Reflections and Introductions

I always feel like I’m walking into a trap when I start any type of self-improvement.  Despite my good intentions for doing it and the fact I WANT to do it, the moment other people get wind of what I’m doing they start projecting these expectations on my motives.  Eventually I join in until I don’t recognize why I started anymore, and the constant external plugging of Instant-Great-Life makes me quit.

I am physically healthy for a 5’7″, 237 pound African-American woman, haven’t had anything remotely close to high blood pressure or high cholesterol, haven’t tested anywhere close to having diabetes, and have a slight tendency towards anemia (my white blood cell count has been on the low side since I was a kid).  Yet whenever I go to the doctor’s office or whenever I tell someone I want to lose weight (mostly to become fitter and for my mental/emotional health since I can’t afford therapy, not even on a sliding scale), my doctor insists DESPITE MY DAMNED MEDICAL CHART we have reviewed together, that I need to ward off these specters of disease because BMI says I’m obese, and people presume that clearly I have been written a death ticket because I’m a fat black woman who wants to lose weight.

Reading this Bitch article on the links between privilege and a larger anti-feminist empowerment structure put it into perspective for me, because while I’m trying to make lifestyle adjustments and visualizing goals, I inevitably start wanting unrelated things.  I start wanting things that, for whatever reason, I’ve assumed that I can’t have now while I’m fat.  An excellent career.  A healthy romantic relationship.  Lots of money so I can join a gym, do a class, buy cute outfits.  Driving lessons and a car, so I can get my license.  Dancing lessons, so I can learn to dance.

Then when I look at all these little fantasies I’ve erected, I wonder, “How the hell did I get to wanting these things when I just want to get rid of these two asymmetrical rolls on my back?  Why is this my laundry list when I only want to get to the point that I can run and not feel like I’m going to collapse after an 1/8 of a mile?  If someone doesn’t think I’m attractive now, rolls and all, what does it say about me that I assume they’ll come running once I’m fit and slimmer?  Even more, what does it say about them that they felt no need to approach me until I conformed to their aesthetic?”

***

Weight Watchers is simultaneously improving and ruining my life.  Let me explain.

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve lost 25 pounds.  I lost the first 17 pounds using a free tool online called My Fitness Pal for calorie counting and estimating my activity.  I’ve lost the 8 pounds through my enrollment on Weight Watchers through my job.  I’ve been on the program since April, and I like the POINTS system as much as I like calorie counting; but of course, the POINTS calculator makes tracking more convenient, and you don’t have to rely upon people’s inaccurate assessments of nutritional facts as often.

But I am swiftly realizing it may have been a mistake to enroll in the Weight Watchers program through my job and to let it garnish my wages.  That choice has switched me from eking out a living with an administrative job to existing from paycheck to paycheck.  I cannot afford to go out with anyone.  I cannot afford to buy anything I need.  Instead, my money funnels towards home, student loans, and paying for the times when my fantasies of having enough, having it all, and continuing to have more blinded me to the reality of being a poor black woman with a relative to care for and the constant need to weave her own blessings from dust and dreams.

If I had that Weight Watchers money every two weeks, it would make a WORLD of difference.  But on the to-do list for a girl playing at privilege she doesn’t have — to eat, to pray, to spend — praying is the only thing I can afford!  So I do it regularly to instill some heaven into the hell I’ve created.

***

Credit is now the bane of my existence.  I relied mostly on credit to fuel my fantasies of having it all.  I could subscribe to magazines I liked.  I could buy my friends thoughtful gifts.  I could donate money to people and charities.  I could go out to eat.

And I LOVED going out to eat.

I ran up my credit card in college feeding myself and my friends.  Although we were granted the privilege of being served unappetizing food, sometimes undercooked food, often not very healthy food through our college diet plan, we opted not to take it.  We would either go to other places or buy groceries and cook ourselves.  We would choose our own unhealthy adventures, thank you very much, and we did it until we couldn’t anymore.  My little baby credit card, given to me at 17-18 (with parental supervision, initially) has grown from an $800 limit to approaching $10k while I’m the ripe old age of 24.  Guess how much your girl owes after 5 more years of higher learning, 5 years of running after security in shopping bags, and 5 years of wanting to feel responsibility through spending instead of through… well, taking responsibility.

I’m coming down from an addiction, and I’ve had mini-meltdowns in recovering from my need to show that I’m magnanimous and generous through spending.  Spending money helped to curb my social anxiety in a big way and helped me feel engaged in a non-profit model that gets by with constant solicitations for money and signatures instead of time-consuming interaction with issues, instead of recognizing the patterns of how these issues affect my life even if I’m not immediately proximate to the causes.  And it’s telling that lately in activism, saying the phrase do something translates often to give money to starting/stopping something.

***

I learned earlier this year that I cannot afford to write for free.  The second I felt the impulse to sit down and write here, on my space, I would follow it up with a question: “Can I make this longer and pitch it somewhere?”  Writing is something I enjoy; it’s something I do to sort out the thoughts that don’t belong anywhere else.  But it takes time, and time is money.  I’m foregoing a trip to work for time and a half to write this.  This is the best self-care I have.

I’ve slowly tried to phase out using Sylvia Peay as my writing name.  I have a body of work here and other places writing under that name.  I’ve made great friends and occasional enemies writing under that name.  But for a woman who constantly writes things like “this is who I am” to keep using a name that is not the one she was given — it grew tedious.

Some writers do well pseudonymously.  But I like my name.  I want to write for free and write for money (multitasking!), and I want to do it under my name.  I found an archive of posts from The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum by chance a month ago (proving nothing ever truly dies in cyberspace), and I will slowly integrate them here and bulk up my archives.  Eventually I will learn how to get my own domain space, buy said space, and see if I can pretty things up beyond what WordPress has given me.

I’m Monchel Pridget.  I’m a Christian (non-denominational), lawyer, writer, poet, radical woman of color, online activist, armchair revolutionary, and big mouth.  Honesty is one of my most precious commodities, second only to love.  My words, opinions, and occasional fits of hubris belong to me and not to anyone employing me at any given time.

Nice to meet you.

A Note (and then hiatus)

I can’t keep doing this to my stomach and my health, my consciousness and my emotions, my work and life. And since the woman I did it for has asked for it to stop, I will honor that.

