Exporting Psychology

I had the opportunity to meet with Ethan Watters a few years ago when he had written a very interesting article on PTSD in refugee populations. He has a new book out Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche."

Here is an excerpt via NPR Talk of the Nation:

Author Ethan Watters thinks that America is "homogenizing the way the world goes mad." In Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, he describes how American definitions and treatments of mental illness have spread to other cultures around the world.

"[McDonald's] golden arches do not represent our most troubling impact on other cultures," Watters writes. "Rather, it is how we are flattening the landscape of the human psyche itself. We are engaged in the grand project of Americanizing the world's understanding of the human mind."

The premise of this book is that the virus is us. Over the past thirty years, we Americans have been industriously exporting our ideas about mental illness. Our definitions and treatments have become the international standards. Although this has often been done with the best of intentions, we've failed to foresee the full impact of these efforts. It turns out that how a people in a culture think about mental illnesses — how they categorize and prioritize the symptoms, attempt to heal them, and set expectations for their course and outcome — influences the diseases themselves. In teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we have been, for better and worse, homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

What if "The Wire" had included a season on Immigration?

Via David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire:

Q: The police department, schools, industry, the media—these are all institutions that were addressed on The Wire. I’ve always wondered if there were a couple more institutions that would have been dealt with if there had a season 6, like the finance industry or health care, maybe?
A: Immigration was a theme that I would have done. The problem was that there was actually a delay of almost two years between season 3 and season 4. It took HBO awhile to renew the show. They were on the fence about it. By the time they did and we got back together and got into their schedule, it had been two years. For us to then stop and to retool and to do the research on immigration…

Q: Is there a large Latino population in Baltimore?
A: Just in the last decade. Baltimore had almost no Latino population when I was a reporter there, like minuscule. Then, suddenly, Central Americans began showing up in Southeast Baltimore. They’ve created an incredibly vibrant immigrant community.

Q: It would have been fascinating to see how The Wire would have treated this.
A: All you’ve got to do is watch the national debate and realize that immigration is this incredibly potent source of friction and ideology, and maybe always has been in American life. So I would have loved to have done that, but none of us knew Spanish and none of us had done any research on it. It would have taken us a little time, as it always did. But we had researched the school system and we were ready to do
that.

(HT: Jonathan Dingel)

Links I like

• As the post-Khmer Rouge generation of Cambodians grows up, they’re producing a flurry of films that mimic the vintage style of the 1960s – widely considered the country’s golden era. Much of the revival is owed to educated filmmaker refugees who are repatriating to Cambodia from France and the United States and opening the country’s first film institutes at local universities.
• Hundreds of Somali refugees are being forced at gunpoint to join rebels fighting in northern Yemen
• Paddington Bear is launching a campaign to to highlight the British Government's continued arrest and detention of hundreds of child asylum-seekers in prison-like conditions.
• A disabled athlete who has won five gold medals for Britain was set to be deported to Nigeria after losing his legal battle to live in the UK.
• British Muslims feel a greater sense of patriotism than their counterparts living in mainland Europe, according to a study by the Open Society Institute
• Rather than living in rows of neatly pegged white canvas UN tents set up in fields as the public might imagine it, aid officials have revealed that more than 50 per cent of the planet's 10.5 million refugees are now battling to get by in urban areas.
• The proportion of the population that is foreign-born has almost doubled in the past two decades to 11 per cent, or 6.7 million people.

P Visas only Granted to "Culturally Unique"

Apparently the the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services only allows visas to cultural groups that are "culturally unique." What does this mean? The Wall Street Journal:

When Jordan Peimer booked an Argentine band that fuses Jewish Klezmer music with tango, he thought he had the perfect act to headline his "Fiesta Hanukkah" concert.

That was before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services weighed in with some cultural commentary of its own. The band couldn't travel to the U.S., the agency ruled, because it didn't satisfy a "culturally unique" requirement for a performer visa called P-3.

"The evidence repeatedly suggests the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music...[which] cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe or other group of persons," read the denial. It was signed by caseworker CSC4672/WS24533.

In fact, immigration law gives an anonymous group of government bureaucrats a lot of cultural clout: They can decide which foreign ballerinas, musicians and artists qualify as "outstanding," or special enough to deserve a visa to enter the U.S.

