feminist blogs

Via Facing South:

Today a state appeals court threw out the aggravated battery conviction of Mychal Bell, one of the half-dozen black teens facing unusually serious charges for the beating of a white schoolmate amid escalating racial tensions in a small Louisiana town... Bell was only 16 at the time of the beating. It occurred after a series of troubling incidents that started when black teens sat under a schoolyard tree that had traditionally been reserved for white students. In response, a group of white students hung three nooses from the tree, an act for which they were punished with a brief expulsion.

For the AP story, go here, for CNN’s coverage, here.

For background on the history of this case, see The Group News Blog. Be prepared to cry your eyes out.

*UPDATE 11:45 AM 8/14/06*

Okay, this is hilarious. This post is getting a lot of hits (but, interestingly, zero comments thus far) from this blog’s feed at RVAblogs.com, a lovely site that aggregates various Richmond, Virginia-based blogs. Recently, the site’s editor set up a neat tagging system enabling readers (rather than the bloggers themselves) to add descriptive tags to the posts. When I looked earlier today, I saw, for example, that the tag ‘race’ had been added to my post. Okay, that’s fine… but then later I looked again and a brand-new tag had been added: “only white people are racist“.

Um… Sorry, but I never said that. Or even remotely implied that! I’m writing here about racist shit white people feel perfectly happy with sharing with other white people. That was all. Of course people of all ethnicities can be racist! (See, for example, see this post on the Asian feminist blog Reappropriate about an Asian woman’s racism against a black man in making hiring decisions.) I won’t go so far as to assume that the person who tagged my post in this manner is some embarrassingly defensive (and racist) white person, but damn, it sure looks that way.

Okay, I now return you to the original blog post…

This evening we went to visit some friends, Chip and Lisa, who’d recently bought a house in a neighborhood near ours. There are quite a few homes for sale in that area so we poked around a bit, peering in the windows of those places that had For Sale signs (and which weren’t presently lived in… we’re not out to invade anybody’s privacy). Later we were talking with Lisa (who, like Chip, is white) about the neighborhood, who she’d met and what her impressions were. She said their neighbor next door, an elderly white woman, had seemed friendly at first. When Lisa asked what the woman knew about her neighbor on the opposite side of their house (whom Lisa had only briefly met before), the woman’s first response was, “Well, he’s colored.” As if, perhaps, Lisa had somehow not observed the fact that this neighbor was black, and needed to be informed - no, warned - of this fact! (How Lisa reacted to this startling observation, I neglected to ask.) Next, the woman said about the man, “Well, he’s been here for a few years.”

Later, Lisa met the man again and it turns out he’d been living there for, oh, twenty-seven years. Whereas the racist white lady had been there for only a few years longer than that. Yet, her perception was that this man was some recently invading (”colored”) interloper. Time to get over it, lady. Particularly since the neighborhood on the whole seemed about evenly white and black. Her racist nostalgia for a day when, presumably, it was much more exclusively white is just plain embarrassing.

I’m reminded of the time when, a few years back, a white waitress at a local Shoney’s, after we’d paid and were getting ready to leave, making friendly conversation, decided for some reason to share how annoyed she was about The Blacks (a phrase she uttered with significant venom) who kept using the Shoney’s parking lot, while they were apparently patronizing the business next door. What was most obnoxious about this was the way in which she said it, leaning over the counter and speaking in hushed, conspirational tones suggestive of some kind of racist shared reality between us. Of course I told her off on the spot (”In front of God and everybody” as we sometimes say in the South), explaining to her and then to her manager why the fact that she’d made this racist comment meant we would never again set foot in that business establishment (we had been, at that point, regulars, eating there at least once per week). I don’t know which of them looked more confounded, the waitress or the manager.

Later, in speaking to the same manager and subsequently his regional manager over the phone (at my initiation, not theirs), I failed to get through to them about why the woman’s comment had been racist, and moreover, why it had been so offensive to me. The regional manager actually asked me if I was white. Had I been thinking more clearly, I’d have hollered why in the hell does that matter here? But instead I just said, well, yeah, following which he seemed even more baffled as to why I’d been offended. Why would I challenge (even in this truly infinitesimal way) the very system of racism from which I derive privilege? I can’t imagine that the waitress would have said what she said to us in front of non-white customers. (While I can easily imagine her treating such customers differently, perhaps with racism of the less overt variety.)