But before I saw her request, I wrote this at Hugo Schwyzer’s in response to Elaine Vigneault and probably to many others who feel the same way. I should have just sipped the hemlock directly instead of mixing it into some red Kool-Aid. This is it until May 16th.

Regardless of whether or not Amanda outlined the article prior to the speech, her refusal to include WOC who obviously wanted to be included in the discussion is the real issue here.

Oh my Jesus, no. It’s not. It’s really not.

The real issue is the work of women of color gets trivialized or rendered invisible every time our feminisms intersect.

I don’t know how anyone could read the Seal Press situation as a request for inclusion unless they have a highly inflated sense of their worth. “Fuck Seal Press” is not a cleverly short and provocative book proposal, not a plea for love, or a request for respect. It’s a dismissal. Though it may lack context in the post it’s written in, it is NOT without context in Seal Press’s decline in incorporating and publishing works by women of color.

I also don’t know how anyone can read this situation as a request for inclusion into dialogue. It is about work and respect for that work which is ongoing, with or without the weigh-in of white mainstream feminists. Just tossing our names in isn’t enough. But it’s a start in showing that the ideas that you’re presenting are not novel and that they have a foundation beyond the “zeitgeist” of the time. This is not a new concept. It’s called appropriation. May not have the force of “stealing” or “plagiarism” but it’s much worse in its impact.

That’d take knowledge and engagement with the idea that women of color do feminist work, anti-racist work, work involving people with disabilities and LGBT that decidedly does not depend on white feminists noticing them. Yet the ideas and information from the work of women of color find its way into the books and articles of white feminists without attribution.

Feminism is not limited to one action or conceptualization. There is not only one movement. We are not trying to join anything or to have ourselves included in anything. Once again, please stop ego tripping. There are publishing houses, copyrights, programs, networks, opportunities and consciousness for women of color. We pour our experiences and our passions into the work we present, the work we do, the work we live everyday. We want credit for what we’ve done and what we’re doing when it trickles down and through to white middle-class feminism.

We don’t want disembodiment from issues that affect us because it reached someone [else] later than it touched us. We don’t want our bodies and our lives and our truths dependent on whims and zeitgeists and bound to arbitrary timelines. Our strongest claim to these issues beyond dates and clear similarities of theory and synthesis is we live in them and they live in us.

The red herrings tearing this discussion away from this fundamental request for respect are galling.

Now back to building this bridge called my life.

addendum

Another thing this debate conjures for me is when people have been caught for writing fictionalized memoirs, race, and the question of authenticity. I’m sure people have heard about the Margaret B. Jones debacle, for example. I think in situations like Jones’s, the clear line where appropriation diverges from attribution begins to rise and become clear.

Stereotypically, the situations and narratives Jones identifies in her work are experiences linked with a certain class and race in America. But Jones, through her whiteness, gained more popularity and eventual notoriety because she came to the situation 1) writing with a distinct claim to authority on that experience (one that was later determined she didn’t have) and 2) writing with knowledge of what people with no authority on the subject would like to read and see. Which is where the privilege of her white lens became a boon for her and a new opportunity to ignore similar narratives from people of color living the same and similar realities. Like the autobiography of Felicia “Snoop” Pearson, from the overhyped but under-acclaimed series The Wire, for example: Pearson could likely claim authenticity for her work, but because of the stereotypical nature of our system and the fact that she is writing with no conscious head nodding to the white lens, the lens of distance and cultural observation, her work is undervalued in this discourse.

That’s the same as what’s happened in this situation. No one backpedaled on the accusation of appropriation. My post, which I was careful to compose, does not link point for point where Amanda “stole” things word-for-word from BFP. Rather, it makes BFP’s work — who is just one of the bloggers who have been tying feminism with immigration before the article Amanda quoted hit the “zeitgeist” — visible. And it questions why Amanda took upon her shoulders the claim of authenticity on critical issues on immigration and feminism, immigration and dehumanizing language, and immigration and sexual abuse without giving some indication of the longstanding body of work from multiple people of color who have identified more heinous crimes, who have pointed out more causal links, and whose work undoubtedly could lead to honest and critical engagement with the situation and possible broader activism in coalition with people who don’t want to touch the situation.

Because without that reference, it invisibilizes people who do have that authenticity and experience, who live those experiences, because they cannot impose a lens of detached whiteness that they did not have into their narratives. They cannot pretend that they’re horrified witnesses without a dog in the fight who have sympathetic and probing viewpoints in the matter. And as a result of not being able to claim that detachment, you get the phenomenon Belle quotes from BFP, as well as a continuing dependence on people carrying the white lens to ferret ideas from people of color for publicizing and spreading awareness. The peddling of brown people without last names who get mundane yet detailed narratives of their every move because it’s so different. Who get their horrific moments sensationalized and their tragic and common moments ignored.

THAT’S the sinister nature of appropriation. And in this instance, by not linking to anyone that inspired her viewpoint — forget BFP, even — Amanda tapped into this narrative that has been tapped into by countless folks online and offline. And each leaking into this scheme hurts and makes the victims of invisibility less than charitable once someone white sees us and says, “Hey, what’s wrong? Please write us a book report with cross checks and proper cites, perfect spelling and grammar, and completely objective — that means don’t interpose your oversensitivity into it — yes, please write us a great screed telling us everything very clearly about what’s wrong. One ‘t’ uncrossed, and you lose your argument. And please, make sure you note everyone involved; if you fail to do so, that’s intellectually dishonest and we’ll refuse to engage with you!”

“Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition” | Mari J. Matsuda

[I haven't forgotten what I wanted to share. One of a few women of color legal scholars that shaped my introduction to women of color feminism. --M]

…

I. Three Women Working

A. Daughter of Pi’ilani

Haunani-Kay Trask is a paradox to those unfamiliar with the world from which she comes. She writes of working in coalition with environmentalists who, in her community of Hawai’i, are often white in-migrants. Expressing bitterness and frustration, Trask recounts the dispossession of Native Hawaiian people — their landlessness, poverty, unemployment, imprisonment, rates of disease, and illiteracy. Trask speaks of the haole (Caucasian) colonizers who removed the Hawaiian government by force, leaving wounds in the native population that have never healed. Expressing outrage at the haole-backed takeover of Hawai’i has earned Trask the reputation of “haole-hater.” She speaks out in the press. She writes. She debates. Trask is constantly engaged in dialogue with the haole. She works with whites in coalition on a variety of issues, from nuclear testing in the Pacific, to South African divestment, to degradation of the environment through geothermal development.