• Los Angeles concert promoter Grand Performances booked an Indian music ensemble called Jaipur Kawa Brass Band for a summer gig. U.S. consular authorities approved visas for six members of the band, but rejected two, including the band's only competent English speaker. No explanation was given.
  

• The U.S. sponsor for the all-male Brazilian hip-hop company Grupo de Rua applied for a P-1 visa, and submitted articles about the dance company's performances in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and the Edinburgh Art Festival. Immigration officer number AA0089 requested "evidence the group had achieved international recognition and acclaim."

Artists who wish to visit the U.S. for a performance typically need a P-1 visa; a P-3 visa, issued to entertainers participating in a culturally unique program; or an O-1 visa, for individuals with extraordinary ability in the arts, education or sciences. Once a visa is approved, artists visit a local U.S. consular office to get it stamped in their passport.

Immigration authorities say that in weeding out applicants they deem marginal, they are simply carrying out the intent of Congress in creating the visa categories. The P category is meant to promote the exchange of culture and the arts. The O category is sometimes called the "genius visa. "

Each year, more than 20,000 O and P petitions arrive at the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Services in St. Albans, Vt., and in Laguna Niguel, Calif., where 28 adjudicators review them. The artists' requests represent a small fraction of the visa caseload. The California office alone receives more than 1.3 million visa applications each year.

Review of Jimmy Baca's New Book

During my senior of college, I took a class called "Poetry of American Prisoners" in which we read a lot of Jimmy Baca's prison poetry and he came to our class as guest speaker. If I remember correctly one theme that emerged from this class the Jimmy's poetry was that of ethical reading- what does it mean to read the poetry of someone who has committed crimes?

From NPR:
Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca has produced his first novel, A Glass of Water. The book goes over the well-worn path of Mexican immigrants to the United States.

New Book by Monica Ali

For those that have read Brick Lane, Monica Ali is out with another book about immigrant integration. The New York Times book review:

In “Brick Lane” she explored, with comic gusto and pathos, the Bangladeshi immigrants and British no-hopers living in Tower Hamlets, an East London housing project. This time around, she ties her story to two self-contained social structures that allow her to trace Britain’s fault lines: the busy kitchen of a hotel restaurant in central London, where Gabriel Lightfoot, her main character, is executive chef, and an old mill town in the north of England, where Gabriel’s dying father has worked all his life.

Gabriel’s kitchen is immigrant Britain on display. “Every corner of the earth was represented here,” he reflects at one point. “Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between.” These are the drones who toil unseen in glittering London, desperate strivers, many with horrible stories to tell, or forget. As the novel begins, a Ukrainian kitchen worker turns up dead in one of the hotel’s subterranean passageways. His former lover, a sullen, waiflike pot-scrubber named Lena, becomes Gabriel’s personal reclamation project and his entryway to the underground economy, a shadowy world of illegal immigration schemes, slave labor and forced prostitution. This is the new Britain.

Teo's Journey

Here is information on a new movie, 'Teo's Journey.'

Andrew Sullivan on Michael Jackson

One of the best pieces I have read on Michael Jackson's passing is by Andrew Sullivan:

There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.

But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.

I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.

I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.

I hope he has the peace now he never had in his life. And I pray that such genius will not be so abused again.

Also, completely unrelated to Michael Jackson, but also posted by Andrew Sullivan is 'A Milestone on the HIV Ban.'

A Report on Scapegoating

Via Fresh Air on NPR:

Chip Berlet has studied extremism, conspiracy theories and hate groups for more than 25 years. In a recent report for PublicEye.org, he says that the murders of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen T. Johns exemplify the potential for violence that often lurks within extremist groups (9 hate crimes since Obama's inauguration in total).

Berlet argues that right-wing pundits share some of the moral responsibility for the actions of their followers. He summarizes the analysis in his report in a June 10 Huffington Post article about Johns' murder: "Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation."

Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-area-based think tank, and the co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. He is also the editor of Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash.

'England People Very Nice'

On my recent trip to London, I went to see the play 'England People Very Nice' at the National Theatre (located on the South Bank- there was some confusion amongst locals). This was a play about the history of immigration in England (Bethnal Green)- from the French Huguenots to the Irish to the Jews and finally to the Bangladeshis. The play highlighted the discrimination felt by each group, but interesting by the previous immigrant group. It was crass humor, both critical of English people's treatment of immigrants, but also of how immigrant integration works within the groups. In the end love conquers all. I highly recommend seeing it if you are in town.

