"You got a treat for me, Two-Legs?"
I Have Officially...
...reached the point of apathy re: Osama bin Laden news. I'm certainly not arguing that's a good thing, but that's what is.
It's not that I don't think there are important conversations to be had about the assassination of Osama bin Laden (see: Nezua's post), but those conversations largely aren't the ones happening.
I just really can't be arsed to give a shit about what Andrew Breitbart thinks about Hillary Clinton covering her mouth or what the jackasses at Time's 2004 Blog of the Year claim about this execution validating Bush torture policies, and I sure as shit can't bring myself to take seriously a ridiculous debate about how President Obama taking down flags at Ground Zero because he's an illegitimate Muslim or whatthefuckever.
I'm still not sure I know exactly how I feel about the killing of Osama bin Laden, but I am positively certain that the public discourse which followed is an absolute disgrace.
What I'm Listening To
Video Description: There is no video; just a static shot of the comedian, actor, and writer Paul F. Tompkins. The audio is Tompkins singing The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?" (lyrics here), but in a kind of loungy, sardonic way.
True Fact: Paul F. Tompkins will play the role of Paul T. Spud in Shakesville: The Movie.
OMGLOLWTF WHUT?!
With content like that, it's a wonder Fox canceled his show.
[Commenting Guidelines: Disablist comments musing about Beck's psychological state or outright calling him crazy, nuts, deranged, delusional, unstable, a lunatic, in need of commitment, etc. are both unwelcome and not on-topic. I have a mental disorder, for example. It doesn't make me a lying rightwing dipshit.]
Principles!
GOP presidential nominee wannabe Tim Pawlenty has them!
HA HA JUST KIDDING.
Thursday night's Republican debate was worth watching if only to see Tim Pawlenty try to talk his way around his previous support for efforts to cut planet-warming emissions. As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty not only acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but also endorsed a cap-and-trade plan to deal with it. That makes him something of a pariah among other Republicans these days."I apologize from the bottom of my heart for ever having hinted that I have the capacity for reason. Please forgive me, Republican base."
In a very "This is Your Life" moment, the Fox debate hosts replayed a 2007 ad that Pawlenty recorded for the Environmental Defense Fund in which he argues for cap and trade as a solution for climate change. When asked to discuss the ad, Pawlenty abashedly replied, "Do we have to?"
After trying to explain that he didn't actually support cap and trade policy as governor—he just supported the "study" of it—Pawlenty decided to try apologizing:
"I've said I was wrong. It was a mistake, and I'm sorry," Mr. Pawlenty told the Fox television audience, presumably filled with potential Republican primary voters. "You're going to have a few clunkers in your record, and we all do, and that's one of mine. I just admit it. I don't try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I'm just telling you, I made a mistake."
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud distributors of Spudsy Brand Accordion Straps, "for the strapping accordion player in all of us!"
Recommended Reading:
scatx: These Are the Democrats Who Voted for HR3
Tommy: On HR3
Chris: Attorney General Holder Vacates Immigration Decision Based on DOMA
Ta-Nehisi: Black Privilege
Lara: The Problems with Nadine Dorries' Motion
crunktastic: We Need Each Other to Survive: On Recovery and Reclamation
Resistance: Earthquake Relief
Leave your links in comments...
Whoooooooooops
So there's this article in Time titled "Masculinity, a Delicate Flower," which is all about how men are obliged to establish, assert, and constantly maintain their masculinity throughout their lives. It's a very basic article, so superficial in its examination of the concepts of gender construction and performance, and so imprecise in drawing any distinction between socialized gender expectations and gender essentialism, that it would hardly be worth mentioning to this crowd were it not for its concluding paragraph:
The authors said this research also begins to illuminate the negative effects of gender on men — depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and violence. And, at the very least, it may persuade ladies to cut their guys a little slack. "When I was younger I felt annoyed by my male friends who would refuse to hold a pocketbook or say whether they thought another man was attractive. I thought it was a personal shortcoming that they were so anxious about their manhood. Now I feel much more sympathy for men," [psychologist and researcher Jennifer K. Bosson] said in a statement.*insert the sound of record scratching here*
Whoa whoa whoa there, partner. First of all, "depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and violence" are not "the negative effects of gender." They are the negative effects of the Patriarchy, and conformity thereto. That's not a matter of semantics; that's the whole fucking point.
It isn't being male, nor being a man, that is a problem, but believing that to be male, or to be a man, is to have to project a very specific and rigid definition of masculinity—which defines itself in contradistinction to the feminine, thus forcing men to conceal and deny any part of themselves that anyone could call feminine; which limits men's emotional spectrum to anger; which forces men to exist in a permanent state of insecurity, constantly monitoring the boundaries of their masculinity and engaging in displays of bravado to prove their self-worth; which considers sheer brawn and physical toughness the only acceptable kind of strength, while the kind of strength which informs one's character, what might be described as emotional strength, the kind of strength that means walking away from a fight, or being patient, or showing empathy, isn't allowed to play much of a role at all in the definition of masculinity—which leaves men, whose physical attributes of masculine strength will wane with time and age, keenly aware that their masculinity is ever threatened by their own mortality, because they haven't been encouraged to cultivate a compassion and resiliency that can't be measured in kilos or KOs.
