Same Wavelength; Different Perspectives

Blackamazon’s question.

Freedom Fighter’s reflection.

Important thing to remember: Some women study other women on a regular basis and never matriculate.

All women means all women. Everyone will not attend your conferences. Everyone cannot afford your books. Everyone will not understand your code words. And the fact that these are truths does not mean that the people were never properly educated. It means that they have learned from other schools, other halls of learning, other points of view, other fields of study. Nothing romantic; but they had to survive somehow, right?

What do we do when whole histories are being carved out of curricula? People can learn lessons from what others refuse to teach and whom others refuse to teach.

Dalit feminism and Black feminism

Interview with Ruth Manorama

“I have been associated with the Indian feminist movement since the 1970s. Let me tell you something: women in the women’s movement lack a good understanding of feminism. Feminism opposes all kinds of inequalities and injustices. It looks for equality between men and women. In such a circumstance, it is required of feminism to see caste as an inequality, as an institution of inequality. Then why do the feminists not refuse and resist caste? This was a big question for me. Next, if you look at the question of mobilization in the women’s movement you can see that poor working women, women agricultural labourers, Dalit women and Adivasi women are the ones who attend meetings in large numbers. But they aren’t given leadership roles, perhaps because there are not many educated women from these sections. Even if these women have the capacity to run a movement, they are not given the responsibility. They are only seen as followers. Was this not casteist? And these two questions troubled me no end.”

“I was looking at why these Black women were organizing themselves differently. Why were they separate? Then, I understood the racist notions of purity and pollution that operates there. Just like our situation, the Black women don’t have leadership in the mainstream women’s movement. The White women were not going to solve the problems of Black women…They not only wrote about the racist inequality, but they spoke about the class struggle, they outlined the economic oppression, the absence of land and resources. There are so many connections between the Dalits and the Blacks.”

The connection between women based in different countries and in different movements caught my attention (I am a poc in the US). I recently dropped a class called “Women and Gender in South Asia” because I didn’t feel like dealing with the spectacularly orientalist comments certain types of people spouted – but one of the things that I noticed early on from the readings was the similarity between the dynamics of upper-caste feminism and US white feminism, with the marginalization of dalit and black women among gender-based and caste/race-based movements, and the way certain feminist politics can be twisted to contribute to the characterization of subaltern men as violent thugs while letting the men with status off the hook.

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!”

Don’t hate; reappropriate.

I would like to share a full-length article with you, outside of the traditional mechanisms where I’ve shared works and articles. Normally, I list the work’s name and its creator in the title; then the body of the entry shares the video/essay/poem/story, etc. I try to make sure I offer proper accreditation, and I tend not to make any modifications of the original work.

In an effort to demonstrate the need of doing exactly what Jenn’s blog title suggests — to reappropriate — I will take a different tactic with this article. I will not alter the original text; I’ll only redirect its emphasis. For my sister, Brownfemipower.

Sexual Abuse Fueled by Abusive Immigration Language
By X, RH Reality Check. Posted April 7, 2008.

Describing immigrants in dehumanizing terms like “illegals” turns immigrant women into targets for sexist oppressors, from anti-choicers to rapists.

In all the furor over rising immigration rates in the U.S. – often disguised as concern over “illegal” immigration — one story in particular demonstrates that contrary to scare stories about the effect of immigration on this country, the reality is that this country is often a scary and oppressive place for immigrants. And immigrant women, having drawn the double whammy card, are especially vulnerable. A 22-year-old immigrant from Colombia exposed her immigration agent using the threat of deportation to rape her, using her cell phone to tape the assault. Unfortunately, as is all too common with these sorts of stories, most reports describe the event as sex, even while making it clear that the sex is question was coerced, and should be more accurately described as rape.

The story has hooks most likely because it’s about how a common crime — sexual blackmail against immigrants and other women marginalized in society — became more difficult to hide and ignore because of new technologies. But despite the dubious reasons why this story hit the mainstream news, the activist community can still seize this opportunity to make two very important points: 1) Immigration is a feminist issue and 2) The distinctions between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants is red herring to distract from the fact that it’s immigrants, full stop, who face oppression under a tidal wave of anti-immigration sentiment.

This woman’s story demonstrates the way that the cut-and-dry distinctions between illegal and legal immigrants touted by the Lou Dobbses of the world tend to turn shades of gray when examined closely. Or actually, shades of paperwork. The rape victim entered the U.S. legally on a tourist visa and overstayed, but managed to enter the system to get her green card by marrying a citizen, which all but the worst mouth-breathers accept as a legitimate way to get a green card. Her story shows why it’s front-loaded and racist to describe a human being as “illegal,” especially when her illegal actions were misdemeanors such that they didn’t even raise the ire of the law when she got her paperwork in order. I’ve managed to drive a car before after letting my inspection lapse, and then got the ticket straightened out by renewing my inspection sticker, an equivalent crime. No one describes my very being as illegal, though. Though rape, on the other hand, is not a minor crime and is earth-shattering enough that it’s acceptable to describe the people who commit that crimes as “rapists,” I suspect that rapists get called by that moniker less often than immigrants without their paperwork in order get called “illegals.”

