Sorry, Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I STILL stand with Planned Parenthood

If Susan G. Komen for the Cure will not truly support reproductive health for women...If the organization will abet those who seek to take away women's freedom, even if that happens on the backs of poor women and women of color... then I will no longer support Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I will, however, continue to make a monthly donation to Planned Parenthood.

Below, more than 60 reasons why we all need to stand for Planned Parenthood, from the My Planned Parenthood blog carnival, hosted by What Tami Said and Shakesville last summer.


 

We are proud to say that we stand with Planned Parenthood. Here are our stories:


Shakesville (Shakesville will be running MyPP stories throughout the day.)
What Tami Said (What Tami Said will be running MyPP stories throughout the day.)
Dawn Friedman's Work
Passion for the Possible
Politics Power Sex
Quoded
The Exponent
Build Peace
Before You Go, You Should Read This...
Out of the Box
Startled Octopus
Coelestinus
Shadowplay
Anytime Yoga (Trigger warning for assault and PTSD)
Laur Abroad
The Sin City Siren (Additional post here.)
The Tired Feminist
Persephone Magazine
Women Are People Too
Kristin Anne Carideo
Merchimerch
My Life on the Z List
Susan's Musings
The Mormon Child Bride
Math Nerd

How finger wagging is like hair touching: Lessons in priviledge

I wasn't going to write about the whole Jan Brewer/Barack Obama controversy. This has already been a long presidential election season and I need to pace my outrage lest I have a stroke. But last night, I caught Bill Maher discussing the issue with journalist Martin Bashir, detestable erstwhile MTV personality Kennedy (now doing something awful for Reason magazine) and the equally objectionable Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California). Watching Rohrabacher and Kennedy obfuscate around this issue was headache-inducing. Both of them, like other conservatives who have weighed in on the episode, were being willfully obtuse in an effort to mask Brewer's display of racial privilege. 

Here's what happened, according to The Washington Post (video at the link): 

PHOENIX — President Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) appeared to exchange heated words in front of reporters and other public officials on Wednesday as Obama arrived in this Southwestern city for the second stop of his post-State of the Union tour. The unusual confrontation--which included Brewer pointing her finger at Obama, and Obama walking away--centered on Brewer’s newly published account of a meeting she and Obama had at the White House in June, 2010, officials said. 

Obama descended the stairs of Air Force One and was greeted by Brewer, who was waiting for him along with other politicians in a traditional receiving line. Brewer offered Obama a letter, which she later said was an invitation to sit down with her to discuss Arizona’s economic “comeback” and to join her for a tour of the U.S.-Mexican border.

The encounter resulted in the photo above and, among black folks and allies, lots of angry discussion about the vagaries of white privilege and the uncommon level of disrespect received by our nation's first black president. (Very crunk dissection of the incident here.). Of course, the response from the right was incredulity accompanied by whining and the usual charge that the left manufactures charges of racism to rally the dirty hippies and constantly-aggrieved coloreds. 

The assumptions behind "the black marriage crisis"

Read my latest at The Guardian:

Twenty years ago, just after college, I attended a birthday party for a friend. In the kitchen, standing round the drinks, a handsome guy chatted me up: 

"So, do you have a boyfriend?" He asked. 

"No," I replied. 

"Oh, what's wrong with you, then?" 

"Sorry?" I said, puzzled. 

"I mean, dudes should be interested in a woman like you. If you don't have a boyfriend, something must be wrong with you. You must be one of those crazy women." 

Over the last decade, America has been playing an increasingly aggressive game of "What's wrong with you, then?" with heterosexual single black women. US marriage rates are dropping, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. But African Americans marry even less often than their white counterparts. According to the 2010 census, just over 26% of white Americans aged 15 and older have never married, compared to 47% of the black population.

We are told that the "black marriage crisis" (pdf) affects none so much as black women. Though black men are equally unmarried, news articles, panel discussions, special reports and books solely lament the fact that black women are half as likely to marry as white women.

There are, of course, many complicated reasons for this gap. Experts cite numbers: there are more American black women than men; higher rates of interracial partnering among black men; bias against black men in the criminal justice system and the legacy of slavery. There is also the achievement gap: black women outnumber black men in higher education more than two to one, and this often creates a wedge of opportunity and class between them. But no reason seems more compelling than the idea that black women need to change who they are and what they want.