A bit more than a decade ago, as a struggling young mom on welfare in Minnesota, I had another interesting experience with this sort of “whitey-to-whitey” conspirational racism, this time at a grocery store. Can’t remember the chain, but it was sort of like Ukrops here in Virginia… think it began with a B, which is to say it was somewhat high-end. (At the time, my girlfriend, my daughter and I were actually homeless, temporarily crashing out in the basement of someone we vaguely knew who lived in that area, hence shopping at the improbably high-end grocery store, because that’s all there really was.) The cashier smiled widely at me, saying, so pretty much everyone in the checkout line could hear, “Oh, you’re on food stamps?” As if that weren’t humiliating and irritating enough, she went further, asking, “So how do you like being on welfare?” To which I responded with something bright like, um, it’s okay, since, even if I’d been able to come up with some lucid, on-the-spot analysis of the particular intersection of class and disability politics* that had led to me being on public assistance (my girlfriend was disabled, her SSI was forever pending, and I had to take care of both her and my daughter full-time), A) it was none of her damned business and B) it would have been over her head anyway.

But wait, there’s more! Then the cashier launched into a rant about how she could totally understand someone like me needing to be on welfare and that was cool, but what she just couldn’t stand was These Black People who were forever coming in and buying steaks! Yes, steaks with their food stamps, when you could plainly tell they had plenty of money from all those gold chains They wear! In response to which I could, at that time, do nothing except stare at her in horror, grabbing my groceries as quickly as possible and heading for the door. Later, I called the store and told the manager what had happened. That time, at least, I didn’t have to explain why I was so offended; the manager profusely apologized and promised to take immediate action in addressing the problem with the cashier. (Of course, I don’t know what actually happened after that point; for all I know he may have done nothing.)

But what continued to haunt and gall me after the fact was how this woman had spoken to me in this conspirational way, from that place of presumed shared racism, and, what was more, as if she had any idea whatsoever what my life circumstances were. Plenty of people, of every possible ethnicity, scam welfare systems in one way or another (and there are lots of reasons why this is so, which I won’t get into here, but suffice it to say I would never automatically condemn someone who did that, because survival itself frequently requires such activity). Why did she automatically assume I was deserving of these benefits, based on our few moments of acquaintance in the (okay, now I remember the name) Byerly’s checkout lane? Only, of course, because I was white. Ugh.

*Actually, there’s an intersection with queer politics here, too, in that if Lee and I had been able to marry, I could have gotten a job and Lee could have subsequently qualified for the medical insurance she desperately needed while we were waiting for her SSI to be approved, a process which ultimately took four unbelievably anguishing, poverty-afflicted years. So even if she could not have been contributing economically to the household, I could have cared of all of us on one income; insurance could have paid for a personal assistant to help her with things I was staying home (or, as the case sometimes was, at other peoples’ homes) to take care of for her.

I’m listening to podcasts accumulated since last week (last time I was on this computer) and wanted to stop by this, my own sad and desperately neglected blog, to issue this recommendation just in case anybody is still reading me: go, if you have not already, and listen to the NPR interview with Larry Wilmore, previously a writer for In Living Color and The Bernie Mac Show, and most recently of The Daily Show as “The Senior Black Correspondent.” It’s toward the very end of the interview (all of which is quite good, addressing the role of satire in addressing racism among other social ills), but he has some comments specifically on mixed class upbringing that I found personally relevant. (Although in some ways, my own class identity could be described as more schizophrenic than merely “mixed.”)

*A very few worthy anti-war blog links are cited here. Submit your recommendations in comments if you wish.

