Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 19

April 23, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: The Indian Ocean in 2004

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On threecultural works that can help us remember one of the most devastating natural disastersin recorded human history.

1)     Paint the Sky withStars (2005): This poetry collection, edited by British author Stephen Robert Kuta, brought together the voicesof those directly affected by the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami alongsidemany other poets and artists. All proceeds from the book’s publication went tothe TsunamiRelief Fund, making it a worthwhile project to support in any case. But Iwould add that, while some of the poems do represent a frustratingly external(ie, Western) view of the tragedy, many were indeed authored by folks from thecountries most affected, offering a vital view into those communities and experiences.

2)     “12/26” (2006): Speakingof complicatedly Western perspectives, the idea of a white Americansinger-songwriter writing a song which features (in part) the point of view ofa non-white young woman whose family and community were destroyed by the tsunamiis, to say the least, a fraught starting point. But I think Kimya Dawson walkedthat line pretty effectively, balancing that distinct perspective with her ownpoint of view, details of the tragedy and its effects with critiques of the USgovernment and response, first-hand experiences with second-hand but still relatedissues, and more. I was glad to learn about this song while researching thispost, and plan to return to it.

3)     The Impossible (2012): AHollywood film featuring two current mega-stars (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts)and a young actor who would soon become one (Tom Holland in his first on-screenrole) was bound to come down on a particular side of that aforementionedcultural line, and there’s no doubt that a good bit of this film focuses on theexperiences of the white tourist family at its center. But as I remember it (Isaw it not long after it came out), it did both depict the tsunami withstriking realism and portray its effects on local communities with depth andpathos—and since the film likely wouldn’t have been made without the initialstar power, it’s fair to say that it represents at least a better-case scenariofor how global cultural works can engage with this tragic quake and its aftermaths.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 22, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Three Other California Quakes

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On onestriking detail about each of three quakes that followed the 1906 disaster onwhich I focused in yesterday’s post.

1)     SanFernando in 1971: Perhaps the worst quake to hit California since 1906,this hugely destructive disaster was also (as that hyperlinked websitehighlights at length) strikingly productive, resulting in a number of new policies,laws, and research programs that substantially improved the state’sinfrastructure and disaster readiness. I’d point in particular to the Earthquake Clearinghouse, a groundbreakingresource (bad pun intended, but also it really was and is) that has become amodel for how multiple scientists and organizations can share information andideas.

2)     The Bay Area in 1989:No amount of preparation or readiness could prevent earthquakes from occurring,of course, and the next major one would hit the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area(the first major quake in that region since 1906) in October 1989. Like the 1906quake, this one’s epicenter was on the San Andreas fault,which to my understanding remains the most fragile site for such disasters tothis day. But for this AmericanStudier, as I’m sure for many Americans then andsince, what made this quake truly stand out was its impact on the World Series,the first and to date only that featured the two Bay Area teams—and which was delayedfor a week due to the quake.

3)     Northridge in1994: To come full circle to my first item, this catastrophic SouthernCalifornia quake was particularly ironic because it came four years after the CaliforniaLegislature passed  the Seismic Hazards MappingAct of 1990. As with most bureaucratic processes, the actual such mappinghad proceeded slowly, and likely had not been able to take much effect by thetime of this January 1994 quake (which would be, perhaps unrelatedly butperhaps not, the costliest earthquake in US history). In any case, thisdisaster certainly sped up the mapping and zoning processes, and in the decadessince Northridge a great deal of Southern California and the state overall havebeen assessed and developed to make them safer before the next big one.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 21, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: San Francisco in 1906

[125years ago this coming weekend, the firstname in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’llAmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post onRichter himself!]

On twodistinct, equally inspiring communal responses to one of our most destructivedisasters.

