Tag: identity
Weekend Reader: ‘Michelle Obama: A Life’

Weekend Reader: ‘Michelle Obama: A Life’

First Lady Michelle Obama once said, “We live in a nation where I am not supposed to be here.” And yet she is a resilient model for many of the things America has aspired to. She’s emblematic of how hard work, intelligence, and audacity can blaze a trail to success. At the same time, as an African-American and a woman, her achievements belie how much entrenched discrimination and racism she must have overcome as well.

Biographer Peter Slevin’s Michelle Obama: A Life is not so much about the power of the First Lady — though the book spends a good amount of time describing its subject’s efficacy in that role — as it is the narrative of the woman who became Michelle Obama. And as Slevin continually reminds readers, her story is also a story of race, identity, and politics in America. “So much had changed in seven decades,” he writes, “and yet much had not.”

You can read Slevin’s introduction below. The book is available for purchase here.

In June 2010, when Michelle Obama cast her eyes across the class of graduating high school seniors from one of Washington’s most troubled black neighborhoods, she saw not only their lives, but her own. The setting was Constitution Hall, where the Daughters of the American Revolution had prevented opera singer Marian Anderson from performing in 1939 because she was black. So much had changed in seven decades, and yet much had not. Michelle spoke to the graduates about the troubles facing African American children in Anacostia, and she spoke about racism. She pointed out that the neighborhood within sight of the U.S. Capitol once was segregated and that black people had been prohibited from owning property in parts of the community. “And even after those barriers were torn down,” she said, “others emerged. Poverty. Violence. Inequality.”

Michelle drew a straight line from her struggles with hardship and self-doubt in working-class Chicago to the fractured world the Anacostia students inhabited thirty years later. She told them about being written off, about feeling rejected, about the resilience it takes for a black kid in a public school to become one of the first in her family to go to college. “Kids teasing me when I studied hard. Teachers telling me not to reach too high because my test scores weren’t good enough. Folks making it clear with what they said or didn’t say that success wasn’t meant for a little girl like me from the South Side of Chicago.” As she spoke of her parents—their sacrifices and the way they pushed her “to reach for a life they never knew” — her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. As the students applauded in support, Michelle went on, “And if Barack were here, he’d say the same thing was true for him. He’d tell you it was hard at times growing up without a father. He’d tell you that his family didn’t have a lot of money. He’d tell you he made plenty of mistakes and wasn’t always the best student.”

She knew that many of the Anacostia students faced disruptions and distractions that sometimes made it hard to show up, much less succeed. It might be family turmoil or money troubles or needy relatives or children of their own. Or maybe the lack of a mentor, a quiet place to study, a lucky break. “Maybe you feel like no one has your back, like you’ve been let down by people so many times that you’ve stopped believing in yourself. Maybe you feel like your destiny was written the day you were born and you ought to just rein in your hopes and scale back your dreams. But if any of you are thinking that way, I’m here to tell you: Stop it.”

There were no cheap lines in Michelle’s speech that day, seventeen months after she arrived in the White House as the unlikeliest first lady in modern history. In a voice entirely her own, she reached deep into a lifetime of thinking about race, politics, and power to deliver a message about inequity and perseverance, challenge and uplift. These were the themes and experiences that animated her and set her apart. No one who looked like Michelle Obama had ever occupied the White House. No one who acted quite like her, either. She ran obstacle courses, she danced the Dougie, she hula-hooped on the White House lawn. She opened the executive mansion to fresh faces and voices and took her show on the road. She did sitcoms and talk shows and participated in cyber showcases and social media almost as soon as they were invented. Cameras and microphones tracked her every move. Maddening though the attention could be, she tried to make it useful. Amid a characteristic media fuss about a new hairstyle, she said of first ladies, “We take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see. And eventually, people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what we’re standing in front of.”

Michelle’s projects and messages reflected a hard-won determination to help the working class and the disadvantaged, to unstack the deck. She was more urban and more mindful of inequality than any first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She was also more steadily, if subtly, political. Not political in ways measured by elections or ephemeral Beltway chatter, although she made clear her convictions from many a campaign stage. Rather, political as defined by spoken beliefs about how the world should work and purposeful projects calculated to bend the curve. Her efforts unfolded in realms that had barely existed for African Americans a generation earlier, a fact that informed and complicated her work. “We live in a nation where I am not supposed to be here,” she once said.

