Class Wars: The Reality

What Echidne said.

(What _____ Said concept shamelessly stolen from Duncan Black.) via Jeff Fecke.

I'm Messing With Your Mind

This week has been a stellar week in Various Examples of Racism. First, there was the swim club that decided that the "complexion" of their club would be negatively changed if they honored their contract with Black and Brown kids but did you catch the second type? You weren't supposed to see it.

The swim club example is just beyond blatant. It's the sort of thing we don't see as much of these days. The second example is the more common type. Do you know what it was?

It was the pictures of Obama "ogling" the women at the G8. You don't think so? Let me explain how it works and perhaps you'll see it.

America has a long and (as one friend termed it) bloodthirsty tradition of black men being characterized as lecherous sexual threats to white women.* Black men were lynched for so much as looking at a white woman in a way that the white men felt was inappropriate. The idea of black men having sexual access to white women was a scare tactic used to oppose emancipation, repeal of Jim Crow, opposition to Civil Rights and school integration. And it hasn't been so long ago that the fear doesn't live on in our lizard brains, in the subconscious and immediate reaction to a BM/WF interracial couple before we engage our more evolved minds to the situation. Some of us check ourselves and some of us rationalize our reaction but I've yet to meet anyone white who grew up in the US who does not have that split second reaction. It's not under our control--it's something that was absorbed by osmosis simply by being a member of this society at this point in time. It simply is.

Political campaigns playing on this fear has a long history as well. Willie Horton was used against Dukasis in 1988. Harold Ford in Tennessee felt the sting of this tactic. Strom Thurmond was a master at this American tradition. Each of those ads plays on fear while deliberately leaving it unsaid. It's in the subtext, the same way that Reagan's "State's Rights" speech in Philadelphia, MS doesn't contain any overt racism but instead relies on the listener knowing what was meant. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Are you beginning to see it? Our African-American President is seen supposedly leering at not one but two young women. The first is light-skinned woman, not immediately identifiable as "not-white" from the photo and the second is a woman as white as me bending over to pick something up she dropped at Obama's feet. Greta Van Susteren viewed the entire video of the first photo and found that it was a ridiculous contention. It simply never happened. The second photo, if one looks closely, is just as misleading. He's looking at a point somewhere between her and his feet but not at her. And besides, he's a human being in good health. So what, right? Shit, if I had someone following me around with a camera, snapping photos of all the men I so much as look at, I'd be in big trouble.**

But it doesn't matter. That's right. It doesn't matter. The damage is already done. That fisson of fear, of wrongness, has already been felt while viewing a photo of Barack Obama. The connection has been made in our lizard brains between that feeling and Barack Obama. And there's just one cure for it.

Like all things evil, this type of racism depends on the shadows. It lives in the space beween words and in the spaces before words. It depends on never being seen, skulking around in the places never noticed, let alone examined.

The cure? To shine the light in the shadows, to expose those places to examination. To call attention to it makes it melt like ice on a Texas sidewalk in August. I just did that to you.

You are welcome. After all, the alternative is to end up the kind of person who denies a five year old a swimming pool in the hottest days of summer. It means ending up the person who sits in a dark room, looking at videos of the President frame-by-frame in an attempt to find something that "looks bad". And, I don't think any of us wants to be that person.




*To disentangle the racism and misogyny in this meme could be a doctoral dissertation and I'm writing a blog post, not a dissertation.

** I work at a university. I may be a fat, married-for-decades, old woman but I'm not blind nor am I dead. Hell, I look at Keith like that, too. He's a fine, fine looking man. Appreciation of beauty, like one appreciates the beauty of the sculptor's work on the David or the Venus di Milo, is not inappropriate. It's in how you do it and in your actions, in my opinion.

Welcome to My Nightmare

This situation is just messed up. How could they get it so messed up?

Wait. Am I missing something here? Am I wrong on this? Is there something I don't know about this situation that changes everything?

No...I'm not seeing it and I've looked.

Let me look again.

Still...no.

So, I'm right. Or am I? Am I being stubborn and crazy and blinkered about this?