Words like “illegals” dehumanize immigrants, whether or not they have their paperwork in order, and that dehumanization makes immigrant women juicy targets for assorted sexist oppressors, from anti-choicers to wife beaters to rapists, as this woman’s story shows. One Honduran immigrant faced charges after trying to self-abort with an ulcer medication, an attempt that failed to induce abortion, but was linked to her giving birth to a premature infant who passed away. The same article notes that a 22-year-old Mexican immigrant living in South Carolina was put in jail for inducing her own abortion with the medication at home. That immigrant women often resort to self-abortion should surprise no one. Not only is safe, legal abortion financially daunting for a number of women, the atmosphere of dehumanization of immigrants makes many women understandably eager to reduce their encounters with authority figures of any type, including doctors.

Green card manipulation isn’t just a trick practiced by immigration officials wanting to control and dominate women, either. According to the Family Violence Prevention Fund (PDF), many domestic abusers use threats about immigration status to keep women in relationships with them. Whether married to citizens or non-citizens, the quasi-legal status assigned to immigrants means that many victims of domestic violence fear seeking help; consequently, the rates of domestic violence are significantly higher for immigrant women than women at large. Congress stepped in to create the International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act, which gives immigrant women the right to leave abusive marriages without being deported. It also requires that men who go through “marriage broker” services to disclose their domestic violence histories to potential brides.

If you ever want to despair of the human condition, Google the term “IMBRA” — the vast majority of the results returned are authored by men outraged at these entirely reasonable measures that keep men from beating their immigrant wives and using green cards as leverage to perpetuate the violence. Strangely, few of these websites argue that men should be given the direct right to beat women, but it’s hard to imagine what other worldview they could be operating under, when they think that it should be perfectly legal for a man to threaten his wife with deportation if she leaves him after a round of beating. If you are under the incorrect impression that sexism is dead and feminism isn’t needed anymore, I recommend listening to the howls of men who think the government owes them the right to treat immigrant women like a population available for their punching bag and sexual assault needs. That goes double for you if you’ve ever sneered at the term “intersections of oppression,” because I can’t think of a better example myself.

All original ideas in this entry remain unlinked.

So, X of Pandagon

and of RH Reality Check:

Link, love.

M.

P.S. If I’ve given you too many examples, start with this one link. That’s probably the best point. Know that people say women of color are sometimes dark as night, not born last night.

edited by request.

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!”

Punishing Radicalism: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Andrea Smith, and Due Process

When I ran The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, I linked a post about one of many political prisoners in the United States right now, Mumia Abu-Jamal. (A consequence of nuking one’s blog is not knowing which post it was, or who wrote the post you linked. *sigh*)

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a renowned journalist from Philadelphia who has been in prison since 1981 and on death row since 1983 for allegedly shooting Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He is known as the “Voice of the Voiceless” for his award- winning reporting on police brutality and other social and racial epidemics that plague communities of color in Philadelphia and throughout the world. Mumia has received international support over the years in his efforts to overturn his unjust conviction.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was serving as the President of the Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party as a teenager. Years later he began reporting professionally on radio stations such as NPR, and was the news director of Philadelphia station WHAT. Much of his journalism called attention to the blatant injustice and brutality he watched happen on a daily basis to MOVE, a revolutionary organization that works to protect all forms of life–human, animal, plant–and the Earth as a whole.

[...]The prosecution claimed that the shot which killed Faulkner came from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s legally registered .38-caliber weapon, contradicting the medical examiner’s report that the bullet removed from Faulkner’s brain was a .44-caliber. This fact was kept from the jury. Moreover, a ballistics expert found it incredible that police at the scene failed to test Mumia’s gun to see if has been recently fired, or to test his hands for powder residue. One of the most damning prosecution claims was that Mumia confessed at the hospital. However, this confession was not reported until nearly two months after December 9th, immediately after Mumia had filed a brutality suit against the police. One of the officers who claims to have heard the confession is Gary Wakshul. However, in his police report on that day he stated, “the Negro male made no comments.” Dr. Coletta, the attending physician who was with Mumia the entire time, says that he never heard Mumia speak.

