Category Archives: diversity

entitlements

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“They were all four of them providing a service for the rest of the people in the café, simply by being here. They were the “local vibrancy” to which the estate agents referred. For this reason, too, they needn’t concern themselves too much with politics. They simply were political facts, in their very persons.”

–Zadie Smith, NW

My new place is a lovely treehouse in the hills surrounded by paths and trails and wilderness. It reminds me of a friend who grew up around here, when she moved to a more urban area said she missed running the trails in the evenings. One of my roommates this semester said she missed swimming in the pristine ocean, saying ‘not having the ocean is like not having carrots.’ I felt these people were being unappreciative, just because you grew up in a particular way doesn’t mean that it’s better or worse than another place, you can take a bus to the ocean or take a walk to some trails. When you grow up in nature, you gain a lot, but you miss out on a lot to, it’s often harder to access culture, but most importantly to me, you miss out on diversity.

I recently read Zadie Smith’s new book, NW and it reminded me of the a lot of racial issues around geography and urbanity. One thing I appreciate about Zadie Smith is her insight into middle-class black life. I don’t envy my mother’s cohort of educated black (often single) mothers who had to chose between raising a child who grew up in the comfort of an urban area around black people (knowing her roots), and the extreme discomfort of being the inkspot in a richer, whiter neighborhood. My mother chose to make our home in a middle-class neighborhood that was very mixed racially, and send us to schools where my brother and I were often the only people of color in our class. I think it worked out great for us, but I don’t envy people who have to make such difficult decisions.

People who grow up in urban centers, projects like the ones described in NW, have to deal with the realities of poverty, criminality, lack of access to education, and all that this entails. But people who grow up as the token brown person have to deal with the realities of not being represented in the culture that surrounds them and the pressure of representing their entire race and class, a pressure I’ve been feeling a lot in my job lately. The weight of that burden is difficult to describe for someone who has never experienced it. I know it’s not my responsibility to teach everyone what black people are like, but when I’m the only brown woman on my team, there is added pressure to perform. I carry this burden on behalf of my generation (people think millenials are lazy), for my locale (people think Californians are lazy), for my race (people think black people are lazy), for my sex (people think women aren’t smart, and can’t do science), for my family and for myself. A friend of mine was telling me how fun it is to act crazy sometimes, frankly I don’t think I have to luxury of lunacy.

I listened to the Slate Audio Book Club on NW. On the podcast they discussed the character Keisha, a black woman who grew up in the projects and became a successful lawyer. She was my favorite character in the book and the one I related to the most. The people on the podcast seemed to believe that the character could never really be successful. That she was bound to fall from grace in a way. I don’t think she had a dramatic fall from grace, but I also don’t think such a fall is so inevitable. In any case, I liked the book, and the discussion and I’d highly recommend both.

Growing up where I did I was surrounded by a diverse group culturally, socio-economically, and ethnically. I’ve written a little about this before but as I’ve lived and moved to other places I have found that this is very important to me (and that such a mix is pretty much unique to Oakland). But it brings up the question, what are we entitled to in a home? Is what your parents had good enough? Is what you had good enough? are you entitled to the same experiences as your peers? do you need wilderness to breathe free? do you need to live with both a mother and a father? do you deserve your own room? How much culture are you entitled to and what?

NOTE: I have started a new job (see resume) and don’t have much time to blog. It’s probably gonna be more like once a month from now on.

Healthy Infrastructure for Single People

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One idea in our society that I find prevalent and destructive is the idea that being in a romantic relationship is a sign of mental health. I resent the idea that everyone should be involved in a romantic relationship, but especially the idea that people who are in these relationships are somehow healthier than those of us who aren’t. I’ve found, based on completely anecdotal evidence, that my friends who were raised by single mothers are more likely to share the point of view that ‘until you’re comfortable living alone, you’re not ready for a relationship.’ But even people with this philosophy ultimately tend to think that once you get yourself correct, you’ll be ‘healthy’ and ‘ready for a relationship,’ as if there’s some sort of equivalence. The idea is that once you establish a romantic relationship you’ll be happy, have kids and in doing so become a healthy, contributing member in society.

