the woods apology: asian mothers and ethnic programming for the win

When Tiger Woods's infidelities broke into the public sphere last year I joked with some friends that when straight-laced, boring, repressed folks crack, they go big or go home.  On some smaller, deeper level, I even sympathized with his crack up: when a revered father dies the mooring that steadied you disappears so, of course, you go off course.  My own personal experience mirrored his, in a way; when my mother died, I went through my own 'grief sex' period - years where I slept around like a sailor, to feel anything that would break through the white noise of my mother's death. 

But it took an offhand comment from an old college friend about Woods' press conference on my Facebook page to look at Woods through a very familiar, and particular, cultural lens- a lens that those in the media have, of course, overlooked.

From my friend on Facebook:
"Tiger Wood's apology (and his mother's reaction during it) made him seem more Asian American to me...

Suddenly it all clicked: brother may look black (to some people) but, if there's one thing I know about mix-raced asians, if the mother is asian, you are gonna get a huge dose of asian culture exposure (read: guilt) and it will be hardwired into you even if you have to adapt to other cultures (whether you like it or not, mama's gonna rig it)...so his cultivated characterless-ness, the extreme privacy and (surprise!) the lapsed Buddhism angle, coupled with the public self-shaming in front of family (not wife but elders)...hmmmmm...this all sounds very familiar. Stern mommy in the front row completed the scene.

All the media asked: why the hell did he feel he need to do that public apology? Because every bit of his asian upbringing told him this was the proper thing to do!

Once I saw him in that all too familiar formation with his mother who is so often un-present in his media representation, I suddenly realized who was responsible for the daily grunt work of making him into a man: the feeding, the schlepping and the occasional (or not so occasional) slap. I saw him in a room full of aunties, sitting in a corner and being told to be quiet while they talked business. This is a bound to be an intense part of his psychic make-up...and probably more crucial to a private sense of self, given the fact that American media wants to produce a public image of blackness for him.

The media didn't understand the mom's stern posture, followed by hug gesture...they thought she was cold...and maybe in their eyes she is...but what I saw was a reversion to certain basic childhood patterns. Nugget from my childhood: Southeast Asian moms always make you tell them what you did wrong before they tell you never to do it again.

So, this explains why Tiger Woods would not let go of his Asian-ness, despite the criticism by whites and blacks that he was trying to shirk his blackness. His attempt to multi-identify was seen as a cop-out by people who only saw obsessively in terms of black and white...but his core sense of self was constituted by rituals of pain and pleasure that came from some powerful asian american mother-son bond(age).


When mom gets to handle the discipline, she also gets to handle the ethnic programming. With my sisters who have married outside of the race, I have noticed that they excessively program vietnamese-ness into their children's early self-constitution (like a trojan horse computer virus) just because they know that at some point, some other culture will "claim" their children.

Case in point: Throughout my early adulthood, I would encounter my eldest sister's children taunting me because they could speak better Vietnamese than me and felt themselves better attuned to Vietnamese-ness. Now, they hardly ever want to speak Vietnamese, because they're blond and nordic-looking...but almost always, especially at emotional moments, they revert to classic patterns of vietnamese behavior."

I responded:
"Oh my god, yes! My mom was far scarier than dad when it came to discipline - and the stealth bomb she would pull out was 'you're a bad daughter.' (It was understood that this meant I was a bad Filipina daughter.) Responsibility, obligation, duty, protecting the family name and upholding family integrity. Seen as an asian son-almost every aspect of his behavior is understandable."

I'm fascinated at the way our mainstream culture is perpetually tone-deaf to the nuances of multiple cultural identities. When I looked at his press conference again, the whole thing screamed Asian family discipline and apology.  The focus on self-respect, restraint, the ultimate importance of family and the lessons that family can teach, rather than the 'lessons' taught by over-indulgent celebrity and vice; for those of us who grew up with an Asian parent, these are familiar themes that were pounded into us throughout childhood.  But then, also, the discipline of the public apology, the ritual of apologizing to those you've shamed: the inner family first, then outward.  His public, and the media, is last.  Who's first?  His mother and wife (and the presence of the wife is immaterial - the presence of the mother is primary.)

The press was miffed there was no Q&A - well, the press was just a minor necessity. The real focus were those people sitting in the front row. The apology was less a PR stunt (though it served as one, too) than a necessary step in repairing his bonds with his Asian identity and upbringing - embodied by his mother, in particular.  My takeaway: don't mess with Asian mothers, man.  They'll make you apologize in public.

ready, set, go! maybe.

From the House chamber gallery yesterday, I watched my state reps chit chat, talk on their iPhones, surf the web, eat lunch, snooze, doodle, confab and a few of them were even paying attention to the bill debate going on. What follows is a very paraphrased version of the proceedings:

Dem Rep: ...and so I think my Baby-Daddy registry amendment to bill Such and Such is a good idea.


GOP Rep: Uh, I don't get it. I'm sure my esteemed colleague knows his community best but I'm not sure I get the point.
Dem Rep: Well, there are baby daddies - or maybe not. But we won't know unless there's a list of them. A list of Baby Daddies.
GOP Rep: I still don't get it.
(And the debate continues like this for a while. Then - )
Dem Majority Whip: (standing) This amendment makes no sense; pull it.
Dem Rep: (sigh) I respectfully withdraw my amendment.
GOPRep: I still don't get it!
Sith Lord of the House (aka, Speaker): Next bill, Clerk.
Clerk: On a resolution protesting terrorism, Miranda rights, the use of the super max prison for terrorists who have been Mirandized and extolling all things good about America.
Sith Lord: Who wrote this?
Patriotic GOP Rep: That would be me; I really think it's important to protect our state and read this resolution on the floor because the Obama administration is going to destroy everything we hold dear and this resolution will somehow be meaningful.
Sith Lord: (hard stare and sigh) Why can't this go to committee?
Patriotic GOP Rep: Because I want to read it on the floor. My colleagues agree with me.
(tiny GOP minority cheers)
Sith Lord: Are you sure you don't want this to go to committee?
Patriotic GOP Rep: No. Read it.
Sith Lord: I say we don't read it and I have this handy procedural rule that will allow me to kill it. Duly killed.
Patriotic GOP Rep: I protest!
Sith Lord: I call for a vote: shall I be Sith Lord and have the right to kill this puny resolution or shall I not? Finger vote!
(computer screens all light up)
Sith Lord: 69 votes for me and none for you. Everybody, to my chambers! (exeunt)

And so on for the next hour. I had to give it to the scrappy Patriotic GOP member; while Sith Lord was conferring with his leaders, he tried to reintroduce his resolution but the Sith Lord's second just repeated the procedural vote results from a paper and ignored him over his protests. Up in the gallery, a woman leaned over to me and whispered, "That man over there just got dissed, didn't he?"
I whispered back, "Big time."
She sighed. "This is why nothing ever gets done."

My COO, who was waving to her aunt on the floor, leaned over. "After seeing this, don't you want to be down there?"
"No. I would lose my shit."

She gave me a hard glance. "You know you love it. This is all a show, and you know that. The real work happens in those committee meetings. That guy knew he wouldn't get his amendment. And he knew his resolution wouldn't make it out of his mouth." Nodding down at the now silent Patriotic GOP member.
"And that makes me want to do this, why?"
"You're still young enough to try this and either make it or not. But you have about 3 years to plan. You should make a decision soon. My aunt can help."

Later, at the train station to return to Chicago, my COO introduced me to her uncle, a retired blue collar worker whose main job is to make sure Rep Auntie X made it to her meetings in Springfield from the south side.
As we were shaking hands, the COO said, "She's feeling the call."
Uncle X gave me a look and said, "Well now."
"We'll see," I said. "I'm interested but ..."
"Well," he said. "My wife won't tell you this, but I'm not anybody's elected anything. With every election, the quality is going down. They're getting stupider and stupider. If you're worth it, and my niece doesn't back people who aren't worth it, then you should do it. You'll be needed."

On the train, my COO said. "You'll need 3 years to get a mortgage, a fundraising base and a network. You have a strong network already partly in place. And you need a target. Westside districts will be hard; northside might be doable; southside would be easier. My aunt's would be ideal."

"I don't want to move to the south side!"
"Delia Christina, you need to be serious. If you're going to do this, the DO THIS."

This was still on my mind when I got home, exhausted. If one day of basically nothing exhausted me, what would a whole job do to me? If one session made me disgusted, what would hundreds of them do? If I secretly thought elected official X was an asshat, what would prevent me from calling him that to his face? And if people like me (or you) don't step up, what then? What about my writing? What about the book that's been growing inside me? What about my relationship? And have I said I don't want a frakking mortgage!?

So that's what's on my mind: trying to plan the next three years to maybe be ready for a go in '14. Or not.

