Presenting ¡PRESENTE!

**ETA Scroll to the bottom for pre-made tweets to spread the word**

Presenting Presente.org:

Our goal is to create a broad-based online community of Latinos and our allies strong enough to make the United States honor its promises and protect our people. We’re starting with immigration, but we won’t stop there—we’ll provide you with ongoing opportunities to make change on the issues that most affect our communities.

And from Nezua:

OVER AND OVER we hear about The Hispanic Vote™ and The Latino/a Vote® and it is a real thing we are talking about in all of this. Our people—nuestra gente—have long been a force in this land, be it under the golden sun harvesting the corn that has for thousands of years fed our antepasados (ancestors) or away from the sun and working hard in US places of business or doing so much to build strong familias together, as las mujeres—the women—among us are known for historically. We are a beautiful and long enduring people, and responsible for so much creation here that sustains us today: Art, Literature, Food, Clothing, Song

And yet, our voices have yet to be utilized and enjoined in a way that can efficiently organize around the issues that affect our communities. Don’t mistake what I say: the Latina/o (or “Hispanic”) community is famous for its ability to organize on the local level, and we are proud of this. And that is why it is time to continue to tie this ability and history together and bring it to an even higher level.

It’s true that while so much joins us, we do come from many different backgrounds and hold varying views on the issues that affect us. We will not always agree, nor should we. What we can agree on, though, is that we should have a way to centralize and engage the politics that affect us on so many levels.

I am involved in launching a site, Presente.Org, that is determined to achieve this very goal. Please stop over and check it out. If what I have written above interests you, please sign up.
Hasta luego!

• One note: On my own blog I do tend to speak more to Mexican@s and Latin Americans, because that’s the point at my place. But Presente.org has a much wider focus as “Latinos” and “Hispanics” can come from a wide range of origins. As far as some of my words above, not all of us have come from farming families, or the hot climates! Though many traditions and struggles do overlap. I just wanted to make clear that while I am involved in the organizing of this effort, there is a variance between my readership and presente.org’s intended audience.

For more information, or to take part, please visit Presente.org.

And spread the word via twitter:

To direct people to Presente.org Please TWEET:
Stand and be counted, Latinas, Latinos, Hispanos, Gente, Amigos and Amigas! Join http://presente.org today. #latino #hispanic #immigration

Or TWEET:
Stand and be counted. Empower the Hispanic/Latin@ Community. Join http://presente.org today. #latino #hispanic #immigration

To direct people to Nezua's post
TWEET:
The Unapologetic Mexican: Presenting ¡PRESENTE! http://tinyurl.com/cw6fyp #immigration #latinas #latinos #hispanic

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Para dirigir personas a Presente.org Por favor
TWEETEA:
Ponte de pie y seas contado, Latinas, Latinos, Hispanos, Gente, Amigos y Amigas! Unete Hoy! http://presente.org #latino #hispano #inmigración #migrantes

O TWEETEA:
Ponte de pie y seas contado. Apodera a la comunidad Hispana/Latin@. Unete Hoy! http://presente.org #latino #hispano #inmigración #migrantes

Para dirigir personas a este post,
TWEETEA:
El Unapologetic Mexican: Presentando a ¡PRESENTE! http://tinyurl.com/cw6fyp #latino #hispano #inmigración #migrantes

A New Meme: Please Get One

ETA please see Nezua's post at The Sanctuary

I'm preparing to be whipped into a frenzy about the breakout of a mutated strain of swine flu. What I wasn't prepared for was how quickly the "blame the dirty, diseased immigrants" meme would take hold. This, despite the facts that 1)the source of the outbreak could be a CAFO in Mexico owned by our very own Smithfield Farms and 2)"the US was already looking into cases within our own currently designated borders," as noted by Nezua.

But those facts mean nothing to more rabid right-wingers. From Media Matters:

During the April 24 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage stated: "Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico."*

[snip]

"[C]ould this be a terrorist attack through Mexico? Could our dear friends in the radical Islamic countries have concocted this virus..."

[snip]

"How do you protect yourself? What can you do? I'll tell you what I'm going to do, and I don't give a damn if you don't like what I'm going to say. I'm going to have no contact anywhere with an illegal alien, and that starts in the restaurants."

During the April 27 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Neal Boortz asked: "[W]hat better way to sneak a virus into this country than give it to Mexicans? Right? I mean, one out of every 10 people born in Mexico is already living up here, and the rest are trying to get here... ."

In an April 25 blog post... syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin suggested that the outbreak was due to the United States' "uncontrolled immigration... 9/11 didn't convince the open-borders zealots to put down their race cards and confront reality. Maybe the threat of their sons or daughters contracting a deadly virus spread from south of the border to their Manhattan prep schools* will."

"Mexican@s & Latinos already had a hell of a time w/all the hate," Nezua wrote on Twitter.** This flu outbreak gives right wing pundits an opportunity to ramp it up.

Early signs of what the outcome could be? Already, this flu is being framed as "more of one or another kind of Mexicanicky “spillover.” At Vivir Latino, Maegan suggested that, "swine flu is the new racial profiling," pointing to this summary of Homeland Security Secreatary Napolitano's instructions:

Secretary Janet Napolitano also said border agents have been directed to begin passive surveillance of travelers from affected countries, with instructions to isolate anyone who appears actively ill with suspected influenza.

Then there is the story of Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman's suggestion that the flue be renamed the "Mexican Flu." The CDC has advised against non-essential travel to Mexico--and while I can understand how that might be practical, I cannot help thinking how this advisory will be perceived in a country where Mexico is constructed as hopeless, corrupt, and inadequate.

Reading Maegan's and Nez's tweets on this made me reflect on the long history within the U.S. of categorizing "undesirable" immigrants as dirty and diseased. They were undesirable, of course, because of their racial/ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious differences from the WASP-y mainstream. In the 19th century, much of the anti-immigrant sentiment focused on the Irish and Asians (particularly the Chinese); in the early 20th century, "undesirable" expanded to include the "new" immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the disabled, and most Asians.

Part of characterizing these immigrants as undesirable was claiming, in no uncertain terms, that they represented a danger to Americans and the "American way of life." For example, here is George Frederick Keller's (in)famous depiction of what the Statue of Liberty's counterpart in San Francisco Bay might look like:



And I borrowed this from here a while ago to show my students:



A few years ago, I wrote briefly about some works that talk about the old "immigrants carry filth and disease" meme:

American citizens tend to impose their own standards of housekeeping and "cleanliness" on immigrants and judge them deficient. Nayan Shah, for example, posits that Americans considered San Francisco’s Chinatown dirty, overcrowded, and unacceptable. From there, Chinese were cast as health hazards, rife with disease and in need of police and medical supervision. Taking this cue, some African Americans in San Francisco complained that, “on the streets of the Chinese section of town… one could find filth actually personified and the stench which arises and penetrates the olfactory nerves is something perfectly horrible.”

Mexican immigrants, too, became a perceived threat to American health and hygiene. According to Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna, the porosity of the border worried U.S. health officials in the early twentieth century. In response to a typhus epidemic in Mexico’s interior in 1915, the U.S. Public Health Service quarantined Mexican immigrants and treated them as if they were “vermin-infested.” Along the border, Mexican immigrants were subjected to invasive, humiliating examinations before they were "certified" disease free. That quarantine extended until the late 1930s, long after the epidemic had passed, a testament to the American perception of Mexicans as infectious germ carriers.***

And now, the "new" immigrants of the 21st century--so labeled because they came largely after 1965 and because, more recently, they are traveling to new settlement areas****--are facing the same attacks. Of course, part of the reason is that they share the label of "undesirable" that I defined above. This is a distinction that, as Liss convincincly argues, is becoming synonymous with "immigrant":

In between the disparate uses and meanings of "immigrant" and "ex-pat" (expatriate) falls everything that underlines the racism, classism, and xenophobia of the immigration debate in America.

