I get a lot of criticism for "complaining." But I reserve the right to complain. Because complaining seems to have come to mean objecting to things that affect you, and I'm personally of the opinion that we as individuals should talk about issues that we're familiar with in terms of identity, that is, what we identify with. For example, I am a Black woman, so I should feel free to talk about Blackness and feminism and Black feminism.
Fight the power
The objector might say, but wait! You're excluding people! No, I'm inviting people. In being a Black feminist, I'm representing my own group(s). I would encourage someone who is differently able to talk about ableism, should they choose to, for example. And I firmly believe that groups should be represented by their members, and dialogue about groups should be primarily controlled by people who have experience as a part of that group. Otherwise, you're Tim Wise-ing. Or Emineming. Or whatever you want to call it.
He a master at race talk.
But he White.
I'm not saying we should never talk about issues regarding which we are dominant or privileged, but there's a fine line between intersectionality and Emineming. I'd say Tim Wise actually walks that line fairly well (but not quite well enough—go ahead, argue with me). But we have to be careful not to co-opt others' speech. Because, like Eminem has gentrified a music genre that was born as the voice of Black youth, or like the commercial I watched just now consisted of straight people endorsing gay marriage, standing alongside their silent gay friends and family, we need to let groups speak for themselves.
That's not to discourage the intersectionality-lover though. It's also important that we use our privilege for good. Sometimes, the public will only listen to a light-skinned girl preaching about colorism, or a man talking about sexism. In that case, keep co-optin'.
So there's this bill called VAWA or the Violence Against Women Act, and it's an act that essentially increases protection for women who are victims of domestic abuse (it could be broader than that – I'm not sure). Now according to ncdsv.org, VAWA is a misnomer, because the most liberal version of the act protects people of all genders and sexual orientations. So naturally, in January of 2012 the Republicans were all into killing the parts of the bill that protects people who are of non-hetero sexual orientations, AS WELL AS the parts that protect American Indian women living in sovereign Indian Country, and my school sponsored my going to the capitol (with a few classmates) to lobby for the full version of the bill. Now it's February of 2013 and their attempts have made headlines.
And I must say, this cannot possibly be reflective of the views of the people. Most of us are for marriage equality, so I can assume a bigger chunk of us want to protect our peers, Queer or not, from violence. And it occurs to me that the Republicans are allowed to do this simply because of privilege and apathy. In fact, generally, they are allowed to swing so far to the right socially because of privilege and apathy. And of course, the reluctance to protect Indian women frankly blows my mind and reinforces that premise.
"Don't vote on 'hot-button' social issues," cry the fiscal conservatives, and thus, bills like VAWA get gutted and the congresspeople who approve such gutting get reelected because of their supposed fiscal prudence. Yeah, well, that's real easy to say when VAWA already protects you. Hard to say when you're trans* or Indian.
So yeah. I'm just here to say, vote on social issues. Vote vote vote on them. We MUST draw the line somewhere on human rights abuses.
I think it's no secret that we see Black people as aggressive. And it's really frustrating when people tell me that I'm wrong in an argument simply because they perceive me as angry. Similarly, we perceive women as emotional. Thus, "you're upset" becomes a weapon of argumentation against me.
I also observe White people putting words in my mouth, i.e. misconstruing the narratives I present in a way that suits them, or, rewriting history the White way. I see this as microcosmic of colonialism. Now, bear with me. But, you know how Whites write the history books? That's colonialism. And when my speech gets co-opted, I see that as a similar practice. Not to conflate interruption and colonialism, obviously, because one is a much more serious problem than the other (take a guess).
Before you object to this, consider an extreme example of a Black narrative being misconstrued the White way. The amount of misinformation about Barack Obama is unprecedented—1/4 people don't even know what his religion is. The degree to which the Republican party has been allowed to write his story is unique and honestly hilarious.
What other president has been called a Muslim Atheist Socialist Communist Arab Kenyan Tyrant?