Please check out Dulce Et Decorum Est, a “A collection of anti-war cultural artifacts” compiled by the same cool dude who graciously set up feministblogs.org, and whose Rad Geek People’s Daily has been regular reading for me for years now. (This was the first post with which he earned my respect.) I might not have run across this blog if he hadn’t linked to an old post of mine (featuring the searing words of Otep Shamaya when we were merely a couple of years into the recent Iraq imbroglio).

I tend to avoid blogging extensively on the war, or about any among the specific idiocies of the Bush administration because I find the exercise heartbreakingly redundant, but others have a better grasp on the material and can make constructive use of it in their works, for which I’m grateful. If you’ve seen Dr. Violet Socks’ Just Impeach the Stupid Freak category at The Reclusive Leftist, then you know what I mean. Also, for the record, the Iraq category at Appletree is handy one-stop repository of war-specific If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention material.

I’m leaving tons of worthy sites out, mostly on account of my own hazy, persistently traumatized feelings about the subject, but for now this will have to do.

Now, for those inclined to offer them, your “Best of anti-war blogging” link recommendations are welcome in comments.

Since I’m overly consumed with non-Internet life at this moment, I am dropping by in an effort to render the illusion that, having labored for a great deal of time to fix various template issues, I still have some energy leftover to actually blog.

Therefore, this post shall conclude with a (mostly) gratuitous photo of my kids meeting Chris Rock (and his kid), last year in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Rock was in town for the April 30, 2006 Rally to Save Darfur. I was in town (with family in tow) for the beginning of a week long workshop, Protecting Victims of Child Prostitution, hosted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

(Pause inserted here so that any of y’all with actual money can go visit either or both of the above sites and consider making a donation. See, this isn’t completely gratuitous post.)

So while I was holed up in Alexandria with an interesting mix of FBI agents, prosecutors, child advocates, and Law and Order: SVU detective types (plus one incredibly obnoxious vice cop, whose bullshit I was happy to call out in front of God and everybody - but that’s another story), my husband and kids were gallivanting about the Capitol, going to this museum and that one, eventually running into Mr. Rock and his family at one of the various Smithsonians.

Jeff reports that at first he didn’t recognize the star, since his hair had more gray than he could recall from recent film appearances. My husband, being a gregarious fellow, finally approached the artist and struck up a conversation, in a non-threatening manner (in other words, did not scream oh my God! It’s Chris Rock!, which likely would have irritated the star and his bodyguards, of which there were several).

Mr. Rock was quite courteous, and said “sure” when Jeff asked if our girls could have their picture taken with him, so that’s what happened.

With all the scandal recently revealed with regard to how the present administration is treating its veterans, this photo spread affected me even more than it otherwise might have. I know next to nothing about the Marine veteran and his new wife portrayed in this set, but my heart sank most when I saw how they’d married on the grounds of their high school. They’re practically kids, I thought, and gripped my abdomen subconsciously.

I wish them every happiness.

See the whole series (most photos by Nina Berman, copyright Redux) at this link:

Marine Sergeant Ty Ziegel already had his life planned out, he would marry his girlfriend Renee Kline upon returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq.

(Link via my friend Chris at Cosmopoetica.)

Caption: Ty Ziegel and Renee Kline at their wedding, held at their high school.

Caption: Ty Ziegel at the candy store at his home in Washington, IL. When kids ask Ty what happened to his ears, he says, “the bad guys took them.”

Tags: Iraq, military

My dear friend Joriel is what I like to call a Virginia ex-pat; a longtime resident of this state, she has since moved on to yet another place my geographically and culturally schizophrenic heart will always call home: Seattle, Washington. From there, she often does a better job of keeping up on Virginia-related events than I do. Such was the case this morning, when I read her excellent post on Virginia’s recent legislative resolution concerning the atrocity of slavery. I was reminded, then, that I had a post in draft form to finish on this very subject, which follows.

