On Presentism

Dear U.S. History Student,

I understand protectiveness of your idols, I guess. If I felt someone impugned the figure of, say, Fannie Lou Hamer, I'd be ready to take off the earrings and smear the Vaseline. But I'm weary of your smug responses to any critique of your beloved Founders and/or your racist and sexist and classist grandfathers--the cry of presentism. How dare I or any student suggest that your beloveds were, well, fucked up? We can only come to that conclusion because we're judging them through the lenses of our day. We have to look at the "time in which they lived" (C). We are guilty, in our naivete and lack of understanding, of presentism.

I'd like to point out that your concept of presentism rests heavily in your identification with dominant groups. You may not have noticed, but one of the books I use, that you're supposed to be reading, is called Dissent in America. It's chock full of all kinds of primary sources that show that people in the past also thought your idols were full of privileged bullshit. Your adored historical figures had contemporary critics who were pointing out the same things that your classmates and I are. So, your claim of presentism dismisses all those people, all their arguments, and the history of dissent in this country.

I suppose that saying "The historical figures I admire were understandably a product of their times" is a lot more face-saving than saying "The historical figures I admire held tightly to oppressive systems out of self-interest and an unwillingness to challenge the status quo, thus ignoring the people who suggested that maybe, just maybe, there were problems with said systems." Whatever. Hey, they ignored protest from the margins, why shouldn't you?!

So, you can, if you choose, go ahead understating your idols' flaws and bristling at the critique of them. Or you can acknowledge things like the fact that, for whatever else they did, quite a few of your Founders were a bunch of sexist, elitist, racist slaveholders, some people told them that, and they didn't give a damn. Or that it wasn't just some abstract notions of states' rights and strict constitutionality that your southern forefathers were interested in upholding. Etc, etc.

Or you can continue to claim that critiques of them only occur in the present and conveniently disappear people like:

Benjamin Banneker
Abigail Adams
Maria Stewart
Frederick Douglass
John Brown
Chief Joseph
Ida Wells
Mother Jones
Joe Hill
Carlos Montezuma
Alice Paul
W.E.B DuBois
Hubert Harrison
Angelo Herndon
Fred Korematsu
Hector Garcia
Grace Lee Boggs
Bayard Rustin
Septima Clark
Clyde Warrior
Dolores Huerta
Audre Lorde
Vito Russo
Howard Zinn

Yep, I listed all those as a start. Crying presentism erases their historical critiques, their arguments that the world that was, wasn't the world that had to be.

Of course, that version of history is the one for which you probably long. It's safe. You can simultaneously, dissonant-ly claim the U.S. is exceptional and dismiss any problems with "but other people did it as well." Either we're different and special-er than everyone else or we're not; make up your mind. But maybe that dissonance is part of our heritage as well--how could the same person who theorized "All men are created equal" so completely challenge his own theory in Notes on the State of Virginia?

But my God, if your totally complacent answer is "That's just how it is," what limited possibilities must you envision for yourself and your abilities to effect change?

Sincerely,

dr. elle

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.

While Typing My Syllabus...

...I realize I have two versions of the primary document reader for one of my classes. One has more documents than the other. Not sure which one is going to come with their bundle. Aargh!

...My son is standing behind me reading. "You're an assistant professor?" he asks.

"Yep"

"Who do you help?"

...One of the monographs is not in the box I packed which means its on my dresser in Louisiana. Getting my parents to mail more than an envelope is like pulling teeth. Bookstore, here I come, sigh.

...Haven't had breakfast or lunch and my niece keeps trying to feed me because I haven't eaten anything today. She eats at regular intervals--she's diabetic--and I know I drive her crazy.

...I'm loving Quinn and T even more for their help.

...I'm turning over and over in my head a lunch invitation from some other WoC faculty--I'm both appreciative and nervous.

...I'm realizing I need to buy parking decal because I have orientation coming up!!!

OK, back to work. I'm procrastinating on writing the course descriptions--I hate those as much as the "objective" on resumes.

When Does College Life End?

No, for real. If you haven't noticed, it's 2 a.m. and I'm still up prowling the internet. And this is not a one-time occurrence. One of the biggest differences between my friends and me is that most of them have standard, 8 to 5, five-day-a-week gigs. They go to bed the night before they have to wake up. They don't get up in the middle of the night and get on the computer.

I am still stuck in the college life. Granted, I won't sleep well into tomorrow afternoon (I wake my son up at 6:15), but I definitely am a night person. I developed that habit as an undergraduate and haven't shaken it. It fits, in a way, with my life-as-a-mama--I usually don't even attempt to work in the evenings until The Kid is in bed.