This is why I don't believe in ethos as a legitimate aspect of argumentation. Ethos involves what you bring to a debate and thus, the preconceived notions about who you are. Black people have less ethos, and so do women. So does anyone in a non-dominant social group. Dominant groups are too often allowed to co-opt the speech of those who belong to oppressed groups.
I urge you to think about the ethos that your privilege affords you, and how durable your privilege makes that ethos. That doesn't only mean to question credibility for a White man, it also means that I should question my credibility as straight and upper-middle class. Who has to have manners and conduct themselves respectfully? And who can take more liberties and condescend their peers a little more?
Just think about it, ok? I know it sounds out there, but think about it.
SCOTUS has deemed affirmative action illegal
unless it’s integrated into a holistic approach to college admissions, that is,
considered a “factor” but not a quota. This is largely due to Justices Roberts
and Kennedy, in their swing-vote-y swinginess, Alito in his
Scalia-bandwagoniness, Thomas in his frustrating silence and Scalia himself, in
his full diversity-denying form.
What? I just don't care about Brown people!
(IT'S A JOKE GOSH)
But I
am an affirmative action believer. According to Jeremy Pienik’s paper Race, Social Class, and Parental Involvement
with Children’s Cognitive Development, Lareau and Horvat in 1999 indicated
that Black students are less likely to do well in school independent of social
class. According to Sean F. Reardon’s paper, The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor:
New Evidence and Possible Explanations, the class gap is twice as wide as
the race gap. And other factors, such as gender, ability, orientation and
mental illness all affect school performance and individually provide potential
for the marginalization of students. So why shouldn’t college admissions boards
be able to know these facets of identity in students?
There are a number of advantages to affirmative
action. The first is empirical: Affirmative action for women has already been
practiced in the U.S. (and with protest that pales in comparison to the protest
that’s come from race-based affirmative action). And today, women actually
surpass men in graduation (perhaps we overdid it), and we’ve closed the achievement
gap, at least at face-value. But because we can whitewash feminism but not racism,
we’re uncomfortable with race-based affirmative action. “But class is a real
difference,” proponents of class- but not race- based affirmative action cry.
And now people call for class-based affirmative action in lieu of race, because
class is now considered somehow more real than race. But that isn’t true. It’s
not only necessary that we give the poor equal access to education, but that we
ensure the number of poor Blacks is at some point equal to the number of poor
Whites.
Thus, I propose that
affirmative action should apply to all facets of identity. That is, gender,
ability, class, orientation, race/ethnicity, nationality/immigration status, mental
health—everything. Because why shouldn’t college admissions boards know
everything identity-wise about their potential students? There’s value in a
diverse student body. There’s value in it because a breadth of perspectives in
a classroom is most educational and because it’s also least marginalizing for a
classroom to be segregated. It’s also most valuable to the entirety of the
community if a classroom is diverse and available for all of its members.
Today, I will take you back to the days of the democratic 2008 primary, and complain about Hillary Clinton and her constituents. I have a problem with what I like to call Eurocentric Feminists, which is a misnomer, because really what I mean is a feminist who doesn't care about any other types of oppression besides your generic 1950's-style misogyny. I think this is a great example:
So I go to a predominantly White prep school, and I don't fit in very well—probably because I do things like social justice blogging. And it recently occurred to me that my blog has likely drawn a small faction of kids (meaning 2 or 3) around a computer to watch my videos and laugh at me:
My school doesn't have NEARLY that many tokens.
I'm not sure what's humiliating about my blog, but it occurred to me—have haters made me famous??
Well not famous. But, you know, have haters gotten me page-views?
And I know this isn't really about social justice, but to eccentric kids in high school...
So for those of you who are strangers, I'm in high school (I know), and earlier this year, a kid at my school made his senior speech about political correctness. This pissed me off not because the kid personally offended me—I think he did the topic justice—but because there have been so many previous speeches at my school about political correctness. And they all complain about how straight White Christian males are silenced and "reverse-oppressed" by Queer Brown* Muslim womens' (I kid, I kid) political correctness. Boo hoo.
