Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 April 23

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April 23

What were the thoughts of Communists on the US's historical treatment of Native Americans?

I know that the Communists advocated in favor of Black separatism and specifically in favor of the idea of creating a separate, independent Black ethno-state out of the Black-majority parts of the US:

http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/NQ36.pdf

In turn, this made me wonder--what were the thoughts of Communists on the US's historical treatment of Native Americans--specifically the ethnic cleansing and land grabbing that the US constantly engaged in with regard to the Native Americans? Futurist110 (talk) 00:10, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

The "orthodox" Marxist-Leninist view is that it is typical of capitalist imperialism; the powerful displace, oppress and take from the weak. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:57, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

For a fun example of this viewpoint, look at Entertainment!, under the "Artwork" section. The whole premise is summarized in three short sentences. --Xuxl (talk) 12:40, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

"Perhaps because of this greater attention to antiracism and Indian issues on the left, there seem to have been a small number of Native American members of the Communist Party (CP) who had, at least in regional chapters, a rela-tively high profile. On the West Coast, in the early 1930s, an activist by the name of Joe Manzanares, self-identified as an American Indian, was featured in several headline stories; he also placed an advertisement asking for those “interested in Indian issues” to call a number at the San Francisco CPUSA office.33 There were also calls by Native Americans to join the Communist Party in the editorial section, framed much like the letter by Spotted Eagle, as a combination of calls for self-determination, communist class rhetoric, and anticolonial questionings of the savage–civilized binary. One letter, for instance, argues that “white bosses stole all the land from us Indians” and “they call us ‘natives,’ or ‘Indians,’ or ‘wild,’ . . . the Indians are not wild. . . . Indians are always friendly to workers who must slave for a living.”34 This letter writer suggests that entering modernity—being “not wild”—is not the same as assimilation. Socialism, described as “solidarity with the proletariat,” is reimagined as coincident with the writer’s claims to the land and his history of dispossession. Much like Spotted Eagle’s letter, communism and indigenous claims for self-determination are articulated as being part of the same project. Or to put it another way, self-determination is reinvented through the language of the transnational Left." from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/20218/Travels_balthaser_A.pdf;sequence=3 --Soman (talk) 12:16, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Can anyone find "A Letter from Martin Luther King from a Selma, Alabama Jail"?

It's an ad in the New York Times on 5 Feb 1965 according to https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/Selma/Selma/.

I doubt its anywhere online, I might have to visit the library.

Sinsoto (talk) 06:13, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

It seems to be in the book Clayborn Carson, ed., The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. Your library might have that. Also you could ask at WP:RX if someone can get it from TimesMachine though if it's an advertisement it might not be there. It would still be in NYT microfilms at the library, though. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 06:41, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

I found an image of the entire newspaper page (except perhaps the bottom edge) here, but it wasn't produced at a high enough resolution to read the letter easily. I also find a transcription of the letter here in PDF. I tried to compare it for accuracy against the image of the original, and found only one small discrepancy: the PDF had "political scientist" by mistake for "political science". --76.69.46.228 (talk) 07:08, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikimusic

Has a sister project for Wikipedia that is a collection of public domain sheet music ever been proposed?? Georgia guy (talk) 13:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

There are lot of scans of old published sheet music on Wikimedia Commons... AnonMoos (talk) 15:10, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

If your interest is predominantly classical, the International Music Score Library Project already does a superb job, and it would be futile for Wikimedia to try to emulate it, imo. It is free, except there's a $15 per annum subscription if you want to avoid a 15-second delay when printing each piece. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:13, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

There is also musopen.org. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 21:52, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Secret "justice"

Eleven people are on trial in Saudi Arabia in connection with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The proceedings are secret, as are the identities of the defendants and the offences they are being tried for (notwithstanding that the prosecutor has asked for the death penalty for five of them). I was not aware that Islamic justice took place behind closed doors. Has this ever happened before? Have Islamic judges ever before secretly executed people? 2A00:23A8:830:A600:20A1:7855:EB6E:71C5 (talk) 17:09, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

This is not really a secret trial because the trial itself, and certain details of it, are in the public record, and the government fully admits it is going on. A trial that is acknowledged, but not reported on officially, is called a trial In camera. Such trials are not unique to Saudia Arabia or Islamic countries in general. --Jayron32 17:45, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Which territories that the US never actually acquired were ever on the radar of US expansionists?