In Is Marriage For White People?, Ralph Richard Banks tells black women to date more nonblack men. In an interview with gossip site NecoleBitchie.com that exploded around the web, actor and singer Tyrese cautioned black women against being "too independent". Comedian, radio host and now bestselling author Steve Harvey suspects women don't understand how men think. We need to, according to Harvey, meet men on their own terms. In his popular books, Act Like a Lady: Think Like a Man and Straight Talk; No Chaser, Harvey doles out advice on how to be "a girl" and cautions women that wanting a man who is "humble and smart, fun and romantic, sensitive and gentle, and, above all, supportive" is "unrealistic".

Harvey is not alone in thinking black women demand too much of their partners. Even as we are bombarded with advice on how to change to meet the desires of selective partners, single black women are constantly confronted for being "too picky".

And it seems black women are not the only women carrying this burden. In a recent article for the Guardian, Syma Mohammed discussed why older, Muslim British women in the Asian community struggle to find marriage partners. There is a tradition of men from the Indian subcontinent marrying women from their country of origin. Also, men are allowed to marry outside of the Muslim faith, while women are not. And then, there is this:

Read more...

Why I'm ambivalent about that WaPo/Kaiser survey of black women

In a new nationwide survey conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, a complex portrait emerges of black women who feel confident but vulnerable, who have high self-esteem and see physical beauty as important, who find career success more vital to them than marriage. The survey, which includes interviews with more than 800 black women, represents the most extensive exploration of the lives and views of African American women in decades. Read more...

It's hard to know whether to be happy or dismayed about this survey of black women that has gained so much attention since it's release last week. It is nice that, for once, a major media outlet spoke to black women, rather than at, about or around us. It is disheartening, though, that it requires "extensive exploration" for the broader American public to determine that black women are diverse and complicated beings, like, y'know, everyone else.

Really, Liz Lemon? Am I the only one who thinks Tracy Morgan's homophobia shouldn't be comedy fodder?

Last night's episode of 30 Rock made like Law & Order and ripped a story from the headlines. It played on the real-life backlash against series star Tracy Morgan after he made violent, homophobic remarks during a summer stand-up performance in Nashville. In last night's show, Morgan's Tracy Jordan character mades a dumb remark about homosexuality during a performance and attracted the ire of the gay community. And then...um...comedy ensued?

I think the decision by Tina Fey, Morgan and the writers at 30 Rock to tackle this real-life controversy was a bad one. By doing so, they diminished Morgan's earlier apologies and added insult to injury.



(Relevant content is at the beginning of the clip)

Newt Gingrich's cynical play to racial prejudice

Read my latest article on The Guardian's Comment Is Free:


It is curious that in a climate when nearly 45 million Americans are in need of food stamps, unemployment stands at 8.5%, nearly 50 million people have no health insurance and tough economic times touch nearly all of the 99%, including an increasingly fragile middle class, the GOP would pin its 2012 electoral hopes on demonizing teachers and public workers and demeaning the economically strapped as lazy and shiftless. It is curioser still that the Republican base eats this rhetoric up with a spoon.

The Republican party's fealty to the Southern Strategy is as strong in 2012 as it was in 1960s. And if the crowd at last night's Republican debate are any indication, the strategy still works.

During the debate in South Carolina, Fox News correspondent Juan Williams challenged candidate Newt Gingrich about recent statements made along the campaign trail. The former House speaker had made like Ebenezer Scrooge ("Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?"), questioning the work ethic of the disenfranchised, dismissing child labor laws and suggesting that poor children be given janitorial jobs. When Williams asked whether Gingrich's remarks weren't, in fact, belittling to all Americans, but especially racial minorities who face higher rates of poverty, he was roundly booed by the audience. Gingrich retorted:

"So here's my point: I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness. And if that makes liberals unhappy, I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job."

At which, the crowd erupted in cheers that drowned out the debate moderators.

Take that Juan Williams! Why, Newt was just talking about the awesome American work ethic and the poor people who clearly need help acquiring it. Who said anything about race?

Read more...

It's not "defensiveness"--Why we challenge "the black marriage crisis" narrative

In Sunday’s New York Daily News, Ralph Richard Banks, author of Is Marriage for White People?, hit back at those who question “the black marriage crisis,” branding critics “defensive,” saying:

They dismiss the shortage of marriageable black men as a myth and the marriage decline as an overhyped nonproblem, the discussion of which is depicted, as one New York Times essay put it, as “part of a persistent historical and present-day attack on black people in America, with black men made into deviants and black women into problems.” 

That’s just one example among many hostile reactions to my recently published book, “Is Marriage for White People? How the African-American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone.” Some commentators, without even reading the book, have characterized me as self-hating, if not outright racist. 

No wonder some whites too are hesitant to venture onto the terrain of race and marriage. 

