where i ramble and get in touch with my anger

things that have pissed me off today:

1. reading about the blog demise of BrownFemiPower. damn. i came to the whole kerfuffle too late (caught up with it via Post Bourgie as well as some other brown blogs) but it's upsetting to read about. i read BFP on and off and, though she was way more radical than i and it scared me because i'm a timid bougie brown girl who likes things a little too comfortable, her work and voice was/is important, rigorous and fierce.

i call myself a feminist, and have done so for a very long time, but the whole thing (which is part of a larger history of the rigorous work academics/activists of color being completely glossed over and/or appropriated) just makes me wonder why i even fucking care to call myself one anymore. i mean, events like this just rear up to ride my last brown nerve like a pony. it also demonstrates for me again why impact needs to be considered when something like this happens; whatever some folks' intent was when it all first blew up, the end result is that an important woman of color's voice on the blogosphere is gone.

maybe i'm naive, but i don't think 'sisterhood' is supposed to end up with one of us battered and exhausted from the struggle.

(shrug) i don't know.

maybe sisterhood isn't even the fucking point of 'feminism' anymore.

2. reading the 'post-game' wrap up of last night's PA primary.
3. realizing this never-ending primary season is going to drag on forever and, meanwhile, whatever hope we had for an exciting and civilized election season is choking in the weeds.
4. my social life. yeah, the thrill is gone. dating sucks and i don't care if i never go on another one again.
5. my wallet. it's nearly empty. oh, to sell out and get wads of cash in return. but how can an overly educated woman of color with authority issues sell out? hm. it's a puzzle.
6. that BFP thing is still pissing me off.

fine. i'll watch the primaries.

a scene from yesterday, a gorgeously sunny day in chicago with relatively mild traffic while Roomie and Ding left their offices early

Roomie: so what's on your schedule this week? dates?
Ding: nah. a work event and a board meeting. maybe a boy later on this week but nothing's confirmed.
Roomie: what do you want to do? dinner?

Ding: (sigh) but where will we go? what will we do? what will we eat? choices...i'm incapable of making them.
Roomie: mmm, jibarito....
Ding: we can't have jibarito for dinner. that would totally mess us up for the rest of the night.

Roomie: (sigh) jibarito. what about tomorrow? let's watch the primaries at Enoteca Roma.
Ding: euww. no. i can't watch the primaries. i'll just get mad.
Roomie: o-kaay. no primaries.

(silence)

Ding: no, we can watch the primaries. let's do that. i'll just get mad if clinton wins. and the pundits, i want them to die. and i'm too busy this week to be pissed off.
Roomie: it'll be fine. wine, cheeses, nibblies, primaries with other obama folks. perfect.

so, even though my earlier enthusiasm about this election has practically been beaten from me by this too-long primary season (thanks for that, Democratic Party), i will endure one more night of primary returns and hope i don't slip into an election-induced depressive rage.

if

One of my favorite romantic comedies is Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie. In it, a slightly pudgy, cranky, 30-something woman goes out with a guy she thinks is out of her league and, well, you know what happens. True blave. Through the course of the story, she gets together with her friends and they go through a ritual called the If Dinner: they sit around and talk about what their lives would be like if they got everything they wanted.

The other day I'm having lunch with a couple of coworkers and we find ourselves in the middle of an If Lunch: if we got everything we wanted, where would we be in 15 years?

First, I was startled to realize that I'd be 53 (yikes) in 15 years.

Then I said something lame about having a stable career, living in a cute place, being surrounded by friends, blah blah blah.

T-, one of my lunch friends, looked at me over her glasses and said, 'That's kind of boring. What do you really want?'

Without hesitation I blurted out, 'I want to have at least two surprisingly non-crappy romance novels published, maybe a serious collection of essays or a family memoir written; I want to have 2 long term lovers, live in a fabulous urban house in the middle of the city, be a non profit consultant on strategic communications or maybe run for Alderman. Holy crap. Wouldn't that be funny - me, in public office? And, of course, be surrounded by a wonderful group of friends and family.'

C-, our other lunch companion said that she didn't know about the feasibility of running for office while having two long term lovers, but it was my fantasy; I could dream of anything. She's right. I can.

So. If there were no obstacles, what would you want your life to look like in 15 years?

have lunch with me!

Women Employed : The Working Lunch (May 13)

I'm on the Advocacy Council for this organization in Chicago and it is awesome.
Every year, we throw a big luncheon to celebrate our success as well as do some hard public education on the state of working women today. Last year, we had John Edwards come. (He was great, I got to shake his hand and took a blurry photo of his hair.)

This year, it's Arianna Huffington. She's no slouch, either.

If you're interested in attending, click on the link, register and send me a personal email so I can try to sit us together. It'll be like a meet up!

(If you can't come, click on the link anyway, buy some raffle tix and contribute to a wonderful organization that does so much on behalf of women's economic empowerment. I'm co-chairing the raffle, so help a girl out!)

more linkies

the field negro
i like this blog, too.

elitist? i think the word you're looking for is 'uppity'

i'm just so tired of all of this pre-election crap but i, for one, am TOTALLY fine with Obama being an elitist.

fuckety fuck. whatever happened to fucking aspirations in this country?

McCain blah blah blah Obama is elitist blah blah blah - New York Times

un pájaro en la mano vale dos en el arbusto?

a dating question:

what's the etiquette if you've gone on two dates with someone, and a third is in the offing, but you still wanna date around? do you make that a point of conversation to fully outline and manage expectations? or do you assume that he's dating around, too?

i mean, i liked the two dates (as did he) but we're not committed to anything, right?

this stuff is hard and my not knowing the answers is giving me some anxiety.

my frakkin' luck

so i'm on my second date with B3 (we'll introduce him later); we've had a lovely dinner in bucktown, ingested way too much chocolate and now we're in a local joint in humboldt park listening to a honky tonk band. (i know. honky tonk. but they weren't bad!) when we were looking for parking i thought, 'hm. looks familiar. i remember that chain link fence. i believe there is probably where i lost my purse...' and, looking ahead, i saw the street name from that undiginified morning Walk of Shame.

