• Sources
• Oscar Zeta Acosta's Brown Buffalo Story
• Children and Responsibility Essay
• Discussion Questions
• Notes
• Related References

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Sources

This essay comes about in response to two readings:

• Breaking news on stem cell research. Particularly President Bush's position on the issue.
• My reading of The Autobiography of A Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta, Vintage Books, July 1989 edition. ISBN 0-679-72213-0

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Oscar Zeta Acosta's Brown Buffalo Story

Starting at pp. 79-81 of the 1989 Vintage Books edition:

"So one day I finally made my decision to join the resistance. I climbed to the top of the lily tree in our back yard. This tree with the purple blossoms and little green balls the size of steelies---the best marble you can pick for playing Fish---this was my own personal, private place. Bob was the owner of the eucalyptus tree, and we all shared the fuits of the plum, the fig and the almond trees; but no one could climb my lily tree without my permission."

jeanne's comment:

Note the natural story-telling voice in which the young boy interrupts his story to tell us what the best marble is, and in which his descriptions are in terms of "steelies." Bob was his brother.

"I carry my pump-action .22 strapped to my shoulder as I carefully and quietly climb the thirty-foot-tall sniper post. The enemy planes fly day and night over this land. I just have to wait. Gary Cooper didn't complain when he had to sit in that tree with the Japs marching underneath, the flies and gnats driving him crazy in that hot, steaming jungle, did he? . . . I hear the drone in the distance. I close my eyes. You can tell by the hum of the motor whose side he's on. And when it is overhead I take careful aim. I know it looks like a P-38, but that's a disguise . . . I shoot."

jeanne's comment:

The pejorative label, "Jap," was used so extensively during World War II that children our age (I am of the same cohort as Acosta) would have used the term even when speaking non-pejoratively. I recall in New Orleans, at about this time, being terrified at the rumor that the "Japs" had come into New Orleans up the Mississippi on a submarine from the Gulf to visit movie theatres in New Orleans. The total improbability of this scenario neither troubled my beliefs nor assuaged my fears of attending the local movie house, where I was sure I would encounter "the enemy".

Acosta's ability to dredge up these memories by telling his stories is part of his story-telling talent. We'll talk more later about the use of narrative, especially in critical race theory.

Note also that the hidden connotations that the pejorative label carries with it are masked by the general acceptability of the term. This is one of the reasons for demands of "political correctness" in not naming the Other disrespectfully. The unstated connotations go along with the label. I used "pomo" for postmodern the other day, and Susan objected. I removed the line.

"I wait for it to fall, but somehow it keeps flying towards the aluminum plant . . . I wipe the seat from my brow and think it through again. What would Coop do in this situation? I have only one bullet left. One shot. Do I wait for another plane? Of course they heard the blast from my rifle. Soon they'll be here. I'm not afraid of the torture. I can take anything, remember? But a man has to destroy any target, any supply of war material, do anything that will hurt the Nips. It doesn't have to be a moving target. It doesn't have to be a human . . ."

jeanne's comment:

"Nips" was another pejorative term used for the Japanese in the Second World War. Again, it brought back childhood memories that are pejorative, and that were mostly formed from the movies we watched at that tender age.

Using such language and labels and showing such movies is termed "propaganda." Both sides, in war, use it. I had a college teacher in the 50s who spent World War II developing propaganda. He told us the story of a German newspaper article telling how in Germany the soldiers' wives were unfaithful while their men were at the front. Our side was so happy to find the article. And then they found out that they had planted it!

"And there it sits, big as day. No more than one block from my scope is the infamous water tower. The whole town dpends upon it. Cut off their water supply and you'll have them in the palm of your hand in a week. Does the Geneva Convention actually prohibit sniper action against the civilian population? What would Miss Anderson say about this? F*** it! I've got to help my father get home any way that I can. After all, this is war! Surely God will understand even if the sisters don't. Look at Humphrey Bogart. He's still alive, isn't he? And how many has he snuffed out? I squeeze the trigger and close my eyes."

jeanne's comment:

Miss Anderson was his elementary school teacher, and the "sisters" are the Catholic nuns. The Brown Buffalo is very surprised to learn two days later that the water tower still stands, and he wonders how they managed to dry everything out and "suck up" all the water, and is sure they must be on the "spare tank" by now. But, undiscouraged, he chalks it up as an "attempt," knowing that his father will believe him, since he doesn't lie "ever since he hung me from a rafter in the chicken coop." (At p. 81.)

Like Beatty, Acosta uses profane and scatalogical language. But, again like Beatty, he tells it "like it is" without prettifying the language and without falsifying the context.

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Children and Responsibility Essay

Children do feel responsibility for many things which are beyond their control. In both the story of Robin Hood and in the story of Brown Buffalo's doing his part to end World War II and bring his father back home, the children acted on their assumptions of power. In both cases those assumptions proved wrong. In the "real world" the children did not in fact have the power to change the injustices they saw.

