I was reading about abortion and birth control int he 1930s, and I read this quote:

I have three living well grown loving daughters and have always had a reasonable rest between, thanks due entirely to my husband who never dreams of worrying my more than once or perhaps twice a month

This reminded me of something I’d read by Grace Paley. She was writing about her husband’s mother, who was old and dying. She asked Grace Paley about Women’s Lib. You should read Just As I Thought because I can’t do justice to the whole conversation. I’ll just quote the end of the piece:

She was tired. That’s a lot, she said. Then she went upstairs to sleep.

In the morning she surprised us. She came down for breakfast. I couldn’t sleep, she said. I was up all night thinking of what you said. You know, she said, there isn’t a thing I’ve done in my life that I haven’t done for some man. Dress up or go out or take a job or quit or go home or leave. Or even be quiet or say something nice, things like that. You know I as up all night thinking about you and especially those young women. I couldn’t stop thinking about what wonderful lives they’re going to have

My life is wonderful. It’s a lot of other things, at times, but it is wonderful.

The only way I can give any meaning to what I have is to honour the struggles that went into getting it and keep fighting.

Editor’s Note: I’m posting this hastily, so it still needs a cold proofread. You may notice a few little changes after I cold proofread it tonight. Ok, it should be fixed.

My partner and I were having a discussion the other day with a mutual friend of ours. Our friend is a middle to upper middle class professional black man, and he has recently experienced some trouble in his workplace, in particular being passed over by a coworker who failed a qualifying exam three times¹ We were joking about racism, like we often do, and we got into a discussion of some of the more subtle ways that whites are advantaged in the workforce.

He made a joke that was funny, but unfortunately this joke is indicative of some serious problems in the labor force. in this conversation, we were discussing a Latino friend who is woefully underemployed. He was trained at a fairly good private university in a applied technology field, but in spite of having a degree from a good school, he’s struggled to get a good job in the 10 years he’s been out college. Given the rapid changes in his field since his graduation, his likelihood of getting a job in that area today are slim. The nature of his field, like many, is such that a person goes into a job with basic knowledge, but much of the training comes when the person actually gets the job. My partner said, “Yeah, you only know 50% of what you need to know for a job before you start it.” Our friend had a great come back in the form of a joke² –”The problem is Carlos is the 50% brother. Nobody wants to hire the 50% brother.”³ The two black men (my partner and his friend) in the conversation were high fiving and laughing hysterically, “That’s minorities in the workforce.” I got in a few laughs myself, but the sad thing is that their joke reveals a truth that most people of color know–you need to be more than just a qualified person of color to get a job.

They were arguing that it is much harder for people of color (and white women) who have the 50% knowledge to get their foot in the door for jobs that require more on the job training. Moreover, they felt that even though it would be expected that a person would not know everything required for one of these jobs, lack of knowledge is often held against people of color as a sign that they are unqualified or less qualified, whereas whites without that knowledge are viewed as trainable. In fact, they both felt that an overqualified or very highly qualified person of color (or white woman) stood a better chance of getting a job than even their white counterparts, in part because employers would be surprised and would be more likely to see this as an opportunity to diversify.⁴ I’m not a sociologist in the field of work and occupations, so I don’t know much of the research emanating out of that field, but I have heard the 50% Brother/Sister Argument before from many people of color, and I tend to think it is true.

The first issue that many people of color (and white women) face in 50% jobs, is the fact that their lack of knowledge is held against them more than it is for whites. Part of this problem relates to camaraderie, which I discuss below, but the other issue is that there is a common stereotype that people of color are less qualified than whites in the first place. Some people of color worry about acknowledging that they do not have a particular skill, fearing that their lack of knowledge of this particular skill will be viewed as a sign of being unqualified. On the other hand, there is also a fear of saying that they know everything because it can come off as bragging.⁵ When a person feels close to an interviewee or a co-worker, their lack of knowledge fades more into the background and their trainability is more evident.

These 50% jobs require that the person hired work closely with the others around him or her, so the extent to which potential coworkers feel a degree of camaraderie with this person will make a much greater difference in evaluations during a job interview. Carlos has spent most of his life in NYC, and he’s spent very little of his time in predominantly white environments. He doesn’t necessarily know the insider jokes and norms that middle income whites have, and most middle incomes whites are probably unfamiliar with the same insider norms and jokes the he grew up with in his predominantly black and Latino neighborhood. My partner and his friend were arguing that this was one of the key problems Carlos was having.

One of the biggest barriers, when it comes to race, is the level of interactional comfort and camaraderie that people feel when they are in the presence of people of other races. I think this is one of the primary manifestations of contemporary racism. Many people have a discomfort that is conscious or unconscious, and this hurts people of color in the job market because it profoundly affects how they are evaluated by higher ups and co-workers⁶ I think this is really hurting Carlos and many other people of color like him, who don’t have extensive interpersonal interactions with the middle class whites who will be hiring them.

I think camaraderie is always going to be a factor in job hiring and promotions, but we can work on the two other problems. We can make sure that race doesn’t affect people’s perceptions of qualifications.⁷ This may mean making parts of the hiring process more race blind and other parts more race conscious. We also need to address the issue of comfort and camaraderie. Until the discomfort many people feel in the presence of people of other races subsides, people of color are routinely going to be passed over for hires and promotion when they are definitely qualified. I understand that racial discomfort is often a two way street with both whites and people of color feeling discomfort at times, but if we are talking about this in relation to institutional power, people of color are significantly more likely to be negatively impacted by whites discomfort than the reverse. There is no way in a short blog post I can detail all of the ways we can work to stop the interactional uneasiness created by racism and racial prejudice, but the workplace and most other social institutions will never be equal until this problem is addressed.

