Juneteenth
If public schools in the United States really want to shock me and the rest of the planet with its black history awareness and its totality of perspective, each of them should carve out assembly time for today, June 19th. Today is a day of celebration and rejoicing — Juneteenth demands it.
The holiday’s history has to do with hardworking people celebrating great news after times of strife and tribulation. In 1865, two years after black men, women, and children were freed from slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas on this day to let the people know that the re-United States had ended slavery in the nation. Needless to say, until this point these black Texans were still working and carrying on with their lives.
When the news arrived and it sank in, families gathered, barbecue was eaten, and red soda water was sipped in celebration of newfound freedom and opportunity for black people in America.
So why don’t people know more about this holiday? It has family! Freedom! War! Peace! Community! Food! Texas! Get on the ball, folks!
There are many people who have written about this holiday from personal and historical perspectives, aside from the two people I’ve linked already.
Preventing and Treating HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria Worldwide
Via Black Perspective (please sign the petition; it’s very close to its signature goal):
Time is running out for the most important tool we have in the
struggle to treat and prevent three of the world’s deadliest diseases:
HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria.The window to reauthorize PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for
AIDS Relief) for five more years and $50 billion is closing. At this
critical moment, a handful of senators are blocking all action on the
bill.We need champions to pass this bill and keep America on the path to
saving millions of lives in the developing world. Luckily, we have you
and two very important senators.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell are the two most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, and we
know they are strong supporters of American leadership against these
global killers.Click the link to add your name to the petition below and send a
message that now is the time for Senators Reid and McConnell to stand
up for the world’s most vulnerable people and get this lifesaving
legislation to the floor of the U.S. Senate for a vote.http://www.one.org/pepfarleaders/o.pl?id=368-1238117-EZ7Pafx&t=2
Confident that your leadership can overcome the current resistance
and demonstrate the very best in American global leadership against
AIDS, TB and malaria, we urge you to do everything possible to bring
PEPFAR reauthorization to the Senate floor as soon as possible.The rush is on to pass PEPFAR reauthorization now because in just a
few weeks, the leaders of some the world’s wealthiest and most
powerful nations will meet at the G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. There,
they will make decisions about what commitments to make to help the
world’s poorest nations fight these deadly but treatable diseases. If
we pass PEPFAR now, it will demonstrate the best of American values to
the world and put pressure on other world leaders to do their part,
leveraging billions more dollars in international aid.Add your name to the petition and ask Senators Reid and McConnell to
lead at this critical moment, get PEPFAR to the Senate floor and set
an example for the whole world.http://www.one.org/pepfarleaders/o.pl?id=368-1238117-EZ7Pafx&t=3
This new and improved PEPFAR promises five more years of saving lives
in parts of world where AIDS has had a devastating impact. But if we
don’t pass it now, we’ll miss not only our opportunity with the G8,
but with elections around the corner, it becomes that much harder to
pass the bill this year.Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, the two most powerful people in the
Senate, have proved their support in the past. With us by their side,
they have the power to get PEPFAR to the Senate floor and deliver a
huge victory for millions of people around the world. We can let them
know that we need their bold leadership now to overcome the obstacles
and keep America’s promise to lead in the fight against global
disease.Thank you.
Book Review: Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell (Part 1 of 2)
After considering the backlog of reading I’ve accumulated and the “time” I have now, I’ve decided that book reviews may become a summer feature of this blog. Be excited. I know I am, hurr-hurr. I have a pile of 10 books sitting on my desk that I’ve started, and there are even more on my bookshelves. The reviews will all have a progressive/radical bent, stemming from an anti-oppression viewpoint. Be forewarned. If you find this development encouraging/crappy as hell, leave a comment and let me know.
First victim book:
Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell.
She’s the same author who wrote Sex and the City, and HBO transformed that book into the hit TV series about which feminists of all stripes have mixed feelings. (Anyone going to see the movie? I probably will see it and hide behind a watermelon martini glass (or four), in case people recognize me.)
Like Sex and the City, the big networks have already transformed Lipstick Jungle into a television series starring Brooke Shields, Lindsay Price, and Kim Raver. This time NBC green-lighted the series (you can watch the full first season online), and a second season is already in the works for the fall.
