2017
August
18
Friday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 18, 2017
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Statuary speaks to us. This past week has driven that home.

What it’s saying depends partly on the care of the listener.

One walking route from the Monitor newsroom to Boston Common – a site being prepared for a Saturday rally organized by groups calling themselves “libertarian” and “conservative” – leads down the middle of the city’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall, a broad and leafy thoroughfare.

The mall offers at least one monument per block. There’s a Cork-born Irishman who became state rep, a West African writer first brought to this Colonial port as a slave. There’s naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, in cap and windbreaker. “Dream dreams then write them,” his plaque reads, “aye, but live them first.”

That’s uncontroversial. Inspiring, even. Beyond the plaque, however, some of Morison’s writings have been called out for exhibiting racist undertones. “No Great Man is all great,” wrote The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr in a piece on Boston monuments this summer.

But can knowing where we started help us to see progress? How might that be brought home?

Watch for a story soon from Richmond, Va., by the Monitor’s Story Hinckley. In that city, once capital of the Confederacy, a young African-American mayor promoted – and then withdrew – a plan to remind without lionizing. The idea: Add words of critical context to statues along the city’s Monument Avenue. 

If the statues now end up coming down, might something in that same spirit replace them?

Now, to our five stories for today.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Prejudice is easy to recognize when it’s overt; surfacing its more subtle forms is harder. But the importance of doing so is starting to be recognized in cities that have long considered themselves progressive bastions.

Ben Stevens/PA/AP
People protest against the local authority in control of the response to the Grenfell Tower fire ahead of a meeting of Kensington and Chelsea Council in western London July 19. The fire at the residential bloc left dozens dead.

The continuing investigation of London’s devastating high-rise fire says a lot about how the wealthy city accommodates its poor – or fails to. 

Many Republican lawmakers may be frustrated with President Trump and a White House that keeps roiling (as with Steve Bannon’s dismissal today). But they’re soldiering on. Why? Because how could they not? They’re doing the nation’s business. 

Self-described "alt-right" groups have not hidden their admiration for Russia’s strongman president, based in part on an assumption of many shared values. That reveals how little they know of Vladimir Putin’s philosophy – and Russia's history.

R. Baer, S. Kovac/Citizen CATE Experiment/AP
A 'diamond ring' shape is seen during the 2016 total solar eclipse in Indonesia. The photo was taken by Bob Baer and Sarah Kovac, participants in the Citizen CATE Experiment. For the 2017 eclipse over the United States, the National Science Foundation is funding a movie project nicknamed Citizen CATE in which more than 200 trained volunteers equipped with small telescopes and tripods will observe the sun at 68 locations in the exact same way. The thousands of images from the citizen scientists will be combined for a movie of the usually hard-to-see sun’s edge.

There have been hundreds of total solar eclipses since Galileo first aimed his telescope skyward. But each eclipse offers a few minutes to glean more insight into our nearest star’s deepest mysteries.

SOURCE:

NASA

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The Monitor's View

After last weekend’s violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., many Americans feel a need to make better choices about public expressions of racism, such as in Confederate symbols or hate-filled Facebook postings. The responses are quite diverse, ranging from the farcical to the coercive, which makes it important to look for a common thread that ultimately makes a difference.

In a “Saturday Night Live” skit, comedian Tina Fey urged Americans to respond to neo-Nazi hatred by ordering “a cake with the American flag on it ... and just eat it.” That is the “ignore it” response.

In contrast, HBO’s “Vice News Tonight” ran a half-hour documentary with an insider account of the white nationalist movement, showing vivid portrayals of the marchers in Charlottesville and their cause. The video has been viewed more than 36 million times. That is the “expose it” option.

Perhaps the easiest response comes from governments now questioning their past endorsements of racist expression in the public square. Dozens of cities and states are searching for Confederate memorials or signs erected decades ago and deciding whether to remove them. This is the “not in the public’s name” option. But this effort has its limits as many well-known figures in history are tainted by racism or who did good far beyond their errors.

Then there is the “disarm it” option, or taking away potential physical harm from racist expression. In Boston, for example, the city has ordered that an Aug. 19 rally by a right-wing group – and a counterprotest – not include sticks, guns, or anything that could be used as a weapon or to hide one. That rule is in contrast to the presence of guns and sticks – as well as a car used to strike counterprotesters – at the Virginia protests.

Boston’s protective action is similar to a new stance by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU, in response to criticism of its usual defense of free speech, has decided not to defend the rights of hate groups if they allow guns at their rallies.

A variation of the ACLU’s response comes from internet companies such as Google and GoDaddy. Many high-tech firms are beefing up the policing of their websites for hate speech that might incite violence. As private companies, they can censor views in ways government should not. Yet in the era of democratized information, in which political and social groups have multiple digital platforms, this “private ban” option also has its limits. Big media are no longer the gatekeepers of public thinking.

A common thread in all these options is a heightened recognition of the need for individuals to stand guard over what ideas or images to allow into their thinking. The choices that Americans are now making about public expressions of hate and racism rely first and foremost on upholding the ability of everyone, either alone or through collective democratic means, to control what enters one’s consciousness.

This sounds so basic as to be trite, but it has been key over centuries in eroding the false claims about race. Keeping watch over one’s thinking also helps keep open the possibility for racists to realize they still have a choice and can question their views.

Racist groups often rely on intimidation to express themselves. Their rhetoric and rallies are often threatening and coercive. In contrast, those who guard their thoughts from racism rely on freedom of conscience and peaceful persuasion. And that option can make all the difference as the United States confronts the legacies and challenges of the notion that society define people by skin color.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

It’s hard not to be dismayed by events such as what recently took place in Charlottesville, Va., and Barcelona, Spain. But there’s great strength to be found in letting divine Love lead us forward. It’s not about overlooking hate or wrongdoing. Rather, it’s a question of loving others enough to acknowledge that no one is beyond God’s healing, redeeming power. “I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results,” writes Mary Baker Eddy (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 250). Instead of getting caught up in animosity or fear that things will never change, we can yield to the infinite strength of divine Love and bear witness to the reformation and harmony it inspires.


A message of love

Fayaz Aziz/Reuters
A laborer reclines on a pile of recyclables at a yard in Peshawar, Pakistan, Aug. 17.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for reading today. Come back Monday. Among the stories that we’ll be sharing: one on China’s effort to create one of the world’s most expansive national park networks – in part to prevent a furthering of damage wrought by rapid economic growth. 

Also: Here’s a bonus read for your weekend. A recent graduate of the University of Virginia, Story Hinckley (also mentioned at the top of this package) writes about her years in Charlottesville, and coming to terms today with her school’s complicated racial history

More issues

2017
August
18
Friday
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