That's not about being a man. That's about being a man in a Patriarchy, who's never been offered an alternative paradigm.
Well. I've got an offer for you, gents! (Though you needn't just listen to me!)
And, suffice it to say, I don't agree with the contention that an awareness of how the Patriarchy hurts men, too, should "persuade ladies to cut their guys a little slack." Women don't have the luxury of "slack." Most gay/bi men don't have the luxury of "slack." Most trans* men don't have the luxury of "slack." Many men who are physically disabled, many men with dwarfism, many men with psychological disabilities, any man who is (wrongly) perceived, for whatever reason, to be "weak" via some inability to conform to the exacting demands of the Patriarchal male norm, don't have the luxury of "slack."
Slack is a privilege.
Understanding that subscribing to Patriarchy-approved narratives of masculinity is the issue, not some innate maleness, but something over which men have some control, have a choice, means that if "ladies" (and all the other men who have made a different choice regarding masculinity) are persuaded to do anything, it should be to expect more.
Once upon a time, I suggested to Iain that something he was doing (which was pissing me off) stemmed from a latent sexist notion that it was his prerogative as The Man to do this specific thing, which is not an accusation I wield carelessly or often; I have little reason to, since Iain is rationally egalitarian—and viscerally egalitarian for the most part, too. Anyway, we talked it out, and Iain was generously honest, saying that, yeah, that was the reason he was doing it and, wow, he hadn't realized it, but, shit, that feeling was totally there, ick. No hard feelings; it's not like I've never been called out for deeply internalized bullshit. We move forward with a new understanding.
It took a long time to get there, though, and at one point, Iain had said, "You know, if you weren't a feminist, this probably wouldn't even bother you."
I replied, "No, if I weren't a feminist, it would still bother me, but instead of acknowledging that you're an indoctrinated member of a patriarchy just like I am, I'd just think you were being a lousy shithead."
He chewed on that for a moment, and then said, "Fuck."
That was the first time Iain really understood how my feminism was benefiting him—that feminism doesn't make me see problems that aren't there, but provides the tools which allow me to analyze and prescribe solutions based on a context larger than my immediate experience. And existent outside the narrowly-drawn borders of constrictive stereotyping.
Implicit in feminism/womanism is not only the belief, but the expectation, that men are not brutish nor infantile—nor stupid, useless, inept, emotionally stunted, or any other negative stereotype feminists have been accused of promoting—but instead our equals just as much as we are theirs, capable not only of understanding feminism (and feminists), but of actively and rigorously engaging challenges to their socialization, too.
Feminists, of course, have the terrible reputation, but it isn't we who consider all men babies, dopes, dogs, and potential rapists. The holders of those views are the women and men who root for the patriarchy—which itself, after all, takes a rather unpleasantly dim view of most people.
I don't have slack to offer men. What I have is the alternative to a life spent swallowing one's emotions and feeling a constant anxious insecurity where one's contended self-esteem should be—and that seems a lot more valuable to me than "slack."
Brazil Recognizes Civil Unions
(TW for violence and homophobia in the linked article.)
Brazil's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex civil unions must be recognized. According to the AP "The ruling, however, stopped short of legalizing gay marriage in Brazil."
Brazil's high court ruled that gay couples are entitled to "the same legal rights as heterosexual pairs when it comes to alimony, retirement benefits of a partner who dies and inheritances."
Go, Brazil!
The Catholic Church, of course, opposed the measure.
Happy 40th Birthday, Spudsy!!!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
You like to sit in the dark eating braunschweiger
while watching bad mooooooovieeeeees…
And OMG Shoez I do, too!
I love you, Spudsy.
Thank you for being a friend.
xoxox
Question of the Day
What decorative body modifications have you made, if any?
I've never had anything done, aside from getting my ears pierced when I was a kid and dying my hair. I'm all for pretty much any kind of body modification (You want a bifurcated tongue? I will celebrate your bifurcated tongue!), but I've never had a compelling desire to do anything myself.
I love the look of tattoos, and rather fancy getting one, although I've never come to any decision about what I might like to get. I'd quite like something decorative on my hands, but I've had tattooists tell me they don't recommend intricate work on the hands, because maintaining it is tough.
I imagine I'll probably spend my life vaguely contemplating now and again what sort of tattoo I'd like to get, and never actually getting one. Or, I'll wake up one day with a bug up my ass and come home inked to the nines.
Get Me to the Fainting Couch, Minerva!
I am positively SHOCKED, I tell you, to hear the news that the GOP's first presidential hopefuls debate tonight in South Carolina will be preceded by a "Freedom Rally" that is sponsored by rightwing extremists groups!
Fetch me the smelling salts and a mint julep! My heart can't handle the alarm that the GOP's big tent is not, in fact, full of diversity and rainbows, but a bunch of sad old white bigots!
Mercy.
* * *
In all seriousness, my optimism for progressive and inclusive change is nearly boundless. Frankly, it has to be to do this job every day. Not only do I expect more, but I quite genuinely hope and fervently believe that most people are capable of delivering better and coming to expect more of themselves, given the desire and opportunity.
But I did say nearly boundless—and the boundaries of my expectation go just as far as the borders of the Grand Old Party.