1. If I remember correctly this coworker is Latino, and race is likely one of the factors in the background of our friend being passed over, but he thinks the greater problem is cronyism. (back)
2. Yeah, it doesn’t read like a joke, but he was laughing and talking goofy when he said it. (back)
3. I’m changing his name here. (back)
4. I don’t think they are right about this, and I’m not sure what exact comparison they were using. I’m not sure if they meant to compare the overqualified black candidate to overqualified whites, qualified whites, or whites at all levels of qualifications, but it was interesting argument. I have seem a few cases where this has happened, but I’m quite reluctant to say it’s a trend unless I see some data. (back)
5. I’m going to do a second post on race and bragging in the workplace because this was the second part of the conversation we had that day. (back)
6. Here is an example of a study that found whites experience increased stress when they are around people of color. This finding does not appear to be an anomaly. (back)
7. I’m reminded here of a recent discussion we had at Alas about Barack Obama’s qualifications. In that discussion Amp, linked to a post by Dave Schraub, where he notes that Obama has more experience in elected office than Clinton, Giulinani, Romney, Thompson, and Edwards. But somehow, Obama is viewed as inexperienced and less qualified. (back)

The inaugural edition of Electronic Village’s Top Ten Black Bloggers is out, and — even though I’m retired from non-cartoon-or-baby-blogging — I wanted to quickly congratulate some of my favorite blogs that made the top ten. I was pleased to see that five of the top ten are blogs that I’m a big fan of (gotta check out other five, I guess!)

So congrats to Angry Black Woman, Racewire, Prometheus 6, Angry Black Bitch, and Republic of T. (And congrats to the other five selectees, as well). These are some of the best political blogs out there, period.

8.5″ by 11″, 100 pages, 190 cartoons, $16.

I’m still figuring out how many to print, so let me know if you think you’ll buy a copy. :-)

From Dani Rodrik:

The slave trade, whereby able-bodied Africans were shipped to other parts of the world and sold into slavery, was a despicable economic institution for sure. But did it also have long-run effects on the economic development of African countries? Yes, is the surprising answer of Nathan Nunn (pdf link):

I construct measures of the number of slaves exported from each country in Africa, in each century between 1400 and 1900. The estimates are constructed by combining data from ship records on the number of slaves shipped from each African port or region with data from a variety of historical documents that report the ethnic identities of slaves that were shipped from Africa. I find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from each country and subsequent economic performance. The African countries that are the poorest today are the ones from which the most slaves were taken.

Nunn is careful to try to rule out reverse causation: he finds that the regions from which slaves were taken were, if anything, the more developed parts of Africa at the time.

The most likely explanation for the result? “[The] procurement of slaves through internal warfare, raiding, and kidnapping resulted in subsequent state collapse and ethnic fractionalization.”

There’s some interesting discussion in the comments there, too.

I wrote this awhile ago, about a friend who was raped at fifteen by the eighteen-year-old man who said he loved her.

Beneath the Surface

i.

air thins as in high places,
whirring like an insect’s buzz
between your ears

a broken mosaic: flickering candles
transform his muscles
into to shadows, highlights

your bra
in the corner, limp
white swell, defenseless

above, his face
one featureless tile
matte black

crimson, too
what to call
this straining, fingerless hand
like the stump
of a bloodied wrist?

ii.

on the ceiling
water stain bleeds
into the shape
of tail and bottle nose,
for the duration
you are that dolphin
submerged below
stucco waves

iii.

tomorrow, he will drive
too fast in his cherry convertible,
fingers waving through wind
smile bright as a new coat of paint

tomorrow,
you’ll sit alone
drowning

heart slowing
blood shifting
lungs collapsing
compressed by navy
deeper than light,
inescapable

Cuteness squared!

A friend brought over her seven-month-old pug puppy. At first I didn’t get out my camera, because Maddox and Sydney — while delighted to see the puppy — were also very shy of it, and would run squealing whenever Augustus (that’s the puppy’s name) approached. In Maddox’s case, the delight was so intense she actually seemed stoned, and did nothing but recite “puppy! puuuuppy! puuuppppy!” over and over for about ten minutes.

More below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: Some students at CCSU have started their own blog–Take Back the Recorder– in opposition to the paper’s editorial staff. Go show them your support.

Last February we heard the story of a college newspaper in Connecticut that printed an article saying “rape is a magical experience” and “rape only hurts if you fight back.” The author claims he was trying to satirize rape, which he clearly did not achieve. ¹ Well it looks like this bunch is at it again and more emboldened than ever since they managed to survive their last go round. This time, among other offensive diatribes, the Central Connecticut State University newspaper has published a cartoon about urinating on a 14 year old Latina, who is locked in a closet.²

I found out about this debacle from a comment left in the thread on the West Virginia rape and torture case over at Feministing. A commenter named prof/activist provided a link to the PDF copy of the paper. The offending cartoon can be found in its original context if you scroll to page 16, the final page of the PDF file. The cartoon consists of two figures one triangular and the other square. The triangle says that his urine smells like honey after he eats certain cereals, and the square asks if it tastes like urine. Then the triangle says, he doesn’t know he’ll have to ask the Latina girl tied up in the closet. Then, it jumps to the final frame where the square says, “Tell Juanita I said Hola.” The cartoon also has a sentence printed under it that says, “The Recorder Does Not Support the Kidnapping of (and Subsequent Urinating on) Children of Any Age.” I was going to repost the cartoon here, but it’s not worth the bandwidth. You can open the PDF file above to read it.

