Lucky White Girl

Putting on the historical blinders

Well, McCain has finally agreed to tone down the screeching rhetoric of his campaign and return to substantive issues (wonder if Sarah Palin will get that memo?). 

He's even gone so far as to correct some white people at his "town hall meetings" railing against that "Muslim" and shouting "kill him, kill him".  This is a long overdue and definitely welcome change in tone from the Republican side. 

I'm glad that Representative John Lewis (D-GA) spoke out over the weekend and warned, in his wise way, about the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric.  The man knows what he's talking about; his political consciousness was forged in the fire of the civil rights movement.  What amazes me is that he got criticized for drawing on the lessons of that era (the right is saying that by doing so he compared McCain to George Wallace-- another man who used powerful rhetoric to incite people's basest instincts).  That criticism irked me.  Attacking Mr Lewis is a classic case of attacking the messenger.  Why else were they quicker to jump on Lewis for calling McCain out on his inflammatory rhetoric than they were to criticize McCain or his supporters for the undercurrent of racism running through their campaign? 

Furthermore, the premise of their criticism is itself problematic.  Criticize someone for making a historical comparison?  Here's why that bothers me: it's a denial of the old saying about those who don't learn from history being doomed to repeat it.  It's true and that's why conservatives avoid encouraging people to draw historical connections. 

Spin usually can only last so long.  It might be socially acceptable to hate X group of people today but 20 years from now?  There's no controlling the rationality and perspective that comes with the passage of time.  Eventually even people who couldn't see the ugliness of historical events as they happen, can usually see it decades later (which is why we so often erect monuments to past mistakes while contemporaneously committing the same mistake).  Given that, the only thing they can hope for is to get you to see absolutely no connection between contemporary events and anything that ever happened in our past.  Everything is isolated and has no connection with anything else.  Only if you can look at the world in this way, does the conservative viewpoint make any sense at all. 

All I can say is well, good luck with that.  I'll keep looking at the big picture.

A concise history of black-white race relations in the U.S. by Ampersand

Sorry it's been awhile.  I've been in a funk.  Just found this cartoon though by a blog friend, Ampersand (Barry), whose group blog (Alas, a Blog) is probably blogrolled down there in the list (and if not it should be). Click image to enlarge.

 

Reality TV

I don't usually write about TV because I don't get to see much of it.  Most of the time I don't have a TV in the house and when I do (like now) we don't have cable, which limits the options so much the only thing I watch is old reruns of The Simpsons. 

But I know there is a lot of good non-junky television with good stories and complicated, intriguing characters. 

The Sci-Fi channel's Dr. Who is impressive.  Grey's Anatomy has a realistically diverse cast of characters that doesn't leave you wondering where all the non-white people are (just where all the non-supermodel people are!).  Monk is cute and quirky and light without being unconvincingly shallow.  And then there's the AMC's Mad Men which has been getting rave reviews and is opening its second season tonight.  There's something irresistible about Mad Men.

Mad Men, if you haven't seen it, is about a certain kind of life for a certain kind of people during the 60s.  Set in the high-stakes world of the advertising industry of New York City, it doesn't just do its duty to include the realities of sexism and racism of the times, it goes out of its way to luxuriate in them.

Compare this to so many movies and TV shows about times past that apply a more evolved 21st century consciousness to gloss over the problematic aspects of previous eras and make sure that a contemporary audience will feel comfortable with it.  This is understandable.  We want to see images of people in this country during previous decades NOT acting in ways that would make us cringe today, just as we want to see images of the good Germans who resisted the hateful antisemitism of the Nazis.

But the hard truth is that most people back then didn't.

And ultimately the lie that these sorts of movies promote is that it's easy to resist the pull of racism and sexism of the society you're surrounded with if you just have a good moral character.

It doesn't work that way.  Resistance doesn't just happen and it doesn't just come out of the blue.  It always has a context. 

I'm not saying that EVERY story of times past has to show characters that surrender to the forces of the society around them because it's more honest.  Some of my favorite stories are about characters who do that (e.g. Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River about a young woman in 1930s Germany who resisted the moral decay that surrounded her).  But I am saying that this shouldn't be presented as the norm.  Because it wasn't.  To suggest that it was is to underestimate or under-represent the power of the human capacity for evil. 

Mad Men is so alluring because it doesn't do that.  It doesn't indulge or coddle us.  If you were white and middle to upper class during the 1960s, this was your world.  And if you were part of that world you were almost invariably white and middle to upper class.  And it's a very accurate description of what that world was like back then.  You didn't see people of color.  Men really were patronizing and condescending towards women.  Sexual harrassment at work was painfully common and accepted.