I have no hope for them. For them, I have naught but contempt.
And, apparently, Victorian sarcasm.
Daily Dose of Cute
We recently had to retire Dudley's BFF Piggy, because Dudley had played with Piggy so much that he'd reached the squeakers. So one day I snuck Piggy away to the kitchen bin heaven, and soon afterward brought home Monkey, who is Dudley's new BFF.
There has been much squeaking and tug-of-war fun with Monkey, as well as lots of cuddly naptime.
As I mentioned when we first got Dudley, just over a year ago, he came to us baffled by the concept of toys, after life at a racetrack where he was never given any. I said then: "One of our challenges is to bring out the happy-go-lucky inner dog in him. Too much enthusiasm scares him, so it's confidence-building first, and then we'll learn how to have fun!" A year later, I feel like we've had real success. He is an extremely playful pup now, who will actually go and get toys (especially his yellow blanket) and bring them to us when he wants some playtime.
It is a marked difference from when he first arrived, and would cringe away if we lifted a hand too high in an attempt to play.
I have noted before the surprise with which Dudley is greeted now by his foster parents at the rescue, who remember the timid, anxious, unconfident dog he was when he came off the track—and I sometimes imagine, when I look at him now, what he makes of that distant past.
It is said that dogs don't remember, but this morning Dudley gave a terrifying shriek in his sleep. I ran into the other room where he slept and called out his name. He leapt up and looked at me with what I would swear was a look of relief, and ran to me with a wagging tail. I knelt down and he put his head on my shoulder. He wanted to feel safe.
And then, he wanted to play.
We went out into the backyard and ran in mad circles together. When we came back in, he cuddled up with Monkey on his big tartan pillow beside my desk, where he gave a big heaving sigh of contentment and soon fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
He lies there often while I work, sometimes napping and sometimes just resting, keeping his big brown eyes on me in the hope I might drop a bit of sandwich.
And when he wants to play, I play—because he needs it; because he is owed at least that much; because he is a survivor, just like me.
Dudley and Monkey in Two-Legs' office.
The National Day of Prayer: Encouraging Christian Supremacists Since 1952
by Shaker Jadelyn, linguist, witch, feminist, pacifist, progressive, activist, writer, queer, gamer, musician, exile, lover, and superhero, in no particular order.
[Trigger warning for Christian supremacy.]
Today, May 5th, is the National Day of Prayer here in the U.S. By law, enacted by Congress in 1952 (and amended in 1988 to fix the date on the first Thursday in May every year), the President is required to issue a proclamation declaring a national day of prayer. Obama's proclamation for this year can be found here. The main organization promoting the NDoP, and which organizes the vast majority of NDoP events throughout the country, is the National Day of Prayer Task Force (NDoPTF) chaired by none other than Shirley Dobson, the wife of James Dobson, founders of Focus on Your Own Damn Family, a nationally-known fundie Christian org. Which kind of makes it hard to believe that the NDoP is not a sectarian act of government-sanctioned proselytism, as its backers insist. When the main organization organizing events for a government-sanctioned observance is a fundamentalist Christian organization, and the events themselves are themed around a quotation from Christian scripture, well. Suffice to say the quacking is getting awfully loud, despite protestations that it is not, in fact, a duck.
The theme NDOoPTF has chosen for this year is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God", taken from Psalm 91:2, which reads: "I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." They make the usual noise about the terrible state America is in - which, I agree with them, but I rather suspect our reasons for that belief wildly diverge - and have even given us the thoughtful gift of an absolutely terribad promo video.
[Video Description at end of post.]
It's the music that really makes it, y'know? A day of prayer – which, in many traditions is a quiet, meditative reflection on and connection with one's deity – is totes the same as an actiony disaster movie, amirite? Well, perhaps if you consider the NDoP to be a disaster. *rimshot*
But whatever happened to the ruling from last year, wherein a judge in Wisconsin found the requirement of a NDoP to be unconstitutional? If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, why is it still being celebrated? Why has Obama issued the 2011 proclamation (aside from his terrible predilection for pandering to people who will never vote for him)?
Unfortunately, the 7th Circuit overturned the ruling on appeal last month. They ruled that, since the law requiring declaration of the NDoP each year only directly affects the President (by requiring hir to issue the proclamation), only the President has suffered sufficient injury from the statute to challenge it. Thus, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has no standing to challenge the NDoP. The decision, which was 3-0, declared:
Plaintiffs contend that they are injured because they feel excluded, or made unwelcome, when the President asks them to engage in a religious observance that is contrary to their own principles.... [However] offense at the behavior of the government, and a desire to have public officials comply with (plaintiffs’ view of) the Constitution, differs from a legal injury. The "psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees" is not an "injury" for the purpose of standing.The concurring opinion defended the decision by saying SCOTUS hasn't defined "injury" in the context of Establishment Clause cases well enough yet to give FFRF and other non-religious (or religious but Constitutionally-inclined) citizens standing based on "psychological injury" resulting from the blatant Othering of non-belief a Presidentially-declared Day of Prayer foments.
And so we have it that, in 20-fucking-11, President Obama – the only President to ever consistently include the phrase "believers and non-believers" in his speeches, yet who attempted to have FFRF's case against the NDoP thrown out before the initial ruling was given – has issued the yearly National Day of Prayer proclamation asking "...all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation."