White, (relatively) wealthy, and English-speaking immigrants are ex-pats, with intramural rugby leagues and dues-drawing pub clubs and summer festivals set to the distant trill of bagpipes.

Non-white, poor, and non-natively English-speaking immigrants are just immigrants.

Ex-pats are presumed to have come to America after a revelation that their countries, in which any white person would be happy to live, are nonetheless not as good as America.

Immigrants are presumed to have come to America because their countries are shit-holes.

Ex-pats are romantic and adventurous, with wonderful accents and charming slang.

Immigrants are dirty and desperate, with the nefarious intent of getting their stupid language on all our signs.

John Higham posited that nativism ebbs and flows, and we seem to be at a high period (and seem to have been frozen here for well over a decade). Given that, the fact that anti-immigrant sentiment tends to rise during periods of economic hardship, and the long-standing practice of associating certain immigrants with germs and disease, I don't expect the right-wing attacks to stop.

That doesn't make them any less disturbing, however.

(cross-posted)

Many thanks to Nezua, Maegan, and Liss, for pointing me to links and for their own words which helped me work through my thoughts.

h/t Jill and The America's Voice Blog, whose posts I also consulted.
_____________________________________
*According to Media Matters, "Officials think they [some NYC high school students] started getting sick after some students returned from the spring break trip to Cancun." Thus the disease was brought to NY by returning tourists, not immigrants.

**Deeky expands on that sentiment here.

***Discussed works:
Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Arnold Shankman, “Black on Yellow: Afro-Americans View Chinese Americans 1850-1935,” Phylon 39, no. 1 (1978): 3.

Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society,” The Millbank Quarterly 80, no. 4 (2002): 765.

Similar characterizations were made of Slovak immigrants, M. Mark Stolarik, “From Field to Factory: the Historiography of Slovak Immigration to the United States,” International Migration Review 10, no. 1 (1976): 96-97.

****Most of my knowledge of new settlement areas comes from my work studying the poultry processing industry, so I'll point you to the works of William Kandel, Emilio Parrado, and Leon Fink.

Scandalous

Trigger Warning

I'll begin the post with the assumption that we know that within the world of hip-hop,

Much of the music and many videos specifically transmit, promote, and perpetuate negative images of black women. All women, but mostly black women in particular are seen in popular hip-hop culture as sex objects.

Discussions of misogyny and sexism in hip hop began at least two decades ago and continue until now. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brooklyne Gipson had recent discussions and Feminist Review just reviewed Ewuare X. Osayande's Misogyny and the Emcee: Sex, Race, and Hip-Hop. You can also find Byron Hurt's Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes on Google Video.

I list those sources because what I want to do, rather than rehash the arguments, is point you to what is a rather disturbing song and video by Mike Jones called Scandalous Hoes. And while you might think the name of the song alone was enough, I'd like to point out that since the days of Bitches Ain't Shit, hip-hop song titles have done much to inure us "shocking" titles.

Mike Jones begins as many of these songs do--by invoking the hybrid Jezebel/Gold-digger* image. He scowls as he looks at the men in the video, being duped by women who are all sex and smiles, trying to lure the men into a (largely financial) relationship. Jones describes:

They see you living twelve cars, all black
American Express, not green, all black
They'll try to set you up
If you let 'em set the trap
I ain't finna fall for that

T-Pain, who guests on the song, adds his own warning:

I don't love 'em
Still don't trust 'em
Get paranoid
Every time that I fuck 'em

As the video proceeds, we see that one poor guy has bought one of the women a car and committed to her. Then, Mike Jones channels Kanye West and raps about the tired cliche of women "tricking" men into getting them pregnant, the result being

Now she got yo ass up in court
Facing child support
For a kid he found out
Wasn't his

And like Kanye, Jones reminds us that because these women are "scandalous hoes," they transgress in serious ways--first, they sleep with other men, despite the fact that a man has made a down payment on her sexuality with his money and his gifts. And then, they continue manipulating a man's feelings, first, by making him love her, then by erroneously telling him he's her child's father. After all, Jones says of the father-child bond in such cases,

You're glued to his soul
Your heart say
You can't leave that kid
Scandalous bitch

But here's where the video becomes like nothing I've seen. We see the "not-the-father" on the couch reading papers--ostensibly, the DNA results--and crying. He's seeing the light about his girlfriend (who had already morphed from a somewhat sweet and smiling Jezebel into a frowning, fussing Sapphire) and once she has been revealed as a scandalous ho, she must be dealt with.

How?

Well, in his righteous anger, the boyfriend understandably kills her:

Some shit is just so so wrong
Some shit I know I can't put up in the zone
Some shit'll get you hurt if it go on too long
Cuz once the nigga gets pissed,
the gun goes click

[snip]

You shoulda told him, bitch
Before it came time for this
Now the ho getting carried by six

So enraged man kills woman because he finds out his property (her vagina and child) has been trespassed upon.

And it all makes perfect sense.


___________________________
*Description begins on page 15

Le Sigh

I gave my niece
the car
a grocery list
my debit card
my child (for a trip to the barbershop).

Televisions are off.
Lights are dimmed.
I have
two chocolate chip cookies,
ice cold milk,
a thick, steamy novel.

The weekend:
it begins!

On Having a President Who's Not Like the Others

The first thing I said when I saw the shirtless-Obama Washingtonian cover?

Oh.

No.

They.

Didn’t.


Was it supposed to be cute? Daring? The editors have defended the image by noting that President Obama isn't like other presidents, by which they almost certainly mean he's generally regarded as more conventionally attractive than most American presidents, or "hot." But that's clearly not the only way in which Obama is different than every other American president -- and, while it might be new to have a black president, there is nothing new about objectifying black men and focusing on their sexual "hotness." It is undoubtedly more convenient for them to ignore that context, so they might pretend they're not playing into it.

There is a long history of black men being reduced to the physical, being defined in terms of their (often exaggerated) sexuality. Hell, the mindset of Southern whites for centuries—and especially after 1865--rested partially on the notion that pure white women had to be protected from the irrepressible urges of the oversexed, black male savage.*

This is an image we have internalized. In the case of black men, they face the dilemma of living in a patriarchal, heterosexist society, that demands that they prove their manhood, and a racist one, that denies them the traditional means of proving it—namely through the roles of “provider** and protector.” They are often left to demonstrate their “manliness” through physical and verbal violence (though I would argue that this is true across race and class lines) and sexual prowess, determined by the number of female “conquests” they’ve made.

In those respects, this cover disregards history. But it also captures a very present-day phenomenon—the projection of an aura of “casualness” around the Obamas. I get that people want to make them seem approachable in a they’re-just-like-you-and-me way. It’s a way to ease a country in denial about its racism into the reality of having a black first family. There’s another effect of this “casualization” though, rooted deeply in racism and classism. While the Obamas are commonly compared to the Kennedys, what goes unspoken is that they lack the pedigree, the lifelong experience with “the formal” that John and Jacqueline had. What I read over and over, from people who critique Michelle Obama's fashion sense, is the implication that she is too casual—she does not know how to dress appropriately. I believe the Washingtonian cover reveals a similar sentiment about President Obama.

Finally, I’d like to point to the Washingtonian’s narrow definition of hot that focuses on the physicality of the President. Now, of course, we live in a country obsessed with appearances and operating with a very narrow concept of attractiveness, so the Washingtonian is not alone. But I think some of the “hottest” things about Obama are his intelligence, the respect and love he seems to have for his wife, and the alternative image of black masculinity he represents—no shirtless image required to portray any of that.