The idea is so prevalent that our society lacks the infrastructure to support single people as well as single mothers. Architecturally the places created for single people are not thought of as permanent; rooms in apartments, studios, 1-bedroom apartments, in most places, (even cities), these living situations are thought of as temporary while stand-alone houses are considered permanent. We tend to think, ‘I’ll live in this apartment until I get married and we start a life together and buy a house’. The lack of urban density and smart-growth is in part fueled by this American lifestyle that says you grow up in a house, you live in an apartment in your twenties, you get married and start a family in your 30s, buying a house, and you hold onto it until you die1. This biographical timeline is so common and so ingrained that most don’t even notice it enough to question it.

The reason I find the idea destructive is not only that in discourages smart-growth, but that it discourages the development other types of relationships. Relationships with close friends and family are back-burnered in favor of romantic ones. It privileges sexual relationships over asexual ones, and often encourages a type of co-dependency that can be much more unhealthy than independence. In fact, I always thought, growing up, that people in relationships were weaker than people who weren’t. Now I can see that there can be health in romantic relationships and that independence is not always strong (and never truly independent). It’s not black and white, and neither is life, but when there is one vast and prevalent idea I think it’s always helpful to question it.

1Housing Life Cycle

From Rapid Fire White Paper, Calthorpe Associates.

Junot Diaz on Pigment Politics and Decolonial Love

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I’m re-posting this excerpt from Junot Díaz, at the Facing Race 2012 conference in Baltimore 11/15/12 with some transcriptions I did.

On Pigmentation Politics – 6:45

“What was my process like in identifying my own systems of oppression? That’s actually a wonderful question and conversely difficult. … I think what’s interesting about that is how many of us are aware of the strange and agonizing systems that both invite us to tyrannize other people and that help to tyrannize us. I think for me, belonging to a family of 5 young immigrant kids of African descent, from a poor Caribbean family, the first step in this process was noticing how clearly and how nakedly privilege got distributed in my family across racial and gender lines. Which is to say my family was like a really fucking weird experiment in pigmentation politics. Where the bizarre fiction of eliding light with lovely really was practiced superbly well in my family. So that the lighter siblings of the five, [people] were always like ‘you guys are so beautiful, you guys are so nice, you guys are so amazing,’ and they even received less punishment than the rest of us who are considered more racialized. And then of course this gets complicated [by] gender was also, in my family we were split between brothers and sisters.

“And for me I think one of the first steps in this idea was both how I noticed this system very early on, but also how greedily I attempted to profit from it. Because it’s one thing to point out when somebody’s trying to put a foot in your ass, but usually most of us, while that’s happening we’re trying to put a foot in someone else’s ass. And I noticed that I was at the receiving end of this sort of stuff, but I was also really kind of gleefully practicing it. And I know the consequences of that in my family, 5 kids, each of us a year apart, really tearing each other up along those lines. A lot of the pain and the damage, a lot of the treachery, a lot of the cruelty, this followed us into our teenage days and became not only a source of tension, but when we got older a way that we began to talk to each other.

“And listen guys, when you’re that close in age and that close in family, if you grew up like we did where you stacking 3 kids to a bedroom, it forms part of your conversation, it’s hard to run from that, though people can. And I think the kind of ways that I hurt my little sister, the kind of ways I betrayed her, the kind of ways that I sort of projected a lot of racial and hetero-normative and masculine shit on her in a way that really hurt her, and the way that it kind of deformed her childhood. And both of us growing up with the consequences of that, her more forcefully and palpably but me more as someone who had spent a lot of time victimizing her. I think those are the roots of when I think about working and it becoming clear that one has to do a lot of internal work to really get anywhere in this world especially if one who’s really interested in racial justice of any form. I think usually most of the groundbreaking occurs inside of you, I think of that when I think of it. Yeah, it’s tough.”

On De-Colonial Love – 20:45

“What links most progressive people …to the most rabid right wing lunatic is how gleefully we exercise our privileges. The funny thing about our privileges is that we all have a blind spot around our privileges shaped exactly like us. Most of us will identify privileges that we know we could live without. So when it comes time to talk about our privileges we’ll throw shit down like it’s an ace and that shit is a three! I understand that. You grow up and you live a life where you feel like you haven’t had shit, the last thing you want to give up is the one thing, or the couple of things that you’ve really held on to.