Students and faculty members, disgusted by the paper’s racist and sexist reputation, protested the cartoon on Friday. The story was covered in the local paper and it received national attention. Here’s a quote from the AP article in the New York Times:

The university’s president vowed on Friday to cut off advertising in the paper, and its critics have planned a protest on Monday on campus to push for reforms, including the ouster of the paper’s editor, Mark Rowan.

“We believe the climate here at Central is one that fosters this kind of behavior,” said Francisco Donis, a psychology professor and president of the university’s Latin American Association, “so we want more systematic changes to create a welcoming environment for everyone to feel safe and secure.”

About 5 percent of the 9,600 undergraduates are Hispanic, according to university figures. The campus is in New Britain, a racially diverse city of 71,000 about 12 miles southwest of Hartford.

Mr. Rowan, 21, was the editor in February, when the newspaper was criticized for publishing a satirical opinion piece titled “Rape Only Hurts if You Fight It.” The satire called sexual assault a “magical experience” that benefits “ugly women.”

The author of the article lost his position at the paper and apologized, but Mr. Rowan was allowed to retain his post.

The university created a task force that recommended providing more training for its student journalists, buying libel insurance and creating a student-run alternative paper or Web site.

Mr. Rowan, who is set to graduate in December, said lingering anger over that controversy was adding to outrage over the cartoon. He said he did not know if he would be asked to resign.

Rowan and his cronies have caused enough trouble for the University, ushering the school into the national spotlight on two separate occasions. It seems clear that Rowan lacks the ability to judge the quality and appropriateness of the paper’s content. Both pieces in question were not only offensive, but they also were of poor quality. Petroski’s rape article didn’t succeed at being satire, and this cartoon didn’t succeed at being funny. In fact, only a person like Ted Bundy would find either of these articles amusing, which makes me wonder if there are some sociopaths running this paper.

Mr. Rowan has shown poor judgment, and has allowed the student newspaper become a bottom feeder with little journalistic integrity. Right now Mr. Rowan holds two journalism related positions. He’s an editor of the CCSU student paper, and he has an internship with the Hartford Advocate, but at the rate he’s going he may never have another position in journalism. How is he going to explain these gaffes to potential employers? Who would want to hire someone, who routinely brings negative attention to their publication? He hasn’t learned his lesson, and that’s going to come back to haunt him in the future. A good editor thinks about getting the story, and getting quality material, not just pushing his political agenda and publishing anything that comes across the desk.

I know the retorts that the student editors will have–We have free speech. We didn’t mean to offend. Lighten up, it’s just a cartoon. You’re being too sensitive. I hear these arguments every time someone engages in offensive behavior like this. Rather than taking responsibility, they try to deflect the criticism by condemning the condemners. At this point, it’s pretty clear, that the University needs to step in and revamp the paper. If the student editors are unwilling to do this themselves, it is incumbent upon the University administration and the majority of students to oust the paper’s editors. This surely doesn’t represent the school, its administrators, and the vast majority of its students.

1. If you want to see real rape satire, go here to Marcella’s site. (back)
2. The writers and editors clearly haven’t learned their lesson. While scrolling through the electronic copy of the paper I found an article written by Justin Kloczko. The primary purpose of the article is to taunt a local reporter who is leaving the New Britain Herald to write for the Hartford Business Journal. The taunts and insults are directed at this reporter because he was one of the people who brought the February rape article to light. The article appears next to a picture that says “Crotch Shots, Nipple Slips, Cellulite Legs! The Recorder is not looking for the above, but is looking for dedicated photographers to cover local and campus events. Contact us at ccsurecorder@gmail.com and make us forget that Britney picture.” (back)

Use this thread for talking about whatever you want to talk about. Meanwhile, here’s four more or less arbitrarily chosen items:

“Only one in seven Americans (15 percent) can correctly name John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States while two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) know at least one of the judges on the Fox television show American Idol.”

In more interesting survey news, a survey of Iraqis shows that the majority of Iraqis not only want the US out of Iraq, but thinks that violent attacks on US troops are acceptable. Gee, wonder why they hate us? Oh, wait, yet another new survey of Iraqis finds that over a million Iraqis have died due to the US occupation. I guess that’s a good reason to hate us.

Meanwhile, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a waiter left his post to tackle a knife-wielding carjacker who was attacking a woman outside the restaurant. The waiter wrestled the carjacker to the ground and, with help from some passerbys, held him until the police arrived. He talked to the cops and the media, returned to the restaurant, and was fired for having left his post.

Finally, my friend Heron61 argues, I think persuasively, that the threat of overpopulation is solving itself.

UPDATE: So I fixed a number of things about the drawing. The big thing is that I redrew the SARWM’s right arm and related areas, just because they were very badly drawn the first time.