(cross-posted)
_______________________________
*Neither is there anything new about putting black bodies on display to titillate or entertain or to determine their physical desirability.

** One interesting thing to note is that while black men might play the provider, it is cast in a different context than white men’s role. Black men might shell out money, but it is in a context in which black women are assumed to be playing the role of the greedy gold-digger who "sells" herself to a temporary “provider.” As Lisa Jones noted, “Between rappers turning ‘ho’ into a national chant and [the movie Waiting to] Exhale telling African Americans that our real problem is the shortage of brothers who are both well hung and well paid, I’m getting to think that all we can offer each other is genitalia and the paycheck.” Quoted in Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought.

Again.

Another 11-year-old child, Jaheem Herrera, has hanged himself "after enduring extreme daily bullying that included antigay taunts."

This is how his best friend described Jaheem's agony to Jaheem's mother:

He told me that he’s tired of everybody always messing with him in school. He is tired of telling the teachers and the staff, and they never do anything about the problems. So, the only way out is by killing himself

Via

Dear Lord

I haven't done the bargaining prayer--"Dear God, if you let 'a' not happen, then I promise I will never again 'b' "--in a long time, but I'm on the verge.

As soon as I can figure out what "b" will be.

I have the beginning worked out, though:

Dear God, please don't let this woman become a martyr, sacrificed on the evil altar of teh radical homosekshul agenda.

I realize that it might be easy for her to overlook the absolute lack of clarity or logic in her I-am-brave-enough-to-stand-up-against-political-correctness answer, or the competition she faced in Kristen Dalton, Miss North Carolina USA, but dear Lord, if you will 1) disabuse her of the notion that her answer "did cost me my crown," and 2) stop marriage equality opponents from spreading the meme, I promise that I will never again...

That's where I get stuck.

Support Justice for Angie Zapata

From VivirLatino:

Angie Zapata was a transgender woman who was brutally murdered in Colorado last year. Next week, her killer goes to trial, and an online campaign by ProgressNow Colorado is encouraging us to remember Angie’s life and death at this difficult time.

Light a Candle for Angie is a Facebook application designed to draw attention to the issue of hate crimes. If you are a Facebook member, why not join the iniative?

If you are a Twitter member, you can follow all of the activities around the online campaign by adding Justice for Angie, or searching #zapata for other online conversations around anti-hate activism in Angie’s name.

H/T bfp

Ancient history through a very modern lens *

Archaelogists believe they may have found the site that holds Cleopatra’s tomb. Among the treasures found at nearby digs are coins that bear Cleopatra’s image and a bust of her.

You’d think these coins would be treasured primarily as priceless ancient artifacts or mementoes of a beloved queen. But they are valuable for another reason. A couple of years ago,** scholars examined another coin bearing Cleopatra’s image and determined: “The popular image we have of Cleopatra… that of a beautiful queen,” was wrong. Apparently, the news that Cleopatra might not have looked like Elizabeth Taylor was shocking to some.


Thus, we have the problem of figuring out what to do about Cleopatra--when you tie most of a woman's achievements/activities to her "incomparable" beauty, how do you now, when she is (ridiculously) judged by current standards to be "ugly," tell her story? How does it change? To what do we attribute Caesar's and Antony's "weakness" (as affection or regard for a woman is so often called)? Surely, Cleopatra's intelligence or cleverness or personality could not have been enough?

These new coins rescue us, again, from those questions.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said the coins found at the temple refuted "what some scholars have said about Cleopatra being very ugly".

"The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive," he said.

So she is, indeed, worth our continued fascination.
________________________________________
*Though ancient cultures had their own beauty standards and such ephemeral things as beauty standards are subject to change.

**Though the debate about Cleopatra's beauty predates this.

I've Referenced This Book Before...

...but I'm so glad, Wednesday, 15 April 2009, a Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day, is over.

Usually, my solution is to go to bed and relish starting over, but I'm going to watch some totally mind-numbing T.V.

Notes from the Academy

My colleagues and I talk a lot about students’ sense of entitlement and (depending on where you teach) privilege. Some of the things they ask demand are unbelievable.

I want to share a story with y’all, a bit of what I alluded to at the beginning of this post and here. I spent quite a bit of time talking about the freedom movements of the 1950s and 1960s in my post-45 class. I heard by way of one student, that another older, white, male student liked my class, but since he’d “lived through all of that,” he’d really wanted to hear more about Sputnik and the space race than I’d offered. The student who relayed the story to me said that she asked him, “Did you look on the history site and see what her specialties are?”


I was glad for her little nudge, but this is something I’ve encountered repeatedly, albeit not always so nicely worded. In my first set of evaluations eons ago, I had a student say, “She’s a good teacher, but she talks too much about race.” I also “focus a lot” on gender. I get related comments often—if not in bulk (one or two a semester, at most).

Those comments used to get under my skin. I now take them as a compliment of sorts. Somewhere along the way, I had a moment of clarity. I won’t say that students can’t help determine what I teach—I love when they ask to hear more about a subject, for example. And I try to give examples that are relevant to where they are (Texas)—in my survey, when we talk about other ways PoC tried to better their conditions during the Depression (since they were so often left out of the New Deal), we spend a nice amount of time on the San Antonio pecan shellers’ strike and the revitalization of the NAACP in Texas during the 1930s.

But for students to think that they can demand that I, a black woman historian, teach in a way that excludes or doesn’t “focus a lot” on race or class or a number of other factors, when my syllabus lists as an objective “To enable you, as a participant, to… recognize the role factors such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability have played in shaping policy, institutions and relationships within the U.S.” is ridiculous.

In a sense, they are asking me to teach a history that disappears me.

I'm starting to think that my life in the academy will teach me as much about race and gender privilege as my life in a rural, southern town.

Gentle Reminder...

Have you gotten your SPEAK! CD yet?

Well, why the hell not?!!!

Really, Steven?

Trigger warning

Dear Mr. Ward,

I will admit that I don’t watch your show, Tough Love. I think I am exceedingly glad that I don’t.


Still, I was quite nonplussed when I read that you opined that one of the women on the show, Arian, was going to end up “getting raped” if her present pattern of behavior—raunchy and inappropriate, I believe were your words?—continued. She enjoys taking risks, said you, putting herself “in that position,” and there are consequences! Arian should be more “classy!”

Hmmm, I thought, is Mr. Ward really suffering under the ildelusion that “classy” women don’t get raped? That rape occurs because “raunchy and inappropriate” women “ask for it?” Surely not!

But, in case you are, I’d like to point you here (or here or here) and here, where the entirety of the blog deconstructs and proves the fallacies of rape apologies like yours.

And I’d like to challenge you, Mr. Ward, to realize that “in that position” often means existing as a woman or anyone perceived as weaker or more vulnerable in a rape culture.

Yes, a rape culture.

How else would you describe a culture in which the logical consequence of acting a certain way or wearing a certain thing is understood to be the violation of one’s bodily autonomy?

xoxo,

elle

P.S. Oh, and expect more letters.

H/T Alessia via belledame on twitter

My Weekend Question Is Back!!

For the wise ones, how do you let go?

Y'all would not believe the things I obsess over at night while staring at the ceiling. One example, I showed pictures of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and one of my students asked how far did it extend into the sky. I didn't know the answer off hand. I worried about that.

Okay, I shouldn't paint it as an isolated event that I went crazy over--the survey class I have this semester has a knack for missing the point, sometimes, and asking me all sorts of questions like that. My old advisor told me, "Tell them that's something that they can easily look up on their own."

