Happy Blogiversary, elle, (abd) (phd)

Five years ago today, I began this blog with these words:

A few minutes shy of November 29, 2005, I'm beginning a new blog. Let's see how this goes...

I think it has gone swimmingly :-) I don't post as much as I'd like, but the friends I've made, the thoughts I've worked out, the writing I've done, the realizations to which I have come all have made this one of the most important endeavors I've undertaken in my life.

I don't know what the next five years will hold. Will I have a year in which I actually post consistently? Will I finally call it quits as the tenure clock shifts my focus away from writing anything but THE BOOK (that's how I think of it--a terrifying, in-need-of-revision thing that stands between me and job security :-)? I really don't know.

But I am glad I did this!

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Thanksgiving Thoughts

I am thinking about how Thanksgiving is a story we weave for ourselves so we don't have to focus too much on the horrific reality of what happened to indigenous peoples before/after this "story."


I am thinking of all the people who mark this day as a "Day of Mourning."


As part of this culture, I am thinking of that for which I am thankful. In a few hours, my family, (largely) spared and well for another year, will pour into this house with an abundance of food and warmth and children and love.


I am thinking about the physical absence of my father and feeling that, but I am thankful for what his life of work and sacrifice and love made possible. I am sitting in a house he bought with an education and gift for words he helped make possible. I have a security-in-self, an assured-ness that I am loved and appreciated that he fostered.


So, it should come as no surprise that I have a wide variety of thoughts and feelings and observations. I am, after all, a SIStorian who is quite interested in the way U.S. history is constructed and taught in ways that encourage nationalism, often at the expense of (hi)stories that don't fit the narrative. I am also very much a product of this country and a Christian heritage that emphasize the need to be and express thankfulness.


I don't try to figure me out--neither should you :-))

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Anchored

Once, during a particularly un-Louisiana like winter in my youth, we had a severe ice-and-little-bit-of-snow storm. The world outside our flimsy screen doors was cold and white. The ubiquitous pine trees bent beneath the weight of icicles. The roads lay covered by inches of ice and the little stream in front of our house looked as if it had been interrupted mid-flow, frozen into a wavy sheet that we assumed must be just right for ice-skating (we were kids from the Deep South; what did we know? :-). Because my blue-collar parents didn’t have the luxury of having jobs to which they could just call in and miss, they went to work. My mom always hated the fact that if one person made it out of the bad weather to the plant, all of them would be expected to come.

My sister and I spent the day at the babysitter’s who lived down the street from us. At some point after 3 p.m., my dad, who was working days that week, came to collect us. We were so excited. Because mama did most of the day-to-day care and was so overprotective that we were always with her, Daddy was the “fun” parent. (As a mother, I think that’s horribly unfair, but it’s how we perceived it.)

He’d ridden with someone else who dropped him at our babysitter’s house. We were all going to walk home together. My sister and I initially took itty-bitty steps, scared of slipping and falling. We clung to Daddy’s arms and I honestly have no idea how he stayed upright and managed to keep us standing. Over the course of the few hundred yards to our house, we grew bolder, sliding on the ice, nodding at Daddy’s warnings, but skipping and squealing as we’d slip. Each time, Daddy would sigh, catch us, set us on our feet. It was a little scary, the knowledge that we might slip down the steep sides of the “branch” and land on the frozen stream. It was also exhilarating because we were made virtually fearless by the presence of Daddy, secure in the knowledge that he would never let us fall.

Today is my dad’s birthday and I couldn’t think of a better metaphor for our relationship than the one expressed in that story. I have done some questionable, dangerous, make-no-sense-at-all things in my life and my dad was always there to catch me, to make me feel safe, to keep me upright. Even when I ignored his warnings, he’d sigh a lot, scold for a minute, then pick me up and set me on my feet again. His presence made me feel safe in venturing out, messing up, and trying again. One of the reasons that I’ve been able to do so much, good and bad, is because I knew I had a secure foundation in my parents. “You can always come home,” they told us, and they didn’t mean it in just a literal sense. My parents were/are home, and in the last four and a half months, I’ve felt the missing part of that structure keenly.

This is the first November 8th I’ve ever faced without my dad. I’m not even home to visit his grave. And in two weeks, I’ll have my own first birthday without my Daddy. I don’t like thinking about that, either.

