Skeleton Keys

 Sometimes my "Hey, that looks interesting" method of book selection misfires. I bought Skeleton Keys thinking it would be anatomical, but instead it was anthropological. Written by a paleontologist, it provides a rough history of the human skeleton and tales of how anthropology has been misused. Not bad, but not what I expected and far from memorable.

Here, Right Matters

 I usually don't read recent or as-it-happened political books (I made an exception for A Higher Ground because James Comey was my Trial Advocacy professor), but reserved Here, Right Matters after hearing  an interview with Alexander Vindman. I remember listening to his testimony and seeing the pictures of him entering the hearing room with his identical twin Eugene, also a Lt. Colonel, in their dress uniforms. He came across as honest and earnest, a professional who was doing his job and doing what he believed was right for his country. 

As a writer, he's engaging and surprisingly funny in the book he wisely made more of a memoir than a political tome. Born in the USSR, his and Eugene's earliest memories are of an abusive foster home where they lived while their mother was in hospice care, and within two years they, along with their father (an engineer), older brother, and maternal grandmother, were refugees in Brooklyn. I don't feel like he exactly glossed over how hard life must have been for his family, but he doesn't dwell on it. He mentions his father's initial job as a manual laborer while he studied for the Civil Service exam and the long days his father worked once he was hired by the water department, but he focuses on the mischief he and Eugene got into as the black sheep of the extended family - daredevils who were intelligent but didn't apply themselves to what didn't interest them and who fed off each others's schemes and energy. He initially joined ROTC to emulate his older brother (Leonid Vindman served in the Army Reserves), but found his passion while serving, first in Korea, then in Afghanistan (where he earned a Purple Heart), and eventually using his language skills as a member of the National Security Council. 

There, in a job usually taken by someone of much higher rank, he sat in on a routine phone call between Donald Trump and the recently elected president of Ukraine. When Trump asked for a "favor," Vindman reported this to the NSC's ethics officer (coincidentally his twin) and through the proper channels. From that point on, he started to experience professional slights, apparently orchestrated from the highest echelons and aided by an office mate with whom he had a mutual dislike and distrust. We know the public side of this story, so other than pointing out that his mid-level position allowed him to avoid recognition until shortly before his hearing, he focuses on how this affected him and his family. His father, like many Russian emigres, was a strong Trump supporter and his daughter, while not old enough to understand the politics was old enough to be affected by the upheaval. Tacitly admitting that his former boss, Dr. Fiona Hill, was right in considering him a bit naive when it comes to politics, he relies on his wife Rachel and his twin (whom he calls his inner voice) to help him realize that his best course is to retire from the Army. Now a free agent (in his words), he's forging a path to continue his service as a civilian.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

 I'm writing this as the Senate is considering a pair of infrastructure bills, one of which focuses on "human infrastructure" - child care, elder care, education, and health benefits. Those vital but intangible benefits have been cut underfunded at least since Ronald Reagan used the budget and tax code as a way to convince the middle and working class that "those people" are getting more than they deserve. That philosophy was supposed to bring an economic windfall that would help everyone, but instead it hollowed out the middle class while enriching the already wealthy. 

Heather McGhee argues in The Sum of Us that it's not tax cuts and lean budgets that "raise all boats" but investment in human infrastructure. The former head of Demos, she begins by covering much of the same ground as Richard Rotstein did in The Color of Law. White families have more wealth, even when you adjust for income, because of the discriminatory housing policies and practices of the mid-20th Century. She traces the resistance to social programs which help everyone to the dismantling of pools and parks when they were required to desegregate in the 1950s and 60s. The next step was to underfunding schools, particularly as cities became less white and white students moved to private schools. Along the way, blatant racism (claiming that non-whites are inherently inferior) was replaced with cultural blame ("they" don't respect education or family or hard work, or whatever excuse seems believable).

McGhee explains how some of the largest current social problems hit the African American community first. Even adjusting for income, non-white students carry considerably more debt than white students, so it became unmanageable a decade before our current crisis - and cuts to higher education and the switch from grants to loans accelerated this process. The housing crash hit everyone - but the history of redlining and the practice (which doesn't fall directly under any laws or regulations) of selling sub-prime rates to non-whites whose credit qualified them for regular loans meant those communities had less equity and a smaller margin for error. But politicians feel they have to dial back any program to ameliorate these problems because "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" constituents won't stand for them. Like my former co-worker who didn't want the state to help Philadelphia's public schools because it might cut the advantage his sons got from living in Delaware County, even if something doesn't harm them (or even helps them), too many people afraid that helping the community as a whole will end up hurting them.

I know this sounds depressing, but The Sum of Us is an optimistic book. McGhee's final chapter describes a trip to Lewiston, Maine. It's the second largest city in the oldest, whitest, and one of the poorest states. Like West Virginia (where Joe Manchin is currently harming his constituents at their request) and post-COVID Alabama they record more deaths than births. Parts of Lewiston, though are thriving thanks to 20 years of immigration, mostly from Africa. McGee shows us a place where refugees have found a new life, and the old residents have benefited as well. An older woman who regretted losing her French Canadian roots reclaimed her language with Francophone African immigrants, a chance meeting between a parolee and a Muslim woman brining halal food to the prison started a friendship and brought him into social activism. The seemingly unlikely coalitions formed in Lewiston worked to expand Medicaid by ballot measure (then Governor Paul LePage rejected expansion multiple times using racial scare terms, even though the number of Mainers who live in poverty is twice the number of non-white resident), and provide hope going forward. These coalitions shouldn't be rare, because studies show that integrated groups solve problems more quickly and creatively. If we only realized that we all benefit when we work together.