But while I don't get a malicious feel from them, I am aware of the fact that because I am black, a woman, and young-looking, some students take it upon themselves to "prove" I don't know everything, and I'm not at a point where I can be as dismissive as advisor advises. :-)

Y'all would believe that I've blown this semester into the worst-thing-ever to the point that I can't even hear the students who tell me "This is my favorite class" or "I love when we do so-and-so" or "I never thought about that." A thicker skin, my female colleagues advise me, will grow.

In the meantime, I obsess.

Tell me how not to!

More than Words

Trigger warning

Via Maegan and Noemi on Twitter, I heard about this story:


11-Year-Old Hangs Himself after Enduring Daily Anti-Gay Bullying

An 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hung himself Monday after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay, despite his mother’s weekly pleas to the school to address the problem. This is at least the fourth suicide of a middle-school aged child linked to bullying this year.

I am a former elementary school teacher. I am a current parent. Bullying is not just harmless words--that sticks and stones shit is for the birds, and I get pissed every time I hear about teachers and school officials ignoring it.

There are all kinds of excuses, of course. Children who bully are just being kids. There's nothing a teacher can do because it will continue out of our eyesight in the quiet corners of playgrounds and bathrooms. And all too often, teachers' disdain turns toward the victim of bullying: "Toughen up," "Don't be a tattle-tale," or "Get over it, people are always going to talk about you." (Re: that last excuse, I swear I heard this from teachers and parents: "They even talked about Jesus; why are you any different?")

The author notes that Carl did not identify as gay*, an effort to drive home the point that

[Y]ou do not have to identify as gay to be attacked with anti-LGBT language. ... From their earliest years on the school playground, students learn to use anti-LGBT language as the ultimate weapon to degrade their peers.

[snip]

Nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT youth (86.2%) reported being verbally harassed at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, nearly half (44.1%) reported being physically harassed and about a quarter (22.1%) reported being physically assaulted, according to GLSEN’s 2007 National School Climate Survey of more than 6,000 LGBT students.

Most of the kids who are bullied and harrassed never report.

They've learned that their teachers and administrators will not effectively address the abuse.
______________________________________
*Of course, there are many reasons that he might not have identified as gay--I don't mean to dismiss the possibility that he was. I am struggling with that part of the article. I get that the intent is to show the anti-gay bullying can hurt anyone, but I also get a slight, "This is even more tragic because he might not have even been gay" sense from it--not that I think it was intentional.

And there you have a peek into this meandering mind.

**See this from Petulant's round-up at Shakesville.

TAKE THOSE THINGS AWAY FROM THEM. NOW.

Trigger Warning

So said Nez when he tweeted about this story: Police chief fired for using taser on wife (News video there).

From the AP:

OAKWOOD, Texas (AP) — The chief of a small Central Texas town's police department has been fired and jailed for allegedly using a Taser gun on his wife.

Former Oakwood police chief Oly Ivy is in Leon County Jail in Centerville on Wednesday, charged with aggravated assault. Bond is $100,000.

I don't have a lot to add--we know that abusive police officers prey on vulnerable and marginalized people and communities. So it's no surprise that women who live with men who are abusive and who are trained how to restrain people and how to use deadly force, are at risk.

They might be, as this fact sheet describes, "uniquely vulnerable."

(Crossposted)

I Just Realized How Country I Am

I just yelled at my kid to "Go get a bath!!"

I forgot that was even in the ellexicon.

Bless my heart!

Really? Could You De-center for a Moment, Even?

What I think she really wanted to say:

"See, this is why I mumble and grumble about 'indigestible immigrant blocs' (and I don't give a damn if you've been here five generations, you're still not really American) and the fragmenting of America and how our totally homogeneous culture is being lost.

You expect me to learn your name? That'd be like learning your difficult language, and I totally don't have to learn another language, cuz I'm American and we are the center of the woooooooooooooooooooooooorld!!!!!!!

God Bless America!!"

Via

Water

When I went to the Organization of American Historians conference, I attended a panel by black women professors telling their stories of what it is like for us in the academy—the challenges, the classroom questioning of authority, the dismissal, the please-can-you-serve-on-every-committee, the isolation, the feeling of being an impostor.

But that is another post. I bring up that panel because of what happened to me when I heard Dr. Ula Taylor speak. She spoke about all those pains and about the hurt that results from the much-too-soon loss of black women like VeVe Clark and June Jordan. But she also spoke about healing, about how she soothes and comforts and heals herself by swimming.

And I started to cry. Because for the longest time, I have wanted to write about water.


Yes, water.

Because of my heat- then chemically-straightened hair, I was taught that water was my nemesis. I could not lie back and pretend to float in the tub. My sister and I could not run under the water hose or the sprinklers on sweltering Louisiana summer days. I could not play in the rain. On Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, when our family went to the park, the girls could only go so far into the water.

And I could not swim. Never even learned.

I wanted to so badly, because somewhere along the way, I realized I loved water in my hair, on my scalp. I think it was when I first had to wash my hair on my own—I’d always believed I didn’t have the expertise necessary to deal with that “difficult” part of me, but college-induced poverty changed my mind.

That water on my scalp--the first warm rush, the later, slow trickles--made me think longingly of swimming. What it would be like to immerse my whole body, to have water move in its gentle lap-lap-lap as it caressed my skin?

But my "whole body" was the other issue. How could a fat girl learn to swim? What would I wear? I was (am) too fragile to reveal myself like that. I do not want the pitying, disgusted gaze of others.

I am afraid the pitying, disgusted gaze will be mine.

So I learned to suppress the desire to swim.

Mostly. Sometimes it overwhelms me.

Like when my son is swimming and I dangle my feet in the pool, bathe them in the cool, silky water while the sun warms my back.

Or when we spend holidays near the water and I, very quickly, trail one of the babies’ feet or hands through it. Just so they’ll know the delicious feel of it.

Those moments are fleeting, subordinate to my attachment to my bone-straight hair and my internalized body shame.

But I want to be like Dr. Taylor. I want to find healing and peace in the water. It's not that I think water is somehow magical. The appeal is rooted somewhere in something both literal and figurative--how the weightlessness we feel in water is a temporary reprieve from all that we carry, all that brings us/holds us down. So, I know there is something there for me.

Why else would I crave it so?

A Timely Video...

..considering my post yesterday on skin bleaching. Via Kameelah, a clip on "A Family of Skin Bleachers in Jamaica."

No transcript, but I want to point out a few things the daughter says:

Nothing sells in town like rubbings [meaning the skin bleach], hair, and clothes. Even food doesn’t sell as much as bleaching. Everyday you talk about being hungry, but if I have $1.50, I will go and run to buy one of them. They say beauty brings pain. Style is what we want, so we just have to bear it.*

And later, she smiles as she describes how the bleach has its desired effect:

…nobody can say anything; we are white*.

The video also talks briefly about men who have begun bleaching.



________________
*All emphases mine

"Whites Only"

Recently, when I asked my students an exam question about World War II and pre- and during war mobilization, I began with the statement, “During the first half of the 1940s, Americans found themselves confronted with the paradox of fighting racism abroad while sustaining a racially/ethnically stratified system at home.” Of course, that is a broad statement—you could argue, for example, that given the fact that the military was segregated, the U.S. sustained racism abroad during the war, as well.


And now, the BBC has found another way in which the U.S. “sustained racism abroad” during the war:

Papers unearthed by the BBC reveal that British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a "whites only" victory.

Much of the Free French fighting force (65%) was African, and they had made tremendous sacrifices:

By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Senegalais, lay dead.

Many of them were simply shot where they stood soon after surrendering to German troops who often regarded them as sub-human savages.

But the U.S. and the U.K. were dismissive of their service. When the liberation of Paris seemed possible in 1944 and Charles de Gaulle insisted that the French lead the liberation,

Allied High Command agreed, but only on one condition: De Gaulle's division must not contain any black soldiers.