The April 18th, 1906 earthquake thatstruck the coast of Northern California, with a particular locus of the SanFrancisco Bay Area, was itself a particularly destructive one, measuring 7.8 onthe RichterScale and hitting the maximum level of Mercalliintensity of XI (both of those measures were developed in the 1930s, and sohave been applied retroactively to estimate the quake’s force and effects). Butit was the fires that developed throughout the city in the quake’s aftermath—somestarted by firefighters themselves while dynamiting buildings tocreate firebreaks; others supposedly started by homeowners seekinginsurance payouts; but most simply the effects of a naturaldisaster on a largely wooden city—that produced the most widespreaddestruction; by the times those fires died down several days later, anestimated 80% of San Francisco had been destroyed. Well more than half of thecity’s population of 410,000 were left homeless by the quake and fires, with refugeecamps in areas such as the Presidio and Golden Gate Park still inoperation two years later. Although the relatively new technology of photography and thevery new technologyof film allowed the quake’s effects to be catalogued more overtly thanfor any prior disaster, amplifying the destruction’s public visibility, by anymeasure and with or without such records the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake wasone of America’s most horrific natural disasters.

No amountof inspiring responses to that tragedy can ameliorate its horrors anddestructions, and I don’t intend for the next two paragraphs to do so. Yet inthe aftermath of the earthquake, San Francisco communities did respond to it ina couple of distinct but equally compelling and inspiring ways. In the quake’simmediate aftermath, the city’s residents began to set up emergency proceduresand services with striking speed and effectiveness, a process documented andcelebrated by none other than WilliamJames. The pioneering American psychologist and scholar was teaching atnearby Stanford at the time, and, after waking up to the earthquake, managed tojourney into San Francisco later that day and to observe at length the city’sand community’s ongoing responses to the quake. He detailed those observationsin Chapter IX, “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake,” in 1911 book Memories and Studies,describing what he saw as “a temper of helpfulness beyond the counting” andnoting that, while “there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before theweeks and months are over, … meanwhile the commonest men [used in agender-neutral way, I believe], simply because they are men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing thisadmirable fortitude of temper.” While not all American disasters have producedthat same communal spirit (as we’ll see later in the week’s series), it doesrepresent a consistent historical thread, and James’s observations ring trueacross many such moments.

The otherinspiring response to the earthquake came from a more specific San Franciscocommunity, and represented an opportunity to challenge a discriminatory andunjust law. By 1906 the ChineseExclusion Act and its many subsequent extensions had been in operation for aquarter century, leading to both the detention and exclusion of Chinesearrivals and numerous hardships for existing Chinese American families andcommunities (such as SanFrancisco’s century-old Chinatown). When the 1906 fires destroyednumerous public birth records, members of those Chinese and Chinese Americancommunities saw a chance to resist and circumvent those laws, and the concept of the “paper sons” was born.Current Chinese American men and families would produce fraudulent birthdocuments, whether for children born in China or to be sold or given to otherunrelated young men, in order to claim them as having been born in America andthus U.S. citizens (itself certainly a fraught category for this community, butone to which, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1898’s United States vs. Wong Kim Ark decision,the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship stillapplied). Despite its unequivocal horrors and losses, then, the 1906 earthquakeallowed for the city’s and nation’s Chinese American community to continue andgrow despite the Exclusion era’s xenophobic limitations, a positive andinspiring outcome to be sure.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 19-20, 2025: Kyle Railton’s Guest Post on the OJ Simpson Trial

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to this repeatof his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Hey everyone, my name is KyleRailton and I am an upcoming senior in high school. As you can tell by my lastname, I am the son of the legendary professor Ben Railton, and writing for mydad’s blog has been on my bucket list for a while, so it is an honor to get thechance! I have been semi-interested in the O.J. Simpson trial for some time,hearing occasional things about how he was guilty, the lawyers messed up, thegloves, etc., but I only became very invested in the past year, when I began aschool project about the case. It was in my American Legal Studies class, and Ichose to read The Run of His Life, the book by Jeffery Toobin, whichquickly fascinated me about every aspect of the case: the media, lawyers,drama, and especially the defendant–O.J. Simpson.  