A friend of mine gifted me the novel and a hefty bit of chocolate after completing my finals, and I took a few days to read it and detoxify my legal-lined brain. I’ll admit now that reading the snippets of praise for the book caused dread to well up inside of me. Some examples:
“The real satisfaction here is the book’s surprisingly thoughtful pop feminism, at once sharp and sweet.” – New York magazine
“Bushnell proves she’s still the philosopher-queen of a social scene.” – New York Times Book Review
“While Carrie Bradshaw was her alter-ego years ago, Bushnell’s latest book offers a clue of the author today — a woman less interested in the gender wars and more concerned with women taking their place in the world.” – The Standard Times
“What Bushnell does so well is to get just the slightest bit ahead of the curve. Just as her Sex and the City girls are more common now than they were in the days of her New York Observer columns, so the coarse, energetic woman tycoons of Lipstick Jungle might be signposts of the years ahead. I’d welcome the change.” – Salon.com
Of the two reviews I’ve found and linked, the Salon review confuses me most because the author conflates the dominance/submission aspects of the book’s sexual power dynamics with sadism/masochism, and to me those terms have a slightly different connotation than just playful clothes-ripping and wanting someone on top. A very light form of Domination/submission would more accurately characterize the sexual relationships the review author and her friend are thinking about. (There’s a reason that people who talk about sex and power dynamics largely refer to the culture as BDSM or BSDM.) Unlike the reviewer, I don’t “welcome the change” the book signals for changing gender roles in American society — the book speaks more about keeping the roles the same as the two genders share power at the tippy-top of the capitalist structure. Also, the quote about Bushnell being a “philosopher-queen of a social scene” is incomplete; this social scene is “propelled not by vanity or conscience but by sheer perversity.” The quote itself comes from the review of Trading Up, Bushnell’s novel preceding the action in Lipstick Jungle.
Okay, enough background and piddling into reviews: let’s get to the meat of the book.
The Three-Sentence Synopsis:
Three forty-something white businesswomen in Manhattan, all climbing to the tippy-top of their respective fields, slowly acknowledge and appreciate the power lust of monetary success beyond the business and professional sectors. Gender roles remain binary for simplicity’s sake, get challenged, and get turned upside-down (whoa oh oh!) in that bubblegum-tinged, superficial way. By the end of the novel, men and women have renegotiated their positions at the tippy-top of the economic and social pyramid, the three women celebrate their professional abilities and new accomplishments as true survivors (in the outwit/outplay/outlast sense, sans eating bugs and Jeff Probst), and the reader either tastes bittersweet hope for something better in this capitalistic life or the bitter taste of blood from the stupid kicking her in the mouth.
(Sadly in my case, I felt a bit of both worlds.)
Pop Feminism: Rosie the Riveter in Leopard Print Manolos
If we’re to take New York magazine’s word for it, this book gives us a hearty fictionalized dose of what pop feminism would look like in action. Lipstick Jungle largely reads like a postmodern comedy of errors without the witty edge and intricate plot line; but throughout the book, there are snatches where each female protagonist remarks about how men just don’t get it.
The characterizations of men and women in the book are highly stereotyped, where the women’s main ambitions are money, power, status, and fame just like or better than the high rolling men. From there, we gain the women’s perspectives where they glance off stinging sexist remarks and work hard to make sure their heterosexual attractions to some of these men do not interfere with the busy and powerful lives they’re building. We expect the three main characters to achieve balance in the end, and Bushnell gives a hasty wrap-up of each woman’s accomplishments to give the veneer of accomplishment. But in those tides, there is chaos.
The resounding earmark of pop feminism prizes novelty over subversion; it honors women in predominantly male fields as accomplished per se, without any real inroads for cultivating respect for all women in those fields. Since we recognize these women as accomplished on face value because they are women, we are expected to sympathize with Wendy Healy, the high-powered executive from Parador Pictures, when she realizes she cannot divorce her economically indulgent househusband Shane because he takes care of their three children — at least, she cannot do so without incident. The children mostly recognize her as a money source, and she seeks to increase the number of cameos she can make into their lives as she works hard to clinch an Academy Award for her most prized movie project.
We are expected to sympathize with Nico O’Neilly, a shrewd magazine executive, as her desire for upward mobility forces her to pander to an aging media mogul who appears more and more insane and unpredictable with each business day. We also watch her personal powerstroking as her affair with a younger male model brings him a little closer to new jobs and increased business contacts as she exposes him to her highly influential social circle.
We are expected to sympathize with Victory Ford for remaining independently minded and self-assured in the face of billionaire businessman Lyne Bennett’s ego, while she simultaneously dismisses him at one point because he dares to intervene as she cooks a recipe (in her country getaway home in New England, of course) to add an ingredient to her prized personal gravy recipe.