I still do my best writing in or around my bed (I preferred my bed to my desk in my dorm) and I'm still a horrible procrastinator. And I teach and hold most office hours on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, so it really is reminiscent of yesteryear.

It's not that this is at all a big deal necessarily, but it does create a gulf between my friends and me. Our lives are out of balance. We schedule time together on the weekends, true, but I really prefer spending Friday nights lazing around and Saturdays doing some sort of work. On the other hand, if I have late-night cravings in the middle of the week, I can't call them to go to a neighboring town to get something to eat like I used to. Combine that with the fact that I was "in school" for years and years and I don't feel "grown up" in the same way that they are.

One example, living in a small town means that everyone knows when and where I work. You would not believe how many times I've heard, "Oh you work two days a week? I need that job!" My explanations about working from home and prepping for class and (finally) beginning revisions are ignored. The implication is that I don't have a "real" job--even my mom comes in on Mondays and Wednesdays and makes little comments if I haven't cleaned the house or done some task she thinks I should have time to do. When she asks, "What did you do today?" my skin crawls.

I knew my life was going to be different from most of my friends' and relatives'. And while these are only minor observations, I'm starting to realize how much.

The Big Head

Did I tell y'all? The other day, I got my bound copy of my dissertation from proquest. I sat and held it and smiled. And smiled and held it. And held it and smiled. So forth and so on, with short breaks to let members of my family look at it and declare that it was wonderful while I preened.

And you know, for a moment, as I skimmed it, I thought, maybe it wasn't the worst dissertation in the history of PhD-dom.

That feeling lasted all of a minute.

And then I sighed and put the thing away from me.

I Haven't Forgotten...

...the promised series. Just been busy with more pressing matters.

And I've been thinking, maybe y'all should get together and raise a collection to send me to a spa or on a cruise or something...

...cuz it's DR. ELLE, now, baby!!!!!!!

Predictions

The other day, in comments to one of my update posts, Rachel teased

You're not a real grad student until you've either fallen asleep in the library while trying to complete a paper or you've been kicked out of the library because it's closing time.

Turns out, she's quite the sage.

This morrning, I did my usual MWF routine: dropping the kids off at school, getting stuck in traffic, debating on getting breakfast, going to the library. But I was soooo tired today just thinking of wrapping everything up so I can spend Easter with my family and submit my new, revised groundbreaking dissertation by Tuesday. Around 10:45 A.M., after shifting papers, reorganizing my books, scribbling on a notepad and generally getting nothing accomplished in my carrel, I decided I had to take a nap. I was so sleepy, it was the only way I would get anything done today.

So, I prepared to lay (lie? I never know) my head on the desk. Only, with breasts like mine, my head was still inches off the desk. I grabbed a three-inch binder full of articles, placed the sweatshirt I keep in the carrel on it and tried again. Still, the boobies are too high. I realized I could slide my chair way back, so that my breasts weren't on the desktop. But having them there, just hangin' in the wind wasn't comfortable for my breasts or my back. So, on top of the binder I place a really thick volume of the 1960 Congressional Record, an empty book bag, and the sweatshirt. Success!! I took some deep breaths and fell asleep.

30 minutes later, I woke up with neck pain and the beginnings of a headache. But I was still sleepy and determined. So, I sat up, draped the sweatshirt over my head (both to shield my eyes from the light and to cover my face because I know I looked a complete fool), pulled my arms into my t-shirt (it was cold!), and went back to sleep--sitting up.

I woke up mildly refreshed, called a former union official (who has agreed to let me interview her, but that will have to be in the eventual book), and came downstairs to check my e-mail and give y'all the required dose of TMI. It's the strangest thing--it's like I am exhausted, but still motivated. I really want to do this, sleep be damned :-)

I'm on my way back up. I have four hours before I have to pick up the kids and I need to make them count.

I want to say something...

...really. But I'm treading water. Update soon.

In the meantime, describe what's going on in your life. I'd like the sweet reminders of what life outside a library is like.

On the Dissertation

The overdue update:

Last Monday, I submitted the first draft of it, sans conclusion, to my advisor.

Made some corrections, tightened up my notes, and submitted it to my labor history prof on Tuesday. He's not on my committee, but advisor wants him to be.

Made more corrections, expanded the intro (per some early suggestions from advisor) and fed-exed it to my outside reader Thursday evening.

Spent Thursday night and all day Friday going through microfilm from the Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen. Discovered the local I'm studying had a ba-a-a-d reputation in the 1970s for not responding to the members and that there may have been a strike at my plant.