I think the choice of a balding White guy for this ecard might be intentional.
(Go ahead. Call me a reverse racist. DO IT.)
And so I made a facebook status about it and people got real mad, but hey, I got off scott-free without any allusions to my being a house slave (kids telling me I'm not a real Black person). Here's how it went:
Something that makes me question the political correctness speech is the choice to make that speech in the first place; such a choice is, in turn, a decision about what areas of social justice warrant the most dialogue. When I hear 6 or 7 speeches of the same thing, it makes me feel as if that thing must be a problem of enormous magnitude. But for a social justice issue, it really isn't. Censorship via "political correctness" doesn't stand a chance, magnitude wise, against poverty, for example. This is the point about which I agree with [a different kid at my school]: We should make choices about not just what we'd like to dialogue about, but the magnitude of the issue and the necessity for such dialogue. How pressing is "political correctness"? Somewhat. How much is it dialogued about? Way more than other issues of greater magnitude. And honestly, this leads me to draw the conclusion that for every speech about the oppressed, we need 6 about the privileged because we are that afraid of giving a voice to the voiceless. And of course the privileged should have a voice, but how pressing is that issue? Hardly at all. Fighting for the privileged to have a voice is like fighting for straight peoples' right to marry—it just isn't that big. Truth may be truth, but what's telling is which truths we choose to share.
The internet was mad at me that day.
Furthermore, I think we should be politically correct. Two warrants:
1. Being polite to people is OK. If I want you to call me Black instead of African American, you should respect that that's what makes me comfortable and just call me that. Why is it such a big deal to just be nice to people? Some people prefer LGBTQIA, some people prefer Queer, some people prefer disabled, some people prefer differently able... Just be nice and call people what they want to be called.
2. You should let a member of an oppressed group decide what they would like to be called. For example, if you're White, you might think that African American is a better term than Black because it recognizes my ancestry. But I may prefer Black because I think it helps us remember that we are not just from Africa to America, but from Africa, on a slave ship, in the fields and the house, and facilitators of the civil rights movement etc etc and acknowledges a history (this is my actual opinion). Instead of arguing with me about it, respect that I am Black and you are White and let me define my own identity. Furthermore, do not complain about the burden of "political correctness" I have put on you. It's your burden to be communicative about what I'd like to be called since you are the one with privilege. Same goes for me and someone Queer or LGBTQIA—I should ask first (I like Queer because it's super inclusive, so that's what I default to, but I will change what I say if someone asks me to). Although when it comes to immigration status, you should probs just say undocumented. But you get my point. Ask people their gender pronouns and stuff!
*I like the terms Queer and Brown better than LGBTQIA and of color because they're monosyllabic and inclusive.
Days ago, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was mistakenly shot in Chicago near the President's old house.
Since this video came out of impulsive frustration with the system, there are a few mistakes. Firstly, I mispronounced Hadiya Pendleton's name—it's Hi-dee-uh—and that's my bad). Secondly, I said that 409 people were murdered in Chicago in 2008, when really it was 509. Thirdly, she was shot near Obama's old house, not the white house. But unfortunately for me, this was done off the top of my head with some notes, so I can't re-create it. Here it is:
I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure there's a Sambo in some of Langston Hughes' poetry. I'm still probably humiliating myself by criticizing him though. Thoughts? I still love Langston Hughes overall. I too sing, America!
THIS LADY IS EPIC FOR SO MANY REASONS. Her name
is Phillis Wheatley, 1753-84, and she was one of the first critically acclaimed
Black poets in U.S. history. Since I'm a Black girl who has always liked to
write, my mom used to tell me about Phillis Wheatley and how she was this
fantastic Black writer under horrible circumstances. She gave me hope in my
childhood that I could be the president/scientist/best-selling author! Now I'm
feelin' betrayed. Check out this poem:
On Being Brought from Africa to America, by Phillis Wheatley"'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan
land,Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there's a God, that there's a
Saviour too:Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.Some view our sable race
with scornful eye,"Their colour is a diabolic die."Remember,
Christians, Negro's, black as Cain,May be refin'd, and join th' angelic
train."
