This post will be cross posted at Persephone Magazine tomorrow – be sure to check out the discussion there!
I have no time for a huge introspective post right now, thanks to the two classes that I decided to take this summer. Fortunately, both of those classes are helping to inform my activism, feminism, and blogging! I am taking Advanced Topics in Black Psychology and Film Representations of Race, Class, and Gender because they both could towards my degree and they both help to fill the MAJOR gap in my activist knowledge surrounding issues of race and ethnicity.
I don’t have time for long blog posts at the moment, but I DO have time to share some of what I’ve been reading in and out of class so that we can learn together!
I didn’t know much at all about the Tuskegee Syphilis studies until last week, but I’m glad to have learned. What happened to the men involved in this study (and their families) was terrible. Essentially, over 400 black men with syphilis were recruited for a study on the effects that the disease has on the body (especially the heart, brain, and spinal cord.) These men were promised free healthcare and money for a burial in return for their participation… which is where we run into our first ethical mistake. Technically these men couldn’t consent because, at the time, black people could not purchase life insurance and most could not afford health care, this creates a power imbalance that makes honest consent more or less impossible.
One of the doctors involved with the study, injecting a participant.
The study went on for years, with the men receiving nothing more than pink aspirin and an annual checkup… although they were told they were being treated. Some dangerous treatments (like arsenic) were experimented with and given out for free, but the men in this study were carefully tracked and kept away from any potential treatments. This is ethical mistake number two: deception is permissible only when it is the only option, and its not okay in cases where extreme damage will be done to a participant without their knowledge or consent.
After it was discovered that Penicillin cured the disease the scientists involved with this study decided to continue anyway… keeping the men in this study away from life saving treatment, for no good reason. The scientists wanted bodies to autopsy and study, and they were determined to get them even at the expense of real human lives that could have easily been saved. This can’t even be called an ethical mistake… its just flat-out inhumane.
The kicker of it all is that we didn’t even learn anything new. According to my professor, Syphilis had been studied many times before this. We already knew what it did to the body, the researchers just wanted to see the process in action, and they were willing to essentially kill innocent people in order to get what they wanted.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the United States conducted a similar study in Guatemala around this time. In order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating the disease, US scientists purposefully infected people (by paying infected sex workers, or just putting the disease right into the body using medical techniques) and then gave some treatment, and some nothing at all.
When did this all happen? The Tuskegee study started in 1933 and didn’t end until 1972, just 39 years ago. The Guatemalan study took place from 1946-1948, 64 years ago.
[Sources: Tuskegee, Guatemala.]
What strikes me most, I think, is that things have not gotten much better when it comes to our societal structures and racism. While I doubt scientists would dare attempt to violate human rights in as blatant of a manner in the present (in the United States, at least… part of me feels like we’re probably still engaging in some sketchy things abroad), there are still plenty of systemic injustices that place the black population in a vulnerable position.
For example: I found this article, Fourteen examples of systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system, on Tumblr instead of in class, but it is still incredibly relevant and powerful to a lot of what I have learned in a formal setting so far.
Eight. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in March 2010 that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10% longer than white offenders for the same crimes. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project reports African Americans are 21% more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and 20% more like to be sentenced to prison than white drug defendants.
[...]
Thirteen. Remember that the US leads the world in putting our own people into jail and prison. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the US has five percent of the world’s population but a quarter of the world’s prisoners, over 2.3 million people behind bars, dwarfing other nations. The US rate of incarceration is five to eight times higher than other highly developed countries and black males are the largest percentage of inmates according to ABC News.
Fourteen. Even when released from prison, race continues to dominate. A study by Professor Devah Pager of the University of Wisconsin found that 17% of white job applicants with criminal records received call backs from employers while only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records received call backs. Race is so prominent in that study that whites with criminal records actually received better treatment than blacks without criminal records!
[...]
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a racialized system of social control. The stigma of criminality functions in much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us, allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted people. She calls it a new caste system.
Poor whites and people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of social control. Because if poor whites or others get out of line, they will be given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor blacks.
I pulled out a few examples that really struck me, but you really should just go read the whole thing. Aside from explaining the problem of the Prison Industrial Complex in easily understandable terms, this piece makes suggestions as to how we can begin to mend a broken system and highlights organizations doing the work.
