The Race Card. Again.

Reported on CNN:

Was race a factor in the slow response [Katrina]?

Question: Just your best guess, do you think one reason the federal government was slow in rescuing these people was because many of them were black, or was that not a reason?

Blacks answered:
Yes: 60%
No: 37%

Whites answered:
Yes: 12%
No: 86%

SAMPLE: Interviews conducted September 8-11 with 262 black adults and 848 non-Hispanic whites in the United States.

SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 7% for black sample; +/- 4% for white sample

I recall the first thing they teach you in statistics: you can make them say anything you want.

In research, the phrasing of the question is paramount. In court, the same holds true. The way the question is phrased will determine the answer, in a poorly constructed question. That is why lawyers jump up with "Objection! Leading" at every opportunity in court.

The question places the subject in the position of implying that race is a factor by virtue of word construction. Most people will agree when asked a question. In this case, agreement automatically confirms the interviewer's theory. Leading, as they say. Given that more of the whites seemingly disagreed with the automatic bias of the question, I will bet the interviewers were white.

But the interesting thing is the sampling. The majority of NO residents are black, yet the interviewer interviewed almost three times more whites than blacks. Where was the interview conducted? Outside of a golf course? Or was it done by phone? With the majority of the poorer neighborhoods still underwater, I would assume that there is no one home to pick up the phone.

The numbers are odd.

Given the monumental sampling error for the black group, here is the breakdown:
Blacks answered:
Yes: range 139-175
No: range 79-115

Whites answered:
Yes: range 68-136
No: range 695-763

Theoretically, an equal amount of blacks and whites could have answered yes. However, because of the number of interviewees, this likely did not happen. Similarly, blacks could have been nearly split down the middle with their responses, with an equal number saying yes and no. With this sampling error, it is hard to tell what reality is. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Ignoring the statistics, what is the real story? I know from being female that everything I interpret is influenced by the fact I am female. I view the world through female eyes, through female experiences. I have unique biases. I also view myself as white, though I am technically a minority. So I look through white female eyes out to the world.

As a white, I laughed when I saw this story. How in the world could the fact that they are black determine the response of the government? I saw no connection through my white female eyes. What I saw with this tragic display of governmental incompetence was just that: incompetence. FEMA did not receive a phone call, ask where the tragedy was, and how many blacks lived there. FEMA, IMHO, is not sufficiently competent to even ask those questions, which would imply some sort of conspiracy against minorities that, looking through my white female eyes, does not exist.

But then I remember. I remember as people looked at me like I was crazy when I said that I had been passed over for promotion because I was female. They, of course, were male, and looked through white male eyes. They could never see what I saw. They couldn't see the way little things added up: the way my ideas, suggestions, input were routinely ignored by the white male machine. I knew what was happening, I could see it. Why couldn't they?

Discrimination does not announce itself. No one will ever step up and say "Sorry, kid. We're not giving you the raise you because you are female." Just won't happen. Quid pro quo is the rarest form of discrimination. The real form of discrimination, the one that you know is there but you just can't quite put your finger on, is the one that is made every day, with each little comment and decision. We tend not to notice them until it is too late and the big picture has already been painted. Decisions are influenced by our biases, whether we acknowledge that or not. Each thing that happens, every event, every conversation, is interpreted through my white female eyes. And I see things you can't.

So, was the FEMA response slower because of the predominantly black populace? I don't think so. But I don't look through black eyes. I would never be able to see it.

Makes you wonder.

Why I Love My Job: Reason 122

HR definitely puts the 'fun' back in dysfunctional.

Travel around here is a logistical nightmare. Always has been. Just when you think things are getting better, someone alters the rules. I'll skip the horrid details of people getting lost for days on end, getting stuck in a place they weren't supposed to be, having to sleep in bug-infested transient rooms on camp, etc. Never mind the fact that to travel out of the country from an outer site, you have to begin the journey up to two weeks before you are due to fly out of DXB.