Which territories that the US never actually acquired were ever on the radar of US expansionists?

So far, I could think of Canada, Cuba, northern Mexico, Yucatan, and Santo Domingo. However, were there ever any additional territories that the US never actually acquired and that were on the radar of US expansionists at some point in time? Futurist110 (talk) 19:44, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Greenland is a good one - we offered Denmark $100 million for it. --Golbez (talk) 02:37, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Why'd the Danes reject this US offer? Futurist110 (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Futurist110- not sure if this counts, but there was the Golden Circle (proposed country), taking in the Southern US, Mexico, Central America and northern South America - Epinoia (talk) 03:36, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

This would have counted had the Golden Circle merely wanted to acquire these territories for the US. The fact that they also wanted to secede from the US disqualifies them from this, though. I'm looking for people who wanted to acquire additional territory for the US--not for themselves. Futurist110 (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

- and the United States took possession of the Philippines from Spain after the Spanish–American War - Epinoia (talk) 03:36, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

The US did, in fact, acquire the Philippines in 1898, though. Thus, it certainly doesn't count for the purposes of my scenario here. Futurist110 (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

All of Mexico when it surrendered in 1848. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:14, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Yep, that's a good one. The All-Mexico movement. Futurist110 (talk) 05:21, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Compelling interest for enumerating US citizens(?)

I have a question related to the ongoing controversy concerning the 2020 US Census over the inclusion of the "citizenship question": in particular the compelling interest the Federal government may have for acquiring this particular statistic for the United States as a whole and for each state. I've been looking at the various inclusive population sets ranging from aggregate state populations all the way down to the level of actual elections, and matching up at least one existent rationalization for the enumeration of each subset, pursuant to constitutional requirements and federal and state laws.

For each state in the United States, the numbers of voters casting votes is a proper subset (herein abbreviated as "subset") of the number of registered voters, which in turn is a subset of eligible voters, which is a subset of citizens, which is a subset of that state's total resident population.

Being a state of the United States entitles that state to two senators. The total resident population of each state determines congressional apportionment in the House of Representatives (per Article One of the United States Constitution section 2, as modified by the 14th Amendment). The number of citizens in the United States and/or each state is currently used for ___________???___________. The number of eligible voters within a state is (theoretically) used to determine whether or not certain subclasses of eligible voters are being discriminated against (per the 14th Amendment section 2 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965). The number of registered voters in that state is used to guard against potential voter fraud. Finally, the number of votes cast by participating voters in their respective states or congressional districts decide the various Federal-level election winners.

There are, undoubtedly, several other good reasons for determining (as accurately as possible) the numbers for each of the above subsets. However, for the life of me, I have yet to find one compelling interest which fills in that one notably-blank part. In other words, assuming that there currently exists a legally-mandated determination of the total number of US citizens (either by enumeration or statistical sampling) to the exclusion of non-citizens in each state, what is the reason (or reasons) that could be given for it (other than Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's seemingly disingenuous rationalization)? Please note that I'm not looking for hypothetical future scenarios or politically-motivated opinionating here. DWIII (talk) 21:16, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, if one is in favor of affirmative action for US citizens (in contrast to US non-citizens), couldn't that in itself be a compelling state interest in favor of this? Also, the reverse (being in favor of affirmative action for non-citizens) could also work for this, no? Futurist110 (talk) 02:31, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Strangely enough, googling "affirmative action for non-citizens" results in a whopping total of three (3) hits: two of which points directly to your comment above, and the last one to a 2009 South Africa document. As for the flip-side, what few online references I can dig up seem to be mostly expressions of deep sarcasm. At any rate, since the laudable ideals of affirmative action in the US have been heavily infected with political histrionics, and since the US government already constitutionally "discriminates" against non-citizens (with respect to Federal voting rights in particular), your well-meaning suggestion would seem to be rather uncompelling (thanks, anyway). DWIII (talk) 16:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Also, I should add that non-citizenship is not in itself a genetic trait; which, unlike a genetic trait, can be altered (Michael Jackson notwithstanding). DWIII (talk) 16:42, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

The "compelling interest" by the current regime is to scare illegals away from the census, thus leading to a lower count in states such as California, and thus possibly leading to fewer representatives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:47, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