Take me to your Leader

Last summer I was in a conference room with two colleagues and our COO, a very smart and wise woman who had seen things, done things, been in campaigns, had managed people, teams and orgs – and had a mixture of savvy and thoughtfulness I wanted to emulate. It was at the height of the state budget crisis and we were all afraid of losing our jobs, feeling pressured to make sure our programs survived and the women we helped would continue to be helped. It was a summer of fear and frustration but also a time when we all stretched ourselves beyond what we thought were capable.
It was also when I learned what it took to lead an organization and how different it felt from the inside of the bubble than the outside.

I was sitting with the PR officer and the Associate Director of Communications and we were crafting both the internal and external communication strategies; on the table was the dicey problem of managing internal fear of mass layoffs and shut downs. Do we tell staff about possible furloughs, layoffs or wait until everything was settled and it was too late for staff to make plans for their families? I was pushing for more transparency, having learned through a corporate lens that if you trust your frontline with difficult news they can come through for you and the fear and panic will likely subside once they know what’s happening.

The PR officer was feeling frustrated at the perception people seemed to be stalling making decisions and our AD was arguing for adopting a really conservative, cautious line. So the COO walked in on our intense debate and after she listened for a bit she closed the door.

‘I’m not supposed to share these things but I think I should in order to share with you what’s happening at the senior management level. So you know what we’re struggling with. In a RIF over a certain size, there are state and federal rules that mandate how much notice you need to give your employees. If it’s up to and over 50%, it’s 60 days. If it’s about 25%, then 30. But we don’t know what contingency plans we’ll have to put in place, yet. We just don’t know.

But RIFs alone won’t save the agency, and we need to save the agency. It’s in our charter and bylaws, we’re mandated by our Board and there you are. So there are furloughs or pay cuts for those who survive the RIF. But how to structure furloughs? If we structure it badly, it impacts health benefits and at a time like this we all need our benefits; if we structure it badly, we could also expose the agency to risk, in terms of legal action. And we’re also trying to do the right thing and abide by the laws and statutes of the state. So we’re trying to find little bits of a puzzle at a time when we’re flying completely in the dark.

We also don’t want to create a panic. We can’t have half our staff quitting in fear when we still have work to do. So you see that we are dealing with all these details that could have some serious, lasting ramifications for our employees.’ She paused. ‘So, in our position, what would you do?’

We were silent. All the debating flew out the window. The differences of opinion flew out the window when faced with the heavy details and choices our bosses would have to make – choices that would materially impact a working family.

‘We are so fucked,’ I said. There was laughter. ‘You’re right. We can’t go public with all this. They’d freak. I’m freaking just listening to you.’

The COO smiled. ‘And this has been what’s happening at every senior manager meeting, every day. We’re all freaking. Just control the panic until we can figure out the least harmful way of dealing with this mess. And get us that budget back, Delia.’

(When she left the room, I’m sure that’s the moment our PR officer decided to revise her resume and go on the market.)

From the outside, it looked like our leaders were fumbling in the dark, deliberately not sharing information for bad purposes, or withholding the truth for some weird lack of trust (which was sometimes deserved); on the inside, the choices to be made were so weighty, the details and consequences so damaging, a workable solution couldn’t be arrived at, yet.

From the outside, they lacked leadership and direction; they weren’t fighting hard enough; they weren’t doing what they promised; they weren’t doing what we wanted them to do. From the inside, they knew damage would occur, but were still struggling with how to triage the damage.

What would you do? How would you lead?

Talking about leadership (which I do a lot) and actually leading – while taking in the entire contextual universe of that act – is hard. And it’s not about winning. ‘Winning’ and leading are sometimes in conflict. Did my agency win? Hard to say. We’re still around. But that RIF took place; we laid off about 30% of our headcount; we lost 10% of our multi-million dollar funding. There were pay reductions; there were service reductions. There was anger and resentment; we said goodbye to some good people. We lost a lot.

But we came through it because our leadership made really hard decisions that were not going to feel good for the rest of us – and their decisions were made with the intent of trying to mitigate the damage to the rest of us.

For the past several months, I’ve been reading all sorts of right and left analysis of what’s happening with the Obama administration. I keep reading posts and articles admonishing more ‘fight,’ more ‘kick ass,’ more ‘do something’ – which all imply winning, not necessarily leading.

And what they’ve been saying has reminded me of that conference room debate I had with my coworkers. Why isn’t more being done? Why aren’t they telling us? Why aren’t they fighting harder? Why are they not telling us the truth?

I don’t have answers to any of that. But I know questions like those come from a position of fear and desperation, emotional states that don’t lead to good decision making. And I also know this: until some of these sideline analysts and writers are ready to put on their big girl panties and sit in that big chair and make the decisions that will bring down damage in order to save the larger whole, then those folks need to shut the fuck up reevaluate what they really want in a leader.

professional tip #1: put on your big girl panties

At first, my sister's divorce was making my heart pound erratically but now it's work.  And now I carry a bottle of Atavan.

A couple of days ago, emails were colliding in my inbox and it became too much. I busted into BossLady's office and had a mini-breakdown.  It just suddenly dawned on me that there was a LOT riding on my success or failure.  Money, funding, staff, jobs, livelihoods. My chest felt like it was going to burst.  And I felt like there was a big target painted on my back.

"I just wanna know that I'm not on the hook for the whole strategy leading this place," I said. "I mean, I'm not..I can't...I'm not an executive! I'm just pulling shit out of my ass!'

BossLady understood. 'So what are you saying? You're overwhelmed?'

Our COO stopped in. 'What's going on?'

I said, "I'm freaking out. I feel there's a big target on my back and there are a lot of expectations and I can't handle it. This is totally above my pay grade. LITERALLY."

But if I thought there was sympathy from my awesome COO, there was none.

With a voice like a blunt instrument, she said, 'Sorry. We *are* relying on you to provide the strategy. This is what you do and what we need from you.'

'Jesus. I'm about to lose my shit,' I said. 'I am so not comfortable with that. I'm not used to that. I'm used to giving suggestions, advice, throwing in some 'have you thought ofs' - not 'this is the whole freaking plan and it came out of my head'!'

You know what's in my head?  Most of the time, bravado and useless crap!  But apparently, that's my job - to marshall my natural talent for bravado and academic bullshit in order to get what we need to survive.  It was a really heavy moment. My job wasn't a game. There was no room for shrugging and saying 'oh well, maybe next time.' There was weight to it.  And it was hanging around my neck and I was scared.

It's terrifying, sometimes, to see yourself the way others see you.  (And this, one week after bullshitting my way through letter of recommendation! The irony, you know?)

My two bosses were sympathetic but not really feeling me more than that.

The upshot: put on your big girl panties, DeliaChristina.

asshat of the day: who else?

Let this be a lesson, kids: when you mix white privilege, male privilege, boredom, celebrity, and a hugely over-indulged ego you grow up to be John Mayer. You've been warned.

Round up of responses to the 'very very' Mayer:
John Mayer's "Very" Wide-Open Window Into U.S. Race Relations - Psychology Today (this one was more empathic than others.)

John Mayer: A black woman responds - Salon

When Racefail Meets Playboy: The John Mayer Interview - Racialicious

Should We Give Him a Pass on the N-word? - BlogHer

John Mayer and his white supremacist man-bits - Feministe

Mayer Reveals His Authentically Racist Self - Whose Shoes Are These Anyway?

Was he high? Was he serious? Who cares? If I keep getting my 'black card' revoked for my lack of pop culture knowledge I want his freaking 'hood pass' permanently suspended!

Parts of his interview (esp. the part about having a white supremecist cock) reminded me of that opening hook up montage in The Wedding Crashers - our two heroes will sleep with *anyone* - just not black women. I honestly don't care who people sleep with - but I always look aslant at folks who cross out whole ethnic groups and don't interrogate it. I include myself in this number; I will admit there are whole countries of men I am not interested in meeting.  Maybe I should give Mayer some slack for being so horrendously honest about his racial preferences.

Whatever. Any dude who needs to look at 300 images of porn just to get going in the morning is an asshat. Frak his honesty.

this is MY country

Rachel Maddow unloads a bunch of righteous fury on Tom Tancredo, the Teaparty and their dangerous, seditious, white supremacist nostalgia.

I connect this moment to Black History Month because, personally, I'm tired of February being the month we use to sing gospel songs (badly and too slowly), revisit big moments Black Folks Did Something That Shamed White Folks Into Thinking We Were People, or to complain about how janky and/or 'post' Black History Month we are now.

For months, it should have been clear that the narrative running beneath anything the Teaparty does or says has been about citizenship; crazy and fringe as they are, the Birthers were onto something. Oh, the thing wasn't Obama's actual birth certificate but the question it prompted: Who is allowed to be American in this contemporary America? 