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Michelle’s prospects as first lady delighted her supporters and helped get Barack elected, but her story and its underpinnings remained unfamiliar to many white Americans in a country where black Americans often felt relegated to a parallel universe. “As we’ve all said in the black community, we don’t see all of who we are in the media. We see snippets of our community and distortions of our community,” Michelle said. “So the world has this perspective that somehow Barack and Michelle Obama are different, that we’re unique. And we’re not. You just haven’t seen us before.” She belonged to a generation that came of age after the civil rights movement. It was fashionable in some circles for people to declare that they no longer saw race, but translation would be required. As her friend Verna Williams put it, “So many people have no idea about what black people are like. They feel they know us when they really don’t.” Lambasted early as “Mrs. Grievance” and “Barack’s Bitter Half,” Michelle knew the burden of making herself understood. One of her favorite descriptions of her Washington life came from a California college student who described the role of first lady as “the balance between politics and sanity.”

During her years in the spotlight, Michelle became a point of reference and contention. She built and nurtured her popularity and emerged as one of the most recognizable women in the world. “You do not want to underestimate her, ever,” said Trooper Sanders, a White House aide. Indeed, Michelle seemed to stride through life, full of confidence and direction. Comfortable in her own skin, friends always said. Authentic. But when asked what she would say to her younger self, as an interviewer flashed her high school yearbook photo onto a giant screen, Michelle paused to consider. “I think that girl was always afraid. I was thinking ‘Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe I’m not bright enough. Maybe there are kids that are working harder than me.’ I was always worrying about disappointing someone or failing.”

At Constitution Hall, addressing 158 Anacostia seniors dressed in cobalt blue gowns, Michelle shared her history and her self-doubt. She offered advice and encouragement but skipped the saccharine. “You can’t just sit around,” she instructed. “Don’t expect anybody to come and hand you anything. It doesn’t work that way.” She asked them to think about the obstacles faced by Frederick Douglass, their neighborhood’s most illustrious former resident, born into slavery and self-educated in an era when it was illegal to teach slaves to read or write. His mother died when he was a boy and he never knew his father. But he made it, “persevering through thick and thin,” and spent decades fighting for equality. She also asked them to consider the current occupants of the White House. “We see ourselves in each and every one of you. We are living proof for you, that with the right support, it doesn’t matter what circumstances you were born into or how much money you have or what color your skin is. If you are committed to doing what it takes, anything is possible. It’s up to you.”

Excerpted fromMichelle Obama: A Life, by Peter Slevin. Copyright © 2015 by Peter Slevin. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

If you enjoyed this excerpt, purchase the full book here.

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U.S. Has Become Notably Less Christian, Major Study Finds

U.S. Has Become Notably Less Christian, Major Study Finds

By David Lauter, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. has become significantly less Christian in the last eight years as the share of American adults who espouse no systematic religious belief increased sharply, a major new study found.

For what is likely the first time in U.S. history — certainly the first since the early days of the country — the actual number of American Christians has declined. Christianity, however, remains by far the nation’s dominant religious tradition, according to the new report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The rapid increase in the number of adults without ties to traditional religious institutions has strong implications for other social institutions and for politics.

Whether a person attends religious services regularly is among the strongest predictors of how he or she will vote, with traditional religion strongly tied to the Republican Party, at least among white Americans.

The decline in traditional religious belief adds to the demographic challenges facing the GOP, which already faces difficulties because of its reliance on white voters in a country that has grown more racially diverse.

The interaction between religion and politics may work both ways. Some scholars believe that close ties between traditional religion and conservatism, particularly on issues such as same-sex marriage, have led many younger Americans to cut their ties with organized religion.

Almost one in five American adults were raised in a religious tradition but are now unaffiliated, the study found. By contrast, only four percent have moved in the other direction.

Because the U.S. census does not ask questions about religion, the massive religion surveys by the Pew Research Center have become a chief source of information on the U.S. religious landscape.

The current survey questioned 35,071 U.S. adults last summer. Its huge size allows detailed analysis of even fairly small religious groups. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus six-tenths of a percentage point.

The U.S. still remains far more religious than most other economically advanced countries, but the significant increase in the share of Americans who do not follow a traditional religious belief mirrors trends in Europe and elsewhere.

Just short of one in four Americans now describe themselves as being agnostic, atheist, or simply “nothing in particular,” up from roughly one in six in 2007, according to the new study. The ranks of the “nones,” as the study labels them, have grown in large part from people abandoning the religion in which they were raised.

By contrast, Christian ranks have eroded. Roughly 173 million adult Americans identify as Christian, just under 71 percent of the U.S. population. That’s down from 178 million, or 78 percent of the U.S., in 2007. The total U.S. adult population grew by about eight percent during that eight-year period.

Protestants, who once dominated the U.S. population, no longer form a majority, the study found. About 47 percent of the U.S. population identifies with some Protestant denomination, down from just over half in 2007.

The decline has been uneven, with mainline denominations, such as Methodists and Presbyterians, shrinking more quickly than evangelical churches.

Slightly fewer than one in six adult Americans identify with the mainline Protestant churches, according to the survey. Evangelicals, by contrast, make up about one-quarter of the adult U.S. population. They now form a majority among those who identify as Protestant.