Here is a review by The Telegraph.

'Outcasts United'

Outcasts United is a book/movie about a group o refugees in the United States that formed a soccer team. Their team name is the 'fugees' short for refugees.

In January of 2007, New York Times reporter Warren St. John wrote about the Fugees, a team of soccer-playing misfits from a dozen war-ravaged countries transplanted to the small Georgia town of Clarkston. The article prompted a huge response -- tons of donated cash and equipment, plus a book contract for St. John and a movie deal that financed a team bus and a new school, the Fugees Academy.

Here is the NPR story.

New French Movie "Welcome"

The New York Times talks about the political implications form the movie "Welcome:"

“Welcome” is the latest in a series of recent movies — Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor,” Ken Loach’s “It’s a Free World,” Wayne Kramer’s “Crossing Over” and Costa-Gavras’s “Eden à l’Ouest” (Eden is West) — that explore aspects of the migrant and immigrant experience.

It differs in that it centers on a French law that makes it a crime — punishable by five years in jail and a €30,000, or about $40,000, fine — for helping anyone without papers to enter or stay in the country.

After the March 18 screening in Parliament, French deputies scheduled a debate for April 30 on article L622-1, the law governing the treatment of those caught assisting people who are in the country without papers. Last year, 4,423 French citizens were temporarily detained by the police under its terms, said Sandrine Mazetier, a Socialist deputy. In February, Monique Pouille, 59, a housewife who lives in a small village in northern France near Béthune, was held for nine hours for recharging migrants’ mobile phones.

Performance as Therapy

The New York Times spotlight on how immigrants -especially youth- are turning to performance as a way to overcome their trauma from home countries, was particularly moving:

Stephanie, 18, brought Haitian zouk — joyous dance music that she said “releases pain” — to be woven into the performance, along with patriotic Albanian hip-hop and Arabic pop. That meant sharing something positive about Haiti, even as she talked about hiding from rebels, unable to leave the house, and missing school.

Koreans and Bangladeshis Claim Ethnic Neighborhood in LA

Both Bangladeshis and Koreans are vying for the right to call their ethnic enclave their own in a six square mile part of LA. The New York Times reports:

In the last 30 years or so, a six-square-mile area west of downtown Los Angeles has become an enclave of some 50,000 Korean-Americans, the largest concentration of Koreans in the country. The district is now commonly known as Koreatown.

But on the city’s official maps, Koreatown is nowhere to be found, because until 2006 Los Angeles had no formal process for designating neighborhoods, whether well recognized or little known. Korean civic groups say they always simply assumed that the area was officially Koreatown.

The application, submitted by a committee of the growing number of Bangladeshis in Los Angeles, has brought a struggle between two mainly immigrant groups that reflects the complexities of negotiating space and official recognition in an increasingly crowded urban center.

The last official count of the Bangladeshi population, in the 2000 census, showed only 1,700 in all of Los Angeles County. But the Bangladeshi consul general here, Abu Zafar, estimates that there are now 10,000 to 15,000 in Los Angeles and some 25,000 in Southern California, making the region the nation’s second-largest home to Bangladeshis, after New York City.

The LA Times reports:

More than a name is at stake. Although largely symbolic, the recognition afforded by a special district designation can help establish a community within the cultural mosaic of Southern California, said Hamid Khan, executive director of the nonprofit South Asian Network. When noted on maps and street signs, it can also attract visitors and help local business.

In the ever-shifting Southern California ethnic landscape, turf tussles are not uncommon as new populations move into areas of long-settled residents.

Central Americans in the Pico-Union district and Japanese Americans in Little Tokyo have nervously monitored the expansion of Korean businesses and residents into their ethnic enclaves. In Artesia, some residents opposed proposals to designate Pioneer Boulevard as Little India because of the city's diverse ethnic makeup.

Immigrants' Children: A Foot In Two Worlds

NPR has a great series on Immigrants' Children: A Foot In Two Worlds.