But I also changed the shorts from having polkadots (which did make them look like boxer shorts, as Robert pointed out) to looking more like jeans. Then I added polkadots to the shirt of the woman in the foreground, because the sad truth is I just like drawing polkadots. Then I tried to make SARWM’s shoes look like shoes rather than socks, and I added glasses to a character, in response to Dianne’s comments. And I played around with a couple of other small details.

Am I responsive to reader comments or what? No, no, don’t thank me. A medal is enough.

So here is (I think) the final drawing. The original, pre-changes version is below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: I wrote this post this afternoon before the announcement that prosecutors will not bring hate crimes charges in this case.  I’ll make a more detailed update tomorrow. 

So I guess that some of the people in the West Virginia case have long histories of violence, including killing people. Check this out from the New York Times:

The Brewster family and their trailer has a history of violent crime, the police said.

Mr. Brewster killed his stepfather there when he was 12, the authorities said, and served time at a juvenile correction facility.

In July 1994, Mrs. Brewster shot and killed an 84-year-old woman she was looking after, also in the trailer, according to court records.

Mrs. Brewster, who was charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served six years at a state correctional facility. She was paroled in 2000.

In 2005, two men got into a fight outside the trailer, the police said, ending with a fatal stabbing.

In January, the police were again called to the trailer, where they found a man who had been slashed across his abdomen; the man survived, according to court documents, and Mr. Brewster was a witness in that case.

Also being held in the case of the young woman were Danny J. Combs, 20, who was charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding; George A. Messer, 27, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery; Karen Burton, 46, who was charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony; and her daughter, Alisha Burton, 23, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery. The four were being held in $100,000 bond each.

The Brewsters were being held pending bond hearings.

The authorities said they were still deciding whether to file additional charges, of hate crimes, against the defendants.

“The whole family is shocked,” a sister of the victim said.

Relatives said the victim has mild learning disabilities but graduated from high school. The relatives would not comment on whether the victim was living at home or had a job.

It would seem to me that the fact that the victim has learning disabilities also makes the release of her name more suspect, and if you watch this video, it does not appear that the victim is in any shape to consent to have her name released to the whole world.

On a side note, clearly these people are dangerous, violent, and disgusting, but they didn’t do this because the are Appalachians, rural whites, or poor whites. They did this because they are criminals, thugs, and racists, so I will not be accepting any comments or commentary like these:

Hillbilly Hell in West Virginia

West Virginia: No Thanks

Mama! Mama! Look At The White Trash!

Six Held In Rape, Stabbing of Woman in WV

Despicable Deeds

I know plenty of hill folks and poor whites, and the vast majority are not at all like these wackos.

Update: The AP, in a rather suspect move, is reporting the victim’s name, which will not be appearing on this site.  They are saying they have permission; however, to me it feels like they are taking advantage of this young woman, who will likely get a bunch of hate mail and death threats from white supremacists.

I’m not sure that I can find words to adequately describe the brutality of this crime.  You can read more details below.  Here’s the initial report:

Authorities are investigating whether a woman who was tortured in a southern West Virginia home for more than a week may have been lured there by a man she met on the Internet.Police were still looking for two people they suspect drove the 23-year-old Charleston woman about 50 miles to the Big Creek home where she was abused, said Logan County Chief Deputy V.K. Dingess.There, according to police, she was beaten, sexually assaulted and humiliated.Logan County Prosecutor Brian Abraham said police are investigating the possible Internet connection into what some are calling one of the most shocking crimes in the county’s recent history.In 30 years of law enforcement, Logan County Sheriff W.E. Hunter said he’s never seen anything like this.It’s “something that would have come out of a horror movie,” he said Tuesday.

Deputies were interviewing the victim Tuesday morning and are scheduled to meet later in the day to discuss the case with Abraham, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office. The officials may decide then whether to file hate crimes charges.

Bill Crowley, spokesman for the FBI in Pittsburgh, confirmed that the agency is looking into possible civil rights violations.

Six Logan County residents, including a mother and son and a mother and daughter, remained in custody Tuesday on $100,000 bonds each. They are charged in the weeklong kidnapping and abuse of the woman.

All six are white. The victim, who was being treated Tuesday at the Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital, is black.

“Every one of these people who were arrested are no strangers to law enforcement,” Hunter said.

Deputies found the woman Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek to investigate an anonymous tip from someone who had witnessed the abuse, Sgt. Sonya Porter said Tuesday.

One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the victim limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying, “Help me,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release.

Besides being sexually assaulted, the victim had been stabbed four times in the left leg and beaten, Porter said. Both of her eyes were black and blue. The woman’s wounds were inflicted at least a week ago, deputies said.

During her capture, the victim was forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet, according to the criminal complaint filed in magistrate court. The woman also had been choked with a cable cord and her hair cut, it alleges.

One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is accused of cutting the woman’s ankle with a knife. She used the N-word in telling the woman she was victimized because she is black, according to the criminal complaint.

Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.

“We have all been praying and asking the Lord to take us through this,” the victim’s mother told The Charleston Gazette on Monday. “It’s hard to deal with it. We are very angry. … She will be scarred for a long time.

“She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, ’Mommy,”’ the mother said. “What’s really bad is that we don’t know everything they did to her. She is crying all the time.” 

Some evidence suggests that the crime was racially motivated.  We’ll have to watch the details as they come out. 

I’m in.

