The Shooting of Trayvon Martin

This post is about the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin.

1.  George Will and Donna Brazile had insightful comments on ABC This Week.  Click here for the transcript.

George Will said: “That the law in question, the so-called Stand Your Ground law, is a bad idea, because it tries to codify a right of self-defense, but it really confers upon citizens the illusion at least that they have something like powers exercised by highly trained police officers. Mr. Zimmerman says he was acting under this self-defense law, but he is said to have been recorded saying that he was in pursuit of the person. You cannot be in pursuit and acting in self-defense…But the problem, of course, is at this point we all ought to remember something. The last time everyone in the media and certain well-known agitators got up on their high horses and galloped off in all directions was the Duke lacrosse case, and everyone was wrong.”

Donna Brazile remarked: “Neighborhood — I’m a Neighborhood — I belong to a Neighborhood Watch. We don’t — we don’t carry pistols. We don’t carry guns. We try to protect the streets. We try to protect the neighborhood. We don’t profile people. We just try to make sure everybody is safe, get in and out.  But this has, of course, awakened some wounds, some wounds that go back generations, where young black boys are taught and told at a very early age — I heard my mom, it’s called the talk, my father, the code. The talk is, of course, watch yourself, be careful of your surroundings. If you’re stopped by the cops, protect your pride, but act with humility, and try not to run, to flee. But in Trayvon’s case, he didn’t know who George Zimmerman was. He didn’t know what this guy was up to.”

I don’t know exactly what the events were that surrounded George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin.  I read wikipedia’s article on it this morning, and it was well-documented, going so far as to include sound-clips from George Zimmerman’s call to the police and 9-1-1 calls.  The wikipedia article states the following:

“When the police arrived, they reported finding Martin face-down and unresponsive, with a gunshot wound in the chest. The police report states that they attempted CPR, paramedics arrived and continued CPR, finally declaring him dead at 7:30 p.m. Statements by the police say Zimmerman had grass on his back and his back was wet. Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and the back of the head; subsequently his lawyer stated that Zimmerman’s nose was broken.^[48][49] However, the police report does not indicate that Zimmerman required medical attention. Zimmerman claimed self-defense, telling police he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street he was on, when Martin attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck. He said he fired the semiautomatic handgun because he feared for his life.^[50] Martin was unarmed, and was carrying a bag of Skittles candy and a can of Arizona brand iced tea.^[50][51]“

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some physical altercation between Martin and Zimmerman.  As Donna Brazile said, Martin didn’t know who Zimmerman was, and Martin wondered why this guy was following him.  An altercation may have broken out, and that escalated into Zimmerman shooting Martin.  I don’t think either person was evil.  From what I have read, Zimmerman deeply regrets shooting Martin.  Could that be because Zimmerman looks back and sees that this action was unnecessary, over-reactive, and impulsive?  While he was fighting with Martin, Zimmerman may have felt that his life was in danger, when it really wasn’t, since he’s much bigger than Martin.  But he acted on impulse, with tragic results. 

If that’s what happened, does that mean Zimmerman should be let off?  I can understand why Martin’s family and many others would be outraged at such a possibility, for an innocent person lost his life—-and it all started when Zimmerman thought that Martin looked suspicious for highly nebulous reasons.  I can feel for both sides.  Some have wondered why the American evangelical community has been largely silent about this tragedy.  What could evangelical pastors do?  I think that they should do what Sister Helen Prejean (played by Susan Sarandon) did in the movie, Dead Man Walking: reach out to the victim’s family, and also the perpetrator and his family.  Both are suffering.

UPDATE: Evangelical pastor John Piper has spoken about the tragedy.  See here.

2.  Newt Gingrich is criticizing Barack Obama for highlighting the race of Trayvon Martin.  Obama said that, if he had a son, the son would look like Trayvon Martin.  Newt Gingrich finds Obama’s remarks to be disgraceful because Newt does not think that Trayvon Martin’s race is relevant: that it would have been a tragedy, whatever Trayvon’s race was.