'with my luck,' i thought, 'Frakkin' Trader will be inside.' but then i thought, no. the universe doesn't hate me that much.

so imagine my chagrin when Frakkin' Trader walks into my view, stops, turns, looks right at me, stares and circles our booth through the crowd. he's still looking at me and i'm still staring at him over the heads of very young hipsters, thinking, 'frakking universe hates me!' of course, i excuse myself to go to the restroom and send a frantic text to my Roomie, the gist of which was "WTF??"

about an hour later, when we leave, he's still at the bar and i avoid catching his gaze in the mirror behind the bar as we pass.

at home, Roomie said, 'come on, Ding. Bar A is four blocks away, Bar B is one, and his place is right in the middle! he's gonna drink somewhere! did you really think you wouldn't see him tonight? really?'
i said, 'well, i thought there was a chance but i was hoping i wouldn't!'

don't blame me for thinking the odds were in my favor; there at least 10 other people in this city with whom i've froliced (sp? that doesn't look right) and i have never run into them - anywhere - after the frolic has ended. (it was like the universe did me a favor and killed them for me.) why would i expect to run into the Frakkin' Trader now?

Roomie said, 'well, it's clear he's avoiding you like you're avoiding him but you're bound to run into him again. the 'hood is just too small.' indeed, it is. and if i keep going out with B3, and his haunts cross FT's, this neighborhood is going to seem as big as my living room.

anyway, the sorta good news is i've made it to date #3, the farthest i've gone in the hetero-normative ritual called 'dating.' Dr. C- would be happy i've made such progress.

i like this blog: Too Sense

The Capitol Fax Blog » More cuts threatened

Can anyone explain the governor to me? I mean, really. Explain him to me.
'Persuasion' is a truncheon in his hands - basically, he wants something from the downstaters but, to get it, he's going to destroy what they need.

What the hell kind of political playbook is this man reading?!

Anyway, carry on.

spring dating: where i also think about the 'lost weekend'

Spring is here and you know what that means: boys.

Despite an unfortunate glitch two weeks ago (wherein I woke up in an apartment that was not my own and discovered I had lost a purse, phone, keys, cash, eyeglasses, dignity and memory of the previous 9 hours) I predict this dating season will be fairly mature, sober and, hopefully, boring.

You hear that, universe? I am now OK with boring.

Why, just Saturday, I met an older, sober, divorced father by the park for lunch. It was a gorgeous day and, while my expectations were suitably managed, the weather encouraged me to think this would be the beginning of an exciting spring. Well, at least the wine we had with lunch was nice.

To be fair, he was a perfectly nice guy: smart, mildly funny, successful and tanned. But...he was the size of a jockey. I'm no towering inferno of feminine hotness but even I dwarfed him. And then we started talking about therapy (he brought it up) and he admitted to some issues. Angry, bitter, confrontational issues. So we wrapped up lunch, walked into the park, shook hands at the Bean and went our separate ways.

As I walked down Michigan I told myself that the past 90 minutes would have been better spent browsing the comic book store around the corner.
...

I've been thinking about that Friday night before last and the responses a story like mine usually elicits from people who feel awfully comfortable turning judgmental on women who may drink one too many and then things happen to them.

Hell, I can even remember saying those things: "What did they think was going to happen? Didn't they think? Why didn't they prepare? Why weren't they careful? How dumb do you have to be..."

Judgment, judgment, judgment.

Taking a look back at that evening, I wonder, Where did my judgment falter? Was it when we were walking to his place? Was it when I ordered the second martini? (A martini that normally would have left me totally unaffected, btw.) Was it when I suggested stopping for a nightcap earlier that night after the event instead of stopping at McDonalds for several Big Macs? Was it when I rushed to get dressed that evening for the event and decided not to grab a bite to eat? Or was it when I had that last glass of white wine at the event and thought a plate of nibblies would do me?

(And these are rhetorical questions. I'm totally not interested in folks telling me how I should turn back the hands of time and not done this or that when, really, the ground zero of that whole night was a skipped meal.)

Though I'm abashed at the amount of fallout that one lost Friday night created, I'm fairly happy that I took care of everything speedily and with a minimum of fuss - credit cards and ID recovered, new phone, new keys/locks paid for, heartfelt apologies to friends made, and Plan B contraception taken. Yay, responsibility.

(And let's give a hearty shout out to Plan B, purchased at CVS immediately the following Saturday morning. With no problem or interference at all, I shelled out $50, took the pills and endured a whole day of nausea and dizziness.)

Anyway, this was all supposed to be about the hot Israeli locksmith who helped me Friday but turned into something else. Oh, well.

busy busy busy

sorry posting has been so light.

i just got back from springfield last night after a day of chasing legislators, work has been beyond hectic and with all the cuts being proposed in the President's FY09 budget, organizations like mine have gone into super self-defense mode. So, while I haven't been writing here, I've been writing my arse off at the office about the continued need to keep programs serving rape and assault victims in the budget.

but rest assured that i haven't stopped thinking about things over here and that there are still more connections in my brain being made about the recent Rev. Wright flap and how maybe this crap never would have happened if politicians were actually serious about that little thing called 'the division between church and state.' (oh, and if the so-called 'values coalition,' two or three elections ago, hadn't exploited religious fervor in the first place as a substitute for public policy.)

cue dorky squeal here: X-Files movie!

