In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: April 2010

Blogging Against Disablism Day: Addressing Ableist Language

Blogging Against Disablism Day, May 1st 2010Today, May 1st, is Blogging Against Disablism Day. Blogging Against Disablism Day is hosted every year by Goldfish as an absolutely excellent blogswarm about ableism. (“Disablism” is synonymous with “ableism.” Disablisim is the term preferred in the U.K.; as someone from the U.S., I’m more comfortable with the term ableism, and that’s the one I’ll be using throughout the post.)

This here is a blog. And while others writing for Blogging Against Disablism Day can and will interpret the title of the event in a huge variety of ways and choose to write about a huge variety of topics and experiences, it strikes me that those words imply a perfect opportunity to address the subject of ableism in blogging communities, and in this blogging community specifically.

At Feministe, we’ve have had plenty of problems and committed many offenses with regards to ableism. As readers have educated us and as we’ve educated ourselves, we’ve made changes and attempted to do better. It’s certainly a work in progress; I harbor no illusions that Feministe is anywhere near a safe space for people with disabilities, and we are very far from perfect. One area that still needs a lot of work, and one which we have less control over than most, is our comment section, and the ableist language that tends to appear there.

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Speechless

Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters the Horror in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel by Alice Walker
(Seven Stories Press)

“In Kigali I paid my respects to the hundreds of of thousands of infants, toddlers, teenagers, adolescents, young engaged couples, married people, women and men, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters of every facial shape and body size, who had been hacked into sometimes quite small pieces by armed strangers, or by neighbors, or by acquaintances and ‘friends’ they knew.” So begins Alice Walker’s Overcoming Speechlessness, an account of Walker’s travels to Rwanda and Eastern Congo in 2006 and Palestine in 2009. Working with Women for Women International and CODEPINK, Walker has done what few North American writers are able to: bear witness to atrocities in places that are geographically far away, but politically connected to the West.

Without a doubt, the strongest aspect of this lyrical little book is the parallel she draws between Dutch control of Rwanda and British influence in the creation of the state of Israel.

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Friday Random Ten – the Good Taste In Music Is Clearly Genetic edition

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I could sure use something mindless and not-stressful or infuriating today — how about you?

Set your MP3 player to “shuffle” and post the first 10 songs that come up. Friday video: Harlem!

1. Neko Case- Vengeance is Sleeping
2. White Denim – World As A Waiting Room
3. Elvis Costello – Deep, Dark Truthful Mirror
4. Tom Waits – New Coat of Paint
5. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – Woodfriend
6. The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry
7. Cat Power – Islands
8. Van Morrison – Fool For the Spirit
9. Thao – Geography
10. Lykke Li – Tonight

More videos, mostly of songs that have been stuck in my head this week, below the fold.

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May 1st: March for Immigration Reform

Tomorrow is May Day, and Reform Immigration for America is marking the day by holding marches in support of progressive immigration reform all over the U.S. Tens of thousands of people are expected to march in almost 100 locations across the country:

On May Day, we’re telling the our elected leaders in Washington DC that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to act. They’ve made promises and pledges – now it’s time for them to keep them. Every day that they don’t pass comprehensive immigration reform, millions of families and communities suffer. Workers are exploited. Ordinary immigrants live in fear of raids. Families are torn apart.

Every day that our leaders don’t act, the dream that is America is tarnished. Our leaders can’t hide behind their rhetoric. It’s time for concrete action.

On May Day tens of thousands of people will attend hundreds of marches all across the country. We’ll stand together to show our leaders that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to fix our broken immigration system. All of us, immigrants and native-born citizens, will be united to show the world that this country needs comprehensive immigration reform now.

Click here to find a full list of the May 1st marches and see if there is one near you.

via abbyjean

The Racist Breeding Grounds of Harvard Law School

This is a guest-post by Diane Lucas. Diane is a Harvard Law School graduate and an attorney in New York.