The star prosecution witness, a prostitute named Cynthia White, was someone no other witness reported seeing at the scene. During the trial of Billy Cook (Mumia’s brother) just weeks before Mumia’s trial, White gave testimony completely contradictory to what she stated at Mumia’s trial. Her testimony at Billy Cook’s trial placed someone at the scene who was not there when police arrived. This corroborates the other five witness accounts that someone fled the scene. In a 1997 hearing, another former prostitute, Pamela Jenkins, testified that White was acting as a police informant. Other sworn testimony revealed that witness coercion was routinely practiced by the police. In 1995, eyewitness William Singletary testified that police repeatedly tore up his initial statement–that the shooter fled the scene–until he finally signed something acceptable to them. The following year, witness Veronica Jones came forward to testify that she had been coerced into changing her initial statement that two men fled the scene. Witness Billy Cook, who was present the whole time, has stated very clearly that Mumia is absolutely innocent.

Due to police manipulation of witnesses, fabrication of evidence, and the rights of the defense severely denied, Mumia was found guilty. He was sentenced to death during the penalty phase based solely on his political beliefs. Mumia has been unjustly separated from his family for twenty-two years, with the threat of death looming over his head.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reviewed Abu-Jamal’s case, and they affirmed the federal district court decision to conduct a new sentencing hearing and invalidate the death penalty sentence, rather than award Abu-Jamal a new trial. (Via Xicano Power.) Robert Bryan, the lead counsel for Abu-Jamal, spoke with Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about the pros and cons of the court’s decision:

On the one hand, the death penalty—the court threw out the death penalty in this case, even though Mumia remains on death row today, and if the state appeals or seeks further relief, nothing will change, at least for the present. The court did order a new jury trial on the issue of whether he should be on death row. In effect, what they did, as I said, was throw out the death penalty. So that’s the good part of the decision. And having done this type of work defending people facing the death penalty for over three decades, I can tell you any time the death penalty gets thrown out is a real victory.

On the negative side, as Juan just pointed out, the jury—the court ruled against granting a new jury trial on the issue of guilt and innocence. And we were rather astounded that the court made that ruling. The silver lining to that ruling, to that dark cloud, is that it was a split court. We were before three judges. Two judges ruled against us; a third judge, Judge Ambro, rendered a forty-one-page dissent in which he strongly criticized the majority and said that racism was a work in this case, that racism—that the prosecution engaged in removing people of color, African Americans, from sitting on the jury of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

For some brief background, before the start of a trial, the prosecution, defense, and judge conduct a process of jury selection called the voir dire. A pool of potential jurors enter the courtroom (thinking of excuses to get out of serving), and the judge or the lawyers ask the potential jurors questions about their abilities to decide the case in question fairly and impartially. In most jurisdictions, the lawyers can ask questions — Maryland, which is in the minority on this issue, has the judge ask potential jurors questions.

During this process the prosecution and defense have two mechanisms for eliminating jurors from the panel until they receive the final 12 triers of fact: challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. Challenges for cause are unlimited, and they are used when the lawyers and/or judge determine that a juror’s conscious or unconscious biases will affect his/her impartiality. Peremptory challenges, however, are limited depending on the type of case before the jury. Peremptory challenges can be used for any reason by either side. In crimes carrying the possible penalty of death, the peremptory challenges are very high and the voir dire is more stringent.

The exclusion of people from juries on the basis of race via peremptory challenges has affected the state and federal court system through a large portion of United States jurisprudence. Prosecutors would routinely strike black Americans from the juries of black defendants using peremptory challenges; as a result the trial, conviction, and sentencing would not be determined by a proper jury of the defendant’s peers.

The seminal case that outlawed this practice of excluding people from juries on the basis of race is Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). The Court at that time articulated a test where defendants could challenge the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges if it followed a pattern of removing members of a certain race from the panel. Upon being challenged, the judge asks the prosecutor to go back and give legitimate reasons for striking the jurors removed. If the prosecutor cannot provide satisfactory reasons, the jurors stricken are reinstated.

Getting back to Abu-Jamal’s case, Robert Bryan notes in the Democracy Now interview that the Supreme Court reinforced the principles of the Batson case earlier this month in its decision in Snyder v. Louisiana, 128 S. Ct. 1203 (2008). Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, reinforces the importance of upholding the general principles of Batson:

As previously noted, the question presented at the third stage of the Batson inquiry is “‘whether the defendant has shown purposeful discrimination.’” The prosecution’s proffer of this pretextual explanation naturally gives rise to an inference of discriminatory intent.

[...]In other circumstances, we have held that, once it is shown that a discriminatory intent was a substantial or motivating factor in an action taken by a state actor, the burden shifts to the party defending the action to show that this factor was not determinative. [...]We have not previously applied this rule in a Batson case, and we need not decide here whether that standard governs in this context. For present purposes, it is enough to recognize that a peremptory strike shown to have been motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent could not be sustained based on any lesser showing by the prosecution.

However, the Third Circuit decision in Abu-Jamal’s case does not take the extra step to order a completely new trial for him — only to have his sentencing redetermined by a new jury.