But that would only be an ulterior motive which, obviously, is not what the current regime, or any regime, would ever admit to. Which is entirely beside the point, since one could easily come up with much more intimidating "questions" if one truly wanted to engage in scare tactics. Assuming for the time being that such an accounting of citizens could be safely accomplished with negligible-to-no risk in alienating anybody, would there truly not be any public or legal interests that would be accommodated? (and I don't mean political interests!) DWIII (talk) 23:59, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Officially, the citizenship question is supposed to aid in the enforcement of 52 U.S. Code § 10301 (formerly 42 U.S. Code § 1973). There is supposed to be a memo explaining that logic, somewhere. Apparently the technical analysts at the Census Bureau reacted "wtf?" (Paraphrased.) By the way, District Judge George Hazel did not mince any words describing the genesis of that argument, laying out the broad daylight evidence that the administration made the decision first and looked for a reason after: [1]. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I see you mentioned that reason in paragraph 3 of your original post, sorry for repeating it. Anyway, one interesting thing to note in the opinion cited is that it is actually on record that Ross had tremendous difficulty finding anyone who was even willing to write a report on how asking that question would be a good thing, so consistent had been the opinion that you could not. And also some departments were explicitly afraid of bad press. So it makes sense you'll have a hard time finding more arguments, if people in the position to make them are deliberately avoiding the topic. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Trump is probably still trying to find a way to "prove" that the 2016 popular vote in California contained "millions" of illegals. The obvious workaround for the public is to answer "Yes" to the citizenship question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

• A few points. The United States Census clauses of the U.S. Constitution do not use the terminology "citizen" anywhere, so there is no constitutional reason to count citizens specifically; it merely says "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their respective Numbers", with further terms like "numbers" and "enumeration", without recourse for citizenship status. Until the 14th amendment, slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person, and "non-taxed" Native Americans (generally taken to mean those who live as part of Indian Reservations) were not counted. The 14th amendment eliminated the slavery counting provision, and established that all persons resident in a state are counted. It should be noted that while the Constitution provides two purposes for the census (apportionment of House of Representatives seats and direct taxation) it does not exclude the use of the census data for other purposes; and much of that data, including the spending of federal dollars for providing services like police, fire, and schooling, are apportioned based on residents (logically, it makes sense: non-citizens need fire protection and drive on roads and go to school too!) --Jayron32 12:39, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

And, in addition to that, there are exactly 22 mentions in the Constitution to "citizens": 4 regarding Federal elective offices qualifications, 7 regarding judicial powers extent and limitations, 3 regarding privileges and immunities of citizens, 1 regarding requirements of citizenship, and 7 regarding voting privileges of citizens. None, it seems, which would directly benefit from any sort of raw head count of citizens only (unlike the Constitutional census provisions, which applies to all resident persons); unless of course somebody could make a rational case otherwise. DWIII (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

So the "compelling interest" formulation sounds like it's taken from the doctrine of strict scrutiny, which is the most demanding standard of constitutional review. Provisions subjected to strict scrutiny rarely survive.

The inclusion of a question, on the census, seems most unlikely to be subjected to strict scrutiny. At most I would think it might be subject to rational basis review, and even that only if someone could be found adjudged to have standing to challenge it.

The only actual constitutional warrant for the census is to count people. That's it. Count people and which states they live in. But the temptation to find out more is strong, and the census asks lots and lots of extremely nosy questions. Maybe they ought to be challengeable, but I have never heard of a successful challenge, and certainly not of anyone getting in the same time zone as getting the courts to apply strict scrutiny. --Trovatore (talk) 16:30, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

The only things the census generally asks are 1) a person's name 2) a person's date of birth 3) a person's racial/ethnic background.here is the 2010 form. 1 and 2 are required for unique identification of a person (to prevent double counting) 3 has been determined to be necessary to ensure states and institutions are not systematically violating laws regarding racial/ethnic descrimination, including (but not limited to) the 15th amendment. People who imagine that, because they themselves don't use the "n-word" that institutional racism ended in 1865, often object to the third question, but the state does have an interest in stopping racism, which is still active today, despite the annoyance of privileged white people who never have to see it. --Jayron32 16:54, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Jayron, your very own link refutes your claim about what it asks. That form, in addition to the items you enumerated, also asks your telephone number, your sex, whether you own your home, rent, or something else, and whether you sometimes live somewhere else. And I'm pretty sure that's the "short form". Those randomly assigned to fill out the "long form" are subjected to lots more prying questions. --Trovatore (talk) 17:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