The ideologically correct answer is any of us and their rejection of our national ideal lies at the dark heart of this seditious movement. (And, yeah, I'll call it that because that's exactlly what it is. Just the same way I'll also characterize it as white supremacist.)

The nostalgia they indulge in speaks to a time when national identity and citizenship was very narrowly defined by race, and every institution of this country supported that narrow definition. Without things like Black History Month (and the people who actually know it), without people like Howard Zinn (rest in peace, truth teller), a TeaPartier's nostalgic wish to 'take back' their country floats in our public discourse without context or challenge.  Black History Month should exist to counter their narrative, to make their narrative a lie. 

Black History Month is understood to be the culmination of a civil rights fight that ended a long time ago.  But it's evidently not over - not as long as there is a burgeoning movement in this country to question my citizenship, my rights to equal protection, my rights to an American history .  As a country, we are young in our plurality and we forget that the world the TeaPartiers lost (and dream of ) could easily return - if we let their seditious wishful thinking take hold.

Still wanna celebrate Black History Month? Let's make a deal.  I'll ignore all the bad Negro spirituals being sung in mainline churches in Sundays this month if y'all read up on things like vote suppression, red lining, the source of racial wealth disparity and our long history of intstitutional racism - and tell these Teaparty sons of sedition to go frak themselves.

...and more on the Idaho 10 (love the name)

Americans Jailed in Haiti Plead for Help From U.S. - NYTimes.com

Sigh.

Reading the comments, I'd say their hold on American sympathy is dwindling.

sheeple

The story about the 10 Baptists in Haiti just gets sadder and more bizarre:

Idahoans in Haiti agreed to pay $7,000 a month to house children in church center, newspaper says News Updates Idaho Statesman

They never had lodging arranged; they didn't have the proper paperwork; they had no clear plan; they had no experience running a facility for children; they were either going to give these children up for adoption OR they were going to be with them forever - in any case, frak their families.

I don't want these sad people thrown in jail; you've recovered the children (who are in a 'real' orphanage) so why not expel them from Haiti and bar them from ever returning?

And please - good hearted Christian ladies! Stop - adopt some critical thinking skills before rushing into the unknown.

professional tip #15: write your own letter of rec

I just wrote the most outrageous ode to my own awesomeness:

"With her help we have become a model of advocacy in the region and we’re proud of the generous way she shares her knowledge with our sister associations to build capacity. We now enjoy a reputation for being ahead of issues, for being a ‘first-responder’ on issues critical to victims of assault and working poor families. It’s difficult to ascribe direct causality but there is no doubt we could not have achieved this without her combination of guts, smarts and resourcefulness."

There's more but I'll stop there.

I'm applying for a competitive leadership bootcamp in DC for May and part of the application is two letters of recommendation. Who'd I pick to recommend me? My CEO and COO (I think having leadership behind you matters).  But they're busy women so I wrote the letter for them, sent it to them, said they could edit it as they saw fit  - and I'd do the rest.  One down, one to go.

Writing it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. 

Have you written a letter of your own awesomeness?

On my path to get to The Next Step I'm becoming a big believer in being your own biggest fan - especially if you're a woman.  Remember that article folks were talking about a month or so ago, about what women needed to do to be more successful - and the upshot was 'be more like a dude'?  Well, no.  I wouldn't know how to be a 'dude' if I tried - but I like being one of the smartest people in the room (and I'm not afraid of being that person in the room who also says 'I don't get it.') I like knowing what I'm capable of and doing it; I like knowing that there are things I can do better than other people. 

Why be ashamed of it?  Why be apologetic for it?
(I'm not saying be a dick.  Just be...who the hell you are. Unless you really are a dick. I can't help you with that.)

To me, not apologizing for being you (constructive warts and all) is being your own biggest fan. And being forced to write it all down makes you define who you are for yourself.  That's why I don't understand people who ask for recommendations and then leave it up to others to say something nice about them.  You're really going to trust other people with your reputation and image?  Really??  Risky.

Anyway, it felt good writing this letter.  It reminded me of why I do the work I do and why I've stayed where I am.  It returned to me some of my purpose.  And when my CEO signed off on it with a fluorish without changing one word, I squee'd a little inside.

Now if I could just conquer my fear of the networking event...

if i was white i'd bore myself to death

This was interesting (in that way that makes you sit back and go, 'Huh.')

This piece in RaceWire posits that the LATimes' method of 'personalizing' their paper to individual readers suffers from what the folks over here call the 'white racial frame.'  (The writer doesn't actually use that term but I'm sure that's what she meant.)

From Hing's piece:
'...I should have known from the get-go, the whole thing is a gussied up marketing survey. And because, as a woman of color, I am not part of their marketing plan. The whole system is powered by Visual DNA, a company with “patented technology proven to increase Revenue Per User.” Visual DNA’s tagline is: “We transform unknown users into known people.” Only problem is, they’re not interested in knowing anyone whose goals, values and interests fall anywhere outside of a very narrow range of people.
The whole exercise is the most heterosexist, white, male, corporate America view of the world.'

(Sounds like the white racial frame to me.)

But I was a little skeptical - I mean, I've taken marketing surveys before. I have yet to meet a survey that acts like a scalpel encoded with your DNA. However, almost immediately, I felt...nonplussed. The choices they gave me to best represent my possible interests, values, issues, self-images, goals, ideas were so frakking White!  I mean, really.  You're going to ask me what's great about America and all I see are white men in suits, skyscrapers, American flags, white servicemen, white people silhouetted against a sunset and then a bunch of latinos holding an American flag? What the hell is that?

So I picked the most innocuous thing I could that didn't scream Mitt Romney:

A blank hand with a computer. This is what's great about America to me because they didn't have any frakking women of color to choose from.

When they asked me about my issues, all I had to choose from were nifty pics of sterile labs, hospitals, a forest (with a white person in it), a wedding cake with two grooms on top of it, more military, a brown person graduating, and a bunch of other stuff that yelled Ozzie & Harriet.  So what did I pick? The brown person graduating - which is lame compared to my 'real' issues (women's rights, poverty, racial inequality, politics, communication...I can find pictures of these things, why couldn't they?)

But then they asked me what success meant.  Dude. They showed me variations of a white family on a boat. Which image did I pick?

An empty, sterile home. (It works, kind of; I consider myself very successful if I have a clean house.)

And don't even get me started on what there was to choose from when I had to identify my Art or my Music.

But the kicker was how they put all my janky, second rate choices together to form my 'white racially framed' profile.  According to them, I am a Live Wire!  I have 'traditional values,' like relaxing with the kids (what the hell?), going to the mall (or soccer pitch), and I have all the excitement of a Sarah Palin speech.

I didn't think it was possible but it's true; the LA Times just made me white. I mean, I'm fairly bougie, but this? They sucked the color right out of me.

All kidding aside, this is what is so frustrating about living within the white racial frame all the time.  I dare say some (white) people will take this survey and also disagree with their profile.  'I don't like flags, the military or picket fences! I like really hip, interesting esoteric things that weren't represented on this survey at all! Marketing surveys are never accurate! You're reading too much...blah blah white privilege white privilege white racial framing...!'  

(And, because, again, this is not about how white people experience the world, but how people of color experience it.  Not a person of color?  STFU.)

I'm talking about the person of color who takes it and, puzzled, ends up just picking random things because we weren't considered at all at the front end of this project; as a result, our view of the world is erased and never represented (and, yes, our view of the world *is* different than yours in alot of ways).  This erasure of our sensibilities, this constant invisibility of our identity - our very presence, even - is a daily strain and source of frustrated disappointment.

As a result of our erasure, the picture of our national culture, our national identity, is diluted. It does our culture a disservice to erase whole peoples like this - just because some marketing guy can't figure out how to fit the rest of us in.  

[If you're a person of color (or a woman, I daresay - the survey comes across as very 'male') please take the visual survey. It's the best example of racial framing I've seen in a long time.]

[Updated: Here's another version of white racial framing.  No young Hollywood actors of color exist? Really?  Nowhere? Like here or here or here or here?  Again, some people aren't trying hard enough.]

what are they thinking?? now we know.

So.
Have you read the GOP poll results from the Kos folks? Holy crap.

They polled 2300 (massive sample) self-identified Republicans and the results made me spit out my cereal.
I swear I don't want to indulge in any lazy name-calling, but what the hell??