I have heard people say of Professor Trask, “She would be much more effective if she weren’t so angry,” as though they expect a Native Hawaiian feminist to work in coalition without anger. There is a politics of anger: who is allowed to get angry, whose anger goes unseen, and who seems angry when they are not.

Once, when I intended to compliment an African-American woman on a powerful speech she had made, I said: “I admire your ability to express anger.” She looked at me coolly and replied, “I was not angry. If I were angry I would not be speaking here.” Another African-American friend of mine jumped into the conversation. “I’m disappointed in you,” she said. “This is what always happens to us when a Black woman speaks her mind. Someone calls us angry.”

I remember this exchange because it was an uncomfortable one for me, and because it was a moment of learning. Talking across differences, my colleague told me that if she were hatefully angry, beyond hope of coalition, she would not talk. In this light, Professor Trask’s strong words are acts of engagement, not estrangement.

Would Professor Trask be more effective if she were less angry? There is a cost to speaking without anger of the deaths and dislocation that Native Hawaiians suffered in post-contact Hawai’i. On the simple, communicative level, failure to express the pain created by this legacy obscures the depth of one’s feeling and discounts the subordination experienced by one’s community. More significantly, the use of polite, rational tones when one is feeling violation is a betrayal of the self.

Professor Trask’s many white and Asian colleagues who choose to remain in the room when she speaks in tones of outrage about the destruction of Hawaiian lives, land, and culture inevitably find their understanding greatly enriched. The discomfort brings with it an opportunity for learning. As a third-generation Japanese-American, I have felt the discomfort and benefited from the learning when Professor Trask criticizes the role of immigrants in displacing Native Hawaiians. The choice is mine to remain in the conversation, discussing (sometimes with acrimony) the role of colonialism in bringing my peasant ancestors eastward from Asia to work on the land that once belonged to indigenous peoples of Hawai’i and North America.

I could shelter myself from conflict by leaving the conversation, but I have come to believe that the comfort we feel when we avoid hard conversations is a dangerous comfort, one that seduces us into ignorance about the experiences of others and about the full meaning of our own lives.

…

C. The Multi-Cultural Feminist

…

[Some] suggest that coalition has limits of both tolerance and utility.

Why, then, given the frustration of coalition, do…women [of color] not retreat into racial separatism? In the quest for a theoretical underpinning for social change movements, women of color have the choice of remaining in coalition or dispersing to do separate work. The emergence of feminist jurisprudence, critical race theory, critical legal studies, and the women of color and the law movement has raised fears of division and parochial separatism in the legal community. If it is so hard to work together, if the gulfs in experience are so wide, if the false universals of the modern age are truly bankrupt, what need binds us? What justifies unity in our quest for self-knowledge?

My answer is that we cannot, at this point in history, engage fruitfully in jurisprudence without engaging in coalition, without coming out of separate places to meet one another across all the positions of privilege and subordination that we hold in relation to one another.

II. Theory Out of Coalition

Through our sometimes painful work in coalition we are beginning to form a theory of subordination; a theory that describes it, explains it, and gives us the tools to end it. As lawyers working in coalition, we are developing a theory of law taking sides, rather than law as value-neutral. We imagine law to uplift and protect the sixteen-year-old single mother on crack rather than law to criminalize her. We imagine law to celebrate and protect women’s bodies; law to sanctify love between human beings — whether women to women, men to men, or women to men, as lovers may choose to love; law to respect the bones of our ancestors; law to feed the children; law to shut down the sweatshops; law to save the planet.

This is the revolutionary theory of law that we are developing in coalition, and I submit that it is both a theory of law we can only develop in coalition, and that it is the only theory of law we can develop in coalition.

A. Looking at Subordination from Inside Coalition

When we work in coalition, …we compare our struggles and challenge one another’s assumptions. We learn of the gaps and absences in our knowledge. We learn a few tentative, starting truths, the builing blocks of a theory of subordination.

We learn that while all forms of oppression are not the same, certain predictable patterns emerge:

• All forms of oppression involve taking a trait, X, which often carries with it a cultural meaning, and using X to make some group the “other” and to reduce their entitlements and power.
• All forms of oppression benefit someone, and sometimes both sides of a relationship of domination will have some stake in its maintenance.
• All forms of oppression have both material and ideological dimensions. The articles on health, socioeconomics, and violence i this symposium show how subordination leaves scars on the body. The damage is real. It is material. These articles also speak of ideology. Language, including the language of science, law, rights, necessity, free markets, neutrality, and objectivity can make subordination seem natural and inevitable, justifying material deprivation.
• All forms of oppression implicate a psychology of subordination that involves elements of sexual fear, need to control, hatred of self, and hatred of others.

As we look at these patterns of oppression, we may come to learn, finally and most importantly, that all forms of subordination are interlocking and mutually reinforcing.

B. Ask the Other Question:

The Interconnection of All Forms of Subordination

The way I try to understand the interconnection of all forms of subordination is through a method I call “ask the other question.” When I see something that looks racist, I ask, “Where is the patriarchy in this?” When I see something that looks sexist, I ask, “Where is the heterosexism in this?” When I see something that looks homophobic, I ask, “Where are the class interests in this?” Working in coalition forces us to look for both the obvious and non-obvious relationships of domination, helping us to realize that no form of subordination ever stands alone.

If this is true, we’ve asked each other, then isn’t it also true that dismantling any one form of subordination is impossible without dismantling every other? And more and more, particularly in the women of color movement, the answer is that “no person is free until the last and least of us is free.”