Yes it makes a 21st century audience cringe.  Thank goodness it does.

Rich on "The All-White Elephant in the Room"

Here's an even better column on the controversial issue of candidates and their loud-mouth preachers.  Frank Rich says

... it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

...which means all these white Republicans seeking out endorsements from racist bigots like the Rev. John Hagee, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell better think twice about throwing stones at Obama.  What's more,

...the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house.

Thanks for the perspective, Mr. Rich!

CBS story on racial disparities in media coverage of missing/abused women

I was pleasantly surprised to see this is a CBS story:

Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide:

"Cases of maternal homicide involving minority women are underreported and underpublicized"

And by the way, that link goes to a blog called Black and Missing!! which is linked to down there under Tamika Huston's picture (whose link is dead by the way, I'll have to fix that.  The site that was dedicated to publicizing her disappearance later reported on her death and had lots of resources on taking action to change this.  Now the domain name's up for sale.)

Could this be a sign we're having an influence on mainstream media?  That they've started taking these stories seriously I think is thanks to the work of all the great bloggers out there who've repeatedly put stories like this in the spotlight.  Many of them are listed in my blogroll.  Check them out!

 

"Playing" Race

Wow, there is a really interesting story this morning about a new play that deals with the complicated questions of race and racial identity and what it means for us to play these race-based roles in everyday life.  It's called Yellowface by David Hwang.  This NYTimes review doesn't nearly do it justice, but man, I'd love to see this!  If anyone knows anything about it, please let me know!

Racial tension hits home, marchers take anti-racism message to DC

I was really sad to see this story in the Gainesville paper (yeah I still check in on what's happening in my hometown!). Bradford County is largely rural and small-town-ish.

Yesterday here in DC, in response to the increasing surge of these sorts of hate crimes, there was a HUGE march to the Justice Department of folks demanding that our leaders pay attention to this trend and take it seriously. Al Sharpton was here. I only caught a tiny bit of the news coverage on CNN I think it was and it seemed surprisingly positive for a change! I was glad to see that the march was noticed and the messages of the marchers taken seriously.

----

On a personal note: things are still going well for me here. I went out for drinks with a couple of my co-workers last night and we met up with one of my new roommates and her co-workers. I had a blast. It's really, really good to work in a place where there's such good repoire among everyone! The more I think about it the more it makes sense that I had to save up 8 months of luck to get this job. I am very happy!

Hey Slick! Show us that twisty logic again!

Do you remember hearing about the controversial remarks by John Tanner, the Department of Justice's Chief of Voting about how voter id laws disenfrancise white people more than people of color?  According to his logic, it's because the disparities in health care in this country mean that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first".  "So," he says, "anything that 'disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities".  He concludes that therefore white people are being more disenfrancised by voter id laws than are people of color.

Hmmm... stop.  Rewind.  Lemme see that move again, Slick!   You lost me there...

Mr. Tanner was trying to use a sound argument:  Namely, that white people tend to live longer than people of color because of the disparities in a white supremacist society means that white people tend to have better access to health care and such than do people of color.  (It's all about economics! says the Marxist)

but wait!  That's only half the story.  There's a sleight of hand trick here:

It's true that structural racism affects people's life spans but people aren't automatically disenfranchised by virtue of their being elderly.  They're disenfranchised by virtue of their being poor and elderly.  Poor people are less likely to have IDs and to have the documents such as birth certificates needed in order to get those IDs.  Why?  Because of racism.  People of color are more likely to be poor for exactly the same reason they're more likely to lack access to health care; because racism has very real economic consequences.   And anyway voter disenfranchisement is not something the Department of Justice should be condoning!

I applaud you for recognizing the disparities in our system, Mr. Tanner, but wow, what a way to shed some murk on the subject!

Rest in Peace, Mr. Bellencourt

Vernon Bellencourt, longtime leader of the American Indian Movement "respected by many, hated by some, but ... never ignored" (his famous quote describing the organization) died a few days ago.  He was 75.

Story in the Washington Post.
A Lifetime of Protest (from the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis-St.Paul)

Read blogs --you learn lots of depressing things about the world.