The process is that you must manifest three days in advance to get a charter flight. You cannot manifest until you arrive at the main camp for your area (I am fortunate to be at a main camp, but stay with me here). To get to the main camp, you must fly Mil-Air. Mil-Air is, of course, not regularly scheduled, and civilians always fly space-a (dependent on availability). So you can wait days to get on Mil-Air, arrive at the main camp, wait three more days to get on a Charter flight to Baghdad (I'll go into the Charter flight nightmares another time, that is definitely a story all to itself), then can wait another two-four days to get manifested out of Baghdad. While you wait in Baghdad, you sleep in transient trailers at BTC. I'll spare you the details. The trailers are a nightmare. And if anything happens, like it has a tendency to in a freakin war zone, the whole damn system backs up.

BIAP (Baghdad Airport) is a world unto it's own. There really is no government in Iraq right now. Yeah, there are some people attempting to nail down a constitution, but government as we know it does not exist. Think about it. It is strange. You have a country, it seems to kind of be functioning, but no one knows exactly how. BIAP is the frontier of this Wild West we live in. There have been no commercial flights into BIAP since Gulf War I. The airport never was upgraded, never got computers. Electricity is coming back on, and sometimes the A/C works. Someone, somewhere, has been replacing light bulbs and doing some painting. But the bathrooms have not been cleaned (see my first posts!) in fifteen years. I looked at the pictures of the Convention Center in New Orleans and thought to myself, shit, that's nothing. You should see the bathrooms at BIAP...

So, without a government, there is no transportation system. Hmmm. Interesting. So there are no flight standards, no IFR, nothing. The system for passing through this airport of no return is spooky. It technically does not exist. There are no luggage racks, no toilet paper, no usual supplies of an airport. When you check in your luggage, you basically kiss it goodbye and hope it comes out the other end OK. What is a prohibited item changes each day, given that there is no government and no flight standards. So they frequently abscond with your luggage, as it has mysteriously been determined to be a threat, and take it downstairs, where they rifle through it and steal everything inside. You can't complain. There is no government, and therefore, no one to complain to, remember?

The most interesting thing is what I like to call the "security peep show." Given that this is a Muslim country, certain standards of modesty apply. So you go through the x-ray machine, and pass into a lobby. The baggage extortionists have already claimed your suitcase by this point. You wait until the scary looking Ghurka security guards summon your group, then you pass to another lobby. You can spend hours waiting. Flights here in no-man's land are not scheduled.

The women are usually pulled to the head of the line. At first, I thought, "how nice, they are finally cutting us some slack." Then I realized what was really going on. Being Iraq, female airport personnel must pat-down the women passengers, and male airport personnel must pat-down the men. So the women, at the head of the line, are summoned into another lobby that is divided from the main lobby by only a wall of glass. There is a wooden divider that each woman must stand behind, to shield her from anyone else in the lobby she just entered. However, and this is the interesting part, she faces the glass wall, looking back into the main lobby where all the men are still waiting, and is subjected to the pat-down in full view of her colleagues. And, being that there are no standards, and no one to complain to, the pat-down is the full we-suspect-you-are-a-terrorist-and-that-lump-is-a-glock-not-a-breast pat-down, not the abbreviated we-can-get-sued-if-we-touch-you-there TSA pat-down.

Really, to call it a pat-down is deceiving and ridiculously American. I have had lovers who have never touched me the way these black-abaya'ed babes have. They squeeze your breasts, full on, with the room full of men behind the glass watching, smiling. I'm just waiting for them to start waving dollar bills at us. Then they go for the crotch. Does anyone really hide a grenade in the ole pussy? Really, too much is too much. If they pull out forceps, I'm speaking to my travel agent.

The first time they did this to me, I was so stunned I froze as she continued her slow grope. The second time, I looked down at her, her face uncomfortably close to my crotch, and introduced myself, saying that I felt we knew eachother well enough that we should at least exchange phone numbers. I don't know if she understood what I said, but she smiled and politely nodded. I figure I'm doing OK as long as she doesn't start yelling Allah Akbar or something.

So, by the time you get to Dubai to catch your commercial flight, you are already exhausted, pissed off, and eager to slam as many drinks as you can possibly stomach in one sitting.

Oh, and while in Dubai, waiting for your commercial flight, you do not get a company hotel room unless your flight leaves later than 3AM. And, for some strange reason, the vast majority of flights that leave for Europe and the US all leave between 1-2:30AM. Hmmm. Coincidence? So you sit in the lovely humidity of the Dubai evening with nothing to do but wait. And drink, I suppose. So, you've been traveling two weeks already to get to Dubai. You are hot, tired, pissed. And you arrive in Dubai at roughly 5PM, and must stay awake because you have no room to go to. You sit at the bar until roughly midnight, then head to the airport three hours before your flight, which can be as long as 3o hours. Nice, huh?

