@Chris: for my part, I don’t really care WHY anyone was harassing Juan Andrade, and I don’t think it matters. The core issues are that (1) someone harassed Juan Andrade out of the country and (2) it was racial harassment.
I don’t think “there may have been more to it.” Either you believe Juan Andrade’s public statement that he ‘felt increasingly slandered by [people] referring to [him and his family] as “illegals” […] for over a year’ or you don’t. If you do, I’m really glad; if you don’t, you’re asking for an unreasonably high standard of evidence to believe victims of harassment: that they need to prove, concretely, in hard copy, to you, that it occurred.
(1) Bonsai is an art form, and art forms are inextricable from the people who practice them and the cultures of practice those people create; what happened to Juan Andrade has everything to do with bonsai.
(2) What happened to Juan Andrade isn’t “politics”; it was harassment and racial discrimination perpetrated by people in the US bonsai community against a US bonsai professional within the context of bonsai practice. If this forum is for “practicing bonsai,” discussing a serious and frightening situation that affects someone within bonsai’s community of practice – and within Mirai’s community of practice – is absolutely appropriate.
(3) I’ll turn your last point back on you: if you don’t want to engage issues of harassment and racial discrimination in bonsai on this forum, you don’t have to; just stop reading the thread. “I’ll quit this whole forum over this one thread I keep choosing to read” is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
@hierophantic Fair enough. I don’t know Juan personally and I haven’t seen his public statement but even with that said - it’s just an allegation made by one person. It alone doesn’t prove guilt. If you go into a courtroom and the only evidence is “he said/she said”, well good luck. Presumably ABS has enough “supporting evidence” (including a pattern of previous behavior against others) to request his resignation and I am putting my faith in that even though I haven’t seen it myself.
@mm13, if Ryan/Mirai want to close down this thread, I have no problem with it. But to leave a forum because of comments in one thread seems a bit of an over-reaction. Just don’t look at it if you don’t like it!
@Chris: the US legal standard for establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt was never intended to be used – and isn’t appropriate to use – outside a courtroom. US legal evidentiary standards probably ARE outside the scope of discussion here, but for two cases in point:
(1) US legal standards for establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt are so high that OJ Simpson was acquitted;
(2) The US legal system has a bunch of standards that are lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” including “reasonable suspicion,” “some credible evidence,” and “balance of probabilities,” all of which are used to decide serious and impactful issues, including police stop and seizure, unemployment benefits eligibility, mitigating circumstances in criminal or civil court and aggravating circumstances in civil court, and, incredibly enough, Florida’s own ‘stand your ground’ laws.
Consider again how difficult it would be for a victim of harassment to provide evidence that someone has systemically verbally harassed them over a period of time. Are they supposed to carry around a rolling tape recorder 24/7? Are they supposed to record that harassment and let it go on long enough to establish the period of time? And so on. Criminal harassment is unbelievably difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court room because it so often leaves no evidentiary trace.
@Chris: and this isn’t a criminal court, is my point. Believing victims of harassment – and creating social repercussions for their harassers – is not subject to criminal evidentiary standards, and trying to subject them to criminal evidentiary standards is why it’s so difficult to hold people who engage in harassment accountable.
@hierophantic: I think we can all appreciate your zeal and overall commitment to this subject. Clearly, this is something close to your heart. Let me ask you: What do you recommend we do?
@Carl: thank you for asking! I know how challenging (and draining) it can be to engage issues of systemic discrimination; as much as I think some folks around here would prefer if I stopped harping on this, there’s nobody who wishes I could stop more than I do.
I think “what can we do?” ultimately has three separate answers: one each for the personal, the social, and the political spheres. I’m going to try to keep it bonsai-focused, but inevitably it’s going to bleed a little. I’m also going to refrain from justifying each action for the sake of brevity and readability (plus I’ve already done most of it above).
PERSONAL ACTIONS
Believe people when they say they’ve been harassed. In the contemporary US, it’s much more expensive – socially and even financially – to be a victim than an abuser or harasser. The myth that people claim to be harassed or abused to gain a social or financial advantage doesn’t hold up to scrutiny; overwhelmingly, contemporary US culture punishes people for being victims. In context of bonsai: this means believing Juan Andrade when he says he was harassed without demanding evidence.
Call out and confront ‘missing stairs.’ The term ‘missing stair’ came from the sexual abuse community; more generally, it refers to a person whom Everyone Knows can’t be trusted, but whom they try to work around and quietly warn others about rather than confront directly. In context of bonsai: if you know someone in your local bonsai community who is abusive, engages in harassment, uses racist or sexist language, etc., confront them directly and make sure there’s a social cost for bad behavior.