These are just some of their answers:
They want Obama impeached. (why??)
They believe he's a socialist.
They barely believe he does *not* want the terrorists to win. (a significant number, however, think there's some wiggle room here.)
They don't want gays to marry, have civil partnerships, serve in the military, receive benefits OR teach in our schools. (so how DO they think gays should be treated?)
They want contraception to be outlawed.
They don't want sex ed taught in schools.
They don't want workers to be allowed to unionize.
They don't want immigrants to be allowed to become citizens.
They think the birth control pill is an abortifacient.
They think the Book of Genesis is a valid lesson to be taught in our science books.
They think ACORN stole the election. (sigh)
They (overwhelmingly) think Sarah Palin is more qualified than the POTUS to be POTUS.

Thankfully, they also think marriage is an equal partnership and women should be able to work outside the home. So, I guess, yay for women. Barely. (Women also like having birth control, asshats, so that we're not constantly dropping babies - so that we can work outside the home.)

Oh! And this:
They believe folks who aren't Christian are going to hell.

What does this kind of fundamentalist theology mean for governing a pluralistic nation? (Which we ARE.)

How do you govern if your base thinks like this? I'm not being facetious. This is a serious question.

How does one develop effective public policy if your base is this....retro. (That's the kindest word I can think of.)

And am I the only one who feels a tiny bit of pity for these folks who see the world through such a paranoid, irrational, illogical, and ungenerous lens?

For the whole poll, go here.

suffer the little children to come unto me...legally

Asked what he thought about the Americans’ claims to be doing God’s work, Mr. Denis shrugged. “What is God’s I leave to God,” he said. “What’s the state’s is ours.”

Ah. God and state.  What is Caesar's and what is not.

The story of the Baptist missionaries playing Pied Piper to a bunch of Haitian kids gives me a Sunday School flashback rash. In Sunday School I learned all about the miraculous things that faith could do: it could roll away a stone from a tomb; it could raise the dead; it could be as small as a mustard seed yet grow into a mighty oak; it could allow you to walk on water, feed hundreds with just a few loaves, it could make you lay down your nets and follow some guy (nevermind about providing a living for your family depending on the revenue of what you caught.)

Basically, if you had the faith of a child you could be a superhero. You could do Anything!!

Or it could land you in jail.
Right now those 10 well-intentioned Baptists are sitting in jail, and quoting Phillipians. The significance of Phillipians? It's the letter Paul wrote while in jail awaiting trial in Rome to the church in Phillipi. He's writing to friends, reassuring them, encouraging them and sharing how his faith (slightly bigger than a mustard seed) in Christ has carried him through this period of darkness.  It's a beautiful letter, I've always thought. 

But Paul is also the go-to apostle when it comes to invoking martyrdom and going 'balls out' for the Lord.
'Limits be damned! I'm on fire for Christ! I am His Chief Sinner! Arrrgh!'

But the Phillipians letter also shows the limits of faith; for all his faith, Paul is still going to trial.  He will be executed in Rome. He will eventually bow his knee to Caesar. His faith is great, but his faith can't stop the workings of the state.

I don't think faith exists to embolden magical, fantastical thinking.  And it was fantastical for those people to think they could 'rescue' Haitian children and then ...what? Just scoot them over the border and keep them indefinitely?  Seems so.  My religious training has always taught that you have faith *in* Christ -- but don't get all crazy with it.  In other words, being faithful is great but that doesn't mean the State can't exert its own will on your ass when you break their laws.  (That's what landed Paul in prison in the first place.)

I also don't think God communicates to us in mysterious, ill-thought directives, despite what someone's father might say: “They were acting in faith. That may sound trivial, but they were acting not only in faith but God’s faith.” God wanted them to ignore procedure and just snatch children across the border? Really? God works like that? I'd like to see that demonstrated, somewhere.

This is also the uncomfortable tension between how we practice our evangelical faith (I say 'we/our' because I can't really get rid of it, no matter how many presbyterian cocktail parties I attend) and the rules of the world we live in.  Faith doesn't exist in a completely rule-free zone.  On one side you have John Brown; on the other, Scott Roeder.  On one side you have the many missionaries who have been in Haiti for years, delivering critical services. But on the other, you have the nagging, troublesome tendency of faith groups to enthusiastically 'fix' things without thinking if they really ought, to the detriment of the very people they're trying to help.  Unintended consequences are a bitch.

One's faith may say 'Save teh poor fetus babehs!' So you shoot Dr. Tiller.  Well, suck it up.  The state has a rule for that. 
One's faith may even say 'Rescue the poor little black babehs!' So you load up a bunch and take them without permission. Their country has a rule for that.
One's faith dictates gays are an 'abomination.' So you strip them of civil rights.  Well, our constitution has a rule for that.

I understand what walking in faith means to an evangelical. You walk by faith, not by sight. You believe there is a purpose, a meaning ahead of you and you walk toward it, even if the path is scary. But where does faith and common sense take leave of one another? Does walking in faith mean to put aside critical thinking skills? Does it mean to ignore the rules of a sovereign country?

To quote a blog friend of mine: You may believe those babies are better off in Idaho, but that doesn't make them 'orphans'.

reasons why having M- isn't such a bad idea

1. He has a beer waiting when I come home from the office at 10 pm.


2. He is my buffer between me and the crazies when I'm not in the mood.

3. The first thing he says when I come thru the door is, 'Hey, there's my girlfriend!'

4. He's not jealous of my job, which he knows I love.

5. He actually pays attention to my job even though he isn't that clear on what I do.

6. He protects my space.

7. He warms up the freezing cold spots in bed.

8,9,10. Other stuff one probably shouldn't say publicly on a blog. Cough.

they got nothin': the prop 8 trial

Over at Pam's House Blend, see how the Prop 8 defense's star witness crumbles under cross examination:


He admitted marriage is a "public good" and that marriage would benefit gays and lesbians, their children and society at large.

He also testified (text below as shown on screen):

· "Gay marriage would extend a wide range of the natural and practical benefits of marriage to many lesbian and gay couples and their children."

· "Extending the right to marry to same-sex couples would probably mean that a higher proportion of gays and lesbians would choose to enter into committed relationships."

· "Same-sex marriage would likely contribute to more stability and to longer-lasting relationships for committed same-sex couples."

· "Same-sex marriage might lead to less sexual promiscuity among lesbians and (perhaps especially) gay men."

· "Same-sex marriage would signify greater social acceptance of homosexual love and the worth and validity of same-sex intimate relationships."

· "Gay marriage would be a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion. It would likely decrease the number of those in society who tend to be viewed warily as 'other' and increase the number who are accepted as part of 'us.' In that respect, gay marriage would be a victory for, and another key expansion of, the American idea."

Geez. Those who want to deny gay civil rights don't even believe their own hateful crap.

oh, the time suck.
enjoy The 50 Most Racist Movies.
(some of which i actually enjoyed, at one time!)

(isn't that an interesting thing? you can derive enjoyment from something that is also racist, which does not negate said racism. i think that's interesting.)

The feedback from my latest post has been great, here and at Bitch.
And, yes.  This is all going somewhere.  Frak the Trashy Novel. My family's fodder enough.

Thanks for listening, all 12 of you.

Cheers,
Delia Christina

this american marriage

If the past month and a half had been a play, my family and I would be together for a holiday gathering. We would live in a rambling old Victorian, a la August: Osage County, and M- would be an owl-eyed guest, utterly clueless to the cracks in our family facade.

At some point during the 2nd course, my sister and her husband’s obvious unhappiness would spill into the gravy, dragging the holiday spirit into the fire and sending ashes over the rest of us. Revelations would be made; hypocrisies exposed. Confessions spat out. Identities and roles would be forever reversed.

And I, the family black sheep, would emerge the well-adjusted one.

Because if I (anti-authoritarian, knee-jerk, shrill, tarty, boozy, feminist and well stocked with pharma) am well-adjusted, then you know some serious shit has hit the fan.
…
‘I had an affair,’ my sister L- said. Her text message had sounded urgent so I was huddled in the guest bathroom of a friend’s house with a glass of wine and my mobile, waiting for her to spill it. ‘The guilt was killing me so I had to tell him.’
‘Jesus Christ. You *told* him?? Why the fuck did you tell him?’ All I could think about were all those Dateline episodes of cheated upon husbands who killed their wives, dumping their bodies in places like the La Brea tar pits or a shrubby ravine somewhere in the canyons.

‘There’s more.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ, L-. If you tell me you got pregnant I will fly to LA and take you to Planned Parenthood myself.’
‘I couldn’t if I tried.’ Sniffle.
‘I don’t get it.’

‘It was a woman. I had an affair with a woman.’

*crickets*
…
My office phone rang yesterday and my father was on the other end. When he told me what he told me, at least he asked permission first.

I groaned. ‘Geez, dad. Every time you tell me something I need a drink after. Why can’t you write it in your journal and I can read it when you die?’

My family has always had secrets. My father’s family secrets read like a black southern gothic: drug use, prostitution, child abuse, mental instability, ‘passing,’ sexual abuse, old-time religion, and denial. Everywhere, denial.