I was undecided about whether the comic book was ‘Buffy’. I accepted it was cannon, Joss says goes. But I just wasn’t sure whether I was going to treat it like Buffy. I’m not a comic book person, and a month is a long wait. To treat it like I treated the show I needed it to be like the show was when it was good, not the last few seasons with flashes of brilliance within miles of boring.

Someone actually commented on one of these posts that it must be a new season of Buffy because everyone’s complaining about how the quality has gone downhill. There’s definitely some truth in that. While I have a lot of affection for all the Joss-penned opening episodes, beginnings are not Joss’s forte. They always feel a little like a reintroduction. #5 was, of course, the best comic ever written, with a two page spread which is up there with the end of Becoming II or that bit in Chosen. But I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a sign of things to come.

If ‘No Future For You’ is a sign of things to come, then I’m sold.

I don’t have particularly strong feelings about Faith - I don’t dislike her, but she’s not one of my favourite characters. This story is good, and that’s what matters. The opening is brilliant, really capturing the horror and aloneness of Faith’s life.* The scene between Giles and Faith captures both their characters spot on (plus Giles was wearing a Yellow Submarine Jersey)**

I’m loving the plot. As the title of my blog suggests, I’m generally pretty pro-Buffy plots where the ruling-classes are the bad. As a metaphor it works for me. Pygmalion is a tad over-done, but going undercover as upper class to kill them, rather than to show your worth works for me (plus there are a few more nice moments of undercutting).

Just over 20 pages a month is still woefully unsatisfying. But I can’t wait to see where we go next.

There are still some issues of course. The dialogue was trying a little bit too hard. Faith never just said anything without turning it into a Faithism. It was almost like Buffy fanfic where every second sentence from Giles contains the word ‘wanker’.*** I think it’s probably justified in this episode from a character point of view, because it’s a sign Faith is on her guard with Giles, she’s thinking before she speaks and acting defensively, but if it continues it’ll get old really fast.

You notice how I haven’t mentioned the drawing yet? I’m putting it off. Actually this was the first comic strip where I felt the art added much to the script. There were a couple of frames where the expression on Faith’s face really captured something about her character and conveyed the complexities of her feelings (I’m thinking ‘So, who is this evil bitch, anyway?’).

But, and there’s always a but, women’s breasts are not balls. They are not round like balls and they’re not solid like balls. While I do appreciate that there was no random female nudity this episode and two characters wore an outfit that wasn’t a crop top (which is some kind of record), the breasts on the cover and the last page bug me. I wonder what it’s about, why comic book artists think that that’s what men would most like to see? Why would men like to see that. I don’t see that it can be a sexual fantasy thing in any real sense. Isn’t the way breasts move a large part of the fun? Obviously it’s partly about turning women into objects, in a very real sense, the less comic book girls look like people, the easier it is to dehumanise them, and then in turn dehumanise actual women.

I’m not saying that this is necessarily going to Geroges Jeanty’s mind when he draws the script (and I choose to believe it dosn’t go through Joss’s mind when he approves it). Just that comic book art must have developed this way for a reason, and I don’t get it. Anyone else got theories.

* Except the fact that Robin Wood is also running a team of slayers. I find it more than a little bit problematic that every male character who survived the season finale is running a team of slayers (even Andrew!). While we have yet to see a female character do so, except Buffy (unless the black dreadlocked slayer from last issue was supposed to be Rona, even so she didn’t appear to be running it alone).

** Although only the second coolest top in the issue - gotta love Xander’s Sunnydale swim team t-shirt.

***Not that I’ve read that much Buffy fanfic. Honest. If we were talking X-files fanfic I would be lying when I said I hadn’t read much. But Buffy fanfic never worked for me. Possibly because every second sentence from Giles contained the word wanker.

Why is it so much more amusing to give voice to one’s complaints in letter form to vast & unresponsive entities?

For instance:

Dear Prison-Industrial Complex,

You’re a fuckhead. Do you even understand how much of a fuckhead you are? Seriously. Get some therapy.

Sincerely,

Mandolin

or:

Dear Victorian Era,

Therapeutic hysterectomies are the dumbest idea you’ve had in a while — except for the therapeutic clitorodectomies. And while we’re at it, can you knock it off with the corsets? Even ladies like to breathe.

Kudos on the satin and ruffles, though. I even like the bustles.

Sincerely,
Mandolin

or, on days when I’m aggravated by too much critiquing of amateur stories:

Dear Entire Fucking Universe,

LEARN PAST PERFECT TENSE.

Love & Kisses,
Mandolin

My favorite of all time is by a friend of mine*:

Dear 1970s,

Obscurity is not art.

Does anyone else agree with me that this sort of thing is amusing? Clearly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and I are on the same page.

And oh yeah, consider this a totally open thread for posting your favorite McSweeney’s lists. ‘Cuz we all know that’s happening.

–

*a more reasonable link representing the friend.

This month’s Carnival will be held at Reading, Writing, and Living.

The Erase Racism Carnival is a collection of blog posts dedicated to creating a world free of racism. The Carnival is published around the 20th of every month.

If you would like to submit a post written by you or someone else, just go here and click on “submit your blog article to this carnival”. Along with the URL of the article, be sure to include your name and email.