Per advisor's request, sent her the new-and-improved intro.

And now, my biggest problem is time. I had to make myself stop writing/revising yesterday because I'm supposed to be grading. Prof gave an exam the Thursday before spring break and commented that we could use spring break to grade. I told him that wouldn't be happening, so he gave us an extra weekend--exams due back Tuesday and I am way behind on grading.

Also, I can't gloss over a strike at "my" plant, but the microfilm ends without details of whether or not it actually occurred, the town's newspaper does not exist on microfilm, so I'd have to make a trip back to the cold, scary newspaper morgue to dig there, and I've been able to find only one extant copy of the local's newsletter for the 1970s. My point--I'm sure more info exists, but I don't have the time to find it. Labor prof has been telling me (because I'm freaked about a few other loose ends), "Save it for the book!" But that's hard for me.

And revisions, time wise--Advisor promised to have it back next week. I have every intention of getting it revised (again) before Easter, but then it goes to my whole committee. What if they have a million suggestions? I have to defend by the end of April to graduate in May!

On the other hand, I've been thinking--this is the last semester for which I'm eligible for a TAship. And, I'm not sure I have financial aid available for the summer (though, I suppose my dad, all grumbly and mumbly, would help me pay in the summer, if I needed to). I have no summer job (though I might teach a class at my MA university or do the little thing through the state of Louisiana that I did last summer--still, no news on either possibility, yet).

So, for financial reasons, I do need to graduate. Badly. Advisor says it is possible--difficult, but possible. But, I work exceedingly well under pressure--open-ended deadlines and meandering on my own time have gotten me into this situation. Knowing that I have to do some things has me writing and reading my ass off. I won't have any more grading to do until May and my fellow TAs and prof are all very encouraging and supportive.

If anyone wants to help me work out a mental timeline...

I'm Back...

...and finished. :-)

More later.

Hello, Darlings!

I've always wanted to say that--a desire rooted somewhere in my illusions (or is it delusions) of grandeur.

The revising/writing is proceeding, though the introduction is troublesome.

And I'm apparently vying for the "shortest dissertation of the year" award. In defense of my brevity, I must say that there is some good stuff in there. Plus, I'm feeling good about it--I'd forgotten that my advisor had gone over some chapters 3 times with me, so some of them only needed a few changes before I could submit for more feedback.

Anyway, two chapters and the rest of the intro to go. Thanks for all the well-wishes!

Dissertation Update

I'm off to basically hibernate. The first full draft of my dissertation (minus conclusion) is due MARCH 16TH!! Well, I could stretch it to March 19th, as I'll be out of town, but the 16th is the date for the first round of revisions and a butchered intro (cuz trust me, that's what it will be).

I don't think it's fully hit me yet--I've been revising and some of the chapters are in okay shape. But the notes and the bibliography (the bibliography stops at chapter 3!!) and the chapters 2 and 4 (damned even numbers): aargh!!! My plan is to take a chapter a day over the next week and look at it more. The end of the day means move on. That's the hardest thing for me--letting go.

If I plan to graduate in May, all my ducks have to be in a row (defense done, dissertation submitted) by May 4.

Keep reminding me that it doesn't have to be perfect, that I actually need feedback (I hate getting backed the damned marked up papers!!), and that I can conceivably do this. Well, Texter and Sharonica, we can do this.

I leave for Louisiana this afternoon and I'll be spending most of the week in my dad's room (much to his dismay). None of the distractions of my own room, not as bright as the kitchen (I can't work in a lot of light), and people are more hesitant to come in there.

Prayers, good vibes, powerful thoughts--send 'em out.

Options (and Way Too Many Questions) on Unionization

crossposted at Progressive Historians

Because Ragey asked for an update, here is an issue I'm struggling with in writing the conclusion to my chapter four, and to the dissertation. A more informative update shortly!

This morning, I received an H-net e-mail that had the following phrase in the subject: "Non-Union Forms of Employee Representation." Because of the labor history class, I've been thinking about such things. U.S. union membership is perilously low and unions are troubled by a persistent association of corruption with unionism, a culture that prizes the individual over the collective, and the nature of U.S. capitalism.

The primary question on my mind is, are unions still viable vehicles for employee representation? Neither Sweeney's 1995 ascension to AFL-CIO leadership nor all the promises of change-to-come have sparked mass organization. Is it time for a new dominant form of organization?