Just catching up on some of my blog reading and geez... while I'm a bit peevish about not hearing about this before now it just goes to show how important blogs and independent media are for keeping us informed of what's going on in the world...did you hear about this?  West Virginia rape/torture case?  And the fact that they decided that somehow it's *not* a hate crime?!!  Wow.  Unbelievable.  Reminds me of the Dunbar Village case in West Palm Beach a few months ago.  Here's an update on that by the way (you have to scroll down past weird formatting to see the article on that last link).  I have been following the Jena 6 case --lots of folks blogging about that and I'm glad the protests went so well (we had a small one here in Gainesville even) but lord all this news that goes beyond merely "bad" and is well into the "absolutely horrifying" category makes me so tired!  It's just overwhelming. The only way I have to cope is to tune out for a few weeks.  So just because I'm not blogging about some horrible news story doesn't mean I don't care about it or think it's not important; it's just because I can't do this all the time.  Really I've barely been hanging on as a blogger lately.  I just don't have the energy anymore. Anyone have any advice for not getting overwhelmed?

Some good blogs who keep plugging away at these issues:

Brownfemipower/Women of Color Blog
Writing is Fighting
SlantTruth
Rachel's Tavern

Obviously not an exhaustive list, so please feel free to leave links to others you know of, if you like.

Okay to hate X group of people?

A friend of a friend of mine who is a retired priest has often said that sex offenders are the modern world's lepers --the people that decent people (e.g. not psycho killers) believe it's okay to hate: the people who are society's outcasts, the scorned, the rejects.  In Biblical times people with leprosy, a highly contagious skin disease, were the lowest of the low.  People spit on them and ignored them and were not embarrassed by the disgust towards them that festered in their hearts.  It was just the socially-sanctioned thing to do and feel: one did not talk to, look at, touch or in any way associate with lepers.  Period.  (On the other hand Lot, who slept with his own daughters, was a pillar of ancient Hebrew society.  Go figure.)  No one cared about lepers; they were non-humans.  (Well Jesus did.  He'd walk right up, sit down and have a conversation.  He'd even touch them without gloves on!  The radical!  No wonder they crucified the guy!)

But I don't want to talk about Jesus in this post.  I want to talk about the phenomena of socially-sanctioned hate-- when it's socially acceptable to hate an entire group of people.  Who are today's lepers?  Why is it that still today we have people that otherwise decent, compassionate individuals are not ashamed to admit they detest.  This quote comes from a story in today's local paper:

"She said people don't want to [go to this place] because of all the ________  people there."

What kind of people do you think she's talking about?  Lepers?  Sex offenders?  People of color?  Which group of people is it okay to publically admit that you hate?  Thirty years ago a woman like this might have said without hesitation that, "[her kind of] people don't want to go to [the place she's referring to] because of all the black people there".  The racism of thirty years ago was socially sanctioned.  She's not now (and wouldn't have been then) mortified to be quoted in the daily paper saying something like this. 

In this case, the people's she's talking about are homeless.

Since she's not at all ashamed of her prejudice, I'll print her name here to be attached to her words.  Her name is Linda McGurn.   She's a rich downtown developer and she is proud to be a paragon of one of the worst characteristics of human nature: that part of us that fears and despises and dehumanizes large segments of the human population based on random biases within our culture.  Ms. McGurn, when your life is over and you lie looking back on all you've accomplished rest assured of one thing: No one will ever confuse you with a big-hearted person.

Who's Indian?

There's been a lot written about white people who want to shed their identity and "discover" that they're really something else.  While it's hard for most whites to suddenly claim to have African ancestry, it's somewhat easier to claim Native American ancestry.  The popularity of New Age spirituality in the 90s further increased the trend and the decade saw many white people attending pow-wows and partaking in sweats after having suddenly discovered a "Cherokee grandmother" in their closet.

The case of the Lumbees, however, seems different.  Their claims to "Indian-ness" go way beyond the 90s fad era.  Congress recognized them fifty years ago but they're not granted the full rights as a Native American tribe.  It's an interesting, complicated story with a lot of money from a finite pie of federal assistance funds at stake.  Here's a link to the NPR story.  Give it a listen.  It gives a whole new spin on the concept of identity and what identity means, doesn't it?  When the answer to the question, who are you? has a monetary influence, how does that reflect on our personal concepts of self-worth?

No more Chief Illiniwek

I forgot to blog about this.  I'm doing it now only because I've written so much about the racist mascot issue in the past.  Good for them --those who struggled for twenty years to get the university to drop this shameful Native Americans as fierce fighting animal imagery.  It's about time.  Welcome to the 21st century: where people are people and animals are team mascots.