You can also submit directly to Reading Writing and Living:susan@susanito.com

We have also booked the Carnival through the end of the year. You can check out some of the sites in advance:

October 2007 @ Kill Bigotry!
November 2007 @ Eric Stoller
December 2007 @ Present Progressive Mood

Sydney walked up to the “microphone” and began giving an Oscar acceptance speech. “Thank you to Mommy, thank you to Bean…,” etc. When she finished Bean and I and the few other adults that were in the room applauded her, so she came back to the mic and gave her acceptance speech again. :-)

From a review of World War IV, the new book defending Bush’s Iraq policy, by Norman Podhoretz:

The most astonishing part of “World War IV” is Podhoretz’s incessant use of violent imagery to describe American politics. Critics of the Iraq war represent a “domestic insurgency” with a “life-and-death stake” in America’s defeat. And their dispute with the president’s supporters represents “a war of ideas on the home front.” “In its own way,” Podhoretz declares, “this war of ideas is no less bloody than the one being fought by our troops in the Middle East.”

When I post New Zealand centred posts here I usually do a lot of translation, explaining things that aren’t well known outside of this corner of the world. I’m not going to do that this time, it’s just too complicated to explain, but I do think it addresses some ideas that might have some resonance outside New Zealand. The only thing you really need to know before reading is that in New Zealand the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980s were carried out by the supposedly left-wing Labour party.

**********

A couple of weeks ago John Minto gave a talk called Gender, Race and Class - and the greatest of these is class. I really admire the work John Minto has done, of course. But I disagree with a lot of the arguments, and assumptions behind this talk, just as much as I disagree with the title.

In this post I am concentrating on John Minto’s comments on gender and feminism. Not because I believe that ‘the greatest of these is gender’, but because I know far more about the women’s liberation movement than the Tino Rangatiratanga movement.

The talk began:

Those of us active in politics in the 1970s and 1980s will recall the interminable debates about race, sex and class within all manner of progressive organisations, protest groups and social agencies.

Anti-apartheid meetings could be dominated by debate about patriarchal processes, peace groups about institutional racism, union meetings about representation of women.

John Minto appears to be implying this was a problem, or at least that these discussions were a distraction from the main aims of these groups. I think all groups need to look at ensuring women can participate, and I think anti-racism and peace work are completely intertwined, but it his the third example that, to me, showed a stunning lack of analysis.

Women and union members are not two discrete groups; women are now the majority of union members. To talk as if the representation of women is a side-line issue for unions is to say that only half of union members matter. The first thing to acknowledge in any discussion about gender, race and class is that our world is not just made up of working-class white men, middle-class Maori men and middle-class white women.

Another problem I have with his talk is what I’d call ’straw-movementing’. I can’t talk with any knowledge about the Maori sovereignty movement, but I think the feminist movement he is describing (and critiquing) in his speech, never really existed in NZ.

Feminism sought to empower women in their own right (a bit like the black consciousness movement sought to empower black South Africans through pride in their race) and to gain equality of opportunity with men.

That’s a really limited description of what feminism is. The women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s certainly went far beyond empower and equality of opportunity. I’d say even in these moribund times we’re talking about a lot more than that. Here’s another example:

Where is the focus for the struggle of women and Maori today? The former seems to be within the equal opportunities and equity arguments while the latter is largely focused on the Treaty of Waitangi process.

The feminist groups that were set up within the equal opportunities/equity framework in the 1970s - NOW and WEL - have all folded.* The biggest, organised, feminist groups are in response to violence against women - rape crisis, refuges. I don’t think I’m giving disproportionate attention to the activities I’ve been involved in when I say that the focus for the struggle of women in New Zealand over the last few years has been police rape.

Given that his view of the feminist movement is so limited, it’s no surprise that he argues:

So while the feminist struggle has largely impacted on the middle-class women the benefits for working class women have been illusory.

I don’t think the benefits of the feminist movement for have been illusory for working class women. If asked what the gains of the NZ feminist movement were I’d say:

• The ability to decide when and whether to have kids (before the feminist movement you often couldn’t even get the pill unless you were married or pretending to be)
• Equal Pay and the DPB - as well as being important gains in themselves, they both make it more possible for women, particularly women with children, to live without a male partner.
• Women’s refuges, the right to say no in marriage, rape-shield laws, the fact that 95%* of the country believes Clint Rickards is a rapist, and any understanding that rape and domestic violence are not ok. The size of the problem of violence against women is over-whelming, but compared to how much worse things were 40 years ago we’ve won a lot (including the possibility of surviving without a male partner).
• Making sexism less acceptable

I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left out - but that’s not a list that only impacts on middle-class women.

I’d agree with part of what he’s saying - women now have access to all sorts of jobs they didn’t have before, thanks to the feminist movement. If your brother was never going to be able to be a lawyer (for example), then opening up the lawyer profession to women isn’t going to make much difference to you (although women also have more access to the relatively well-paid working-class male jobs - there was a huge fight to get on the meat-works, for example).

But there is so much more to feminists’ aims, and the gains feminism has won, than that sort of formal equality. John Minto he has a very narrow view of the feminist movement - so he argues the feminist movement is narrow.

The crux of his discussion is about the 1980s, and how the hell it happened. John Minto appears to be offering two related explanations:

It reached a climax in the mid 1980s with many erstwhile stable groups and sensible people imploding or exploding, unable to hold together because the conflicting views within them developed greater strength than the political glue which bound them in a common cause.

While all this angst was going on a revolution took place. Almost while our backs were turned, while most of us were distracted perhaps, Rogernomics ripped the heart out of our economy and in a few short years destroyed what two generations of the welfare state had established.