On my mother’s side there’s just a giant question mark. In a reversal of the usual Filipino immigrant narrative, my mother never tried to bring over any of her family. While they wrote often, it was clear my mother’s family was glad to see my mom over here and keep themselves over there. When they wrote my father at the news of her death they said how sorry they were. They also said they were sorry for the hard life my mother had had in the islands and that they were glad she was finally at peace.

The reason for sending her away was never made clear to either my sister or me. If my father knew, he kept my mother’s secret. At least, that secret. Her other secret she was willing to spill on her own.

My sister and I had both been in college when, one afternoon, my sister was home, watching Geraldo with my mother. It was an episode about biological mothers being reunited with the children they had given up for adoption.

Mom nudged my sister. ‘That’s me.’
‘What?’
‘That’s me. Before you and your sister, I had to give up a baby. You have another sister.’
My sister watched the rest of the episode with tears in her eyes. A week later she told me while we were walking down Bruin Walk, on our way to sell back out books at the end of the quarter. We were both laughing and crying while all I could say was ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?!’

Somewhere out there, we have an older Filipino/Hungarian half-sister. With every tv show about reuniting families, I feel a lump of dread. I don’t want to know her. I don’t want her to find us; the family I grew up with is all I need. Or so I thought. Barely three weeks into the new year, it is becoming clear that the family I have may not resemble the family I grew up with.

Back in my office, my father’s voice thickened over the phone.
‘I just don’t want you to hate your mother or me. Don’t hate your daddy.’
‘Dad, I could never. There is shit in everyone’s life. I have shit in my life. I just don’t tell you because, you know –boundaries.’
There was a short bit of silence then he said, ‘Do you remember when your mother stopped sleeping in the bedroom?’
‘When she slept on the couch for two years? I always thought that was menopause.’
‘Menopause? I never thought of that.’ His voice got all viscous again. ‘Your mom and I had stopped being intimate for a long while. She just wasn’t interested in all that anymore. So I had a same sex affair with – ‘

‘Do not tell me.’ I could guess who it was and even if I couldn’t I didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles and bump into my father’s ex-gay lover and actually know it. If it was who I thought it was, my anger toward him had a different source and I wanted to keep that with me. I didn’t want it clouded with empathy or sympathy.

‘Your sister…she’s like your mom but she’s like me.’ He added. ‘Why do you think I’ve always said I’ll never marry another woman after your mom?’

I’ve always known this. Well, I’ve known this since my mother died. I’ve known that my father was curious, was testing the bars of his cage. My friends had always suspected my father was gay and we had laughed about it over wine after every visit. Even now, my friends are sending me joking messages: “OMFG! We knew it! He was too well-dressed for an old guy!”

And so the faded, sepia-tinted mental photos I carried in my head about my family have begun to curl and crisp around the edges. I predict that in about 6 months, they will be all but ash and I will have new, more complicated images of my family and my childhood to carry with me.
…
What is it about marriage? What is it that squeezes the life out of a person? I’m not talking about partnership or love or devotion. I’m not even talking about cohabitation. I’m talking about the whole blinking thing. The Marriage. What about it turns those who believe in it into clichéd versions of 19th century domestic dramas?

I can’t decide if my sister is experiencing The Awakening or Madame Bovary; my father is wobbling in some kind of Maurice of his own and I’m looking at both of them wondering if any of this would be happening to them if they hadn’t been married in the first place. What did marriage force them to postpone?

There is something wrong with the way our culture packages, practices and defines marriage. Maybe it’s the presumption of monogamous heterosexuality. Maybe it’s the irrational investment the rest of us feel when it comes to someone else’s marriage. I found myself resisting the fact that my sister’s marriage was not the perfectly manicured Garden of Marital Bliss. When she told me they had been having trouble for seven years, the voice in my head whined, ‘Nooooo!’ When she paused after I asked her if she still loved her husband, I answered for her. ‘Of course you do! You do!’

Why try and push her to say that everything was fine when everything was SO NOT fine?

I had been proud of the marriage my sister had made. I was proud of the fact that she and her handsome husband had proven all of the statistics wrong. I loved the optics of their marriage. They were professional, brown, young, attractive, educated, smart, popular, wholesome, Catholic, and socially liberal/fiscally conservative; they had bright, gorgeous Black-y-Mex-y-Pino kids. They were the perfect foil against our low-income childhoods in South Central and Santa Monica. I loved that I could compare my wacky life to it and say to myself, ‘Their marriage makes my un-marriage necessary.’

But the pride I’d taken in their marriage makes me complicit in its disintegration. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who took emotional and visual pleasure in their marital status. Both families saw them as a way of correcting the past. We heaped such expectations on them – not to be like our parents, to do things the ‘right’ way. So when my sister cries out that she feels like she is being crushed and her husband says his loneliness is killing him, I feel as if our families’ (and friends’) desire for someone to have that perfect marriage has been yet another weight upon their chests.
…
In my office I had been on the phone with my father for almost an hour, looking at the river, listening to his gay affair confession and his notion that all marriage reaches an inevitable point of impasse. It was depressing as hell to hear and to think that my father could only become the fuller person that he is now after his wife died. Is that what it takes to be happy and authentic? For your spouse to fucking die off?

‘LB (my brother in law) wants to have a three-way with you and me,’ my dad said.
‘What the hell?!’ I said. Had my brother in law snapped? Was he reaching out for any freaky opportunity for retaliation at my sister?
‘He really needs to talk to someone, Del. He’s been calling me for the past three days and I think he’d like to talk with you, too.’
‘Dad, the term is ‘conference call.’ He would like to have a conference call with us. Jesus.’
‘That’s what I meant, girl!’

I let it go.

I’m going to have to let everything go. Just like they are.

[Updated to change the title.]

ideas (and preparation) matter: cook county board president candidate forum

Last night I went to the Cook County President Candidate forum sponsored by local domestic violence and sexual violence orgs and I have never had such a stupendously clear example of how *not* to present yourself to an important constituency.  It was really disappointing that not a single GOP candidate (or Dem O'Brien) mustered the energy to attend.  While there may have been legitimate reasons why they were absent (hey, I know schedules can get weird) they've left the women in that packed room no choice but to say to folks, "XX Candidate doesn't give a shit about violence against women."

Is that an unfair characterization?  Perhaps.  Too bad they weren't there to counter it.

Should the Cook County President even care about violence against women?  Considering how domestic and sexual  violence impacts the women/girls and LGBTQ community in this county, and how we may/may not be accessing services through the public healthcare system or may/may not be interacting with law enforcement - yes, the Cook County President should goddamn care how a public health/safety issue is impacting at least 1/4 of the goddamn population.

(You can read my Tweets about it last night here.)

What I learned last night:

1. The importance of a good moderator:  Kimbriell Kelly was awesome.  She didn't let candidates get away with anything.  When Stroger drifted into generalities, she pressed him for specifics and clarification.  When Brown tried to rest on her laurels about funding, she rode Brown to lay out a specific implementation plan to counter violence against women.  When Tresser just looked nuts and repeated himself about fighting corruption and waste, she pretty much called that a red herring.  And, yes, she also pressed Preckwinkle to be more specific about best practices.

2. The importance of having good ideas:  I would gladly stand next to Tom Tresser in a protest.  The guy is relentless.  He fought against the Olympic bid (yay!), the Oprah show (huh?) and has been a non profit leader, a social justice activist and community activist for years.  I bet he even buys organic vegetables.  But as a candidate he is a disaster.  I have no doubt he wants reform in our county gov't and that it needs reform.  But while the spirit is willing, his talk is crazy.  Ideas matter.  Having a few would be a good idea.

When he said that he would defund the sheriff's department as a response to the practice of shackling female prisoners while they give birth, Brown gave him a 'you are so crazy' side glance that made the two back rows snort aloud.  That's your idea, Tom?  Really?  You're going to stand by that?

Speaking of Brown: it's true the county needs cash.  (Take a close look at CTBA's analysis of the county system, sometime.)  But if your only viable problem-solving solution, with the exception of establishing task forces and committees, is to source revenue then why call yourself President?  Why not just run for the Chief Development and Revenue Officer, or something like that?  I don't see the flexibility in her thinking.

It was disappointing that no one had a sufficient answer to my question: how would they prepare county providers for the fallout should a state budget fail to materialize?

I know that Stroger has become sort of a walking joke in this town - and last night did nothing to dispel it.  The guy is checked out.  He looked disengaged from the entire process.  His answers were defensive, vague and lacking in specifics.  Did anyone prepare him at all for that forum?  I mean, give the guy a fact sheet on the issue, for god's sake.  The only fire he showed was when he snapped on Brown for saying he didn't sit on a certain com'tee.  'My representative sits on that com'tee for me,' he snitted.  Brown snitted back and for a couple of minutes it was like being at a Sunday dinner with some crazy deacons.