Earlier this week, a Harvard 3L named Stephanie Grace was introduced to many people in the country (or at least to people who follow legal blogs). She has a resume that could make her the next president of the USA. Grace went to HLS and Princeton undergrad. (the same pedigree as Michelle Obama). She is an editor on the Harvard Law review and has a federal clerkship lined up. Yet Grace still holds some archaic, backwards, and flat-out racist views. In short, Grace believes that there is a scientific possibility of black people being genetically inferior to white people. She equates it to being as simple as Irish people being more likely to have red hair, and African Americans being more likely to have darker skin. Of course, she explains intellect is about nature–for example, if her baby is raised by her in America or in a Nigerian orphanage, her baby would still share her intellectual prowess (wow, that is just too much ignorance in one sentence). Grace first spewed her racist statements at a law school dinner and then later clarified her views over an email. It was sent to a Black Law Students Association (BLSA) member, and then became viral. I refuse to waste my time and energy refuting a point as ridiculous as this, as I literally cannot have the intellectual equality of black people be open for debate.

The deeper issue here is how and why Harvard Law breeds a racially tense environment, which often culminates in “race wars.” And why the administration often ignores or ridicules any backlash from black students after a racist incident. As an African-American woman and a HLS alum, I dealt with the Harvard racism everyday. I felt like I was an outsider on campus; and often invisible. When I felt accepted, I sometimes felt exoticized. My classmates would refer to me as “homegirl” or “diva”, but call other students by their given name. Worse, black students were often racially profiled on campus– made to show identification to and from class. In classes I was often confused with the five other black women in an 80-person class. And then of course, there were the infamous classroom discussions. I heard the statistical explanations for why black people were pre-disposed to be more violent, which of course was cited in support of racial profiling; or the affirmative action discussions in which, essentially, some of my white classmates explained why black students in the class did not deserve to be there.

Interestingly, Harvard Law has deep ties with racism. It was built from the proceeds of Antiguan slave labor on wheat plantations, which is reflected today by the three wheat sheaves in the HLS school crest. I believe HLS’ current battles with race are a result of it having a significant population of sheltered, often white-bred students, who went to non-diverse prep schools, many of whom were made to think at an early age they were geniuses and everything they spewed was brilliant. When these students attempt to intellectualize racist views, they often cite statistics and/or science to support their views. This leads to a false sense of validity and creates a twilight zone in which the irrational somehow becomes acceptable in intellectual, legal debate. Problematically, HLS fails to address the racial tension until it reaches a boiling point. Even then, in recent history, HLS has failed to take appropriate steps to discuss or address the racist acts of students, and has even condoned them in certain instances. The HLS administration has criticized students who take a stand as being over sensitive, overly passionate, irrational and/or not appreciating the right to freedom of speech. So with that in mind, I was not surprised at all when I read Grace’s email.

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Come join Living Liberally’s Annual Celebration!

Tomorrow, May 1st, is the Living Liberally annual celebration. Kerry Trueman explains why this event matters, and quotes the lovely Baratunde Thurston:

Around the country, people need this type of liberal network more than ever. As we hear about the Tea Baggers in the news, many of us ask, “Where is OUR Tea Party?” Well, the fact is there are liberals in over 300 cities that are drinking something stiffer than weak tea. Drinking Liberally chapters are often the first stop for candidates trying to reach progressive audiences and for local advocates looking to recruit for their campaigns.

In some cities, it’s the only event that welcomes “liberals,” providing a necessary destination for those who want to create a more progressive future for our country.
…
The Living Liberally team is only able to create this network with your support. Each year, the Annual Celebration gathers allies, honors partners and pulls in the necessary resources for the work ahead.

Get your tickets now! And if you come, Baratunde and I will give you a complimentary Christian Side Hug.

Stephanie Grace, racist Harvard emailer.

This is disgusting. Stephanie Grace, a 3L at Harvard Law School, apparently had a conversation about race during a dinner with other law students. Her comments, she believed, were perceived wrongly, and so she sent out an email to a few students in an effort to correct the record. That email was forwarded around, and eventually made its way to several Black Law Students Associations (BLSAs). Here’s what Stephanie Grace wrote to some of her fellow HLS students:

… I just hate leaving things where I feel I misstated my position.

