Class – Page 8 – Feministe

A Case Study in Race and Class Privilege

Renee at Womanist Musings has a post up right now that pretty much makes me want to drink myself into oblivion. But it’s really worth your time reading all the same. It’s one of those things we don’t want to read, because of how it illuminates the extreme injustice of the world, but for the same reason kind of have to.

It examines the case of Roy Brown — a homeless black man who committed an unarmed against a bank, where he left piles of money behind and stole exactly $100 because he was hungry. Brown turned himself in to the police because he felt guilty about what he had done, and was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Renee uses this utterly despicable and depressing story to make one very interesting and prudent comparison with Bernard Madoff:

Here we have two vastly different interactions with the justice system; a black man who turned himself in after stealing one hundred dollars because he hungry and Madoff who stole billions to feed his greed and ego. How does the man who stole 100 dollars out of a sense of desperation merit 15 years in jail, while the billionaire sits in his luxurious home surrounded by his ill gotten gains? Someone want to tell me again about how blind the justice system is?

Indeed.

Go read the whole post.

Why are poor people poor? It’s not the reason you thought!

Right-wing radio host Bill Cunningham on poverty and welfare:

I cannot say it too often or too many times. Nothing FDR did in the 1930s stopped or alleviated the Great Depression. Almost everything FDR did in the 1930s exacerbated the Great Depression. There’s nothing LBJ did in ’64, ’65, and ’66 that helped the plight of African-Americans; in fact, it hurt them. Almost all their actions brought about the law of unintended consequences. The goal of model cities, Section 8 housing, and food stamps was to give the poor people money, not understanding that poor people were not and are not poor because they lack money. They’re poor because they lack values, ethics, and morals.

All that the mid-’60s and ’70s did to the black community was to pay black fathers money on condition that they not be involved in the lives of their children and that black mothers were told that if you married, it would have a painful consequence. If, on the other hand, you acted irresponsibly by producing children out of wedlock, you would have a positive consequence, because government would fund bad behavior.

So LBJ and the Democrats and Republicans had the best of intentions to solve poverty by giving to poor people money, acting as if that was the resolution of their problem, when just the opposite occurred. By giving poor people money by acting irresponsibly, they incentivized more irresponsible behavior.

Looking at that full quote, what do you say to so much old-school bigotry all in one place? Yup, we’ve got the classic lineup, classism, racism, sexism trilogy all here. Poor people deserve what they get (so let’s just let ’em starve), black people are lazy and immoral (which is why they’re all poor), and women (especially black women) are fucking up the world with their sluttiness.

Maybe “nice try, hate-monger, but be more original next time”?

NC Panel Recommends Reparations for Victims of Forcible Sterilization

A North Carolina panel has recommended that reparations be paid out to some 7,600 people who were victims of forced sterilizations:

A state House panel recommended the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, which sterilized about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1975 who were considered to be mentally handicapped or genetically inferior. Though North Carolina and several other states have apologized for such programs, none have offered reparations.

“Yes, it is ugly. It’s not something that we’re proud of,” said state Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, who has been working on the issue for several years. “But I’m glad that North Carolina has done more than any other state to step forward and not run away from it.”

Lawmakers in the full General Assembly will have to approve the idea. They convene next month.

Illinois was the first state to offer a eugenics program in 1907 as social reformers advocated for a way to cleanse society of the mentally handicapped and mentally ill. Many states curtailed their sterilizations after World War II, recognizing it was similar to the actions taken by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

North Carolina, however, moved ahead aggressively after the war, conducting about 80 percent of procedures after 1945 and growing the program to be the third largest in the nation, behind only California and Virginia.

Most of those sterilized in the 1960s were poor black women.

There are strong intersections here between sexism, racism, classism and ableism. Though people of all genders were forcibly sterilized, women were generally seen as the ones responsible for fertility; those with mental disabilities were seen as unfit to reproduce; and those who were of color (especially but certainly not entirely black) and/or poor were more likely to be seen as having a mental disability, even if they didn’t, and unfit to parent for a variety of reasons.

The history of forced sterilizations is one that’s highly important to modern understandings of systematic, violent discrimination, reproductive justice, and how social movements, certainly feminism, have often failed to help those burdened under the weight of more than one type of oppression. In fact, though much less common, forcible sterilizations and attempts at forcible or coerced sterilizations continue in America today.

For a much more comprehensive introduction on all of this, I can’t more highly recommend both Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.