Respond immediately to unacceptable behavior.In context of bonsai: if someone engages in abuse, harassment, racist or sexist language, etc., and you’re present, confront that person and demand they stop the behavior. Even if it’s a joke. Even if it’s a little thing. Silence is acceptance.
SOCIAL ACTIONS
Advocate for your local bonsai community to be inclusive – proactively. ‘Inclusive’ means welcoming to people regardless of their age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, mental or physical disability status, etc. ‘Proactive’ means three things: (1) writing inclusive language into your local charter, (2) actively advertising for new members from marginalized communities, and (3) responding to people in the community who aren’t inclusive by requiring them to change their behavior or, if they don’t, excluding them.
Support marginalized people in your local bonsai community. Speaking as a marginalized person, I often feel uncomfortable in US bonsai spaces, because – in my experience – they’re overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy, and homogeneous. Being truly inclusive means making extra effort to locate and retain marginalized people. “Support” is pretty broad, but could include (1) creating specific events for marginalized people or grounps – think ‘women-only bonsai workshop,’ partnering with your local LGBTQ+ organization to do a Queer Bonsai Night; (2) providing scholarships that are restricted to marginalized people or groups to attend shows, workshops, apprenticeships; (3) committing to buy supplies primarily or exclusively from local, marginalized population-owned and -operated business; (4) many, many things I’m sure I’m not thinking of.
POLITICAL ACTIONS
Vote. If you value an inclusive society, vote for candidates who make inclusivity a core part of their platform. At the national level, those candidates are pretty obvious (and thin on the ground); at the local level, it can be harder to tell who’s running at all, let alone what they stand for. Do your research, and pay special attention to members of marginalized groups; they’re overwhelmingly more likely to support inclusive policies, because their groups have been systemically excluded from dignity, influence, and safety in the contemporary and historical US.
@hierophantic: Wow, thank you for such a detailed outline! I imagine that must have taken some time to format. I do appreciate all that went into that response. With that being said, I do have have one question to help me clarify some things. What do you mean by “marginalized” in this context? I would hate to equivocate and be inaccurate in my understanding of what you’re saying.
@Carl: You might be Surprised To Learn that I had some of that just lying around. I appreciate your kind words though!
I’m happy to answer your question about marginalized people, but I’d also suggest doing some reading on your own; my answer (1) isn’t intended to be specific or comprehensive, (2) is definitely US-focused, and (3) might not capture nuances of a term that is very much still evolving.
“Marginalized people” (or marginalized persons, or marginalized populations) are groups of people who are systemically disadvantaged in a given society. In the US, there isn’t an official list or anything, but the list of federally protected classes of people is a good place to start.
“Disadvantage” is hard to define, but broadly it tends to mean at least one of three things: (1) the group has been systemically excluded from equitable opportunities to accumulate wealth, (2) the group has been systemically excluded from political participation, or (3) the group has been systemically abused either physically or linguistically.
People can belong to more than one marginalized community, and some communities are more marginalized than others. THAT SAID, almost no one who takes systemic discrimination seriously participates in what we call the Discrimination Olympics: trying to prove that their group has more Marginalization Points or whatever than any other. (You’ll hear marginalized people talk about “intersectionality;” what they mean, ultimately, is that they believe everyone who’s getting screwed is getting screwed in the same way by the same systems, and most of the time, what does it matter if it’s harder for people who are gay or people who are Jewish when fixing the root problems helps all of us?)
In practice: if I ran a local bonsai group, I would – based on my personal experience – probably target the following marginalized populations for special support:
People who identify as female, transgender, or non-binary;
@hierophantic: Amazing! Of all the people with whom I interact, very few are able to define the words integral to their argument, especially to this caliber. One more definition, please and then I’m sure I’ll understand; unless you introduce something new and ambiguous (at least to me) in your next response. I’ve seen you use the word “systemic” quite frequently. Granted, I can use a dictionary, but I’d rather know how you’re using it.
@Carl: thanks so much! I have a degree in Rhetoric, and one of the things I learned (and have continued learning since) is that most disagreements ultimately boil down to definitional disagreements. Having good definitions helps get everyone on the same page!
Happy to define “systemic,” but again, caveat emptor: it’s my own definition, it’s very US-focused, etc.