In trying to explain this to my own community, I sometimes try to shake people up by suggesting that the patriarchy killed Vincent Chin.^{[1 ]} Most people think racism killed Vincent Chin. When white men with baseball bats, hurling racist hate speech, beat a man to death, it is obvious that racism is a cause. It is only slightly less obvious, however, when you walk down the aisles of Toys R Us, that little boys grow up in this culture with toys that teach about being pretty, baking, and changing a diaper. And the little boy who is interested in learning how to nurture and play house is called a “sissy.” When he is a little older he is called a “f-g.” He learns that acceptance for men in this society is premised on rejecting the girl culture and taking on the boy culture, and I believe that this, as much as racism, killed Vincent Chin. I have come to see that homophobia is the disciplinary system that teaches men that they had better talk like 2 Live Crew or someone will think they “aren’t real men,” and I believe that this homophobia is a cause of rape and violence against women. I have come to see how that same homophobia makes women afraid to choose women, sending them instead into the arms of men who beat them. I have come to see how class oppression creates the same effect, cutting off the chance of economic independence that could free women from dependency upon abusive men.

I have come to see all of this from working in coalition: from my lesbian colleagues who have pointed out homophobia in places where I failed to see it; from my Native American colleagues who have said, “But remember that we were here first,” when I have worked for the rights of immigrant women; from men of color who have risked my wrath to say, “But racism is what is killing us. Why can’t I put that first on my agenda?”

The women of color movement has, of necessity, been a movement about intersecting structures of subordination. This movement suggests that anti-patriarchal struggle is linked to struggle against all forms of subordination. It has challenged communities of color to move beyond race alone in the quest for social justice.

C. Beyond Race Alone

In coalition, we are able to develop an understanding of that which Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw has called “intersectionality.” The women of color movement has demanded that the civil rights struggle encompass more than anti-racism. There are several reasons for this demand. First, and most obviously, in unity there is strength. No subordinated group is strong enough to fight the power alone, thus coalitions are formed out of necessity.

Second, some of us have overlapping identities. Separating out and ranking oppression denies and excludes these identities and ignores the valid concerns of many in our constituency. To say that the anti-racist struggle precedes all other struggles denigrates the existence of the multiply oppressed: women of color, gays and lesbians of color, poor people of color, most people of color experience suborination on more than one dimension.

Finally, perhaps the most progressive reason for moving beyond race alone is that racism is best understood and fought with knowledge gained from the broader anti-subordination struggle. Even if one wanted to live as the old prototype “race man,” it is simply not possible to struggle against racism alone and ever hope to end racism.

These are threatening suggestions for many of us who have worked primarily in organizations forged in the struggle for racial justice. Our political strength and our cultural self-worth [are] often grounded in racial pride. Our multi-racial coalitions have, in the past, succeeded because of a unifying commitment to end racist attacks on people of color. Moving beyond race to include discussion of other forms of subordination risks breaking coalition. Because I believe that the most progressive elements of any liberation movement are those who see the intersections (and the most regressive are those who insist on only one axis), I am willing to risk breaking coalition by pushing intersectional analysis.

An additional and more serious risk is that intersectional analysis done from on high, that is, from outside rather than inside a structure of subordination, risks misunderstanding the particularity of that structure. Feminists have spent years talking about, experiencing, and building theory around gender. Native Americans have spent years developing an understanding of colonialism and its effect on culture. That kind of situated, ground-up knowledge is irreplaceable. A casual effort to say, “Okay, I’ll add gender to my analysis,” without immersion in feminist practice, is likely to miss something. Adding on gender must involve active feminists, just as adding on considerations of indigenous peoples must include activists from native communities. Coalition is the way to achieve this inclusion.

It is no accident that women of color, grounded as they are in both feminist and anti-racist struggle, are doing the most exciting theoretical work on race-gender intersections. It is no accident that gay and lesbian scholars are advancing social construction theory and the analysis of sexuality in subordination. In raising this I do not mean that we cannot speak of subordination second-hand. Rather, I wish to encourage us to do this, and to suggest that we can do this most intelligently in coalition, listening with special care to those who are actively involved in knowing and ending the systems of domination that touch their lives.

^[1] Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was murdered in Detroit by assailants who shouted racial slurs while attacking Chin with a baseball bat. See Detroit’s Asian Americans Outraged by Lenient Sentencing of Chinese American Man’s Killer, Rafu Shimpo, May 5, 1983 (on file with the Stanford Law Review).

Matsuda, Mari. “Beside My Sister, Facing the Enemy: Legal Theory Out of Coalition.” Feminist Legal Theory: An Anti-Essentialist Reader. Eds. Nancy E. Dowd and Michelle S. Jacobs. New York: New York University Press, 2003. 73-77.

it came in a whisper

and i picked it up, breathless,
more than a little anxious,
wondering what it held inside
even as i lived most of it

i picked it up, homeless,
more than a little cautious,
wondering what home it held
even as i ran towards it

and i haven’t even probed
the essays yet and i want to cry,
i want to hug, i want to blame,
i want to build a bridge without
my body and its products and
its tears

i read only the introductions
and i looked around
because i did not want to cry,
i did not want to cry in front of these people,
i did not want to read aloud
and wail about what i missed

i decided against reproducing,
the word needs imposition
into the lives and hearts of those
who speak of things very old
and get pelted by praise for
new discoveries

i hopped on the bus
to class, to the world,
holding a piece of home, moving
away from the freedom
of befriended living,
and i nearly thanked the woman
who drove the bus and cried
before saying good morning

An Open Letter to Western Feminists

You really have to read all of it and drink it in.

In the current climate of U.S.-initiated or U.S.-backed assaults on women in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we are deeply troubled by one kind of hypocritical Western feminist discourse that continues to be preoccupied with particular kinds of violence against Muslim or Middle Eastern women, while choosing to remain silent on the lethal violence inflicted on women and families by military occupation, F-16s, Apache helicopters, and missiles paid for by U.S. tax payers. This is a moment when U.S. imperialism brazenly uses direct colonial occupation, masked in a civilizational discourse of bringing Western “freedom” and “democracy.” Such acts echo the language of Manifest Destiny that was used to justify U.S. colonization of the Philippines and Pacific territories in the 19th century, not to mention the genocide of Native Americans. U.S. covert, and not so covert, interventions in Central, South America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean have devastated the lives of countless indigenous peoples, and other civilians, in this region throughout the 20th century.

The U.S., as well its proxy militias or client regimes, has inflicted violence on women and girls from Vietnam, Okinawa, and Pakistan to Chile, El Salvador, and Somalia and has avenged the deaths of its soldiers by its own “honor killings” that lay siege to entire towns, such as Fallujah in Iraq.