But I do have moments of peace. A few weeks ago, we went rock climbing. As I hemmed and hawed and climbed, I kept thinking, “Your ass knew better than this! Lord, I’m not gone make it.” I kept going, though, a little bit at a time, stopping to catch my breath or balance. And then, a good way up the rock, we suddenly felt a strong wind at our backs. It was so forceful that we could feel it pushing us. I made it to the top and just sat there for the longest, thinking, breathing, silent as the wind blew all around me. That night, when I talked to Mama about it, I told her, only half-jokingly, “I know that was Daddy helping me up that hill.”

“It probably was,” she said, “You know he’s still holding you up.”

I love you, Daddy. Happy birthday.

And thank you.

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Weekend Crises

I graded papers this weekend. That created the first crisis. Roughly 20% of the students in this small class plagiarized. Another 50% percent did their own work, had great ideas, but lacked the organization, details, and analysis to make their exams good.

This class has turned out to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated because quite a few of the students came in not ready to do the work required in upper division classes. Grr.

But here is the main crisis. Crisis One facilitated an emergency moscato-run. I returned home to find...

MY CORKSCREW WAS NOT WORKING.

And so I was reduced to this chisel-and-shove game involving a paring knife, a steak knife, and, as my need and desperation grew, a small hammer.

You know how sometimes you say f*ck it and just push the cork down into the bottle and swill down cork with your deliciously sweet wine? Well, yeah, no. This one wouldn't budge. I swear we worked on it for an hour.

Finally, the bottle just cracked and off popped a smooth piece of glass. My niece looked at me, ready to toss it.

"Girl, get my glass," I told her.

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In Which CNN Doesn't Get "It"

Liss directed me to an article on CNN entitled “Is Ethnic Beauty the New “It” Factor?” From the article

There was a time when the Caucasian girl-next-door looks of Christie Brinkley, Cindy Crawford and more recently Kate Moss dominated the fashion pages. Then came new fashion icons: Naomi Campbell, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce - and then Giselle, Kim Kardashian and Shakira.

More voluptuous figures, fuller lips and darker skin, features traditionally associated with women of African, Latin and Asian cultures, are "in." Over the past decade, an appreciation for ethnic beauty has been on the rise, and these natural features are becoming popular among Caucasian women who desire to look more "exotic."

My immediate response was, “Eww.” I’ll give you some reasons why in simple, numbered form.

1) CNN, you’re a little bit late. The New York Times ran a piece way back in 2003 about “Generation E.A.: Ethnically Ambiguous” in which advertising and fashion industry insiders waxed on about the “desire for the exotic, left-of-center beauty.” And you know what T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting discovered when she analyzed the “rise” of Generation E.A. in her book, Pimps Up, Ho’s Down? This:

“Despite the hubbub about Generation E.A., editors and ad executives admit that whiteness continues to dominate the beauty and fashion industries,” (31).

2) There is something creepy and fetish-y and colonizer-y about talking about WoC’s “exotic” beauty, white women’s desire for it, and the commodification of it. “What’s not to love, embrace and emulate about ethnic beauty?” gushes one fashion director. And, yes, the NYT article actually used the word “exotic,” too. They also both, not-so-covertly, define WoC outside the realm of “Americanness.” From the CNN article:

The desire for individuality leads people to embrace the image of ethnic women over typical "cookie-cutter American beauties," said [Marie Claire beauty and health director, Ying] Chu.

And one blogger claimed that “no one wants to just look like the quintessential American girl.”

With regards to the NYT article, Sharpley-Whiting notes that the “left-of-center” designation “still situates whiteness at the center of American beauty culture and darker hues on this schematic shifting to the left,” (31).

3) There is, apparently, “beauty” and “ethnic beauty.” Love that continued disappearing of (the normalizing of) whiteness.

4) This isn’t just about our increasingly multicultural nation. “ ‘Race’ mixing is not a ‘new reality,’” writes Sharpley-Whiting, “America [has never been] as ‘white’ as it believes itself to be,” (30). This is about the beauty myth and those ever-shifting goalposts. Naomi Wolf is right—women are never going to meet the elusive standards. I did agree with the blogger I mentioned in point two that this has less to do with a melting pot and more to do with the “obsession of perfection.” “The beauty standards,” she said, “[are] a bit skewed and contradicting.”

5) To imply that the fashion industry, with its notorious color and race issues is at the forefront of this “trend” is laughable, at best.