“I’m telling you guys, we’re never going to fucking get anywhere—if you want to hear my apocalyptic proclamation which I would never repeat, but which I know you motherfuckers are going to tweet about—we are never going to get anywhere as long as our economies of attraction continue to resemble, more or less, the economy of attraction of white supremacy.”


via Racialicious

Asexuality Movie

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(A)sexual the movie is on Netflix now so I watched it last night while I couldn’t sleep. In high school I started to explore my own asexuality and found AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility Network. I remember reading an article about David Jay, and being relieved to find a label that worked for me, that seemed to define my position on the sexuality spectrum. But like sex, asexuality just didn’t seem to hold my interest. In college I was too busy studying to worry about caring about my sexuality, it really never seemed that important to me. Lately I’ve been exploring the possibility of sexuality for myself, but seeing the movie gave me a sense of relief, to reinforce that there’s nothing wrong with asexuality in our sexualized society was really powerful and comforting to me.

I was reading about the 10 Most Common Reactions to Asexuality. One thing that’s important for me, but that I didn’t hear expressed in the movie, is that while these are not what define asexuality, you can be asexual for zero, any and all of those reasons. Maybe you’re ugly, repressed, have a hormone problem, and hate men because of sexual trauma. So what? If you’re not interested in sex you get to call yourself an asexual, and if you want you can explore your asexuality with others you should be able to do so.

I thought the movie was really interesting, and a great starting point for asexuality education. I was surprised and disappointed to find the link between asexuality and aspergers because for me it seemed to reinforce a stereotype that asexuals (a word spellcheck doesn’t recognize) are just too socially awkward to find dates. I think the reason David Jay has become such a good spokesperson for asexuality, and why I was drawn to him and the movement, is that he is conventionally attractive and socially adept; showing that his asexuality is a choice, not just the result of social ineptitude. (The article I read in high school described David Jay as having Kennedy-esque good looks and as being extremely well spoken.)

The movie showed many different types of asexuals but in doing so associated asexuality with a wacky freakishness that kept me from using the label for myself (eg. I had to fast forward while a woman hammers a nail into her face). So one drawback of the movie for me was an embracing of a certain kind of diversity, but, with classic human narcissism, what I found lacking were representations of me, and my own type of diversity. As far as I can recall there were 3 black people in the movie, 2 bigoted black guys at the beginning who didn’t believe asexuals existed and one ‘naturally celibate’ woman at the end.

I was also disappointed by Dan Savage’s comments which seemed to undermine the community. His view is that people who are asexual need to disclose this to any potential partner and should not be in relationships with sexual people. His idea is that it’s asexual people don’t need a movement because there isn’t real stigma associated with it, just go do that on your own, no one cares. His second point seemed to really undermine the first point though because without a movement to identify asexuality you wouldn’t know what to disclose at the beginning of a relationship. So many people don’t identify as asexual because they don’t know it exists, if you want people to self identify and remove themselves from the dating pool, or whatever, they need to understand and identify with the language and the language doesn’t develop without a community. That’s what I think, at least. I agree with Dan Savage so much, which is why I was so disappointed that he isn’t supportive of my part of the sexual spectrum.

Asexuality is difficult to define as a sexual orientation precisely because it is non-sexual, you could almost describe asexuality as the right to be left alone if you want to be. SPOILER ALERT Ultimately I found the end of the movie to be pretty sad. To find that David Jay thinks he won’t be able to have a meaningful relationship or raise a child without a somewhat sexual relationship made me really disappointed, but this is the subject of another blogpost to come.

P.S. I don’t want people to think I’m hating on the woman who hammers a nail into her face, she seemed pretty awesome. Aside from just liking her hair and her style and she said one of the things I most identified with in the movie, she said that before learning about asexuality she just thought that she was going to have to have sex at some point but that the thought was so repulsive to her that she figured she would have to drink herself into a stupor beforehand. This is exactly how I have always felt and it felt really refreshing to hear this expressed, and to see her in a relationship with someone who respected and heard this from her. The only other time I’ve heard this sentiment expressed is by a lesbian talking about straight sex, and I never identified as a lesbian. Anyway, it’s always nice to hear you’re not alone.