A recurrent critique I've read/heard of unions attributes much of union membership decline to exclusionary practices. From the early years of exclusion based on race, gender, and skill-levels to the AFL-CIO's current uncertainty over whether or not to organize undocumented immigrants, organized labor in the U.S. has always seemed to "miss" significant numbers of laborers. In Hard Work, Fantasia and Voss noted that at the moment U.S. labor was becoming more diverse (because of immigration at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century), organized labor, with its focus on craft unionism and its racist policies was becoming more exclusionary.

Unions are also critiqued for their lack of "broadness" in at least two ways. First, they focused almost exclusively on workplace issues and were hesitant to take the lead in the social justice struggles of some of their more marginalized members. Even in unions known for such activities--notably UCAPAWA, its later incarnation, the Food, Tobacco, and Allied Workers, and the UAW--officials often withdrew support or dispersed "radicals." Within the poultry industry, when a coalition of civil rights and labor organizations formed the Committee for Justice in Mississippi to fight for workers' rights, the ICWU "pulled the rug out from under the coalition."* Secondly, they have never been able to formulate a "plan" for class-based struggle or foster class-consciousness--from some studies, it would appear that union leaders, like most Americans were/are loathe to even acknowledge the existence of a poor working class. As my professor says, if asked, all Americans claim middle class status.

While I tend to agree with the criticisms outlined above, I also see the validity in the arguments of scholars who assert that exclusion and the narrow focus of unions have not been top-down phenomena. In other words, workers have prioritized parts of their identities over their economic class and have often not wanted a broader-based movement or a movement that transcended these identies. Alan Draper wrote of the white southern union men who viciously attacked union leaders who pushed for civil rights. Women, according to Dorothy Sue Cobble, feared the loss of autonomy and focus on issues relevant to them if they joined with men in union locals. F. Ray Marshall (and more recent works) recorded a similar hesitance on the part of black unionists. Herbert Hill wrote that the AFL from its inception, with Samuel Gompers as president, was virulently anti-Asian, thus it is no wonder that Chinese, Japanese, and initially, Filipino cannery workers organized themselves based on other (e.g. ethnic, community) forms of solidarity.** I do not mean that the reasons for segregation and union exclusion are acceptable to me, but how marginalized workers coped--by fashioning something uniquely their own--is admirable.

There are also the reasons for union decline that I do not fully engage--the disappearance of heavily unionized jobs, the effects of technology, and globalization (i.e. capital's mobility vs. labor's relative lack of mobility) and the reasons I have mentioned before--the power of employers, the failure of the U.S. government to intervene on workers' behalf. All together, these create a pretty dismal picture for unions. Can they be reinvigorated and learn to effectively use grassroots techniques? Will the Employee Free Choice Act be enough? Can unions effectively reach a diverse workforce?

Of course, if the answers are no, my next question would have to be, what does organized labor without unions look like? I, for one, cannot fully imagine it. I interviewed the executive secretary of the Georgia Poultry Justice Alliance for my dissertation, and while she was proud of the work the PJAs have done, she insisted that unions were still the best options for employees who wanted to engage in collective action to improve their working conditions and quality of life. And workers' committees and the like seem to be a product of an anti-union nation.

What are the alternatives? Do we need them?
___________________________

*See Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 on how Latinas were pushed out of union leadership; Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement ," Journal of American History, 75, no. 3: 786-811 and Ken Lawrence and Anne Braden, "The Long Struggle," Southern Exposure, November/December 1983: 85-89. Marion Crain and Ken Matheny maintain that unions marginalized themselves by helping shaping labor law in a way that "social justice issues were severed from class issues," Labor's Identity Crisis, California Law Review, 89, no.6 (2001): 1767-1846.
**Hill, "Anti-Oriental Agitation and the Rise of Working-Class Racism," Society, 10 (January/February 1973); Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1870-1942.

Academic Opinions

As noted below, I turned in the last chapter. I e-mailed Advisor to let her know I was leaving it in her department mailbox and that I was going to be out of town for the weekend. She e-mailed me back, to say good, remind me that she'd need to see it all together soon, that we needed to start bringing my committee in, and that I needed to find out when was the last possible date I could submit the dissertation to graduate in May. And beside the word "May," she put (or August).

I raised an eyebrow at that--I'd been thinking May and I want to push for it. But, since I've officially drafted all the chapters, I finally believe that I'm going to get the PhD, so August wouldn't kill me... I guess.

Here is where I need opinions. I want all my PhD friends to let me know if May is a reasonable goal--if I bring as close to my A game as possible. I still have to draft the conclusion (the intro exists in fragments); do whatever revisions she and the committee want; some serious crafting on my chapter 2 (because my original chapter five has been collapsed into it); and tighten up the bibliography and notes.