But since the jury during the course of a normal jury trial decides the defendant’s guilt and innocence, as well as recommends a sentence of life or death, why won’t Abu-Jamal’s entire case — guilt or innocence determination included — be reevaluated in a new trial by a new jury?

The poor logic in this case reminds me of the poor logic of the University of Michigan in denying tenure to Andrea Smith, an eminent Native American feminist scholar.

Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies, Dr. Smith’s body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

With this type of record, the reasons for denying tenure seem incomprehensible. However, the fabric of Andrea Smith’s work consistently challenges the racism, sexism, colonialism, and systematic disenfranchisement and violation of Native Americans at the hands of the United States and its supporting institutions. (See her published work, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, as an example.) This trend of radical thought and activism, when considered along with the fact other women of color professors at the university being denied tenure, indicates a more invidious reasoning is afoot for these decisions.

Comparatively, since Abu-Jamal’s incarceration and long wait on death row, he has written a series of published works about the nature of his imprisonment, his life on death row, and the legitimacy of the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. His lawyer thinks, and I agree, that the reluctance of the court to award a new trial for Abu-Jamal stems from a reluctance to accord any substantial benefit to him because of the body of his work, despite the fact the remedy would be entirely appropriate considering the prior history of his case:

What’s interesting about this decision yesterday, and Judge Ambro raised this question twice in his forty-one-page dissent, and that is, why is this case being treated differently from other cases? Why is the majority, the other two judges, treating this case differently? It’s what we often think of as the Mumia exception. And that is, the law is one thing for everyone else, but the courts seem to strive to carve out an exception for Mumia Abu-Jamal, because obviously he’s outspoken, he’s very critical of the establishment. And I might say that the big issue lingering over all of this is that he is absolutely not guilty of murder.

The overarching result of this decision is Mumia Abu-Jamal gets the option between facing death (again) or receiving life in prison, even if his attorney presents exculpatory evidence that proves his innocence. On what planet is this choice just?

Why is it seemingly a facet of this system that if you challenge its illegitimacy or its flaws — within its logic, using its rules, with acknowledgment of the paths constructed to allow everyone following them a fair chance at life — its response results in more erosion of its so-called just and neutral foundation? I hold little doubt that the penalties lodged against Abu-Jamal and Smith stem from their work to criticize and to expose the history and cycle of unjust and immoral practices this society encourages daily. And it’s sickening to be raised under such high ideals about this country’s capabilities when its foundation can’t even face up to its own history, its own consequences from the bloodshed implanted into its legacy.

The criminal justice system of the United States, along with many of its other institutions, needs redemption and transformation desperately. It needs restoration and drastic transformation into a system that truly tries and judges people accused of crimes fairly and impartially, granting the appropriate remedies and levying the appropriate punishments when required. And Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case is one of many cases that proves our system has a long road to travel before it reaches its highly lauded standards of due process and equal protection under its laws. Through its everyday application, these guarantees of rights, justice, and liberties seem to exist for people only in this country’s deluded idealizations of itself.

“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.

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.

The Secret Council of American Negroes

Just read the PSA. I’m too busy laughing to tell you how awesome of a blog this is; the work speaks for itself. A snippet:

NARRATOR: Black women laugh 25 percent more than white women and smell like cinnamon and cocoa butter. They shit rainbows and have posteriors so lovely that if you tossed them up in the air they would turn to sunshine. Their voices are sexier and they’re just more interesting, more black than other girls. A matter of fact, black girls can do 50 percent more with their hair and are 100 percent blacker than other girls.

Cut to man on the street

NARRATOR: And do you want to know the best part, Jim?

Man leans in a little.

NARRATOR: The same black women I told you about are all single!

MAN: (shocked) They can’t be single. Not all of them! They sound so great! I mean, any man would be lucky to have a fun, happy girl with great never aging skin who shits rainbows!

NARRATOR: I know! You’d think that wouldn’t you!

Footage of sad, lonely, but pretty black women sighing and frowning

NARRATOR: But there are literally thousands of these wonderful women just sitting on the dating market untouched. More than half of all black women between the ages of 25 and 34 have never been married and black women are the most likely group in the United States to never get married.

Cut back to man on the street.

MAN: That sounds awful.

NARRATOR: All that wonderfulness, sitting alone with no one to talk to. But you’re probably not interested in hearing more about these wonderful women. You’re probably gay anyway. All the men worth dating are gay.

MAN: Hey! I’m not gay!

NARRATOR: So what are you now, some homophobe?

MAN: No … it’s just …

NARRATOR: Calm down, I’m just fucking with you.

MAN: Oh. OK, awesome.

But you have to read the rest because it’s even more hilarious from there. (And true. So there.)

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! )