In January 1944 Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, was to write in a memo stamped, "confidential": "It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel.”

To create the “whites only” illusion,

Allied Command insisted that all black soldiers be taken out and replaced by white ones from other units.

When it became clear that there were not enough white soldiers to fill the gaps, soldiers from parts of North Africa and the Middle East were used instead.

In a sense, this is not surprising for the U.S.—a nation that had always downplayed black military personnel’s service, that relegated black service people to menial duties, that until World War II, excluded them from certain branches of the military. The degradation of African Americans military service went so far that, in 1925, the Army War College issued a report detailing why African Americans were unfit for combat and could never be pilots.

But this seems somehow, particularly low, that in the midst of what was supposed to be a great triumph, the U.S. took the time to strengthen and assert policies that were supposed to be the very antithesis of what it was fighting for.

Lighter Is Better

I cannot pinpoint the moment that I, as a little black girl, began to absorb the messages about the desirability, the attractiveness of lighter skin. There were all the moments my mother admonished me to stay out of the sun, a lifetime of growing up with the knowledge that, of my three aunts, the fair-skinned one with the green eyes was considered the “prettiest,” the childhood argument/fight experiences in which adding “with your black (meaning dark) self!” made an insult even worse.

There were the times I watched pregnant women in my community grab the hands of straight or curly haired, light-skinned people and rub those hands across their stomachs—so the “good” hair and light skin would rub off on the baby. There were the times people asked my sister and I if we had the same father, because I was lighter than she. There was also the fact that I was an early romance-novel reader; I wish now I had a nickel for all the mentions of “pale” or “alabaster” flesh (quivering flesh—it was always quivering flesh!)

And then there was the media—I was bombarded with images of black women who were attractive because of their long, straight hair, fair skin, and non-brown eyes.

The message sank in early—one of my first school memories is walking to my kindergarten classroom, hand-in-hand with my white classmate, Robin. I remember looking down at our clasped hands and wishing mine was more like hers.

I was four years old.


I began with a personal story, but the belief that lighter-is-better is a problematic one throughout black communities, particularly for black women. I remember, as a child, watching a Whoopi Goldberg monologue in which she was pretending to be a little girl. She, too desired lighter skin, and decided to try with chlorine bleach. “All I got,” her character said, “Was burned.” The character was half right—chlorine was not the solution, but bleaching was. And the agent of choice, increasingly in the U.S., was hydroquinone.

Flipping through old black newspapers and magazines, you can see the ads for Fashion Fair’s Vantex, Ambi, and Dr. Palmer’s. Back in the day, they were more to the point, promising to lighten and whiten the skin. In the aftermath of black pride movements, they promise that their 2% hydroquinone formulas will fade or lighten discolorations and give you a more even skin tone. How can we argue with that? Unspoken, of course, is that the undesirable “dark spot” in need of fading/lightening is the entirety of our brown and black skin. (Though, given the image at the top of this page, and the name of the product, you can give “Fair & White” credit for being honest, I suppose.)

I cannot pinpoint the moment that I realized that the lighter-is-better issue was an issue for many other WoC, either. In grad school, my friend Jesse—who was Mexican American—told me a story about his mother’s despair that his sister looked “native” while he himself was fairer. His uncle had tried to console his mom by reasoning, “At least she’s pretty.”

And then I began to read stories about various African countries in which skin bleaching was unbelievably popular—even after hydroquinone and the mercury used in some products caused burns, and other painful ailments, and were linked to conditions like ochronosis, which is marked by

marked by the darkening and thickening of the skin, as well as the appearance of tiny dome-shaped bumps and grayish-brown spots.

Women in Mali reported being shunned if they didn’t use the product. And a hairdresser in Tanzania explained her use of skin bleach:

You hear that if you want to look beautiful, then you have to look like a white person and to look like a white person you have to use these creams.

Asian women are targeted, as well—a couple of month’s ago Women’s E-news described an ad on Hong Kong’s public transit system:

One video you might easily find yourself staring at promotes lingerie and is made by the Japanese company Wacoal.

In the lingerie ad, a serious young man first runs his hands over the bosom and buttocks of a thin woman with dark hair. He is then shown working in a futuristic laboratory crafting undergarments from his observations. In the final scene, an Asian woman with long blond hair and light skin wears a diaphanous gown to highlight her newly sculpted hourglass figure and turns to smile seductively at viewers: She has taken on Caucasian features.

And if you have the heart (and the stomach), you only have to click over to youtube to look at some of the Fair & Lovely ads for India.

Being lighter, being closer to white, makes PoC more successful, more confident, more attractive. That message is drummed into us over and over. So when Maegan drew my attention to the Ponds’ Flawless White series on youtube that posits that being lighter also helps you win your lost love! (and being darker makes you greedy and evuhl), I should not have been surprised.

But, well, damn. And so, without further ado, I bring you this nightmare*:



Transcript:

Ponds Flawless White
Reduces dark spots and lightens skin in just seven days
Ponds Flawless White
Love’s Helping Hand

(crossposted)
______________________________________
*I am also interested in the ways this intersects with class. In one of the articles I read about skin bleaching creams in Asia, the author noted that darker skin was associated with working outdoors and manual labor, a designation many women didn’t want. I am aware of a similar sentiment in my community. Then, in one of the articles about Africa, a doctor expressed the belief that skin bleaching was more prevalent among the less educated. This is problematic for lower socio-economic class women whose low wages mean they turn to cheaper products (often black market) that are even riskier and that they may spend a disproportionate amount of their income on these “beauty” products.

Things I've Missed the Last Few Weeks...

Jimmy Kimmel makes a "ho" joke when he's supposed to be talking about First Lady Michelle Obama's starting a new garden. And since he said, "the first time a ho has been used" since Clinton was in the White House, no, I don't think he was talking about Bill Clinton. (When it comes to sex, we know who gets "used" and labeled a "ho.")





Gwyneth Paltrow advising Joaquin Phoenix to "go live in the projects for a few years" to lend his rapping career some authenticy. But, 'sokay if she dispenses such advice cuz she has a black rapper friend, according to the article!

The passing of Dr. John Hope Franklin. I just showed my survey class his clip from "The War," called "Everything but Color" in which he talks about how he was ready to serve the country during WWII but was informed that he had all the right credentials, except color. According to Dr. Franklin, he determined that his country, "would not get me," that the U.S. did not deserve his service if that was how he was to be regarded. Every time I watch that clip, leaf through my old copy of From Slavery to Freedom, or read his words and thoughts, I love him a little more. Goodbye to a beautiful, brilliant, brave man.

A sweet tribute to him is here.

Almost Free...

The OAH is this weekend.

It will mark the end, for me, of the worst March in recent history. I won't detail what all this month entailed for me, but I will publicly rejoice that is nearly over.

Mayhap I shall return and produce a prosaic-yet-poetic post that will knock your socks off.

More than likely, I will come back and whine about writer's block and end of semester rush and the spring fever I have that makes me want to take my classes to every Women's History Month presentation and every guest speaker and every other event on campus. I'm tired of the four walls.

In any case, cross your fingers for me. I don't feel nervous so far, but it is the OAH and my former advisor will be there along with women from my dissertator group and a commentator whose work I respect beyond measure.

See y'all soon.

100 Facts about Elle (27)

Apparently, I don't love all chocolate.

I buy Hostess cupcakes, peel off and eat the fudgy icing, spoon the cream out of the middle, and throw the cake away.

Similarly, if I eat Oreos, I prefer double-stuff, because I lick the cream out of the middle and throw the cookies away. My cousin Tren, who has elevated Oreos and ice cream to a food group, refuses to share her Oreos with me for this reason.

Wasting Oreos, it seems, is akin to sacrilege.