Hem
hem. We're going to have to break this down oppa AP English style.
'Twas not mercy who brought her from her pagan land. It was a genocide called
the slave trade that resulted in the deaths of 17 million Blacks (and don't you
dare ask me for a footnote). 'Twas capitalist greed, my friend. No one taught
her to worship God, and it wasn't a blessing that colonists preached
Christianity to individuals of color so as to pacify them and instruct them to
wait for justice in the "next life" (according to Malcolm X in his
autobiography-biography-thing). Then she claims that the saving grace of
Blackness is that Blacks have the capability to assimilate.
This is very upsetting to me, but I should have guessed. "Critically
acclaimed" is code for White-approved, and if Wheatley was popular with
White during that time, it's no wonder her writings reflected such internalized
racism. Her framing of slavery as merciful and Blackness as curable are clear
reflections of the Sambo rhetoric White wanted to hear at that time.
Sad, sad, sad. And disappointing. There's a part of me that wants to see her as
the Tyler Perry of the 1700's. But she wasn't, because she paved the way for
me, nonetheless. So I'm still grateful. Grateful and sad.
What do y'all think of role models and way-pavers that are imperfect in their
social-justice-y ways?
So my favorite youtuber MrRepzion makes the distinction between Theism and Deism by saying that Deists believe that a god created the universe and Theists believe that that god still intervenes today. The generic internet agrees. The Abrahamic monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam—are all theist (hence monotheistic).
My experience growing up has been with Christians so I'm going to talk about why I don't get theism through a lens of Christianity.
1) God sometimes intervenes?
So in Christianity, there are good-bad distinctions. We know that God considers punishments of misfortunes, like plagues and/or death. And sometimes, if you're a good Christian, God makes sure these things don't happen to you.
Lookin' out for ya
For example, God tests Job's faith by making terrible things befall him, and then rewards him when his faith remains strong (correct me if I'm wrong). In short, God rewards biblical characters for being good people by stopping bad things from happening to them.
Or with a reward...
In 2011 there was a drought in East Africa* during which children and their parents had to trek across the desert in search of water. Theists might say that God ended their suffering by causing rain to fall. But what of all the people who died in this draught? Certainly, some of the casualties must have been infants.
"Just have faith... They died for a reason." But God makes it clear in the Bible that suffering is a punishment... Why is the baby being punished? And what divine purpose could the death of an infant possibly serve?
"They weren't a believer." It's a baby...
"Overpopulation!" The Bible definitely doesn't have any examples of God being that utilitarian. He's always rewarding good deeds and punishing bad ones... It's about cause and effect in almost every story.
"It's going to grow up to be Hitler." There were a lot of babies in that drought. At least one of them was not Hitler.
Someone please explain this mentality of an intervening god to me.
2) God is responsible for everything?
A) This doesn't make sense because of the reasons above... If he's responsible for things like drought and Hitler, I'm no fan.
B) Why does God create things, get mad and punish them? Because of the Garden of Eden? Then doesn't that mean he's not all-powerful?
C) Why shouldn't we believe that humans are responsible for some things? Don't we have free wil? And shouldn't we take credit for the good things that we do?
MrRepzion's take on it:
Lol his face
Forever correctable,
—AKB
*I know this example reinforces some exhausting stereotypes, but it's the example I always think of when I talk about this subject.
I may have to send in a complaint to Obama about this, but his political capital is pretty...well...Black right now.
The government can imprison you and sell the fruits of your labor to Starbucks.