Resurgence of racial hatred

Report by Anti-Defamation League says the KKK is rebounding due to anti-immigrant bias:
CNN story
ADL Press Release

Reframing the Duke rape case

The headline of this editorial wouldn't have caught my eye if I had seen it on Znet but a friend forwarded it to me because he knew I was interested in the Duke rape case so I took the time to read the thing.  Wow.  Very thought provoking.  Basically this is a sociologist who was asked to provide commentary on a CNN program about racism and race issues surrounding the Duke Lacrosse team rape case.  I think the second half of the article is the most interesting so I excerpted it here.  The first half talks about her experience on the show.  The second half examines media portrayals of this and other stories and it is so good I want to post it here so more people will see it:

"The case is framed as a "race" issue, which for producers meant that blacks are out for revenge for past misdeeds by whites. Jumping on this bandwagon, so the story goes, was the District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was trying to curry favor with the black community in a re-election year. The consensus on the show was that if anyone is guilty here, it is the lying, immoral black stripper and the amoral, politically motivated DA. The victims here are the upstanding white men who have now had their reputations tarnished first by a stripper and then by gullible fools who believed her. And of course, within the framing of the show, I appeared as not just a gullible fool, but even worse, a gullible fool with a feminist agenda.

My anger at the way the media humanized these men as victims and dehumanized the woman as the perpetrator of a lie clearly stood out from the rest of the show. And this was, I am now convinced, the producer's goal. I was set up in the show to be an example of the problem -- white liberal elites who have taken political correctness too far. I was not brought on as a researcher or activist but as an example of how feminists "rush to judgment" in order to further their man-hating propaganda.

Virtually every email I have received blasts me as a conniving feminist who didn't even bother to know the facts of the case. These men -- yes, they all were from men -- explained to me that the facts show without question that nothing happened that night, which I would have known if I were not so busy trying to further my feminist agenda.

This is truly an example of how mass media construct reality. The so-called "facts" of the case have mainly been planted by the defense as a way to spin the case. The prosecution can't reveal all their evidence by law, but we do know, as law professor Wendy Murphy has pointed out, enough evidence was presented that "police, forensic experts, prosecutors, and a grand jury comprised of citizens, all agreed that charges should be brought." The truth is that we actually have access to very little evidence about that night, yet every man who has emailed me is convinced that all the facts are out there and only a feminist fool would believe otherwise. This is because the "facts," or lack of, speak for themselves and tell their own story in a society where racist and sexist ideology is internalized by a good percentage of the population and subsequently writ large onto a black woman's body. Let's not forget that this woman was bought and sold in the white male marketplace of sexual entertainment.

This obsessive focus on the woman is not particular to this case; routinely the media focus on the women victims, with a certain prurient interest. Instead, we should put some of the focus back on the men in this case, as we know much about their behavior that night that is not under dispute. They saw the hiring of two black women to strip as a legitimate form of male entertainment. They didn't see the commodifying and sexualizing of black women's bodies as problematic in a country that has a long and ugly history of racism.

One of the team buddies, Ryan McFadyen, sent out an email on the night of the event where he wrote "ive decided to have some strippers over and all are welcome …. I plan on killing the bitches as they walk in and proceed to cut their skin off while cumming in my duke spandex." Later that night, 911 got a call from a black college student out walking with her friends who was called "nigger" as she walked past the team's house. And to top it all, not one lacrosse player has come forward to express any regret at that night's events or offered any apology for being part of a drunken strip party that humiliated and degraded two black women.

It would seem to me that all of this undisputed information would make for a compelling CNN program. On such a show, I would be happy to share these emails calling me a bitch, whore, and cunt. That wouldn't be a rush to judgment, but instead an acknowledgement of what women know -- any one of us could be the next victim turned celebrity whore."

What Biden says about white racism

This is a pretty thoughtful analysis of the latest example of politician-foot-in-mouth disease.  And ya gotta loooove the accompanying graphic! 

I heard one of the commentators' on NPR say something like the thing about Biden is that he's a rarity amongst politicians --so candid and honest in a world of careful constructed artifice and spin and what a shame if this snafu puts a damper on that spirit of frankness that he has.  Well... okay, I can see the usefulness of that; I do like it when people are up front about their feelings.  But I wish the commentator'd gone further to say something about how Biden's honesty reveals once more how ingrained racism is in our culture that he could essentially say that people of color aren't normally so clean and smart and articulate as Barak Obama.  Anyway go read Zuky's post about narratives.  It says it much better. 