As is always the case with reparations, they don’t actually right a wrong. With something so serious and irreversible, the wrong cannot in fact possibly be righted. They do, however, act as an acknowledgment of the suffering that was inflicted, and the fact that it had very tangible results. If the state approves the idea of reparations, as I certainly hope they will, $20,000 for each survivor will not heal the wounds that NC created, but they will act as an important symbol of how people, all people, should and should not be treated. And no one should have their reproductive rights and their bodies violated. Ever.

h/t CripChick

Bush’s Last Minute Regulations: They Go Beyond Abortion and Birth Control

Though just last week I got really pissed off at Tim Dickinson’s Rolling Stone piece on Proposition 8, this week he has a really good article about all of the last-minute regulations Bush is putting into place as he walks out the White House door. Of course, we know all about the anti-choice HHS rule . . . but there’s a lot more than that.

While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. “The administration is handing out final favors to its friends,” says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. “They couldn’t do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose.”

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Target Women: Jewelry

It’s a good one!

As a writer, the journalist joke especially had me laughing my ass off.

On Increasing Poverty and Homelessness

The above video really did break my heart. On the one hand, I really do worry that there’s something exploitative about filming and watching this man’s pain. On the other hand, I feel like we need to watch, and turning away is just another way of excusing and reinforcing the system that created this man’s desperate situation, and that of the many men and women like him. Renee has some excellent thoughts on the matter.

And Sharkfu also has some thoughts on those who were living in poverty before this most recent economic crisis.

That alternative system is composed of eight drop-in centers, which have showers and seats but no beds. From there, homeless men can find one-night beds in churches and synagogues — or, if they can show they’ve been on the street for more than nine months, they can use city-run safe-haven beds. But each night, more than 500 hundred people, on average, end up sleeping in the chairs at the drop-in centers — some by choice and some because there are not enough beds in the faith-based centers.

Saying that it is looking to revamp the system so that homeless men don’t sleep in chairs anymore, the city wants to close the drop in centers at 8 p.m., starting in June 2009. In return, it will add to the number of faith-based and other easy-to-access beds. “What is most important is that at the end of the night, individuals are coming off the street into a bed,” said Heather Janik, the spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services.

But advocates for the homeless and some of the men and women who run the faith-based beds argue that the city doesn’t understand its audiences. “The city says it doesn’t like people sleeping on chairs at the drop in centers. We don’t particularly like that, either. But it is a better alternative than sending them back to the street, which is essentially what will happen, of they are told they must go to some kind of city facility,” said Douglas Grace, the director of outreach ministry at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Clearly, this is horrible no matter what way you cut it, and seemingly based far more on aesthetics than on actual desire to help homeless people. And NYC is apparently being even more thoughtless in preventing 22 churches from housing homeless people, due to enforcement of a silly ordinance.

But as I was reading this article, I just kept noticing the word “men.” Did the writer somehow just forget that women are homeless, too? Or are women actually not allowed in these shelters? Are there other shelters for women that are not being cut? Really, what of homeless women? After all, women do make up a significantly disproportionate number of those living below the poverty line, and homeless women are often rendered invisible in typical depictions of people who are homeless. I’m very much concerned about the impact that this new plan will have on men, but I’m also concerned about the women who may either be affected as well or didn’t have access to these shelters to begin with, and who seem to be getting erased either way. Can anyone shed some light?

The day the universe stood still.

I actually think David Brooks has a point.

Here Tits: The Wet Nurse and the Revival Of Mammy

Well everything old is new again. I was reading Hoyden About Town when I came across a link for wet nurses. My initial reaction was WTF….seriously…not in the year 2008. As a WOC the idea that you can, or should pay someone to breast feed your child is extremely problematic. For those that aren’t aware, historically it has been white women paying, or forcing WOC to act as wet nurses for their children. There was a time when breast feeding was believed to ruin a woman’s figure, and therefore rather than risk their sexual appeal, white women of privilege hired dark skinned women, or used slaves to nurse their children. The other factor that made wet nursing attractive is the detachment that parents believed to be in the best interest of the child in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. If a child was breast fed by the mother it was deemed that said infant would develop an unnecessary, and unnatural attachment. WOC were also seen as best able to bond with a child, as it was deemed that they had the same mental capacity.

The role of wet nurse reduces women to roving tits, that are available to hire. For women of colour the association with mammy cannot be dismissed. Women of privilege hire wet nurses because they want to continue working, and provide the best possible nutrition for their child. That this is exploitation, so that they can achieve their goals is something that is not considered. Women of wealth have a history of exploiting poor women to aid in reproduction and child rearing. When feminists say that women can have it all, the answer is certainly yes they can, if they depend on another woman to do the labour that they are either unwilling, or unable to do.

