Samuel L. Jackson on Barack Obama.

Samuel L. Jackson, the Hollywood actor, voted for Barack Obama, he revealed in a recent expletive laden interview in Ebony magazine. Now, what struck me as very revealing was why he did so. Can you guess? Well, Samuel L. Jackson voted for Barack Obama for one reason and one reason alone – because Obama is black. That’s it. Samuel L. Jackson declared that Barack Obama’s policies meant nothing to him, really – all that mattered was that he was black. He voted for him because “he looked like me...and that is why people vote for people”. He said, in similar words.

In the same interview he accused the Tea Party of racism since their sole purpose was to get Barack Obama – a black man – out of office.

Now, these words of Samuel L. Jackson are very curious and telling. Mr. Jackson appears to be unaware that his choice of Barack Obama simply because he was black, rather any reason of substance, is, in fact, a racist choice. Samuel L. Jackson is showing an unconscious racism by this decision, whether he realizes it or not. Anyone who selects anyone, above others, for anything, for the reason of race, alone, is being racist. Race should not be reason for selecting for or against someone. Only matters of substance can form reasonable motivations for choosing one person over another. Samuel L. Jackson didn’t choose for any such reason – he chose Obama because they had the same coloured skin. This is the very same kind of reasoning which Jackson views as racist when he judges the Tea Party. They, too, are, it seems, wishing to choose a President, or determine a President, based on race...the white race. Samuel L. Jackson has declared the same motivation as the one he pins on the Tea Party – it is just the mirror image of it.

I hope for a day when race plays no part in political or other choices. People should be measured for their qualities, their abilities, their views, their aspirations and aims, their plans and their experiences – they should not be assessed on whether or not they belong to a particular race. The best candidate, in terms of a summation of all their qualities, is the one who should win – along with the best party as a summation of all they have to offer a country. The race of those politicians (or whatever other class of people is being considered under the circumstance) should not be a part of any rational, fair, humane decision making process. It should always be the best person wins. It should NEVER be – the person most like me, racially, wins. That is a racist decision, no matter who makes it, or whatever race they be.

I don’t think Samuel L. Jackson is aware that his decision was a racist one. I don’t think he has reflected too deeply on it. If he had, he would not have accused the Tea Party of similar thinking, implicitly, for he would have recognized that their views were simply mirrored echoes of his own. No. Samuel L. Jackson most probably does not intend to hold a racist view...but, in fact, he does. Sometimes people are not aware of the true meaning or implications of their own thinking. They don’t examine their own thought processes enough to become aware of them – they just act, almost reflexively. I think Samuel L. Jackson’s decision comes into this category of reflexive thought. He instinctively chose Obama because of the physical race based similarities he has with him. That is all. He never paused to reflect on whether or not such a decision was fair, reasonable or free of racist undertones. He just reacted. So many people do that. So many people “decide” without thinking. We need a different world. A world of more thinking, in which decisions are actually thought through and are not reflexive. We need a world in which people actually consider the context, implications and consequences of their thoughts before making a decision. The only basis on which Barack Obama should have been judged is on the substance of his life and his merits as a human being. No-one should have been judging based on his race. He should have been compared, in a race blind way, with all other possible humans who could have had his job – and being judged accordingly, positively or negatively. I think, had this been done, perhaps he would not have been elected. He seems, to an overseas, impartial, uninvolved eye, to have certain weaknesses as a candidate, which seemed to have been overlooked by the electorate, perhaps because they saw his race first, his suitability last.

Let future elections in America, and elsewhere be race blind. Let the decisions on who is to lead a nation be based purely on who would make the best leader, from the point of view of who would benefit the nation most. If such a person be black, then by all means elect them. However, such a person should never be elected purely BECAUSE they are black, or Hispanic, or Asian or white, etc. As always the winner should be the most optimal candidate, not the most “ethnically correct”.

The future of America is likely to see other Presidents who are minorities. I would be unsurprised to see an Hispanic President, given how quickly the Hispanic population is growing. Again, however, such a President should only ever be selected if they are genuinely the best of all candidates.