Indeed, it would have been a tragedy, even if Trayvon Martin were white.  But I don’t think that race should be considered irrelevant in a discussion of this issue.  For one, African-American males are often racially profiled and suspected in American society, and that could have been what was going on when Zimmerman called the police about Martin.  Second, I don’t see why it’s wrong for President Obama to speak as an African-American man about a tragedy that befell another African-American man, and that befalls other African-American men as well.  Should we expect people to leave their racial and ethnic backgrounds at the door when commenting on issues, when that is a significant part of who they are?  And should we pretend that racism had absolutely nothing to do with this tragedy, when it very well could have?

Buckley on Racism and the American Dream

For this final day of Black History Month 2012, I’ll post links to some YouTube videos that I was watching a couple of days ago.  Essentially, they’re William F. Buckley, Jr.’s contribution to his 1965 debate with James Baldwin about racism and the American dream.  See here and here for the videos.  If you’d like to listen to Baldwin and the other contributors to the debate, they’re also on YouTube.

Buckley is not exactly easy for me to follow, due to his intellectual verbiage, but what I got out of his presentation was the following four points:

1.  Buckley argues that African-Americans are holding themselves back.  He appeals to a scholar who argues that African-Americans have displayed less motivation than other minority groups to become doctors, even though there are schools that are non-discriminatory and offer scholarships.  Buckley also refers to the increase in out-of-wedlock births among African-Americans.  Buckley states that America is a mobile society, and that the solution should be to provide opportunities, not to resort to the iconoclasm against America that Baldwin practices.

2.  Buckley states that the plight of African-Americans should be addressed with concern, and that it has been in America.  James Baldwin, after all, is a well-received author, and the issue of the plight of African-Americans is prominent in the United States.

3.  Buckley fears radical “solutions” to a complex problem.

4.  On the issue of African-American suffrage, Buckley glibly remarks that the problem is that too many white people are voting!  Buckley also echoes Booker T. Washington’s sentiment that African-Americans should be educated to become informed voters.

Buckley was roundly applauded at this debate, but his position was ultimately out-voted.  The proposition was that “The American dream is at the expense of the Negro”, and Baldwin was arguing in favor of this, whereas Buckley and another speaker were arguing the opposite.

My greatest problem with Buckley’s argument was that he under-estimated the reality of racial discrimination. Regarding Buckley’s comments on suffrage, I think that any adult should be able to vote.  But what if the person is not educated and does not know what’s best for society (which is not to say that Buckley had a high opinion of the Ivy League, notwithstanding his Yale credentials)?  First of all, I think that people with or without education (formal or informal) can, on the basis of their experiences, form a legitimate opinion about what policies help them or hurt them.  Second, we usually vote for people who are educated, anyway.  I think that we can listen to all sorts of policies developed by educated people and make a fairly informed decision about which we like and dislike.

Reflections on Projects for Black History Month

For the last two days of Black History Month, I was planning to blog about the chapter on civil rights in Joan Hoff’s Nixon Reconsidered.  But I changed my mind on that, for a variety of reasons.  For one, the chapter discusses African-American civil rights and also feminism, and I didn’t want to go off course more than I already have (since my blogging through Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights ended up discussing Native American and feminist issues, which are not exactly relevant to Black History Month).  Second, Hoff discusses African-American issues outside of her chapter on civil rights.  There is a solid chance that I will one day read Hoff’s entire book and blog through it, but I won’t be reading and blogging about any of it for the last two days of Black History Month.

Overall, I’m glad that I read and blogged through Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights this month.  I first saw the book at a public library a few years ago, but I did not have the time to read it then, since I was trying to concentrate on preparing for my comprehensive exams, and I already had enough books on my plate.  I was contemplating the possibility of reading and blogging about it during February, 2011, but I decided instead to read and blog about W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.  During earlier Black History Months, I was curious about the disagreement between those two African-American leaders, especially because it was often discussed in Roots: The Next Generation, which I watched for several Black History Months.  I also noticed that many African-American conservatives gravitated towards Booker T. Washington, whereas some African-American liberals preferred Du Bois (and this characterization is far from absolute).  I figured that I should read what these figures themselves had to say, before I read about Richard Nixon’s civil rights policies.