`X - Files' Creator Spills Film Details - New York Times

Do I need to reveal that I loved The X-Files with a passion that not even BSG has been able to tap? (Home is still my very very favorite episode.)
Do I need to confess that I taped a big photo of David Duchovny inside my medicine cabinet because I wanted to wake up to his visage every morning?
Do I need to admit that I catalogued every taped and watched episode in a special spreadsheet on my computer?
Do I need to repent of writing some very very bad erotic fan fic, once upon a time?
Do I also need to say that the only reason (well, one of the only reasons) I crushed out on a certain kilt-wearing guy in my grad program was because of his resemblance to David Duchovny?

Because I will! I am that unashamed of my stalkerish love.

aw, man: Match poetry – a thread

Ding: If this doesn't make you wanna take a 10-yr hiatus from men and dating, then maybe nothing will:

"ps your nose is cute. i like to share this poem with you.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments"

Ploos: Shit. That was long. Something tells me that he's a wife beater.

Ding: He's a wife beater that wants his woman to sit with his pain. Then go dance wildly and stand by a lake and shout at the moon. Nutbag.

Atalanta: Ugh - and it isn't even his - it is actually a *published* poem (rather of the 'Motivator' variety). The sorrow - oh the sorrow.

(and, in case you are longing for more of the same.)

Miz K: So he's not even an original freak? How disappointing.

Atalanta: Indeed. The 'i like to share this poem with you' seemed to contrast strangely with 'centre' - so I was forced to google. On the plus side, the door is now open for Ding to respond with more poetry by the same person - may I suggest the following (edited for the sake of brevity and to focus more strongly on the all-important Oatmeal):

It's hard not to think of you
as I stand at the stove stirring oatmeal
looking out over the lake.
The morning sun touches the water
rippled by the warm breeze....

Finally learned how to make your own oatmeal,
after countless mornings of waiting
for me to do it.
And I did.
Hard to understand why a man
who can make a multi-million dollar deal
can't read those four lines of instructions
on the oatmeal bag....

I want to make oatmeal one morning
and not ache in the centre of my body.

MizT: I shouldn't read these emails during lectures. Out loud giggling.

Ding: ohgod. i can't stop laughing at my desk. it's like i'm having a heart attack. i'm so sending this poem to him.

Clinton Would Have Left Obama's Pastor

in the words of a friend in DC:
"Hillary, please. You didn't even leave an adulterous husband."

(unfair? totally. but it's a snappy comeback, isn't it?)

Fug Madness

Go Fug Yourself: Fug Madness

I am furiously filling in my brackets. (Round 1 and 2 are done but there's still time for the rest!)

Go there and download the bracket and do it! Do it now!

politics: another word for poo

I know. I said no politics this week.

But after reading about the Carville-'Judas' thing I can't help it. Richardson 'betrayed' Clinton because he endorsed Obama. Let's ignore the implication that Clinton becomes 'Jesus'; instead, let's concentrate on politics, a game that reveals all players to be utterly without bottom.

I mean, does being in politics mean that one is practically obligated to participate in shifty shenanigans and say morally corrupt, intellectually dishonest, things? And I'm not even looking at the GOP! This is the left!

The hard cynic in me asks if I'd be able to hang on to a shred of my moral posturing if I was a politician. I'd like to think so but it's clear that if I did, perhaps I wouldn't be in office for very long. Perhaps it's fitting that we only saw Mr. Smith in Washington during one session of Congress, instead of a whole term. It seems that once you become a public figure you lose any sense of yourself; you find yourself agreeing to a teeny tiny 10-ft plot real estate deal; you find yourself in bed with religious fanatics you shunned years ago; you hear yourself ducking for cover under sniper fire.

Simon Pegg : damn, he's married.

Simon Pegg - Run, Fat Boy, Run - Film - New York Times

see? told you this week would be all about crap.

burp

frak it!
clearly, Blogger wouldn't let me post from home over the weekend. (and i had a nice post about how Gen X will save the world all ready to go.)

anyway, hope y'all's Easter (or other celebretory pagan feast) was fun. i had dinner at a friend's mother's house and i am still full of deviled eggs and ham. (mmm, pork.)

what's on my schedule this week? well, i'm laying off all the ranty militant crap for a few days; work is going to kick my arse and i need to retain a shred of serenity. so this week it's all about planning a wardrobe for italy, organizing my taxes and preparing to go on another date. (this time, no divorced dads. they're too sad to be around.)

so, what have we learned?

Obama Tries to Shift Focus Away From Race but sees a drop in support, according to a poll mentioned in the Times.

What have we learned from the past few days?

Well, that Americans are dumber than ever when it comes to talking about race or racial identity and that no one will ever say the words 'white privilege' on air.

Jesus. As long as Obama stayed imbued with the halo of his media-created 'magical negritude' then he was all right. But - as soon as he became associated with a less moderate point of view about America and America's treatment of communities of color, then he's militant and somehow unworthy of the candidacy.

(And HRC? All she has to do is sit back and watch it all happen.)

I spoke with someone about this today (a white woman that I respect a great deal) and she said that what disturbed her most about how this whole thing is playing out is how this is impacting speech. (And let's be clear about one thing - you might not like what Wright said but it's not hate speech.) Not only is this an instance of 'guilt by association,' something that would never seriously damage a white political figure, she said, 'If churches are where communities can safely vent their frustrations and troubles, then this means that those spaces are no longer safe.'

Here in Chicago are we suddenly going to pore over the sermons by people like Rev. James Meeks or even Fr. Michael Pfleger at St. Sabina's if they say something bad about white supremacy?

Because that's what Wright was talking about: White nationalist supremacy. Not you, oh clueless, individual white person. Get over the interpersonal and intentional way of framing your discussions about race or racial justice. It's not about YOU, it's about the structure of white supremacy in this country. How many times do we have to say this before you fucking get it??