For his part, I think Obama handled it with much grace.  The dude's got class and that classiness just made Biden seem like a washed up archaic archtype.

Diversity --just plain smart.

"The very fact you have people of color in the workplace changes the way everybody in the workplace thinks" --interview with Columnist Shankar Vedantam on NPR's Morning Edition.

On affirmative action

So the University of Michigan has announced today that it will comply with the new state-wide ban on affirmative action that the voters passed last November.  The president of the University sounds like she's got a good head on her shoulders.  In an interview on NPR, she says that despite having lost a useful tool, they'll do everything they can to keep the school diverse.  Good for her. 

The proposal was misguided but I don't think those who voted for it were necessarily racist, only ignorant of how affirmative action works and why it is needed.  People have this simplistic view of affirmative action --seeing that it gives people an "unfair advantage".  This is because they were never taught to see all the unfair advantages given to whites  --advantages that can't be banned because they are so ingrained in our society. 

I can't afford to make this a long entry because I seemed to have developed a repetitive stress injury in my right forearm and typing hurts but this was important enough to suffer through a brief post.  I just want to say this:

I'll have no problem with ending affirmative action for women and people of color when --and only when-- we also end affirmative action for men and white people.  Fair's fair, after all.

Distinctions that are regretfully, not obvious

Clamoring for an investigation (what I and many other bloggers did early on) is not the same thing as convicting someone without a trial.  I would hope that could've gone without saying but so many people talking about the Duke rape case are conflating the two that I guess it's necessary to draw the obvious distinction.  So in case you missed this point let me make this clear:

We were outraged and called for an investigation.  I never said or even implied anything to the effect that could be construed to mean otherwise.  To call for an investigation is NOT THE SAME as saying the men were guilty.  It is the same as saying that the woman's accusations should be taken seriously.  I would do it over again in a heartbeat.  It's a little surprising that even Scott Simon couldn't see this distinction.

Some have suggested that those of us who called for the woman's charges to be investigated should apologize.  Let me get this straight: I should apologize for not saying that we should have ignored the woman's accusations prima facie because she's poor and black and she's accusing rich white men??  You've got to be kidding!  Thirty years we had the civil rights movement in this country to get rid of just that kind of shit.  I will never apologize for NOT being a backwards Jim Crow era racist.

To the white supramacists visiting this site --face it: you guys lost.  We called for an investigation and we got one.  No matter how much you want it to, this country's not going back to the Jim Crow era where a black woman's accusations of rape would be dismissed out-of-hand.  It's just not going to happen.  It's probably better if you try to get used to the idea of civil rights and justice for all and join the 21st century.  You are anachronisms.

Duke rape case: little to celebrate

The rape charges against the three Duke Lacrosse players were dropped today.  Since LWG was one of the blogs that was outraged when this story broke and tried to help raise a cry for an investigation of her allegations I thought I should share some thoughts on this occasion. 

First and foremost, I'm proud to have stood in solidarity with the woman then and I'm proud now to stand in solidarity with her now.  Why?  Because something unsavory went on at that party that reeks of racism, sexism and classism.  That has NOT changed and it says something very troubling about our whole society generally and the cultural climate of Raleigh North Carolina specifically.  There is something unsavory that reeks of racism, sexism and classism in the hate mail this blog receives every time the story makes headlines again.

That the rape charges were dropped does not mean that the men are innocent.

"The men are still charged with kidnapping, for allegedly holding the woman against her will, and sexual offense. Under state law, a rape charge requires vaginal intercourse, while sexual offense covers any sexual act. In dropping the rape charges, Nifong did not specify what sex acts prosecutors now believe occurred (from the Guardian Unlimited story).

That the rape charges were dropped does not mean that the men did the right thing, that they acted humanely, that their actions were honorable or that they did not sully the name of their team, their institution and their families.  That the charges were dropped means only that it can't be proven that they acted criminally.  If it were a crime to be sexist, racist bastards, it'd be a different matter.  The evidence of their behavior that night in that respect at least is apparent.  If I were them, I think I would feel the need for reconciliation right now rather than triumphalism.  I see very little to celebrate in this case.

So what's the upshot of all this?  What does it all mean?  In the end I think we did the right thing.  We listened to a poor, young black woman who accused wealthy, young white men of a crime.  We took her seriously.  Thirty years ago it might not have even gone this far.  If the fact that these boys behaved as they did is cause for shame, the fact that the rest of the nation reacted as we did --with shock and outrage-- is cause for hope.  And no one person embodies that right response better than District Attorney Mike Nifong.  That the charges were dropped doesn't mean he didn't do his job; it means he did.  He took some serious allegations very seriously.  In my book that makes him a decent DA.  He'll sleep well tonight.  Mr. Nifong, I'm sure you already know, but you did the right thing.