It is appalling that in these catastrophic times, many U.S. liberal feminists are focused only on misogynistic practices associated with particular local cultures, as if these exist in capsules, far from the arena of imperial occupation. Indeed, imperial violence has given fuel to some of these patriarchal practices of misogyny and sexism. They should also know that such a narrow vision furthers a much older tradition of feminist mobilizing in the service of colonialism–”saving brown, or black women, from brown men,” as observed by Gayatri Spivak.

While we too oppose abuses including domestic violence, “honor killings,” forced marriage, and brutal punishment, we are disturbed that some U.S. feminists-as well as Muslim or Middle Eastern women who claim to be “authorities” on Islam and are employed by right-wing think tanks-are participating in a selective discourse of universal women’s rights that ignores U.S. war crimes and abuses of human rights.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the last day of my fun-havin’ fundraiser.  If you want more info about it, look at the top of my sidebar.

House of Cards

Patricia J. Williams has been making too much sense again.

It was delightful, those early days when Republicans were in fractious disarray and the Democratic field bloomed with interesting candidates like a pasture full of daffodils–any of them! All of them! Bluebirds sang. We were rolling in good will. Now, however, John McCain has unified the right with a lizardy, smothering oil of “my friend,” “my friends” and “hey listen, pal.” And Democrats are chewing each other’s legs off. Instead of discussion about substantive positions, a distressingly large proportion of the debate is epitomized by an e-mail I received from a good friend: “In my state, a black man trumps a white woman and that’s that. So what do you suggest?” Here’s what I suggest. 

Go see what she suggests.  Hat-tip to LJ Blackfolk.

The Repossession of My Hair

(a sponsored post.)

It’s been 22 years and my hair does not yet belong to me.

It belongs to my mother and my grandmother.

It belongs to the world of processing and forced relaxation.

It belongs to the strangled strands of unhealthy tresses with ends split in all directions because, and I quote,

“It’s finally at the length I wanted!”

Note that the “I” in that sentence is not my “I,” but my mother’s “I.”

Also note that when my grandmother sees me, it will turn into “we.”

I have lived through decades of uncool hair.

When I was a little girl, I had pressed out strands with little ball-barrettes and butterfly clips.  But luckily, no relaxers or straighteners.

But when I saw the PCJ No-Lye Relaxer commercials and I started getting teased in school for my overpopulated kitchen after breaking into a sweat…

I wanted one!  Oh god, how I wanted one!

For some reason, I grew up calling relaxers “perms.”  And I wanted a permanent farce of straightness.

I begged my momma.  I begged her and she said, “No.”

Just like that.  And up until high school — that’s right, high school — I wore my natural hair braided into all sorts of styles.

When I was younger, my mom got creative.  Stars and hearts would be tightly stitched into my scalp with brown wavy strands of hair.  Maybe even an “M” for my name.

I would get my hair braided and rebraided every week for about 15 years.

For special occasions, my hair would be unbraided and the stench of bergamot and pro-styl would fill the air as that hot comb got near my scalp–

I yelled and hollered out of principle.

I would have thick bangs or chunky curls only meant to last for a good day, maybe two.

Then I would whine and creepwalk to the spot between my mama’s knees, on the beige carpet, and she’d get the bergamot and the fine tooth-comb and get to work.

A few times I convinced her to perm my hair, and afterward I would look in the mirror to see my string-thin hair clinging in damp fear to my scalp, wondering what trauma would hit them next.  But beneath that fear was a smiling face with white and not-quite-grown-in teeth.  Lit up eyes.

Finally, I look like my friends!  Everyone will look at me and boys will notice I exist and the girls won’t try to kick me in the bathroom again!  I Am Cool. 

I mimicked the Pantene Pro-V commercials and flipped my head maniacally back and forth.  I didn’t know my hair wasn’t healthy at that time; but, boy, did it ever shine!

I walked into class and everyone would literally gasp.  Ask what happened.  Touch it.  And they’d be nice to me for a good…day.

But my new straight hair did not overshadow the fact that I asked too many questions in class.  Or that when I tried to talk to other people in class, my whispers were too loud and we’d always get detention.  Or that I couldn’t play tag that well.  Or I wore second-hand plaid uniforms to school almost every day because we couldn’t afford anything else.

Or, or, or.

So the braids came back a week later, and everyone laughed.  They knew it was short-lived.  And I hadn’t learned to appreciate the friends I had no matter what I looked like; so the laughing made me sad.

The hair wars continued.  In high school, my mom relaxed and so did my hair.  Sometimes it was neat; sometimes it was unruly.  But it was something I could comb through and I felt vindicated.

Until it got boring.  Then my aunts started wearing wigs, and I borrowed this crazy curly wig from my mother.

And I loved how weird it looked until a friend of mine told me I looked like Howard Stern.  And it itched!

Sometimes I would pull it off in the middle of class to scratch my scalp; of course, that’s when everyone had great interest in the back of the classroom.

When I got into undergrad, I gave up.  I kept my hair covered.  Maintained the oiling of the scalp when I could.  Still faithfully washed it and heat-blasted it with my blow dryer.

But I didn’t give a shit about styling it.   Sometimes my friends would take me calmly by the hand after a period of depression and patiently do something — anything — with it.

When I went home, my family was pissed.  They were convinced they had taught me nothing about being a woman.

• I wore no makeup,
• I sometimes rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and went to class in my pajamas,
• If I rolled out of bed at all,
• I did not carry a purse (too many bags; I have pockets!), and
• My clothes!  They are not the same color (a special level of matching beyond simple coordination of style).

By my second year of college, my hair began to break off.  I went to Hair Cuttery and my best friend helped me pay to get the breakage snipped off in a reverse bob.  A napped-up reverse bob.

I tipped the beautician 50% and left smiling.  It felt like fifty pounds of weight got snipped off my brain.

I enjoyed touching it.  It was so soft!  And my fingers could go through it and my wide tooth-comb could too!

I kept it covered as my secret source of pride.

And when my friend graduated, her mom twisted my hair.  They were so long!  My hair smelled like coconut oil and shea butter.  I melted.

My family liked it but wondered when I’d get a perm.

They answered their own question after my grandmother and I got into a fight.

Between her legs I sat, crying, and in went the relaxer.  A few months after my 18th birthday.   Relaxer sores back in my scalp because I scratched my hair with abandon before that time.