(Angry? Yeah, I'm fucking angry. I'm always angry when I'm confronted with stupid.)

But, more importantly, we've learned that the much-ballyhooed 'post-racial' era in America is about as real as a jackalope.

(The president of the Chicago Urban League wrote a letter to the Editor here in the Chicago Defender about her reaction to the flap.)

my reactions to the obama reaction to the media's reaction to the wright reaction to...

Rather than spend my valuable time creating important talking points for an upcoming lobbying campaign at work, I'll jot down some random questions in the wake of the speech Obama gave today (which were in reaction to the public reaction to some old Jeremiah Wright comments.)

Primarily, my questions are about mainstream (i.e., white) reaction to black anger and I'll try to keep my thoughts as succinct as possible.

(Thoughts about the theology, or lack of theology, represented by Wright's remarks are outside of my skill set.)

Why is it, whether expressed in the way that Wright had done, in the comedy of Dave Chappell or the comic strips of Aaron MacGruder, that folks can't seem to understand where black socio-political anger comes from?

What and who is served by the public pressure for Obama (or any black person) to distance himself from the problematic comments like the ones Wright made (or even the ones made by Farrakhan)?

What fears are assuaged once this distancing has happened and, conversely, what fears are stoked when a black person refuses?

What allegiances or reassurances are being sought through this kind of pressure?

Why must people of color perform this kind of white supremacy power dance when individual white people don't? (For instance, we have yet to see any kind of well-wrought distancing speech from Hillary Clinton after Ferarro's avowedly pro-white comments were made.)

Why does the word 'minstrelsy' come to mind?

obama's speech today

.. “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

[I'll try and post my thoughts about his speech and the kerfuffle around Jeremiah Wright at some point this week. Internet issues at home are putting a serious crimp in my blogging style. But, for now, share your thoughts about this speech.]

Monday: what i'm reading today (between meetings)

Where Does Society Stand on Gender Matters? - Eliot Spitzer - Hillary Clinton - New York Times (vaguely interesting but they never seem to go deep enough, do they?)

Tracy Morgan on SNL. (a little rough? yeah, but thems the dozens, baby.)

Economic straits 'trickle down' to state budgets. (bad bad bad news for non profits.)

The end to blogging anonymity? (or, who cares about constitutionality?)

JP's Annual San Patricio Limerick Contest! (you know you want to show off your versification)

Website I love: See Jane Work, for all the tax/life/financial organization doodads. (I bought the Financial Organizer and the Captio Taxcase. They're so pretty, I've been fondling them at my desk. Will they help me survive tax season? They frakking better.)
...

and, in other news, i had a date saturday night. it was ok. every date i go on just depresses me.

Shocking, yet not really: the Spitzer thing

The Eliot Spitzer Stuff - New York Times

On the way home yesterday as we were listening to NPR run down the whole sordid Eliot Spitzer scandal, Roomie and I were wondering why public officials just can't keep it in their pants. Or, rather, why male public officials can't keep it in their pants. What is it about a lonely hotel room, solitary hours and public scrutiny that leads to really ill-advised phone calls to sex workers?

This profile seems to lay it all at the feet of being 'reckless.' Perhaps. Maybe it's the high pressure of being a guy with power. But weird how we don't see scandals about women in power getting caught in sexually compromising positions. Or maybe not so weird. Their scandals are about illegal nannies or covering up hubby's bad business practices or tax evasions. Interesting how women in power have scandals still linked to domestic disturbances while men in power seem to get in trouble for making public service a libidinal pleasure dome.

Update: more on the gendered ways this scandal is playing out here.

Dear Clinton Campaign, you are making this harder and harder!

The Swamp: Clinton aide: Obama unqualified for VP

well. i know surrogates don't 'count' but, really. i have to record my displeasure.

way to go, Clinton camp. way to just give the big finger to the many people who happen to support Obama and are trying to come to terms with voting for *you* if it comes to that in the general election.

way to just lean over and fart all over your opponent, who hasn't done anything wrong except run against your candidate, and show how frakking petty your campaign is.

nice. well done. good god! do you want me to stay home on election day??

[cleaned up a bit to make the focus the campaign and not HRC]

monday morning dyspepia

a morning commute that should have taken 30 minutes by bus took one frakking hour, i'm under caffeinated and that movie, Margot at the Wedding? total trash. we saw it at a friend's house over the weekend and we all hated it. at the end, we all sat in silence with little frowns on our faces. it was dark, unpleasant and pointless. why this became a critical darling, i don't know.

i just had to get that off my chest. it was giving me gas.

hats off, Miz T!

so...at last, my friend has launched her hat blog! see it here: tonya gross millinery

wait, it's more than hats - it's millinery! her hats are all hand made, creative and rock.
(i love her cashmere slouch winter hats - plenty of room for girls with 'fros!)

needless to say, check her out.

shrub: still an idiot

last night, on The Daily Show, they showed a clip of our President who said he hadn't heard that gas was approaching $4/gallon.

clearly, the man is living in a bubble because, this morning, Roomie stopped for gas and it was $3.90-something for a gallon.

i think we should flood the White House postcards or photos of our current gas prices because it's criminal that a President (lame duck as he is) should be so ignorant of real life.

frakking clueless tool.

now this is activism!

Minnesota Bars Beat Smoking Ban

Well, I love this story of normally reticent Minnesotans putting on drag and 'acting' in bars just to have a cig. Kudos, my friends from the great white north, kudos.

on the couch

Dr. C-: so, it's been a while. tell me what's going on.
Me: well, i had a date. in february.