As I continued to learn more aboutthe case, a couple of parts of the case bothered me the most. I will prefacethis by stating that I do believe that O.J. committed the crime, despite themistakes from the prosecution and the alternate theories proposed by the dreamteam. Firstly, I believe that the trial did not deliver justice, as America’sjustice system is supposed to do, implied by the name. One of the main focusesof the American Legal elective I took this past school year was to study whatjustice was, and how courts are expected to promote justice through applicationof the law. However, I saw this entire case, specifically the outcome, as notproper justice, because many external factors influenced the not guiltyverdict. For example, the media played a crucial role since the discovery ofNicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, negatively affecting and manipulatingperceptions of the trial to the public, even before the jury was selected. Manypeople saw the police as “mistreating” O.J. Simpson when rather the LAPD hadtreated O.J. Simpson like royalty many times in the past, and he was close withmany officers. Additionally, race was almost certainly a deciding factor in thecase, which was exacerbated by the media and constant coverage of the case.While it is obvious that Mark Furhman was extremely racist–a nazi even–and theLAPD has a horrific history of racial prejudice and police brutality, thesefacts had nothing to do with O.J. Simpson’s case. As mentioned in Toobin’sbook, they were specifically used as the “race card” to get Simpson free. Thereason I see this as a massive injustice is because there is lots of racialprofiling in the court system and police forces across America, but this casewas not an instance of racist police officers framing an African American man.Now, it is completely understandable why many would believe that the LAPDframed O.J., but this use of the “race card” only opens the world up tocriticism when actual racist incidents come, as they too often do because then Americansclaim that it is just another use of the “race card.” I remember a hilariousquote from a show I watched with my family based on the O.J. trial, which goessomething like, “O.J. Simpson is the first defendant to get acquitted becausehe is Black!” Race has never been a black-and-white subject in America, andwhile it is unfortunately impossible to change the past and convict O.J.Simpson, it is possible to build and grow as a nation, which starts withlearning from the history of America’s complicated justice system. 

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any responses I can pass along to Kyle!

April 18, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Chinchillas

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Three waysto contextualize my son’s favorite animal (and one of the cutest out there, justobjectively, you know it’s true).

1)     Exoticpets: I wrote a good bit in that post on ostrich racing on both exotic petsoverall and my sons’ interest in them in particular (focusing there on alpacas,another favorite of the boys’ and one featured at mywedding!). I certainly get critiques of exotic animal fads, such as the pot-belliedpigs a few decades back who ended up being left at shelters or justabandoned altogether far too often. But in truth, chinchillas are notradically different from many other rodents frequently kept as pets, fromguinea pigs to hamsters to gerbils and more. Yes, they require a bit ofspecialized care, but every animal is unique in its needs. And the benefits more thanspeak for themselves.

2)     Fur is murder: Most of the chinchillas in theworld these days are indeed kept as pets, as both of the chinchilla species inthe wild have becomeextremely endangered. There are a few reasons, but by far the most significantis huntingfor their fur, which has been prized for items like coats for a long time. (EvenJay-Z references chinchilla fur as the gold standard in his rap verse on his wifeBeyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.”)I’d like to think that we’ve all realized here in 2025 that fur is indeedmurder, but just in case not: the only place chinchilla fur should be found ison chinchillas.

3)     AnimalAdventures: Young Kyle had been a fan of chinchillas for a while before hehad the chance to meet one in person, but when he did it took things to a whole‘nother level. That was thanks to the folks at this local animal rescuebusiness, and specifically to their featured exhibit at the awesome Kimball Farms in Westford, MA.When they let Kyle take part in a performance and hold a chinchilla on his head(as well as in his arms, natch), my younger son’s fondness for not just thisparticular animal, but all cute animals, was truly cemented—and despite his thoroughlymature 18 year old self, that fondness remains, one of so many things I loveabout him.

Guest Postthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 17, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Track & Field Fighters

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

In honorof a track career which has faced way more than its share of setbacks (from allof which Kyle has bounced back and then some), quick hits on five moments whentrack & field stars fought the good fight.

1)     Jim Thorpe: Being aNative American athlete brought up on a reservation who became known as the greatestAmerican athlete of the 20th century would be more than enoughto earn Jim Thorpe a spot on this list, as would his genuine successes at morethan a few distinct sports. But for a post on track & field fielders, I’ll highlightthe story—hard to confirm, but I’m very willing to believe it—that thereason Thorpe is wearing two different shoes in picturesfrom the 1912 Olympics is that his were stolen and so he found two mismatchedones in the trash and wore them when he set hugelylongstanding records in the decathlon.