FFRF has said they will seek en banc rehearing (review by the full court, not just the 3-judge panel). Welp. I know what I'm praying for today, then. And it's sure as fuck not "asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our Nation." If it comes to a contest between God as interpreted by Christian Dominionists and "the forces of hell" as represented by those who would see the Constitution's Establishment Clause respected, well. I'm gonna have to side with the forces of hell on this one.
[Crossposted at Witch Words.]
--------------------
[Video Description: Calm but faintly ominous-sounding instrumental music over a montage of "heartland" shots: a farmhouse, a windmill over waving grain fields, a white one-room-schoolhouse style church, with the sky above all these showing gathering roiling clouds oddly lit from within. Panning across a carefully-planned-to-look-multicultural group of people (black guy, Asian woman, white child, but with all older white people in the background pews) sitting in a church pew with blank but attentive faces. Cuts to a black man standing at the pulpit of the church, gesturing and reading from the Bible. A shadow falls over his face and he looks up as if startled. The music suddenly shifts to full-on ominous disaster-movie-trailer and cuts to a dark cloudy background with all-caps text in gold reading "What if we didn't respond to the call to prayer?" The cloudy background flickers with reddish lightning. Cuts to wide shot of grassy plain with a single run-down-looking old house to one side, the sky increasingly full of those weirdly-lit boiling clouds. Then to a white teenaged girl sitting on her bed, picking up a Bible from the bed beside her as if going to read from it. She looks up consideringly, the room darkens suddenly and she looks worried. She gets up and walks to the narrow window in the room. This whole time, the music is sounding like it's been ripped straight from a 90's disaster movie trailer. She looks out at the weird, tumultuous clouds. Cut back to cloudy background with all-caps gold text: "What if we forgot the God of our fathers?" More reddish lightning. Cut to a Latino-looking young teenaged boy sitting on a couch with a Wiimote in hand as if playing a video game. The room darkens suddenly. He looks up, gets up and goes to the window to look at more weird clouds. Back to cloudy background and all-caps gold text: "What if we didn't care?" The music is really getting into it, adding wordless female chorus voices in descant over the throbbing drumbeat. This would be the part where the plane is plummeting in flames, or the earthquake opens a jagged canyon in the earth and people start falling in, in the trailer the music probably came from. Cuts back to the Latino boy, going to a table and picking up a Bible. Then to the white teen girl, opening her Bible. The music abruptly stops as she looks down, and it shows the page she's opened to in Psalms. Psalm 91 is shown up-close, then the page gets all weird and blurry and streams of light seem to be coming out from behind verse 2 "I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.", obscuring everything else. The music fades in again on a single-note crescendo until it bursts back into full disaster-movie glory and the video cuts to a blue sky with passing clouds and some odd dissolve-text effects resolving to read "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" in white. Cut to the one-room-schoolhouse church interior, pews cleared and a semicircle of white people kneeling on the wood floor with black guy and Asian woman strategically positioned off to one side. The two teens enter and go to the empty space in the center and both kneel, clasping their hands in their laps and bowing their heads with everyone else. Scene pans across the room of kneeling people, and we see that the Latino teen, black guy and Asian woman were the only non-white people there. Cuts to the Capitol building, backlit by those dark roiling lightning-filled clouds. Then the Golden Gate Bridge, looking inward toward the Bay, also topped by those weird clouds. Fades to the kneeling teens, then immediately fades to the outside of the white church, where a hole slowly opens in the dark clouds, seeming filled with white light. Quick fade to a white family kneeling in prayer inside the church, then to a steeple with beams of white light breaking up the dark cloud behind it. The Golden Gate Bridge again with those beams of light starting to break through the clouds. Cuts to a time-lapse shot of some city on a body of water at dusk, clouds streaming over the sky and lights coming on along the shore, with white text reading, "He Created the Heavens." Text dissolves, image fades to a time-lapse shot of a mountain peak covered in snow with white text reading, "He Set the Mountains in Place". Cuts to a shot of an older white man who looks suspiciously like Dubya, face upraised in either a serious prayerful expression or an expression of constipation (it's kind of hard to tell. Can't the religious reich afford decent actors?), and hands clasped before his face, light shining on him. Text beside him reads, "There is Hope...In Prayer!" He bows his head, text dissolves. Cut to a loltastic created shot involving the Capitol, the White House, and the Jefferson Memorial all side-by-side and sort of layered over each other where they overlap, a pair of disembodied hands reaching up from the bottom of the frame and slowly grasping each other in interlocked-fingers-prayer-position, while an American flag with no apparent means of support waves from the left side of the frame, and lightning flickers across a strip of dark clouds above the Representing Washington DC building mashup. Text falls into place reading "Join With Millions in Prayer", then the NDoPTF logo reverse-dissolves into place below that, superimposed over the mashup. The music comes to a dramatic climax, cuts off for a dramatic moment, then comes slamming back as the screen goes black and "05.05.2011" written in glowy disaster-movie font zooms in, then flashes to "www.NationalDayofPrayer.org" backlit by a lens flare. The music finishes with a dramatic flourish and the whole thing fades to black. Fin.]