I don’t dispute that the NZ left was imploding, or exploding, in the 1980s, although I’d want to do considerable more research before speculating on a cause. But if it was the ideas of women’s liberation and Maori sovereignty that were causing groups to implode, then surely the problem was primarily sexism and racism on the left, not people pointing out this racism and sexism.

The other explanation John Minto offers is basically that the left was bought off:

The question has often been asked as to how this process could have been driven through by a Labour government. The answer is because Labour is a middle class party. This middle-class constituency was rewarded by David Lange with social policy changes such as anti-nuclear and gay rights legislation while Roger Douglas hammered the hell out of working New Zealanders. The impact of these new right economic policies was felt by working class families while the middle class – the heart of Labour activism – was largely protected.

Firstly, I’m not entirely sure why middle-class people benefited more from anti-nuclear legislation and homosexual law reform. Working class gay men exist and Don Franks has done some really good work to point out that nuclear ships wasn’t just a middle class issue.

More importantly I think the amount of progressive legislation out of the fourth labour government has probably been over-estimated (particularly if you take into account that they didn’t pass pay equity legislation in time to make a blind bit of difference to anyone). For example, there was at least as much, if not more, feminist influenced out of the following National government (as well as some vile anti-woman legislation, but that’s true of both governments). Domestic violence, rape and censorship** laws all got reformed by the Bolger government’s, and as far as legal codes go they’re as feminist as you get.

I wasn’t there*** so I don’t know if people really were bought off, but I do know that doesn’t really discuss the most important reason why people didn’t fight back in the 1980s: The union movement’s loyalty to the Labour Party. It wasn’t the lack of class analysis which stopped people fighting back, it was a really bad class analysis.

But I have a more fundamental objection to John Minto’s argument - I don’t think we have to choose. I think choosing, pitting causes against each other, is inevitably going to weaken our ability to fight back, rather than strengthen them. In this country capitalism, colonialism, misogyny and sexism are intertwined like one of those parasite plants that is slowly strangling a tree. You can hack away at one branch, try to clear a section, get some breathing room and sunlight on a piece, but we have to attack the whole thing if we’re going to get any kind of freedom.

* I’d argue that they didn’t always operate within those frameworks but now is neither the time or the place.

** I don’t think I’ve ever heard any complaints about our censorship laws from the left/feminist perspective. All I know about them is that in the 1990s they changed the criteria censorship is based on from one of obscenity to one of harm. Even the obligatory fractious pornography discussions, are generally void of any discussion on what the law is, let alone what we want them to be. Is this because our censorship laws are generally OK? It seems a bit unlikely.

*** Much - I went to a few demos, even organised one, but I hadn’t started secondary school so I didn’t keep up with internal politics.

I’m sorry, y’all. I was unclear about what I meant in the last post. Let me try to be more clear! And specific! Woo, I know you all wanted that TMI.

So:

I have a medical disorder which means that my body has decided it doesn’t really need to produce the hormone that stimulates periods. Eh, says my body. Who needs progesterone? Not me!

Consequently, I haven’t had my period in 8 months. In the meantime, though, my uterine lining has been like, “Woohoo! I can get thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker…”

I don’t prefer to take birth control pills because they make me depressed. That means that I haven’t had BC pills to thin my uterine lining — so I don’t know what it’s like to use birth control pills for that purpose. I haven’t been TRYING to suppress my periods. My body just decided it didn’t want to have them.

Previously, my body had gone 3 or 4 months without bleeding, so I wasn’t really freaked out about the lack of blood. Irregular periods have been with me since I started the whole bloody shebang. Maybe I should have worried earlier, but I didn’t. So it wasn’t until I went in to the gynecologist for my pap smear that I revealed the whole unbloody story, and my gynecologist furrowed his brow. Quoth he, “That ain’t good.”

See, the thing about my uterine lining (sans bc pills) is that it’s been growing and growing. And the thing about growing uterine lining is that the cells grow crazy fast. They like getting into trouble, those persnickety uterine lining cells. Sometimes they like to grow in places they’re not supposed to be, and that can cause lots of damage. Sometimes they become cancerous and their rapid growth rate makes them extra-super-dangerous.

So, I was told by my gynecologist, bleeding must occur! Progesterone pills must be taken! You must be absolutely miserable for 10 days during which you will alternately cry and scream at your spouse, suffer odd cravings, and periodically vomit! Yay!

There you have my sordid medical story.

I brought this up because, long ago in the foggy mists of blog history, I related my gynecologist’s opinion on the occasional annoying, but necessary, sloughing of uterine lining. My gynecologist had told me that I could use birth control pills to stimulate menstruation, which would help me get rid of uterine lining build-ups which had previously occured.

In that long-ago thread, some false medical info got bandied about, and just in case any menstrually-challenged ladies like me had been reading, I wanted to relate the correction. I am not taking a position on the medical ramifications of menstrual suppression by birth control pills, on account of I haven’t tried it.

Also, I haven’t read “Even the Queen,” which is a tragedy of epic proportions. I’ve got a copy of _Impossible Things_ in the other room. I’ll read soon!

This has been your daily dose of too much information.

Editor’s Note: This post is a follow-up to a series of earlier posts. If you are confused about some of the measures of segregation, you can look at this post from July 2nd where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation. That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from. If you link to the actual Census report, they show the statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described. They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation.