Things Seen 15

Traveling through east Texas on my way back home Sunday, I saw this image on a Navajo Trucking rig.



I just could not believe those eyes, y'all, just could not. Now, I don't know how much of the rest of the image is authentic (her headdress and the coils around her neck, for example), but I am skeptical.

As I stared at that image, I wondered why in the world the company portrayed a Navajo woman with blue eyes. It occured to me later that it is for the same reasons PoC are encouraged to take on, or prized for being born with, "European" features IRL.

In theory, such features bring us closer to a standard of beauty that most people of European descent can't even achieve. They make us "stand out," "more beautiful," "different."

But I wasn't thinking of any of those descriptors as that truck rolled by me. I was thinking, "How sad." It isn't enough that Navajo Trucking appropriated names and images of a people to "represent" their company. They altered those images to conform to a certain aesthetic, perpetuating a long-standing pattern of trying to own and control the bodies of WoC and how our bodies will be represented.

SPEAK! CD

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:*
*March 7, 2009*
*SPEAK! WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA COLLECTIVE** RELEASING SELF-TITLED DEBUT CD*
*UNITED STATES *

SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective, a netroots coalition of women of color bloggers and media-makers, is debuting March 7, 2009 with a performance art CD, accompanied by a collaborative zine and classroom curriculum for educators.

Compiled and arranged by Liquid Words Productions, the spoken word CD weaves together the stories, poetry, music, and writings of women of color
from across the United States. The 20 tracks, ranging from the explosive
"Why Do You Speak?" to the reverent "For Those of Us," grant a unique
perspective into the minds of single mothers, arrested queer and trans activists, excited children, borderland dwellers, and exploring dreamers, among
many others.

"We want other women of color to know they are not alone in their
experiences," said writer and educator Alexis Pauline Gumbs, one of
the contributors to the CD. "We want them to know that this CD will
give sound, voice and space to the often silenced struggles and dreams of
womenof color."

The Speak! collective received grant assistance from the Allied Media
Conference coordinators to release a zine complementing the works featured
on the CD, as well as a teaching curriculum for educators to incorporate its
tracks into the classroom environment.

"*Speak!* is a testament of struggle, hope, and love," said blogger
Lisa Factora-Borchers of A Woman's Ecdysis. "Many of the contributors are
in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names... I
can guarantee you will have the same reaction as to when I heard them
speak, I was mesmerized."

To promote the initiative, the Speak! collective is coordinating
listening parties in communities across America, creating short YouTube
promotions illustrating the CD creation process, and collaborating with organizers and activists online and offline.

The CD is available for online ordering at the SPEAK! Media Collective site on a sliding scale, beginning at $12.

All inquiries for review copies should be directed to us at speakcd@gmail.com. Proceeds of this album will go toward funding for mothers
and/or financially restricted activists attending the 11th Annual
*Allied Media Conference* in Detroit, MI from July 16-19.

Still Trying to Find the "Mysteriously Missing Word, Rape"

Yesterday (Tuesday March 3), Chester Arthur Stiles was convicted of sexually assaulting a two-year-old and a six-year-old.

He videotaped his sexual assault of the two-year-old.

But when I opened up my AOL home page, here is how the case was described:


That link takes you to the article linked in the first line, which has the cleaned-up title "Man Convicted in Toddler Video Case," though the URL still contains "man-convicted-in-toddler-sex-video."

Over at Shakesville, Liss has written a lot about the media's refusal to call rape what it is (two* examples). I don't have much to add, but I was particularly struck (and angered) by this.

(crossposted at Shakesville)
________________________________________
* My title references this post

Things Seen 14

It may seem that I talk a lot about how products geared for children reinforce and perpetuate ideas instilled by living under the kyriarchy, but, damn, I'm continually astounded.

We were shopping for summer clothes. My son, avowed lover of graphic shirts, thought this was funny:





I told him I didn't like it, then tried to explain why.*

"He's saying his sister is so annoying, he was happy she was kidnapped."

He understood that part, but the back took a little more.

"This is based on a stereotype that girls and women talk a lot, that their talk is annoying, and that what they say isn't important."

A debate ensued, which he began with, "Mama... some girls do talk a lot."

He kept looking at the shirts, then said, "You are really not going to like this one!"






He was, of course, right.**
_____________________________________

*Sorry for the (camera phone) picture quality. The shirt says "The Flying Monkeys Stole My Sister... But They Brought Her Back for TALKING TOO MUCH."

**The front of the shirt features a smiling boy holding duct tape. "I have no idea where my sister is," he says. On the sleeve is his unsmiling sister, restrained with the duct tape.

The Other Louisiana

Some time ago, I asked what Louisiana does Senator David Vitter, who opposed the S-Chip reauthorization in 2007, live in.

After Bobby Jindal's speech and his rejection of some of the stimulus funds, I have to ask the same of him.

I am really at the point where I can't utter much more than, "How dare his ruthlessly ambitious, selfish, trying-to-score-a-political point ass do that?"

From my micro-viewpoint of the north-central/northeastern portion of the state, I'd just like to point out people in Louisiana are suffering. There have already been budget cuts and guess where those disproportionately occur?

Higher (public) education and health care. This is a result of politics as usual in Louisiana:

Over the years, lawmakers have locked more than half the state's income into specific programs -- everything from elementary and secondary education dollars to wildlife and fisheries funds -- making the money largely protected from budget cuts. When the state faces a deficit, the governor and lawmakers have little discretion to cut those shielded programs.

That situation leaves Louisiana's public colleges and health care programs to take the largest hit in tight budget years. They are the two largest areas of unprotected spending.

[snip]

Higher education and health care could lose more than $380 million each in budget cuts next year because the state is expected to bring in $1.2 billion less in state general fund revenue in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

If you look at that Vitter post you can see some of the dismal statistics re: health care (and access to it) in Louisiana. But here is a summary from LPB's Louisiana Public Square January "Backgrounder" entitled "Guarded Condition: Healthcare in Louisiana":

Louisiana is one state away from leading the nation in:

- Infant mortality, with an average of 10 infant deaths per 1000 live births;

- Cancer deaths, which kill 223 out of every 100,000 Louisianans; and

- Premature death, where poor preventive care practices annually kill 11,000 of our citizens before their time.

Health outcomes like these have placed the state either 49th or 50th in the United Health Foundation’s national health rankings for the last 17 years.

Medicaid and CHIP are (again) underfunded in Louisiana. According to FamiliesUSA, that has translated into a reduction in the number of monthly prescriptions covered by Medicaid for most adults, "delayed implementation of programs that provide services to certain seniors and people with disabilities," and "reducing how much providers who participate in the programs are paid for their services."

As if it is not already difficult enough to find providers willing to accept Medicaid.*

On the education side, Louisiana's public universities have already had $55 million trimmed from their budgets.

What that means in my North-Central Louisiana home area is this:

Louisiana Tech has had to lay off 30 employees and had $2.65 million cut from its budget.

UL-M has frozen hiring and had $2.38 million cut from its budget.

Grambling has had $1.33 million cut from its budget.

Friday, I talked to a colleague at LA Tech who asked me about going to the Organization of American Historians' Conference at the end of this month. Someone from his department was going to go, he said, but then travel funds were frozen. I read somewhere that such is the case on many campuses. And adjuncts, already in a tenuous position, are being fired.

The University of Louisiana System could have as much as $116 million cut from its budget next year. That particular scenario:

would result in the loss of approximately 60 academic programs, 1,500 jobs, 3,000 furloughed employees and a possible drop in enrollment of 12,000 students.

The technical colleges are hurting, too. As noted on the Louisiana Community and Technical College System website

LCTCS institutions have the lowest tuition rates throughout the state per full-time equivalent student, and are the most reliant on state funding. Therefore, across the board cuts have a far greater impact on our ability to serve students.