Dr. C-: exciting!
Me: it was fine. ok. whatever. it didn't lead to a second date and that's ok. but it made me weird for a couple of weeks. there wasn't any chemistry but, for some reason, i felt bad about that.
Dr. C-: well, that's to be expected. you haven't done this in a while. have there been other dates?
Me: i keep putting them off. i think i'm ready to go but then i just get all stressed out and then i put it off.
Dr. C-: talk about that.

Me: there's two guys. perfectly nice guys. they aren't the type i usually go for but that's ok. they're in the burbs, they're single dads, they have some college but they aren't grad school types. they ask me out, we're in the planning stages - logistics, you know? the plans are very low-key. movies or something. but then i find a reason to back out - oh, it's too far, my schedule is too busy, blah blah blah.

Dr. C-: what are you afraid of?
Me: well, i don't know that it's fear, it's anxiety. stress. i think about the travel, the dressing up, the effort of getting to know another person, and then i start thinking about if this person is going to fit into my life, my friends, my routine and i suspect that they aren't because i'm not that into them in the first place, and they're probably looking for a mother for their kids and i'm not that - i can't be that - and then i think that i'm going to start resenting them the way i began to resent B- and then i am relieved when the date plans don't work out and i think, 'whew! dodged a bullet on that one!'

(silence for a minute)

Dr. C-: that's a lot of thinking. before you even go on a date.
Me: i know. it happens instantaneously.
Dr. C-: you know, in our field, 'anxiety' is very often 'fear.'
Me: oh.
Dr. C-: so it's like you're expecting the same issues that you had with B-, you start feeling the anger, fear and stress that you felt when you were with him and you're basing your behavior with these new men on it.
Me: interesting.

Dr. C-: well, i think you need to go on more dates.
Me: jesus.

aagh, don't make me

Obama Regains Ground in Texas Caucuses but, overall, the Texas primary may have gone to Clinton.

(groan)

You know, if I absolutely have to, in order to stop another four years of a Republican president, I'll vote for whoever becomes the candidate on the left. But, jeebus on a stick, do we really think that Clinton is going to be an electable candidate against McCain?

For the Obama supporters who read Screed, what would you do and how would you feel if Clinton snapped up the nomination?

Updated: ok, I went to the folks at Kos and their soothing, Spock-like numbers crunching has brought me down from the ledge, reminding me of the big picture. Big picture, Ding, big picture.

Update on the update: However, it's stuff like this that makes me get all angry again about Clinton tactics. Would it be inaccurate to say the Clinton camp used this falsehood about Obama's campaign contacting Canada to unfairly stir mistrust of Obama and give her campaign a boost?

election '08: pout

watching the mid-returns from the primaries and the CNN projection that Clinton will win Ohio.
it's totally unfair but i found myself thinking that ohio has consistently chosen the wrong people for the past three elections...

thanks, ohio.

while phonebanking for obama

earlier today...

ding goes to the unisex bathroom after a couple hours of solid phonebanking and a large coffee.
she's in her stall, finishing up some feminine business (ahem) when she hears the door open and someone enters the stall next to her.

the stranger pees and ding thinks, 'hm, that's got a little distance.' she flushes.

at the sink, she hears the other stall open and the asian campaign guy walks over. he gives her the chin up greeting.

'hey,' he says.
'hey,' ding says. there are no paper towels so they stand there, shaking their wet hands dry.

then they both go back to the phone banking room.

this is obama's america - a place where men and women can pee next to each other and go back to the job at hand.

heh.

work vent, friday edition

Here's the perfect way to lose respect in an office. Say these words:

"That's not my job."

When she said this, the very young woman blinked at me like a doe and crimped her lips a little.

I clamped down hard on my temper. "This is exactly your job. If it's not yours then whose is it? It's about the whole organization and staffing so this falls under your area. That's your job."

She tried again. "Well, with everything else on my plate I've just sort of pushed this back on the backburner." She said this while sitting on top of her desk, after having finished chatting with a coworker. Her laptop was dark.

"I suggest you move this up to the front burner. I just gave the ambassador incorrect information based on this." I shook the paper in my hand. "That's unacceptable. How long do we have to wait until something comes from this office without mistakes on it?"

She sat on her desk. "I'll fix it. I'll post the revisions on the shared drive so everyone can access them."

"Thank you. I appreciate it." To take the sting of this encounter away, I will probably have to find a way to make this a coaching opportunity, but for now, I'm still frustrated.

(Yes, I have officially become my mother. And now I understand all those women who rode me hard when I first started working in corporate environments. To those women I say this: I'm sorry for every bitchy, ignorant thing I muttered under my breath when you walked away. You were right.)

Sick Days Access: Call to Action!

My agency is part of a coalition, led by Women Employed and including Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and Heartland Alliance, working with lead sponsor Rep. Julie Hamos to change the fact that 3 million private sector workers don't have the right to a single sick day.

Our basic bill proposes a way for these workers to accrue just 7 days of paid sick time over the course of one year. (For every 30 hours worked, a worker can earn 1 hour of paid sick time.)

The bill, HB 5320, has been introduced. There's support for this in the legislature but to move the bill out of Rules, through Labor, and towards a vote on the floor, we need more.

So we need stories.

We are looking for stories from people who can talk about the need for paid sick days—either you used to work somewhere that didn’t have it when you needed it (and what happened), or you are currently working and don’t get paid sick days.

We’re looking for brief summaries that we could turn into a letter, use as part of legislative testimony, or perhaps include on a fact sheet.

If you have a story, email takeastand@ywcachicago.org.

You can, of course, request your story to be as anonymous as you want it to be (first name/age/industry/city, if you like.)