What do y'all think?

On Becoming a Feminist, pt. 2

**Yes, it's long and I apologize, but if you love me :-) bear with me and read it. I really want your opinions on the last part.**

"Your mama on welfare!"

When you're a black child, growing up where I grew up (and in many other places), that is one of the worst insults other children can hurl at you. Before we can even put into word our biases, before we can fully engage in our own stigmatization of poverty, we know, in the simplest terms, that welfare is racialized, feminized. Shameful.

My mom's mom was a retired domestic and farm worker, relegated to the "welfare" provisions of our social security system. I've mentioned before that she was a cook with unmatched skill. What I haven't mentioned is that she also bought much of her food with food stamps and that during the summers, we were the one who'd have to walk the short distance to the local grocery store to buy the makings of lunch and dinner.

Those were the most humiliating experiences of my young life. Typically, my sister, my cousin Tesha (Trinity's sister) and I would have to go. We never went in together--each day, one of us had a turn and the other two lagged outside, as if people in our small town wouldn't realize we were a group. We went early in the morning, so no one our age would be there and shopped quickly as possible, the shopper of the day dreading the moment she had to tear the appropriate amount out of the booklet and receive her change in paper stamps. It seemed as if the cashier took forever and that the quick scurry out of the store, head down, eyes glued to the tile, was never fast enough.

Eventually, we pretended to overcome the shame in a "radical" way: "Yes, I am in this store with food stamps and I am not ashamed!" as we slapped the stamps on the counter and eyed the cashier. It seemed bold at the time, but it was not. It was more of a "See, I'm not ashamed to do this shameful thing."

As I got older, my behavior morphed from scorn and ridicule to a condescending sort of pity. You know, the kind that expresses itself verbally as "Those poor people. I just don't know what I'd do if I were them" and silently as, "But thank God I'm not!" By the time I was in my MA program, I had the distinct feeling that something was not right about the discourse surrounding welfare and mothers and children who received it. Still, I had not formulated my own theory and while I thought I identified with poor women, part of me wanted it clear that I was not like them.

And then I found some of those works I mentioned here, Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, Gwendolyn Mink's Welfare's End, Whose Welfare, and The Wages of Motherhood, Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children, Lisa Levenstein's “From Innocent Children to Unwanted Migrants and Unwed Moms," JoAnne Good's Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform and so many more.

I learned how white women reformers championed only one mother as deserving of assistance--the widowed, white woman--how they ignored other mothers for fear that they--these never married or abandoned or brown or non-western European mothers--would turn public sentiment against the call for mothers' pensions. I learned how white men crafted the Social Security Act so that people most "deserving" of assistance would be white males attached at some point to the work force, so that there are two tiers--the unemployment insurance and retirement pensions that people "deserve" after having worked--and the "other tier"--the despised welfare programs for people who had not worked or who had been employed in excluded categories. I learned that excluded categories included jobs like teaching, social work, and nursing, thus excluding many women from the top tier, and also domestic and agricultural work, thereby excluding most blacks from the honorable tier. I learned that the later distinctions, that created a top tier category for women who had been married to men who worked in one of the included occupations, meant that many white women got to leave the bottom tier programs.

And I finally knew what was wrong. From its earliest days, the system was designed to leave people of color and women in bottom tier, "handout" categories. It never valued the work of women outside the work place, never acknowledged the right of women to be mothers outside any but the most narrow of confines. It was never meant to be a true system of social provision, characterized as it is with paltry payments and intrusive interrogations. In its most recent forms, it spurs people to question recipients' abilities and rights as parents, an idea I think Fab addresses here:

What can we do in the name of integrity and justice to stop the state’s attempts to destroy low income and people of color by taking children away, by CPS investigations on low income families, the resorting to second class citizenship via one’s lack of access to efficient, free to low cost, friendly and of high quality health care including dentists and psychiatrists–ending the immigration bullshit operation, constant police intimidation of our communities and families, how it is expected that our act of change be done with “grace” and non “angry”, or divisive, dreaming for the better tomorrow and living as our life depended on it, because our integrity is shattered daily by poverty and those out to protect us and the bullshit services for low income people. Where supposed criminal behavior, bad parenting, neglect and abuse is judged upon [by] a middle unaffected class.

If there is ever an experience during which it feels like scales fall away from your eyes, this was it for me. My politics, my self-identification, my thinking--all have changed since.

Which brings me to another point (related, I promise). Considering John Edwards's anti-poverty platform, Nonpartisan asked me did I think Edwards was an urban populist or an agrarian radical. I had to do some quick research (and I'm so grateful NP brought this to my attention) and I found this speech, excerpted at Ezra Klein's

Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities... To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it...
In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.
In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it...
In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.
In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.
In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain—to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.

