The podcast Caliphate from Rukmini Callimachi and The New York Times gives a riveting view of ISIS from the perspective of members, as well as exploring the rise, fall, and structure of the terror organization. Rukmini and her partner Andy Mills interview former ISIS fighters, prisoners, and citizens of the areas occupied by their military rule.
The podcast does a decent job interviewing people of different backgrounds and attempts to avoid the “single story” and played out stereotypical view of the middle east. It does fall short however in some areas, like when sounds of gunfire and explosions are heard with yells of “Allahu Akbar” used to immerse the listener. While this is a reality of how ISIS fights, this felt overly dramatized and used to play into the othering and single-story narrative that occurs in media regarding Islam and terror. This gives the listener some distance and removes them from seeing the true reality of the politics in the area, which I think takes away from the overall goal of the podcast of humanizing the victims and members.
One thing the podcast does well is showing the view locals have on the US military, both the good and bad. It breaks down the narrative that the US are the saviors by interviewing the locals and getting perspective on the ways the US has actually complicated the situation. This brings about conversations about whether it is necessary or even acceptable for the US government to be involved, and whether or not the time spent in the region has been effective or successful.
There has been recent controversy surrounding the podcast as credibility questions have arose around one of the main interviewees. He is being charged under terrorism hoax laws in Canada about making up his role in the organization and fabricating his tales of killings and violence he committed and witnessed. This brings about criticisms surrounding journalistic integrity and the intentions of the podcast. It brings up discussion about whether the podcast was trying to bring a voice to the people in the region, or if this was simply another dramatized and exaggerated piece of media. While the authors give people in the region the chance to talk, the podcast is compiled and created by the authors from portions of these interviews, and it makes a critical listener wonder how “raw” and first hand it actually is after being processed into the podcast. This is similar to Spivak’s idea about the subaltern. Overall, this podcast is worth the listen if listened to critically and supplemented with other media.
Matt Hynes: Hey, this is going to be our podcast assignment and this is Matt Hynes, I’m a fourth year welding engineering major
Terry Cahalan: And this is Terry Cahalan. I am pursuing a certificate in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Matt Hynes: So one of the things that I brought up in one of my diaries was one of my friends was recently hired as a teacher. He’s a middle school math teacher and his school that he just got hired to over the summer ended up having to transition to being completely online this year due to COVID because they didn’t have as much funding as they needed to be able to make it safe for all the students to come back. It was really sort of shocking to me that that’s the reason that they couldn’t be in person was because they didn’t have enough money. Whereas I grew up with everybody in my family as teachers and both my parents are teachers and their schools are in-person right now. And, you know, a lot of that comes down to the school district that they work in had enough money,and enough of a budget to be able to take the necessary safety precautions. Which was kind of odd to me to see that sort of disparity of two different schools 10 minutes away from each other with such drastically different fundings.
Terry Cahalan: I think that this is one of those unfortunate examples of COVID really emphasizing a problem that already has existed, those discrepancies in school funding. But I think it’s one with a lot of cost in the lives of these kids because research shows that kids from less advantaged areas actually need more financial resources per student than those from more advantaged areas to achieve equal outcomes. It also seems like..
Matt Hynes: Well, I think one of the things that you just said is interesting how you said that students that are in these school districts that struggle more need more funding per student than the richer school districts, you could say. Whereas I think, you know, typically, you see that as actually being the exact opposite these days. Whereas the schools that need a large amount of funding are the ones that are getting, you know, less of it because of the way property taxes are combined into that in order to determine who gets what funding.
Terry Cahalan: And you’ll see that, I mean, you were talking about your dad’s school and your friend’s school being just 10 minutes away from each other and having such drastic differences in their funding and, I mean, there are examples like that everywhere. I drive through upper Arlington every day to get to work and they’re building a brand new high school from the ground up. It’s gonna be beautiful, top of the line, like perfect for these kids who are in a wealthier part of town, compared to the school 10 minutes down the road, one of the Columbus City Schools and they’ve been fixing the air conditioning there for four years now. Fixing supposedly and they can’t seem to get a handle on that they don’t have the resources to make that important change. And I think Columbus city schools is still entirely online as well. These kids, in less advantage areas start school with an achievement gap already a lot of times, because they aren’t exposed to as many words, maybe their parents have a lower educational level so they are exposed to less advanced vocabulary and have less enrichment activities like going to the zoo or to museums and therefore they have more ground to catch up in just with the background knowledge and the information that they come to school with already.
