racial equality

For those of you who haven’t yet listened to NPR’s recent series on Native American families and foster care in South Dakota, click here.  The first part aired last week when I was running errands.  I immediately parked my car so that I could stop everything and listen.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve done something like that.  I’m a multitasker to the core, but I couldn’t think about groceries with this story on the radio.  I couldn’t stop listening, partly because I could not wrap my mind around what I was hearing.

All Things Considered reporters Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters dropped several bombshells in their story.  Consider the following list of their “key findings” from the web version:

* Each year, South Dakota removes an average of 700 Native American children from their homes. Indian children are less than 15 percent of the state’s child population, but make up more than half the children in foster care.

* Despite the Indian Child Welfare Act, which says Native American children must be placed with their family members, relatives, their tribes or other Native Americans, native children are more than twice as likely to be sent to foster care as children of other races, even in similar circumstances.

* Nearly 90 percent of Native American children sent to foster care in South Dakota are placed in non-native homes or group care.

* Less than 12 percent of Native American children in South Dakota foster care had been physically or sexually abused in their homes, below the national average. The state says parents have “neglected” their children, a subjective term. But tribe leaders tell NPR what social workers call neglect is often poverty; and sometimes native tradition.

* A close review of South Dakota’s budget shows that they receive almost $100 million a year to subsidize its foster care program.

What is going on here?  How is it possible that Native families are still being torn apart?

Native parents and grandparents have fought to keep their children for decades.  The United States began taking Native American children away from their families in the 1800s, sending them to boarding and missionary schools that would “civilize” them and cause them to assimilate into Anglo-American culture.  Native American activism in the 1960s and 1970s helped to bring this era to an end—but clearly many Native children remain vulnerable.  While some children may need a more stable home than the one their parent(s) are able to provide, it’s hard to understand the numbers in South Dakota: Native children comprise less than 15% of the population but more than half of children in foster care; 90% of Native children are sent to non-Native families or group care when they are legally supposed to be placed in the care of other Native Americans.

Louise Erdrich writes about a single Native mother, Albertine, who fights unsuccessfully to keep her child in the powerful short story “American Horse.”  Albertine’s passionate love for her son remains invisible to the social worker, Vicki Koob, a well-meaning woman with a “trained and cataloguing gaze” who sees only evidence of poverty and alcoholism as she surveys their small house.  She wishes to “salvage” the boy from his surroundings—as if his home is a trash heap or his family an impending shipwreck.

What if Vicki Koob were able to see what Erdrich sees?  What the reader is compelled to see?

Patricia Hill Collins argues that placing the experiences of mothers of color at the center of our vision enables us to understand motherhood differently.  In “Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood,” she writes:

Whether because of the labor exploitation of African-American women under slavery and its ensuing tenant farm system, the political conquest of Native American women during European acquisition of land, or exclusionary immigration policies applies to Asian-Americans and Hispanics, women of color have performed motherwork that challenges social constructions of work and family as separate spheres, of male and female gender roles as similarly dichotomized, and of the search for autonomy as the guiding human quest. […] This type of motherwork recognizes that individual survival, empowerment, and identity require group survival, empowerment, and identity.

For these mothers, the biggest conflicts aren’t found inside their homes.  They lurk outside: the institutions and structures and ideologies that threaten to tear families apart.  So for Native American mothers (as for enslaved African-American mothers), “getting to keep one’s children and raise them accordingly fosters empowerment.”

So please, check out the story and leave your thoughts below.

The National Women’s Studies Association 2011 conference will take place in Atlanta, Georgia this year, where Governor Nathan Deal recently signed into law HB 87, an anti-immigrant bill.

NWSA leaders and conference organizers believe that the new legislation will undoubtedly limit immigrants’ rights to social justice as well as basic human rights; we view this law as one that conflicts with our feminist values and commitments.  We also believe that oppressive measures like HB 87 can be addressed through education and action, and we plan to address the issues driving HB 87 and the struggle against it at our conference.

Our conference theme, “Feminist Transformations,” speaks directly to the potential of feminist organizing to challenge anti-immigrant and xenophobic legislation reflected in HB 87 and similar measures nationally.

NWSA has planned special conference events, activities, and collaborations with local organizers to highlight our opposition to HB 87.  Stay tuned for more updates!