[edited to remove Chicago Coalition for the Homeless as a coalition partner]

asshat: graeme reeves

Clit Bandits: Evil Gyno Graeme Reeves Brutalized 800 Women Before He Got Caught

i think this goes beyond being an 'asshat.' asshat implies that one, if they tried hard enough, could reflect and reform their asshattery.

reeves, however, has transcended basic sexist asshattery and entered a new category: Mutilating Misogynist Mengele.

and the man isn't even in jail! i haven't read anything about charges being brought against him at all! nothing about criminal liability. he's on the run and all those women (one of whom had her labia and clitoris removed against her will) are left without recourse.

what's even more stupefying about this story is the lack of oversight and action. reeves wasn't exactly alone while he was cutting off clitorii, sexually abusing and mutilating women. there were other people in the room who presumably observed and assisted his mutilating surgical procedures. there is currently a 'task force' in place to investigate how reeves could have gotten away with this but i think all you have to do is look around at his coworkers, his nurses, and fellow doctors.

No, really. Shut up.

In light of yet another failed student attempt at racial 'satire' (this time out of the University of Colorado) I think it's time for all us current and former literature profs, English adjuncts, composition teachers, and English dept. graduate instructors to put our feet down.

So here's an open letter to all undergrads everywhere, particularly on campus newspapers:

Dear Undergrad Writer,

For the love of Polyhymnia, just stop.

We, your former and current college and university English instructors, have endured an endless supply of undergraduate compositions and we are happy to do so. This is, after all, our job. With varying degrees of success, we have introduced you to the best of Western literary tradition as well as the brightest new additions to the literary canon from women, people of color and across the globe. Though other disciplines certainly have the right to say the same, we English instructors think that ours is a calling that can best equip a young person to be culturally literate and we are grateful we have had a role in your intellectual maturation.

Like a Crusoe with his Friday, (you did read Dafoe, didn't you?) we encouraged you to fill pages with your inner thoughts, your ideas, your theories and we reluctantly approved them, as long as there was a shadow of an argument. The writing was the thing, not necessarily the matter of your writing. We overlooked your problematic arguments against reproductive choice, papers agreeing with the internment of the Japanese, and your wrong-headed ideas about Shakespeare's Viola being a victim of incest. Lest we be accused of liberal bias, as long as you wrote, and relatively well, we smiled. (It was a strained smile, but it was there.)

Well, now you can stop. Stop writing.

Your failure to understand the most basic literary devices is starting to make us and our profession look bad. Clearly, when we assigned you Swift's A Modest Proposal, you didn't read it closely enough. You didn't study, did you? When we assigned you Milton's Paradise Lost and reviewed his rhetorical devices you zoned out, didn't you? You didn't pay attention to Twain, you didn't 'get' Dickens, you forgot to read Heller and you just skimmed the Cliffs Notes for Vonnegut. In fact, if Twain took a page from your book, poor Jim would end lynched and Huck would have joined the White Knights.

We implore you - stop writing. In particular, stop calling your work product satire. It's not satire! It's not even a jeremiad or a good parody! It is unfocused, poorly conceived, shabby, mean and clumsy. Your writing has nothing to do with social commentary or criticism because you don't have the mental will to poke your finger in the eye of Power and you just don't have the intellectual heft to carry it off.

Moreover, before you can write well you must be able to read well and, apparently, you've burned all your books - with the possible exception of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Before your lack of education becomes too embarassing, just put down the pen. Close the laptop. Be silent.

Best Regards,
The Faculty

[h/t Alas, A Blog]

something about obama

Small Donations Add Up for Obama - New York Times

i just made a donation this morning (not as large as i would have liked, but it's something.) the story of how regular, private citizens are giving directly to candidates is amazing. i don't know about any of my five regular readers, but i haven't given a donation to the main Democratic party since that crushing Al Gore defeat. why give my cash to them when they FUBAR things so completely?

while the obama 'juggernaut' continues i have to admit that i feel a little bad for clinton. i'm sure that feeling of momentary pity will pass soon.

in other obama news, just came across this blog, Think on These Things, that does a pretty good job of delineating the difference between Obama and Clinton - their policy stances, the arguments about 'experience' (hey, guess who's actually passed major legislation and who's just named a post office?) and the sneaky media attacks on Obama.

particularly good is this video of a young black guy laying it down about Obama and healthcare to a pushy interviewer in L.A. Think of These Things is pretty up front about being pro-Obama, so make of that what you will. S/He's laying out a comprehensive argument in favor of a candidate and it's convincing to me.

and, via that clip, here's another blog i stumbled on - Jack & Jill Politics - that looks pretty cool, mixing bougie-ness and political wonkiness all in one.

(what's Jack & Jill? where i come from, if you were black, lived in Baldwin Hills and your parents were of the professional class, you probably participated in J&J. if , like me, you lived below the Hill, your parents were lower middle class and didn't know about such things, then you didn't.)

have i wasted enough time at work?
i think so. back to the grind, folks.

glen beck to progressive women: 'eww, you're ugly!'

(video clip can be found at Feministing)

Mr. Beck,

I'm sure you're tired of all the email you're getting in response to your 'ugly women=progressive,' but as with Jello, there's always room for a little more.

Aren't you tired of being a stereotype?
Aren't you weary of that Neanderthalic exterior of yours preventing you from stepping into the 21st century?
Aren't your knuckles a little sore from being dragged on the ground so often?
Isn't your arm a little tingly from holding the banner of 'Conservative Blowhard' so high?
Aren't you a little bit afraid that you're becoming a little bit of a caricature of yourself?

I mean, really. How many tired stereotypes of progressive women do you really need to roll out every time you open your mouth? We're ugly, unshaven, emasculating, humorless, shrill, emotional, too sensitive, butch, dykes, smelly, scary, or the Bogie Man/Loch Ness Monster combined. Yawn.