But my hair was longer and healthier than ever, after that period of natural growing.

I felt no connection to it anymore.  I let other people handle it.  And then everything else.  And the depression grew worse.

Thankfully, I had wonderful professors who knew my problems with deadlines and did not fail me outright.  Who let me turn in final projects during winter breaks.  Who even gave me rides home in the cold when I carried gallons of water back to campus.  Water I never drank.

Thankfully, my mother pressed me to apply for law school because I was convinced that if I could not do a paper or my hair or wear makeup or carry a purse, how would I function in law school?

I applied to one school under threat of violence after gentle urging and patient screaming did not work.  And I got in.

Then the question of handling my hair reemerged.  I could NOT wear a fro.  Not in a professional setting.  So it was permed and hot combed and curled.

The white people at my jobs LOOOOOVED my hair.  “It’s so thick!  You look so professional!”  Whatever, heifer.

I discovered the internet did not only have porn and broken slang.  I formed Opinions About Important Matters.

Law school began, and my mother braided extensions into my hair that needed to be refreshed every month.  White classmates wondered at them, and black classmates smirked at the fact I never went to a Black Law Students Association meeting.

The braids came out and I insisted, one last time, on a relaxer.

People stared at me as if I scalped some poor white lady and put her hair on my head.  “You look phenomenal!”  “Is that…your hair?  All of it?!“  Whatever, heifers!

After that last time, I joined the Black Law Students Association informally before paying dues and getting my Official Black Law Student Card this past fall.

I also explained to my mother that I wanted to chop off my hair again and wear a fro.  I thought this could work somehow.

But we reached a compromise.

I would not get any more perms in exchange for not clipping it short.  I would let the perm hair grow slowly, and I would let her get the straightening comb.

No More Bergamot.  Coconut oil only.

And she could take care of it.

Okay, this is doable.

Until the time she told me I was worthless for missing the tiniest patch of scalp and leaving it dry, and I pulled out a headful of rollers in tears and threw them all over the house.

I was leaving, I was moving, I would max out my credit card, and I would go somewhere.  Anywhere.   

My grandmother insisted over the phone that I stay in place because she didn’t want to scour the city finding me.  I needed a better plan than a credit card.  She loved me.  My mother…well, you know about your mother.

I trembled and nodded.  I flinched as I recovered the rollers and saw whole strands of my hair still curled in them.  She called me worthless again and put my hair in a ponytail.  I cried silently in bed.

Then, my hair slowly began to grow despite the straightening comb and the strangling of split ends that my mother pretends to cut when I take her to task on it.

Now it is back to braids with extensions.

But soon, I will move.  I will move away with a better plan than a credit card and spry feet running on pavement until body collapses in a place and calls it home.

And my homecoming will come in the form of a Hair Cuttery and a 100% tip.

And a law office space that will be forced to face my curls and twists and braids.

Because that’s what I’m giving them.

My hair will be mine.  God-given and thick.

(Can you touch it?

Whatever, heifer.)

Shirley Chisholm is NOT to be forgotten now or ever.

The thing that angers me about Obama and Clinton is this is NOT a historical first with regards to a black person or a woman seeking the presidency. The REAL historical first is Shirley Chisholm back in 1972.

Clinton has been using Chisholm’s legacy as a pawn with black folks and black women since one of the things she did as a junior senator is contribute to legislation honoring her. That’s it.

Obama, on the other hand, has channeled her “Unbought and Unbossed” campaign into an appeal to the people, catered to the hopes of young people with complete audacity, and has painted himself as the Every Person Candidate. That’s it.

Just as Chisholm did! Before Jesse Jackson, even!

It’s no coincidence or surprise from either politician to give her lip service about what she did. I mean, I read these words from Chisholm and it sounds like something Obama’s used in his speeches in almost the exact same words:

“You can be part of the system without being wedded to it,” I say. “You can take part in it without believing that everything it does is right. I don’t measure America by its achievement, but by its potential. There are still many things that we haven’t tried — that I haven’t tried — to change the way our present system operates. I haven’t exhausted the opportunities for action in the course I’m pursuing. If I ever do, I cannot at this point imagine what to do next. You want me to talk to you about revolution, but I can’t do that. I know what it would bring. My people are twelve percent of the population, at most fifteen percent. I am pragmatic about it: revolution would be suicide.”

Chisholm’s the one who paved the way. All these folks can spin Obama and Clinton as historical firsts and discard the importance of her run post-Civil Rights Acts era. I don’t buy the “first with a chance” theory. The fact that she ran knowing that she may not win reflects more on the superficiality of the American people than it does on the merits of her campaign and her spirit. Junior Congresswoman vying for the ticket, all of that. People have thrown lip service in her direction and a few quick glances; but if they look at her ideals you can see so much of her in this season. So much, and yet not enough.

Such leaders must be found. But they will not be found as much as they will be created, by an electorate that has become ready to demand that it control its own destiny. There must be a new coalition of all Americans — black, white, red, yellow and brown, rich and poor — who are no longer willing to allow their rights as human beings to be infringed upon by anyone else, for any reason. We must join together to insist that this nation deliver on the promise it made, nearly 200 years ago, that every man be allowed to be a man. I feel an incredible urgency that we must do it now. If time has not run out, it is surely ominously short.

And ironically, when I look back at descriptions of how Chisholm ran her campaign and garnered support, tactically Obama’s rhetoric squares with hers. (Aside: Why is this historical first’s biography out of print?)

On Young People and Change

One question bothers me a lot: Who’s listening to me? Some of the time, I feel dishearteningly small and futile. It’s as if I’m facing a seamless brick wall, as if most people are deaf to what I try to say. It seems so clear to me what’s wrong with the whole system. Why isn’t it clear to most others? The majority of Americans do not want to hear the truth about how their country is ruled and for whom. They do not want to know why their children are rejecting them. They do not dare to have to rethink their whole lives. There is a vacuum of leadership, created partly by the bullets of deranged assassins. But whatever made it, all we see now is the same tired old men who keep trucking down front to give us the same old songs and dances.

There are no new leaders coming along. Where are they? What has happened suddenly? On the national level, on the state level, who commands respect, who is believed by a wide enough cross section of the population to qualify as a leader? I don’t see myself as becoming that kind of a leader. My role, I think, is more that of a catalyst. By verbalizing what is wrong, by trying to strip off the masks that make people comfortable in the midst of chaos, perhaps I can help get things moving.