Jesus Christ, this is what we have to work with.

3. The importance of knowing what the hell you're talking about - and who actually gets the work done: This is Toni Preckwinkle's strength.  I don't know if she's a fast learner or knew this stuff before, but for every question she answered she gave an example of a best practice.  When asked what they've done to combat violence against women, the only thing Stroger could say was he implemented a program to tow johns' cars in the act of soliciting.  Preckwinkle pointed to the excellent work of a program called End Demand and detailed what they did and how she supports programs like that in order to shift the burden away from arresting protitutes which doesn't do anything except to further destabilize women.  That's a smart answer.  That's an answer that shows some little study; it shows a more flexible way of thinking about domestic trafficking - and it's an acknowledgment that domestic violence and sexual violence orgs actually do the work bloated municipalities can't.

She plays to her strength which is knowing what's happening on the ground.  Why couldn't Tom (who's on the ground) articulate that?  If the county is strapped it's going to have to rely more on community orgs to deliver services for it.  She sees that the county is going to have to become more of a facilitator of services and in order to do that, you need the right ideas and the right folks in place to get that done.

(And no. I have never paid Toni Preckwinkle this much attention before last night. She always seemed kind of crabby when I spoke with her.)

4.  If they can do it, so can you: Swear to god, if these people can run for office, show up completely out of their depth, spout inanities and get away with it, so can you.  But don't do what they do.  Be better than they are.  Apply for training with IWIL.org.  Or go to a DFA training.  Or register with The White House Project.  Study your issues.  Raise some cash.  Just be better than they are. 

Please.  For the love of our democracy.

The Book of Eli: Or, Yay for the Chinese!

(spoilers galore)

So The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic fable about faith, the Word and, ultimately, the triumph of the printing press.  Sure, Denzel has the knife, the mystical connection to The Book, defends women from predation, and can shoot a vulture from the sky with his handy bow and arrow. But believe me, the real hero of this flick is the printing press. (Which was invented by the Chinese! See? Get it??)

You can read this film in one of two ways: a religious fable about the enduring nature of the Word to triumph over godless evil or the triumph of humanism and western culture over the petty wrangling of global illiteracy and ignorance.

No doubt, Eli is a religious-ish man on a quest to save The Book. He prays. He resists the blandishments of the flesh; while kicking ass, he quotes Scripture, murmuring about accountability in the afterlife after shoving some dude’s nose into his skull; he reads the Book every night and protects it with his life. He gruffly explains to Solara (Mila Kundis) that faith is going where you don’t know where to go. (Or something like that. Whatever. It’s about as clear as ‘belief in things that are unseen.’)
The irreligious psycho Carnegie (Oldham) is also a man of faith. Carnegie is a man with a vision; he is a man who recognizes the patterns and traditions of prayer but wants to exploit it, in much the same way he exploits the fresh water springs he hides or the flesh of his blind concubine’s daughter.

The Word in The Book of Eli is an intangible and elusive thing, which makes me wonder if those calling this movie a piece of religious propaganda ever went to Sunday School. We actually don’t see much of its religious power. No one worships, no one preaches. Mostly, the Word (and the faith that it is supposed to represent) is a nice relic from the Old World, before the war. It is, however, particularly effective when you’re about to kick ass or have yours kicked. Literally embodying the scripture that says the word of God must be written in your heart and mind, Eli quotes the Book from memory. Quoting the Word separates him from those in Carnegie’s world.

But Carnegie knows the Book, too. Aptly named, he is part post-apocalyptic land baron and part religious ringmaster and old enough (like Eli) to remember that religion is used as a force of social control. With the Book, you don’t need henchmen, guns or weapons. The Book itself is a weapon to manipulate and soothe the ravaged populace into submission. This sounds familiar enough to me, with the likes of Pat Robertson and other crazy religious leaders going around urging violence on a god’s behalf today. In fact we learn that the cataclysmic event that burned the earth and turned people blind and sick was perhaps caused by a religious conflict, which led to the eradication of all books (especially religious books.)

In the movie’s climactic fight scene, Carnegie forces Eli to relinquish the Book and misquotes scripture as he fires a bullet into Eli’s belly to prove he is just a man and not the physical embodiment of the Word. It seems the Word has been defeated by gangrenous capitalism.

But it’s in the film’s last 10-15 minutes that the alternate reading of this film becomes clear. The Book itself is a burden. Once he is free of the oversized, leather-bound and locked Book, Eli remembers that it is not the doctrine of the Book that matters but the internalization of its message: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He reduces the whole of the Bible to manners. (Eli’s manners, by the way, are impeccable.) In sum, the Word is about being kind to one another. Carnegie, meanwhile, takes the Book, struggles to unlock it and discovers it is all in Braille. (Neat twist! Eli is blind but he can ‘see’! How…like a parable he is.) Carnegie’s blind concubine refuses to read it to him and his corrupt world descends into chaos. We last see the Book laying open, unread and useless on Carnegie’s desk.

As a spiritual document, the Book is useless but in the hands of those who are trying to preserve the printed legacy of Western culture (or any remaining culture at all) the memorized verses of the Bible are priceless. On a fortified Alcatraz, Eli recites the Book to an erstwhile cultural librarian who writes it all down and then prints it on an old school printing press. Eli’s version of the Bible is then bound and put on a shelf next to a copy of the Koran, the Talmud and other religious books.

So the sum of religious conflict and doctrine lands on a shelf on a shattered island in the hands of a few bibliophiles and blind Eli is dead, swathed in a white robe and shaved bald, literally becoming the Monk he was meant to be.

As for the Word? I doubt the culturally literate are keeping the books and pieces of art in an armed Alcatraz to create an afterschool literacy program. Keeping the artifacts of culture away from the rabble is a nice jab at cultural elites (folks like us?) and neatly rewrites the revolutionary power of the printing press – which actually removed literacy from the sole province of the privileged. The only other person who followed Eli is an illiterate urchin (Solara) who sets off toward home, carrying Eli’s damaged iPod, his sword and, we presume, his Word: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Upon this rock perhaps the world will be rebuilt. Amen.

a tardy post for MLK day

So I’m in a café yesterday, relishing in Dr. King’s holiday – and the day off it affords me. Yeah, I could do some volunteering but I work my arse off for a women’s org that empowers women and eliminates racism every day. I think I can do with a day off from official do-gooding.

So I’m reading the paper some guy left behind and two stories jump out at me: the one about Matisha Goens who left her 8 mo-old baby at a police station on the south side and the one about the additional costs gay couples incur just to have the bare minimum of privileges straight couples get to have.

Some questions prompted by the Matisha Goens story:
Why are we criminalizing this young mother for doing exactly what she ought to have done (rather than keep her child and risk future abuse and neglect) when it’s clear that more needs to be done to fix a system of care that is overburdened and lacks the necessary capacity for young parents like Goens?

Though she’s being charged with a misdemeanor and not a felony, how will Goens receive the help she needs? If she becomes a mother again, how will she build the skills to be a safe and nurturing mother?

One solution might be something called the Young Parents Program (funded through the Ounce of Prevention) that seeks to give young parenting women the skills and capacity to mother -- and which could prevent what happened to Goens from happening to other young mothers. Through this program, young mothers attend regular support groups, gain parenting skills (which aren’t intrinsic behaviors, incidentally), are visited regularly by program counselors, are observed and taught to be better mothers. If young mothers experience high levels of stress, feelings of isolation and depression, this program helps these young women develop coping skills and regain their confidence in their abilities to mother their children – which also helps them make crucial decisions to strengthen their childrens’ lives. They can see the possibility to attend school or find better employment rather than see no other way out than to leave their children at a police or fire station.

But if our state’s budget takes another header into the toilet, this program goes away – much like it did for 3 mightmarish months last summer when the FY10 state budget proved inadequate and the Ounce lost the funding it needed to keep this program running. As our state’s fiscal crisis spirals further out of control, and our leaders refuse to take action, stories like Matisha’s will become more common.

Another question:  Why don’t we listen to young women who express their doubts about motherhood? It’s rather clear (to me, anyway) that Goens knew she didn’t have the wherewithal for early motherhood. Her own mother says Goens had expressed doubts about her pregnancy and her ability to mother; she had talked about adoption but her mother thought it would get better once the baby arrived.

(I can’t even deal with the kind of wacky logic that is.)

Goens became more depressed and isolated during her pregnancy and had, once she gave birth, had already tried to give away her baby. Why didn’t anyone listen to her? Why are we in the habit of discounting what young women tell us about their own situations?