As for what it all means... I think a lot of questions still need to be asked.  Why was this woman so poor she had to work as a stripper for rich white men?  Why is there such a class divide in Raleigh, NC and in the whole US of A?  Why do some people feel so jubilant right now and interpret this news as dropped charges as a victory of rich white men over a poor black woman?  I think it's yet another reminder that we still have a long way to go here.  There's still a lot of healing to be done and a great need for reconciliation. 

This is not a victory for the players.  The only victory here is that originally the team and the school didn't want to investigate this woman's allegations but public outcry and a courageous DA resisted that.   They did the right thing.  They listened to her and they did investigate.  That's the real victory. 

Keith Ellison becomes first Muslim elected to Congress!

I can't believe it.  It has been six years since I cried over an election and at that time, they were tears of shock and despair at a stolen election.  This morning I'm actually crying for joy.  Not so much because I have a huge amount of faith in Democrats generally (although I am glad about the message their overwhelming victory sends to Washington) but I am most moved and inspired by this man who won in Massachusetts.  His words this morning (heard on NPR) were the impetus of the tears. 

And Keith Ellison is the first Muslim elected to Congress (here's the NPR story)--how cool is that?

Maybe it goes along with fantasies I've been entertaining about a Barak Obama presidency following Bush's, but for the first time since 9/11, I feel a renewed faith in the people of this country.  Maybe there is hope for us after all.  Maybe we can redeem ourselves.  I don't mean that by electing progressives we'd cease to be a hegemon.  That depends on more than just who's in power.  But we might be a different kind of hegemon.  Would that matter in some small way?  I wonder...

Anyway, I'm just very, very happy this morning.  I've been waiting six years to see a headline like this.

By the way Ortega won in Nicaragua but I don't know who he is these days so what his victory means for the Nicaraguan people is not at all clear to me.

Spin.

Out to breakfast with friends this morning, my friend Pat points out the difference in the two headlines here.  Same story, different papers.  The Times-Union is from Jacksonville and has a reputation of being a conservative paper.  The Gainesville Sun... well, I wouldn't say it's conservative generally but it's conservative for the town it comes out of (a college town with a long history of progressive politics), which means that I you'd expect it'd be more radical.  You'd also expect it to be a better quality paper generally, given that it is a college town and we do have a school of journalism here (I'm not sure how good it is, but I can tell you that the St. Petersburg Times is a nationally-recognized high-quality paper (by far the best in Florida) with a few Pultizer's under its belt and so it's no surprise that the journalism school down there --I think it's the Poynter Institute?-- is one of the best in the country.

Anyway the point is I think these headlights are really good examples of the different spin papers give to stories. 

The Jacksonville paper plays down the race and class aspects of the story to emphasize geographical location (gee, it might just be a matter of luck as to whether you have a good chance at longevity or not).  Not to mention the glaring typo in their version. 

The Gainesville Sun's headline wins the "duh!" factor award but at least admits the race and class difference but here's the interesting thing about the story itself.  It says the Union and Baker counties rated the highest of Florida counties in the survey.  12th in the nation for worst life expectancy.  So what, you ask?  hahaha.... Union and Baker counties are just north of here and they contain Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institute respectively.  THAT'S WHERE OUR DEATH ROW IS!!    I mean yes, we do have what about 300 hundred people on death row and that's not enough to explain that #12 ranking but c'mon you gotta admit that's pretty funny, eh? 

Truth is it's probably a couple of other things too.  The prisons are probably the biggest employer in these rural counties which means there's a lot of poverty there in the first place.  Secondly, explains Pat who used to work as a counselor in the prison system for 11 years, the general prison population as a whole don't tend to be in good health and that's a pretty sizable population (I'l ask him for an estimate next time I see him).  Anyway, just an interesting picture of the country we live in.

the view from here: a social theory of relativity

So once again I have two hours to kill until my next interview.   I sit down on a little park bench and a teenage boy who lives in one of the houses I tried to interview at, comes up.  (I say tried, they were another family who had to be replaced eventually).  I noticed when I first met him at his house that he was very odd but I couldn't put my finger on why exactly.  He was sorta always grinning and at first I thought he was just being sorta the cocky teenager, laughing at my accent and what I was doing (trying to convince them to let me interview them).  He'd never met a gringa and wow I spoke English and that's so wild!  Imaginate!  Still.  He was a little over the top.