Pop feminism is largely an exercise in superficiality and tacit acceptance of power. In its purview we do not get any challenges of the problematic systems that would keep any person down, regardless of gender, if relegated to their ranks without recourse; instead, pop feminism lifts certain women up to sit on an equally jeweled throne as the men in their lives. Bushnell’s foray into this world is no exception to the pop feminist rule, and it is difficult to separate the women’s personalities from their perceptions of their position in the world of power and influence. Each of them shares a powerlust that is partially camouflaged by the skills they possess in their trades — skills portrayed superficially in order for the reader to perceive them as innate. And in a few choice moments, Bushnell chooses the actions of everyday people and interjects her trio of friends, so that her readers understand that despite their success, they have traces of humility and occasionally inserts a pedicured toe into the waters of reality.
Throughout the book, Bushnell converges the jaunts and jolts of upward mobility with assurances of these three women’s absolute womanhood and innate understanding of each other as women through these experiments with whether or not 40-something women can handle power at the top. And Bushnell paints a convincing and problematic picture of a world in which they can, a world where scattered shards of the glass ceiling fall indelicately on the privilege-challenged people beneath it.
In Part Two, I’ll go into the woman-as-conqueror theme that pervades the book literally and figuratively, its perceptions on heterosexual relationships and female friendships, tolerance of the pervasive -isms, and conclude with a few notes about the style of the book overall.
Oh yeah, I have to introduce myself!
As Sylvia said, I often comment as Bq, and I recently set up a blog of my own. Sylvia has kindly allowed me to mess up her lovely blog co-blog with her and get into the swing of things. Like many of you, I am interested in discussing imperialism/colonialism, nationalism, black feminism, postcolonial feminism, free trade and militarism.
Okay, i’m nervous now, so I’ll stop here and put down the mike, hehe. I look forward to reading your replies.
Dalit feminism and Black feminism
“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 New Co-Blogger: Bq!
She also has her own spot, and I hope you all check her digs out as they develop.
Bq is a very good webular friend of mine, she’s a woman of color, and in a nutshell I think she’s dope. (Or however the kids say people are great to know these days.) So when she said she wanted to start dropping her knowledge in the blogosphere, I immediately extended the red carpet for her to write and share information here as she pleases.
I’m pretty sure you’ve seen her comment once or twice around the POCsphere under the name Bq or Buria q. So use this entry as a place to welcome her to Problem Chylde, go welcome her at Lyra’s place, and generally give her some celebratory love! I hope she posts her own intro very soon. Probably will have to do some reorganization to get her info available for contacting, etc.
For the time being, though — welcome to Problem Chylde, Bq! 
Supreme Court ruling on detainees’ right to habeas corpus
The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”
Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
The decision, left some important questions unanswered. These include “the extent of the showing required of the government” at a habeas corpus hearing in order to justify a prisoner’s continued detention, as Justice Kennedy put it, as well as the handling of classified evidence and the degree of due process to which the detainees are entitled.
Months or years of continued litigation may lie ahead, unless the Bush administration, or the administration that follows it, reverses course and closes the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which now holds 270 detainees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/washington/13scotus.html?ref=us
(I am co-blogging with Sylvia; my commenting name is bq.)
R.I.P. Tim Russert
Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said.
He had recently returned from Italy, where his family was celebrating the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.
No further details were immediately available.
Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.
But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights.
He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”
In 2008, Time Magazine named Russert him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 7, 1950. He was a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.
Senate staffer before entering journalism
After graduating from law school, Russert went into politics as a staff operative. In 1976, he worked on the Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and in 1982, he worked on Mario Cuomo’s campaign for governor of New York.Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of NBC’s TODAY show from Rome, negotiating and arranging an appearance by Pope John Paul II, a first for American television. In 1986 and 1987, Russert led NBC News’ weeklong broadcasts from South America, Australia and China.
Of his background as a Democratic political operative, Russert said, “My views are not important.”
“Lawrence Spivak, who founded ‘Meet the Press,’ told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest’s positions and take the other side,” he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. “And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that’s what I try to do every Sunday.”
Cuomo, Russert’s onetime boss, wrote of Russert: “Most candidates are not eager to present themselves for Tim’s incisive scrutiny, which is fed by his prodigious study and preparation. But they have little choice: appearing on ‘Meet the Press’ is today as vital to a serious candidate as being properly registered to vote.”