Banks ends his commentary by calling on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and imploring that we “have the courage to look unflinchingly at societal trends that some others would prefer not to acknowledge.”

I found Banks’ article uncharitable and frustrating. He dismissed very real criticisms of the way the media talks about black relationships and marriage and alluded that black folks would rather watch communities fail than air the dirty laundry of high incarceration rates and success gaps between black men and women. This, in my observation, simply isn’t true. What critics like myself are hesitant to buy into is the sexist and racist framing of cultural shifts surrounding marriage.

Lazy racial humor kills amusing skits dead

I was all in on this Saturday Night Live skit lampooning Ricky Gervais' return as host of The Golden Globes. Jason Sudeikis gets Gervais' bullying I'm-a-cheeky-boy smarm and abundant self-regard just right. The spot hints at how the current hype surrounding Gervais makes it seem like telling a few pointed jokes in front of rich and famous folks makes one a mad, bad, speaking-truth-to-power man--like a cross between Shaft and  Howard Zinn. It was funny...until about 1:40 in when Jason-as-Ricky takes his act to the BET Awards and gets some caps busted in his direction.

*side-eye*

Whither Cliff and Clair of the modern TV age?

Roc and Eleanor Emerson of the 90s sitcom Roc.

I've mentioned before how much I have enjoyed speaking with black women, as part of my Black Women and Marriage Project,  about how they love and are loved by their significant others. It has highlighted for me how erased black love is from the cultural landscape. And perhaps because it is rendered so invisible, all those reports of black relationship dysfunction stick to public consciousness more easily.

Just consider the small screen. When I think of loving black TV couples, the ones that immediately come to mind are characters from old, now-defunct shows like Roc or The Cosby Show. (My buddy blogger Pamela Kemp suggested Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) and her partner on the now-canceled Law & Order mothership.) 

But where are the examples of functional black relationships on TV TODAY? And since I am inclined to focus on how black women are treated in the endless discussion of black relationships--Where are examples of black women as desired objects of affection and love interests?

Leave your suggestions in the comments. I'd really like to analyze this for a future post.

Not everyone is laughing at "Shit White Girls Say To Black Girls"

This one time at journalism camp (Yes, there is such a thing.), a white friend that I had been bonding with for the week, leaned over and confided that until last year’s camp experience, she had been certain black people had tails. That same summer, another camper expressed her extreme dislike for rap music and then turned to me apologizing so profusely you’d think I was Kool Moe Dee himself. I’ve been “the only” in so many situations from childhood until today that when I spotted comedian Franchesca Ramsey’s new video, “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls,” I almost squealed. Man, could I relate! In college for four years in Iowa, I heard half these things four times between the shower and my morning class. For me, Ramsey’s entry into the “Shit ________ Say” meme was not only funny, it also contained important social commentary. But not everyone is laughing.

As the video exploded across the Internet, some folks, particularly white women, including ones who deem themselves liberal, anti-racist allies, pushed back. A cruise through comments over on Huffington Post, Jezebel and Facebook reveals some unhappy responses, including 1) This is reverse-racism/stereotyping! 2) Everybody says dumb racial stuff equally. Guess what this black girl said to me once? 3) Nobody really says this stuff. I mean, maybe in the South/Flyover States... 4) How come this is okay, but “Shit black girls say to white girls” wouldn’t be?

Sigh.

You think talking about “big” racial issues like loan discrimination and redlining and police brutality against black men is hard? It’s often a lot easier than discussing race-based “microaggressions.” Microaggressions is a word coined by psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, meaning “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of other races.”

The discussion is hard because it requires good, well-meaning people to admit to and examine their own racial privilege. It requires those who may think of themselves as anti-racist allies to do more than tsk tsk along with black friends about some madness, say, Rick Santorum said, and recall the things they personally (and perhaps innocently) may have done to make friends, family and co-workers of color feel othered. That’s tough. And it’s not just tough for the “white girls” mentioned in Ramsey’s work. It’s hard for everyone who has any kind of privilege, be it educational privilege, sexual privilege, gender privilege, etc. (All microaggressions aren’t tied to race. Just check out the Microaggressions Tumblr to see the many non-race-related ways this can play out.) But “Shit white girls say...” is centered on racial privilege and that is what much of the push back seems to ignore.

Read the rest of my article at Clutch Magazine...

Straw Dogs: When is sex and violence just sex and violence?