It may be that no one can have any effect on most adults on this society. It may be that the only hope is with the younger generation. If I can relate to them, give them some kind of focus, make them believe that this country can still become the America that it should have been, I could be content. The young may be slandered as “kooks” and “societal misfits” by frightened, demagogic old men, but that will not scare them. They are going to force change. For a while they may be beaten down, but time is on their side, and the spirit of this generation will not be killed. That’s why I prefer to go around to campuses and talk with the kids rather than attend political meetings. Politicians tell me I’m wasting my time and energy. “They don’t vote,” I’m told. Well, I’m not looking for votes. If I were, I would get the same kind of reception that a lot of political figures get when they encounter young people, and I would deserve it.

There are many things I don’t agree with some young zealots about. The main one, I suppose, is that I have not given up — and will not give up until I am compelled to — my belief that the basic design of this country is right. What is essential is to make it work, not to sweep it away and substitute — what? Something far worse, perhaps.

Most young people are not yet revolutionary, but politicians and police and other persons in power almost seem to be conspiring to turn them into revolutionaries. Like me, I think, most of them are no more revolutionary than the founders of this country. Their goals are the same — to insure liberty and equality of opportunity, and forever to thwart the tyrannous tendencies of government, which inevitably arise from the arrogance and isolation of men who are securely in power. All they want, if it were not too fashionable for them to say so, is for the American dream to come true, at least in its less materialistic aspects. They want to heal the gaping breach between this country’s promises and its performance, a breach that goes back to its founding on a Constitution that denied that black persons and women were full citizens. “Liberty and justice for all” were beautiful words, but the ugly act was that liberty and justice were only for white males. How incredible that it is nearly 200 years since then, and we have still to fight the same old enemies! How is it possible for a man to repeat the pledge of allegiance that contains these words, and then call his fellow citizens “social misfits” when they are simply asking for liberty and justice?

Such schizophrenia goes far back. “All forms of commerce between master and slave are tyranny,” intoned Thomas Jefferson, who is rumored to have had several children by black women on his estate. If the story is true, the great democrat was a great hypocrite. Even if it is not true, it has verisimilitude. It could be a perfect metaphor for the way our country was founded and grew, with lofty and pure words on its lips and the basest bigotry hidden in its heart.

The main thing I have in common with the kids is that we are tired of being lied to. What we want is for people to mean what they say. I think they recognize at least that I’m for real. They know most adult are selling something they can’t deliver.

I wonder if Gloria Steinem even remembers what she wrote about Shirley Chisholm as she shills for Sen. Clinton, or if any of the Obamaniacs recognize the person who tried it first.

Perhaps the best indicator of her campaign’s impact is the effect it had on individual lives. All over the country, there are people who will never be quite the same: farm women in Michigan who were inspired to work in a political campaign for the first time; Black Panthers in California who registered to vote, and encouraged other members of the black community to vote, too; children changed by the sight of a black woman saying, “I want to be President”; radical feminists who found this campaign, like that of Linda Jenness in the Socialist Workers’ Party, a possible way of changing the patriarchal system; and student or professional or “blue-collar” men who were simply impressed with a political figure who told the truth as she say it, no matter what the cost.

The Chisholm candidacy didn’t forge a solid coalition of those people working for social change; that will take a long time. But it began one. If you listen to personal testimony from very diverse sources, it seems that the Chisholm candidacy was not in vain. In fact, the truth is that the American political scene may never quite be the same again.

So perhaps it is time for the electorate to ask ourselves honestly what we want to see our President do, instead of listening to what they want to do for us.

With more straight talk and crystal clear positions. (PDF) Her announcement speech:

I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America. (Clapping.)

I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. (Clapping.)
I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. (Clapping.)

I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests.” (Clapping. cheers).

I stand here now without endorsements from many big name politicians or celebrities or any other kind of prop. I do not intend to offer to you the tired and glib clichés, which for too long have been an accepted part of our political life. I am the candidate of the people of America. And my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.

I have always earnestly believed in the great potential of America. Our constitutional democracy will soon celebrate its 200th anniversary, effective testimony, to the longevity to our cherished constitution and its unique bill of rights, which continues to give to the world an inspirational message of freedom and liberty.

We Americans are a dynamic people…

More on the inside of the campaign.

And no white feminist would dare say she neglected women’s rights.

But I understand why most people now would rather have you forget her. She is perhaps the first black woman who knew her place and dared to ask people to help her get there.

“The Chisholm candidacy… confused and unsettled the niggers — and by niggers, I don’t mean just the black niggers, but also the student niggers and the woman niggers and the poor niggers — plus a whole lot of other people who thought they were revolutionaries but discovered they couldn’t dig her wig.”

— Florynce Kennedy, lawyer, black activist, a founder of the National Organization for Women and the Feminist Party

(Above quote added for Daisy after I recognized the speaker! Hehe, gracias! )

Support Southall Black Sisters

Message from the Facebook group from Sabrina Southgate on more things you can do to help:

Save Southall Black Sisters
ACTION ALERT!!

Things you can do currently to support the Save SBS campaign:

1. Come to the Million Women Rise march on Saturday. The march as a whole will gather in Hyde Park at 12 and then make its way to a rally at Trafalgar Square from 3-6pm at which SBS will be speaking.
Southall Black Sisters, and its supporters, will be gathering between 11.30-12.30 at Marble Arch. Please come and show your support for this vital campaign. We will be taking photos to release to the press to show how outraged we all are by this decision so the more of us that are there, the better.
It is a women and children only demo but the male supporters of SBS are still encouraged to come and stand on the sidelines (as it were!) to offer their support.

2. Sign the newly created online petition on the Number 10 website to urge the Government to clarify it’s position on ‘community cohesion’ in relation to organisations providing non-generic, essential services to vulnerable people, such as those provided by Southall Black Sisters. (***NOTE: YOU HAVE TO BE A UK CITIZEN TO SIGN THE PETITION.*** I will contact the person who distributed this message to see if there can/will be a corresponding petition for those of us who live outside of the UK.  –M)
3. Write to your MP asking them to sign the Early Day Motion (a formal motion submitted for debate in the House of Commons) in support of SBS – EDM 1122.You can find and write to your local MP via this website. A template letter will be posted on the Facebook group very soon.