I have to say one thing, though. We are tough. The people that come here, the people that stay, accept the fact that we are not living in a normal world. We accept discomfort. We accept the unknown. We accept that our tickets will be lost, our itineraries incorrect, our arrival and departures uncertain. We work in Iraq. This is a place like nowhere else in the world right now. We appreciate that there are no guarantees in this job, and we take much of the inconveniences that we are subjected to with a grain of salt. We grumble a bit, but it is usually a shared, good-natured whining rather than malignant morale. We put up with every nightmare known to man here. And we stay. We are tough.

But the usual travel experience is so exhausting that I always leave a day or two early and book my own room, elsewhere, at least you can take a shower and a nap for your 30 hour flight back to the states. At least, that is what I did when I traveled with David. We managed to have fun amidst the chaos of war logistics. But most of the tight-wad Texans here will not spring for a room, instead preferring the company of their fellow drunken, pissed off travelers at the bar at the company hotel. It is always entertaining to see men slamming drinks after four months of being dry. We've already been banned from one other hotel in Dubai (following an embarrassing incident involving a drunken 400 lb. man passed out naked in the lobby elevator), and are fast approaching getting kicked out of the only one left that will take us. Iraq is not the real war zone. That fucking bar at the hotel is. C'est la guerre....

OK, so I haven't even gotten to what my point was in the beginning. So following the latest shutdown of the Baghdad Airport, HR has come up with another brilliant plan. See, if no one can move in or out, thousands of us get stuck with nowhere to sleep. We miss our commercial flights out, and have to be reticketed. It only takes a few hours of delay to collapse the entire scheme. When I came into DXB last, the airport had shut down for two days. There were no more hotel rooms in Dubai. They had people arriving from lengthy flights, exhausted and hot, and had to stack them in the lobby of the hotel waiting for rooms to open up. They never did. If you can't move them onward, how do you get them to check out? Duh. So, there was alot of griping going on about that. It was a mess.

Viola!! HR saves the day! New procedure! Now, if the airport shuts down, we are routed back to our camps, go to the back of the line, and start the process all over again. Now, remember, you might have just spent two weeks getting to Baghdad. Now you have to go in the reverse direction, and start back to Baghdad again. Excuse me???????

So, bear with me, I am getting to my point. Let's talk about ticketing. The ticketing process is a mess. There is one agency in Dubai that tickets us. They are overwhelmed. Now they refuse to ticket you if you request multiple stops. Too much work for them. So instead of dealing with the issue, that the agency is overwhelmed, they just make another rule that makes it impossible for us. Normally, due to the fact that things happen (the airport shuts down, we are attacked, there is a monster dust storm, etc.) it is advisable for HR to purchase your flight tickets. That way, if you are delayed, HR will reticket at no cost to you. But if you book your own ticket online, and something happens to delay you, you eat the ticket. So what person in their right mind would book their own ticket and roll the dice??

So I requested my ticket to Istanbul, and waited patiently. Ho hum. The price I saw online ran around $400 or so. Not bad, and, best of all, it was a daytime flight so I was eligible to get a room when I arrived in Dubai. Great!

Not so great. When HR sent me my itinerary, they had booked me on a flight that cost nearly $800, and departed at 2AM. Hmmm. That way they don't have to put me up for the night. But there was no fucking way I was paying $800 for a two hour flight. So I refused the itinerary and told them that I was physically looking at flight such and such, and the price was $400. I requested they book it. A couple hours later, they informed me that $800 was the best they could do.

So I had to book the flight on my own. If the airport shuts down, I am screwed. But now that the new and oh-so-improved travel policy is in effect, if the airport shuts down, I am screwed royally because I am no longer automatically scheduled to depart the next available flight out, I have to go to the back of the queue and start the process all over again. And the extra ticketing that would be required for this, added to the fact that the agency in Dubai already can't keep up with the current workload required of them, will-let me guess-grind the entire process to a complete stop.