Russert wrote two books — “Big Russ and Me” in 2004 and “Wisdom of Our Fathers” in 2006 — both of which were New York Times best-sellers.
Emmy for Reagan funeral coverage
In 2005, Russert was awarded an Emmy for his role in the coverage of the funeral of President Ronald Reagan. His “Meet the Press” interviews with George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 won the Radio and Television Correspondents’ highest honor, the Joan S. Barone Award, and the Annenberg Center’s Walter Cronkite Award.Russert’s March 2000 interview of Sen. John McCain shared the 2001 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television Journalism. He was also the recipient of the John Peter Zenger Award, the American Legion Journalism Award, the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Journalism Award, the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism, the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Communication and the Catholic Academy for Communication’s Gabriel Award. He was a member of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.
Russert was a trustee of the Freedom Forum’s Newseum and a member of the board of directors of the Greater Washington Boys and Girls Club, and America’s Promise — Alliance for Youth.
In 1995, the National Father’s Day Committee named him “Father of the Year,” Parents magazine honored him as “Dream Dad” in 1998, and in 2001 the National Fatherhood Initiative also recognized him as Father of the Year.
Irish America magazine named him one of the top 100 Irish Americans in the country, and he was selected as a Fellow of the Commission of European Communities.
Survivors include Russert’s wife, Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, whom he met at the 1976 Democratic National Convention; and their son, Luke.
Check back soon for more on this breaking story.
Wisdom on Writing
Many have a way with words. They label themselves seers but they will not see. Many have the gift of tongue but nothing to say. Do not listen to them. Many who have words and tongue have no ear, they cannot listen and they will not hear.
There is no need for words to fester in our minds. They germinate in the open mouth of the barefoot child in the midst of restive crowds. They wither in ivory towers and in college classrooms.
Throw away abstraction and the academic learning, the rules, the map and compass. Feel your way without blinders. To touch more people, the personal realities and the social must be evoked — not through rhetoric but through blood and pus and sweat.
Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don’t let the pen banish you from yourself. Don’t let the ink coagulate in your pens. Don’t let the censor snuff out the spark, nor the gags muffle your voice. Put your shit on the paper.
We are not reconciled to the oppressors who whet their howl on our grief. We are not reconciled.
Find the muse within you. The voice that lies buried under you, dig it up. Do not fake it, try to sell it for a handclap or your name in print.
–Gloria Anzaldua, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers”
The Möbius Strip of Ageism
I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journalthis seems to happen all too often.
what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-ass radicalhowever:
young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it’s a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution.such is our politics and you can have it
all.keep it.
sail it up your
ass.—Charles Bukowski, “Having the Flu and With Nothing Else to Do”
I’m going to say something radical.
There is no such thing as reverse ageism.
Young people are not the ones who are neglecting the needs of older people. Young people are not the ones responsible for elder abuse. Young people are not the ones who are failing to cater to demographics in advanced ages. Young people are not responsible for the stereotyping of the old as weak, feeble-minded, conservative, or what have you.
In the age spectrum, young people are the least likely to be able to wield that type of power over anyone. Why?
Because young people have their own sets of restrictions, they have their own stereotypes to battle, they have their own problems with neglect, abuse, and characterizations of their perspectives.
Just as the zero-sum game of oppression doesn’t fit neatly into a dialectic model when it comes to racism, sexism, heterosexism, and ablism — it doesn’t fit neatly in this scenario, either.
You’ll find in both directions — for the young and for the old — ageism and ablism go hand in hand in how society forms stereotypes about both groups.
As you look at marketing, at definitions, and at restrictions placed on both groups, you’ll see correlations based on physical capabilities, levels of cognition, conceptions of freedom, similar ideas of care, removal of agency, mischaracterizations of intent–
And as you evaluate the correlations, you’ll see that society has an obsession with the concept of youth and longevity and not a corresponding obsession with respecting the needs and autonomy of young people and older people. Commodification value for both groups are extremely limited until they reach the middle ages of adulthood. The priorities of commodification may shift over the years; but the mechanisms are all the same.
So if you measure ageism by looking at marketing trends, younger people would win out.
If you measure ageism by looking at people’s idealization of earlier times, younger people would win out.
But if you measure ageism by looking at how people in different age groups are subordinated or treated unfairly or harshly because of their ages, you’ll see a lot more correlations between younger and older people than you would want to see.