Shelton Apologizes
[TW for homophobia and violence.]
On the heels of last night's homophobic tweet (see here and here), Blake Shelton has apologized:
Hey y'all allow me to seriously apologize for the misunderstanding with the whole re-write on the Shania song last night...Later Shelton said:
@glaad hey I want my fans and @nbcthevoice fans to know that anti-gay and lesbian violence is unacceptable!!!!! Help me!!!!I hope Shelton has learned that homophobia and gay bashing are nothing to joke about. And maybe GLAAD will take him up on his plea for help. Sounds like Shelton may be willing to be educated a little on the subject. Good on him if that's true.
(Via.)
Them Who Shall Be Asked for Papers
by Nezua
[Trigger warning for racism, violence, Othering, dehumanization.]
Hola, family. My name is Nezua and you may know me as the creator of The Unapologetic Mexican blog. My thanks to Melissa for inviting me to write here at Shakesville, after her reading a stream of tweets I fired off in reaction to the White House releasing President Obama's long form birth certificate in response to Donald Skunkstump's blathering about all the darkies at the water fountain or whatever it was he was trying to say. I know that moment has been eclipsed in the media since Osama Bin Laden was reportedly killed, but the issue of US and THEM is not unrelated, and Them Who Shall Be Asked for Papers know this as well as anyone.
This is an article I have taken my time with, and brevity was not the first priority. It will not be a fast read. I hope you can get to it with a drink, or a sandwich, or a cup of tea.
We begin, but do not end, with the sensational incident where the Obama White House, under Trumpian pressure, produced for public inspection the President's "long form" birth certificate.
I do not know how successful I will be in my attempts to navigate the journey, but I think it's important to move from an immediate feeling of hurt or anger to a broader view of the very thing that moves behind this event and is so upsetting about it. This is what I will try to do.
* * *
Why can't we roam this open country?ROADBLOCK
Oh, why can't we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free.
--Bob Marley, 3 o'Clock Roadblock
What a frenzy.
What a storm of feelings, thoughts, tweets, and emotions were exploded into view with that one event, where the President of the United States of America—a man of color—answered the insincere jeering of a single white citizen by producing his identity papers for inspection. As if our duly elected President was but a teen at a police checkpoint, wearing baggy pants and with his hands up against the hood. As if he were a young man standing on a corner looking Mexicano, immediately suspect and thus beholden to the law man to prove he was not up to criminal acts. What a shaking of the timbers of racial history were felt up and down the blogosphere in this one simple happening.
And rightly so. What a harsh reality we trade in; that it will take far more time than our grandparents', parents', or our own lifetimes to evolve past the sickly, sadistic, inhuman history we Americans share on matters of race. In matters of history—look to Mexico, or China, or Egypt—this country is in an infantile stage. And the things that were done to African Americans, and Indians (indigenous peoples from el Norte as well as from south of the "border"); to Chinese and Japanese and Chileans and so on.... These ghosts will not fade fast.
Donald Trump is one of those ghosts, his expression forever puckered like a lemon-shocked anus-mouth, his mind alight with tired stereotypes and bursts of fart-static. A clown who doesn't have the decency to laugh at himself.
And Donald is so easy to hate, isn't he? Because he is a hateful man. And because he enlists the powers of hate, hate long rooted in American soil. Hate that long ago drew blood and tossed ropes and smiled for the picture as the body cooled to a dusk-like temperature. Hate that raided Native American villages to murder sleeping children. Hate that buffed its boots before demanding that black men duck their eyes, and go drink from some other fountain. Hate that considers women, and Blacks and Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis and Afghanis and Mexican and Chinese and Vietnamese and Puerto Rican as less than human. Hate today that spends Joe Arpaio's paycheck, props up his decaying frame, and parades his prisoners in pink. Hate yesterday that reneged on treaties, and swallowed up gold, and burned codices.
Donald Trump is animated by the very same hate that is used to divide so many people today, and strives to obscure the roots of our liberation as it obscures the hands that lock the cuffs on us. It is a disease of the mind and soul called White Supremacy. And in the land wherein this virus thrives, certain kinds of men, with their ballooned minds and feverish egos, get to demand certain concessions from other people: that you surrender your papers; that you not harbor anger in your eye or your tone lest it be beaten out of you; that law shall endorse such beatings; that you prone out on the ground with a gun in your back at a moment's notice; that you swallow a bullet if the bully feels sexy while perched up there and straddled around your spine. It is a land where you apologize for a role you never asked for but is ascribed to you by thieves and liars; where They will always have the right to tell you to pull over and prove yourself, and where You will always comply and perhaps be allowed to live with just humiliation if you are lucky enough to walk away with your life.
And so the target of so much history, for a day, becomes Donald "I am the Patriarchy" Trump. And many hearts seethe for his being so cruel as to remind us of our history, and to imply that even when you gain The Most Powerful Office in the World, it means nothing next to the anger of a White Man. It was the same reminder Republican Senator Joe "YOU LIE" Wilson gave us when he shouted down the President of the United States in the middle of an address that was adorned with all the pomp and decorum as we see fit to afford our nation's executive leader. That shout, that demand to show papers, that insistence that you duck your eyes, it hisses You can even become President, but you still are not White. Which means you are not really the President. Don't go dreaming that somehow you are now more powerful than me, darkie.