Anyway yesterday he came up and sat down with me and we had a long conversation and started ask ing me a million questions like what was it I was doing again and what was a non-profit organization and what was it like in the US? and did I live in New Jersey? And had I ever smoked marijuana? He's on some kind of pills but he doesn't like them but he takes them because the doctor said to and what kind of music do I like he likes rap and reggae and is the US very developed do they have lots of things there and why didn't I like that word developed, he meant advanced, was the US very advanced and why didn't I like that word either and did I have a boyfriend and why wasn't I married yet and he just broke up with his girlfriend why because of lack of communication and how old was I and no way could I be thirty years old I look like I'm in my twenties and I must have lots of experience for being thirty and really am I really thirty do I take a lot of care of my skin and could he have my phone number?

Later his mom passed by and I walked with her a bit.  It seems he does have some kind of mental illness.  (I didn't ask, she offered).  I said I was sorry.

But another part of the conversation involved an description of racism in the US.  Remember he said he liked rap and reggae?  So he heard the n-word (which I'm not typing or I'll get even more racist Google searches leading to this blog) and so he wanted to know what the word meant.  I said it was very complicated and that what it means depends on who's using it and how.  He really didn't get that, I think, so I tried to explain the history of the word to the best of my knowledge but I didn't get very far because he kept cutting me off.  Then he asked me something that surprised me a bit but it requires some explanation. 

In Spanish, you might know that people use words that describe physical appearance a lot.  Gordita (chubby -femenine diminutive), flaco (skinny -masculine), mono (light-skinned sorta, or pale or sometimes "cute"), morenito (dark skinned -masculine diminutive), including negro or negrito.  It's not rude to do this as far as I can tell -calling someone gordita, for example- it's like a term of affection sorta.  But being a gringa it's hard for me not to feel awkward using these terms and so I tend to avoid them.  (There are lots of words like this I think.  Some things just sound funny coming from a foreign mouth so best to stick to the rules more or less)

Anyway, in this case, though, I did use the term los negros together with afro-americanos because I didn't know if he'd understand me [insert background info here: Chile, by the way, is very homogenenous supposedly, not like Colombia for example where there's tons of people from African-Carribean descent because of the slave trade.  In Chile people are mostly of mixed European indigenous descent if you don't count the immigrant populations.  They are also have their racism, though it differs from our version of racism in the US.  Here, the main minority group that's discriminated against are indians.  In fact that's the exception to the above examples of describing someone by the physical characteristics.  Calling someone an indian, or indio is unfortunately an insult, like in many Latin American countries.  Also, someone here explained to me that "indigenous" is not far removed from "indian" so don't use that either.  I used that term, indigenous populations but he said not to.  Better to use the term "original peoples".  So anyway, there's lots of racism against anyone with darker shades of skin but there's very few black people.  I only saw one black person here and he was probably a gringo too.  By the way, there's also neo-nazi groups here who regularly appear in the news.  So all that is to explain that it's likely this kid had never seen a black person in his small town.  Which leads to his question].  Who are the black people?  Us? he asked.  Not really, I explain, the people whose ancestors came from Africa as slaves.  And there's lots of racism in the US? he asked. Yes, we have a long history and many problems ... and the conversation whirrled on.

All this is just to say it's interesting to find oneself asked to describe these things to someone within a different system.  It's an interesting experience.  Distance both distorts and clarifies.  It's like the description I just wrote of Chile, which is of course the perception of a gringa, someone from the outside.  It's different from what someone from here would write.  I don't think it's wrong to talk about terms or situations that are not our own, we just have to be aware of 1.) the power imbalance within the history of white people doing that (describing and interpretting other people's cultures) and 2.)remember that a description is not just a description, it's a description from a certain perspective, a certain point of view.  And that that perspective, that point of view changes the way the thing looks.  Call it the social theory of relativity. 

Or something like that.

Shift ---> keep awake.

Life works like a manual transmission, ya know?  Sometimes you have to shift gears.

I've been needing to shift gears for a long time now.  I'm going to shift a similie for a metaphor now too and say I've been sleep walking for the past year.  Or two.  Since I came back from Colombia.  But let me tell you, sleepwalking fits well with grad school.  In fact it may even be necessary.  If you are too awake, you will not stay and finish your degree.  You'll leave and go do something.  And maybe that something will be so overwhelming you'll have to go back to sleep again.  That's okay.  Just don't sleep forever.  Remember to wake up.