And, though his proposals are different and sound wonderful, here is where I have a problem: what is the difference between his rhetoric and that of the Social Security Act framers? Why are the only ones deserving are the ones engaged in paid work? For that matter, why do we still work under definitions of who is or isn't "deserving?"

If we prioritize paid work over all else, ignoring that paid work is not always liberating, honorable, possible, or desirable, what happens to the people included in the 5%+ who are always unemployed in a "full employment" capitalist society? What happens to those that can't or don't work? Why are we steadily trying to fix and fix?

When do we change?
___________________________
For more of my struggle with the stigmatization of welfare, see here.

The History of One (Aspiring) Labor Historian

In my quest to be the most self-obsessed navel-gazer you know, I've decided I want to do some posts about how the professional and political me came to be.

I came to history by a twisted route which I've re-capped before. My BA is in psychology, so I initially went to grad school in a counseling psychology program (I wanted forensic psychology, but there weren't any universities close by and I wasn't ready to leave home again). I had doubts from the beginning--did I think everyone could be rehabilitated? What if I couldn't help someone? Then they upped the program's requirements to 48 hours and some extensive internships, and I admitted to myself that I just didn't want to do all the for an MS in psychology. I took a quarter to think about it and while I was "off," I took some history classes. They reminded me of how much I'd loved my African American Studies minor, and I thought, "I can do this." I applied for admissions to the history department and got accepted.

Now, my plan was to study the 60s. As an aside, that's been an interesting decade in this country's history. In the 1660s, Virginia was cementing the "peculiar institution." In the 1760s, many Americans were on a course to committing quite the treasonous act. In the 1860s, the Civil War--I can't pithily summarize that. And in the 1960s, the country (or at least the laws of the country) was changing in the most amazing ways, socially, politically, culturally, the result of grassroots efforts, people getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. These were the 60s I wanted to study*--as a black southern woman, I was worshipful of the Civil Rights Movement, curious about the movement for women's rights, and interested in exploring the links between those two. As the daughter of a largely silent VietNam vet, I wanted to know more about that era, how and why it happened. And as someone well-acquainted with Motown Records--because that's what my mom did on Saturdays while we all cleaned; she opened the front and back doors to let in the sun and put on old, scratchy records--I admired the soundtrack of the 60s. And I did study them--I took classes on VietNam and Watergate, on the New South and black women. I wrote papers on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the perspectives of soldiers involved in the VietNam war.

Then I graduated. And that was that. Until, burned out from teaching and continuously, lovingly harassed by my friend John and my old advisor, I decided to work on the PhD. I wanted to return to the safety of the 60s.

My advisors here said, "No." The social movements of the 60s were well-documented, both as grand, large-scale things and as small, community-centered efforts. While re-thinking, I fell in love with Linda Gordon's Pitied but Not Entitled, and Jill Quadagno's The Color of Welfare, and virtually everything I touched by Gwendolyn Mink, and even Winifred Bell's Aid to Dependent Children. "I'll write about welfare in Louisiana," I said. Advisor raised a brow, "Mmm, possible, look into it." But it was hard, because I just didn't know how to do the research and I was a bit unmotivated.

Then I read Jacqueline Jones's Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow. That, along with Pitied but Not Entitled and Deborah Gray White's Too Heavy a Load, are books that I read word for word because I loved them so much. And I knew. I wanted to write about black women's work, in and out of the home. I wanted to write about work that wasn't necessarily liberating or the primary thing by which women defined themselves.

And I knew the poultry industry. I knew about low wages and chicken rashes and finding out on Thursday that you had to work Saturday (plans be damned) and washing the clothes separately and joints aching and being so damned tired. But I also knew about saying "Fuck ConAgra and this job," and slowing down the work and telling the supervisor off and being the best mama you could be and taking time for your children, despite the company's demands and helping the new women on the line.

That, I decided, I could write about. But since I stumbled into labor history, I feel woefully unprepared sometimes. I had to find out for myself about the archives in Madison and at Georgia State and even a few things I needed at UT Arlington. I still am unclear on the "new" versus the "old" labor history. There are bellwethers (book-wise) I'd never heard of before this semester. And my head is swirling with "craft unionism," "industrial unionism," "economic unionism," "pure and simple unionism," "business unionism" and all sorts of distinctions I didn't know. When I talk to the NLRB about my FOIA requests, 90% of the time, I can't be clear, because I don't fully understand the way all of it works.