How did Kotlowski’s book compare with my expectations?  When I first saw the book in the library, I did not know if it would be enthralling or dry.  It turned out to be both.  I think that the book was enthralling when it discussed the complexity of Nixon—-how his rhetoric and personal attitudes were regressive and conservative, and yet many of his policies were progressive.  It was also enthralling when it discussed the personal reasons that Nixon had for opposing racism, as well as how Nixon boldly stood up to Southern states.  But, ironically, the book was also dry because of Nixon’s complexity, for it was hard to admire fully a President who waffled all over the place before he could arrive at a position, plus some of the discussion of policy was dry.  But the dryness is a huge part of why the book is a valuable resource, for a mark of solid research is that it acknowledges complexity and gets into detail, while meticulously documenting the details.  It’s good when a piece of non-fiction can have enthralling novelistic elements, and Kotlowski’s book did, to a certain extent.  But, in other areas, it did not because it’s ultimately not a novel, but a work of research.

I’m not sure what I’ll blog about tomorrow, the last day of Black History Month (since February 2012 has 29 days).  We’ll see, though.  Stay tuned!

Nixon’s Civil Rights 27

I finished Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights.  In his epilogue, Kotlowski offers his assessment of President Richard Nixon’s civil rights policies.  In some areas, Nixon followed others, either activist federal courts or the Democratic-controlled Congress.  This was evident on such issues as school desegregation in the South, voting rights, lowering the voting age to eighteen, Title IX, and the Equal Rights Amendment.  On other issues, such as tribal self-determination and assistance to African-American colleges and minority-owned businesses, Nixon was more of a leader.

In terms of the effects of Nixon’s policies, Kotlowski sees positives and negatives.  Affirmative action opened the door for minorities to get professional or managerial positions, and that allowed U.S. firms to gain “a cultural advantage over European and Japanese competitors in the race for global alliances and international business deals” (page 262).  But affirmative action “did not touch all blacks and still left them overrepresented in low-wage, unskilled jobs” (page 261).  As African-American historian John Hope Franklin argued, the African-American middle class was increasing, but so was the African-American underclass.  President Nixon’s lack of emphasis on integration had negative results, according to Kotlowski, for it left blacks and whites separate and unequal, and the later location of service- and information-based industries in the suburbs “added new layers onto the walls of segregation” (page 262).  A positive element of Nixon’s policies, according to Kotlowski, was that they acknowledged that civil rights applied to a variety of people, and Kotlowski in this epilogue discusses Nixon’s revolutionary policies for the elderly.

Kotlowski argues that Nixon’s civil rights policies were significant because they occurred in an important time in history and set the stage for how subsequent Presidents handled civil rights issues.  But there came a point when later Presidents retreated somewhat from Nixon’s policies.  Kotlowski notes that Nixon’s detractor, Roy Wilkins, thought that Nixon’s civil rights policies looked good when compared to those of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush!  Republicans in the 1990′s criticized affirmative-action and supported making English the official language, whereas Nixon was more supportive of bilingualism.  Bill Clinton embraced the Eisenhower Republican ideal of using government to give people a hand-up as opposed to hand-outs, but, while Nixon mostly emphasized action over talk in the area of civil rights (and often talked in a manner that appeased Southern conservatives), Clinton was the opposite, focusing on talk rather than action.

In certain respects, this book was difficult to read because reality is complex, and thus it’s difficult to place it into a neat narrative.  There were times when Nixon was bold—-dramatically bolder than his predecessors—-but then Nixon would retreat somewhat, or he would pursue a middle ground.  It was hard to make firm, definitive statements on Nixon’s civil rights policies because there were paradoxes and contradictions, but Kotlowski did rather well in his attempt.  While I applaud Kotlowski’s attention to detail and nuance throughout this book, there were a couple of times when I wished he provided more detail.  For example, what were the long-term effects of Nixon’s policies to help minority-owned businesses and colleges?  Did they make a significant impact, and, if so, why is there still a lot of poverty among African-Americans?  Was it due to any deficiency in Nixon’s programs?