Please God help me to always remember to wake up! 

I just saw a movie that woke me up again.  It's called Sophie Scholl, you've seen it?  Go see it.  It's about the White Rose which is a story that has had a huge impact on my life.  If I ever have a kid, I will name her Sophie. I had a book about the White Rose, written by Sophie and Hans' sister who survived and preserved some of their letters.  The book might be out of print now, but if you don't know the story the links above should help.  And do go see the movie.  Maybe it will cause a shift in you too.  I needed a shift.  I desperately needed it.

After the movie I left thinking one thing: we are not doing enough.

Shift.

See the thing about Sophie Scholl that haunts me so much is that I can just so identify with her situation.  Being someone who looks around the world and realizes a.) how beautiful it is and b.) that the greatest threat to the peace and security of that world is your own country and the crazy old white men who run it.

We are not doing enough. 

Shift.

The difference between Hitler's Germany and Bush's US is ... what?  Some of the methods?  We're way more subtler today both in our techniques and our language.  Invading and occupying foreign countries?  Oh yeah, we got that.  A threat to our neighbors?  Definitely.  Killing people we think are not valuable?  We've got that too.  Is it less systemic?  No.  It's differently systemic.  Six million is a lot at one time, at one place, in the same way, true.  We haven't done it like that.  We do a little here and a little there, with both direct and indirect means but they are nonetheless systemic.  How many depends on when you start counting.  How many millions died in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War?  How many died in the wars and dictatorships we supported in Latin America throughout the 80s?  How many people in the Majority/Third World starve because we don't leave them enough resources to live, get sick because we don't want to share our medicines with them, or sweat their lives away to make our clothing?  All Holocausts are equally terrible, equally disturbing.  We have to recognize that we place more value on some people's lives than on others and we, yes, us, you and me here today right now expect to sacrifice other people --other people!-- so we can have this standard of living, this particular (false) expectation of security (whose security??)!

So tell me again, what's the difference?

Shift.

The difference between Sophie Scholl and the other members of the White Rose is ... what?  That they were young enough not to have lost their sense of outrage.  They were outraged enough that they sacrificed their own lives to resist.  Nonviolently.  Sabotage the weapons, their fliers said.  Sabotage the weapons.  How can we sabotage the weapons of the world superpower today?

Shift  ---> keep awake!

I walked home thinking about internal resistance.  Rebellion from within.  It was easy for the Allies to be against the Nazis.  It was hard for the Germans to do so.  It is easy for people of color to hate white racism and supremacy.  It is hard for white people to do so.  It is easy for victims of Empire to hate imperialism.  It is hard for those of us who benefit from it to do so.  Internal resistance.  Rebellion.  Insurrection against moral wrongs, even when they benefit us.

Keep awake!  What Jesus told the disciples waiting in the garden.  Keep awake!  Don't fall asleep.  Don't become complacent.  Don't forget.  Never, ever, ever forget!  And it's not enough to feel gratitude for those who struggled in previous generations.  It's not enough to be grateful to them for doing what they did.  They only started something we have to continue.  It never stops.  We're not the beneficiaries, just the next in line.

History's influence

Hey again.  I keep posting every coupla days but still don't consider myself done with my hiatus.  I just wanted to say two things:

Sea Ganschow emailed me in regards to some interesting conversations that happened a while back about white "culture" and it turns out in all those conversations I missed her blog and her posts (which actually sorta started the whole thing!) and but anyway like I said the conversation happened a few weeks ago and it kinda got usurped by the Duke rape thing but it's still very interesting and pertinent conversation I think.  I think a lot of what both Sea and I were saying was misunderstood.  'Cause it's not like we were saying "white culture is bad".  That's way too simplistic.  We were just saying that white people have a particular history that includes racism and genocide and that that past still affects us today.  Not that we're "guilty" of the "sins of the fathers" as Hugo says but that the sins of the fathers still *influence* us and we have to deal with that influence by recognizing where it comes from and NOT by expropriating other people's cultures because we as white progressives are ashamed of our own past. 

And it's true that there is no one monolithic white "culture" but I think that kinda gets us off on a different track.  Maybe "culture" isn't the right word.  Just that there's something like a common set of beliefs and values that may not be culture per se but is something common to all people who have that shared history of racism and genocide.  Anyway, just go read her post, and her blog.  She's very good.