I am hopeful that some people might have learned a lesson from President Barack Obama’s election. Many people, I am sure, are a little disappointed at his performance. Yet, they should not be surprised, since many were like Samuel L. Jackson. They didn’t choose him for his capabilities...they chose him for his colour. Colour, alone, is no guide to a good leader. I hope America, and the world, choose future leaders without reference to race – for such concerns only ever corrupt and contaminate the electoral process and give rise to irrational decisions for which the country must pay the price. The world cannot afford to pay such a price – it needs to eliminate racism and choose the genuinely best candidates, in a colour blind fashion.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

On racial purity.

Several years ago, a (then) friend of mine, who is no longer one, remarked, with a strangely gleeful face, that: “Your children are not racially pure…my daughter is.”

I thought this a most bizarre and inexplicable remark coming from a man whose first marriage had been to a fellow Caucasian – but whose second marriage (and two children by it) was to a Malay woman!

He seemed to have forgotten that two out of three of his own children were as mixed as mine were.

Anyway, his remark got me thinking. Does it matter that my children are racially mixed? Does it make any difference to me, in any negative sense – as my former friend implied it should? Clearly, the answer is no, it does not matter. The reason for this should be clear to anyone with the least understanding of genetics: my children by my Malay wife, contain exactly the same number of my genes as any theoretical child I could have had by a fellow Irish woman. My children are just as much my children, in a mixed race marriage, as they would be in a “pure blood” marriage. The situations, from the genetic point of view of what fatherhood means, are exactly equivalent.

I realize that my former friend was expressing a view, held by some, that there is something wrong with “impure” crosses. They see something wrong in mixed race children. I cannot agree with this view. Mixed race children are, by simple observation, frequently more attractive than either parent – so, they certainly do not lose out there. They are likely to be healthier than a “pure blood” child, since they are unlikely to have genetic diseases which require two defective genes, one from either parent. This is obviously so, since different races will have different preponderances of various defective genes: a mixed race cross is unlikely, therefore, to bestow a genetic disorder on a child. Thus, mixed race children can be expected to be healthy and good looking. They are also, don’t forget, just as much their parents’ children, as they would have been in a “pure blood” cross. So, I don’t see any disadvantage here, indeed there are certain advantages.

I have one qualification to this, though. I do think it would be a bad idea if ALL relationships were mixed race crosses. You see this would extinguish the individual races and their individual mix of abilities and disabilities, advantages and disadvantages and create blends between them that might not be as suited to particular environments as the uncrossed pure bloods would have been. So, some mixing is fine and, in fact, to be desired in some ways – but it is important, I think, that the full panoply and variety of human races (and mixes) is maintained – for in that variety, Humanity has a certain strength against changed circumstance and a range of challenging environments.

The Caucasian is in decline in the world. Caucasians are having fewer and fewer children. I, for one, would regret the passing of the Caucasian, should they decline to extinction (though I am not likely to live long enough to see it). Yet, that does not mean that mixed race marriages and biracial children should not be. Such children and such marriages contribute to the world’s diversity, and this can only be a good thing. It is my hope that all races and all racial combinations, persist for the long term – for in each such combination, I think there is something of lasting human interest to be found.

As for my former friend’s remark about my children not being “pure blooded”, I admit, I was surprised that he should not only say such a thing, but think it. He seemed to take pleasure in the fact that my children were “mixed” and “not pure bloods” – as if they were somehow inferior to his daughter, thereby. In the end, I understood that he needed to think such things to defend himself against an unavoidable fact: my children are a lot brighter than his. He was looking for a way to reason that his child was superior to mine. He chose “racial purity”. It was jarring to hear such thoughts, in a post-Nazi world. I would have thought that the ideals of racial purity would have been muted, by the events of the nineteen-forties. However, he did not seem to have this historical awareness, despite his father’s wartime service against the Nazis.

My own view is that all races and mixes between races, have their utility and special place. All should be respected and valued – and all should be preserved. You never know when a particular race, or racial combination, might prove vital to the interests of Humanity – so it seems wisest to preserve them all, against future need.