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Forgive me if I’m less than completely impressed with my home state of Virginia’s so-called ‘apology for slavery.’ Sure, we’re apparently the first state to do so, but the progress toward this apparently landmark event (to the extent that toothless legislative resolutions can be “landmark events”) has been marked with cynicism.The legislation was sponsored in Virginia’s Senate by Henry L. Marsh, and in the House of Delegates by A. Donald McEachin. (Incidentally, I’m still deeply embarrassed, on behalf of my fellow Virginians, that McEachin lost the 2001 State Attorney General’s race against Jerry Kilgore, particularly given the extent to which Kilgore was revealed to be a complete asshat when he ran against Tim Kaine for Governor in 2005 and, thank heavens, lost.)In the original proposal, the word “atonement” was used; this was subsequently dropped in favor of more watered-down (and hence, less authentically apologetic) language expressing “profound regret” for slavery. (On the other hand, the new resolution includes references to injustices faced by Native peoples of Virginia, which the original proposal did not; that, at least, is a good thing.)

So, what do I mean when I say the buildup to all this has been ‘marked with cynicism’? Well, consider the charming verbiage of Delegate Frank Hargrove, as reported in USA Today late last month:

The Virginia effort to apologize for slavery stirred controversy last month. Del. Frank Hargrove Sr., a white Republican, told The Daily Progress in Charlottesville that blacks “should get over” slavery instead of seeking a formal apology from the state.

He asked, “Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”

Hargrove voted for the revised measure because, he said, it expresses regret “without apologizing for anything.”

The use of anti-Semitism in the buttressing of anti-Black racism is an extra-nice touch, I must say. Hargrove knows his ‘divide and conquer’ playbook by heart, it would seem.

So, is this so-called ‘apology’ better than nothing? Time will tell. And I’ll be interested to follow developments in other states considering similar legislation (e.g. Maryland and Missouri).

Tags: Overtly Political, racism, Richmond, slaveryOvertly Political, racism, Richmond, slavery

[Note: The following post was written under the duress of both a migraine and pain related to a hematoma in my abdominal wall following my surgery last month. And also, asthma, which might not seem significant here until one factors in the effect that asthmatic coughing can have on two such sources of pain. Which is to say (duh) that it’s all rather amplified for me right now.]

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There is something about the physical plane that seems like such an affront to me lately (indeed: it’s been an affront to my whole family).

Five weeks and one day ago, I was in the ER with an ovarian cyst, said to be in the process of rupturing. I was led to believe, at that time, that it might resolve on its own. But then, days later, I learned I’d have to have surgery, though it wouldn’t happen for several more days. (Which gave me lots more time within which to worry, also - bonus! - without ever being wholly out of pain.)

There was one little event that happened between the date I found out I’d have to have surgery, and the date I finally did, which I never wrote about (much less, told my doctor). That is to say, I spent a great portion of one of the nights between the diagnosis and the surgery throwing up. (Which, in itself, is never a pleasant feeling, but with the Abdominal Demon in residence, it was that much more fucked up for me at the time.)

I didn’t tell the doctor because I was afraid he’d postpone the surgery, and I was in so much pain that I was desperate to get it all over with. I figured it was just some passing bug (which, in fact, it may have been; also, my eldest daughter had similar symptoms around the same time). But now, of course, I can’t help but laugh over recent news of a salmonella contamination of peanut butter products affecting people in our state (among others).

Though I didn’t think much of the story when it first aired, I finally got up the energy earlier this evening to go to our shelves and make sure our (mostly empty) jar did not have the dreaded “2111″ at the beginning of its lot number.

Um. Oh well:

So while I have no idea whether the respective barf-fests endured by my two children and me, at various points over the last several weeks, have anything to do with this peanut butter fiasco, it is beginning to seem a certifiable truth that, lately, the physical universe is out to get me.

Perhaps, indeed, I am being punished for a lifetime of gross overindulgence in peanut butter. (I am, in fact, responsible for most of our current peanut butter supply’s disappearance.)

If so, then perhaps the (ewwww, yuck, icky icky ewwww) hair in my pizza tonight* was also a sign from the Great Beyond; God is angry with me for eating more cheap, crappy, fatty foods (which I don’t even particularly like) than, say, blanched organic vegetables (which I would love).

To which I say, Okay, fine, God - but who’s going to finance all these nice healthy groceries?