4. I know many of you have already but please do vote in the poll on the Ealing Times website. The local authority will be taking note of this kind of public demonstration of feeling. (It’s at the bottom right hand side of the page.)

5. A letter is being submitted to the press ASAP to draw their attention to the campaign’s presence at the Million Women Rise demonstration on Saturday 8th March. If you would like to have your name attached to this letter to show your support please give your consent on the wall of the group ASAP.

Thank you all for your continued support.

Ren Ev’s Snooker for Southall.

Aaminah has information about how to send a donation to Southall Black Sisters via postal mail:

For those in the UK who would like to send a check directly, it can be sent to Southall Black Sisters 21 Avenue Road Southall Middlesex UB1 3BL

She also has information about directly depositing donations into the organization’s account. Please contact Aaminah or the organization itself for more information on how to use this method of donation.

Additional Ways to Help:

What can you do to help?

• Read all about the protest held on 26th February and attend any future protests
• Send a letter of protest to Ealing Council (download a template here)
• Live in Ealing? Find out who your local councillor is, and contact them or attend their surgeries (most hold regular local sessions)
• Join the facebook group “Save the Southall Black Sisters” to show your support for SBS

Southall Black Sisters is under threat of closure — please support us

Dear Friends

Southall Black Sisters is under threat of closure

We are writing to you to request support for our organisation. We are currently facing threat of closure as a result of our local authority’s (Ealing) decision to withdraw our funding as of April 2008.

Since the mid eighties our ‘core’ funding has been provided by Ealing. Over the years we have on average received £100,000 per annum from the local authority and this is utilised to provide advice, advocacy, counselling and support services to black and minority women in the borough who experience violence and abuse. The experience and insights gained through this work has led us to become a strategically important service, providing advice on policy and legal developments to government, and international, national and local organisations and professionals. The Ealing grant has, of course, had to be supplemented by funds raised elsewhere.

The local authority’s decision is based on the view that there is no need for specialist services for black and minority women and that services to abused women in the borough need to be streamlined. This view fails to take account of the unequal social, economic and cultural context which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for black and minority women to access outside help or seek information about their rights. In effect the council proposes to take away essential life saving services provided by SBS. Ealing council suggests that we either extend our service to cover the needs of all women in the borough or that we set up a consortium of groups to provide such a service for the same sum of money. The amount of funds available to the voluntary sector in Ealing has shrunk year in, year out, but the withdrawal of funds to SBS will have a number of far reaching consequences:

* The attempt to compel us to meet the needs of all women will mean that we will have to reduce our services to black and minority women across London and the country. Abused black and minority women, who already face considerable racism, discrimination and cultural pressures, will no longer have access to a specialist service. We have never denied our services to any woman who contacts SBS but our focus has out of necessity, and in recognition of the demographic composition of the area, been on meeting the needs of black and minority women who continue to be one of the most disempowered sections of our society. The suicide rates of Asian women for example, are already three times the national average and homicides – where abusive men and families kill their wives, daughters or daughters-in-law – are also high within some black and minority communities. In all likelihood, any reduction in our services will see a rise in suicide and homicide rates amongst black and minority women.

* We will no longer have the same national impact in terms of our input in policy and legal development in relation to black and minority women, which has been highly effective over the years. Our campaigns in such critical areas of work as forced marriage, honour killings, suicides and self harm, religious fundamentalism and immigration difficulties, especially the ‘no recourse to public funds’ issue, will have to be drastically cut back .

* A unique, specialist and experienced organisation (members of the staff and management committee have a combined experience of over 50 years) will lose its identity – an identity that has become synonymous with high quality service provision. We are seen as a ‘flagship’ organisation. Indeed Harriet Harman, the deputy prime minister in her speech at the House of Commons on 18 July 2007, made specific reference to SBS as exactly the kind of group that the State should support.

…we will work on the issue of empowering women in black and Asian communities. Women play a crucial role working together in their communities, whether they are working to reduce crime in their area, like Mothers Against Guns…, or whether they are Asian women, like Southall Black Sisters, working to support other Asian women. We want to do more to support and empower those women as they tackle problems within, and build bridges between, communities

This statement was made in the context of debates on cohesion in which she specifically identified groups like ours as key to building cohesion between and within communities. It is therefore of grave concern that at a time when all local authorities have a duty to promote cohesion, Ealing Council has chosen to undermine a group that has historically and effectively worked across religious and ethnic lines within black and minority communities precisely to bridge differences and build a sense of citizenship. Ironically, the Council is seeking to set up Muslim women only groups under its ‘cohesion’ strategy – the demand for which does not exist!

We also need to address the new challenges posed by immigration and asylum difficulties, growing racism and religious intolerance. But without adequate funding, SBS is now in danger of closing down.

Current Position

Following legal action, we have compelled Ealing Council to carry out a race equality impact assessment. This had not been undertaken prior to making a decision to withdraw our funding.

Although the Council has now undertaken such an assessment, it is only in relation to the new domestic violence policy. In other words it only assesses whether or not all women ‘may’ be able to access the new service. The Council maintains that withdrawing funding from SBS will have no adverse consequences for black and minority women! The assessment is also flawed since it does not consider the consequences for black and minority women if SBS services are cut or closed. We have submitted detailed representations pointing out the flaws in their assessment procedure with a view to taking further legal action if necessary, Over 50 users of our services have also written to the Council protesting at their high handed decision.

Your Support

The issues raised by the Council’s actions have wider ramifications for all black and minority women’s organisations. It is imperative that we act now. We ask you to write to the leader of Ealing Council, Jason Stacey whose details are to be found on the model letter that follows.

We would be grateful for any support that you can give us. If you do not have time to draft a letter, please contact Hannana Siddiquior call 020 8571 9595 for more information. Please let us have a copy of any letter you send and any reply that you receive.

If you are able to support us in any other way please contact us. We look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely

Pragna Patel
Chair of Southall Black Sisters

Add: Southall Black Sisters, 21 Avenue Road, Southall, Middlesex UB1 3BL
Tel: 020 8571 9595
Fax: 020 8574 6781
Email: southallblacksisters[at]btconnect.com

Hat-tips to BA and BFP.