But, increasingly, I think I made the right choice.**
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*Though, if I had to choose, wailing and weeping, another 60s, it'd be the 1860s. Since I heard professors say, "No law or person "freed" the slaves. They freed themselves. They stole themselves away from the plantations," I've been intrigued. That's bold and wonderful, "stealing yourself away."

**Though, after the dissertation becomes a book, I will revisit my 1960s. I want to write a biography of Diane Nash one of the founders of SNCC, whom I've admired since I first read about her.

An Unorganized History Post

Somedays, I could make 100 posts a day.

And somedays, I can't think of a word to say. Or I'm too busy. Or extraordinarily lazy. Like, I wanted to post about the Kappas who got sentenced to two years for hazing. But I'm too apathetic right now.

But I am reading and writing. I'm sitting in on a labor history class and loving it. I've just read Lichtenstein's State of the Union; Buhle's Taking Care of Business, and I'm about to read Labor Embattled. I also got a book from the library, Hard Work by Fantasia and Voss, that I'm liking it a lot. But I'm all disillusioned now. I have a very idealistic view of the possibilities of labor unions and yet, I can't see how they can ever live up to my dream. The overall feel that I get is that they settled. They became unwieldly old relics stuck in business unionism, an institution unto themselves, instead of organic, vibrant entities able to capitalize on opportunities and the strengths of their memberships.

Last week, the professor asked us did we think labor unions should be concerned solely with issues of wages and working conditions or should they be part of a broader push for social justice. Perhaps, suggested a classmate, we were placing too much on the shoulders of labor unions. Perhaps what we needed was a labor movement, a Labor Party. We spent several minutes wiping away the tears that resulted from our cynical laughter at the idea of the US having any such movement, of acknowledging any class conflict without having people labeled as dreaded socialists and the like (hell, we can't even get most people to vote or anyway advocate for their class interests!).

And then, most of us expressed the idea that labor unions could not fluorish if they do just as the companies who exploit employees do--namely, define their members solely as workers. The well-being of workers depends on much more than a higher wage.

Fantasia and Voss note that the labor movement was becoming more exclusionary just as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe started arriving in large numbers. The emphasis on craft unionism, bastion of skilled, white men, and the racism and sexism that permeated the unions rendered them incapable of reaching both these new workers and black workers. It also meant that union leaders, especially those of the AFL, had a narrow vision of unionism that never included the interpretations of what unionism meant to marginalized workers. For example, many historians have written about how black workers saw union membership as a step towards full citizenship, an avenue for agitation for civil rights. Both Buhle and Lichtenstein indicate that the inability, or as Herbert Hill would argue, the blatant unwillingness, of unions (with a few notable exceptions) to take the forefront in the struggles of the 1960s and beyond meant that they lost much of their appeal. Lichtenstein, using a quote from a young Bill Clinton, notes how the "new" radicals actually viewed the unions skeptically and as part of the establishment.

And that is something else that bothers me, the way that "radicalism" has been treated within unionism by business union leaders like Gompers. Gompers called the IWW (which I will admit I have a largely dreamy view of) a fungus. George Meany bragged that he'd never been on strike. Yes, it's easy to point to Taft-Hartley (an evil piece of legislation, if ever there was one) and blame the legislation for the expulsion of radicals (namely, communists) from unions, but Gompers and his supporters fought many battles against the IWW and later, the CIO, and derided methods like strikes and picketing and IWW members' willingness to get, um, physical. The expulsion of radicals meant the expulsion of the organizers who were most likely to try to reach the unskilled, racial/ethnic "minority" workers. These organizers were also the most likely to see unionism as part of a larger struggle and not an end, in and of itself. The result was an emphasis on bureaucracy and grievance processes and a sad, sad move away from the vision of "social democracy" unionism.

So what happens now? When unionism is at dismal lows among black workers and manufacturing workers, historically (well, since the mid-twentieth century) strongholds? Do unions have a purpose? Can they ever rebound? Will they learn lessons form "alternative" groups like workers' centers (e.g. the Center for Women's Economic Alternatives) and poultry justice alliances? Will they finally see their members' struggles in contexts outside the workplace?

I'm cynical, right now and I shared that in class. So the professor asked, "Elle, are you saying we're doomed?" And I said,"It would take such a radical shift in the mainstream mindset, in the ideology surrounding poverty and class and workers' rights that right now, I have little hope."

He looked at me and smiled and said, "A more radical shift than it took to overthrow slavery? To overthrow Jim Crow, legally? Remember, people thought those things were eternal, too."

And then, my silly old idealistic heart swelled.