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*At a cheap pizza joint that shall remain unnamed, and which I did not complain about at the time, as 1) I was too grossed out to speak and 2) I was pretty sure the only result of such action would be that some minimum wage worker would lose his or her job, or at least get yelled at. I must say, however, that it deeply disturbed me to have Lou Dobbs issuing anti-immigrant invective from the television set there, all the while young Hispanic women and men worked at furious speeds to bus the tables. The clientele was comprised of mostly working class black, white, and Hispanic families, and it seemed to me that (on the macro- level, at least) our accumulations of buffet plates were, on some collective level, compensatory indulgences, responses to learned deprivation. (I, for one, never qualified for the medical moniker of “obese,” until I’d been through involuntary periods of severe hunger, at various points in the late 80s and early 90s, following which my metabolism was screwed and I was far more prone to binge eating.) How many of us in that room had, or will eventually develop diabetes, I wonder?

Oh, and if you think it’s funny that I can take a post about peanut butter and turn it into some self-conscious political screed, see this post by Morgaine at The Goddess (a blog of which, I might specify, I am a fan). She actually manages to work in a tangent about Anthrax!

Tags: classism, immigration, Overtly Political, Parenting, The Body, womens healthclassism, immigration, Overtly Political, Parenting, The Body, womens health

A commenter Noumena was rightly concerned that I was jumping the gun with this post. Now, via Feministing, comes news that Edwards is not going to fire Marcotte and McEwan after all. That’s great, but the fact that there was (at least per Salon.com) a serious threat that he would fire them still causes me concern - as I explained in my initial response to Noumena.

I have yet to read the statements from Edwards, Amanda, and Melissa linked to at the Feministing post, but considering that I’d already (as I said in the response to Noumena) forgiven Edwards for such huge things as his vote to authorize military force in Iraq, I won’t automatically rule out the possibility that this kerfuffle might be forgiveable as well, as there may be mitigating factors. (Certainly, when the disinformation machines of wingnuttery are factored into a given equation in political discourse, this is more than possible.)

However, right now I’m preoccupied with other matters. (Like dancing a selfish little jig over this bit of personal news.) I’ll post again later after I’ve had some time to digest the various statements and feel I can look at the matter with fresh eyes.

If, indeed, I was inordinately rash in posting what I did late last night, that’s my problem to deal with, and certainly not a reflection on Edwards, Marcotte, or McEwan.

Tags: elections, John Edwards, Overtly Politicalelections, John Edwards, Overtly Political

So it is that we have come to learn that Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards has caved into right wing pressure, firing Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, the two awesome feminist, progressive bloggers whom he’d very recently hired to run his blog and netroots campaigns.

Back in late December, Diane Dees at The Dees Diversion, in a post titled John Edwards kicks off his campaign with a statement that infuriates me, wrote the following:

“Orelia Tyler wanted a team of volunteers to come to her newly restored New Orleans house and spread a load of soil in her back yard. She got more than she bargained for when presidential candidate John Edwards showed up to do the shoveling. No one bothered to tell Tyler that her house would be the scene of a political photo op, but even worse was what Edwards said when he got there.

“That’s why I’m in New Orleans,” he said, “…to show what’s possible when we as Americans, instead of staying home and complaining about somebody else not doing what they’re supposed to, we actually take responsibility and we take action…” [emphasis added - VM]

Diane Dees has a pretty sharp eye. (Hey, there’s a reason she’s also a featured writer at the blog for Mother Jones, the motto of which is ‘smart, fearless journalism.’) She writes passionately and frequently about the disastrous governmental response to Hurricane Katrina, and the ongoing struggles the folks of the Gulf Coast (not to mention its exiles) still face. I love her persistence and her precision. I read the same coverage she did about Edwards declaring his candidacy, but I have an acquired numbness concerning all things Katrina. (Mind you: this is a numbness I really have no right to; I’m not a survivor of that disaster, except insofar as I am an American taxpayer, and we will all be suffering the collateral economic damages directly resulting from the Bush Administration’s incompetence for decades to come. But I digress.) I was glad I read Diane’s post at the time, because, embarrassingly, my bullshit detector had been out of whack when I’d first read the coverage on the Edwards candidacy declaration; I hadn’t though far beyond, “Okay, a Dem’s declaring… good thing he’s bringing renewed attention to the Gulf Coast… we’ll see what comes of it.”
Now I think back to my own words from September of 2005 on the Katrina disaster:

…While I’m deeply grateful that I am not directly impacted (beyond the gas price gouging, etc.) by this horrific disaster, there is a part of me that wishes I were in one of the less-severely devastated areas (since of course those are the only areas Bush would dare to set foot in), and wait for this nation’s so-called Commander in Chief to saunter over to me and my family members for a “look how I’m actually responding now” photo op.

I would let him get close enough to me to let him begin to put an arm of entirely fake comfort around my shoulder, and then I would do everything in my power to twist that arm off its evil, obscenely privileged axis, whilst screaming to the reporters: This Man Has Never Been, And Never Will Be My President.

And I would go to federal prison. Gladly.

Maybe there, I’d have access to luxuries like running water and food.

Can someone please explain to me why this incompetent, greedy fuck hasn’t been impeached?

But let’s return, shall we? To Diane’s above-referenced, obviously prescient words in response to the Edwards campaign launch:

“…Well, thank you, but I happen to believe that whoever is not doing what s/he is supposed to be doing should be complained to, loudly and repeatedly, and should be forced to do it. That would be the federal government, whose inept and criminally negligent Army Corps of Engineers caused New Orleans to flood during Hurricane Katrina, and whose Department of Homeland Security did next to nothing when the flood occurred. It’s great that volunteers are shoveling dirt, but all of the shoveling and rebuilding should be done by the organization–in this case, the federal government–that caused the disaster to occur. That’s taking responsibility.” [emphasis in original - VM]

So, really, was Edwards’ use of New Orleans as a backdrop, exploiting the suffering of its people for political gain - especially when he took that kind of a condescending tone with those whose suffering he was ostensibly there to ameliorate - any better than Bush’s equivalent posturing around the Gulf Coast?

That Marcotte and McEwan had been willing to work for the John Edwards campaign made me wonder, at first, if there wasn’t something more substantive to the candidate than I had earlier suspected. Other progressive bloggers had a similar response. Elayne Riggs, for example, wrote:

“…My deep esteem for these women and their writing and passion has caused me to root much harder than I did before for Edwards to get the nom; if Amanda and Melissa vouch for him, that’s good enough for me…”

Hugo Schwyzer, in the meantime, noted that although he was “as yet agnostic about the major candidates in the race (Edwards, Obama, Clinton),” that he “might well end up joining the sublime and winsome Ms. Marcotte.”

Lots of us were willing to consider Edwards on the strength of his vicarious credibility, derived from his apparent boldness in hiring Marcotte and McEwan. Needless to say, John Edwards’ borrowed edge of authenticity is now completely gone, and because of what? A bunch of bullshit right wing ideologues, blasting Amanda because she’d cursed on her own blog, prior to having been hired for the job?

(No doubt, there could not be anyone who has ever worked on a Republican’s presidential campaign who has ever - gasp! - cursed in a public venue of any kind!)

I don’t fault either Marcotte or McEwan for having thrown their support behind Edwards; it’s not their problem that Edwards wasn’t worthy of their efforts. A Presidential candidate who is too much of a coward to withstand the bullshit issuing from the inevitable “wingnut noise machine” (as Violet elegantly put it) is, frankly, too much of a coward to be our Commander in Chief.

Years of Democratic Party cowardice, its overarching failures to stand up to the Right, haven’t exactly resulted in progressive populist victories. So why in the fuck would Edwards think that bending over for in the face of wingnut bullshit would be some kind of strategic move?

So this is me, happily cursing away within the (gloriously American) free speech zone of my own goddamned blog.

Come on! Say it with me, y’all:

FUCK JOHN EDWARDS.

Seriously. Fuck ‘em.

Tags: elections, feminism, George W. Bush, John Edwards, katrina, Overtly Politicalelections, feminism, George W. Bush, John Edwards, katrina, Overtly Political