And as an immediate and visceral (and predictable) reaction, what did so many of us people of color need to see the President do? We needed him to scoff at the implication that such assertions could be true. We needed him to refute that reality. To deny it exists. To stand up and stand proud. To destroy that reality with a new action.
Was coughing up the papers but then roasting Trump at a gala dinner in front of the Press enough? Was ordering the home invasion and murder of a wanted man of color in Pakistan enough to erase that reality? Perhaps for our empathy with Obama being humiliated, it was. Perhaps now the unpleasant memory of watching the national daddy figure bow to a carnival barker has been mitigated for most. Maybe now that feeling, as if we watched the POTUS hand over his lunch money to bullies, has been nullified, gunsmoke wafting about our heads like purifying incense smoke.And I suppose it is best to take the man at his word: he saw the Birtherism (also known as "Racism") wasn't going to go away and wanted to squash it and force the GOP ravers into a corner by removing what he saw as their last leg in what was left of the Birther argument.
But I do not think it does the larger issue any service to forget it when the feelings fade, or to imagine it resolved because the President has shown his papers, is in the clear, and we are feeling tough again because, damn son—he's got that killer instinct. Just as Rosa Parks' challenge was not to one bus driver, but to an entire system of inequality, this matter is much broader and deeper than the pageantry that recently unfolded between two rich men on TV.
Yes, the dynamic where we identify culturally or ethnically in some way with President Obama (and as a man of color, I do) leads us to watch the disgusting Trump claim victory for making the President skip on command, and we fume with empathy. We gnash our teeth and swear our allegiance all over again to Barack, this poor besieged man who has to endure the barbs and slings of Age Old Racism. This intelligent, thoughtful scholar, statesman, gentleman, father and husband. This President who bears up nobly in conditions potentially humiliating, conditions asked of no other President has been before him. We spit on the ground and growl Trump's name. We swear to show up in the voting booth for the Democrats...as if that in any measurable way addresses the larger issue of Them Who Shall Be Asked for Papers.
CONQUER AND DIVIDE
I should probably clearly state the obvious in case it is not as obvious as I'd hope: the American Black experience is deep, unique, and I highly respect it. I would never claim to see it in all its parts or stand within it. I am not pretending to have any stake or voice therein. At the same time, I have my own experiences as a Xicano, and there is some degree of overlap between the experiences of all people of color in this nation. This I know from years of activism and friendships and conversations with people of different ethnicities.
Also—quite important to suss out and account for—there are (exploitable) gaps between our experiences. It is in those gaps that divide and conquer wedges are introduced by the ruling class.
Strategically, it is in marginalized peoples' great interest to discover these gaps ourselves so they cannot be exploited casually. It is in our great interest to find them, examine them, and prepare for the attacks that will be launched; attacks that would seek to exploit the latent weaknesses that could threaten our unity as people marginalized and exploited by the oppressive, racist hand of law. Black and Brown alike suffer behind the racist criminal justice system, for starters. Statistics for both Latinos as well as Blacks are disproportionately high for the actual number of crimes that run rampant through all communities, when compared. This is so because the law continues old power differentials and is implemented by human beings who have been conditioned by the same society.
And because law begins as idea, and only becomes strapped with force when enough people agree on that idea.
One of the ways that unfortunate ideas become commonly accepted is by the use of emotional triggers to mislead thought and obscure the true machinations of state or corporate power.
It is necessary to deny the apparent binaries here.
1. This is not just a black/white issue. Take it from Chuck D. And for all of us who care, there is a way to channel the need to see justice done in the wake of this ugly moment. There are other peoples and communities who would greatly benefit from our consideration in the current context. People who would suffer in continued indignities and abuse were we to avoid using that lens in a broader sense. Other communities that are having their own dignity denied, with not just social pressure demanding they suborn themselves and produce papers for how they look (not white), but laws. Laws and actions, I'm sorry to say, that are supported very much by President Obama. Laws being snuck under the radar that increase the reach of the surveillance state, as well as that feed into the growing prison and detention industry in the U.S. Like the actions of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
I will be more specific on these both in a moment. But I wanted to prepare the soil of your imagination for this turn of thought. I invite you to explore these ideas:
--- The President, seemingly the unwilling subject of this degrading and dehumanizing shape of act before our eyes—being forced to show papers in the course of his day, with no reason but for the fact that he is not a pale man called Smith—supports that very idea being implemented for others who Appear Foreign, and is directly involved with making this a reality across America.
--- If it bothers me that he, as one person (and a very powerful one on the continuum considered) is subject to this, how can I engage the larger fight where millions are subjected to this? Millions of very vulnerable people. Not graduates of Ivy League schools; not powerful politicians with millions of dollars at their disposal, and millions of people clamoring to back them up.
2. This is not a struggle between Barack H. Obama and Donald Whatever Trump. Nor one between their persons or personalities. Sure, let us consider their power and from where their power derives, and what they use it for. Let us give context to the scene and the players. But we really don't need to make either of them a demon or a hero for us to successfully engage this important fight. In fact, doing so will dilute our powers of observation and thought.