Maythee Rojas is a teacher, critic, and writer.  Author of the new book Women of Color and Feminism (Seal Press), she is currently an associate professor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at California State University, Long Beach.   The book is a fascinating overview of feminist history and the construction of identity politics within feminist movements, with a diverse representation of notable icons, which includes not only Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash and Saartjie Baartman, but Tracy Chapman and Laura Aguilar as well.  It’s a smart, page-turning read that offers numerous examples to illustrate powerful points.  The book easily belongs in the hands of the many online feminists today who are in search of a book to start the critical journey of self-education on the connections between race, class, sexuality and gender.

Over phone and email, I recently spoke with Maythee Rojas about intersectionality, resisting multiple oppressions within feminist movements, and the hopes for her new book in addressing important issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in feminism(s) today:

Allison McCarthy:  What led you to working on a book focused on women of color and feminism?

Maythee Rojas: I have been teaching a course on the subject for the last nine years and the literature and theory by women of color is something I have studied closely as a scholar. However, when I set out to write this book, I wanted to avoid writing something that could be construed as the authoritative book on women of color.  There’s no such thing, nor should there be. I respect Seal for taking something academic and making a commitment to developing it as part of a mainstream series. It helps create bridges with the academic world and find new audiences beyond the Ivory Tower.  My hope is that this book will lead other presses – mainstream and academic — to publish more works on women of color.

AM:  In what ways did your academic research on Chicana/o and Latina/o literature contribute to your literary vision for Women of Color and Feminism?
MR: In the book, I consciously attempt to focus on multiple groups and communities. Learning about Chicana/o and Latina/o culture has never been in isolation for me.  In fact, if you look at the history, experiences, and creative expressions of Chicana/os and Latina/os, you’ll find that other communities of color have often influenced them.  There’s a lot of overlap in terms of the messages relayed and socio-political issues addressed.  As a scholar, I have the same approach: having a specialization in Chicana/o and Latina/o literature requires me to think about other groups in an intersectional manner.

AM:  Why do you see the theory of intersectionality as critical for all feminists when addressing issues raised by women of color?
MR: Intersectionality applies to everyone, period.  We all have multiple facets of identity.  However, intersectionality is often applied only to those who do not fit mainstream categories of identity. Much of it has to do with people’s lack of deep introspection; or, whether they are willing to think about their positions of privilege on a daily basis and the effect of their actions upon others.  It’s a journey of integrity and honesty that’s a part of self-actualization in our lives.  If feminism is truly going to produce the result of equality for women and opportunities in a less biased society, we have to think about how women from different communities can reach that success.  We’re not all on the same level in any place.  What factors and what privileges stand in the way?  It’s really about working collectively.  It requires reflecting on people around you: their lives, opportunities, limitations.  If you’re working in a social justice movement or a place of transformation, you have to take those factors into account or it’s going to be a flawed attempt.  It does require those things.

AM:  How have women of color, outside of global feminist movements, contributed to a greater public understanding of gender, race, class, and sexuality?
MR: I think it’s through daily actions.  The interactions of everyday life are bound to challenge us.  So often, we have perceptions of others based on media, politics, and education.  However, when we encounter people who embody particular markers of race and class and sexuality and we interact with them, those markers fall away to flesh and bone individuals.  I also think our interactions with non-academics – our families and friends– teach us as much about culture as they do about them.  It’s more about what we are willing to open ourselves up to.  Does what we what learn about others connect with what we assumed about their background, sexuality, culture?  To more specifically answer your question, I believe women of color contribute to life through their daily interactions in public spaces, through the ways they raise their families, through the challenges they make to a system, a classroom, a workplace, etc.  For creatively minded individuals, it’s also through their cultural production (art, film, music, etc) and how they shape these expressions to share with other people.  I think a lot of people aren’t actually part of organized social movements, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of social change.

AM:  Have the feminist movements of past and present failed to address the needs and lives of women of color?
MR: I don’t think they’ve outright failed.  If I believed that, I would have to rethink why I am in Women’s Studies.  Have they had their shortcomings?  Yeah.  But that’s part of understanding that we haven’t accomplished all the goals of feminism and there’s a lot left to do.  I think it’s important that we’re critical of these shortcomings and that we register our disappointments.  We can use that as a preventive measure.  The book is rather critical at times of past movements, but I don’t think it argues that they haven’t worked at all. The people who have been responsible for writing about feminism and promoting feminism have been remiss in their inclusion of women of color and that’s important to take into account.  How willing are feminists to really self-interrogate, to really consider what they’ve gained at the expense of others, what hasn’t been achieved in the ongoing project of feminism?  For us to stay abreast of what hasn’t worked, what hasn’t been done, and whose voices are missing keeps us alive and moving forward toward an ideal.  Even if it’s not achieved in our lifetime, it shouldn’t be something we stop striving for.