At least think of something new, you unoriginal, sexist, 'scared of Mommy,' hack.

Best Regards,
Ding

(screw politesse. that asshat needs some vitriol. email him at me@glennbeck.com)

how a book gets born

an author walks home on 9/11:

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

Hand-wringing About American Culture - Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge? - New York Times

we're not only hostile to knowledge, if we saw it, we'd light some torches, chase it though the streets and then tar and feather it. then we'd go home and drink a beer.

smackety smack?

Obama’s Lead in Delegates Shifts Focus of Campaign - New York Times

(and isn't using the word 'incendiary' a bit strong? i mean, i hear that and i think the clinton camp is going to kidnap the obama girls and hold them for ransom, or something.)
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i'm working from home this morning, waiting for the hottie plumber to fix Roomie's sink. in the meantime, i'll fantasize about a sweeping Obama delegate victory.

oh, happy v-day.
an out of state fan sent me a comic book sprayed with cologne and a superman card that, despite myself, made me laugh. i guess that counts as a valentine.

glamour corrects 'oops' moment...and other things

Your race, your looks: Fashion & Beauty: glamour.com

remember that kerfuffle when a Glamour staffer went to a law firm and told the black women that 'ethnic' hair was a fashion don't? yeah, good times.

well, to Glamour's credit, they turned that misstep into a learning opportunity.

(as for me, today my hair is straight because it's the only way it can fit under my frakking snow hat. once it's warmer, back to big and curly.)
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today at the office made me bleed from my ass.
i haven't eaten lunch all day and i'm exhausted.

but i've had time to look at interracial romance novels on amazon. question: why are their covers so beat ass ugly?

(yeah, no deep thoughts from me today. i'm too tired.)

black history month: a case for voting black

My aunt's apartment was stifling hot and smelled strange but I tried to ignore it.

"Our people took the name of Mr. C-, you know. He owned our family and when the war was over, we just kept the name," my aunt said.
"I don't know anything about that time. I mean, no one's told me stories about it," I said.

"Well, it's here and there." She thought a little. "You know, there is a story about a relative of ours. The rest of the family kept the C- name and stayed in Alabama. But one left. He came up North and disappeared."
"Disappeared? Why'd he disappear?"
"Because he passed."
"No!"

"Yes. He was white. Real white. Your great granddaddy passed for white for a while; his wife could pass, too.” She paused again. “I don’t know how your grandfather got so dark. Anyway, he came up to Chicago and the story is that he worked in a store and started a business. But he never got back in touch with the rest of the family. He's just lost."

She said this like he just wandered into State Street and just couldn’t find his way back.

"I have never heard this story!"
My aunt sighed. "There aren't that many family members left who know it."
"Huh. Fascinating."

Unfortunately, I have totally forgotten what my passing distant relative’s name was.
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The new Skip Gates special on PBS is full of these stories of passing, diaspora, disappearance and reinvention. (But sometimes I wonder if my own family's narrative is real or just patterned on other stories of black family lines whose origins are just as murky or tangled.)

What strikes me about some of these early stories of lost family members reclaimed is how prominent black-owned land figures into them and how crucial the land is to forming early black identity as well as ideas of freedom and citizenship. The program begins with Gates visiting the land his family has owned for 6 generations and passes by a parcel of land his family had owned but had to sell. Since part of their own genealogical story is lost to them, their farm acts like an anchor for their identity. In subsequent conversations with celebrities like Chris Rock, Tina Turner, Morgan Freeman, Don Cheadle or Tom Joyner, Gates reveals that their families had once owned land - 40 acres, 62 acres, 65 acres - donating or selling some of their land to build schools or churches. The revelations about property and land ownership become a source of pride in their family.

What is it that Rock says – If he had known this before, it would have taken away the inevitability that he would be nothing. And property is usually the vehicle for these stories to come to light; they act like a bracket around early black families: you were property and now you have property.

At the turn of the century blacks owned between 12-15 million acres of land; by the 30s and 40s that number shrinks to just a little over a million. For many of these black families the land is a foundation to build their newly acquired identities as freed people that suddenly disappears, forcing their story to jump, only to be picked up further down the line. What happened? What happened in those intervening years? Did African Americans just suddenly decide, "Hm, you know, owning land sucks. Let's pick up and go north"? Usually something else happened to make a family, or even a whole black town, disperse.

Tom Joyner's family story is a good example; Gates finds his great grandmother but her paper trail ends somewhere in late 19th/turn of the century Carolinas, only to pick up again several years later in the north. Joyner has no idea why she left home or what the story of his family is but Gates and his team discover the reason: His family owned a substantial parcel of land but when his two great uncles are accused of murder and executed, the family sells their land to pay for legal fees and the remaining family flees the area. But Gates' team also uncovers that the accusation was probably false, specifically targeted at the two great uncles because they were part of a black landowning family.

Chris Rock asks how his own ancestor could go from slave, to soldier, to legislator, to landowner, to sharecropper all in 10 short years; Gates simply answers, 'Reconstruction ended.'
We're left to conclude what happened to Julius Caesar Tingman's land on our own.
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Three years ago the exhibit "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" came to the Chicago Historical Society and it was a hard exhibit to walk through. Again, I noticed stories of black land ownership (or burgeoning private enterprise) running alongside the photos of ‘extra-legal deaths at the hands of unknown persons' (which is how the Society described the lynchings that spread throughout the country from Reconstruction to roughly 1965 or '68.)

In 2001, the AP ran a series called 'Torn from the Land' that researched and confirmed claims of widespread land theft - claims that are crucial to the reparations movement. Opponents of the reparations movement say that it's a fallacy to punish or extort money from people today for events in the past; slavery is over. I counter that the cost of these past events is still felt today through procedures that, are legal and that still disproportionately affect poor communities of color, i.e., partitioning, rezoning, ‘revitalization’/gentrification, and eminent domain. These legal maneuvers aren't 'extra-legal' or as extreme as lynching but they sure do have the same result – displacement, dispersal, diasporas.