On my booklist
The war on drugs is a system that ultimately feeds into the prison industrial complex. It's triplets are immigration legislation and the functional abolition of the 4th amendment (racial profiling). It began in the 20's with legislators promoting the idea that cocaine gives Blacks super powers, and manifested itself as "tough on crime" legislation. We had/have insane sentencing limits for drug crimes. I mean, like, absolutely egregious eighth amendment violations. Soon the war on drugs was in full force, and had Reagan and H.W. Bush preaching about the "enslavement" of crack cocaine users (do I sense a hint of racialization?)—all while drug use steadily declined. Center-left governors such as Cuomo of New York (and Bill Clinton) started pandering to their conservative voters by claiming to be "tough on crime," with no reaction from the left.
Cuomo has no Black friends.
The Corrections Corporation of America wanted in, too, so they set quotas for how many people they need to imprison per year (how optimistic) and started making prisoners to work for under minimum wage (~40 cents/hour) so that they could make pretty things for Starbucks, Motorola and Victoria's Secret. (All while the CCA was also co-writing Arizona's immigration legislation and filling quotas full of deportees).
This makes the country ultimately love imprisoning Brown* people because it's easy to convince people of color that they deserve to go to jail and work for the White man, but imprisoning the general White population has political consequences. However, this should still scare you if you aren't Brown because desperate economic times do call for drastic economic measures, and if you're poor, you're more valuable to the U.S. government behind bars.
As someone who is afraid of beer, LEGALIZE DRUGS.
*When I say Brown, I mean anyone who is of color. Social tip: if you're White, just say "of color."
BAM sources:
Edgar F. Borgatta.
“Drug Abuse.” The Encyclopedia of
Sociology: Second Edition, Volume 1 (New York: Macmillan Reference, USA, no
date).
Michelle Alexander. “The New Jim Crow.” This article is adapted from two speeches delivered by Professor
Michelle Alexander, one at the Zocolo Public Square in Los Angeles on March 17,
2010, and another at an authors symposium sponsored by the National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Open Society Institute on October 6, 2010.
(March 17 2010, October 6 2010): 7-26. Accessed February 2012. Url:http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/Articles/Volume9_1/Alexander.pdf.
Rose M. Brewer and Nancy A.
Heitzeg. “The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice,
Color-Blind Racism, and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial
Complex.” American Behavioral Scientist Volume 51 Number 5
(January 2008): 625-644. Accessed February
2012. Url: http://minerva.stkate.edu/people.nsf/files/mina-82v5bl/$file/625.pdf
Republican logic: Regulate drugs, deregulate guns. Because weed is so much more dangerous than a bullet to the chest...
"But think of the children!!"
Yeah, let's. Please.
So TheAmazingAtheist (whose views I do not typically support) pretty much sums how I feel about gun control here:
NSFW – I realize he's a dick, but he's also super smart.
But here are some things I do and do not believe:
"We need bigger guns than the criminals so that we can shoot them!"
Sorry, you can't have them. Sort of like how you can't have a fighter jet to shoot down the 9-11 airplane. That's an infinitely regressive concept. By that standard, we'd all just be armed to the teeth with rocket launchers and mustard gas, awaiting an attack.
Doesn't make sense...
"I'm a gun collector!"
And I'm a cocaine collector. Tough luck. (I'm not really a cocaine collector.)
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!
"But the second amendment!"
The second amendment was meant to promote self defense via a reasonably sized weapon (assuming we're all contextualists here), a right that isn't going to be taken away from you. It also was meant to preserve the right of the people to stage a coup, which isn't possible, no matter how many AK47's you have, because Obama is never going to give us nukes or drones.
You can't just have a rocket launcher in your house.
"Freedom!!!"
How much pathos is it going to take for you to realize that infinite freedom has costs? Costs like the lives of children...
Do you want to be an eagle or do you want to be dead?
Relax. No one is taking away your shotgun or pistol. They're just taking away your automatic weapons, hopefully.