AM:  Who did you envision as the audience for this book?  Have any of the responses to the book thus far surprised you?
MR: I kind of thought about it in two ways.  One of the audiences it’s geared towards is obviously college students, both graduate and undergraduate, and I think you can hear that in the classroom descriptions I use.  I was also encouraged to learn that it would be available in independent and mainstream bookstores, so that anyone could find her/his way to the book.  You might think that a book on women of color is only for women of color.  I can’t stop anyone from thinking that, but I hope that for anyone who reads past the first few lines, the reader will see that it’s for anyone who is interested in knowing themselves better and knowing more about the world around them.

AM: What projects are you currently working on?
MR: I have three projects that I’d like to see happen.  First, I want to finish my book, Following the Flesh: Embodied Transgressions in Chicana Literature, which looks at literary characters who are cast as “bad” women (mistresses, murderers, lesbians) and are maligned by society, and help us rethink what “bad” means. Examining these issues within both US and Latin American contexts, the book addresses crossing not only social borders, but also physical ones.  The next project I would like to pursue is a cultural history of Latinos and dogs. Drawn by my own passion for animals, I’m really interested in looking at how dogs show up in Latino culture.  Living in L.A. with a large Latino population and a dog-friendly attitude, there have been several race and class bias in the city’s laws that have been passed and I wanted to address those biases. I’m also interested in immigration issues in terms of how they relate to cultural shifts about pets as immigrants become more assimilated to the US.  A third project, which is much farther down the line, is a cultural history on feminism in Costa Rica.  My grandmother is nearing her 104th birthday and I would like to parallel her personal experiences as a woman (she has lived a very nontraditional life) with the development of women’s lives and issues in Costa Rica over the past century.  I imagine describing the historical and social changes of my family’s country vis-à-vis my grandmother’s own life.

The Sotomayor hearings begin Monday (7/13), and the media has been talking about her in the most ridiculously sexist and racist ways — “Hispanic chic lady” anyone? In response, the Women’s Media Center has launched a video highlighting the recent sexism & racism against Judge Sotomayor. Check it out above, or right here. The WMC is hoping to inform media coverage of Sotomayor, to encourage the media to do its job free of expressions of sexism and racism. Do check it out, and please spread the word!

Richard E. Nisbett, a psychology professor from the University of Michigan, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the New York Times last weekend about the importance of funding educational programs that really work. All this stimulus package talk has breathed new life into an old conversation: how do we measure the effectiveness of educational interventions?

Nisbett insists that we not overlook the little things, namely boosting children’s self-esteem through high expectations. He writes:

Consider, for example, what the social psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson have described as “stereotype threat,” which hampers the performance of African-American students. Simply reminding blacks of their race before they take an exam leads them to perform worse, their research shows.

Fortunately, stereotype threat for blacks and other minorities can be reduced in many ways. Just telling students that their intelligence is under their own control improves their effort on school work and performance. In two separate studies, Mr. Aronson and others taught black and Hispanic junior high school students how the brain works, explaining that the students possessed the ability, if they worked hard, to make themselves smarter. This erased up to half of the difference between minority and white achievement levels.

In the age of Barack and Hillary, this is exciting news. The days of “you can’t be what you can’t see” are over for little girls or black kids destined for positions of powerful leadership.

But it’s also got me thinking of other implications for the “stereotype threat.” Is part of why young women are so plagued by eating and anxiety disorders that we are constantly reminded of a stereotypical version of ourselves (emotional, overwhelmed, perfectionist)? Would we be healthier if we were told that our quality of life was, indeed, under our control? How can we pull apart the cultural associations of femaleness and self-sacrifice/internalized anger/stress?

I struggle with this because I wrote a book that traces some of the contemporary causes of perfectionism behavior and disordered eating and exercise. Is Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women inherently reinforcing an unhealthy perfect girl paradigm just by exploring it? It’s a pretty paralyzing thought, especially for a  feminist and cultural critic. I’ve always believed strongly in the importance of speaking tough truths, naming things, giving voice to pain. But what if, by mirroring the most painful aspects of my generation’s struggle, I’ve inflamed it?

Where is the balance?