If a young woman says she can’t handle motherhood, don’t you think she knows this better than others? Beyond this instance, if a young woman expresses doubt about her ability to be pregnant, to be a mother, why in the world don’t we take her at her word and get her what she says she needs in order to alleviate the problem? (And yes, I’m also talking about access to reproductive services like abortion.)

I often make fun of the decision-making skills of teenagers (whose decision-making centers in their brains aren’t finished developing yet) but when it comes to this, I’m willing to give them a benefit of the doubt.

And just a short statement about today’s piece in the Trib about the legal hoops same-sex couples have to jump through just to have the bare minimum of straight people’s legal rights:

When the world works ONE way to the marked benefit of a significant population, it should work the exact same way for everyone else.

That’s what justice is.
That’s what civils rights are.

And anything else is bullshit.

What I Learned This Week

1.  I learned 6 strategies and tactics that should help me on the market this year (through these folks) - and simultaneously learned that I've been wasting valuable time on my jobsearch.  Oh, and I finally learned what 'personal branding' meant.  (Do you have an interview bucket list?  Me neither!!  Do you have your communication strategy in place?  I don't!)

2.  I learned that I have a short fuse when it comes to gathering consensus.  It's so clear to me what an action plan should be and it pains me to have to wait until other, dithering folks come around.  In other words, I don't frakking care.  You want something done, or don't you?  Then *do* it.

A note:  if you are a non profit taking an advocacy position you are afraid your Board will not support, take the time to cultivate and engage them on the issue; not doing this leads to vague, unclear, ineffective communication,  your advocacy efforts die on the vine, and your Board becomes a hindrance rather than a help.  They individually may not be 'for' tax increases, but the services your agency delivers relies on increased state revenue - which comes from taxes and which impacts the folks you serve.  Effective issue advocacy can't happen unless you have a Board willing to 'get' it.

3.  I've also learned that we (i.e., the U.S., the 'West', France, the industrialized world) have royally, historically screwed over Haiti; the teeny bit of aid we're sending over there is a drop of relief in a vast ocean of FUBAR we (the U.S.) have left them to drown in.

For example:
However, due to the fact that France and its allies (including the United States) forced Haiti to make reparations to French slaveholders in 1852 in the amount of 90 million gold francs ($21 billion today), Haiti was forced to pay France for the next one hundred years for its independence and has subsequently become the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. (here)

100 years to pay rich countries $21 billion.  What the HELL is that?!

4.  I've learned how important it is to be authentically You.  (This isn't about me, but about folks in general, and women of color in particular, so maybe this is about me. But it isn't really.  It really was prompted by something happening to someone else. Really.)

I thought being an academic was my authentic self; but my years with a coach and a therapist showed me how it never felt authentic to me at all and was a burden to me for a long time.  For years, thinking about being an academic, and then not being an academic, gave me panic attacks.  Authenticity isn't supposed to send you into panic.  Sure, am I a smarty pants?  Yes.  But this right now is my authentic self - a self that couldn't exist without that other one.

My 66-yr old father is finally discovering his 'authentic self' and it has nothing to do with being a pastor, father, grandfather or whatever other box we've put him in.  (His journey has made me closer to him and I can only hope my sister can make it through her journey of finding her authentic self - beyond 'Good Wife' or 'Dutiful Daughter.')

5.  It's also freaking hard to eat only 1400 calories a day - especially during a Chicago winter.  And having a boyfriend is great but hanging out with him watching old horror movies. LOST and Dr. Who is making my ass spread (hey! don't be dirty); add to that the stress of work and the few pounds I'd shed creep back.  Dude.  I need to get back on track.  Deciding how to spread 1400 calories over a full work day without feeling ravenous by the time I get home is fucking hard.

But I also have to be ok with myself.  Getting to the other side of 200 will be a long-term commitment.  I'm not going to get it right all the time but, eventually, I'll get there.

6.  Speaking of M-, I've learned that I've chosen my choice.  He's on my team now.  I'm learning what it takes to be One instead of Two.  And, yes, it's just as wrenching as I thought it would be.

Shit.  I'm going to be late.  M- is coming over for movies and whatnot.  Gotta go and pick up some beer.
(Damn! There go my 1400 calories.)

Dammit.
The text in that Twitter gadget is too light.

Hmph.

2010: already some choppy waters

Already, the new year is crazy.

Really, Rod? You're 'blacker' than the POTUS? I guess, for this guy, race and class are all the same.
Really, FOX?  I'll just let this speak for itself:

Her substantive deficiencies, even more dramatic than those that had previously been reported: her lack of understanding about why there are two Koreas, her ignorance about the function of the Federal Reserve, her belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

I guess there really aren't any standards left, at all.

And, really, Harry Reid?  But then, who in the world is surprised that some elderly guy from Nevada thinks this way?  I mean, come on!  On the other hand, isn't he really talking about code-switching? And most of us folks of color do it.  Or maybe he really is saying that some black fella could never  be president unless he was high yella and talked proper, I don't know.  I'm not an old white guy. 

But did anyone catch Liz Cheney on This Morning on Sunday? Good lord, the balls on her.  She actually said that this was the way 'liberal elites' talked to each other because no one she knows would speak this way.  It was a neat move:  acknowledge the problematics (but not really because no one around that table with the exception of the bearded guy was thinking about anything other than intent rather than impact) but throw the onus of Raqcism on the liberals.  (Not to say that libs on the left always get race right. Hello, Clintons during the primary.)  Kudos to her for that flexible piece of racial/linguistic gymnastics.

(Ta-Nehisi Coates has an aside on it here. Which you've probably already read because I'm late with this.)

Anyway, the legislative session starts today in Springfield. (God, I hate going down to Springfield.  I hate that there's only one train in/out of that place; I hate that the office maps make no sense whatsoever and I hate that it's so dingy and small and if you miss the 5 pm train, you're basically screwed.)

This session is going to be a hard one.  No one wants to take responsibility for the massive crisis Illinois is facing.  Gov Quinn is trying to do the right thing but he's so...un-smooth, he makes himself an easy target for both the GOP and Hynes.  And his tone-deaf mishandling of the last budget cycle did not leave a good taste in anyone's mouth.  Hynes is doing the best he can and has an inside view of the toilet our state budget is in, and how human services is on the bubble - since his office has about $5 billion in unpaid bills to address.  His plan is modest but, of course, since it relies on increasing taxes, the GOP is going to eat him alive.

[Update: I've heard some scuttlebutt that Hynes' plan to fix things is actually more far-reaching, and potentially painful to human services, than previously expected.  Drastically slimming down human services?? I'll have to follow up on that with some folks I know.]

And what's the IL GOP doing?  Not a single GOP candidate seems to have a realistic clue about the budget.  They all think it's only a matter of structural bloat and not of debilitating structural debt that needs revenue.  We don't have $13 billion in cuts to make in our budget.  If you try to cut $13 billion you start cutting into essential services, like education, medical care, public safety, etc.

A GOP Rep was on Chicago Tonight last week (I met him once - a nice, sincere, faith kind of guy) but when he said that the first priorities for any budget was for things like critical infrastructure like education, healthcare and public safety, I wanted to say, 'Who do you think does that work??' 

Who addresses issues of access and quality education in this state?  Non profits.  Who operates a gamut of services that provide medical care and health care access to communities?  Non profits.  Who often delivers services that impact the public safety of our communities?  Non profits.  Who delivers crucial food, shelter and violence services?  Non profits.  Who educates, trains and professionalizes our child care providers?  Non profits.

WE DO THE WORK THE STATE CAN'T.

How do the Dems respond?  Some of them have quietly signed on to a modest revenue plan.  Some (like D'Amico) are stubbornly refusing to take responsibility and do what needs to be done to fix this train wreck. And what's the GOP response?  Strategic obstruction.

I was on a call yesterday and it was said that the House Republican leader is going to hold his caucus so tightly there will be no movement from any Republican on this budget issue until after the general election in November 2010.  They get to step back and deny any responsibility - they weren't involved so nothing is their fault.  But what do they think is going to happen to 25% of the non profits spread across this state, in the meantime?  And after the general election, and they may/may not have control of the Governor's office, how craptacular is the budget going to be when none of their current candidates  have the integrity to do what everyone knows needs to happen - RAISE REVENUE.

(When I say 'everyone' I'm talking about Crain's, Trib, Daily Herald, Bond Buyer, Pew Center on the States, etc.)

Leader Cross wants to 'move Illinois forward' but how can you do that when your plan is to delay movement - and won't actually fix anything?
 