This is a good book to read.  There was plenty of material in it that my blog posts did not cover!  There are two more days of Black History Month for this year, and we’ll see what I blog about.  Stay tuned!

Nixon’s Civil Rights 23

The topic of my reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights has now turned to women’s rights.  Essentially, at least so far, Kotlowski argues that President Richard Nixon and many of the male members of his staff were sexist, and Nixon had to be prodded by Republican women to do something for women’s rights.  But Kotlowski states on page 223 that Nixon “supplanted vigorous support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) with specific programs to help females attain professional careers.”  Nixon also admired certain women politicians, such as Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, and he told a group of Girls’ Nation delegates that perhaps one of them will become President some day.

On page 223, Kotlowski states that Nixon opposed abortion.  This stood out to me because I was wondering when exactly being pro-life on the abortion issue became a Republican cause.  According to Lou Cannon’s Governor Reagan, when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California, prominent conservative Republicans were largely pro-choice, whereas Catholic Democrats were pro-life.  Wikipedia’s article on the Human Life Amendment, however, documents that Republican politicians were proposing to overturn Roe vs. Wade since 1973, the year of the decision.  And Frank Schaeffer has stated that C. Everett Koop’s work with Francis Schaeffer on the 1979 piece, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, brought a number of evangelicals to the pro-life cause.

Why did Nixon oppose abortion?  The New York Times stated regarding Nixon’s comments on abortion on a tape:

“Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster ‘permissiveness,’ and said that ‘it breaks the family.’ But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.  ‘There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,’ he told an aide, before adding, ‘Or a rape.’”

Shocking, to say the least.  But, as readers of Kotlowski know, Nixon had some bigoted ideas.  But he still acted to advance the cause of minorities.

Nixon’s Civil Rights 22

For my write-up today on Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights, I’ll start with something that Kotlowski states on page 213, and the context is when Native American militants took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C.:

“Officials at the White House and interior sketched out three aims: (1) ‘get best press possible’; (2) ‘Look strong.  [Will] not tolerate illegality any longer’; (3) ‘Defer violence until Wed. A.M.,” the day after the presidential election.  On the evening of the occupation, Ehrlichman sounded impatient: ‘We better get those people out of there.’  But after Nixon indicated that he did not want bloodshed to mar his reelection, Justice Department officials sought a court injunction to evict the trespassers.  Garment and Frank C. Carlucci, deputy director of OMB, then opened talks to entice them to leave.”

That sounds rather crass on the part of Richard Nixon: don’t use violence against the protesters, because that might mar my re-election!  But Kotlowski is honest about the crass aspects of Tricky Dick!  For example, on page 39, Kotlowski talks about how Nixon sought to hurt George Wallace’s Presidential prospects, by contributing money to Wallace’s opponent in the primary for Governor, and by probing “charges of graft in Alabama.”

Although Nixon may look like a crass political player who was out only for himself, however, he did manage to do the right thing a number of times.  For example, after the militant occupation of the BIA, Nixon was outraged at what he considered to be Native American ingratitude for his responsiveness to Native American concerns.  He said that he was through with helping Native Americans, and he attempted to discourage Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s interest in Native American matters, calling the issue a “loser”.  And yet, Kotlowski states on page 214: “Such outbursts, so typical of this quick-tempered president, cannot be taken too literally.  Nixon did not reverse his Indian policy.”

Nixon’s Civil Rights 21

My reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights highlighted some of the negative aspects of President Richard Nixon’s policy towards Native Americans.  According to Kotlowski, Nixon dramatically increased funding for Native American concerns, but he did not spend a whole lot on urban Native Americans, focusing instead on those in rural areas.  There were also times that Nixon did not show leadership and will, or follow through on his commitment to legislation.

My reading also discussed what may (in my opinion) have been conservative justifications for Nixon’s progressive policy towards Native Americans.  (Kotlowski did not say this explicitly in my latest reading, but I’m deducing this from facts that he presents.)  Conservatives tended to oppose the interests of Native Americans, for they wanted to protect the grazing rights of ranchers and thus did not like Native Americans asking for land in their claims against the government.  At times, Nixon’s solution was to give the Native Americans cash, or at least to propose that such be done.  But there were times when Nixon supported Native American rights, perhaps for conservative reasons (or so it seems to me).  For example, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 made Native American territory in New Mexico into a national forest, and many saw that as egregious federal imperialism.  Many were concerned about this issue, and Nixon tried to seize it.