I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair. (Now on to the more controversial:) Women tend to perform less well in math due at least in part to prenatal levels of testosterone, which also account for variations in mathematics performance within genders. This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria. I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.

I also don’t think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores (statistically, the measurable ones like income do account for some raw differences). I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects. One example (courtesy of Randall Kennedy) is that some people, based on crime statistics, might think African Americans are genetically more likely to be violent, since income and other statistics cannot close the racial gap. In the slavery era, however, the stereotype was of a docile, childlike, African American, and they were, in fact, responsible for very little violence (which was why the handful of rebellions seriously shook white people up). Obviously group wide rates of violence could not fluctuate so dramatically in ten generations if the cause was genetic, and so although there are no quantifiable data currently available to “explain” away the racial discrepancy in violent crimes, it must be some nongenetic cultural shift. Of course, there are pro-genetic counterarguments, but if we assume we can control for all variables in the given time periods, the form of the argument is compelling.

In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.

Please don’t pull a Larry Summers on me,

Stephanie Grace

You know you’re an extra-special racist when you send out an email clarifying that your views are actually more racist than those that pissed people off at dinner.

I’m not going to get into why Grace’s arguments are wrong; that should hopefully be self-evident, and I don’t think we need to waste time entertaining completely ignorant ideas about the genetics of intelligence, or whether certain racial or ethnic groups are “naturally” more or less intelligent than others. There are certain ideas that just do not belong in the realm of serious intellectual conversation, and this is one of them. (UPDATE: At the bottom of the post, I explain this position a little bit more).

Instead, I want to discuss (a) the system that made Stephanie Grace feel that her email and her arguments were totally appropriate and within the realm of acceptable academic discourse, and that lead her to believe that her views would be accepted and welcomed; (b) the troubling reaction to the dissemination of her email, some of which has revolved around the ethics of naming her; and (c) why this matters. Because while Stephanie Grace is sending out racist emails, sites like Above the Law are falling all over themselves not only to obscure her identity, but also to say that maybe she was kind of right — and that her email wasn’t actually racist, and that the idea that black people are genetically inferior is one that we should entertain.

In other words, this isn’t just about Stephanie Grace.

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Bits and Pieces

Filament: The thinking women’s porn mag (images are NSFW).

The GOP is campaigning against Rep. Betty Sutton with fliers reading, “Let’s take Betty Sutton out of the House and send her back to the kitchen.”

Over at the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart argues that Obama should put a mom on the Supreme Court. I agree with him that role models matter. I think it’s notable, though, that so many women in positions of power don’t have kids — and while putting a mother on the Supreme Court would be nice, it would also behoove us to look at the various institutional factors that allow fathers to succeed, but put roadblocks in the way of mothers.

The more educated you are, the more likely you are to support abortion rights. Education is an even larger factor than gender in determining whether or not you think abortion should be legal. College-educated women are the most likely to think that abortion should be legal. The majority of people, male or female, take the position that abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances.”

Trigger warning on this post by our own Cara, but a disturbing, heart-breaking must-read about sexual assault the media response, if you feel up to it: This is not an analysis of rape culture. This is a rant.

The religious right’s new racial playbook: After promoting segregation and racism, conservative religious leaders focus on African-Americans and Latin@s in their war against abortion, contraception and women’s rights.

The Art of the Confession, with this pertinent quote from Emily Gould: “If a woman writes about herself, she’s a narcissist. If a man does the same, he’s describing the human condition. But people seem to evaluate your work based on how much they relate to it, so it’s like, well, who’s the narcissist?”

One woman’s year in prison, written by a Smith College graduate who was imprisoned for money laundering. In the piece, she discusses (briefly) the racism of the prison system, which is a well-taken point. It would be nice if the media coverage of the prison system actually took that point to heart, and elevated the voices of women who live that kind of racism every day.

The New York Times’ Muslim problem.