“Systemic,” in this case, means that Whatever We’re Talking About is happening (1) to a population, not just an individual, (2) either ongoingly or historically over a long period of time, and (3) as the result of social pressures/mechanisms/norms rather than individual actions or prejudices.
Example: slavery in the US is defined as systemic because it (1) was inflicted on the US population of black people, predominantly African-Americans, not just individual people; (2) was perpetrated for several hundred years; and (3) was perpetuated by social systems – e.g. the justice system, economies that relied on slave labor, social attitudes that viewed people who weren’t white as less-than-human – rather than by any individual person’s prejudices.
(There are MANY other reasons slavery in the US was systemic, and the above isn’t intended to imply that the impacts of slavery aren’t still very much present today; the above is intended only to give a back-of-the-napkin version of why I would label US slavery as a systemic issue.)
@hierophantic: I would agree that most disagreements usually result from undefined terms. Do you think that there is systemic marginalization within US bonsai culture?
(1) American culture and culture-groups systemically marginalize people of color, people who identify as female or transgender or non-binary, people who identify as LGBTQ+, and people who are not wealthy – in other words, American culture-groups, in general, systemically marginalize the overwhelming majority of Americans, especially those who are not white, male, and wealthy;
(2) US bonsai groups are, in my experience, predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy;
(3) The fact that US bonsai groups remain predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy means that they are systemically excluding people who don’t fit those demographics – in other words, marginalizing them.
@hierophantic:
I’m sorry hierophantic, I’m having trouble following this through. So, in line (2), you say that, in your experience, US bonsai groups are predominately white, male, and relatively wealthy, yet in line (3) you refer to this same statement as a fact. Is it true that US bonsai groups remain predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy regardless of your experience? If yes, how do you know? If no, how do you reach the conclusion in line (3)?
Also, in line (3), it seems to me you are arguing the following and if I’m wrong, please correct me:
-US bonsai groups remain predominately white, male, and relatively wealthy.
-Therefore, US bonsai groups are systemically excluding people who are not white, male, and relatively wealthy.
If this is correct, I feel as though there is a missing premise somewhere as it seems to be a non sequitur. What do you think?
I can’t stand these “This is not the place to discusss this” sort of arguments i’ve been seeing so many bonsai practitioners saying on EVERY possible platform for us to discuss this. Facebook, bonsainut, Reddit, and on here. It’s very disconcerting. Many people would rather shut down this conversation entirely than to directly confront racism and xenophobia in their own community. It’s basically the polite way of saying “it’s not my problem, what do I care”. Stop saying that this isn’t the place to discuss this and just admit that you don’t WANT to discuss it. Because you don’t have to deal with the issues that Juan had faced, you can comfortably bury your head in the sand and ignore real problems in OUR community, the bonsai community.
Either don’t comment in this thread or please do voice your opinion. Nobody is making you read this thread, there are plenty of technique and horticulture oriented threads on this and any other bonsai forum. If you’re goal is to ignore racism and xenophobia than go read another thread.
You’re asking whether US bonsai groups are predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy? Well: there hasn’t been a peer reviewed study. But in my experience, yes. I think if you got some other people together, it would be their experience too. I think it would be disingenuous to argue that US bonsai groups AREN’T predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy.
I am absolutely arguing that because US bonsai groups are predominantly white, male, and relatively wealthy; have been that way for a long time; and are disproportionately so compared to the normative population; then yes, they are systemically excluding people who don’t fit those criteria. In other words: if the gap is real and persistent over time, there’s a reason for it.
Exclusion doesn’t have to be formal to be real; see, for example, fraternities on a college campus whose membership is 100% white or board game/card game stores whose event clientele is overwhelmingly male despite both having open admissions policies.
I apologize for being unclear; for the sake of preserving intellectual honesty and avoiding a straw man, my responses can become quite long-winded. I was merely asking if your statements about US bonsai groups being “predominately white, male, and relatively wealthy” were facts or anecdotal evidence because you refer to it as both. It may seem like semantics, but it appears many, if not most, of your conclusions build on this foundation. I have no intention of arguing epistemology, but I do think some degree of certainty is in order.
However, perhaps that can go on the shelf for a later time if you wish, as I’ve had time to think and read over your answers some more. I must ask now whether or not you believe “exclusion” is a behavior or perhaps some kind of mental state or maybe something else entirely.
@Carl
I can’t speak for @hierophantic, but I would say that this “exclusion” stems from Privilege, and an inability or unwillingness to accept it as a reality. So, the “exclusion” is a “behavior” (or in-action) resulting from a “mental state” that blinds us to the realities of social and economic segregation.