Another seven percent of American adults identify with historically black Protestant churches, a share that has remained relatively stable.

Catholics, about one in five Americans, have also seen some decline in numbers since 2007, the study found, although some other studies have found a more recent uptick. Almost 13 percent of American adults are former Catholics — the largest single group of people who have left a faith in which they were raised.

Among non-Christian faiths, Judaism remains the largest in the U.S., although only about two percent of the U.S. population identifies as Jewish. The number is up very slightly from what the survey found in 2007.

Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism each have less than one percent of the U.S. population, although the Muslim and Hindu population have both grown rapidly, reflecting immigration from Asia.

Photo: Mor via Flickr

How Hackers Wreaked Havoc In St. Louis After Brown’s Shooting

How Hackers Wreaked Havoc In St. Louis After Brown’s Shooting

By David Hunn, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

FERGUSON, Mo. — The first call came on a Thursday, 12 days after Michael Brown was shot. Patti Knowles and her granddaughter were watching “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”

The caller warned that the collective of computer hackers and activists known as Anonymous had posted data online — her address and phone number and her husband James’ date of birth and Social Security number.

Anonymous had been targeting Ferguson and police officials for days. But this seemed to be an error. Patti and James weren’t city leaders, they were the parents of one — Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III.

Within hours, identity thieves had opened a credit application — the first of many — using the leaked data.

The second call came on a Friday, nearly two months later. This time, it was their bank.

Someone, posing as James, the mayor’s father, had called in and changed passwords, addresses and emails. Then the individual sent $16,000 in bank checks to an address in Chicago.

The name on the address?

Jon Belmar. Same as the chief of the St. Louis County police.

Knowles figured Anonymous was either aiming to frame them both — or was just being mischievous. Belmar, who has been targeted previously, refused to discuss the issue with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His wife had spent hours every day for weeks dealing with fraud and identity theft.

Anonymous denied responsibility for sending the checks.

“Pfffttt. No. Sounds like corruption if you ask me,” an organizer for Anonymous’ Operation Ferguson, who wouldn’t give his or her name, said in an email to the newspaper.

But Anonymous openly claims credit for the first set of actions: Scouring the Internet for personal and private financial information on hundreds if not thousands of police officers, mayors, judges and officials, in governments big and small, worldwide.

Two years ago, a hacker affiliated with Anonymous claimed he published the personal information of former CIA chief and four-star U.S. Army General David Petraeus and his wife, Holly.

In March, Anonymous targeted Albuquerque, N.M., after the fatal police shooting of a homeless man. Hackers went after the mayor, police chief and multiple officers.

“I think we’re just seeing the tremors of what can happen,” said Peter Ambs, Albuquerque’s chief information officer. “Nobody is immune. It’s not a matter of if, but when. … How much money are we going to have to spend on hardening our systems, monitoring them to the point of locking them down so they have no value to anybody?”

Here, Anonymous operatives have outed at least 18 police officers, officials and residents over the past three months.

It started in the first days after Brown’s death.

Just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 9, rapper and local activist Kareem Jackson, known as Tef Poe, sent out a call for help: “Basically martial law is taking place in Ferguson all perimeters blocked coming and going,” he wrote on Twitter. “National and international friends Help!!!”

Jackson didn’t return a call seeking comment. Jackson’s attorney, James Wyrsch, denied that the intent of the tweet was to request the involvement of Anonymous.

Still, Anonymous responded to Jackson within hours, and, by the next day, had created the Twitter account OpFerguson, plus a warning on YouTube:

“We are watching you very closely. If you abuse, harass or harm in any way the protesters in Ferguson we will take every Web-based asset of your departments and governments offline,” Anonymous’ idiosyncratic electronic voice hummed. “That is not a threat. It is a promise.”

Anonymous said it would begin publicly releasing personal information “on every single member of the Ferguson Police Department,” among others.

Then it did.

Early on the morning of Aug. 12, hackers posted county police chief Belmar’s home address and phone number online. They tweeted pictures of him, his house, his wife, his children. “You said our threats were just hollow,” wrote TheAnonMessage. “See, that makes us mad. You shouldn’t challenge us.”

Anonymous isn’t a group with members or a sign-up list. Informal leaders set up operations, chat rooms and often identify targets. Others then jump in.

On Aug. 20, they posted personal data on Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson. On Aug. 22, Col. Ronald Replogle, superintendent of the state highway patrol. On Sept. 18, Gov. Jay Nixon. And on Sept. 20, Steve Stenger, St. Louis County councilman and county executive candidate.

It’s unclear who used the data following the releases. OpFerguson said it didn’t care.

But the consequences are clear.

Jackson said identity thieves used his information to buy a horse in Turkey. Ferguson police Sgt. Harry Dilworth said someone tried to purchase a $37,000 truck in his name. All six Ferguson City Council members have signed up for an identity-theft alert service.