In case you are curious, it is not my former friend’s remark about my children not being pure blooded that ended our friendship – but something else that he did (a deception). Ultimately, I would rather he was more concerned with purity of heart (his own), than purity of race. Then, probably, we would still be friends.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The national archives of Malaysia and Singapore.

Today, I have come to understand that the national archives of Singapore and Malaysia, have rather different outlooks on the world. Each has a different view of what is worth preserving for posterity. The sadness of this, is that their priorities are not what might be expected.

Long-term readers may recall that the National Library Board of Singapore (NLB), started to archive blogs originating in Singapore, a couple of years back, to preserve them for posterity. I remarked at the time that their priorities seemed strange, choosing to archive airheaded, but popular commentators (who talked of little but shopping, sex and plastic surgery, for instance), whilst ignoring more substantial writers. I wasn't archived, for instance, even though my blog constitutes a record of a prominent young Singaporean (my son). My blog is one of the more serious ones that originated in Singapore - and certainly one of the most reflective and, though I observe it myself, substantial. However, it was shunned in favour of politically correct and insubstantial candy floss. As a result, Singapore's history will thereby be distorted, since, in the distant future, the only blogs to survive may be the ones that the PAP decided, in the present, should survive, thus altering the future view of what the blogosphere was like in these times. My voice will not be among the record, for instance, even though I raised many issues that others did not - and so those perspectives should be preserved, in a nation that values plurality. Clearly, Singapore doesn't.

Today, I found myself much surprised to see a new search listing, at the top of the search on Google for my name, under Malaysian search items. It is a listing in the Malaysian national news archive, News Image Bank found at www.nib.my

This national archive gathers together news items, be they cover pages, interior news pieces or photos, from three leading dailies: The New Straits Times, Harian Metro and Berita Harian. I found myself rather surprised to note stories listed from these newspapers that I had never heard of, living, as I had been at the time, in Singapore. Ainan, too, had his own set of listings, including quite a few front pages.

I found this revelation rather sobering. You see, Ainan was born a Singaporean Malay, in a Singaporean hospital. Yet, Singapore has not, to my knowledge, chosen to archive anything relating to him, or his family. Indeed, we were explicitly not included in a national blog archive. However, Malaysia has chosen to archive material relating to our family. Indeed, they have listings for Syahidah Osman Cawley, too. Now, it is true that Ainan has Malay blood running through his veins...half-Malay, anyway - but is it not telling that the nation in which he was BORN and has citizenship, does not accord him the same status?

What a nation chooses to archive of the present, shows what a nation would like the future to know of its world. Malaysia wants its future descendants to know of Ainan and his achievements. Singapore doesn't. Singapore wants Ainan to vanish into the pages of unrecorded history. Malaysia, on the other hand, would seem to want him to remain in cultural memory as, perhaps, an example to others, an inspiration even, to the achievement and aspirations of others.

Malaysia wishes to learn from its present and its past. Singapore wishes to rewrite it. By not archiving matters relating to Ainan, in publicly available archives (as Singapore appears not to be doing, since there is no such presence online), Singapore is editing its past, such that certain matters, will, in time, be forgotten and lost.

Thankfully, however, other nations, like Malaysia, will hold onto the memories, so, ultimately, Singapore will fail in its objectives, no matter how hard it tries. Ainan's memory may fade in Singapore, as the decades and centuries pass, with no publicly archived records to remind people...but other nations will not be so forgetful.

How sad it is, however, that the nation of his birth, should be so set on repressing his memory, when it should be upheld, along with all other exemplars, of all races. Perhaps, of course, that is the reason for this seeming neglect. Perhaps Ainan, not being a member of the dominant race in Singapore (the Chinese, for those unfamiliar with the city state) is not thought worthy of long-term record. Perhaps, to be thought worthy of archiving, one would have to be a Chinese Singaporean...being a Singaporean Malay is just not good enough, not important enough from the perspective of those-who-decide.

Singapore will always be part of Ainan's personal history and the story that his life tells...but the question is: will Ainan always be part of Singapore's national history...or will his memory be edited out and eventually silenced and forgotten, as already seems to have begun?

One thing is sure, however: this young boy, of Malay descent, will never be forgotten, by our present home: Malaysia.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)