The restrictions are not enough for some Louisiana lawmakers, though, who actually want to see some of the schools close.

Gotta love our priorities.

Lower levels of education are affected too, of course. mrs. o's high school is probably closing in May, after a bitter, protracted fight. She and I both find it ironic that one of the selling points of closing the school and combining it with the larger high school in the parish seat is the availibility of the dual enrollment program at the local technical college. Budget cuts means there is a lack of funding for the program!

The summer program that I usually work, funded by the Louisiana Department of Education, is cut. I'm not sure if its school year existence (when it is held as an after-school program) is in jeopardy or not.

And then, late last week came the news that Pilgrim's Pride plants in Farmerville and El Dorado are closing. The direct impacts of the loss of the Farmerville plant in North Louisiana, according to that article, are 1,300 in-plant jobs gone by summer and 290 contract growers (and my God, their situation merits a posting of its own) in limbo. I'm not sure the article took into account the Louisianans who cross the state line to work in Arkansas. I've already written about how earlier reductions hurt the region. This will be devastating. As mrs. o told me Friday night, by summer, neither she nor her husband will have a job.

This is the context in which Bobby Jindal takes it upon himself to turn down money. And that speech he gave--I'll be honest and say that I focused, horrorstruck, on that image he tried to paint of Louisiana as "regenerated" in the aftermath of Katrina.

A Louisiana to which many people can't come home (not that they're wanted to come back, of course) because of lack of housing** and health*** and social services.

A Louisiana (particularly New Orleans) in which he admits to abandoning the public school system brags about "opening dozens of new charter schools, and creating a new scholarship program that is giving parents the chance to send their children to private or parochial schools of their choice."

A Louisiana in which state agencies still report delays, loss, and confusion as a result of the 2005 hurricanes. My own experience has reflected this. Just one example: in September 2007, I sent my son's birth certificate to the Louisiana Vital Records Registry for a change. In April of 2008, I called them. The alteration had just been assigned to someone in February, an employee told. She specifically connected the backlog to Katrina. In June, I received a letter requesting that I send in a new check as the previous one was "outdated." I said forget it and went to a local health unit and paid for another copy. I have never received the original back.****

Many Louisianans are poorly educated, in poor health, have little economic opportunity, and little job security. The fact that Jindal can stand there with his fake grin, crafting tales, and declaring "Americans can do anything" while marginalized Louisianans, ill-equipped to withstand the realities of this recession, are hurting, is disturbing. He's keeping his eye on the big picture, though, right? Too bad for the residents of a little state whose realities are getting in the way of the story he wants to be able to tell.
______________________________________________
*One of the things that strikes me most about the "Oh, no, universal health care is a socialist evil!!!" arguments is the one that says people might have to wait long periods for health care. Not desirable, but totally based upon the experiences of a certain class. Poor people already wait long periods and the health care they receive is often inadequate. The waiting times at "charity" hospitals (I am most familiar with the LSU hospitals in Monroe and Shreveport and the stories of Ben Taub in Houston) are unbelievable. People sit for hours and hours in ER waiting rooms. Getting in for routine, preventative care at the LSU Hospitals or the Parish Health Units often requires trying to schedule months (even a year) in advance. But as long as it's poor people waiting...

**Click through that whole presentation!

*** Though the shortage of healthcare providers is not nearly as acute as it was as late as 2007, there are still issues surrounding access to healthcare.

**** The other major issues for me, as a historian, have been research related.

An Update on the NJ4 and a Call to Action

via free the new jersey four:

For Immediate Release February 27, 2009

Contact: Kimma Walker 973.676.9813 freenj4@yahoo.com



Queer and Trans Demonstrators Confront District Attorney
One of the NJ4 Appears in Court Next Week
National NJ4 Solidarity Committee Demands and End to All Prosecution Against Renata Hill and Immediate Release of Patreese Johnson from Prison

_________________________________________________
What: RALLY: The National NJ4 Solidarity Committee rally in support Renata Hill and self defense for all marginalized queers, transfolks, women and people of color.


When: 12:00 Noon

Monday, March 2 2009



Where: Office of the District Attorney

1 Hogan Place

Manhattan, NY



Who: The NJ4 Solidarity Committee, comprised of such groups as FIERCE, Gay Shame SF, LAGAI — Queer Insurrection, Bash Back, Resistance in Brooklyn and Queers for Economic Justice.



Why: On August 16, 2006, seven young black lesbians were in New York’s West Village and were accosted by Dwayne Buckle, who eventually grabbed one of them, and a fight ensued. The seven women were arrested and charged with crimes such as “gang assault.” Three of them took plea agreements.



The other four lesbians Terrain Dandridge, Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, and Venice Brown were put on trial in 2007. In the trial and the surrounding media they were dehumanized, villified, and called a “lesbian wolf-pack.” The prosecution and trial were so biased that in an unprecedented move the First District Appellate Court reversed all of Terrain’s convictions, and dismissed the indictment with prejudice, although by that time she had served almost two years in jail/prison. In October of 2008, a retrial was granted on the felony gang assault charges against Renata and Venice, and they both got out on bail after serving more than two years. Patreese’s sentence was reduced to 8 from 11 years, but not overturned. Assistant District Attorney Lanita K. Hobbs is demanding that Renata be returned to prison, or face another trial.

Many diverse communities have rallied to the case, seeing the DA’s prosecution of the lesbians as a denial of their right to defend themselves and each other. “If we are killed or raped, we are mourned as victims, or supported as survivors. But if we fight back successfully, we are imprisoned. The district attorney is leaving us no options when we are attacked on the street,” said spokesperson Ralowe of the NJ4 Solidarity Committee. “It is time for the district attorney to stop persecuting these lesbians and let them get on with their lives.”

The Committee will be not only be demanding that the D.A. drop the case against Renata, but also to help secure Patreese Johnson’s immediate release.

What, No Suitable Fried Chicken Joke?!

Dean Grose, the mayor of Los Alamitos, CA, sent out an e-mail with the subject, "No Easter Egg Hunt This Year." Said e-mail included a picture of what the alternative celebration would be:




A watermelon hunt!! Get it?

Keyanus Price, a local black businesswoman who received the e-mail, called Grose out on his racism and demanded an apology. I'll bet you can guess what he said, right?

He don't know nothin' bout no racism! From the article linked above:

[Grose] said he was unaware of the racial stereotype that black people like watermelons.

As Renee said, maybe it was accidental that he chose watermelons instead of pumpkins or something.

His response was full of other tired lines, too. He waxed unpoetically about his lack of intent to offend. Then there was,

"Bottom line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did," Grose told the AP.

That translates, roughly, to either "She's too sensitive!" or "She was looking to be offended!" And

"It wasn't sent to offend her personally—or anyone—from the standpoint of the African-American race,"

, which read to me like, "I know the singular, monolithic standpoint of the African American race and this wasn't offensive. Why, pretty soon, I'll pull out my black friend who wasn't the least offended by it!"

Anything but a true apology and an acknowledgement of his racism.

H/T Renee

Too Cute to Correct

Tonight my son asked me, "If you had to choose another career, what would you do?"

"Probably be an event planner. I don't know," I said, then didn't think anymore about it.

A little while ago, I fixed a snack--we wanted chocolate, but, alas, our cupboards are bare of that particular treat. So, I decided to put a thin layer of peanut butter on shortbread cookies. He loved it.

When he said good night, he reminded me once again how much he liked our "new" snack:

"No wonder you want to be an invent planner," he said, "You invent the best stuff!"

I Try Not to Talk Too Much about My Job...

But, oh my God y'all, I just heard one of my (male) co-workers tell a female student that she got points off an exam because part of what she wrote was "too feminist for today."