Even those unconnected to Brown have been affected.

Dilworth said one of the officers he supervises, mistakenly outed by Anonymous as Brown’s shooter, ended up moving his family out of state.

The social media pages of St. Ann dispatcher Bryan Willman, also errantly identified as Brown’s killer, were so flooded with death threats, he shut them down. St. Ann police stationed a car outside his house; he didn’t leave for nearly two weeks, Police Chief Aaron Jimenez said.

Jimenez called for more federal scrutiny. “I certainly hope the FBI is going to take this seriously, and make an example out of Anonymous,” he said. “Enough is enough.”

Joe Bindbeutel, chief of the Consumer Protection Division with the Missouri attorney general, said it’s tough to fit such actions into the conventional criminal code and tough to locate the operatives. “The real pros at this are really hard to find,” he said.

The FBI, which has worked with websites to take down Anonymous postings, declined to comment for this story.

Knowles got two calls on Aug. 21. The highway patrol called first. The officer thought Knowles’ personal information was posted online.

Then Knowles’ mother called. She had gotten at least four calls warning of the barrage to come.

Knowles told his father to sign up for LifeLock, a protection service. Before the day was done, the company, which monitors the use of clients’ names and Social Security numbers, had contacted the family with a credit application in his father’s name.

The next day, there were three more. Two, the following day. Then two more. And so on.

The hackers accessed the Knowleses’ bank accounts, changed passwords, emails and home addresses. They changed the Knowleses’ home phone number _ a number they’ve had for 35 years. They set up credit cards, cellphones, home loans.

“Why would somebody do that?” his father asked.

But the $16,000 brought Patti Knowles to tears. The money was pulled from their business accounts — they own a heating and cooling company — and the temporary loss (the bank refunded the cash) led to bounced checks, included one to the IRS for business taxes.

The bank declined to say whether the checks were cashed.

The data leaks led to other problems, too. Someone, for instance, broke into a house they owned, tore out some piping and left water pouring into the basement. Knowles’ father found the house in 6 inches of standing water. The basement — two bedrooms, a full bath and family room — had to be gutted.

But the most frustrating moment for Knowles’ father came at the start of October. His wife noticed they hadn’t gotten any recent LifeLock notices.

When he tried to call, the company wouldn’t let him into this own accounts. Someone, it seemed, had broken into LifeLock, too.

“I pay you money to protect my stuff,” Knowles’ father said. “And you get hacked?”

A spokeswoman for LifeLock declined to comment.

Knowles was irritated, calling the Anonymous actions criminal. Still, the mayor seemed to have had largely evaded the same fate.

Until a few days ago.

“Excuse me Mr. Mayor,” OpFerguson tweeted Tuesday, “the communications director wanted me to tell you, “Anonymous just leaked your credit card data.”

Anonymous emailed late Saturday that the tweet was a joke.

For now.

AFP Photo/Joshua Lott

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Only 43.8 Percent of Military Identify As Republican, Down From 56 Percent In 2005

Only 43.8 Percent of Military Identify As Republican, Down From 56 Percent In 2005

The number of military servicemembers self-identifying as Republicans is up slightly from last year’s 41.49 percent to 43.8 percent. But that number is still down more than 10 percent from 2005, when 56 percent of active duty service personnel identified as members of the GOP, according to the Military Times’ annual poll.

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The military is also less conservative than it was seven years ago.

In 2005, a total of 50 percent of respondents described themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative.” The next year that number fell to 44 percent. And in 2012 it hit 42.72 percent, making it slightly more popular than the next most popular group, “moderate,” at 41.54 percent.

Seven years ago, only 33 percent identified themselves as moderate.

The Washington Times’ Shaun Waterman looked at these numbers and suggests that the changes reflect the growth of the Tea Party, which includes some politicians like Rand Paul (R-KY), whose point of view is much less interventionist than Bush-era Republicans. Republicans in Congress have adopted the Tea Party’s willingness to cut defense spending by keeping the sequester cuts in place, even though they hit the military hard.

However, hardline hawks like senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) still play a huge role in shaping the party’s stands on national security issues.

The number of libertarians in the military has more than doubled from 2 percent in 2005 to 5.43 percent in 2012, but there’s nothing “Tea Party” about the growth of moderates.

The steady decline of members of the military identifying as Republican and conservative since 2005 likely reflects some movement toward isolationism. But it likely has more to do with the decline of the right’s historic advantage on national security. This edge began to deteriorate as the war in Iraq turned into a disaster and the progress made against the Taliban in Afghanistan was allowed to wither away.

A majority, 51.14 percent, disapprove of President Obama’s performance as president (while only 44.3 percent disapprove of how he’s handling his role as commander in chief), but in 2012 the president received almost double the amount of military donations that his opponent Mitt Romney took in.

Photo: U.S. Army via Flickr