6) Speaking of the word trend, now, come on! I mean, the “it” factor? And the claim that the mainstream popularity and visibility of Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez “made the larger, rounder bottom sexy?" This underlying notion, for which I don’t yet have the words, that implies that so-called ethnic beauty needed the affirmation, acceptance, and envy of white people to exist, is infuriating.

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Jail Is Preferable

File this under continued vilification of poor people:

Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in "personal hygiene."

I don’t think I can fully break down the classist, sexist, and racist stereotypes/myths embodied in sentiments like these, but just to start:

1. Welfare recipients don’t work outside the home and don’t want to do so. Even before welfare “reform” back in 1996, most recipients worked or sought work. I always wonder if people like Paladino have any idea how paltry benefits are.

2. Being poor/needing assistance is some sort of moral failing that requires institutionalization and constant shame. That people seek welfare assistance is particularly “bad” to people like Paladino—the poor are supposed to suffer nobly and silently. As one commenter romanticized:

[B]ack in the thirties young men were ecstatic to get a job and to develop new skills via the Civilian Conservation Corp. But back then, the poor were tough, honorable folk with intact families… Today's poor aren't poor due to the economy, but the result of hand feeding that created and now sustains society breakdown.

Recently, problemchylde commented on this mindset:

All rags-to-riches (or rags-to-bitches, if you want to get all Boondocks about it) stories start with people who are poor but industrious. Tales of kids eating cigarette ash sandwiches to survive. Tales of people saving mustard packets so they have food that stretches through the whole year. Bonus points if your parent proudly refuses government help, or if you suffer through and survive a vitamin deficiency. You’re a rock star if you live many years out on the streets and still pull down a 4.0+ GPA. You have done poverty correctly.

However, if you take what little disposable income you have and buy sushi, you are doing wrong. Poor people do not want things like smartphones (you’re poor; who are you calling on a smartphone?), televisions (you’re poor; what do you need entertainment for?), nice cars (why wouldn’t you get a modest car to get around when you’re poor), or delicious food (do you know how much ramen you could have bought for the cost of that scone?). Poor people should not take any windfalls or nest eggs or scraped together pennies and expose themselves to luxuries. After all, isn’t that just a brutal reminder of how poor they are any other time? Why not just face the fact that poor is what you are, poor is what you shall be, and poor means that you cannot have nice things?

I’d advise you to read the whole post.

3. Motherwork is not "real" work/not valuable. The only work that is important/deserving of remuneration occurs outside the home. The article quotes Paladino as saying, “Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check.” (Emphasis mine)

4. The mothering of poor women, especially poor women of color, is insignificant/not necessary for their children. As I said at that link,

A discourse has developed in this country to support stealing our children away from us that attacks us as immoral, "illegal," or uneducated. [Remember] black children sold away from their mothers and Native children forced into "Indian schools" so they could be "properly" Christianized and Americanized. In fact, Americanizers of the late 19th/early 20th century spent inordinate amounts of time threatening to take immigrant children from their parents, telling immigrant mothers how their methods of child-rearing were substandard to those of more WASP-y Americans, probably as much time as 20th century welfare critics spent convincing themselves that poor black women did not really love or want their children--they only had them to get more out of the system--and as much time as 21st century anti-immigration proponents spend convincing themselves that Latinas don't really love or want their children--they just want anchor babies.

If most welfare recipients are single moms and you move them into dormitories, who takes care of their kids? Or do you institutionalize the children as well, under the blanket assumption that the state will do a “better” job of rearing them? As Dorothy Roberts said in Shattered Bonds, "America’s child welfare system is rooted in the philosophy of child saving—rescuing children from the ills of poverty, typically by taking them away from their parents," (p 26). Which brings me to another problematic idea…

5. Poor people need to be institutionalized/under constant government oversight because of their deficient character and abilities. We already know that the state intervenes disproportionately in poor families of color. According to Roberts, "the public child welfare system equates poverty with neglect," (p 27). And as the article noted:

the suggestion that poor families would be better off in remote institutions, rather than among friends and family in their own neighborhoods, struck some anti-poverty activists as insulting.

I think “insulting” is too mild a word.

6. Poor people are unclean, all come from disordered homes and, thus, lack social skills. I mean, he’s going to give them lessons in:

“personal hygiene… the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes.”