There hasn't been such a thing as a long form census since 2010 or 2005 depending on how you count, see United States Census and American Community Survey. You could argue the ACS is just a long form census, it is technically mandatory after all and one of the main differences is how often it's conducted and how many people. But anyway semantics aside the debate seems pointless. The citizenship question was asked in the long form census when it was introduced [2] and is also asked in the ACS [3]. I'm sure some people are concerned about it and the other questions, but the main concern here seems to be that by including the question in the census asked of everyone, it will reduce response rates, resulting in undercounting which will affect congressional apportionment etc. There is much less concern about the question on the ACS/long form census since if people don't answer that it has much less of an effect. Nil Einne (talk) 18:01, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Be that as it may, I have still never heard of anyone successfully arguing that a census question is subject to strict scrutiny or anything remotely close to it. If that has happened, I would be interested to know. --Trovatore (talk) 18:04, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Well one of the complexities there seems to be that the lack of questions means there is limited avenue to test it assuming we only consider the (short form) census. The various other differences aside, it's not clear to me if enforcement of the long form census was treated any different from the ACS [4] [5] potentially limiting the ability to test it in court. That said, I'm in agreement that the strict scrutiny part doesn't seem to be of great relevance. From sources like [6] [7] [8] and the earlier ones [9] [10], I haven't seen any reference to strict scrutiny. A search also didn't find anything relevant and it's not like the census challenge is an obscure legal issue everyone barely cares about. The key constitutional issue seems to be whether the question will result in an undercount sufficient to violate the constitutional requirement for an "actual enumeration". There are also various questions surrounding the question and various laws which tie in to it. And whether the process followed was correct, especially given the lack of testing of the question and that Wilbur Ross said it was something the DOJ required for the above reasons but the evidence suggests it was actually him pushing it at first with the DOJ initially uninterested. This somewhat ties into whether the administration may have ulterior motives, especially those which may not be constitutional but from what I can tell, this isn't being pushed so much perhaps in part recognition it didn't work in Trump v. Hawaii. Nil Einne (talk) 19:37, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Have you read the various memos and stuff? Whatever people think of them, they seem to me an important part of the story. I mean okay you probably don't want to read all 6500 pages but sources have highlighted what they think are key ones. E.g. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]. These ones look to me like they are probably particularly important to your question as they seem to reflect the stated legal thinking [19] [20] [21] [22] [23]. An interesting point is that from the last document, it sounds like Kris Kobach feels that immigrants without lawful permanent residence in the US don't actually reside in the US and so shouldn't be considered in congressional apportionment although this doesn't seem to have been accepted by either the DOJ or Wilbur Ross. (For BLP reasons, I'll add this source [24] which seems to agree with my interpretation.) Nil Einne (talk) 17:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

[25] is even better to deal with BLP concerns. Nil Einne (talk) 19:39, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Appreciative thanks to Nil Einne for those great links (will keep me quite busy for a while!). In the meantime, I am currently partway through C-SPAN's video (which I totally missed earlier) of the 2019-03-14 House Oversight and Reform Committee inquiry of Secretary Ross. I just had to stop at 1:23:00 because committee member Rep. Virginia Foxx (R, North Carolina), in her opening statement, caught my attention with something remotely related to my original question. Quote: "...My point is: We must ask the citizenship question so we can get the data we need to have a full and honest debate about immigration in this country. If we don't ask the citizenship question, we are all debating about knowing the facts." — (Foxx, to Secretary Ross.) I doubt that particular explanation (feeding gristle to the debate mill) hardly begins to qualify as a constitutional or legal motivation; and Ross didn't even mention anything of the sort in his 8-page decision memorandum of 2018-03-26, suggesting such a concern was the furthest thing from his mind. But hey, it's a start... DWIII (talk) 05:11, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

What you seem to be implicitly assuming, though, is that they actually need a reason. It's not clear that they actually do need one, in any way that a challenger can actually enforce. What's the compelling interest, say, to ask people whether they own or rent? Surely the government has as much interest in knowing who "owes allegiance" to it, as to know that.

