in office a little over three years now and conventional wisdom says his reelection hinges on the economy. With jobs numbers creeping up, consumer confidence rising ever so slightly and an inept corps of Republican candidates one might think the president’s prospects are looking good. However, the president is vulnerable on an issue just as important as the economy, in fact an issue very much tied into the economy, the Middle East.

When the Green Revolution started in Iran, Obama opted to stay out of it and let the scenario play itself out. When the Arab Spring began, the president called for the end of rule of an ally, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and took a secondary role to Europe in ousting Muhamar Khaddafi in Libya. Tunisia, of marginal importance to this president got verbal encouragement at first and financial backing only after the president there was ousted. The Muslim Brotherhood has taken over in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Egypt is now holding employees of American NGO’s hostage on trumped up charges with echoes of the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran after their Islamic revolution.

Now Syria is burning and civilians are dying by the thousands. The humanitarian conditions are as bad as the worst offered by Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and other infamous despots, except these are being played out live on television, radio and the internet. A fully wired world with cell phone cameras and the worldwide web cannot keep the secrets of a dictator’s atrocities camouflaged anymore. We live in a transparent world. If ever there was a reason for intervention on a purely humanitarian level, Syria is it.

More importantly, the enlightened West is sitting by, as Christians, once a vibrant community in Arab countries, are being slaughtered and exiled from their homes. Despite seeming moderate, the Brotherhood in all the Arab Spring countries has very little tolerance for other religions and the Iranians execute minorities based on bogus charges every day. Yet President Obama is going out of his way to apologize to Muslims for the inadvertent burning of a few Korans. However distasteful such actions are they are nothing compared to the outright hostility to Christians in Muslim-Arab countries. We need to show our outrage, every single one of us who believes in decency and basic rights. If we are not going to help as Muslim slaughters Muslim then let us at least protect our Christian cousins whose only crime is not being Muslim in a country where the majority is.

It may be politically incorrect to say, but if Muslims worldwide want respect from us then show us respect and to other religions. I am still waiting for Muslim religious leaders, not political ones, religious ones, to get up and say what must be said; that killing ANYONE in the name of religion is Haram – forbidden. I will have to wait a long time. This is where President Obama needs to show leadership and he needs to do it fast.

Syria provides a perfect trifecta of motives for intervention; it will stop brutal atrocities that we witness the regime commit against its people daily, it will break the axis of Iranian influence in the region and it will weaken Hezbollah in Lebanon. Instead the president is dithering while thousands die. It is time for him to lead; the world cannot wait any longer. Lead us Barack, lead.

The New American

Returning to the United States recently from an overseas business trip that had me arriving via Dubai, I learned something about my country that I took to be a pleasant surprise. When going to passport control I assumed the line for foreigners would be much longer than the line for U.S. citizens. The reason for my thinking was simple; most of the people on my fully booked flight did not look like “Americans.” Man was I wrong. The longer line was for U.S. passport holders and I was part of a very small minority of white folks on that line. Before you bash me for being politically incorrect, I state this as a mea culpa.

We tend to see the issue of immigration as one that involves illegal aliens and the policy arguments about securing our borders. What we often overlook and fail to credit our country with is the absorption of millions every year from all corners of the earth otherwise known as “legal” immigration. Standing in line waiting to be admitted back into my home country, I could not help but imagine my own grandparents and relatives who did not look “American” when they stood on similar lines years back, nor could I cease to think that they were perceived by others as I just did my fellow citizens. As I bantered with those around me I realized that they too were very much American; the man with the Sikh turban, the woman in the Sari, another with traditional African garb and the families dressed in modest Muslim religious clothes. They all were anxious to return home to their families, go to work and school, see American television, eat fast food, and go to movies.

I imagined that all of them (or their parents) came here for the opportunities this country offers and some to escape oppression. I am overcome by a sense of comfort, we Americans are so secure in our system we can share it with others, free of fear that other cultures will somehow diminish ours. I think about how perfectly normal and American this scene is; different shades of skin, various styles of clothing and eyes shaped every which way, most speaking unaccented English and patiently waiting their turn.

I admit that my prejudice was not far from my thoughts either as I wondered how many of these U.S. citizens are here to undermine us with some kind of Jihad. I quickly became ashamed of myself, no group is immune from radicals and no group should be singled out because of them. I try to see the lives of these people through the prism of my own. I am a child and grandchild of immigrants. As a family we strove to be absorbed by the American way of life while maintaining our own hyphenated dual identity. It is what I love so much about my country. I am an American Jew or a Jewish American, I see no contrast in the labels and do not feel less American than the descendants of those who arrived on the Mayflower. I don’t imagine that the Sikhs and Muslims on the passport line felt any different at least I certainly hope not.

What makes me optimistic about our future despite all the problems we face is that we are so diverse and open minded that failure is not an option. People still strive to move here. What we have learned from generations of new arrivals from all over the world is that there is nothing that cannot be achieved here. There isn’t, and for that we should all feel proud and thankful.