[snip]

“You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things”

Related to the belief in the disorder/dysfunction of all poor homes and communities, Paladino asserts, "These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities." To live in... jails. And see how he emphasizes the bathroom/toilet facilities? As if this is 1910 instead of 2010 and people aren't used to them?

As an aside, that comment reminded me of Barbara Bush's assertion, after talking to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston, "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." The idea that poor people don't have "real" or worthy communities or family and geographic ties is infuriating.

7. Poor people deserve to have their labor exploited. He’s using prisons to house people to extract low-cost labor. I don’t think this idea is so original.

I'm sure there is more that I could highlight in this disaster of a suggestion, but I think you get the idea.

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Concentration

From the Florida AP/Miami Herald:

A candidate for the Florida House of Representatives says "camps" should be built to house illegal immigrants in Florida until they can be deported.

Yeah, let that sink in. Said candidate seems woefully unaware of how similar ideas have worked in U.S. history. Or, you know, maybe she is.

As if that isn't enough:

Marg Baker, who is seeking the Republican nomination for House District 48, says officials could "collect enough illegal aliens until you have enough to ship them back."

The dehumanization in that sentence--as if referring to people as "illegal aliens" is not a clear indicator of her mindset, she actually makes the suggestion that the government "collect" them and "ship" them as if they are cargo.

Baker even threw in a little classism* for good measure:

Baker added the housing would be "regular homes like a lot of poor people live in."

Then, just to be sure the us vs. them sentiment came through (minus words like "undesirable" and "dangerous"), Baker warned:

"We need to have camps because there are a lot of these people roaming among us."

Emphasis mine.

Ignorance hers.

H/T Quaker Dave He found video (that I just saw this morning and as I am on my way out for a while, I can't transcribe right now). Scratch my idea that maybe she doesn't know about historical precedent. She actually says:

We can follow what happened back in the 40s and 50s. I was just a little girl in Miami and they built camps for the people that snuck into the country because they were illegal. They put them in the camps and shipped them back... we must stop them.

Ms. Baker... while you're reminiscing about history, please remember someone else used camps in the 40s.
__________________
*Of course, much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric, particularly anti-Latino immigrant rhetoric, is classist already.

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I Write Letters

(edited below the fold: h/t
ajoye and The Chemist at Shakesville)

Dear Allstate,

Despite what your advertising people may have told you, this is not a commercial:


(Transcript below the fold)

This is a twisted conglomeration of stereotypes. In 15 seconds, you perpetuate and reinforce the ideas that the “typical” teenage girl:

likes pink,

is distracted by sparkly things,

is careless,

is a dangerously poor driver,

is selfish.

Who is this girl? I'm not sure she's typical. And, as if the commercial isn’t insulting enough, you have the nerve to refer to this mysterious girl as “Mayhem?”

Who’s “in good hands” with you, Allstate? Certainly not young women or the image of them.

Exasperated and insulted,

elle



And this:



Because women out performing their daily routines are a danger to men who just can't help themselves. Here is the same sentiment present in so many rape apologists' arguments: "It's the woman's fault for wearing certain clothing/being attractive/taking up (public) space)."

Grrr.
__________________

Transcript 1:

A pink SUV makes its away across a parking lot. The camera then switches to the inside of the SUV where we see a disheveled man (Mayhem) driving and clutching a cell phone with a sparkly cover.

Mayhem: "I'm a typical teenage girl."

The phone chimes and Mayhem looks down at it. In the process, he hits the front fender of a car and knocks it off, damaging his own car, as well. He continues to drive off and tosses the cell phone into the back seat.

Screen fades to black and the words "Are You in Good Hands" and then "Allstate" appear.

Transcript 2:

Commercial opens on Mayhem jogging with requisite pink headbands and weights.

Mayhem: I’m a hot babe out jogging. I’m out making sure this (gestures towards his upper body) stays a ten when you drive by.

(Guy drives by in black car and ogles Mayhem. Mayhem smiles and winks because we all know how flattering it is to be ogled.)

Mayhem: You’re checking out my awesome headband when…

(Guy crashes into light pole)

Mayhem: Oops.

(Light pole falls on car)

Mayhem: That’s when you find out, your cut rate insurance… it ain’t paying for this.

(Guy gets out of the car to survey damage)

Mayhem: So get Allstate. Save cash and get better protected from Mayhem like me.

Allstate logo appears along with voice of Dennis Haysbert: Dollar for Dollar, nobody protects you from Mayhem than Allstate.

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