Over the holidays, I attempted to watch the movie Straw Dogs. I couldn't make it through. I found the film's relentless misogyny, violence, ableism and stereotyping of Southerners gross and unwatchable. After shutting off the film, I perused a few reviews to see if critics found it as unpleasant as I did. I was surprised to find that, though the movie was generally poorly reviewed, that many movie experts ascribed to the film some deeper meaning. Where I saw wanton violence, they saw commentary on violence. Where I saw dangerous sexism, they saw an analysis of masculinity. This has me trying to tease out, what criteria are there that confirm whether a piece of art celebrates a negative bit of culture (say, violence, sexism, racism or homophobia) or instead challenges or analyzes it?

The 2011 Straw Dogs is a remake of a 1971 film by the same name, directed by Sam Peckinpah. The original, set in England, starred Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The reboot moves the action to the Southern United States and features James Marsden (David), Kate Bosworth (Amy) and Alexander Skarsgard (Charlie). Upon her father's death, TV star Amy and her writer husband, David, return to her small, rural Mississippi hometown. Amy is the picture of idealized white womanhood--thin, blonde and desired by every man who strolls into her orbit. David is the stereotypical effete liberal Northerner--bespectacled, pushing a Jag and always exuding a thinly-veiled aura of condescension. By contrast, the residents of Blackwater, Mississippi, are stupid, scruffy, bigoted, hyper religious and menacing, absorbed by Friday night football, hunting and breeding.

Charlie, Amy's high school flame, joins a group of local men in repairing a barn on Amy and David's property. What ensues is a--for lack of a better word--dick-measuring contest between Amy's past and current paramours. Charlie leads his crew in passive-aggressively (heavy on the aggressive) needling the couple. They play loud music early in the morning, barely put in a days work and walk freely into the house--all things David is too reserved to challenge. The posse soon escalates to more threatening behavior, killing the couple's pet cat and making lewd sexual remarks to Amy. Eventually, while his crew lures David on a hunting trip where he is narrowly missed by a bullet and abandoned in the woods, Charlie and another cohort rape Amy.

And this is where I had to stop. I couldn't bear any more.

Amazon, indie stores and elitism among readers

A couple of weeks ago, Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist at Slate, published one of those "Behold and click upon my courageous unconventional views!" articles that the online magazine is famous for. Manjoo took aim at the popular wisdom (at least among the literati) that Amazon is the Devil to the saintly and struggling local, independent book store; that all those one-click purchases made at the online behemoth are acts of literary heresy by stupid and selfish people who care more for low cost and convenience than the preservation of literary culture. Majoo wrote:

All of which is to say that I was primed to nod in vigorous agreement when I saw novelist Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed taking on Amazon’s thuggish ways. But as I waded into Russo’s piece—which was widely passed around on Tuesday—I realized that he’d made a critical and common mistake in his argument. Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon’s promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, “doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”

That’s simply bogus. As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. With his creepy laugh and Dr. Evil smile, Bezos is an easy guy to hate, and I’ve previously worried that he’d ruin the book industry. But if you’re a novelist—not to mention a reader, a book publisher, or anyone else who cares about a vibrant book industry—you should thank him for crushing that precious indie on the corner. Read more...

Damn!

Now, that bit about longing for the demise of the local independent bookstore? Typical Slate inflammatory nonsense. But for different reasons, I'm becoming uncomfortable with the genuflection to indie bookstores and demonization of Amazon and big book retailers. I think that too much of the discussion smacks of classism and a desire for the right sort of people to hold on to literary privilege. Consider this point from David Plotz on the December 16 episode of Slate's Political Gabfest Podcast:

"All you need to know to defend the independent bookstore...If you think of it as a transactional question...Of...Where can I get a good book? Where is it cheaper? Where can I have a reading experience? And am I buying more books if I buy them through Amazon? Then, sure Amazon and the chain stores are a much better deal. They're much better. You get more books for your money. You're likely to buy more books...

That is not the question...The point about independent bookstores and local bookstores has nothing to do with how well they do with supplying you with books. The thing about them is that we live in a world of undistinguished space...and sprawl and that independent bookstores are anchors of a particular kind of life...a particular kind of urban community life that is incredibly valuable and is not measured in dollars. If it's measured in dollars, it has an extremely high value and we should be grateful. We should pay twice as much for books at independent bookstores. 

When you have a strong independent bookstore, as when you have any strong local retail operation...that you create communality...you create a density...you create an exchange of ideas and a pleasure in community that you don't get in other places. And that's why people..a certain class of people...like to live in dense urban spaces that they can walk around to and pop into." [Emphasis mine]

He goes on to remind co-host John Dickerson that

I'm also willing to accept that that's a form of prejudice that, John, you and I have. We were raised to get pleasure in being in a book store...to enjoy the smell of it and so forth...and other people may not have that. Listen.

Huh.