The real question I have isn't whether guns are good, because I think they're bad. But I think we should keep them legal for the same reason we should legalize drugs. Heroine is bad, too, but a black market for heroine is even worse. Unlike heroine, however, guns have the potential to cause nonviolent crimes (You can't deny that, and all I need to prove it is a Kanye quote: "314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago.") So how many should we keep legal? However many ward off a dangerous black market, I suppose. We'll have to keep a balance between arming too many citizens and creating another War on Drugs. That plus background checks and hugely regulating the guns we do legalize should be a good start.
In all seriousness though, "The Purity Myth" by Jessica Valenti was a super-fast and worthwhile read. An exerpt:
For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer—the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e., “moral”) girl and therefore worthy of praise. ...
Staying “pure” and “innocent” is touted as the greatest thing we can do. However, equating this inaction with morality not only is problematic because it continues to tie women’s ethics to our bodies, but also is downright insulting because it suggests that women can’t be moral actors. Instead, we’re defined by what we don’t do—our ethics are the ethics of passivity.
It's one of those gem-like feministy things where the writing is blunt, the criticism is scathing and the analysis doesn't ignore other intersecting issues such as race and class! She also clarifies that patriarchy is harmful to people all over the gender spectrum—including men (shout out to MrRepzion, who's passionate about that issue). Valenti talks about how our fetishized ideas of virginity as an ideal state for women have eclipsed the truth. She advocates that women be ethical and sexual actors, and backs up her claims with institutionalized instances of virginity-based patriarchy. Although nonfiction, it reads like a horror story, of women in labor chained and forced to have C-sections instead of at-home vaginal births. (Speaking of chained women in labor, I'll be posting about the War on Drugs soon). And her remarks are often hilarious, despite the seriousness of the book.
I searched the book after I developed some ethical qualms with our society's worship of "The Virgin Mary." Valenti gave me answers about why we love virginity so much and, honestly, I've found that the idea of saving ones self (which is distinct from being sexually inactive—that's all good) is rooted in patriarchy. Asterix—according to earlier translation of the Bible, Mary was a "young woman," not a virgin. So to all of the rape apologists out there claiming that women should only have rights if they are virgins (ahem, Republican South Dakota representative Bill Napoli), think again.
Regardless of how much that last paragraph offended you (and I don't blame you if it did), read the book! Read it! And if you can't afford it, "obtain" it in the spirit of Aaron Swartz!
Oh lawd, what is ah gon do? The massas bout tuh teach me how tuh protest tamarrah!
I think we all know MLK day haz a tendency to devolve into this uncomfortably tokenized ceremony dedicated to the supposedly docile side of the civil rights movement. My decidedly granola elementary school even had an assembly during which we all recited sections of his "I Had a Dream Speech." We learned about Black people who did not fight back while they were sprayed with fire hoses and beaten by the police. I was taught, at a very young age, that Dr. King advocated the ethics of passivity for Blacks, under which we should throw ourselves into the front lines of race-battles and wait for the White man to act. This was not, in fact, the case.
Worst. Assembly. Ever.
Teachingamericanhistory.org clarifies that Dr. King's nonviolent methods were meant to be spiritually aggressive, in that they evoked empathy—often entailed with horror—and made atrocities painfully obvious. I see it as having been about accountability. And prospect.org criticizes that we have perverted his vision and forgotten his radical ideas. Dr. King did not name legislation as the culprit—instead, he pointed out the often-de-facto institutions of "racism, materialism and militarism" as the enemy. He was not waiting for some desegregation law—he was an activist in his own right, fighting against all forms of injustice at their roots.
So, on Monday, let's not let MLK day become about pacifying the Blacks who would have otherwise joined the Nation of Islam or the Panthers. Let's make it about Dr. King's unique, non-passive message.
I, for one, plan to educate myself.
Forever correctable,
—AKB
***
UPDATE: I made a poor-quality, sarcastic video about it, too:
