Mission Accomplished

Back during the South Carolina primary, Bill Clinton tried to marginalize Barack Obama by comparing the latter's victory in that state to Jesse Jackson's decades before.

Most white Americans can not stand Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I'm sure about this because I'm around white people a lot, what with being white and all. Bill Clinton's putting Obama's name out there with Jackson's was calculated - and despicable.

Bill Clinton is a sharp pol. From what I've read, even direct quotes over the years, the man can calculate electoral percentages quicker than you or I can figure up how much to tip a waitress (Catholics plus X percent of Protestants on this issue, X percent of red state support on that issue). He knows the different demographics and how they will break around various issues. He knows these as well as he knows the insides of his own eyelids. I am certain of it.

Bill Clinton knows the demographics - and he knows how to split them too. For instance, remember his infamous Sister Soulja moment? As recently as 2004, he was, we now know, still up to his old tricks:

Clinton Advice Spurned. Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the Red States, former President Bill Clinton, in a phone call with (John) Kerry, urged the Senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, "I'm not going to ever do that." (Pam's House Blend).

So, Clinton knows how to split different demographics for political advantage (right - and my next insightful post will be on the imporant topic of "the world is indeed round"). He is willing to throw minority groups under the bus if he sees a potential electoral advantage to doing so.

After spending my Katrina evacuation in Little Rock (which we chose so we could tour Clinton's presidential library...it beats Houston!), I decided to take a detour through Bill Clinton's boyhood home of Hope, touring some of the sites linked to the childhood of the former president.

Truth be told, there wasn't that much to see. There was Clinton's mother's home, his grandparents' home. There was the Blythe/Kelly/Clinton cemetery plot, an unremarkable looking school he attended (long since converted to another purpose). Finally, there was a little train depot that functioned as a museum.

That was it.

Still, I am so glad I took that detour. It was deeply moving, not because any of the designated sites of interest were in any way remarkable, but precisely because none of it was remarkable. As a southerner, once I'd walked around in Hope, Arkansas, I felt I understood some things about our nation's forty-second president. The southerness of the place was palpable. It looked quaint and tidy in places, shabby and unkempt in others. There was no large-scale commerce, no industry. There was poverty. And, to this New Orleans girl, the racial mix of the residents looked like that in my hometown (indeed, census figures show that the town is about 42% white and about 42% black).

From this place came Bill Clinton, this humble place, a president born of working people. I admit that tears came to my eyes because for all that I bitch about what's wrong with my country and engage in activism against the status quo, there is, truly, something right about a country in which a white man so humbly born can become president. (I know, I know. Radical critics are supposed to hate America, right? Well, actually, as Dr. King said, "I criticize America because I love her. I want her to stand as a shining moral example to the world."* No, I'm not an America hater, no matter what my brother-in-law says about me. In truth, I'm a woman whose idea of a great vacation is to go to Washington, D.C, to wander the grounds of Mount Vernon giving thanks for the light rain shower so that no one will notice that I'm crying, to visit the Library of Congress and find that I have to locate a bench on which to rest because standing just on the other side of the glass from Thomas Jefferson's beloved book collection has literally made me lightheaded. I confess to all of that even though, in the context of the rest of this essay, said confession puts me firmly in the camp of white American nationalists I'll be criticizing a few paragraphs hence - just one of the many paradoxes inherent in trying to do antiracism work when you're white like me. Please forgive me my absurdity while I flirt with radical honesty. As Walt Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.")

In this place called Hope, Clinton has oft told us, his grandfather taught him to reject the racism that was as much an ordinary part of life for whites as were warm, ripe tomatoes and oversized, iced watermelons. Clinton's grandfather taught him by example to do business with local blacks the same as he did with whites, a habit quite different from other white shopkeepers of the day.

So, I've been to Bill Clinton's hometown. I know he and I share the same roots, roots in a beloved, schizophrenic South - a South of sweet tea and relic slave shacks, of casserole-bearing funeral attendees and still-segregated churches, a South of unfailing manners as well as fierce racism both personal and institutionalized (I've lived up North and out West too, and white people there need not check their mental compasses for due South when they think about racism).

And so I've seen where Bill Clinton grew up. And I know. I know that Bill Clinton knew exactly what he was doing when he made that comparison of Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson. He knew, and for personal gain for himself and his, he was willing to fan those racist flames, always there, always hot, always bright - and denied by whites even if maintaining that denial requires us to stay in our skivvies and wander blindfolded while denying the existence of the fire.

Oh, he knew.

And it isn't just that Clinton compared Obama to Jackson, Jackson is someone most whites don't like, therefore the association could hurt Obama. It is that, but it's also more.

Hearing about what's happening with Obama's polling numbers beginning to decline now that lots of oh-so inculpable white people have seen film of Obama's pastor speaking his truth, I was thinking today that about how this process, this process of making Obama black enough to make whites consciously uncomfortable, began with Bill Clinton's comment in South Carolina. Now, I'm sure someone - a bunch of someones - would have eventually begun doing that anyway. So this thought came to me: they intended to morph him into "the angry black preacher," to link Obama in the minds of white voters to Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton. It ended up being Reverend Jeremiah Wright instead.

Mission accomplished. Heckuva job, Billy.

And it's no coincidence that in order to morph Obama into those two "angry" black preachers so dreaded by whites, they went through....Obama's preacher.

That was the only way white culture, really, could finally go after Obama.

You see, most white people - and I am a white person - don't know black people. Sometimes, it's overtly racist whites who don't want to know black people. Sometimes, we move to the suburbs, shop at Whole Foods, vote for Democrats, and tell ourselves we just don't have that much opportunity for interracial interaction, but that if we did, you know, we're sure we would be "good" white people who are culturally colorblind. After all, in our reality, race isn't a problem, ergo racism isn't a problem in America.

And even if we know some black people, we don't know black people. How can we, running around the racist bonfire I described above, stripped down to our skivvies and blindfolded so we can deny the heat and the light that are right there? Blindfolded is no way to see. So we don't see.

And when we, blindfolded, hear someone like Jeremiah Wright, ranting apparent madness out there in the beyond, we are shocked. We are appalled. We are angry. We can't imagine why they are being so racist!**

Why don't we know black people? Simply because, to borrow from the boorish Jack Nicholson, we can't handle the truth.

I'll borrow from someone far wiser than I to explain further (his name actually is Tim Wise, but that actually isn't why I consider him a wiseman):

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots....

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the "shining city on a hill," for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do--and this is true even for millions of black veterans--for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like "God Bless America," for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I've seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country--when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as "Negro Barbecues," involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade--an excising of truth and an assault on memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. (please for the love of god please read the rest of this***)

So, there it is. We don't know black people and Tim Wise has explained why we don't.

And what happens when we don't know or know them? Well, apparently the best we can do is to rely on what we've seen.

What have we seen? Well, each of us has been provided through American culture with a rather limited range of black archetypes. There is what Spike Lee calls "the magical negro, there is "Mammy" (yep, still), there is "the driver" a la Morgan Freeman in "Driving Miss Daisy" - those are the classic archetypes.****

In addition to archetypes, whites commonly hold stereotypes of blacks and despite our being supposedly oh-so postracial, surveys show the list hasn't change much in the last sixty years.

In 1933, the top ten stereotypes of blacks were "superstitious, lazy/slovenly, happy-go-lucky, ignorant, musical, ostentatious, very religious, physically dirty, naive and unreliable."

In 1995, the top ten were "athletic, rhythmic/musical, unintelligent/ignorant/stupid, poor, loud, criminal, hostile, very religious, disloyal to family, and physically dirty." (source)

So I submit that whites individually, mainstream culture, and the media have been struggling to find a category - an archetype or stereotype, something for heaven's sake, it's all so disorienting - a hole into which we whites could peg Barack Obama because, once again, we rely on racist cultural shorthand since we don't really know black people (and we really can't recognize that we don't know because the whole system of white privilege is so invisible to us).

For months, Barack Obama was broadcasting to white America as an individual (well, who doesn't, really) and seemed to be being received as such. He wasn't Mammy (or, to be gender precise, Uncle Peter), the driver, Sambo, "the magical negro" (although some have attempted to link him to the latter). He is clearly not, to return to the list of top ten stereotypes, unintelligent/ignorant/stupid, poor, loud, criminal, hostile, disloyal to family, or physically dirty.

He is athletic, and the media has treated us to a number of "Barack plays basketball" stories, but I think white voters were also seeing in those stories the Obama who is competitive and a fighter, who is focused, who is young and vigorous (although I heard some time back that, should he be the nominee, Republicans will run campaign ads that show him playing basketball).

He did joke during one of the debates about his dancing abilities versus Bill Clinton's, and he also danced on the Ellen show.

I offer these last two items with tongue-in-cheek. The point is that I believe whites and our media have been working down a list of "black people we think we know" to try to know Obama.

One item remains on the list of top ten stereotypes - it's "extremely religious." Somehow, the (white) public has very quickly begun morphing Obama into his minister (even as the Clintons previously tried with Reverend Jesse Jackson). And if the (white) public can successfully do that, can think "angry black minister" when they think of Obama, then we will have finally, after these long months of bumbling around, found one of our holes into which he can be fitted. "Angry black minister." Then maybe Obama too is "angry." And then maybe he hates us. In fact, maybe he can't be trusted; maybe he's acting nice around us and hating us behind our backs and plotting against us (these were the big fears during slavery, obviously, and I think we still fear these things today). AND, Hillary is here to explain to us that he isn't even qualified for the job he seeks - she will give that much to the likes of John McCain, experienced political whore in more ways than I care to list at the moment, and not to Barack Obama. I notice too that the red phone ad has lots of racist fearmongering potential - nighttime, white kids sleeping sweetly all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums dance in their heads - virtuous white women of America, can you entrust this man with your precious children? (NY Times noticed too).

THERE! I think that'll do it. Yep, he's finally fitting in that hole! Whew, what a relief, my white brothers and sisters. Life as we understand it can now continue! We now return to your regularly scheduled oblivion.

Enjoy your recession. Buy a bikini to celebrate global warming. Keep those kids safe and send them to America's fine institutions of learning; McCain says we'll be needing them in Iraq years from now. Keep a month's supply of, well, everything in case there is a levee breach near you (yeah, you, non-Louisianians, I AM talking to you too; check out the links). Stock up on the duct tape because it looks like for the indefinite future they will be hating us for freedoms (apparently "they" haven't heard that our freedoms ain't what they used to be).

Submission accomplished. Barack who?

UPDATE: A WHITE FRIEND WHO READ THIS SAYS HE HAS A BLACK FRIEND WHOM HE BELIEVES HE REALLY KNOWS. WHEN I WROTE THAT WHITES DON'T KNOW BLACK PEOPLE, I GUESS I WAS THINKING PRIMARILY IN BROADER, CULTURAL TERMS. WHEN IT COMES TO INDIVIDUAL FRIENDSHIPS, I CONCEDE THAT I MAY HAVE OVERSTATED THE CASE. I GUESS I WOULD HAVE TO TALK TO HIS FRIEND, WHOM I ALSO KNOW, AND ASK HIM WHAT HE THINKS.

* Tim Wise's essays don't seem to have individual URLs, so I can't link to them directly. All I can get is the URL to his homepage. From there, click on "essays" and then "A Dream Distorted: Reflections on the Hijacking of Martin Luther King Jr."

** from the link, click on "essays" and then "Another Batch of White Whine:
Obama, Black Voters and the Myth of Reverse Racism"

*** from the link, click on "essays" and then "Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia:
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth"

**** It occurs to me that in each of those examples, African-Americans are defined strictly according to their utility to white people - mammy, driver, "magic negro." This is also the case with female archetypes - wife (in relationship with a man), mother (in relation to a child), virgin (not yet penetrated by man), slut/whore (penetrated by too many men), femme fatale (man can't resist), damsel in distress (needs protection from or rescue by a man), and so on. This tendency toward what I'm calling for the moment the archetype-in-relation illustrates the extent to which women and people of color are still viewed through the lens of the dominant culture (women as seen by men, people of color as seen by whites).

Gay Scientists Isolate the Christian Gene

Ha!

Hat tip The F Word.

The other day this New Orleans talk radio program did a whole show on Obama's pastor and some of McCain's buddies (Haggee?) and about what people thought. So, on the topic of some people's religious views, this woman called in and said that in the aftermath of Katrina, she worked sorting food donations that were coming in from around the country. The donors apparently didn't realize that the food bank would break packages down into the smallest possible units (I guess to get widest possible distribution). Time and time again, when this woman opened the packages, she found that people had tucked notes inside their food donations, notes telling the already devastated recipient that Katrina was the wrath of god visited upon a sinful people.

I really do hope those gay scientists, now that they've isolated the gene, can find the cure.

(with apologies to any REAL Christians out there; I get so frustrated with the other kind)

An Email Conversation - Contrary Teens

First, my sister passed on the following email from my thirteen year old niece (if this part makes your eyes cross, don't feel bad, just skim it; in fact, I recommend just skimming it).

I had a heated debate with Mom and Dad a few weeks ago about the ethics of robotics (I'm not sure if you remember it, Mom and Dad, but it sure got me
thinking!).

I still don't get why so many people are afraid of the advancement of robotics. Why are people unafraid of computers to the point of not even giving supercomputers a second glance(supercomputers, mind you, that can calculate PI to thousands of places, and can easily defeat the worlds leading chessmasters in the game.), but the thought of Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot terrifies them? Why the bias? One is not any more of a threat than another.

This gave me an idea. You all have heard of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics(If you feel like you don't know enough about them, see this- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) Though these three laws are mainly just a plot device used in Asimov's robot series, they can be progammed into today's robots. (I will try not to go too technical with this explanation). Have you heard of HARDWARE(not tools like you see at home depot ;) ) and SOFTWARE? You probably have heard of software. That's the sort of thing Microsoft makes. It adds programs to an already existing basic set of programs. The already existing set of programs are very hard to alter or delete, but the software can be changed quite easily. Hardware is the physical representation of the technology(http: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/computer_hardware). Think circuit boards and wires. Things programmed into hardware are designed to not be changed. Thethings can be, but really they're the sort of things you need to leave for the computer to work as desired. It could work so that you could create a non-removable chip (like the CPU of most computers)that had ethics closely resembling the three laws, right next to the CPU. Or, it could be stored as a non-deletable .EXE(or similar file extension) file as the permanent memory of the robot. A wide variety of options are availabe to give an adavnced robot the desired ethics programming, and we can> limit A.I. to allow the enough freedom so that they don't need humans to tell them everything, but they don't put thier own personal twist on thier ethics programing(as seen in the movie I,robot.). It is possible. Robots can be advanced, and with the bonus of thier being little to no risk of the robot breaking the oh-so-important first law of robotics-or even the "0th law"-a robot cannot harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come into harm. All that is limiting this from happening is humanity's unwillingness to accept that this can work, and humanity's unwillingness to give potential builders enough funding to do so.

There is one last quote I want to include form the wikipedia link I included on the three laws. this quote comes from an essay written by Isaac Asimov. "Robots are very similar to tools. The three laws cna be changed just a little and they can fit a tool's laws. 1. A tool must be safe to use. (knives have handles, swords have hilts, and grenades have pins.) 2. A tool must perform it's function correctly unless this would harm the user. 3. A tool must remain intact during it's duration unless it's destruction is required for it's use or for safety."

Think about it...
Love, A
"Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is
to find out if the polls were right?"

My reply to my sister:

How did you manage to raise a kid like this in this culture? Somehow I, radical feminist that I am, have raised a girl who wants to be a model. Help me before I finally off myself.

My cousin's reply:

Of course she wants to be a model BECAUSE you are a radical feminist! When I was that age, I said/wanted/did any and everything that contradicted my mother. She was so uncool! Happily, she is much cooler through the eyes of my adult self!

Thank heaven for wise women! Instead of seeing teenaged rebellion, I was assuming failure as a parent. Sigh.

Speechless

So, I went to Mississippi to canvass voters last week. This is what I saw on the way into Natchez.


It's a restaurant called Mammy's Cupboard.

And, shockers, I know, but not only are we not postracial, we're also not postpatriarchal either. I spent two whole days, walking mile after mile, knocking on doors and handing out leaflets, and I got sexually harassed the whole time. Men whistling, yelling, honking their horns (my previous street harassment post about living while female is here).

Calling Brothers and Sisters of the Diaspora - COME HOME

And my mom too...

COME BACK TO NEW ORLEANS

Eve Ensler gets it! Ensler in New Orleans:



Yesterday I did a blog post about the Mardi Gras Indians.

Today, paying homage to a Southern goddess:


(hat tip Katrina Film)

Also this month is a series of Irish, Italian, Irish-Italian, and Irish-Italian-Islenos parades and masses in honor of St. Patrick's and St.Joseph's days (lots more at Time Pic)

Finally, this week is also time for the St. Joseph's alters around the city (partial lists here and here, with a good explanation of the tradition at that second link).

For my friends from around the country, here are some photos of what St. Joseph's alters may look like.




And, of course, no New Orleans-related blog entry of mine is ever complete without a finger flip to those who want the city to just die.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite (Louisiana) Things

First, I just want to say that I've worked out the issue about the other person in my house knowing where my blog is. I talked to him about this, made it clear that my blog has kind of also become my journal (my fault for showing it to him when it was just political rants & blog round-ups). I told him that he has his 12-step program journals in the house, and that I've never cheated by reading any of them. Then I found out how use the blog stats thing so that I can always sign on and be sure the last time anyone here went to my blog, it was ME - and I told him I would be checking from now on too!

Thanks for the supportive comment.

And now, on to some of my favorite (Louisiana) things.

Thanks, Katrina explains how we can be tourists in our own backyard.

This weekend is Super Sunday, which involves the Mardi Gras Indians. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition grew out of the respect and affection African-Americans had for native-Americans, who often harbored escaped slaves. The traditions involved are unique, fascinating, and very complex - and way beyond my ability to explain here, so instead I will provide a link.

This video is offered as a f**k you to the "just let New Orleans die" crowd - and a polite rebuke to the otherwise fabulous Barbara Ehrenreich, who wouldn't include New Orleans in her book on celebrations of joy in the streets because she said Mardi Gras is too commercialized and because she has apparently seen one too many ads for "Girls Gone Wild: Mardi Gras edition." Here you are, Barbara! Come see for yourself!

This video is of two tribes of the Mardi Gras Indians doing "battle." In the old days, actual fights broke out and scores from other times during the year were settled. In modern times, this is how the chiefs do battle. Ultimately, one chief will bow to the one who is "the prettiest."

If you're interested in this, go to the original of the video above at youtube and there is a link to a New Yorker article. Also, try a search for "Mardi Gras Indians" at youtube.

I'm sort of working the event on Sunday. I am volunteering to be a legal observer for the ACLU, observing and then noting what happens between attendees and the police (more at LaACLU).

I did this kind of volunteering once before, when I was a first year law student and member of the National Lawyers Guild (I went to type that last night and it came out "National Lawyers Guilt - how Freudian!). Anyway, that was when friends at the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane held this protest in which they sat down on the highway outside of the Air Force base. At the time, I was so amazed by how professonal and polite the many police and military and riot control units present were. Now that the ACLU has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain our FBI files (the law students referenced on page 12 would include moi), it is abundantly clear why law enforcement were SOO nice. Anyway, so I am going to do that for Super Sunday.

Next, my favorite author in the world, James Lee Burke, gives an interview to the Sydney Morning Herald. (sigh)

NEW ORLEANS isn't just a place for bestselling crime writer James Lee Burke. Nobody could describe it - the good and the bad - the way he does without a deep well of affection. Love even: "You woke in the morning to the smell of gardenias, the electric smell of the streetcars, chicory coffee and stone that has turned green with lichen. The light was always filtered through trees, so it was never harsh, and flowers bloomed year-round."

That's a blues musician talking, a character from Jesus Out To Sea, one of Burke's most personal stories. He's clinging to a roof in "the Big Sleazy" after Hurricane Katrina has ripped it open. He goes on: "New Orleans was a poem, man, a song in your heart that never died … I only got one regret. Nobody ever bothered to explain why nobody came for us."

I went to a book signing of Burke's at a fabulous indie bookstore called Auntie's. At the time, I had been living up North for about ten years, and Burke's books were the closest thing I could afford to a trip home. When it was my turn to have him sign my book, I told him that I was from New Orleans and that I used his books for mental transport back there, then I said, "Thank you so much for writing to life some quirky, recognizable Louisiana characters who aren't just the same old Scarlett and Rhett stereotypes. It means a lot to me." He stopped in the middle of signing, looked up abruptly, kind of searched my face for a moment, then said, "Why, thank you, ma'm." (another sigh)

I walked into my therapist's office one day carrying one of Burke's books and was amazed to learn that she'd never heard of him. She wanted to know specifically what I like about his novels (especially since, as I'd told her, I rarely read fiction). As I tried to describe the complexity of the Dave Robichaux character and the complexity of the world as Burke - accurately - depicts it, where cops have Vietnam flashbacks, occassional violent tempers, and weekly 12 step meetings, where there is honor among thieves but little among politicians and patriarchs, my therapist pointed out that Burke's novels and characters reflect the complexity of my life's experiences. It's true. I've found the good guys aren't easy to tell from the bad guys. I've found little of the black and white I crave, but lots of the gray I dread.

She's right. Burke's complexity gets me (and, if you read the interview, that complexity of ordinary characters, what he calls "the bottom up story" is what he is trying to tell). It's also, however, the simple fact that his descriptions of my beloved Louisiana are melt in your mouth poetry.

Perhaps I carried too many memories of the way the city used to be. Maybe I should not have returned. Maybe I expected to see the streets clean, the power back on, the crews of carpenters repairing ruined homes. But the sense of loss I felt while driving down St. Charles was worse than I had experienced right after the storm. New Orleans had been a song, not a city. Like San Francisco, it didn't belong to a state; it belonged to a people.

When Clete and I [had] walked the beat on Canal, music was everywhere. Sam Butera and Louis Prima played in the Quarter. Old black men knocked out "The Tin Roof Blues" in Preservation Hall. Brass-band funerals on Magazine shook the glass in storefront windows. When the sun rose on Jackson Square, the mist hung like cotton candy in the oak trees behind the St. Louis Cathedral. The dawn smelled of ponded water, lichen-stained stone, flowers that bloomed only at night, coffee and freshly baked beignets in the Cafe du Monde. Every day was a party, and everyone was invited and the admission was free.

The grandest ride in America was the St. Charles streetcar. You could catch the old green-painted, lumbering iron car under the colonnade in front of the Pearl and for pocket change travel on the neutral ground down arguably the most beautiful street in the Western world. The canopy of live oaks over the natural ground created a green-gold tunnel as far as the eye could see. On the corners, black men sold ice cream and sno'balls from carts with parasols on them, and in winter the pink and maroon neon on the Katz and Besthoff drugstores glowed like electrified smoke inside the fog ...

Every writer, every artist who visited New Orleans fell in love with it. The city might have been the Great Whore of Babylon, but few ever forgot or regretted her embrace. (a little more...yum)

Hat tip New Orleans News Ladder for the James Lee Burke interview.

I'll close with this, "Unsuffer Me," by Louisiana GODDESS Lucinda Williams. This isn't really a video, but it plays the song, which is fabulous. Lean back and let Lucinda massage the sore spots in your soul.

Women for Obama HAVE to Read This

If you want to know what kind of woman raised Barack Obama, if you want to know more about Obama, if you just like reading about free-spirited, tough, smart women, READ THIS!

Will Thomas: Obama Releases Earmark Requests, Challenges Hil

Barack Obama has released all of his earmark requests from 2005 and 2006 (his 2007 earmarks have already been released).

His campaign also took the opportunity to tweak his opponent for not doing the same:

read more digg story

Finding Good Stuff

I've been struggling with my depression quite a lot lately. Sometimes, you have to find cool stuff where you can, and today I did just that.

Today, I drove the kidlet to another town for a track meet.

It was a perfect, sunny March day in the South, outdoor thermostat set on "just right."

I got a snowball at one of those little snowball stands, and we got pints of fresh strawberries right off of some guy's truck.

On the way into the track meet, I saw two little girls, one black and one white, both beautiful and wearing pigtails. They were holding hands, skipping, and giggling. Watching them, I was transported to a long since forgotten time, when my best friend was black. This was back in elementary school, before anyone had gotten around to teaching me that such friendships are "supposed" to have limits (sigh...). Her name was Leslie Parsons. She wore glasses and was quiet, except with me. Sometimes we joined the other girls at jump rope, but mostly, we played jacks every chance we got. We were both really good at jacks, better than anyone else in our school; no one else could beat either one of us, so we mostly just played each other. We laughed and held hands like those two I saw at the track meet today, until I asked if she could spend the night at my house. That's when I got "the lesson" - it's okay to be friends at school, but we don't invite "them" to spend the night.

Trying to figure out racism, I have sometimes thought that, okay, maybe people have a natural tendency to seek out those who look most like themselves, that a tribe mentality might have some evolutionary purpose (although surely, we could EVOLVE beyond that by now!). In the end though, I still believe the truth is that "you have to teach a child to hate." If tribalism were so natural, such an evolutionary imperative, why would two innocent little girls be drawn together in friendship to begin with? The truth is that children will make friends with other children, regardless of race - at least until an adult comes along to "correct" them.

Oh, the things I think about just sitting in the sun at a track meet.

Good things about the day:

• ordering jambalaya from the concession stand right there on the track field (where else but South Louisiana!)
• warm, sunny weather in early March (just set my new plants out this weekend)
• locally grown strawberries in March
• spearmint snowballs in March
• kids who say "yes ma'm" and "yes sir" (a Southern sweetness I really missed when I lived up North; my NOLAfugee mom is now teaching in the Northwest and when she recently showed her kids an article about the law requiring schoolchildren to call their teachers ma'm and sir, they really acted like that was child abuse, despite her best efforts to explain the word "manners")
• teenage girl atheletes getting all competitive and fierce, focused on working hard and winning instead of on appearance and getting boys

One mom at the track meet made me think of "Sticks" by Alix Olson. The woman was blonde and bean-pole skinny. Even when I was younger and weighed 102 pounds, I was never stick skinny like that. I always had curves - a 34/24/34 body. But this woman was so tiny, perky, blonde. She had a flashy red handbag, splayed open on the bleachers, filled with everything a well prepared mother might need. She had coloring books and markers for the younger child. She had a stash of big, bright bows so her daughter and her daughter's friends could constantly redo and readorn their little ponytails (geez, my kid was lucky to get a plain stretchy thing for her ponytail; I suck). She had little ziplock baggies full of kid friendly snacks like grapes and Cheez-Its. Sigh:

...We stick baby boys’ lips on our nipples- to relieve them,
stick big boys inside our lips- to relieve them,
suck until we swallow their stickiness.
We tell our sons ‘only sticks and stones
will break their bones,’
then call each other bitch, knowing it sticks
more than hurled knuckles ever could.
We are ignored when our butts stick out,
admired when our chests stick out.
We chant "stick together, stick together", until
size six bitch walks by-
"sick", we whisper, menacingly, to each other,
"Stick", we think, admiringly, to ourselves....

So, yeah, that's how I caught myself thinking about her ("bitch"). I was wondering why I'm not blonde and perky, why my purse contains crumpled ATM receipts with messily scribbled lists on the backs of them (compiled while standing in the bookstore - lists of books I want but can't afford, titles to try to find at the library), pens that don't write, lipsticks I hardly ever use, and two cigarette lighters (even though I haven't smoked since I had the flu in January). I didn't plan ahead, hadn't brought Gatorade and snacks for my teenaged athelete, was lucky I had managed to find matching socks for us to wear.

Then, I thought about the poem, about how expectations pit women against one another and decided that Ms. Perfect Mom was probably an interesting and nice enough woman. Then I got really radical and decided that I'm an interesting and nice enough woman too, just a different kind. Unlike Perfect Mom, I couldn't stay enthusiastically focused on the many track and field events. On the other hand, at least I can say I set a good example for my child by letting her see me read books! Unlike Perfect Mom, I hadn't packed fabulous snacks. On the other hand, I did have one hell of a rocking conversation with my teenager in the car on the way to the meet - about sexism, racism, Clinton, and Obama. As usual, she had absorbed more of my newswatching than I ever dare hope, had strong opinions of her own and wanted to discuss them.

So, yeah, I thought about the poem and decided it was okay that I wasn't Ms. Perfect Mom, that being Me Mom was good enough.

At least today.

After all, it was cool yet sunny and there were fresh strawberries, snowballs, bowls of jambalaya, and giggling little girls.

It was a good day. I managed to find good stuff.

High Heel on the Other Foot

NOLA radfem's "RealBeauty"* campaign

This, to me, is what a beautiful woman looks like.

Born in New Orleans and has lived there all her life. Five children, nine grandchildren, thirty-seven great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild. Single mom back when that was unheard of (the 1940s - wouldn't tolerate a good-ol-boy's philandering). Once talked her way into an accounting job, then came home and asked her accountant father, "So, what does an accountant do anyway?" As a divorced mom in the 1940s, she used to sometimes go out on more than one date in the same evening. Took care of her elderly mother, even when that mother's much-favored sons were nowhere to be found. Buried a forty-two year old son and has survived despite resulting permanent hole in her heart. Another son was taken away from her by an abusive ex-husband when that son was a little boy. Has outlived both asshole ex-husbands. Was a ballerina and tap dancer in her youth, remembered for her brown skin, jet black hair, and her lovely legs. Can scale and gut a fish and make it look sooo easy. Loves baseball. Adored by everyone. Absolutely hilarious. Gets hair done on Fridays, plays poker on Mondays. Was always destined to become the "old woman who wears purple" she now is.

stats

• age: 89
• gender: oh, definitely a woman!
• race: half Creole and half Irish
• body type: 4'10" and rounded like a goddess

turnons

• cooking and crocheting (although she's physically unable to do either anymore; used to cook the kind of New Orleans food tourists pay big bucks to eat, like etoufee and shrimp stew and merliton casserole and hot spinach)
• music (big band and opera)
• clothes/fashion; jewelry (the bigger the better)
• reading (mysteries)
• movies (especially westerns and musicals)
• "Southern Living" magazine
• her rain lamp
• peaches
• dirty jokes
• friends

ultimate turnon - Vegas, baby.

known to say

• "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" (that was fifty years ago, before it could be found on posters and refrigerator magnets)
• "I love you with my heart, I love you with my liver, but if you were in my mouth, I would spit you in the river."
• (to a granddaughter) "I didn't ask you if it's expensive. I asked if you want me to buy it for you. Are we spending my money or yours?"
• "No, you aren't going to get drawn into an argument. You are going to show up there and act like the lady you are."
• (on cheating husbands) "Makes you feel lower than dirt, doesn't it?"
• (to grandchildren running like hell to get inside because they had just discovered that the door to the alligator pen was left open) "I don't care what all the hollerin' is about, you kids wipe your feet before you come onto this porch."
• (handing over cash) "Don't tell Grandpa. This will be our little secret."
• (to an Italian waiter at Mandina's) "You are very handsome, young man. I'm just trying to figure out who I could fix you up with. I just realized all of my granddaughters are married."
• "Well, I'll tell you one thing to live by. Never outlive any of your children."

famous for

• sense of humor (laughing until tears flow)
• cooking
• kicking ass at poker
• hiding cash in her bra
• being the little old lady driving the big tank of a car
• scandalizing her grown grandchildren with lusty remarks

indulgences

• handsome men
• big jewelry

Hollywood knows nothing about real beauty.

* a play on Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign

Access Denied

To whom it may concern:

I don't know if you still read this (and maybe you should, although it's not all about you as you probably think - typed with Carly Simon choruses of "You're So Vain" playing in my mind and remembering when we were teenagers and you actually broke the lock on my diary to find out what was in there about you and then, right now, thinking that I should have realized even then that you didn't understand how not to violate women's spaces and that it's all about you), but in case you do still read this...

It's true that I ache almost all the time, and you can keep trying with your bullshit manipulative massages, but the reason you are going to find that access is always denied is that you still can't enter where I am, even if you tried, and I don't think you really do try.

You've spent a lifetime colonizing women and now you actually wonder why once your exploitation is discovered, access to our womanspace is denied? Really?

"How much longer until I can be close to you again?" you had the nerve to ask me this morning, all little boy bewilderment, telling me about yesterday's behind-the-wheel hardon (from thinking about little old me - aw, geez, hold your breathe and wait for me to take that as a compliment; older and wiser now, I've learned most men just aren't that discriminating and their hardons are NOT to be taken as compliments) and bringing me roses and catching up my tuition so I can crawl out of the pit of depression you've dug and get back to my real calling in life (the tuition-paying is an act some feminist friends have pointed out is not deserving of my gratitude but is better viewed as a simple "asshole tax").

"How much longer?" Really? How about you listen to this dude for two and a half minutes and then ask yourself, "How much longer?"

How much longer? Take your time. My sisters and I - my spiritual ones plus the biological one you molested for years - we're waiting. Just fucking waiting. Just fucking, waiting.

P.S. Access is denied as long as my sister is in pain and maybe as long as my sisters are in pain. I have no idea how you can fix that, which is why it's wise to avoid breaking people to begin with. Not my problem. Figure it out. Access denied.

Wait, I'll leave you one more clue:
right here, with audio

This and That Blog RoundUp

Sixteen Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing with Racism is wonderful and is at feministe. Hat tip What Tami Said.

Yesterday was International Women's Day. Women for Women International is a great organization: "sponsor a woman survivor of war and change a life!"

While some give their best, others give their worst. Here is Phyllis Schlafly on International Women's Day:

"The radical feminists want to remake our laws in order to eradicate everything that is masculine from our culture and create a gender-neutral society," concluded Schlafly. "The United States should seriously reconsider lending its stamp of approval to future IWDs."

I attended a speech by Schlafly one time. It was at a Jesuit college whose tuition was in the $20,000 per year range, which is quite a chunk of quarters to pay for an education if you are among the more than 50% female student body and what you should really expect is to stay home and have babies. We in the Women's Studies group attended, wearing matching t-shirts that had some sort of slogan on them (I can't remember now). Sometimes it was hard not to laugh. Hardly any actual students attended, other than our protest group. The audience was made almost entirely of old white Republicans. Apparently, the local Republican party had sent out emails about her visit, so that's who showed up at her speech.

Here, rightwingwatch dishes on this heapin' helpin' o' rightwing hypocrisy:

Why would such an independent-minded, ambitious, self-motivated and capable woman devote so much effort to making sure that members of her sex would benefit from their dependence upon men? How could Schlafly reconcile her professed anti-elitism and opposition to day care with the fact that, although presenting herself as a traditional wife and mother, she ran for Congress twice, campaigned hard for Goldwater, crisscrossed the country speaking out for conservative causes, wrote more than a dozen books and enjoyed the services of a housekeeper who stayed with her family for 26 years?

Kathryn Jean Lopez says that once Hillary Clinton's campaign is over, we can also do away with feminism:

It would mark the end of the silly-women-talk on the national political scene. The beginning of female candidates running as candidates, without a heavy serving of identity politics…America is ready to quit this feminist silliness that men and women are equal, and that women don’t have different, natural responsibilities to the children they give birth to than men do.
From Townhall.com

Right - because when women and people of color support candidates who look like them and may share their experiences in the world, that's called "identity politics," but when white doodz support candidates who are white and male, that's just called "voting." And god forbid parenting would be about men taking responsibility for their seed.

Let's explain it again for Schlafly and Lopez:

Translated from French, the above sign says, "Feminism never killed anyone; machismo kills every day." Hat tip The F-Word for these three items (and what a great name for a blog).

The Burning Times has a great post about the silencing of older feminists and how it prevents our passing on herstory. She also has links to two MORE great blog posts on this subject (dear dog, will I ever finish reading these internets??). I said this recently in a comment over at Heart's site, but I'll say it again. I am shocked every single day to discover how little herstory I know. We really do seem doomed to perpetually reinventing the wheel because our previous work on how to do it is constantly being erased. I am an educated woman. I was raised by a feminist to be a feminist (although my mom was a liberal and I'm a radical, but the point is that I was given more feminist tools in childhood than are most). I have a degree in Social Justice Issues with a Women's Studies concentration. I read all of the feminist herstory and theory I can find time to read. And yet, the more I read the more frustrated I become by my own ignorance.

The Burning Times also explains about "the porn test," with what may be one of the most insightful things I've ever read:

Porn does destroy women. Sometimes by tiny increments, sometimes in one fatal blow. It infringes upon women's lives, and is increasingly inescapable. The destruction of the individual woman by porn may take many years, but it is also a destruction of women as a class over many hundreds of years. For as long as porn exists, it will be destroying women, one by one, relationship by relationship, state by state, and globally.

on the death of ecofeminist Val Plumwood, covered over at the Society of Women in Philosophy

Memo to Sax and Gurian

Excuse me, modern pied pipers of biology-driven single-sex education, but I have some questions.

First, some background. I have a child who has a vagina. This would automatically put her into your girl category.

When she was little, she attended this amazing private school, where her teachers taught her using a variety of methods. They went on lots of walks and trips. They hardly ever had to sit still for very long. They built stuff, measured stuff, and investigated stuff. My daughter did well there.

We've since moved and my child is in public middle school. In public school here, the teachers only teach using what I like to call the "sit down, shut up, and memorize it" method.

Now I find out that there is apparently something wrong with my child, since she doesn't learn this way. After spending lots of money I didn't really have on private testing, I've learned she has something called an auditory processing disorder. This means that although she can hear, sounds and ideas get mixed up between her ears and her brain.

She would do best if she could go back to learning by building stuff, measuring stuff, and investigating stuff. Two years ago, my public school district almost implemented a plan that would have taught in precisely the way my child best learns, but the ACLU got an injunction because it turns out that this great other way of teaching was only going to be offered to children with penises. That's right. This school district, coached by Sax and Gurian, was going to teach boys and girls differently, and my child was going to end up in the wrong group (god bless the ACLU!)!

"Teaching Boys and Girls Separately" in today's New York Times explains to us how the brains of boys and girls are different and how they, therefore, need to be taught differently.

...two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes.

My daughter really likes snakes. She likes all animals. At Discovery School, the kids had lots of pets in the classroom. The students wrote reports about these animals and also took turns caring for them.

The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.

Mr. Sax, have you ever been down south? Seventy five degrees is awfully hot indoors, Mr. Sax, when it's over 90% humidity. No one keeps their a/c that high, even women and girls. Are you trying to teach girls home ec by cooking them? Just askin.' Seriously, what if my child finds seventy five degrees too warm, even though she has a vagina?

Under Sax’s leadership, teachers learn to say things like, “Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like it’s going faster.” “Now Damien feels encouraged,” Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. “To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’"

Mr. Sax, my daughter prefers the cool colors that you say boys prefer. I also notice that your sample directions for a boy are much more specific than are your sample directions for the girl. My child, who has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, needs very specific instructions given one step at a time. Also, she requires an emphasis on action. Action does not discourage her at all, unlike little Emily, even though they both have vaginas. In fact, she has really only ever been able to learn where there is lots of action involved. Lots of talk sounds like so much white noise to her, and it doesn't help her learn. And she loves anything that goes fast, just like Damien, always has. When she was little, I used to put her on every amusement park ride I could find. I was sometimes bemused to see other children crying to be let off of rides, since my child laughed hysterically at every twist and turn the amusement parks could offer. My child never wanted to sit still. Whenever she was strapped into a car seat, she screamed nonstop. Once, she screamed from western Montana, across the Idaho panhandle, and into eastern Washington - two hours, and I have it on videotape. Invariably, the moment she was free to run, she stopped screaming.

My mother once remarked that she admired my parenting because I always took the time to, literally, let my child smell the flowers; the truth is that she was such a ball of constant motion that giving her time to explore using her own senses was the only teaching I was able to do with her. She wouldn't sit still so that I could read books to her, although heaven knows I tried and tried and tried. Now I understand that all that talk doesn't sound like much to her.

School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore” boys).

My child, who, again, has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, is desperately frustrated by soft-spoken teachers who talk, talk, talk. Do you have any educational theories that would help her?

...claiming that his high school — where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys — discriminated against males

My child also is falling behind academically, as the older grade levels shift completely away from activity based learning and use only what I like to call the "sit down, shut up, and memorize it" method. Even though my child has both a vagina and an auditory processing disorder, could high schools possibly be discriminating against my child too?

By this past fall, Sax says, that number had soared to more than 360, with boys- and girls-only classrooms now established in Cleveland; Detroit; Albany; Gary, Ind.; Philadelphia; Dallas; and Nashville, among other places. A disproportionate number of the schools are in the South (where attitudes toward gender roles tend to be more conservative) or serve disadvantaged kids. Sax claims that “many more are in the pipeline for 2008-2009.”

My child now attends school in the South. Should the school district find ways around the ACLU's specific complaints that won the injunction here, what will happen to children like mine who have both vaginas and auditory processing disorders?

Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture.

My child doesn't hear well. I mean, her ears hear, but her brain doesn't. She has to sit at the front of the room during lectures, and the school may provide some sort of amplification device for her teachers to speak into. Does this mean there might be something wrong with her vagina or female reproductive organs? I wonder if I will ever be a grandmother!

Like Mr. Sax's boys, my child is really observant and good with action - shockingly so. One time, we were shopping at a video store's sidewalk sale. A man next to me apparently grabbed a stack of CDs, ran to his car, and drove away. I didn't even notice. My daughter, however, saw it happen and got his license plate number to report to the police. Another time, during a hurricane, we evacuated to Texas for two days, then drove to Arkansas to share a hotel room with my mom for a week, then drove home to Louisiana. On the drive from Arkansas to Louisiana, my child insisted that we had been in this particular gas station before. I laughed, explaining that after several days on the road, all gas stations start to look alike. She was insistent, however, and knowing how amazing her visual skills are, I finally checked a map. Sure enough, this one stretch of highway was the same one we'd taken from Texas into Arkansas and we had indeed been in that same gas station before. She is never wrong about what she's seen. Never. On the other hand, she is seldom able to process and retain what she is told.

On that November day in Foley, Ala., William Bender pulled a stool up to a lectern and began reading to his fourth-grade boys from Gary Paulsen’s young-adult novel “Hatchet.” Bender’s voice is deep and calm, a balm to many of his students who lack father figures or else have parents who, Bender says, “don’t want to be parents. They want to be their kids’ friends.” Bender paused to ask one of his boys, who said he was feeling sick, “Are you going to make it, brother?” Then he kept reading. “ ‘The pain in his forehead seemed to be abating. . . .’ What’s abating, gentlemen?” The protagonist of “Hatchet” survives a plane crash and finds himself alone by an insect-infested lake. Bender encouraged his boys to empathize. They discussed how annoying it is, when you’re out hunting, to be swarmed by yellow flies.

Meanwhile, in Michelle Gay’s fourth-grade class, the girls sang a vigorous rendition of “Always Sisters” and then did a tidy science experiment: pouring red water, blue oil and clear syrup into a plastic cup to test which has the greatest density, then confirming their results with the firsthand knowledge that when you’re doing the dishes after your mother makes fried chicken, the oil always settles on top of the water in the sink.

My daughter doesn't really cook, and she doesn't really do dishes. She also hates singing as part of a group, preferring to pound away on African drums instead. The books she enjoys feature lots of action. She would enjoy a book about a tough girl surviving a plane crash. She also likes to go fishing.

Sax credits Bender for helping focus a boy who was given a wrong diagnosis of attention-deficit disorder by telling him that his father, who had left the family, would be even less likely to return if all his mother had to report was the boy misbehaving in school. Sax also goes out of his way to note that Bender had this conversation with the boy “shoulder to shoulder,” not “face to face.” “Just remember this rule of thumb,” Sax tells readers: “A good place to talk with your son is in your car, with you driving and your son in the passenger seat.”

Mr. Bender, my father left me when I was a child. It broke my heart. Do you believe he didn't return because I wasn't being good?

Mr. Sax, it's interesting that you point out the best way to communicate with my child, even though you're prescribing for boys only. I didn't know anyone else was on to this trick! The way my child and I talk about serious stuff is side by side, usually in the car. She doesn't like someone looking her straight in the eyes. She prefers to be busy and talk while she's doing. Because she can not sit still long enough to study, what I've done over the years is to make flashcards when she has an upcoming test and then we walk around the neighborhood, moving and studying at the same time. I first tried this when I read that the Greeks studied while walking and I immediately thought of my fidgety would-be scholar. Do you think it's weird that a person with a vagina needs to study in this manner? The ACLU suit quoted some material of yours suggesting that in single-sex classrooms, boys will get more breaks and be allowed to move around more often than will girls. What about my girl?

Speaking to a group of sixth graders, Sax explained his theory that girls’ hearing ability is much better than boys’, as is girls’ sense of smell. The girls, just on the edge of puberty, sat utterly rapt, seeming to want to understand why their brothers, boy cousins, cute skater-dude neighbors and fathers were so weird.

Well, once again, my child's hearing ability is well below average. At thirteen, her ability to discern phonics is at the level of a typical nine year old, even though she does have a vagina; she lags developmentally in this area, as you suggest boys often do. Also, perhaps girls are seeming rapt, wanting to understand boys, because every single aspect of popular culture tells girls this is what they should care about. Surely "Cosmo" isn't destiny.

For several years before then, the boy had been withdrawn, uninspired and on multiple medications, but he had recently made a big turnaround, which his parents credited to having enrolled him in an all-boys school. Upon hearing this, Sax said to the boy’s mother, “With all due respect, I regard single-sex education as an antiquated relic of the Victorian Era.” To which he says she replied, “With all due respect, Dr. Sax, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” After visiting a handful of single-sex schools, Sax threw himself into studying neurological differences between males and females, eventually focusing on how to protect boys from a syndrome he calls “failure to launch,” which Sax often characterizes as caring more about getting a Kilimanjaro in Halo 3 than performing well in high school or taking a girl on a date. Among his early proposals was that boys should start kindergarten at age 6, a year later than girls, in order to ease the “sense of scholastic incompetence” that so many boys feel early on because they tend to develop later.

It's funny you should say that too! My child didn't do well her first semester of kindergarten. It was when we put her in a school that taught using a variety of active approaches that she finally "launched." For example, she finally learned the sounds associated with the letters of the alphabet when her new teacher bundled up the kids and took them for a walk in the snow to look for things starting with a certain letter. When she got to public middle school and this was no longer the teaching style, we did indeed end up having to hold her back a grade, just as you suggest is often a solution for boys - even though she is a girl.

For boys, he said: “You need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys.” Chadwell, like Sax, says that differences in eyesight, hearing and the nervous system all should influence how you instruct boys. “You need to engage boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to say, No, no, no. So instead of having boys raise their hands, you’re going to have boys literally stand up. You’re going to do physical representation of number lines. Relay races. Ball tosses during discussion.”

It's almost like you've been following my life, Mr. Sax! This is exactly how my child learns and lives, even though she is a girl! I think she must have a nervous system too!

For the girls, Chadwell prescribes a focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher. If you try to stop girls from talking to one another, that’s not successful. So you do a lot of meeting in circles, where every girl can share something from her own life that relates to the content in class.”

Um, Mr. Sax? That is a sure route to failure for my child. Any background chattering shuts down her brain's ability to "hear." Also, lots of kids in circles and group processing sounds like static to her. She will become frustrated by the constant static. Her mind will drift. She won't learn anything.

He opens “Why Gender Matters” with two cautionary tales: one about a boy who starts kindergarten at age 5, is given a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. and depression and ends up on a three-drug cocktail of Adderall, Wellbutrin and clonidine...

My child too was diagnosed in kindergarten with A.D.H.D. What helped was not a program specifically for one gender, but an active learning program for boys and girls.

Baby boys prefer to stare at mobiles; baby girls at faces. Boys solve maze puzzles using the hippocampus; girls use the cerebral cortex. Boys covet risk; girls shy away. Boys perform better under moderate stress; girls perform worse. Many academics and progressives tend to find Sax’s views stereotyped and infuriating, yet Sax does not seem to mind.

Well, I do mind, Mr. Sax. My child laughed at risk from the moment she was born. She was fierce and fearless! She was just born that way. As a baby, she didn't prefer staring at mobiles to staring at faces; she was desperately trying to reach out and grab and investigate anything she could see!

One of Sax’s core arguments is that trying to teach a 5-year-old boy to read is as developmentally fraught as trying to teach a 3 1/2-year-old girl and that such an exercise often leads to a kid hating school. This argument resonates with many teachers and parents, who long for the days when kindergarten meant learning how to stand in line for recess, not needing to complete phonics homework. Yet public schools are beholden to state standards, and those standards require kindergartners to learn to read.

My child also couldn't read until well into second grade and was starting to hate school until we found a place that knew how to harness that restless little girl energy.

One of the first things he noticed was that three boys were getting suspended for every girl, “and for the most ridiculous things in the world — a boy would burp, or he’d pass gas, or a girl would say, ‘He hit me.’ ”

A girl would complain about being hit? Well, the nerve!

Under Bailey’s guidance, the boys did two more pages of phonics, and then she jumped to her feet and announced: “Stand up if you need to get your sillies out! Put your hands on your belly. Ha . . . ha, ha . . . ha, ha, ha. Now get ready for a blastoff with me!” Bailey counted down from 10 to 1, crouched down into a squat alongside the boys and then exploded into the air. Then she promptly took her seat. “Sit up tall, fold your hands, three-two-one, here we go.” Bailey held up a page and put her index finger on a red dot. “Boys, let’s read together now. This . . . is . . . my . . . kitten....”

But it was inside Emily Wylie’s A.P. English class where the real social value of single-sex teaching was on display. Ferreira, among 20 other seniors, sat in a circle discussing “Pride and Prejudice.” Wylie asked the girls to call out which characters had which vices and virtues. A serious discussion of whether lust — Lydia’s lust — was a vice or virtue ensued.

My daughter would be bored to tears and staring out the window during this discussion. Can't she just be in the group that gets to stand up, get their sillies out, touch their belly buttons? Even though she has a vagina? It really is best for her education, I promise, even if it doesn't fit your neat little stereotypes.

Thank you again to the heroes of the ACLU! Who else would work to stop these idiots?

Potpourri

LonerGrrrl explains the need for women only spaces. Just brilliant! (hat tip to The Burning Times)

What brings this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men at a Sheffield, UK, "Reclaim the Night" rally. At rallies I've attended in the past, there was a "SpeakOut Against Rape" portion that was indoors and included men as well as women. There was a march in the streets for women only. While women marched, men held some sort of consciousness-raising discussions indoors. I would have been very upset had men been allowed in the march. The idea is for WOMEN to insist on our right to be in the streets, unescorted, after dark.