This is what lurks around the edges of some responses to Manjoo's article--that a desire to give a certain class of person a place to hang out in their hip, urban neighborhoods is more noble than making it easier for the masses to read and discuss literature. Besides, plebes don't understand the smell of a good bookstore anyway. If they did, that would be more important to them than book cost and convenience.

This is such a privileged and narrow point of view; and I say that as a longtime voracious reader who desperately wants brick-and-mortar book stores--the big and small--to survive.

"He had the courage to say unpopular things": No praise for courting controversy

This post is not about Christopher Hitchens. It is just that eulogizing of the writer has me pondering the adulation we give people and ideas believed to be outside the bounds of "political correctness."

Hitch was a polarizing figure: He could be a louche wit and raconteur, an exceptional writer, a tireless advocate for the Godless, a moving chronicler of the end of life and also a pompous sexist, racist warmonger and Islamophobe, drunk on privilege (and whatever else). I'll remind that Hitchens was the guy who argued that women are inherently not funny, who attempted to paint Michelle Obama as a black militant on the strength of a college thesis about the alienation black students often feel on majority white campuses, and who said of the war in Iraq: "The death toll is not nearly high enough... too many [jihadists] have escaped."

Now, despite all that, many folks were fond of Hitchens--at least that is the impression I get from comments on Gawker, Salon, Slate and the like. How does one square abhorrent pronouncements by a man whose work can also be admirably challenging and engrossing? Apparently, it is by evoking the rather vague and puzzling commendation: Well, even if I didn't agree with him, he had the courage to say unpopular things. I keep hearing this in relation to Christopher Hitchens and I wonder: Is the will to say detested things praise-worthy, in and of itself?

At the root of the discussion is the myth of "political correctness," which I wrote about a few years ago in this space:

Disdain for "political correctness" is often positioned as a concern that some important truth is not being spoken for fear of offending someone. But that concern is nothing but smoke and mirrors. To invoke "political correctness" is really to be concerned about loss of power and privilege. It is about disappointment that some "ism" that was ingrained in our society, so much that citizens of privilege could express the bias through word and deed without fear of reprisal, has been shaken loose. Charging "political correctness" generally means this: "I am comfortable with my privilege. I don't want to have to question it. I don't want to have to think before I speak or act. I certainly don't wish to inconvenience myself for the comfort of lesser people (whoever those people may be--women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.)" Read more...

I want an unfunky Yuletide

I publish this post every year, cause it's as true now as it was when I wrote in the early days of this blog. Normally, I'm down with uncut funk (big ups to Parliament). But not at Christmas time. I don't want my carols funked up or rocked out or any of that, as I explain in my annual holiday reposting...

___________________________________________

I like my Christmas and my carols classic.

Today, my nieces and nephew came over and we made gingerbread houses and decorated my tree while listening to holiday tunes--classic tunes. I mean real classic, like from before I was born or when I was a little Tami. I'm talking Nat King Cole and Burl Ives classic, with maybe a smidge of Donny Hathaway. I don't want my carols funked up. I don't want to hear any multi-octave melismas, no rapping breakdown. The Nutcracker, A Rat Pack Christmas and Carpenters Christmas Portrait have been in heavy rotation on my iPod this week.

Yeah, I said the Carpenters, and I'm not ashamed. Karen Carpenter has one of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard and I love to hear her sing Merry Christmas, Darling. Speaking of beautiful voices, I love David Bowie's voice on Little Drummer Boy below. He sounds so sweet, not his usual freaky self. This is my all-time favorite version of the song.

Notes from the Black Women and Marriage Project: An everything kind of love

Black women don't need to be taught how to love. Despite what the common narrative may tell you, we are loving beings--no more or less so than any other group. You don't see it, though. Too much of popular culture--even the movies, TV shows and books targeted to our community--presents black women as bitter and emasculating bitches, misguided in our independence and incapable of appreciating a good man. Don't trust that.

For more than a month, I've been conducting preliminary interviews for my black women and marriage project. When I began this project, I didn't realize how much I would enjoy hearing other black women talk about how much they love their partners. This process has highlighted for me, how rarely I get to hear that. Oh, I experience it in real life, but sometimes pop culture can feel stronger and more encompassing than real life.

One interviewee, upon being asked what she loves most about her man, said: "You don't have the time..." Another giddily talked about how she and her mate discovered their mutual interest in Greek mythology, prompting his family to exclaim, "Oh my God! There's two of them!" Yet another woman proudly talked about how her husband could talk about philosophy and rewire a house. Another woman said that she was "stupid in love with her husband." I can relate, as a stupidly in love woman myself.