–Courtney Martin

In a happy arrangement with our friends over at the blog and editorial collective Feminist Review, GWP is pleased to start offering MORE feminist reviews, courtesy of crosspost!  Here is the first, a review of Letters from Black America (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), edited by Pamela Newkirk.  The review is penned by Brittany Shoot. Here we go…And a big fat shout out to Feminist Review!  –Deborah

While it would help to appreciate and admire the historical importance of preserved letters, you don’t have to be history buff or correspondence enthusiast to delight in Letters from Black America.  In a time of quickly typed emails and SMS, tangible letters hold weight for many who value thoughtful, deliberate communication. In this compendium, Pamela Newkirk skillfully compiles an assortment of missives from the past three centuries that shine a light on the humanity and continued struggles of ordinary and exceptional African American men and women.

Divided into seven sections, the collection of 200-plus letters examines family dynamics during and after slavery, education as a locus for social activism, and Black military service from the Civil War to Iraq. In everyday yet often poetic language, details are revealed about married couples separated by the slave trade and babies born without the presence of their fathers. Open letters previously published in newspapers are included to showcase a wide range of letter writing and how it can be used as a tool to promote public discourse. Prominent Black artists and academics correspond and share visions of hope. One man proposes marriage and later asks to set a date, confirming his lady’s affirmative answer, though the reader never knows what else was actually said.

While the collection does include an interesting cross-section of letter writers and receivers, many are notable figures in Black history, and many—like W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Derrick Bell Jr., and Booker T. Washington—have letters included in several sections. This is not without merit, but letters to and from prominent, highly educated Black leaders are more common than those passed between ordinary citizens. This does not diminish the significance of the selections. At times, it is rather helpful—if not necessary. The often-lengthy writings of Frederick Douglass, for example, comprise a significant part of the letters about politics and social justice. This is not a burden, but an opportunity. Many of these letters are not easily found, even in a time of ubiquitous technology and information. Each letter is introduced with background about the writer and recipient, and these small but critical details make Letters from Black America an incredible reference guide.

While many of the book’s sections are enthralling—love letters from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Coretta Scott (King) and a coming out letter from Joseph Beam to his parents are particularly noteworthy—the climax of the compilation is the third section, “Politics and Social Change.” Some of the most formative communication of our time is found here, including letters between Shirley Du Bois and Langston Hughes, Bayard Rustin and Eldridge Cleaver, and Toni Morrison to then-Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

To address the changes in communication over time, the book ends with letters from “Across the Diaspora.” Communiqués between Pan-African leaders of the last hundred years, across oceans and decades, remind us that even as we move into a time when travel and the Internet make our work easier, we have come very far and yet have so very far to go.

–Brittany Shoot

(Crossposted at Feminist Review)

In the continued spirit of sharing sentiments about the historic day on Tuesday, this afternoon we bring you (via Shira Tarrant!) the one and only Wendy Griffin.  After a checkered past as a college drop-out, diamond courier, Off-Broadway actress, folk singer and cocktail waitress, Wendy received her Ph.D. at the University of California Irvine, in the interdisciplinary social sciences with an emphasis on sex and gender. Her book, Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, identity and Empowerment, was the first scholarly anthology on Goddess Spirituality, and her scholarly articles in Pagan Studies are published internationally.  She is the Chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at California State University Long Beach and the co-chair of the Pagan Studies Group for the American Academy of Religion.  Her remembrance below gives me the serious chills.  Here’s Wendy! –Deborah

In 1953, I went to Washington D.C. to see Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration. I had entered a national contest for students and written in my “25 words or less” essay with great enthusiasm. I remember my older sister saying smugly that she wouldn’t hold her breath until I won.

But I wasn’t really surprised when I won; I expected to with all the confidence of an 11-year old white girl whose world had not yet been limited by her gender. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my winning probably had more to do with being in the same class as the daughter of the corporate sponsor rather than my essay.

Each of the 35 winning students got to take an adult along, and I choose my mother. There are special things about that trip that I still remember. I used my mother’s movie camera and used up almost a whole reel filming clouds out the airplane window. I climbed the Washington monument and heard Spike Jones and his band play in a night club. I remember the inaugural parade and how cold it was. At the inauguration festival that evening, I used my own box camera to take photos of Marge and Gower Champion as they danced across the big stage. I was little for my age, so I managed to weave in and out of the crowd and squeeze in up close so I could get a better shot of John Wayne, who was my hero that year. Apparently I gave someone a push and stepped on his foot, because I was suddenly lifted up in the air and moved unceremoniously to one side.