I have to go do a paper now, so I don’t have the time to formulate a thoughtful response to all of this reading yet. Plus, to be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed with information at the moment… kind of the same way I felt when I first started reading about queer and gender studies. Just like then, reading and talking and repeating is the best way (for me at least) to get past my own ignorance and move into a place where I can start to contribute to the solution. I hope some of you learn in the same was as I do and can benefit from this as well! So, lets help each other grow?
I’d love to have a conversation with people about this though so please, share your thoughts in the comments!
So, so many books!
Now that classes have ended for the semester, I have regained my ability to read for fun! As a result of this new-found free time and renewed joy in leisure reading I have spent a ridiculous amount of time at various bookstores over the last few weeks.
Yesterday I found myself at Barnes & Noble for an hour or so, just to get out of the house. I really didn’t want to add to that already GIGANTIC pile of books to be read, so I decided to spend some time looking at books that I knew I would never want to buy. This is how I ended up flipping through Glenn Beck’s An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems. (Link goes to the Google Books preview.)
First off: save your money. Glenn doesn’t actually solve a single problem, he just complains a lot about how messed up our culture is and makes extravagant claims about how conservatism could fix everything from troubled marriages to oil dependency.
What struck me the most, though, is the whole chapter in his book devoted to body image.
That’s right, the man who just recently spent eight minutes pretending to vomit on his show, in response to a skin cancer PSA that Meghan McCain took part in. In the PSA McCain wore a tube-top and positioned her body so as to appear naked (the point of the PSA was to equate leaving the house without sunscreen to leaving the house without clothes.)
[I'm not the BIGGEST Meghan McCain fan, but her response to Beck has made me like her that much more!]
Beck continued on to advise her to:
“Put some extra clothes on. Like, lots of extra clothes … has she thought about a burqa, just to be extra safe.”
Meanwhile, in his book (which came out before this whole mess) Beck wrote about the need for the modeling industry to truly enforce standards that promote models who look like the “average” American woman (… like Meghan McCain?) or, at the very least, discourage models from becoming life-threateningly thin. He also talks a bit about the societal pressures that young women face in regards to their body image. (You can read most of the chapter for free, here!)
Yes, he said plenty of problematic things in this chapter too: for instance, constantly referring to young girls as “prostitots” complete with a “charming little drawing that shows a “prostitot” growing up. However, mixed in with the problematic messages, there seemed to be a man who genuinely wanted his daughters to grow up in a world where they could feel comfortable in their bodies.
How is this the same man who went on to fake vomit in response to a woman’s body on his national radio show?
Glenn gives some pretty solid advice in his book, bringing the responsibility for protecting young people’s body image onto the parents:
“My family has an unwritten rule, if you wouldn’t spend time with someone in real life, then don’t let them into the living room via your television set either. It seems simple, but these days we’re not just letting people into our living rooms; we’re letting them right into our kid’s bedrooms. [...] Celebrities only have power because we give it to them.”
- Glenn Beck, page 67 of An Inconvenient Book.
This isn’t the whole solution, but cutting out negative media messages is a great start to helping to shape positive self-esteem for yourself and those around you. May I suggest starting by cutting Glenn Beck out of your lives? (After all, you wouldn’t want him vomiting all over your living room!)
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Also, a sidenote to anyone else with a WordPress powered blog: working in the new distraction free mode really is convenient. I love how the sidebar slides down the page with you as you type!
I have a confession to make. Despite the fact that Donald Trump is a terrible businessman, a ridiculous politician, and just not a good person… I have been addicted to The Celebrity Apprentice this season. The Next Great Restaurant (and my enduring love of terrible reality television) already had me watching NBC on Sunday nights and, before I knew it, I was tuning in to the Celebrity Apprentice each week too. It’s a terrible show that rarely makes sense (why was tonight’s episode three hours long?!) but I enjoy the mental vacation it allows me to take so I continue to watch week after week.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I have a few things to say about tonight’s episode.
After losing their challenge this week Star Jones, Marlee Matlin, and Meatloaf were sent outside so that Trump could consult with his two advisers. While outside, Meatloaf and Star continued the argument they had been having in the boardroom. When addressing Star during this conversation (which was not friendly or positive in any way) Meatloaf called Star Jones sweetie. I immediately cringed when this happened, and I am so happy to say that T did as well, because we both recognized how condescending this interaction was.