Imperialist Geography

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People ask me what it means to be a geographer. Most people think of memorizing state capitals. I tell them I make and study maps, I also tell them about Tobler’s law : everything is related, closer things are more related than distant things. For my thesis, I wrote about Afghanistan, a country whose fate is determined by its physical and cultural geography.

Saying your’e a geographer or a cartographer makes you sound like a British Orientalist from the 19th century, but until American stops behaving like 19th century Britain in its foreign policy we’ll still need cartographers:

On Criticism

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I wish that I could tell you that it’s all alright
–Glass of the Microscope – Yeasayer

I like to think that I’m all about tough love and hard truths. When it comes to self awareness, everyone has their blind spots, and I tend to think that it’s the job of a good friend to help you see them. I think if someone asked you whether you wanted to know the thing that was holding you back, almost everyone would say yes, they want to know what their thing is. But not everyone wants to know, even if they say they do. Harsh criticism is hard to take, especially from a friend (a good friend of mine sent me a critical email 3 months ago that I’m still processing it).

When it comes to harsh criticism, what are the exceptions, is it okay to criticize the dead? is it ever okay to tell someone you don’t like their art? In a way, since you’re not criticizing their person, but something they did, it should be easier. But in our culture, art is such an extension of someone’s personhood that it’s never really appropriate.

There has been a spate of articles about book criticism lately, on one side is Slate’s case for more critical critics and Dwight Garner for the New York Times Magazine, while Laura Miller at Salon and Heidi Julavits at the Believer make the case against harsh criticism and snark in their field. Miller argues that there should be an exception for fledgling writers, people don’t read that many books anymore and it does more harm than good to squash these new authors before they get their bearrings. While Julavits argues that no one should review a book until they write one (To hear a great wrap-up of the debate check out the Slate Culture Gabfest). With art especially, there is a particularly vile type of criticism that says ‘this isn’t even art‘. There are certain contexts where it’s considered a matter of taste, and others where it isn’t. I think I tend to be on the side of hard truths but I think it’s not a coincidence that the call to be harsher is coming from men, and the call to be nicer is coming from women. This isn’t because women are thin-skinned and can’t take criticism, I think it’s because they know what it’s like to be on the outside in an industry that still privileges men’s opinion.

Let’s look at criticism in a field I know a little more about. I’ve never wanted to be a writer or a literary critic, but I love music and particularly music analysis. It’s no secret that my favorite band of the past 10 years is Yeasayer. I’ve been anxiously anticipating their new album which dropped this week. The album was panned by Spin and Pitchfork, two of the most respected music magazines. Reviews matter (someone once told me something about the Beach Boys that has tainted almost every listen since), you internalize other peoples’ tastes and they become your own. But what are these magazines really saying? Maybe pitchfork’s reviewers are as racist and sexist as their readers. Yeasayer’s may be too gay for them. I had a friend who wrote reviews and someone criticized him for referring to many albums as ‘the best I’ve heard all year.’ He stood by his statements, arguing that music doesn’t hurt, if you listen to an album once and don’t like it, it’s not the end of the world, you didn’t waste any time, no harm no foul. I agree with Julia Turner on the Gabfest, you don’t have to listen to every album, (or read every book), be discerning in what you review, then you can be as harsh as you want.

It struck me on a second listening to the Gabfest that this can also be framed as an East Coast vs. West Coast Debate. Although born in Boston, Dave Eggars has become a distinctively West Coast literary figure, as has his magazine McSweeny’s is one of the few major magazines published in California and NOT New York. It’s a classic debate between the straight talking New York art critic and the laid back California surfer/stoner/hippie. Coming from Oakland, I feel it’s the best of both worlds, it’s sunny California for sure, but maintains its urban grit and certainly a diversity of opinion. I like to think this represents my views, I can take the harsh truths but only in the warmth of the supportive sun.

p.s. Apologies to the Russian’s Mom, no wedding pictures, just decided to go meta.