Category Archives: ladies

Safe Streets Map update

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Continued from Works In Progress: III

I had a great discussion with the geonerds a couple weeks ago (on my new public twitter account @Brobdingnag). It really helped me to narrow down what kind of map I want to make, and how it is (or isn’t) related to crime. Click the timestamp to see (most of) the discussion:

Like everything, it’s much more political than I expected. As Stephanie May asked ‘Do you want to avoid crime or homeless people?’ Right now I’m more interested in perceived threat (feeling of safety) than actual crime*. The most walkable neighborhoods are going to be higher in crime since high density is correlated with high crime. That said, I still think you can pinpoint particular ‘sketchy’ corners and try to avoid those particular corners or blocks, the kind of things that locals know, and tourists might not. I’m not talking about avoiding whole neighborhoods, just walking down Valencia instead of Mission. I still think the appeal of the map would be that it’s dynamic, it wouldn’t put a permanent bad stamp on a neighborhood or corner.

I made a quick list of potential data sources:

One of the things we talked about was the gendered nature of this perceived safety; that there are places where a man might feel safe enough, and a woman might not. This is related to my street harassment post, there are neighborhoods such that if I was walking around alone at night and got mugged/raped people might first ask ‘what were you doing alone in that neighborhood?’ rather than ‘are you okay?’ It would be interesting to try show the nature of this difference.

Also, some interesting stuff on the street harassment front the other week. Came across this great blogpost on racialized street harassment on the new hairpin spinoff blog The Toast:
Mea Culpa

and got a into an interesting discussion regarding the Jezebel article:
But Where where are you Really from? (again, click the timestamp for more of the discussion):
https://twitter.com/jazzyvice/status/360611906509217796
When is it a compliment and when is it harassment? Sometimes it’s hard to know.

Still trying to figure out the best way to start on this map and the smartest way to approach some of these issues without sounding obtuse or idiotic (and still maintaining the shred of street-cred I may have). I’ve been reading about Feminist Geography (a subject I never really understood until now), particularly Katherine McKittrick and feel I may have found my niche in the field (for the time being).

*I am the first to admit there are controversial and problematic aspects to this map, so many, in fact, that I don’t know where to start. I’d like to address these in a delicate, thoughtful and well-informed fashion, but they are hot-button issues or race/gender and fear. Don’t think I’m not going to deal with the difference between actual and perceived threat, especially given the recent Trayvon Martin verdict. As a black woman I do not think myself exempt from racial profiling, though obviously, it’s complicated. There are affluent white neighborhoods I don’t want to be around at night because people will think I’m a thief in a hoodie, or, depending on what I’m wearing, a prostitute. Saw this really interesting article on Trayvon Martin and perceived threat:
Gender Justice Feminism

Works in Progress II: Prison stats

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When I found out that a friend of mine was imprisoned at San Quentin I was reading Dreaming in French. The book talks about Angela Davis’ experience with the Soledad Brothers at San Quentin. When I saw that she would be speaking in my area I bought some books for her to sign. ‘Are Prisons Obsolete‘ was short enough for me to finish in the week leading up to her talk. It reminded me of this clip from black power mixtape:

The introduction to the book was full of mind-boggling statistics. For my job I had been using the d3 library to make data visualizations, so this seemed like a great opportunity to make a compelling infographic about these statistics. I haven’t done so yet, but here are some of the stats I want to use:

-Only 5% of world population lives in the US, but it holds 20% of prison population
-There are 2x as mental mentally in in prisons/jails than in all psychiatric hospitals combined
In 1990 1/4 black men between the ages of 20 and 29 have been incarcerated…
by 1995 it was 32.2%
-Many minorities are more likely to be in prison than educated

Fastest growing portion of the prison population is black women
Up 78% in 5 years
-There are more women in prison now than in the entire decade of the 70s

California Statistics

in 2002:
there are 157,979 people incarcerated
20,000 for immigration detention
35.2% Latino
30% black
29% white

I’d like to make a CA prison timeline, showing their proliferation during the Reagan Era and how they continue to be built at alarming rates:
1852 San Quentin
1880 Folsom
1952-55 9 prisons built
1962-65 3 jails
1980s (Reagan Era) 9 prisons
90s 12 new prisons
Takes 100 years for 1st 9 prisons, last 9 in 10 yrs
Now 33 prisons, 38 camps, 16 correctional facilities and 15 prisoner mother facilities

Queens of Black Bohemia

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Some of my favorite podcasts are the Culture Gabfests with music critic Jody Rosen. I’ll never forget his comments from a podcast 3 years ago that there’s a hunger in black bohemia for heroes. I am always on the lookout for the new heroes of black Bohemia. Here are is a playlist of black bohemian queens to tide us over for the next big thing, in roughly chronological order:

Nina Simone


Phoebe Snow:

Zap Mama:

Lauryn Hill:

Les Nubians:

The Noisettes:


Santogold:

Janelle Monae:


Left off Eryka Badu, Sade, Jill Scott, Grace Jones and others. But interested to hear what others think.

9/4/2013 Added Laura Mvula:

Thanks to Slate Culture Gabfest.

Gymnastics Montages

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We have a deadline at work and I’ve realized that my current favorite form of stress release is gymnastics montages. Here are some of my faves:

A sassy intro to gymnastics from the movie Stick It:

An artful training compilation from same:

The wonderful French gymnast Elvire Teza on my favorite event, beam:

(If you can’t understand the French, the trick performed at 0:14 is named after her. I just couldn’t tolerate Elfi Schlagel’s comments in the American version)

5 beautiful and artistic beam routines compiled by MostepanovaFan:

A great compilation of difficult and interesting beam mounts:

And who can forget Wei-Wei’s breakdancing beam routine:

When the movie first came out the late Roger Ebert remarked that this skill could only be achieved with special effects. I don’t know if (or how) special effects might have been used in this movie, but I am confident that with a dedicated gymnast and enough time and takes, a girl can do a headspin on a beam. Rock it Wei Wei.

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.

Measuring Pain

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Not all pain is visible. There are many different kinds of intense internal pain. The way that pain was always explained to me is as swelling of some sort, some organ or vessel is engorged enough to be too big for its container. There are other types of pain, (strains, psychological pain, etc.), but it seems to me that this type of pain would be good to measure. If you told a doctor you were in pain and then you gave them a measure of it, they’d be more likely to believe you and treat you. If, you weren’t able to measure it using that pain measuring device you would know that it was a different kind of pain and they would be able to treat you better because of it. win-win

Why can’t we measure pain? We understand a lot about pain these days, how it works in the brain, different mechanisms for its transmission, yet we rely completely on patient assessment for pain reporting. It is important (probably the most important thing) to take that into account, but it should not be our sole source of information.

Also this article is amazing:
No Evidence of Disease