My mother later told me it was Vice President Nixon’s foot I stepped on. She was mortified. Years later, after Nixon’s resignation, she told the story with great pride.

I came home and put together a scrapbook of my adventure. I still have it, 56 years later. But what I remember most about that trip never made it into the scrapbook.
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Women, Work, and the Downturn For an excellent column on why and how the downturn is likely to affect women, read UNC-Chapel Hill sociologist Philip Cohen’s recent post at HuffPo. He argues, as has Randi Albelda and Linda Hirshman, that Obama’s jobs/stimulus plans thus far are good for men, but not as likely to address the jobs concerns for women. As Cohen asks, will Obama listen?

The Black Middle Class As happened during the Great Depression, so in the (current) Great Recession, African Americans are going to be harder hit by job loss. Zenitha Prince does outstanding reporting on the issues in AFRO News. She reports that the manufacturing sector—read auto industry, where in particular African Americans had found a path to the middle class in the past few decades—is getting hammered. What’s the size of the problem? While the unemployment rate overall is currently at 6.7 percent, for African Americans it is at 11.2 percent. It will get worse.

Not only is unemployment generally twice as high for African Americans than for the population in general, but wealth inequality also makes the black middle class a vulnerable group. While the racial gap in incomes—what we earn at our jobs—has declined over the past thirty years, the gap in wealth—what we own in terms of savings, retirement funds, housing, stocks, and other assets—remains quite large. A 2005 report from the National Urban League reports that African American households have about one-tenth the net worth of white households. This makes family crises like unemployment much harsher.

–Virginia Rutter

Later: Read more about the recession’s impact on minority autoworkers in Tuesday’s New York Times.

We’ve been marinating on 2008; what an incredible year! Turbulent, exciting and really most of our wishes seemed to be granted in one fell swoop with the outcome of the US election.

There was China’s Olympic moment of glory, the first female Mayor in Egypt and of course the highs and lows of the U.S. election and then the same sex marriage Proposition in California. For all the leaps forward there is still more to be done for gender equality globally. Next year we want more inclusion! We wanted to share our top 5 wishes en route to inclusion. Enjoy and add your own in comments.

Our Top 5:
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Back from a little Thanksgiving break, we bring you today Family Stories, the monthly column from Jacqueline Hudak.  Still stunned, energized, and moved, I think we’ll all be processing Obama’s victory for a long while. -Deborah

As GWP readers know, I am fascinated by which stories are told in our culture, which remain silenced, and what conditions bring certain ones to the fore. I often say my work as a family therapist entails listening to stories – stories that either cannot be spoken or heard outside of my office.  From the personal to the cultural, it’s often not a great leap.

As so brilliantly documented in a book by a former history prof of mine at BU, (A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present), Howard Zinn presents history through the eyes of those rarely heard in mainstream texts.  I was reminded of this the other week when my friend Trina Scordo, a longtime union organizer, began to tell stories she heard in North Carolina as she knocked on doors for the Obama campaign as the election approached. Trina asked one of her fellow union members why he chose to travel from New York to Charlotte for this election eve.  He told Trina that his father had said there would never be an African-American president in the United States.  He said, “My Father always told me racism was too strong.  My grandparents were slaves and my father faced racism on his job and in the neighborhood in which we lived.  My Dad always tried to avoid the discussion of race because he did not believe it would ever change.  He died believing that.  I had to be here on this day, on this night for him.”  When Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, Trina told me, this gentleman fell to his knees and wept.  He held in his hand a picture of his father.

Other stories came from those on the other side of the doors.  As Trina said, “African-Americans shared their histories with organizers at their front doors and porches.  It was a collective history of slavery, civil rights and unions.  Some told me it was the first time they had shared this history outside of their families and further, with a white person.”

This election gave a sense of liberation to the marginalized: youth, women, communities of color, the exploited and working class.  Yet it was a bittersweet victory – a victory tinged with sadness about the passage of California’s Prop 8. I asked in my column last month: How do we fill the gap between what we wanted and what we get in this election?

I found an analysis of the breakdown of who voted for Prop 8 at Pam’s House Blend, one that did not engage in racial scapegoating.   Hendrik Hertzberg (New Yorker, Dec 1) points to the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets all over this country in spontaneous protest, and believes “It wasn’t enough this time. But the time is coming.”

In the afterword of the young readers version of A People’s History, Howard Zinn asks youth to “imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change.”

We are on the cusp of such a movement.  May it be so.

—Jacqueline Hudak