You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for American Indians and Alaska Natives, and it’s only measuring urban segregation. If you want to read the previous posts in the series, here is the link.

This is the final post in my series on the dimensions of residential racial segregation. I saved American Indians and Alaska Natives for last because there are some dramatic differences between this group and other groups that affect how we talk about segregation, which I highlight at the end of the post.

The analysis of American Indians and Alaska Natives includes 13 metro areas which met the Census criteria of having at least 3% representation–the number was 43 metros for African Americans, 36 metros for Latinos, and 20 metros for Asians.

All data comes from the US Census Bureau.

Since there are only 13 cities that meet the requirements of the study, I’m going to rank order the metros on each measure.

Evenness (metro areas rank ordered from the least evenly spread to the most evenly spread; the number is the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)

1. Yakima, WA
2. Fort Smith, AR-OK
3. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
4. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
5. Albuquerque, NM
6. Rapid City, SD
7. Bellingham, WA
8. Yuma, AZ
9. Great Falls, MT
10. Anchorage, AK
11. Lawton, OK
12. Tulsa, OK
13. Oklahoma City, OK

Exposure Metros (metro areas rank ordered from the lowest exposure to highest exposure; exposure refers to the likelihood of having contact with whites)

1. Albuquerque, NM
2. Yakima, WA
3. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
4. Fort Smith, AR-OK
5. Bellingham, WA
6. Anchorage, AK
7. Rapid City, SD
8. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
9. Tulsa, OK
10. Yuma, AZ
11. Lawton, OK
12. Oklahoma City, OK
13. Great Falls, MT

Concentration (metro areas ranked from most to least concentrated; concentration refers to how densely concentrated or evenly spread throughout the metro area a group is)

1. Anchorage, AK
2. Rapid City, SD
3. Yuma, AZ
4. Great Falls, MT
5. Pheonix-Mesa, AZ
6. Bellingham, WA
7. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
8. Alburquerque, NM
9. Yakima, WA
10. Oklahoma City, OK
11. Tulsa, OK
12. Lawton, OK
13. Fort Smith, AR-OK

5 Most Centralized Metros (cities ranked from most to least centralized; centralization measures proximity to the central core of the city)

1. Yuma, AZ
2. Rapid City, SD
3. Anchorage, AK
4. Great Falls, MT
5. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
6. Bellingham, WA
7. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
8. Tulsa, OK
9. Yakima, WA
10. Albuquerque, NM
11. Oklahoma City, OK
12. Lawton, OK
13. Fort Smith, AR-OK

5 Most Clustered Metros

1. Albuquerque, NM
2. Yakima, WA
3. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
4. Fort Smith, AR-OK
5. Bellingham, WA
6. Tulsa, OK
7. Lawton, OK
8. Rapid City, SD
9. Yuma, AZ
10. Anchorage, AK
11. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
12. Oklahoma City, OK
13. Great Falls, MT

Overall Segregation Levels for American Indians and Alaska Natives (metro areas rank order from most to least segregated)

1. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ
2. Yakima, WA
3. (tie) Rapid City, SD and Albuquerque, NM
4. Bellingham, WA
5. Anchorage, AK
6. Yuma, AZ
7. Fort Smith, AR-OK
8. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
9. Great Falls, MT
10. Tulsa, OK
11. Lawton, OK
12. Oklahoma City, OK

A Few Points for Discussion:

American Indians and Alaska Natives stand out for several reasons. First, their levels of urban segregation are much lower than the other groups. On the surface, one could view this as a sign that Native Americans are the most integrated or most accepted of all minority groups, but this really doesn’t provide an accurate picture of the status of American Indians and Alaska Natives. On many measures, such as poverty, certain health status variables, and incarceration rates, American Indians are not doing well at all–their rates are generally the worst in these categories.

So why are Native Americans so integrated compared to Blacks, Latinos, and Asians when they fare so poorly on many indicators of racial equality? I think a big part of the answer is a statistical artifact. Here’s why. Only 58% of Native Americans reside inside urban areas, so 42% of the population is missing from this analysis. People trapped on impoverished nations or in other rural areas are not in this analysis. The people who are in this analysis are “urban Indians.” They are disproportionately people who have left the communities where they were raised and they are disproportionately people who have recently connected or reconnected with their I know 58% may sound like a higher number, but the percentages of Blacks, Asians, and Latinos who live in urban areas are all well over 90%.¹

I can’t say exactly how segregated rural American Indians and Alaska Native are. They may be less segregated than rural people from other minority racial/ethnic groups, but in focusing only on urban segregation we missing the major form of segregation that has been forced upon Native Americans–the reservation system. I do understand that many American Indian groups now have their own sovereign nations, so the meaning of reservation is changing. However, the isolation is not changing much. Contrary to racist myths, most American Indians and Alaska Natives are not getting huge cash flows from casinos or huge government handouts. According to the 2000 census, 25.7% of American Indians and Alaska Natives lived in poverty, which is higher than any other racial/ethnic group in the US.²

1. I couldn’t find the exact figures for whites, but the number is somewhere around 80%. Data on urbanization come from Majority-Minority Relations, 5th Ed. by John Farley (back)
2. Some American Indian ethnic groups fared much worse than others–38.9% of Sioux, 37% of Navajo, 33.9% of Apache, and 29% of Pueblo people lived in poverty. To see the full Census Report on American Indians and Alaska Natives click on this link. (back)