Well, crazy people never think they're crazy and I'm willing to admit to the possibility so I must not be crazy.

Wait. I might just be rationalizing and I might be crazy.

No. I don't think I am.

So that brings me back to this situation. I'm not crazy and I'm not wrong so how could they have gotten it so wrong?

But, maybe I am crazy and wrong and there's something I don't know....

All day, every day. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Does That Make Me a Redneck?

I've read this post by Amanda several times and all the way through the comment thread more than once and I keep coming back to it because something is nagging at me. First, I'll get the Best Comment Award out of the way, though.

Being the only liberal in my family was always tough. It’s gotten easier since I moved away. Although I still say things that get me in trouble when I go back to visit (i.e. “eat shit you fucking redneck” - I’ve been trying to come up w/a nicer way to say that - maybe “I’ll pray for you”?).--Mark on 07/07 at 12:37 PM

Because? Damn. I've lived in the South for the last 20 years and y'all just don't know unless you've been here for a time. (BTW, "bless your heart" really does mean, "Why are you so damn stupid?")

Now, to the meat of it. I'm not piling on Palin. She's not the only Republican that does this--Bush anyone?--and they all piss me smooth the fuck off. If a one of them have ever had to make the choice between buying groceries or paying the electric bill, I'll eat a moose myself. If they have ever had to ration the food in their homes and tell their kids that they cannot have a second helping for dinner, I'll eat a moose AND a grizzly bear. These people aren't working class, never have been, never will be. They do not understand us. They are not "one of us". So to see these privileged assholes stand up and fake their working class cred and in so doing become a caricature of what it means to be working class just makes me hot--and not in a good way.

Now, Amanda is talking about Red State America and the rednecks when she says:

Hey, I can turn on the shiny female specimen act if I have to---broaden the grin, thicken the accent, send of signals of total harmlessness to get past the radars of angsty rednecks who are always alert to a woman who’s acting out of line. Sure, Palin lives the act, and I mostly use it to minimize hostility when pulled over by state troopers, but I know what she’s doing. I wear cowboy boots, have owned pick-up trucks, eaten and helped prepare food shot by family members, drink cheap beer while standing barefoot in the yard, say “y’all”, and even have a weakness for some country music. I’ve danced in honky tonks and took a shot straight out of a bottle of Jack while standing in front of a rednecky small town bar that has a bonfire in the parking lot during the winter. I know how to two-step, and can probably sing every word to ”The Chair”. I’ve shot beer cans off fences, slept on trampolines, and I’ve had friends that don’t have indoor flushable toilets. I use the phrase “pepper belly” without a trace of irony.

Shiny female specimen? Check. Owned pick-up trucks? Check. As a matter of fact, my dad owned a pick-up truck in which you could see the ground going by looking through the rust hole in the floorboard. Eaten food from family members? Sure. Neighbors, too. Milwaulkee Beast cheap enough for ya? Genny Cream Ale is my favorite, though. I didn't wear shoes in the summer. Small town red-necky bar? Oh, hell yeah. Friends with no indoor plumbing? Remember Downtown Chester pre-gentrification? Yeah.

But, I grew up in Chester, New York. And our working class ethic is less of this:


and more of this:




My people had already been angry for 150 years from generations of being fucked by the rich when the rednecks lost their family plots of dirt and traded in their mules for pick-up trucks. I come from a long line of working class people and have inherited the anger that passes from generation to generation along with the lace curtains*. My family tree is full of truck drivers, mechanics, factory workers, union shop stewards, farmers who had their land taken from them, people who starved from potato famines and Clearances and Welsh history for the last 1,000 years. I watched my grandfather ruin his body and his health and damn near die any number of times, working for Ford. Then, they closed the Mahwah plant and Grandpa was looking for work in his 50s. And his pension is a joke. Now I'm watching the same shit happen with my dad, as the fat cats steal his company piece-by-piece, take their golden parachutes and run while Dad is hoping the company survives until he's locked into his retirement. I've seen my husband go to work sick and hurt because if he doesn't go, he doesn't get paid. I've seen my mom have neck surgery because a little woman shouldn't be throwing pallets of freight but all the soccer moms sure are happy with their new floor tiles.