The argument against the question seems not so much to be that they don't have a good reason, as it is that they do have a bad reason. That's much harder to prove. --Trovatore (talk) 19:42, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Assuming we are talking of the short form only, I would think that there is some sort of non-controversial justification for all of the other ten questions (per the 2010 Census) regardless of whether they actually need a reason or not; in particular your example of the #3 "own or rent" question, which would arguably be for the express purpose of distinguishing between single and multiple residencies for a given person so as not to adversely affect the total count with accidental double-countings. That doesn't mean I personally approve of any or all of those reasons (I currently have extremely strong objections to what damned friggin' business it is of theirs to know what color my epidermis is), but I recognize that those reasons exist nonetheless. DWIII (talk) 21:28, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, you can reverse-engineer reasons for anything, but it still isn't clear that they actually need a reason at all. That would be the first thing you would need to establish for a challenge along those lines. --Trovatore (talk) 21:50, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The rationale for asking about citizenship is likely the same as it has been when it was asked in the past: regulating immigration, and the tendency for government to collect information when they can. From 1820 to 1950, the census has routinely included questions either directly about citizenship (foreigners not naturalized, native country, etc.) or related matters (date of entry to the U.S., whether naturalized or not, etc.) The questions on each census can be seen here. None of this beyond mere counting is Constitutionally mandated, but rather is the result of regulatory bureaucracy implemented by legislation. - Nunh-huh 22:24, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Is there any recent info on the Pirahã?

... i.e. more recent than The Grammar of Happiness (the people rather than the language).

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 21:59, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

off topic

I don't know, but FYI, that's not what "recursion" means, and a lot of linguists think Chomskyism is pseudoscience, so he's not the equivalent of Einstein. — kwami (talk) 05:19, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

My question is about Pirahã people, not at all about recursion or Chomsky. Apokrif (talk) 19:44, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Kwamikagami -- in linguistics, "recursion" means a constituent of type X within another larger constituent of type X: A sentence which is part of another larger sentence, a noun phrase which is part of another larger noun phrase, etc. Linguistic recursion is featured prominently in our recursion article, and since it would be impossible to have any relative clauses without recursion, and also many types of subordinate clauses could not exist, a language without recursion would be very different from ordinary human languages.

Also, few linguists agree 100% with everything that Chomsky says, but he was quite instrumental in breaking the academic field of linguistics out of a post-WW2 doldrums where it was obsessed with logical positivism and narrow methodological issues ("operationalism" / distributionalism / "biuniqueness" etc.), and opening it up to deal with a wider range of problems. Whether you love or hate Chomsky, just his review of B.F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior had a significant impact in changing the overall direction of academic linguistics in the United States.

Apokrif -- most publicity about the Pirahã is due to Daniel Everett's work. If you want to go beyond Everett, then it might help to learn Portuguese... AnonMoos (talk) 20:16, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Alas, the sources in the portuguese wiki article are all before 2012 (except the census count, 2017). Apokrif, the first 50 hits in google scholar (and books, and news) all seem to be about the language too, though maybe if you read some you can get some nuggets about the people. But everyone else seems to be citing Everett for information. AnonMoos did you find portuguese sources? When I asked google to give me the search results in portuguese only I got 0 results. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:11, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I didn't have any specific source in mind -- it just seemed probable that non-linguistic non-Everett news snippets about the Pirahã people would be likely to originate in Portuguese, and might not always be translated into English... AnonMoos (talk) 01:10, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

off topic

Everett's stuff about the Pirahã actually seemed pretty bogus to me, but what do I know. An interesting response to Chomsky's review of Verbal Behaviour is here. 173.228.123.207 (talk) 23:36, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

As I mentioned on the talk page of the "Verbal Behavior" article, there was no substantive behavioralist reply to Chomsky's review for 11 years (when the MacQuorcodale piece you linked to appeared), and Skinner himself never wrote another academic book (as opposed to popularizations and personal reflections). Behaviorism guides the design of certain basic psychological experiments, but as an overall encompassing explanatory ideology or philosophy, it's much less broadly influential today than it was 60 years ago... AnonMoos (talk) 01:31, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps [26]. Apokrif (talk) 18:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)