2)     BabeDidrikson Zaharias: I wrote about Zaharias’s Olympic track & fieldachievements at the 1932 Games(when she was known as Babe Didrikson), among many other inspiring layers toher sports successes, in that hyperlinked post. Her fight was against the kindof sexism that led sportswriter Joe Williamsto write, as I noted in that post, that “it would be much better if she andher ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up, and waited for the phone toring.” Don’t hold your breath, Joe.

3)     JesseOwens: I don’t know that I can detail Owens’s track & field fights,triumphs, and tragedies any more clearly than I did in that hyperlinked SaturdayEvening Post Considering History column. Check it out and c’mon back!

4)     MexicoCity: Like many other commentators have over the last decade, in thathyperlinked post I linked Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s 1968Black Power protest to Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 anthem protests. But while Istand by that comparison, it’s important that we not minimize how much moredanger Smith and Carlos were putting themselves in—Kaepernick has faced countlessconsequences for his courageous stand, but in 1968 (as throughout the decade) AfricanAmerican leaders were being murdered left and right by white supremacistdomestic terrorists. There are few braver protests in our history.

5)     Caster Semenya: Semenya’sstory is far more multilayered than I can do justice to in this brief space, butthe simple and crucial fact is this: due to aspects of her specific human body,ones that are no different from MichaelPhelps’s extra-long wingspan or any number of other quirks possessed bygreat athletes, Semenya has been targeted time and again by both transphobichate and official sanctions. That she has consistently fought back andcontinued to compete and to do so at the highest level makes her a fighter anytrack & field athlete, and any human for that matter, should be inspiredby.

Lastcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 16, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Musical Crossovers

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is abig fan of Kane Brown (whom heand his brother are seeing in concert soon!), and also has a personal playlistthat moves smoothly between hard-core rap, hip hop, and country, so I wanted todedicate this post to highlighting a handful of examples of historic musicalcrossovers:

1)     PoperaPerformances: Perhaps the most striking crossover genre is popera, a formthat combines one of the oldest enduring forms of musical performance with oneof its most overtly contemporary. That hyperlinked last.fm page highlights manyof the individual artists who have embodied this combinatory cultural medium, butI would also note that many popera performances feature duetsbetween artists in each respective genre. Either way, popera representswhat’s possible when genres truly crossover.

2)     Anthrax and Rap: At avery, very different place on the crossover spectrum is Anthrax, a heavy metalband who had been profoundly influenced by rap & hip hop, incorporated thosegenres into their own music, and then produced pioneering collaborations suchas theirsong with rap legends PublicEnemy. Much is (rightly) made of Aerosmithand Run-DMC’s collab, but that a remix of an exiting song, while Anthrax’smultilayered crossovers and collabs were original and to my mind even more groundbreaking.

3)     Jones Jazzes Up Pop: These next two are just individualartists whose music crosses generic boundaries. Jazz and pop have been crossingover since at least LouisArmstrong (and we could say since ScottJoplin himself), but in the 21st century no artist embodies thatcrossover combination better than NorahJones. Through nine studio albums and a great deal more, Jones have broughtthe worlds and audiences of jazz and pop together in groundbreaking ways, creatingprofoundly American music in the process.

4)     LilNas Xplodes: It’s not a hierarchy nor a competition, but I’d say that acrossover between hip hop and country is even more profoundly American (or atleast more rare), though. We’ve seen a variety of such crossover artists aswell as songs in recent years, with Kane Brown himself high on the list. But nohip hop-country crossover artist and song achievedmore success, nor as I wrote in the hyperlinked post at the start of thisentry generated more controversy, than did Lil Nas X and “Old Town Road.” Andhonestly, if he’s making whiteracists mad, he’s doing exactly what crossovers should do.

5)     Parton Rocks Out: This is a simpler one—I justreally love that country (and American, and universal) legendDolly Parton recently releasedan album of rock and roll originals and covers, and by all counts it isphenomenal. Not sure it’ll end up on Kyle’s playlist, but it’s definitely onmine!