Personally, I'm sort of neutral about the reparations movement. Do I want my father's family to be paid money because of slavery? Not really. What I want is a deeper, more public acknowledgment of how slavery impacted and drove our capitalist system, and how our nation's participation in the slave trade laid a foundation for practices, industries and institutions that not only continue to have an adverse affect on communities of color today but still provide the elite in this country with wealth and prosperity. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Land is at the bottom of our American imagination and mythology. The land was the lure and the land has allowed us Americans to earn our claim to citizenship - we stole it, settled it, colonized it, killed for it, and exploited the shit out of it. American land is a metaphor for our political and national identities at home, as well as a justification for our acts abroad.

As an African American, though I am a participant in (and benefactor of) this American history, I am distant from it because of how the land figures into our own fraught, black history: we were counted with the land, we worked on the land, we fought and were killed for the land. More acted upon than actor, we have seen our roles in history marginalized or elided, but now we approach a moment where, at last, our acts can be writ large and with boldness.

I say we owe a debt to our ancestors for the sacrifices they were forced to make – if we have the chance to take a firm step toward repaying that debt, toward reclaiming the lost land of our identities as black Americans, then we should take it now.

spin

The Swamp: Post-Super day, GOP race has clarity Dems lack

this headline is a perfect example of 'framing' or spin.
true to the GOP-lovin' Trib's form, the GOP is sure, decided, firm. Dems are just all over the place, like a sloppy sock drawer.

but who's really in trouble?

i'd say that what this headline calls 'clarity' is actually the GOP 'painted into a corner.'

not like last time

wow. last night was awesome; we stayed up until 2 am watching the returns but we didn't care that we'd pay for it this morning.
12 states for obama; california breaks for clinton (grr - but that's ok!); huckabee makes a surge; romney totally wipes out; mccain takes the lead for the GOP.

we finally have an exciting election cycle.

my favorite line from last night came from paul begala on cnn:
"No one's more conservative than Huckabee! He doesn't believe in evolution, gravity or photosynthesis!"

totally hilarious; we even wrote it on our quote board.
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i dreamt that california eventually went to obama with 91% reporting, but alas, that didn't happen. maybe that's why i was so slow in waking up and rolled into work today at 10.

(and, at last, D- has finally brought himself to the point and asked me out. i will allow myself a tiny smile of satisfaction.)

i have my first earmark request meeting with a congressional office next week.
dude.

i think i'm wearin' my big girl panties.

reading Hillary and her haters

All You Need Is Hate - Stanley Fish - Think Again - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Over at my other blog, Church Gal, I was having an interesting exchange with an anonymous commenter about my post poking at the Clinton campaign for beating the 'experience' drum so hard. What made this exchange interesting was the cloudy, shifting view of Hillary Clinton the commenter had.

Anonymous' Quote:
"Hillary is strong, very clever. She reminds me of Meryl Streeps' character in the Machurian Candidate. Hillary put up with Bills cheating ways for way too long. Why would a strong woman like that put up with nonsense? More then likely it was because at the end of it all, his presidency that is, something was in it for her. Bill and Hillary have a political relationship. They have mastered the art of lying to win. She is using Bill every step of the way. I wish she would come out and say just what you wrote. Interesting, and she will still win because so many men do not have the balls to stop her."

It begins with a positive: Hillary is strong, very clever.

But then comes the less than flattering comparison where a positive figure merge swith a character who is dysfunctional, manipulative, deceitful and ruthlessly cunning: She reminds me of Meryl Streeps' character in the Machurian Candidate.

And then the comment changes again, this time turning Hillary Clinton into the 'woman wronged' who stands too much by her man: Hillary put up with Bills cheating ways for way too long.

Her strength, previously praised, is in doubt: Why would a strong woman like that put up with nonsense?

The answer is her cunning and grasping nature - her (dare I say it?) ambition: More then likely it was because at the end of it all, his presidency that is, something was in it for her. Bill and Hillary have a political relationship.

The Clinton's ambitious partnership is a vehicle for another accusation of deceit, though the worst that they could be accused of is playing semantics: They have mastered the art of lying to win.

Then, erasing the picture we have of compationate ambition, we have another nod to Hillary Clinton's singular agency (manipulative as it is): She is using Bill every step of the way.

And here is where things get interesting and the comment seems to be at war with itself. Anonymous says: ...she will still win because so many men do not have the balls to stop her.

What I like about this part of the comment is how everything sort of falls apart: Hillary will win but her victory is because men fail around her. It makes me ask: If men didn't fail, would Hillary still win? Do I hear grudging respect from Anonymous toward Hillary? Or is it fear? Is Anonymous gloating? And who is the object of derision? Men?

For these readers of Hillary, especially those mentioned in Fish's column, she becomes a comic book superhero, like the Scarlet Witch or maybe even Dark Phoenix - able to change reality around her, or at least prompt those looking at her to dip into some shapeshifting realities of their own. She can be read as an aspirational stand in (like Wonder Woman) for women who see themselves in her and her life's narrative; she can be the shadowy council that makes men afraid or women secretly proud; or she is the sinister shapeshifter who will do what she must to further her own desire for world domination (like Mystique.)

It's all rather silly when you see it like a bunch of comic book characters.

superbowl friday: glad to know the senate's on it

Senator Asks Why NFL Destroyed Tapes

aww, arlen specter plays squash. (that's what a john updike character would play.)
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anyway, we're buried in snow and Roomie and i are supposed to go to a formal benefit tonight. have a good weekend, y'all.