I've seen them all educate themselves on issues and topics when they had the energy to do so. I've seen my mom, pregnant in a New York winter no less, wear flip flop sandals and tell me, "I just don't like shoes much" so she could put food on the damn table and save back a few dollars for Christmas and continue that right through giving those of us they could the opportunity for a college education. Anti-intellectuals? Not on your life.

Sexist? Right. Tell a Yankee working class woman she can't do something because she's a woman and she'll do it, in front of your face, flipping you the bird with both hands and yelling "kiss my ass" at the top of her lungs. (A Southern woman does it, too, but she does it quietly, without the salute or the hollering but with the extra dose of rat poison in dinner.)

Racist? Some, I'm not going to lie but you know, working class folks are more in tune with multiculturalism than these country club wankers. We have to be! We work side by side with people from every walk of life, nation, culture, race. It's a matter of survival for us and always has been. Racism is a conceit we cannot afford.

So where does this caricature of Real American Working Class come from as racist, sexist, anti-intellectual dumbasses? It's not from us. It's from people pretending to be like us to give us a false sense of connection. Chester was a town of working class folks or people who came from working class. Many of us were of Irish decent but there were a few a couple generations out from Italy, too. Some from Iraq, some from Russia, but all people whose roots were in poverty and those who get dirty for a living. There were so many of our parents who were New York City firemen or policemen, people who actually put their lives on the line to provide a 3 bedroom split level in Arcadia Hills or Surrey Meadows. Many more were mechanics and factory workers who struggled to survive just to pay for the basics. Our town was surrounded by onion farms and dairy farms and horse farms. But, we don't count as 'rednecks'. We were 'hicks' to the City folks. I'm not sure we called ourselves anything special. We didn't look down on rednecks that I can recall. They were a mythical people, kissing cousins to us but they lived in hot, steamy places and said 'y'all' instead of 'you guys'. And our parents sent us to college when they could--lots of us. And we ALL graduated from high school. Drop out rate? Are you kidding me? Zero%. Any one of our parents would've killed us.

So, to my redneck brothers and sisters, this hick is just as pissed at being mischaracterized as you are, of having our cultural markers pre-empted for some rich assholes political campaign. No, I don't hate Sarah Palin because she's pretty**, I don't hate her at all. That would require too much time and energy to devote to a fake like her. Or the Shrub or any of them. But they aren't fooling me and I'm not buying the big pile of shit they're selling.

"I’m not in because I’m not a believer in sexism, racism, or American imperialism. I don’t believe white people are better than everyone else, I don’t think that it’s such a great idea to force women to bear children against their will, and I don’t rally round the flag when some politician starts coming up with excuses to invade another country to steal their resources and/or start a libertarian experiment. I don’t bitch about Mexican immigrants, think that Title IX is an act against the god of football, or go on self-pitying trips about how affirmative action is out of control because I saw a black person holding a professional job. I don’t make cracks about woman drivers or black athletes. And I didn’t vote for Bush. "

You know what, Amanda? Me, neither.


*and if you get that reference, you might be Irish-American. Just sayin'.
**does anyone else think of Hot for Teacher when they see her? No? Just me? Okay then.

England, WTF?

I'm hugely anti-hypocrite. You know this, dear readers. And I know that America has been dumping its trash all over the rest of the world, figuratively and literally, for decades. But this? This is just really shitty, my English friends. (Sorry for the bad translation. I do not speak Portuguese. But Bill does.)

Approximately 300 tons of trash collected in England were found in containers in the port of Santos, 72 km from Sao Paulo on Monday (6). The cargo was sent by two companies, and should contain plastic for recycling.

Veja o site do Bom Dia São Paulo See the site of Bom Dia São Paulo

The containers arrived in Brazil last week, but were only opened on Monday. A team of Ibama went to the site to check the load, and it took a scare when the doors were opened. "This is a disrespect to our country, we are not the landfill in the world," said one supervisor.

The part that really made me mad, though?