Outsourcing reproduction, or child rearing is strictly the preserve of the rich. That women are the ones equally participating in this exploitation is extremely disgusting. While fighting to be recognized as equal beings in the public sector, reducing women to their biological functions in the private sector is counter to the progress of all women. Between the rent a womb explosion in India and the increased sale of eggs, reproduction has become big business.

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A Little More Discussion on Privilege

So, earlier in the week, I dropped an email to Cara asking if Feministe had covered exactly what privilege is. It’s a word that is often used (to varying degrees of effectiveness) and often maligned privately in counter blog posts and such. Renee actually beat me to posting on this topic, but since her piece is more of a statement than a question, I think we can host both these discussions and not rehash the same issues.

Racialicious actually explored the idea of privilege through the lens of class a few months ago. I had initially wanted to write a post exploring race and class after I read a blog carnival. Somewhere in the course of the carnival, a writer had talked about racial issues and how they play out in America. A semi-well known author came into the comments, and essentially said “These problems aren’t about race, they’re about class.”

Now, this is a common argument, so I can’t feign surprise. But what bothered me more was the hedging involved in this kind of conversation. Class is an important issue in our society, but conversations surrounding race and class tend to come of a bit disingenuous. There is always this idea of trying to have one system replace the other (racism is dead, the real problem is class; class doesn’t matter, the real problem is race) when the two -isms work in tandem.

Then, I discovered the privilege meme making rounds on the internet, and thought it would be an interesting entry point to the discussion. (This eventually became a series.)

In “Has Class Trumped Race? – Part 1, Understanding Privilege,” we discussed the privilege meme and it’s limitations. Many of my readers mentioned that they were relatively class privileged but their racial background was not reflected in the assumption. Or that some seeming privileges aren’t really privileges at all – it depends on your region, your family, or the school system you attended. I also introduced a second set of questions, that indicated hallmarks of not having privilege.

In “Has Class Trumped Race? – Part 2, Interpreting Privilege,” we dissected more of the privilege checklist, quoted Penelope Trunk on how privilege works in society (from someone who grew up privileged) and introduced different components of privilege:

So we currently have two main components to economic privilege. The material aspect of privilege – which includes always having enough money for the utilities or having extra money for things like field trips, new clothes and AP classes – and the access aspect of privilege, which allows you to gain valuable life experiences.

Do you think that the material aspect of privilege is more important or the access aspect of privilege?

Which one has had a greater impact on your life?

But the third post on Race, Class and Privilege was my personal favorite. And not just because the author of the original meme found our blog and decided to comment.

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Lipstick Feminism and Dressing The Part

Beauty as power is something that is taught to every young girl. Common adjectives that are used to compliment girls often refer to how pretty, sweet, or kind that they are. Very seldom do we reward girls for their intelligence, assertiveness, or passion. As a child becomes a woman she internalizes the idea that is what is most valuable about her, is her physical appearance. That this is something that will decline in value, often keeps young women awake at night; plotting the best way to take advantage of the small window of opportunity that beauty as a source of power offers.

Feminism has engaged with beauty on many levels. Some feminists feel that performing beauty even to gain personally is internalizing the male gaze. Others feel that the daily ritual is a sign of their autonomy in that they actively chose which beauty procedures that they will adhere too and which they will reject based on personal desire. The debate between the lipstick feminists and the I will not subject my body to social discipline feminists has been waged since the 1970’s.

What is beauty without the finery and the flash? Each season the fashion industry deploys an army of models to inform us how to best maximize on our feminine whiles. One simply cannot be caught wearing the wrong shade, or sporting a purse that is the wrong size. On the other side of the equation, you have women that are blissfully unaware of the fashion trends and dress for comfort over style. These are the “utility women,” who find power in thwarting the seasonal call to the mall. Utility women take pride in dressing only in what makes them feel comfortable, while at the same time voraciously attacking their dolled up sisters as patriarchal dupes.

Back and forth the conversation goes. You’re a patriarchal colluder says the utility feminists. Well you’re lazy, jealous and don’t realize that autonomy can be found in many different ways retort the lipstick feminist. Normally I would refrain from calling two groups of women engaged in conversation a cat fight, but what else can you call it when both sides display such narrow minded western privilege over beauty and clothing?

What neither of these groups ever seem to want to acknowledge is that whether or not your purse cost 500$ and has a DKNY label, or it is a 35$ Walmart find, both are participating in the impoverishment of women globally. The problem is larger than whether or not you are dressing to please a man.

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