Another thing bringing this subject to the forefront just now is the inclusion of men on the York Student Union's Women's Committee.

The latest Carnival of Radical Feminists is up.

There is also the latest Carnival Against Pornography and Prostitution.

Hillary Clinton keeps campaign contributions from a CEO with a brazen history of sexual harassment. It's as bad as the Jack Nicholson endorsement. It makes me wonder why these men donate to a woman candidate anyway. Guilty consciense? Cluelessness? With Nicholson, he does have a movie clip in his endorsement film in which he says, "There's nothing sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning." Other than maybe repeatedly bashing a woman's head into the floor, I guess. What is it - some kind of domination fetish? Because we already know it's always about the sex. Always. Vote for Hillary because she's a member of the sex caste and it's sexy to pretend she's the boss. Pardon me while I barf.

The U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women is meeting this week.

On the American presidential campaign: "Leveraging the Power of Race and Gender".

Remembering Barbara Seaman

On the bus with Obama, in search of some Howlin' Wolf: here.

Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian keep pushing their gender stereotypes into public education.

Andrea Smith has been denied tenure - letter-writing campaign.

Linking misogyny and murder in the U.K.: here and here. (via feministing)

Charlotte Allen, who previously pronounced Katrina a good thing that happened to New Orleans now announces that women are really, really dumb (both stories at feministing). I realize I'm two years late commenting on her New Orleans column, but I must say that I would love to meet the local who told her Katrina had been a good thing for the city. I wish Allen had interviewed my grandparents, who are in their eighties, who have ended up spending these last years of their lives struggling to rebuild their home. I wish she could have seen my military veteran grandfather in the weeks after Katrina, driving dazed all over Baton Rouge, desperately trying to find new shoes to fit wide, weathered, eighty-plus year old feet, his eyes filling up with tears as he explained, "We try them out for a few days and then have to return them. Honey, when you're our age, you just don't go buy shoes at Wal-Mart." I wish Allen had met my mother-in-law, widowed just a year before Katrina, following forty years of marriage, gas mask on, trying to scrape mold off of things in her home; suddenly hearing every midnight noise magnified through the walls of her FEMA trailer; one night watching the police chase a man who jumped over her fence as she sat trembling in that little can of a building; suddenly realizing just how vulnerable she really was when she was sexually propositioned in her wrecked home by a contractor she informed about her recent widowhood; spending countless hours for more than a year calling government agencies, contractors, repair companies, delivery companies, utility companies, the mortgage holder, insurance companies, friends, family members. I wish Allen had talked to my mother, a schoolteacher who got transferred to a school 90 minutes and two toll bridges away from her home (without any compensation for increased gasoline costs), who lived in a rental property the owners refused to clean up (these owners threatened to double the rent when she complained), who slept each night for six months listening to the tree rustling inside of the ceiling above her bed, there where it had been lodged since Katrina, hearing critters scurrying around up there until she finally couldn't take it anymore, the nerve pills making her too dopey to work, so she finally moved 2400 miles from here. I wish Ms. Allen could interview everyone we know about now living under the threat of getting cancer as a result of exposure to the formaldehyde in their FEMA trailers.

Can I just say something to Charlotte Allen? Fuck. You.

(I know that last part wasn't especially well written, but I'm tired and that article really made me mad.)

Judge Obama by "Heart and Soul" Legislation

Charles Peters at the Washington Post says the best way to judge a legislator is by his or her "heart and soul" work. And here is what Peters finds about Barack Obama in that department:

And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.

Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him....

Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them. lots more

Hat tip to What Tami Said.

It occurs to me that I've been blogging about Obama a lot lately. It's because everyone else I know is for Hillary Clinton. I get beaten up for saying anything about it in email or at most of the women's groups where I usually post, so this blog has kind of become a much needed outlet for that topic.

Calling on Clinton to Reject and Denounce Nicholson

We know that this week Hillary Clinton was quick on the draw when Barack Obama said he "denounced" the views of Louis Farakhan. Senator Clinton wanted Senator Obama to "reject" Farakhan and the latter's support, which Obama agreed to do.

Today there is news that Jack Nicholson has endorsed Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton supporters have been spot-on in pointing out that overt sexism is socially acceptable while overt racism has generally been forced underground. I hope they don't miss this one, because it really disgusts me. Support from Jack Nicholson, and nobody flinches? This Jack Nicholson???

In 1997, Nicholson was sued by prostitute Christine Sheehan, who alleged that Nicholson had refused to pay for services rendered and had instead assaulted her, and repeatedly smashed her head onto the floor of his Hollywood home. The lawsuit was settled with a substantial payment from Nicholson, but Sheehan later alleged that her injuries were worse than she had originally believed. At last report she was seeking an additional $500,000 from Nicholson.

Or, as another report puts it:

Prostitute Takes Jack Nicholson To Court... Again
12 May 2000 (WENN) Jack Nicholson is being sued by a former prostitute who claims she is dying after he allegedly beat her up. Christine Sheehan says she was invited up to Nicholson's luxury Hollywood house in October 1996, but when she asked for payment for her services, the movie star got angry and allegedly beat her head against the floor several times. Sheehan originally filed a civil suit in 1997, and received $33, 000 after the SHINING star settled out of court. But now the former prostitute claims the money is not enough - and after legal and medical bills, the cash has all been used up. Her lawyer IRA CHESTER says, "About a year after she received the original payment her injuries and the damage to her brain stem got worse than originally thought... Now the injury is actually killing her. She has no vision at times and finds it hard to cope with the pain... The medical bills have already reached $60, 000, but if she is to survive she needs an important operation that promises to set her back $500, 000 (œ325, 000). The original settlement isn't enough." The suit was filed at Santa Monica Court last week and Nicholson is expected to challenge the action. Nicholson's publicist refuses to comment about the case.

It is impossible to find in the American media just how the case was eventualy settled. A British friend and tireless advocate for women recently reported to me that she had been in England at the time of the Jack Nicholson case, where there was extensive coverage. Arriving at an American conference of feminists against pornography, trafficking, and prostitution, this friend anxiously asked everyone what they thought about the Nicholson case. No one knew what the hell she was talking about. There had been a virtual media blackout in this country, where sexist pricks who hire hookers and even beat them can still be Hollywood cool. This friend, who got her news coverage in England, reported that the verdict, which is NEVER reported on American websites, was that Nicholson has to pay for 24 hour nursing care all the rest of this woman's life.

Oh, and what about homophobia? Heeeeere's Jack!

...Another time, the issue was ... sexual politics, but Nicholson proved less than radical. When some Hollywood celebrities called for a boycott of Colorado, in 1993, because of that state's referendum law excluding homosexuals from civil rights protection, Jack announced his opposition. Any boycott of the state where the actor happened to maintain two hideaway homes was, he told the press, "rubbish."

As a woman and an advocate against violence and for gay civil rights, I demand that Hillary Clinton BOTH denounce and reject any support from Jack Nicholson.

New Hillary Ad

Oops, wait, no, it's this one:

Obama just says no:

U.S. Prison Population - We're Number One

I don't have a link, but I heard on CNN last night that the U.S. now has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any nation on earth, with China and Russia coming in second and third.

A full one percent of our people is in prison.

One in 36 Latinos is in prison.

One in 15 blacks is in prison.

We're number one! I hope Michelle Obama is finally proud of her country!

Oh, and five states are now spending more on prisons than on schools.