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 15, 2025: Kyle Contexts: The ACLU

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Threesignificant stages in the evolution of the nation’s preeminent civil rightsorganization (and one with which my blossoming future lawyer and/or activist ofa younger son has connected in multiple ways over the last few years):

1)     1910s and 20s Origins: The ACLU evolved out ofanother organization, the NationalCivil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), which was foundedduring World War I (or the Great War, as it was then known) to defendanti-war speech and conscientious objectors among other causes. The officialco-founders were CrystalEastman and RogerNash Baldwin, but originalmembers also included such luminaries as Jane Addams, Helen Keller, FelixFrankfurter, and the dissenting anti-war Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin. ItsWWI activisms certainly put the NLCB (which Baldwin renamed the ACLU in 1920when he became its sole director) on the map, but it was its central role in theScopes Trial (about which I blogged a few weeks ago) which truly launchedthe organization into national prominence.

2)     Japanese incarceration: I wrote at length in mybook We the People about the role that Baldwin and the ACLU playedin the earlyopposition to the Japanese incarceration policy, leading up to their keyrole in all of the major court cases opposing that policy, from the unsuccessfulbut influential Korematsuv. United States to the successful and even more influential Ex parteEndo. While in hindsight it might be easy to see those efforts as right(although thesedays I’m not at all sure that’d be a shared perspective), it’s important tonote that Japanese incarceration was quite popular in its era, supported by asignificant majority of Americans, and indeed seen by many as part of the wareffort, making opposition to it potentially treasonous as well as unpopular.But the ACLU pursued that opposition nonetheless, to my mind one of the mostcourageous organizational actions of the 20th century.

3)     Loving v. Virginia: A coupledecades later, the ACLU took another unpopular and courageous stand, if perhapsone that also reflected a changing society that was coming around to theorganization’s civil liberties and rights emphases. When young Black woman Mildred Jeter Lovingwrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for help staying together with herwhite husband Richard Loving despite Virginia’s laws prohibiting theirmarriage, Kennedy referred the couple tothe ACLU, who represented them in their landmarkSupreme Court case. Given that I grew up in Virginia and that my sons arethe product of an interracial marriage, it’s fair to say that this itemrepresents a truly multilayered context for Kyle!

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 14, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Younger Siblings

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Kyle is ayounger sibling to a very impressive olderbrother, a situation which it seems to me often leads the younger siblingto carve out their own identity and future very fully (and certainly has forKyle). Here are a few prior posts where I highlighted such badass sibling duosand dynamics:

1)     Henryand William James

2)     Serenaand Venus Williams

3)     Angelinaand Sarah Grimké

Nextcontext tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!

April 12-13, 2025: A Great Gatsby Centennial: Fellow GatsbyStudiers

[On April 10th,1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was publishedby Charles Scribner’s Sons. While I have myproblems with Gatsby, it remains one of our most influential andimportant novels, and one that opens up so many AmericanStudies contexts. Sothis week I’ve highlighted a handful of them, leading up to this weekend postfeaturing fellow GatsbyStudiers!]

Four greatpublic scholarly takes on Fitzgerald’s novel, and a request for more!

1)     MatthewTeutsch: My friend and online collaborator Matthew has written aboutFitzgerald’s novel multiple times, but I particularly enjoyed the chance toread this multi-part account (part two is linked at the bottom) of hisexcellent Fulbright lecture on the book (and not because he engages sothoughtfully with my own takes, although I sure do appreciate that).

2)     StephaniePowell Watts: In that lecture Matthew also engages with Watts’s take on thebook in this LitHub piece, which remains one of the single most thoughtful intersectionsof autobiography and analysis I’ve ever encountered. A must-read!

3)     WesleyMorris: Morris’s intro to the 2021 Modern Library edition of the novel,reprinted by The Paris Review at that hyperlink, is also a must-read(honestly all four of these pieces are for anyone who wants to engage withFitzgerald’s novel beyond its own stunning prose). I particularly like that hedoesn’t take for granted our reading of the book—yes, it’s often assigned byteachers, including me, but we should still think long and hard about why weread it, as Morris models so thoughtfully here.

4)     Jillian Cantor: I triedto engage with Daisy Buchanan a lot and Myrtle Wilson a bit in my earlier poststhis week, but there’s still much more to say about women in Fitzgerald’snovel, and Cantor’s LitHub piece says a great deal very powerfully.

5)     Add your suggestions (including your own work)here!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Takes on Fitzgerald’s novel or its contexts, yours or others’?