In order to empower children, we need to:

• Respect their ideas and their input.
• Listen to them in good faith. That means try actively to understand and help them explain the problem they see.
• Recognize that they have real validity claims, some of which see beyond our rules.
• Find things within their power that can make a difference.
  For example, a class project could raise enough money to purchase milk tickets for those who needed help. Or find a social worker somewhere to help Brown Buffalo's mother cope with having to do the work of two parents at once while her husband is away. Even explaining to her son the need and proper use of aspirin might help overcome his father's prejudices in calling her a "pill head."
• Include the child in both the grieving process over what must be endured and cannot be made better and in the process of using what power is available in the context. Like writing a letter to his father, though bemoaning his absence.

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Discussion Questions:

1. How was the adults' response in the Robin Hood story structurally violent?

   jeanne's notes:

   Consider the fact that the adults assume that there is a "yes" or "no" answer to whether taking the tickets without the teacher's knowledge and permission constituted theft. (That's what we mean by categorical thinking, and Minow points out the detriment of such thinking in the law.) Both adults assumed that "yes," taking the tickets constituted theft. But in focussing on the "rule" both adults failed to address what the child was addressing: that harm was being inflicted on the poor children who could not afford milk tickets. In Kohlberg's stages of moral development the concern for and alleviation of that harm would rank at a higher stage. So the adults were structurally violent in focussing on the importance of rules to the exclusion of the harm they were inflicting. This is reflected in the later official correction of the policy.

2. How is "structural violence" different from violence?

   jeanne's notes:

   Structural violence is harm inflicted not by an individual who intends to do harm, but by following the rules of the system. If theft is taking from another without permission and with the intent to convert the property from its owner, then Angela committed theft. She didn't have permission to take the tickets. She took them anyway. And she meant or intended to convert them to the use of the poor children. So the adults tried to convince her that her actions were tortious or wrongful.

   But Angela was dismayed by the poor children's lack of milk. To her, that was injustice. So she planned to redistribute the wealth by giving the tickets freely to the poor children. That would have righted the injustice. Angela was right to insist that what she was doing was not wrong. It was simply not normative. In our culture we do not redistribute wealth whenever there appears to be an injustice.

   The dilemma here is that categorical thinking doesn't help much. The adults so no violence are harm in their position. One had to have 20 cents to get a ticket and that was that. They weren't responsible for the harm or hunger the poor children suffered. They were just enforcing the rules, which they assumed to be right and fair. But Angela saw the deeper harm of hunger and injustice. That deeper harm, which the adults did not intend, but which resulted from the inefficient system that had been set up function the same for everyone, was structurally violent. Following the rules resulted in harm because the children were not all the same, and the rule that worked for one group caused harm to another.

   And herein lies the problem with knowingness. When we assume that what we do is right without questioning the presumptions which underlie what we think we know, the rule or law we follow does not have similar effects on everyone. But it's hard to make things better because of those unstated assumptions. Minow reminds us that we assume that what we do is right and good and that we don't need to justify it or consider it reflexively, and that people obey the rules and the law without coercion. Not so. And these stories show us how moving from the interpersonal level to the collective level alters drastically our analysis of which actions are appropriate and which are not.

   To solve the problem of individual children being hungry, the tickets were a good idea. But to solve the problem in the system, we would have needed an Angela in every local classroom. Not practical. That's all that was wrong. Angela's solution, though creative and caring, was not applicable system-wide. But the adults missed that point.

   Brown Buffalo had the same problem. though his solution to shoot down the enemy planes and enemy infrastructure (the water tower) was creative and caring, he lacked the sophistication to understand that the imaginary does not have a one-to-one correspondence with reality. So we're all grateful that he didn't manage to effectively shoot either target. And he tolerates pretty well his failure, and marks it up as an attempt. That's one creative child!

   If the adults in these stories had understood "structural violence" they could have recognized the harm about which the children were concerned and worked constructively to alleviating the children's concerns.

3. How would you approach a discussion with either Angela or Brown Buffalo on these concerns?

   jeanne's notes:

   On empowering the child who experiences structural violence

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Notes:

• Compare the childhood stories of Angela Boyd's Robin Hood and Oscar Zeta Acosta's Brown Buffalo. Both, as children, took action in a situation they found unjust and intolerable. Children do have opinions, and within the constraints of their imaginary they do act on them. This suggests that we adults need to be attentive to their feelings and provide them with alternatives that will empower them. We need to take MacKinnon's "consciousness raising" methodology into account.

• Put a section in Kids's site on how to tell the stories for us to share with our kids. And make up some drawing and painting activiities to go along with the stories.

• Include story of dubya and the OK Corral. The Reuter's photograph was on the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday. I saw it, open-mouthed, as I altered it, with two holsters slung on his hips. Talk about adversarialism and mutuality. The phrase I quoted from the article which quoted him I think, speaks of "knowingness" and the privileging of his subjectivity. And that brings us to the OK Corral with superior force and "authority" as the means of deciding validity claims. Duh!

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Related References:

• Responsibility
• Problematizing Robin Hood 1
• Problematizing Robin Hood 2
• Charlton Heston's "Winning The Cultural War"