3. The battle is not between the Evil, Rich, Racist Ole GOP and the Beleaguered, Liberal, Bullied, Righteous Democrats.If I may presume to know and say so, the battle at the heart of this outrage and hurt here, is for principles. For human dignity, and human rights. The battle is for integrity. The battle is against racist hate shaped into popular opinion and finally, given the force of the masses' will—be it in the shape of social pressure, law, violence, or all three.
Going forward, we must recognize the possible faultline that divides certain viewpoints rooted in the Black American experience from certain viewpoints in the Mexican American community, as well as in the Pro-Migrant community. Especially when exploited by the powers that be. We must dwell in our connectedness. It's not hard. I know I don't just care for Mexicanos. I care for all people who suffer behind the racist machinations afoot in the nation today.
4. It's not citizens vs. immigrants. Human rights, dignity, fairness: these are not things we should let legal terms determine. These are things we want human beings to have. Don't let the squirming exploiters and vampires at the top whisper to us the nightmarish myth of scarcity. Things only seem scarce when a small group of people need to capitalize on many people's energies and resources, and this profit-making pyramid shape enforces an artificial scarcity.
When we feel we cannot even take care of "our own," it's easy to let a feeling of solidarity slip away. It makes me sad when I see people of color who should understand and join in the struggle that Mexicanos and other immigrants face today, but who veer away from that struggle imagining that immigrants represent a threat to their own community. This is the voice of White Supremacy, and it's a bullhorn turned on all day and night in this land, so I understand. But when in all important ways our struggle is the same, "our own" can be an expansive thing—and these larger numbers will render us more powerful to fight those exploiters at the top, already unfairly given advantage.
Many of today's most important issues deal with power differentials between the very rich, and the rest of us. Immigration is one of the most important areas for us to mind. Many issues come together here. Drug war, Commerce, and the Economy. Lines of ownership; lines that signify an US and THEM, borders that we end up believing need small army units and millions of dollars of technology in guns, drones, and surveillance equipment to maintain their reality; their solidity.
In the issue of immigration and corporate abuse of borders and employees is revealed the secret of how towns and communities become economically destroyed by corporate powers being above the law, and exploiting the worker. In the selling of the idea that the only people affected are Criminal Illegal Alien Invader Types, the elite continue to exploit our vulnerable brothers and sisters.
In Immigration politics, we see the manipulative hand of Economics, and the fallout of Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Domestically as well as Internationally. Within this struggle are handholds to engage the struggle for working class rights, women's rights, family rights, culture, reproduction, human rights, our national ethics.
As more and more strife becomes about resources and mobility, more conquer and divide tactics will be put to work in this area of Immigration.
We must remember first and foremost (and again at the end), that the forces that benefit from our being divided will seek to exploit all these key areas. A simple lens adjustment would make that impossible. We must come to realize how many of us share this same struggle; fighting that power that reared its ugly naked head recently under the glow of sunlight bouncing off skyscraper windows, and hissed at the President with breath as old and rancid as years of gallows sweat.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY
There are so many discussions about the Arc of Obama in the eye of popular opinion as of yet. We've all had an intense experience of some sort from Election Day until now, though our specific experiences may vary, and our current feelings vary just as much. Some have offered arguable reasons for becoming disenchanted with his administration. I will avoid the political laundry list, some or all of with which you may or may not agree. That's not the conversation(s) I am here for. I don't want to get sidetracked. I don't want to exploit or even risk the potential differences and faultlines in our unity just for a moment. And when I say "our unity," I mean working class people. I mean the 99% of income earners in the nation. I mean many many Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Chinese, Korean or otherwise golden brown beautiful red black people. I mean white people. Here, I talk to all those people marginalized in some way by the powers and status quo that men like Donald Trump act in the service of.
I propose that what we have in common here is the idea of how wrong it is to deny the full dignity and rights to the Other in the name of safety and legal procedure. I suggest that this fight and furious sense of injustice cannot and should not end with the humiliating press conference, nor with the empowering roast of Trump at a dinner you and I had no means nor invitation to attend.
PROMISES, PROMISES
Candidate and President Barack Obama made some very specific promises to crowds of Latinos, in speeches to NCLR and to the immigrant community. He decried the ICE raids that tore parents away from their children, he called the system broken. In passioned speech, he told desperate immigrant families that he had their back. That he understood their pain. That he was determined to make a difference for them. He said he was an ally to Latinos and to Immigrants and that we could count on him.
He then turns around and continues the raids, but in other shapes. He deports more people than George W. Bush does, ensuring that many, many children are torn from their parents, after all. He does this in the name of Papers, not in the name of human rights or dignity.
President Obama and Janet Napolitano brag to the Republicans that they are deporting record numbers of undocumented immigrants. He turns his back on his own disabled aunt when the cold eye of ICE falls upon her. He sends troops to the US' Southern border, when the economic refugees flee conditions in Mexico that have been greatly caused by NAFTA policies (a Democratic accomplishment under Bill Clinton). Those people risking rape, murder, starvation, and poverty to cross the border to find a chance at life don't need bullets in their heads; they need help accessing resources so they don't need to flee their homes and families.