Aaaaah. The perfect vacation!!!!! Groped and royally screwed. How could I possibly ask for more?

I am no rocket scientist. But does this make sense to anyone? Anyone besides HR, that is?

9/11 Redux

I was riveted to the TV. It is always interesting how boring life really is. Every day the same stuff is on the news, not much of great import happens. But then there was 9/11.

I woke up, turned on Today, and heard the slightly-more-confused-than-normal voice of Katie Couric attempting to explain that a plane crashed into the WTC. OK, I thought, no big deal. But as I tended to the morning routine, the second tower was hit, and we all knew this was no accident.

I watched the towers burn, and knew that lives were being lost. But it was simply unimaginable to us at the time that the towers would collapse, and when the first one did, I stood there, stunned, unable to move away from the TV. The next days were a constant stream of analysis as we watched it unfold over and over, as we discovered the horror of those who had died. The thought that skyscrapers could collapse was simply unbelievable. Surreal shots of people on the streets of NYC running from the dust cloud played against engineering debates, political accusations, and shots of sad family members posting pictures on phone poles.

It seemed like a different world then. We were innocent. We had not been attacked on our soil like this in my lifetime. We were free, proud, and certain that our government valued civil liberties. After all, that is why we proudly proclaimed ourselves Americans back then. I felt patriotism for the first time in my life that September, as I saw trucks waving flags and praising unity. We were going to find who did this, and we were going to make sure it didn't happen again. For the first time in my life, Americans stood together. We were going to find Osama.

Where is Osama?

I sit now in Iraq, as someone intimately connected to our so-called war on terror. I know what I do here has no relation whatsoever to 9/11. I know that Saddam was a convenient target, one easily reached, a figurehead for cultures and religions that we could never quite grasp. Day by day we see our freedoms back home disappear in random checks, pat downs, profiling, and the draining of our economy.

Where is Osama?

We build databases now. That is what we have become. Everything, everyone is suspect. You are now suspect. I have personally been pulled aside by the police and subjected to interrogation for taking pictures in a public place. Yet we follow like lemmings, wherever the 'terror' flag is waved. Every evil, Orwellian governmental fantasy is now possible, and we remain completely oblivious. How many times has some drooling idiot gotten on TV to proudly proclaim "I guess a little delay is OK if it makes us safer." Yeah, right. Have you seen what they do with those scans of you that they take at the airport?? You know, the one where they can see your genitals? You are a coffee break joke, buddy.

Where is Osama?

Billions. Can you even grasp that? Billions upon billions. Border security that doesn't work. Immigration laws that are useless. Services lost, endless budgets that are sacrificed for this war on terror. We have now seen the end result of the maceration of democracy: we cannot respond to the real threat of natural disasters. The families torn apart by 9/11, the families that have lost their own to car bombs in Baghdad, and the families of the bloated floating in the streets of New Orleans all share a common thread: your tears will never be dried by this government.

Where is Osama?

We sit here in Iraq amidst the thousands of air conditioners trucked in to keep our American foreheads cool, amidst the fully-loaded Chevy and Ford SUVs that we could never afford to drive back home, eating steak dinners, deriding the amount of money being thrown at this war. I have overheard some laughing in earnest at the American taxpayer for their ignorance. The official term is "daily burn rate." You don't want to know.

Where is Osama?

Saddam goes to trial next month. I am sure it will be a time of more violence here in Baghdad. Yes, we have managed to topple a sovereign government after constructing a plausible-only-to-the-stupid case against them. We are now the terrorists. We spread treachery and deceit, waving it right under ole red, white, and blue. We have managed to anger the entire world, and make no apologies for our arrogance. We are America, after all. We are the cowboys. We are coming to a country near you.

Where is Osama?

We lost sight somewhere of Osama, the real threat. Or maybe we didn't. Maybe we really didn't care. In the confusion, we transmuted truth for political expediency. That seemed much easier.

Where is Osama?

We seem no closer to providing stability to a nation verging on civil war. We cannot give Iraq democracy. It cannot be transplanted no matter how much we spend. That is what GW can never understand in his stammering, swaggering mind. Democracy is earned. Democracy comes from within. Democracy is the essence of the people. Iraq is not there yet. Some doubt they ever will be.

Democracy is everything that America now is not. And, by the way, where the hell is Osama?