Opposition to the federal government infringing on people’s rights is a conservative trademark, at least when it comes to property rights, and that may have been a basis for Nixon’s championing of Native American rights, even when other conservatives did not do so.  We saw something similar when Ronald Reagan was Governor of California: Reagan opposed a federally-supported dam that would have destroyed Native American land, averring, “We’ve broken too many damn treaties” (see here).  As I’ve said before, it’s refreshing when conservatism can be used to advance progressive causes.  I should note, though, that, according to Kotlowski, Reagan as President was not as sympathetic to Native American concerns, for he sought to limit their land claims as well as cut funding for Native American health care and education.

Nixon’s Civil Rights 20

My reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights has turned to the topic of President Richard Nixon’s stance towards Native Americans.  On page 193, Kotlowski states:

“Skeptical of integration between blacks and whites, the president saw no point in extending such a policy to Native Americans.  He also equated the government’s treatment of Indians with the liberals’ tendency to use federal power at the expense of local or private initiative.  Nixon called Native American policy ‘a bitter example of what’s wrong with the bankrupt, old approach to the problem of minorities.  They have been treated as a colony within a nation—-to be taken care of.’  Fond memories of his Whittier College football coach, Wallace Newman, a Cherokee, reinforced the president’s view.  Newman, he told aides, had blamed the government for turning ‘a once proud people’ into ‘wards.’  Nixon did not romanticize traditional Native American lifestyles, which he deemed ‘dirty, filthy, horrible.’  Still, he believed that Native Americans deserved the opportunity to make their own choices and ‘should no longer be treated like a colony within a nation.’”

Kotlowski talks in the above passage about Nixon’s personal and ideological reasons for supporting Native Americans (and, as with African-Americans, his support was mixed with a degree of prejudice against them).  On page 197, Kotlowski discusses the personal and ideological reasons that Vice-President Spiro Agnew was sympathetic towards Native American concerns: that he was “the self-made son of Greek immigrants”, and thus sympathized with minorities struggling to advance.  Agnew as Governor of Maryland had an impressive civil rights record, for he “named African-Americans to state offices, approved a fair employment code for the executive branch, and won passage of a mild open housing law to prohibit bias in the sale of new homes.”

But there were also political and practical reasons for Nixon’s concern for Native Americans.  As with African-Americans, Nixon did not expect to receive a lot of Native American votes, but he did desire the ability to refute charges by liberals that he lacked compassion for minorities.  Moreover, the Nixon years were a time when people became concerned about Native American issues.  In 1972, Marlon Brando refused to accept an Academy Award for the Godfather because of the negative ways Native Americans were depicted in films and television (see Sasheen Littlefeather’s remarks here).  And a group of Native Americans briefly took control of Alcatraz, “claiming it for all tribes ‘by right of discovery’” (page 198).

Nixon’s Civil Rights 19

One thing that stood out to me in my latest reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights was how elements of Nixon’s civil rights policy were conservative.  I don’t mean rigidly libertarian, in the sense that Nixon opposed government intervention, period, for Nixon’s policy entailed increased federal spending in areas.  Rather, I’m referring to a skepticism that Nixon had about the efficiency of the federal government, as well as Nixon’s preference for local autonomy.

For example, on page 182, we read: “As in his relations with black ministers, the president hoped to use the Urban League to bypass the government’s social service and job-training bureaucracy, which he deemed wasteful.  Nixon promised to disburse government contracts, research grants, and manpower training subsidies to the Urban League…”  Nixon had some tensions with Whitney Young, the head of the Urban League, but both had the agenda of focusing on developing job and educational opportunities in the ghetto rather than integration.  Young was all for integration, but he expected for African-American ghettos to remain for years, and so he sought to promote “ghetto power” in the meantime.  Nixon trusted the Urban League more than the federal bureaucracy, which reflects a conservative disdain for government bureaucracy (at least in the domestic sphere).