Obama's Department of Homeland Security offers a program called "Secure Communities" (S-Comm) that ties in the FBI and ICE to local police so that anyone apprehended by local police has all their info shared with these other agencies, even if a person is not convicted of anything. We've seen how successful Arizona's SB 1070 has been in disrupting society, and at driving a wedge between local police and many communities where people fear either being detained or simply being hassled based on ethnic signifiers. Many police have protested the implementation of S-Comm, understanding right away how it would harm their relationship with the immediate community and lend a hand to the proliferation of many crimes that would exploit this wedge. A few cities attempted to opt out of S-Comm, but voila! The cloak came off and Obama's DHS suddenly informed these cities that the program was not, after all, voluntary. Whoops.
Immigrant communities understand that they are being targeted when they are just trying to feed their kids and make a living, often exploited by workplaces that know they live without protection from law or society. But to console the rest who don't know this, Obama's White House claims it is only deporting serious criminals. The most cursory examination of reality shows this to be a complete falsehood.
One easy example of this is shown quite blatantly by how the White House is going after activist, friend, and law school student Prerna Lal. Prerna is a positive role model, an engaged, passionate person and organizer. Hardly a serious criminal. (Please sign the petition to help Prerna fight deportation.) Her crime? The creation and success of DreamActivist.org. Prerna was simply too successful in organizing students behind the DREAM Act, which—unlike these sly and disingenuous actions by the Department of Homeland Security—does exist in the service of human rights. We don't need to be frozen in the sixties to aid those fighting for communities before it becomes common sense to do so. We can look Prerna's way.
The stats tell the same story. The Obama administration is not deporting scores of dangerous criminals but people who have an old offense, or minor offenses, or who get caught up in the widening and growing web of "immigration enforcement," or who are simply students and children of immigrants and dared to make a valedictorian speech at their school, or reach out to help other people in the same plight. Sometimes they are simply driving home from work, and get pulled over by an old, white, sheriff who might as well be Donald Trump. They get asked for their birth certificate because their name sounds...un-American.
COME TOGETHER
It's so easy for us to stay firm in our personal experience and all the ways it feeds our own heart. One of the major premises in this article (or ramble depending on how you look at it) is that we proceed deeper and deeper into times when it will be important to not let ourselves be divided in the wrong ways. The Earth, mother of all, is increasingly poisoned and robbed...and those plunderers conspire to keep us misinformed about her condition. As she sickens in different ways, as our reckless, imbalanced, capitalist society veers drunkenly to and fro, as the divides grow starker and the ultra-rich more intoxicated by desperation, the powers that be will work harder and harder to keep us at each other's throats, to offer us others who we can throw to the curb in order to keep our own apparently threatened freedom.
We can feel empathy, kinship, or even an affection for the person named Barack Obama, for the challenges he faces navigating a system so strongly interwoven with racist currents, yet simultaneously see how today's policies enacted by the creepily-named Department of Homeland Security exist to grow the racist prison system, and aid racist behaviors and values through the normalization of certain laws.
We must shift our view of immigrants as Other. We must consider their fight our fight. They are, in fact, us—if we had less protection and more need for the help of the greater community. They are far closer to you and me than the President is, when it comes to struggle. They can be disappeared down a hole of legalisms and racist hate in a second flat...and you will not see them roasting the police a day later on national TV.
We need to feel simultaneously outraged by the racist mechanisms in society that demand documentation from President Obama simply because he is not white, as well as demand that he, too, do his part in eradicating those very mechanisms.
* * *
Final notes: Thanks to friend (and immigration lawyer) Dave Bennion for helping me with resources and to Melissa for posting the piece, which is crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican.
Please consider this a humble passing around of the socialist hat: If you are inclined and able to support my work on issues of race and immigration, paypal to dolaresATxolagrafikDOTcom (preferred method), or follow this link (will subtract a fee from donation).
Goodbye, Partisan Rancor! Hello, Civility!
Thank goodness! The Obama administration has finally found a way to solve the bitter partisan divide in Washington—by politely agreeing with Republicans that we need to lower corporate tax rates.
The Obama administration is quietly gearing up for a high-profile launch in May or June on what may turn out to be the most heavily lobbied issue of the year: corporate tax reform.Very cool. Very awesome for K Street. I know when I cast my vote for a Democratic president, I was hoping that he would pursue policies that could be described as "a feast" for lobbyists.
"This will be a feast for K Street," said one top aide.
At a time when the two parties can find little common ground legislatively, strategists on both sides tell POLITICO they hope to advance their jobs agenda by finding a way to lower corporate tax rates.I love games! You know what my favorite game is? Pretending that trickle-down economics hasn't been comprehensively discredited for nearly forty years!
"This would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and is something both parties should support in theory," a senior administration official said, predicting "a numbers game" in which companies and industries ferociously litigate the fine points.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to ignite the debate by unveiling a white paper that advocates lowering the top corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to less than 30 percent and as low as 26 percent, according to aides. The proposal is likely to fall between 26 percent and 28 percent.Oh, good. There's nothing I like to hear more than the Treasury Secretary feeling encouraged after meeting with conservative think tanks about how best to stimulate the economy.
...Geithner has already begun his campaign with a series of closed-door meetings with CEOs, academics, labor unions and liberal and conservative think tanks. Aides say he was encouraged by the response.
They always have such excellent ideas.
[H/T to Digby.]