Inside one of the trash-filled containers included a note which read “Here are toys for the poor children of Brazil. Please wash before using.”

Because these kids, and these kids:

...really need some privileged asshole sniping at them more than life already does.

I know that the folks reading here would never be okay with such a thing. I hope y'all can find out the company and make their phones, mailbox and inboxes overload with complaints and calls to find out who did this, have him (why do I have the feeling it's a "him" who wrote that note) join the ranks of the recently unemployed and perhaps have the company send over a few truckloads of REAL toys for the poor children of Brazil.

Happy 4th of July!

Today, there will be some of this in my future:

As well as some of this:


with a dip in one of these:


Provided I can find one of these:


That doesn't make me look like one of these:


What are y'all doing for the 4th, fellow Americans and/or People Who Happen to Be in American at the Moment?

I Don't Think These Folks Meant to Vindicate Dworkin, Did They?

One of the professors, biologist Randy Thornhill, had just coauthored A
Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, which argued that
rape is (in the vernacular of evolutionary biology) an adaptation, a trait
encoded by genes that confers an advantage on anyone who possesses them. Back in
the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who
carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did
not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling
ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were
similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation. That
would be us. And that is why we carry rape genes today. The family trees of
prehistoric men lacking rape genes petered out.

Since we all have a common male ancestor some 60,000 years ago, and since the Y chromosome is passed unchanged from male to male, generation to generation, then that would mean that all men have this "rape" gene and therefore, Dworkin was right according to evo psych. Yes?

Not so fast, says Kim Hill. "It [the data] wasn't even close: the cost [of rape] exceeds the benefit by a factor of 10. "That makes the likelihood that rape is an evolved adaptation extremely low," says Hill. "It just wouldn't have made sense for men in the Pleistocene to use rape as a reproductive strategy, so the argument that it's preprogrammed into us doesn't hold up." This concurs with data from matrilineal, matrifocal, and matrilocal societies all over the world. In these places, rape is completely unheard of--until we patriarchal types arrive.

[E]vo psych's claims that human behavior is constrained by mental modules that
calcified in the Stone Age make sense "only if the environmental challenges
remain static enough to sculpt an instinct over evolutionary time," Pigliucci
points out. If the environment, including the social environment, is instead
dynamic rather than static—which all evidence suggests—then the only kind of
mind that makes humans evolutionarily fit is one that is flexible and
responsive, able to figure out a way to make trade-offs, survive, thrive and
reproduce in whatever social and physical environment it finds itself in.

Now, this makes sense to me--way more sense than "Darwin made me do it." Sharon Begley, in her article in Newsweek, takes apart the most commonly known evo psych bullshit, from the "men are pre-wired to rape" to "men are pre-programmed to kill their step-children". (And they say feminist hate men! Wow.) Strangely, the studies she quotes and, indeed the entire competing discipline she discusses--behavioral ecology--have not been featured on Good Morning America or on the front page of Time the way evo psych has. It seems to me to be good news that men are not dangerous rapists holding back their genetic predispositions by sheer will and doomed to live a life of constant vigilance and restraint. Doesn't it?

Well, you sure couldn't prove that by the comment thread over there. Rape apologia abounds.

Examples:

--Posted By: DRAGONROOK @ 06/23/2009 9:45:58 AM You know, I agree that men should be able to use intelect[sic] to overcome our natural urges, and anger. However, the vast majority of men on this planet are no where near that evolved. I am continualy[sic] hearing about American women who have gone to Afghanistan and Iraq and have been subsequently raped. The Israeli's[sic] stopped using women in combat units because they discovered that many were being raped by their own troops. So the next time you hear a woman, or more likely a girl who thinks she's a woman, say " I can wear whatever I want, and no guy can put his hands on me." , please remind her that even in the animal kingdom, females show their plumage to indicate a desire to mate, and nature doesn't care about the laws, or ideals, of man.

[Ed.-Females show their plumage? I think someone is a bit confused here. As well as the fact that when the female peahen walks away uninterested, you don't see the peacock jump on her, hold her down, peck the shit out of her and rape her then pass her along to all other peacocks, yes? You don't see the peacock pouring GHB into her morning corn and waiting for her to pass out, do you? Right.]