Life in post-sexist academia...

Getting 'em While They're Young

This picture has little to do with this post, beyond the theme of how our kids are taught what is gender appropriate at a young age--I found these shoes (excuse me, these HIGH-HEELED BOOTS!!!) in the girl's dept when I was shopping for my goddaughter. She's a six-year-old first-grader.


As a parent, I have decided on many occasions, that the patriarchy is out to do my efforts and my child in. The most recent realization occurred on Valentine's Day.

My son has a "girlfriend" back in Louisiana for whom he wanted to buy something for Valentine's Day and have it delivered to the school on February 13. He told me this the afternoon of February 13. He moped and whined for a while until I snapped, "She wasn't able to get you anything, so both of you can forgive each other!"

At which point, he informed me, "Valentine's Day is for girls!"

"Why," I asked, "is Valentine's Day for girls? What does that mean? Who told you that?"

"Girls are the ones who care about that stuff," was the only substantial answer I could get.

Silly, sentimental, emotive girls care about that stuff.

So, we talked for a bit, but I was still left with the, "Where does he get this stuff?" feeling.

I got a partial answer the next morning. We were up early and he turned the T.V. on to the Disney Channel. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was on and I made him leave it there because I love the "Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog" song they sing when the problem is solved. Don't ask, I just do.

Now Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a show for pre-schoolers. As such, it teaches colors, shapes, numbers, and letters. As an added bonus, it teaches gender roles!

Anyway, the episode was, "A Surprise for Minnie." Mickey had forgotten Valentine's Day and was trying to hurriedly make a card for Minnie (seeing as how Valentine's Day is for girls and all). Mickey got his card done, but poor, clueless Donald still had no gift for Daisy. Daisy prompts and prompts, but Donald is still lost. Daisy stomps off with her arms crossed.

Mickey appears in the corner of the screen to tell us, "Uh-oh. Daisy's gonna be so sad if Donald forgot her Valentine's Day gift." Then Mickey calls upon pre-schoolers to save Donald's fat from the fire! They use the last mousekatool, a piece of ribbon, to fashion a bow for Daisy. Upon seeing the bow, she goes into full, eyelash-fluttering, soft-voiced forgiveness mode. Donald whispers a grateful, "Thanks, guys."

Valentine's Day: negligible nuisance for men, holy holiday for women. As I was typing this post and re-watching the episode, I asked my son, "So what does that episode make you think?"

"That it matters to girls, but it doesn't matter to guys."

"And why do you think it matters to girls?"

"Because they like that kind of stuff, bows and hearts and stuff."

My dejected slump of the shoulders did not go unnoticed. He said, "It matters to me."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you can show people how you feel about them. And you can show them respect and that you care about their feelings."

I have to teach him, of course, that you don't have to wait for an over-commercialized holiday to do those things. But I'd be lying if I said his words didn't make me feel a little better.

Why My Radio Is Usually Off

Monday evening, on my way home, I decided to turn on the radio. I caught the recap of a local morning show, one of those, "If you didn't tune into us this morning, here's what you missed," sort of spots. In any case, the topic of the show that morning had been Nadya Suleman, and the show's hosts apparently continued the hateful, derogatory talk that has surrounded Suleman and her children.

The main host wanted people to call and weigh in on the fact that Suleman's medical bill was being turned over to California's medicaid/state health insurance plan.* There is, of course, no grounds for debate on such a topic, just a chance for people to call in to rant about people "who-have-babies-and-expect-us-to-take-care-of-them!!!" You'd think that topic was old--we've been hearing it for decades now, right?

Anyway, during the course of the show, the host interrupted one of the co-host's proclamation of how sad the situation is, to mimic Bob Barker/Drew Carey and remind people to have their cats and dogs spayed or neutered. The co-hosts immediately collapsed into laughter.

How hilarious-- Likening a woman to a pet and "humorously" recommending sterilization.

And the station thought it was funny enough to showcase it as a highlight.

I drafted a letter that I plan to fax this morning, then mail. Despite the words I managed to cobble together, I still feel that I just don't know what to say.
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*The frenzy surrounding Nadya Suleman has demonstrated, like nothing else since the debates on "reforming" welfare in the 1990s, our national obsession over who "should" be a mother and who is "deserving" of assistance.

(Not) Taken

I'd heard much ado about Taken. My friend Tasha invited me to see it this past weekend. "You'll like it, I promise. It stays busy!"

So I texted my sister, who'd seen it. "Go," she sent back, "Even you can watch it. Not very long and very good."

Promises that "it stays busy" and "even you can watch it" are needed because, while I love action movies, I'm not a big suspense fan. I always say my nerves can't handle it. I say that a lot--I need to quit blaming my nerves and find out why some stuff just bothers me disproportionately. Anyway, long, suspenseful movies irk me.

So I saw it. A cute girl asks you, your sister recommends it, what can you do? :-)

Rather than give a synopsis, how about I offer an analysis of some of the characters with lots of exclamation points? Spoilers below.


Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson): A poor, pitiful father who is kept from having a meaningful relationship with his daughter, Kim, because of her uppity bitch of a mother, Lenore. Really, the distance between Kim and him is only partially because of his past government job which kept him from being around. Hey, he never missed a birthday and he had to sacrifice for his country!!!!

Lenore (Famke Janssen): In short, the ex-wife of every MRA. She snaps. She belittles. She's possibly a golddigger. She doesn't even want Bryan at Kim's birthday party (she wants to erase him from her daughter's life) and scoffs at his gift of a karaoke machine. But Bryan is on point; despite the fact that Lenore was a virtual single mother and still is the custodial parent, it's Bryan who knows Kim's true heart, a heart that desires to be a singer!!!!

Lenore doesn't even understand Bryan's manly need to protect. She wants her not-very-mature (see below) 17-year-old daughter to hop across Europe following U-2 (that was so unbelievable to me. Maybe it's a rich people thing?) and thinks Bryan is paranoid and controlling.

Kim (Maggie Grace): A 17-year-old. She still giggles, jumps up and down a lot, and is mega-excited over getting a pony!!!! for her birthday!!!! Why, yes I did say 17, not seven.

Jean-Claude: A typical French man. Bryan thought he was a friend, but really he's an enemy. There's a new angle.

Eastern Europeans (various actors): Shady characters who traffic in women. You know they're the bad guys because they sweat a lot, their hair is greasy, and their eyes shift. And they've had the nerve to "progress" from trafficking in eastern European women to grabbing western white women!!!!

Virginity: The thing that Kim has (she's certified pure!!!!) that keeps her from immediately meeting the fate of all the other "besmirched" girls and makes her worth more than they. While Daddy's racing against time to prevent her permanent disappearance, it's clear that he's racing to prevent the disappearance of that particular "prize" as well. I've been thinking since I saw it, "Is that what those promises at purity balls are about?"

Sheik Raman (Nabil Massad): Your standard Middle Eastern enemy. This character made me think of Bill Napoli's comment about what he thought would "really" be a horrible rape. It's as if the facts that Kim could be trafficked, forcibly addicted to drugs, and raped were not enough. I guess the writer was savvy enough to know that people always look for what women do to invite/"increase their chances" of being raped--and Kim (and Lenore) could be blamed for lying about the nature of her trip and resisting her father's warnings. I mean, Amanda did lie about her cousins' whereabouts and look what happened to her!

Casting Sheik Raman as the rapist might tug the heartstrings of those who would say, "Really, she got herself into this" because the potential perpetrator is a fat! brown! enemy. Now, that would be a horrible rape.

Now, the movie was action-packed. I can't say I was bored. But the overarching, "Father Knows Best"/"I Told You So, Lenore" theme was a bit much for me.