Immigrants bring many things to the U.S., but their lasting contribution to the country has always been their children. NPR's series Immigrants' Children looks at that legacy, telling the stories of those children and examining the issues they face.

IN THIS SERIES:

Ethnic Outlets Survive In Sinking Media Market April 7, 2009 : As many major nationwide news organizations are sinking in the tough economy, the "ethnic media," news organizations that tailor content toward the sons and daughters of immigrants, are thriving with growing audiences. Multiplatform interactions — television, radio and the Internet — are popular.

Authors Explore American Immigrant Experience April 5, 2009: Award-winning authors Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz and Samina Ali all came to this country as children. As part of NPR's series on the children of immigrants, these writers offer perspective on the transformation of immigrants in America as the next generation assimilates.

In Rural Wisconsin, German Reigned For Decades April 1, 2009: In the contentious debate over immigration, critics often assert that immigrants and their children are not learning English as quickly as previous waves of newcomers did. In one Wisconsin town, German flourished as a dominant language and culture almost until World War II.

On TV, Immigrants' Kids Mine Cultural Convergence April 2, 2009: As part of a new NPR series on the U.S.-born children of immigrant parents, Neda Ulaby talks to three actors of South Asian heritage — asking how inhabiting two worlds helps them shape the characters they play.

Cary Fukunaga's 'Sin Nombre'

NPR has a great piece about Cary Fukunaga's new movie, 'Sin Nombre:'

Carey Fukunaga, writer and director of Sin Nombre, got the idea for the film from a dangerous train ride he took — three times — through Mexico. His film's lead characters, Willy and Sayra, take a similar train trip when Willy flees his Mexican gang after a terrible crime.

You can listen to more here.

A Must See: 'Walk Out'

I recently saw the movie 'Walkout,' which tells the true story of Chicano/a students from five East L.A. high school who organized three days of school Walk Out to protest for improved educational standards. It is a great movie that describes how community organizing should take place.

Based on a true story, student activist and Mexican-American Paula Crisostomo, tired of being treated unequally, decides to take action and stage a walkout at five East Los Angeles high schools in 1968, to protest educational conditions and complain of anti-Mexican educational bias along with some 10,000 students. Paula Crisostomo is not Mexican- American--she is Filipina-American. Written by Norma Schaffer

Child Soldiers on Law & Order: SVU

Via GG, the latest from the Invisible Children blog:

Alright everyone, get your TiVo’s ready. Our good friend John Prendergast at Enough has been working with the people at NBC on a special episode of “Law & Order: SVU” that will feature a back story of Child Soldiers abducted by the LRA. The episode will air on Tuesday, March 31st.

(HT: Chris Blattman)

The NBA Announces Noche Latina

The NBA announced the launch of its third annual Noche Latina event, a program that recognizes the NBA's fans and players from across Latin America and U.S. Hispanic communities. Noche Latina will take place in eight of the top 10 U.S. Hispanic markets this season (up from four in 2007-08): Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, Chicago, Houston and New York.

Noche Latina, first launched during the 2006-07 season, will feature celebratory uniforms developed in conjunction with La Agencia de Orci & Asociados, a U.S. Hispanic agency, to display the team name as spoken by the Latino population. Rather than translating the team names literally, market research concluded that Spanish-speakers in the U.S. refer to them differently. The Miami Heat, for example, is called "El Heat"; the San Antonio Spurs are "Los Spurs." Noche Latina uniforms were carefully selected based on the uniforms that had the most affinity within the Hispanic population.

Games left: Wednesday, March 25, with the Mavericks vs. the Golden State Warriors and Thursday, March 26, with the Bulls vs. the Heat. The program concludes on Saturday, March 28, when the Houston Rockets host the Los Angeles Lakers.

New Movies About Immigration

• "Crossing Over" an ensemble melodrama about undocumented individuals in Los Angeles
• "Sugar" quiet story of a Dominican baseball player in the minor leagues in Iowa
  
• Cary Fukunaga’s “Sin Nombre,” which combines elements of a chase movie, a gangster flick and a tragic western with the specific plight of Central American immigrants making their way across the Mexican countryside toward the United States border.
  
• Alex Rivera’s “Sleep Dealer” which was shown at Sundance last year, is a science fiction parable set in a near-future Mexico, where concepts of migration and labor mobility are reinvented by cutting-edge technology.