--Posted By: Ian Blokesworth @ 06/25/2009 8:54:59 PM "Posted By: DRAGONROOK @ 06/23/2009 9:45:58 AM You know, I agree that men should be able to use intelect to overcome our natural urges, and anger. " So should women. As a whole, men are doing a fantastic job of repressing their natural urges. Let's see the ladies repress some of their natural urges and worry a little less about rape. With cheap, easy abortion, rape it not as costly to a woman as it used to be.

[Ed.- ...! ]

--Posted By: KESthlm @ 06/26/2009 9:37:42 AM
The rape example seems a bit primitive. The selection process for a certain trait does not necessarily have anything to do with the expression of the trait itself, since the same genes may dictate behaviour in many different situations. The genes behind the "rape" characteristic are probably advantageous in a different setting - such as when the rapist fights other men. Rape may just be a disadvantageous side effect.

[Ed.-"just" a disadvantageous side effect. Nice.]

--Posted By: ChristinaM33 @ 07/01/2009 10:07:41 AM
It truly scares me, how attached to the idea of men being unable to stop themselves from raping some of these folks in this comment thread seem to be. I really wish I knew who, exactly, they are to be sure I'm not ever in an elevator alone with these guys and that my daughter never dates one of them and not a single one of these people should ever serve on a jury for a rape trial.

[Ed.- Okay, that last one was me. I confess.]

It's My Blogoversary!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And thank you, Teena, for saying something or I'd have completely forgotten, the blog would have gotten angry with me--rightly feeling unappreciated and neglected--and I'd've had to spend a ton of time making it up to the blog with lots and lots of attention. We all know for a blog that means lots and lots of posts, some of which are bound to be inane and none of us want that. So, Teena, you really helped me and everyone else dodge a bullet there.

So, it's three years now. Can't believe it's been that long. Elayne and Gine are the ones who first encouraged me to write a blog. Blame them. However, having a blog led me to look at other blogs too, and I found a community of friends out there with whom I fill a role. See, they had no Total Bitch(tm) in their group and they desperately needed one. And so I found my niche. Thanks, y'all*.



*Y'all= Jen, Bob, Steve, Carol, Burning Prairie, Konagod, Lisa and all the rest on my Blogroll of Awesomeness. God's honest truth, I consider each one of you a friend.

I Got Nothin'

Really, I have nothing. No pithy remarks, no political rants.

*Made it through another family event with most of my dignity intact, no arguments per se and only needed three beers to make it.

*Bright spot: Keith rode me over and back on the motorcycle. It is way more fun to drive the bike than it is to ride on the back but it did leave my hands free. Either you trust the rider to be able to manage the bike despite distractions OR...it's a really boring experience after being the rider yourself.

*Anyway, we're working on it (for those reading along with Special Information). Short story: if everyone on the planet had heard the entire story, I do believe that the dumbest person on the planet would look at Keith and say, "Wow. What the hell were you thinking, dude?" to which he would answer, "I wasn't, really." Nothing physical as far as I know, before anyone jumps to that conclusion--just phenomenally dumb, in my opinion. There's been an outbreak of stupid in my house and both he and I caught a raging case of it.

*Was I really as black and white no shades of gray, dualistic, and cocksure of my own judgment on All Things at 18 as The Girl is? Why, yes. Yes I was. I still can be on occasion but I do at least attempt to rein it in. Some. Shut up.

*I get to have a second grader for the second year in a row! Yay! No, not so much but you know, maybe it's for the best. I dunno. We'll see. His biggest problem is that he won't do his work. He just sits there. Perhaps another go 'round will help him mature some but further, it is an exercise in natural consequences--don't do your work, you do the grade again. Also, he's lost his summer. He'll be going to summer school for another week and after that, there are all kinds of courses for kids at the local college. Sucks to be him. (Can you feel my sympathy for the child just oozing from this paragraph? Yeah, he can't feel it either.)

So, that's me.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially to my dad, my kids' dad and my granddad.