On page 189, Kotlowski mentions a detail about Nixon’s policy towards Native Americans: “Nixon did not think it necessary for Indians to meld into Anglo society, and he recognized the need for separate Native American institution, a position in tune with his support for minority businesses.  Nixon’s respect for tribal autonomy was analogous to his use of local committees to desegregate southern schools.  As with their support of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Nixonians pumped money into Native American programs and the BIA”, the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  There were right-wing Western senators who were against Indian self-government, but Nixon’s conservatism led him to favor tribal autonomy.

In some cases, Nixon’s conservatism had good results, as it often did in terms of Native Americans and African-American businesses.  In other cases, the results were mixed.  Nixon’s policy of using local Southern committees to help facilitate integration was a good idea because it involved Southerners in the process, rather than imposing a policy on Southerners from the top-down.  But expecting local Southerners to do the right thing on their own was not always prudent.  That’s probably why Nixon did not hesitate to violate conservatism and to use heavy-handed federal pressure, when he deemed it necessary.

I’m intrigued by how conservatism can support progressive ideas.  Back when my Mom was in a graduate program in African-American history, I was a young man with a John Bircher ideology.  I feared a one-world government, which would undermine the sovereignty of the United States.  When I challenged my Mom’s multicultural notions, she replied that many cultures do not want to give up their sovereignty, but prefer to remain independent.  If my memory is correct, she referred to Native American tribes.  That gave me something new to think about: that opposing a one-world government could actually coincide with an idea that is considered liberal, multiculturalism.  Similarly, when I was a conservative, I had a great deal of sympathy for Malcom X and the Nation of Islam (albeit not for their anti-Semitism), although many conservatives I knew did not.  For me, supporting African-American businesses and encouraging responsibility and family were solid conservative ideas.  On these issues, I overlapped with some liberal colleagues.

I’d like to note another thing that I learned from my reading: James Brown was a Nixon supporter!

My reading over the next several days of Kotlowski’s book will not focus on African-American civil rights, but rather on the rights of other groups, such as Native Americans and women.  I’ll still be commenting on his discussion of those issues for Black History Month, even if that’s not exactly appropriate, however, because my goal is to blog through this book for Black History Month, and that is what I’ll continue to do.  Stay tuned!

Nixon’s Civil Rights 18

In my reading of Dean Kotlowski’s Nixon’s Civil Rights right now, I am in Chapter 6, “A Cold War: Nixon and Civil Rights Leaders”.  The chapter is about how President Richard Nixon had a tense relationship with civil rights leaders.  Part of this was because civil rights leaders disliked Nixon’s focus on providing African-Americans with economic opportunity rather than integration, and they criticized Nixon for favoring a slow approach to the desegregation of Southern schools.  Moreover, Nixon’s continuation of the Philadelphia Plan to empower minority businesses took a bit of time to produce results, and so civil rights leaders labeled it a failure.  On Nixon’s side, Nixon did not care for Ralph Abernathy preaching to him.  Nixon preferred to reach out to the African-American silent majority, which actually was not a majority of African-Americans at the time, but which consisted of African-American ministers and businessmen.

Something that stood out to me was what Kotlowski narrated on page 173.  Nixon adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested in a memo that the “issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect’” (Moynihan’s words).  Kotlowski states: “Moynihan protested that the phrase ‘benign neglect’ was neutral, coming from a 130-year-old report on British policy toward Canada.  In Nixon’s opinion, reporters had given Moynihan a ‘bad rap.’  Neither Moynihan nor the president realized that they implicitly had compared civil rights policy to British colonialism.”

This makes me wonder if the controversial things that public figures say necessarily mean what people think that they mean.  When Rush Limbaugh said that the Obamas were “uppity”, for example, did he really mean that they were not acting in a manner that was fitting for their race, as people claimed when they looked at the history of the use of “uppity”?  Or did Rush simply mean that the Obamas think and act like they are superior to others?  I’m not saying that I agree that the Obamas think they’re superior, but it does seem to me as if many project onto people’s words things that the people may not have meant.