Matt Hynes: Yeah, I think that’s very important that just schools that are in, you know, more necessarily in the suburbs that have kids that might have wealthier parents or a parent that doesn’t work, and is at home all day. And, you know, compared to a student who both of their parents work long hours, and they just have less time with their parents growing up. And like less access to somebody like reading to them and things like that. Growing up, like you were saying, it causes this difference between people going to these poorer schools already have to catch up on more because they have less education going into let’s say like kindergarten or something.
Terry Cahalan: Which this is I mean, this is a sad reality because so many times when we think about poverty, the topic of just better education, like we just need to get these kids a better education and that’ll be a fixed to all of these problems. But there’s not really a broad access to high quality education that’s available to all of our students. There’s not really equal opportunities for people to get the education that will lead them to good job opportunities and to be able to maybe move their family to a better area in the future.
Matt Hynes: Yeah. And it’s interesting, you know, as, as people, have the ability to move out of these areas. One of the things I came across when I was doing this was the topic of educational redlining which I hadn’t heard about it until I started reading about it and like you were saying, let’s say that, somebody has access to good education and they grow up and make a large amount of money and have kids. When people are buying houses and things, you know, they factor in what school district this house is in and what school district is my kid going to go to if I buy this house. Some of the like wealthy areas that have these good schools, it’s sort of like coveted that a lot of people want to move to this area because they have a good school and a lot of times it’s people moving from these poorer school districts with less quality education to these good school districts, which are funded on property taxes, like we said earlier, and it actually is driving up their property value because this land is more sought after because it means your kid gets to go to a better school and it’s an interesting sort of loop there where people are moving towards these better school districts that have a lot of funding, which drives up property values, which increases their funding and then their school is better. So, it attracts more people their property values go up and then it’s just this constant, you know, positive loop there. Which I guess you could say also happens in reverse from the other side.
Terry Cahalan: Yeah. I don’t know, and they’re big problems and Yes, I-
Matt Hynes: I’m not sure there’s an easy solution.
Terry Cahalan: I think a lot of people say that they support equal funding for schools, but then come to oppose the actual policy that makes it possible, like the tax increases. They don’t want to mess with how we’ve always done things, or are just taking individualistic views on poverty and personal responsibility that maybe view other people as having gotten themselves into this situation.
Matt Hynes: Yeah, I think that’s something that comes up a lot, and it’s tough, because if we’re talking educational redlining like we just said. It’s almost like you can’t blame parents for wanting their kids to go to better school districts and wanting to ,you know, move to areas that have, you know, better access to education, but that sort of contributes to this issue even more. Which is difficult to wrap your head around, because at the same time, I don’t think there’s anybody in the world that thinks it’s good if there’s an educational disparity between people, but it’s almost like if you have the opportunity to go to a better school district, you’d be crazy not to take it.
Terry Cahalan: Mm hmm. Everyone wants what’s best for their kids.
Matt Hynes: Yeah, and that same sort of attitude sort of leads to the problem in the first place.
Terry Cahalan: I do think there are some options though, I think there are structural ways that funding can be made more equal among the states or with some kind of federal funding. I think maybe one of the silver Linings, it’s not really a silver lining, but hopefully some good that can come out of this COVID crisis is that problems that have existed for a long time are becoming more apparent and putting ideas in the the right minds that can go make change and can advocate for those policies that will lead to more equal funding. Not that funding is the end all and be all for education, but it can lead to other things like better resources for students and better teacher retention, teacher training, all sorts of things.
Matt Hynes: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, educational inequality is not-, you can’t simply boil it down to funding, there’s quite a lot of things that go into that. Funding is, you know, one of the bigger issues, but there’s, it’s such a complex situation.
Terry Cahalan: Yeah, and all those all those factors play into each other and are intertwined. So it’s hard to separate one from the other.
Matt Hynes: Yeah, it definitely is. I agree with that, for sure. I think that we’re sort of wrapping up on time here. So, I think that was a good conversation.