Upon watching this my mind immediatley jumped back in time, to the job that I was working two summers ago. One day a Professor came in and needed help using the stapler, so I showed him how to do it. He most likely felt embarrassed that he needed help using the stapler, because once he was done he made sure to throw a big, “Thanks sweetheart!” in there. Now, I know this is one of those scenarios where I’m going to have people coming out of the woodwork to call me an angry, humorless feminist for being annoyed by this… but I was. In that context, with the tone that was used, sweetheart felt like a tiny reminder that I was still somehow beneath him. Even though I had just taught him how to use the stapler.
Maybe if I had known this man I would have felt differently.
Maybe if our interaction hadn’t been one that threatened his authority (just a little bit) by making him look silly, I would have felt differently.
Maybe if there were any kind of equivalent to this type of comment that men regularly deal with, I would have felt differently.
But as this situation stands, I was left (just a little bit) annoyed, feeling like I had witnessed another (tiny) instance of sexism that plays into the web of (just slightly) frustrating events that build and build and build into the brick wall that is oppression.
The scenario on the Celebrity Apprentice was much less ambiguous than mine. Honey, sweetie, dear, darling… these terms of endearment are all lovely when used properly, in the right context. An argument, however? That is not the context. Meatloaf knew this, on some level, because in an argument when someone calls you sweetie the implication is calm down you silly sweet thing, you’re getting all riled up for nothing. Isn’t it?
A random tweet on the episode: Star Jones wanna get mad at Meatloaf calling her “sweetie” but they done called you “fat”, “turkey neck”, and “payless queen” before?
Clearly, the way to render feminism obsolete is to take the glass ceiling down and use it to replace all doors with automatically opening glass doors!
To me, honestly, sweetie is the most frustrating out of all of these. Why? Because other people will acknowledge that being called fat, or turkey neck, or payless queen is insulting. Getting people to acknowledge that referring to you by a term of endearment when you are not close, and not happy with one another in that moment is not okay is a very difficult task, as we saw in this week’s board room. Trump layed into Star for being frustrated by this exchange, but still she stood her ground and ultimately got fired (for other reasons).
I feel the same way about the persistent door opening trope. If you’re opening the door for me because you got there first, or I was carrying something big and you’d like to be courteous… that’s awesome! Despite what you’ve been told about angry feminists, I am not going to get mad at you for helping me out regardless of your sex/gender identity. What frustrates me is the assumption that men must open doors, carry things, pay, etc. for women because women are the weaker sex and men are the providers.
Mother’s Day is coming up this Sunday! In honor of this, we’d like to share with you Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation which was sent to us the other day by Barbra Harrison, a Women’s Center Director from the ’80s, via Lee Sennish! (Thanks to both of these wonderful women!)
Mother’s Day originated after the Civil War, as a form of protest regarding the death and destruction of the war, by women who had lost their sons. Mother’s Day was created in 1858 by a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis. Jarvis organized Mothers’ Works Days in West Virginia, with the goal of improving sanitation in Appalachian communities of West Virginia. During the Civil War, Jarvis and other women left their families to care for the wounded on both sides. Jarvis also spent her time during the war as a peacemaker, calling together meetings to try and convince men on both sides to end the fighting.
In 1872, Julia Ward Howe proposed an annual National Mother’s Day for Peace. This is the original proclimation that she issued:
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Americans celebrated Mothers’ Day for Peace on June 2 for thirty years after this proclamation. In 1913 Congress declared that the second Sunday in May would be Mother’s Day.Many activists mark this proclamation as the turning point where Mother’s Day became commercialized and focused on honoring mothers through gifts and fancy meals (consumer goods) rather than through activism and the pursuit of peace.
Personally, I would love to reclaim Mother’s Day for Peace by keeping this activist perspective firmly in mind this Sunday. I play to talk with my family (at Mother’s Day Brunch) about the origins of this holiday and what it means, as a start in reclaiming it. I also plan to make a donation to the activist organization of my mother’s choice as a means of reclaiming those roots. What do you think?