Was Friday a Monday?

In some alternate universe? Not a pleasant beginning to the weekend. I:

-worked on my disertation at the library, but then left my drive there. It is not in lost and found. I'm not totally panicking because I think I saved the work to my account there. But there are some things on that drive that might not be anywhere else. Why the hell would someone take it?

-got an e-mail from an archivist at Wisconsin Historical Society about some microfilm I've been waiting for since November (lots of ILL issues). He wanted to let me know that he'd given me the wrong call number. Mind you, the ILL request is floating out there, so I'll probably get the wrong microfilm. Again.

-realized my brakes could not go another day without some work. $250!! I so love spending money on my car.

-found out it was supposed to rain again today. And it did. Blech!

-went to bed about midnight and woke up around 4:30, wide awake. Didn't get back to sleep until after six, so when I had to get up at eight, I could've beaten the hell out of somebody!

-am sleepy right now and my sister just called to say, "Let's do something! It's Saturday."

Yes, wet, dreary, sleepy Saturday and she chooses this one day to be chipper and outgoing.

Three Things (Thing One)

So, I have three things to say, and rather than kick myself for being online right now, I'm going to say them, then bid you all adieu as I once again place the computer in quarantine. I'm leaving this on top so you'll know these all important three things are here and in the posts below.

In a wonderful effort to explain how I'm feeling, a wise, dear friend sent me the following observation:

every step you take, you're greeted with more steps to go and the feeling that you're not getting anywhere.

To which I can only say, "Exactly." I have a routine, really I do. Reading at night. Writing during the day. Anxiety at all times because, 1) at some point during the reading, I realize, I cannot read everything on this topic and I've read so much that I can't even cover it all and 2) at some point during the writing, I spend long moments staring at the paper, then scribbling down sentences, then scribbling those out. I am blocked in a way that is only exacerbated (actually, the block is probably caused) by the fact that I need to have a complete draft in the next month. End of discussion. So this chapter has to be finished and I have to go back and add what was supposed to be another chapter into my chapter two (they fit well together, so screw writing a whole new one).

But I've decided that I'm pretty much tired of my own whining. I am not the only person to struggle through this process. I just have to do it. Over the last year of blogging, I've seen Quinn, Ragey, and others do it, so it's not as if I don't know it's possible. So, for at least the next week, there is a moratorium on "poor elle" posts. And if you even smell the delicate but bitter scent of one, feel free to respond with a sharp, "Get over yourself, please."

Because it's just time, you know. I've had long enough. I've read enough. I know enough. And the damned thing is not going to be perfect.

Research Dilemma (Thing Two)

My dissertator group has often offered me sympathy on my struggles to write about people who are still living. Human subjects, anonymity, confidentiality, ugh, it boggles the already near-exploding mind.

But my research has recently become complicated by the fact that I know the area and some of the people I study well. Two of the things my dissertation discusses are 1) sexual harrassment and discrimination faced by women in workplaces that were, initially, largely composed of white male supervisors and black female line workers and 2) ways women work together, outside of formal processes, to resist this and other forms of harassment, poor treatment, and being defined by others as solely workers (denying the importance and salience of their roles outside the workplace) and sexually available (by virtue of a large portion of the workforce being black single mothers).

In my interviews, the following situation has come to light. There is one man in a supervisory position who allegedly routinely harrasses women for sexual favors. He is said to have had sex with line employees in company offices, in parked cars, and at local hotels on break. His hands and eyes, according to one employee, are always "busy." One woman claims to have reported him to his supervisor, to no avail, as the two men are friends. Some women constantly threaten to "turn him in" but don't, for fear of their jobs.

So they bond together and fight him in other ways. They do not approach him singly; if they must go to his station (not really an office), they go in pairs. They warn new hires about him. One woman, who has a reputation for not taking shit, has allegedly threatened to do him bodily harm if he touches her again (apparently, he placed his arm around her shoulder and whispered something suggestive in her ear). And finally, they have begun reporting his actions to plant management.

You are probably not shocked. I cannot say, truthfully, that I was either. Here is my problem: this man is the significant other of someone I know.

Someone about whom I care deeply. And while she does not fool herself about him, she does not know the extent of his alleged actions, that his job is eventually going to be on the line.

In some ways, I want to tell her. But I am bound by the promise of confidentiality. Right?
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She does not read this blog. Yes, I am sure. I have three IRL friends/family who know her, who do read this blog, but they already know of the situation, from family members who work at the plant. It is an open secret, apparently, one that I knew something of, I will admit. But I did not know the extent or how much he is feared, either.