This summer I worked at a facility in Boca Chica, Texas for a few weeks. Boca Chica is a small town outside of Brownsville, Texas, and is right on the Rio Grande. It is so close to the border that my phone would switch to a Mexico data plan and I would cross through a border patrol checkpoint everyday going to and from work. It always made me think about racism and implicit bias when border patrol would wave my car through with a nod on most occasions. On the rare occasion My car was searched, the extent was a quick flashlight in my back seat, followed by a “are you a US citizen?” question before being waved through. This is a prime example of implicit bias and blatant racial profiling. On multiple occasions I saw cars pulled off to the side for further screening and nearly every time it was a Hispanic appearing person standing outside the car.
I researched this a bit more and found a supreme court case from 1975 called United States v. Brignoni-Ponce. It ruled that it is unreasonable and illegal to stop people at the border only based on the appearance of being of Mexican descent. However, it appears that this case did say that being of Mexican descent could be a “relevant factor” in a stop with other suspicion. This is racist and simply allows for border patrol to stop anyone they want. This is absurd to think that someone’s race could be a relevant factor in a traffic stop. In Brownsville, the town my hotel was in, I noticed a much higher police presence than other areas. This is historically a problem and is one of the reasons minority populations have higher crime statistics, among other reasons. Brownsville has a population in which 94% of people are Hispanic according to the census.
As a white person, I never got questioned for more than a few seconds, even passing through in a rental car, alone, well past midnight, with no work uniform, and with tools/bags/boots/etc in the backseat of the car. The legal racial profiling is a clear example of systemic racism. These events made me think about what it must feel like to be Hispanic in that area. It made me think about similarities to what we learned about immigration in week 9. The performativity of Hispanic people in that area must be difficult to manage and tiring to deal with every day. I would imagine children have a similar experience to Deming, with how they grow up, attend school, and make friends.
Below is an interesting article from the ACLU, an organization well known to fight injustices in the US talking about border check points.
In The Leavers by Lisa Ko, Deming, later known as Daniel, has a gambling addiction. Gambling addiction, known more professionally as problem gambling, is extremely common. According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, about 1% of adults have severe gambling problems, and 2-3% have mild or moderate problems (NCPG). Some may say that gambling addiction is not a true addiction because there is no specific substance they are addicted to, however the high received after gambling is often compared to that of a cocaine addict due to the physical similarities they exhibit in the brain (Contreras-Rodríguez et al.).
A scary fact is that it is much more common among young adults than any other population. According to Howard Shaffer, an addiction specialist at Harvard Medical School, nearly 6% of college aged students have signs of problem gambling (Shaffer & Hall). Many experts are also worried about how the rapid increase in online sports betting will affect these statistics.
The supreme court recently legalized sports betting in 2018 which got rid of a national ban and allows states to determine if they will allow sports gambling (Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association). This has led to dozens of companies popping up offering online sportsbooks just in the last few years. With the movement to online sports gambling, the internet makes it possible to have instant ”live betting” with odds updating in real time. This allows players to bet on individual plays, quarters, and other events within each game. The fast-paced nature is designed to be addictive and engaging. The NCPG even put out a statement this year discussing how modern online gambling can be extremely dangerous in the coming years. They stated that nearly 16% of people who participate in online betting have characteristics that would place them under the clinical definition of having a gambling disorder (NCPG).
This shows that although the struggles Daniel goes through may seem isolating, there are thousands and thousands of other young adults struggling with similar disorders. Hopefully being aware of this helps add some depth to the character and makes him seem a bit more human. In addition, it is important to keep an eye on our friends who bet often and offer support to make sure they do so responsibly.
Citations:
Contreras-Rodríguez, O., Albein-Urios, N., Vilar-López, R., Perales, J. C., Martínez-Gonzalez, J. M., Fernández-Serrano, M. J., . . . Verdejo-García, A. (2015). Increased corticolimbic connectivity in cocaine dependence versus pathological gambling is associated with drug severity and emotion-related impulsivity. Addiction Biology, 21(3), 709-718. doi:10.1111/adb.12242
National Council on Problem Gambling. A Review Of Sports Wagering & Gambling Addiction Studies Executive Summary. 2020, https://www.ncpgambling.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Sports-gambling_NCPGLitRvwExecSummary.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct 2020.
Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 584 U.S. ___ (2018). 14 May 2018.
Shaffer, H. J.; Hall, M. N. (2001). Updating and Refining Prevalence Estimates of Disordered Gambling Behaviour in the United States and Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 92(3), 168-172. doi:10.1007/bf03404298