So.  Here's to a tough session.

on the unintended consequences of bad policy and parental notifications

I don't think anything I write this year will compare to this post at Fugitivus:

Laws restricting access to medical services are laws restricting access to medical services. They are not laws creating family talks, better worlds, or moral teenagers. They are laws creating restrictions to medical services, which people do not seek unless they need them. Laws creating restrictions to medical services are laws creating restrictions to services people need and need desperately. You can argue that the lawmakers had some kind of noble intentions in mind — I will not buy it, but you can argue that. But you cannot argue that once the law has been in effect and created an inability to comply, and yet remained unchanged. If this was a law about notifying parents, it would have addressed how to notify parents. If this was a law about how to seek a bypass, it would have addressed how to seek a bypass. Since it didn’t address either of those things, this is obviously a law about something else. You only get one guess about what that something else is.

The whole post is long but powerful (especially her memory of what it's like to be on the street and needing to come up with plans b/c/d/e & f.  This section is almost enough to convince me that most policy discussions/solutions need to start with/come from the people who are actually experiencing what others are trying to legislate or control.  Everything else is just academic or intellectual bullshit meddling.)

Because of my job I've become aware that most legislators don't actually read finer points of policy implications for a new piece of legislation; they want the bullet points.  So we give it to them, probably to the detriment of thoughtful policy development.  Some of them ask for clarification but they appear to rely on instinct, some electoral soothe-saying, and a smattering of hope that the nit-picky administrative details will be resolved in committee while all they have to do is jump on as sponsor and then vote on it when it's called.

Well, unfortunately, the devil is in those very details they are likely to overlook.

We rely on our elected officials to take care of the public's trust but they are often too 'busy' (see how I give them the benefit of the doubt there?) to actually do it critically, or thoroughly.

Illinois' parental notification law survived a legal challenge and will be in place as of this year.  At least, that's what they tell us.  Think our bankrupt, overtaxed and janky state system will have a firm enough hand to enforce this badly constructed law?  I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, the anti-woman/anti-choice faction has succeeded in building a wall separating young women in crisis from their legal access to a needed legal, medically-approved procedure.

Golf clap, frakkers.

ringin' in the new year

My liver body has finally recovered from the most kick ass NYE party ever to be thrown in East Ukrainian Village.  What better way to ring in 2010 than to rent a dive bar (thereby giving some older Latina woman a bunch of business she never would have had otherwise) and invite your closest and dearest to drop by and abuse an open bar for 8 straight hours?

M- acted as resident DJ, I was resident hostess and a low-key, yet fabulous, time was had by all.



Generally, this holiday break was a keeper.  One for the books.  But now the fun is over and it's time for me to figure out just what I want to get out of this New Year.  Do I want to be a skinny bitch?  (Not really.)  But I still have to get on the other side of 200. 
Do I want to have a new job? Maybe; I'd really like to build more of a nest egg and have more disposable income. 
Do I want to finally finish that trashy novel?  Yes; I have half of it written!  Only 25k more words to go! 
Do I want to start making money from this blog?  Uh, yes.  (JP, how do I do that?)
Do I want to build deeper, more mature relationships with the folks I love?  Yes, but on my terms. 
Do I want to see my family more?  (Especially my sister...)  Yes, though they are going to give me a stroke.

(Just a word to families of color out there:  therapy is your FRIEND.  Really.  Try it.)

I thought this year was going to be about kicking professional ass but if I look at what I really need, I need a year that will push me further down this road of relationship building and self-building that I've been on for the past two years.  Sure, I'd like to kick professional ass but I don't want to ignore the relationships I've also built and some of which are in flux right now.

What do you want 2010 to bring?

there's a boy in my stocking!

(habits are hard to break.  the title of this post was going to be 'Ding's 1st Christmas - With a BOY.')

Remember all those holidays I spent complaining about LTF's lack of will when it came to spending time with me when I finally had the time? Remember those posts dithering about some vague desire I had to give him a holiday gift? (The most I ever mustered was a Christmas card.)

Well, this time I get to spend a real Christmas with a real dude, and not some frakked up facsimile thereof.

He's spending Christmas Eve with his family; I'm spending it with a friend's family. (Happy Birthday, mom.)
Then we'll be together for Christmas to exchange gifts, watch movies and grab Chinese food.  My perfect holiday.

I used to laugh at my sister every holiday as she'd dump a pile of gift-wrapped boxes at her husband's feet when they were dating in college; I thought she was a tool of the patriarchy.  Now I laugh at myself as I wander Michigan Avenue trying to calculate his shirt size or whether he'll prefer cotton PJs to flannel. The universe played a joke on me and I have to give it props for its timing.

Navigating this new relationship, and the various ripples from it, makes me think about the progress I've made as a result of those two years of coaching and therapy.  I'm so glad I went through that process.  (I really can't recommend it enough.)  I was feeling stuck and was just emerging from the fog of my mother's death.  The progress since then may look tiny, but it's significant to me.  From being blocked, guarded, defensive and numb to where I am now - autonomous, independent again, working to be present, checking in with myself, being more clear-eyed about what it is that I really value and what I need.  Moving past B-/LTF.

Of course, these are 'first-world' problems; who else has such luxury to navel gaze? 

But I'm proud of the internal progress I've made.  Maybe 'Kick Ass' isn't such a bad resolution after all.

Merry Merry to all my 11 readers - thanks for sticking around this long!

unmasking Ding

some things will be changing around here.

if anyone follows me on Twitter (or pays attention here) you'll notice that my pseudonymity is just about to disappear. i've decided that i've been hiding my professional light under a bushel for long enough and if i'm going to start going after what i want, i need to start pushing my 'personal brand.' sigh.

for years, Ding/ChurchGal has been a 'brand' of sorts, but i can't really take advantage of that as 'Ding' forever, you know? it would be like walking around in a cowl and hood.

so...this means that Screed will start migrating some of the personal stuff to another place. (can't really build a reputation on swooning over the boyfriend, you know?)

if you want to follow my Tweets, you can still do so here.

what was my new year's resolution a few years ago? Make An Effort.

this year, i'll add to that: Make An Effort and Be Ambitious.

Or maybe the other way around: Be Ambitious and Make the Effort.

or maybe i'll just condense it: Kick Ass.

sigh: i might as well be killed by a terrorist

Marriage eludes high-achieving black women - msnbc.com

apparently, my 'marriage market' has 'deteriorated' to such an extent i, and sisters like me, are doomed to singleness forever.

we're DOOMED, i tell you.

how come all these articles like this are about black women? how doomed are my high achieving asian girl friends? my over educated latina sisters? huh? why come all this pathologizing of the black women?

hmph.

looks like M- is my ticket out of spinsterhood.

(just kidding, M-! just kidding! kinda.)

since my visit with my family last week, there's been a post floating around my head about the community i come from, the religious community i come from and both those communities' inability to address family abuse (both physical and sexual) - and how that refusal ripples outward, creating more and more shit.

but, of course, i'm a little swamped right now.

and it's frakking 2 degrees in chicago.

brr.

but this one is coming up. soon.

Power to the Sheeple

[in BossLady’s office]

BL: Ding, I got your presentation. I LOVE it! It’s great! It’s well-researched, thought out, love the strategy…

D: Great!

BL: But…it’s too informative.

D: What??

BL: It’s not going to work. It’s…going to scare the crap out of them. You’re going to start a panic.

D: Have they seen the news??

BL: Well…you know that, I know that. But you have to understand… They can’t handle this kind of thing. You want to manage people, don't you?

D: Uh, no. Not if it means catering to idiots who need to be treated like they're brain-damaged.

BL: Well, that's who we have. They think they want to know, but they really don't. Let me just show you what I think needs to be taken out. It's not a lot. [crossing out a few slides about how bad and disastrous our state deficit is]

D: What?! But-but that’s what the presentation is about! You can’t get rid of that! It’s on the news, in the papers, every policy wonk in the state releases a report about our numbers. They can’t handle policy??!

BL: (sigh) These aren’t directors; these are middle managers. They are sheep. They won’t know how to handle this information so we need to manage it for them. [crossing out a slide of message points]

D: Oh, no, I have to TOTALLY disagree with that. If we are supposed to be asking them to help us fight for a better state budget, we need to give them the tools! Otherwise, what’s the point of this presentation? ‘Uh, the state budget is bad but I can’t tell you how bad or how to talk about it.’ What the fuck??

BL: Ok, ok. You have a point. I guess it can stay. But this has to go. [crossing out phrase ‘uninformed public.’] This is them. Can’t say this.

D: But we can call them sheep. Niice. I thought we were about empowering women. How can we empower staff, ask them to perform for us, but not trust them with what we know or trust them to be rational adults? What about giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and treating them like equals?

BL: (wince) Yeah...no. We actually set the bar a little lower than equal.

D: But they’re our Leadership council! Being a leader is about responsibility and trust – but we don’t trust them? What's this group for? And how come I'm not on it?

BL: Senior management realizes now that this was probably a mis-named group.

D: Jesus.